#anyway imaging dying for ugly art

[abysswatchers420]

got curious and looked up if anyone else has died recently from fractal wood burning, and yes they have! a month ago lol

[mtkay13]

Gonna post TWO hoboxus today because I CAN! (still desperately trying to catch up with my twitter posts LOL help I'm terrible at this)

From a meme based on art by KOTTERI, the author of Veil (among amazing other things). Find them on twitter @_K0TTERl_!

More musing below, as per usual! (Be ready it's a LONG one again)

I really hesitated with how I wanted to do this. The original had this gorgeous red poster that seemed like a perfect fit for WKX:

(@_K0TTERl_)

Either I went for the imagery of ZZS wistfully gazing upon the mysterious and eccentric WKX, which would definitely have been more aesthetic and undeniably fitting, or I went the semi-humorous route of channelling the "WKX fell for that ugly hobo and his gorgeous shoulder blades" meme-ified side of their dynamic.

Well, clearly that's where I ended up going, but I feel like explaining a bit.

For me, this picture was three-folds:

First part is the meme; it's kind of funny, kind of ridiculous, and sets the tone of what TYK starts off as; rather absurd, with its reasonable dose of dark humor, and the (at first seemingly improbable) meeting and love story between a silly dying hobo and a strange, suspicious, hedonistic gentleman. It felt thematically appropriate for TYK to twist the original image and put the obviously uglier one on the poster since TYK relies heavily on genre subversion to begin with.

Secondly, there is WKX. So, controversial opinion (/jk) but I don't think WKX was necessarily convinced or even really thought that ZZS was "a beauty" underneath his alleged mask. It was probably a mix of various feelings and teasing/provoking which lead to this joke. First, everything he expresses throughout the book and in extra 4; the fascination for this man who seemed too hide great strength and was of no known identity--who was probably more than what he seemed.

(I'm gonna push it just a little bit ((but isn't that the fun of literary interpretation)), but the "beauty under the mask" is not only physical. It could be a way to say, I think that beneath your raunchy, ridiculous attitude, beneath your gross appearance, beneath the pretense that you're a nobody, that you're a peasant, you're probably someone of great importance and great accomplishments, someone much stronger than you pretend to be--someone like me, perhaps, even. The shoulder blades references are, besides of course WKX *actually* noticing them, the observation of how ZZS moves, of how agile his body is, etc...)

Anyway-- the entire point of this intro is to say that to me, this isn't actually referring to that whole side of their dynamic (or not entirely), but rather to that passage that I am STILL OBSESSED WITH where Wen Kexing recognizes ZZS just from the way he's sitting in a restaurant, and that makes him feel things not entirely positive:

Zhou Zishu stepped into an inn alone. He chose a seat by a window, ordered a few side dishes and a jug of mulled rice wine, and drank it slowly while soaking in the sunshine. As soon as Wen Kexing walked in, he saw Zhou Zishu from behind. He didn’t know why, but he thought that this view was quite special—he could always pick it out of a crowd. Zhou Zishu did not sit with his back straight. Most of the time, he lounged indolently at an angle that looked exceptionally comfortable. Wen Kexing thought that it seemed as though nothing weighed on him; seeing him was enough to ease the heart. Wen Kexing unconsciously halted his steps. He stared at Zhou Zishu’s relaxed silhouette for a while, with no trace of an expression in his face or eyes. His heart swelled with some strange feeling—strange, in that it was no feeling at all. He felt as though this man was mocking him with this wordless posture; he who rushed around for one thing or another, who was burdened with so many cares, yet obstinately put on a devil-may-care persona. Zhou Xu—as carefree as duckweed, he thought, with a body like willow catkins. In all the world, with its boundless perspectives, where could you find someone who walked their path alone and never allowed anything to trouble them? Yet he was not apathetic—he had his joy, his anger, his sorrow—and they came in a flash as quickly as they went. Within the blink of an eye, he had forgotten it already.

(Tian Ya Ke, chapter 18, TL by Lianzi) (have I quoted this already??? If not I should have I love this passage so much)

AND THEN QUOTING ANOTHER PASSAGE (LOL), TL by me this time:

From the moment he'd noticed his shoulderblades, felt this rush of excitement, to when he'd started liking who Zhou Zishu was, when he'd thought——so this is the Commander of Tian Chuang. Suddenly, he'd felt as if he'd met his other self. Both of them, lone wolves caught in a hunter's trap, struggling for freedom to no avail, until they had resolved to coldly gnawing off their own legs in the end. He'd felt compelled to follow him around, watched him, until he suddenly realised—if Zhou Zishu could live like this, then surely, so could he?

(Full passage in this other post LOL)

So yes, THIS. Those two things. That's it. Need I say more? HAH OF COURSE I DO I ALWAYS HAVE TO (help)

More seriously--the way WKX is captivated by ZZS' apparent carefreeness and freedom, all the different feelings (or absence thereof, as he puts it, which I interpret as so distant from what he's used to feel that it almost feels like nothing at all) is what I was going for here.... By not showing his face at all LMAO

The envy, the frustration--the impression of being mocked, but also the longing, how it inspired him to follow along and try to be free like he was.

-cough- yes, so that was point 2 out of 3.

Now lastly, about ZZS himself and my representation of him as hoboxu. I think (?) I've written enough about him that I think I can keep this succint. I love how priest often makes a point of expliciting, in the book, how he's so often smiling, and how he's always incredibly energetic in the morning, as if the night of pain had never happened. I like to think that hoboxu is both a carricature of a ridiculous character that ZZS has fun embodying---but also a liberated expression of his deeper self.

WKX feels like he's mocking him, but ZZS is also mocking himself relentlessly, when he feels like the outside resembles the inside finally, when he feels ridiculous in these new robes, when he allows himself the most outrageous behavior---and then there's mocking life itself, mocking jianghu, mocking everything that he nonetheless deeply cherishes. It's almost... gently mocking, affectionate mocking of everything because his own life has become a joke yet he's still going to enjoy it to the fullest--drinking to his heart's content, rolling in the mud and visiting touristy sites (or so he intended).

In the end... the world is still in his own hands. He chose everything, chose the way he lived, the way he (would have) died and still has the power to dissappear at will--but he stays. Stays and endures what he pretends annoys him, because he can't help himself, because he's ridiculous and is aware of it and may as well have some fun while being so.

I can't seem to ever have enough of this, of this vibe. I wanted to have him laugh at and with WKX, at and with the people seeing him, at and with himself, at and with the narrative.

SO YEAH HAH THATS HUM THAT'S IT. You know what they say, it's only a fun meme if there's an essay behind it (noone says that help 😭😭😭😭)

I hope you had fun reading it and have a nice weeked 🤪

[danpuff-ao3]

ATTENTION EVERYONE: PLEASE PAUSE TO ADMIRE THIS PERFECTION:

(perfection drawn by the ever sweet and skillful @inarticulateimbecile)

Look at that perfect, ugly man who I adore with my whole entire heart.

But also, admire THIS perfection:

My BOYS 😭 😭 🥰

Scenes from my beloved story Contempt. And gifted to me by such a lovely friend. 🥺 (I'm crying, don't worry about it.)

Extra tidbits: the first time I ever talked to inarticulateimbecile was me popping into their inbox all awkward and anxiety-ridden to squeal about their art 😂 The second time was them coming to me to chat about Contempt! We definitely talked about how deliciously ugly Severus is. (Please don't @ me, I don't wanna hear it, let me swoon for his ugly face damn it.) (Remember how SpongeBob said "I'm ugly and I'm proud"???? Get with the program, people.)

ANYWAY. So. I sobbed upon seeing these, of course. I still feel like I haven't appropriately blubbered at them over how wonderful they are and how much they mean to me.

Image 1: look at the ball of light!! That glow!! The shadows on Severus' face!! The lank head hair, the sparse chest hair; the concavity of his chest!! (Very important detail, very important!) And his frown! How he's so sharp and grim and afraid and reserved!!

Image 2: My boys all cuddled close together, as they belong! Harry all snuggled into Severus' chest. 🥺 The way Severus holds him! 🥺 They way they hold each other. How even in sleep they're not quite at peace, not quite happy, but stealing and savoring the moment they have while they have it!! I'm living and dying in my feelings right now, no big deal.

And now!!!! They get to live in my fic cuz friend is so good to me!! 🥰 Also: why are my friends so talented??? Like dang. Mind = blown. Also: why are my friends so friggin' SWEET??? Again. Mind = blown. Please go shower all of inarticulateimbecile's everything with love because they deserve it. Also please go admire their art at the end of Contempt if you don't mind because it gives extra life and character to the fic!!!! Also...!!!!! idk. I feel like I should keep talking because I'm excited. So idk have some exclamation points instead: !!!!!!!!!!!!!

[yanderes-galore]

Fandom: Bioshock

Character: Dr J.S. Steinman

Pairing: Romantic

Type of Fic: scenario/short story. Plot being, Darling is trying to escape the dying city of Rapture (unrelated to Jack's quest entirely) but gets caught by Steinman because Steinman sees darling as the pinnacle of beauty and tries to replicate their looks on other Splicers.

Sorry if this kinda sound specific I tried to make it as open as possible.

Oooo! Yeah! I can do a short for this >:)

Replication

Yandere! Dr J.S. Steinman Short

Pairing: Romantic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Stalking, Violence, Unwanted plastic surgery, Unwanted picture taking, Death, Blood, Kidnapping, Forced relationship, Drugging.

It was never perfect! They were never perfect! Nothing he did could replicate the beauty he saw that one fateful day!

These Splicers are such an eyesore to him. Their looks never matched what he preferred. None of them were beautiful. Steinman has seen beauty.

He's fallen for beauty.

Steinman remembered seeing the pinnacle of beauty in this city. As though Aphrodite herself had blessed him, he caught sight of the most beautiful thing in his life. You... someone attempting to leave this dying city.

Ever since he saw you, a magnificent specimen, he's tried to replicate how he's felt ever since. Day after day Steinman takes in Splicers. They aren't the most willing subjects but he must do Aphrodite's work.

As if to fill an ever growing void in his chest, Steinman chased his desires. He makes surgery his art, he tries to make the ugly into something beautiful.

Every attempt to replicate his muse ends in failure.

The idea of this drives the perfectionist insane. In an exasperated noise of rage every Splicer ends the same. They die on his table due to the blood loss and he tosses them aside before trying anew.

Nothing could match your perfection and he was beginning to wonder if he'd ever get rid of the void in his chest.

Replicating your beauty did not placate him in the slightest. Every attempt was wrong. The image in his mind wasn't enough.

Steinman decided to borrow a camera from Cohen to solve his issue. Cohen is a man who understands art, which convinced him to allow Steinman to take such a tool. Steinman then decides he'll follow you.

Even when he feels he may never see you again, he manages to catch sight of you at times. Whenever you came into view he'd click the camera and hide out of sight.

With new inspiration he feels his work get better and better. The Splicers soon begin to resemble your beauty more and more. He's excited, chasing the high as he cuts into their flesh. Yet then he cuts too deep...

And the work is ruined.

Pictures do wonders for inspiration. However, he can't help but feel that the inspiration isn't the problem. Perhaps it is the canvas, the Splicers aren't enough.

How could they even compare to the original anyways?

With new motives, Steinman is back on the hunt. He traverses Rapture in search of his muse once again. This time, picture's won't do.

All he needs is a needle and some drugs.

It isn't hard to sneak up and wrangle you when he finds you again. You panic when he inserts the needle, the drugs seeping into your blood to slowly reduce your movement. By the time you fall victim to his anesthesia... you're being dragged back to his territory.

Steinman is a delighted man when he straps you to a chair. The room is still coated in the blood of his past attempts. Now... he won't have to worry about those eyesore Splicers.

Steinman has you, a gift from his Goddess.

There's no need to use pictures to replicate you... there's no need for replication at all!

He has the real thing right in front of him now.

[xstarkillerx]

*let me do this again my dumb ass couldnt find the ask lmao*

dude i saw you reblogged my brian o'conner crash fanart, i was about to plug my A03 (i can't really post my delirious fantasies here since this is supposed to be a blog for my art collective 👀) BUT THEN i saw you already posted my shit here BUNNIE IT WAS YOU ALL ALONG insert iasip meme ILY <3 <3 <3

BASSE-FOSSE YOU ARE SO FAMOUS TO ME HELLLOOOOOO!!!!! It is me, you found me! I definitely should've put two and two together that the person posting art of Brian as Gabrielle and the person writing wild crash-f&f crossovers was one and the same lol. Although, as I've come to learn through your awesome recommendation that led me down a bit of a podfic rabbit hole, there are some bonkers, fantastical fics for f&f with super out there concepts but are really really well realized, which was pleasant to discover. I'm gonna keep blabbing under the read-more, because I'm so happy to have found you on tumblr, but I'll end off by saying I can't believe you posted to ao3 twice in July and I didn't know, I'm literally about to feast rn.

Anyway so nice to see you!!!!!

For anyone curious about what we're taking about, here you go!

I should take this time to say crash blew my mind, you were so right about the final scene being extremely similar to the end of the first f&f, to the point where my friend and I's reactions when we did that double feature were pretty much identical, it was so funny! We watched Crash first, and there was something about seeing that Miata finally get knocked off the highway, that was soooooooo... Like, I may be reading too much into this and I definitely don't understand the movie entirely yet, but MX-5 Miatas are one of the most personified cars out there because of their eye-like headlights and mouth-like vents, they literally look like 😃 it's so cute. Miatas are almost always portrayed as innocent, Friendly, and childlike, so to see the destruction of one (which the movie was def building up to), AND TO WATCH JAMES FUCK CATHERINE IN WRECKAGE , like it's such a good image to end on… it really drives home the irreparable effect being introduced to Vaughn's "world" had on them, like they basically went through the a fucked up version of the hero's journey and were left on the other side of the threshold not knowing how to cope, my jaw was on the floor!!! The unattainable fantasy of ultimate orgasm because of the resiliency of both cars AND human bodies, it was so good. "Maybe the next one, maybe the next one," still gives me shivers.

So watching F&F afterward was hilarious because my friend basically had the same reaction to its ending, that truck impact hit her real hard (she too wanted them to ugly fuck on the busted charger lol). I had told her that this was essentially the most blood we would ever see in the rest of the franchise which is not a lot, and we ended up having a whole conversation about comparing the fantasy set in place by both movies. The fantasy of F&F is essentially 1) the characters' inability to die/stay dead or get injured and 2) the seemingly omnipotent ability of cars to take down larger and larger vehicles, starting with 18-wheelers and progressing to yachts, trains, Humvees, planes, it's endless!! Whereas the fantasy in the world of Crash IS to die, to be scarred, marred, for every dent and scratch on your car to be mirrored on your skin until you're one and the same. It's the next evolution of man, to be melded with machine in a way that's gorey and sexual. Both works involve little family institutions, people who get it, people who have your back, and a fearless leader running the show. Where Dom Toretto literally can't die, or even lose, because it's in vin diesel's contract, Vaughn was fated to! What kind of example would he be setting for the others if he couldn't achieve the nirvana of dying on the toronto freeway.

Ugh I totally did not mean to give you an entire book report but I've been sitting on all of this for so long and I figured you of all people would understand being immensely effected by these two movies being put together lol. Anyway thanks for reaching out! I'm around if you ever wanna talk f&f, I loveeeeee the way you view that universe. Much luvvvv 🫶🫶

[mothmanismyuncle]

I posted 20,403 times in 2022

121 posts created (1%)

20,282 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@warmthseeker

@damatris

@sillyjimjam

@definitely-not-indecisive

@ghost-in-a-player-piano

I tagged 1,424 of my posts in 2022

#geraskier - 56 posts

#the witcher - 48 posts

#jaskier - 44 posts

#geralt - 33 posts

#ref - 20 posts

#geralt of rivia - 19 posts

#q - 10 posts

#art - 9 posts

#tma - 7 posts

#cryptidqueueflip - 7 posts

Longest Tag: 137 characters

#like everybody gotta quit gatekeeping. i. a gay man. would rather have 10000 ‘straight women’ ‘’fetishise’’ me than 1 person feel unloved

I sent 1 gift in 2022

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

i hope im never behind the wheel if i see this shit in the wild bc i blacked out ugly laughing

24 notes - Posted September 7, 2022

#4

modern au. geraskier, established relationship. just a little comfort for the bard boy after a miserable day at work.

xoxoxo!!!

❦

geralt looked up from his book when he heard the door click shut and his husband peel off a soaked jacket. shoes were kicked; a bag was dropped; still, jaskier said nothing.

usually, geralt starts hearing his husband’s car radio from the moment it enters their neighbourhood. the quiet is alarming, to say the least, so geralt turns his book over and lays it on the couch, putting his reading glasses on his head.

“jaskier?” he calls trotting into the laundry room, where jaskier is shucking off his sodden work uniform.

“hello, love,” he replies huskily. “it’s raining.”

“it is,” geralt agrees. he turns the dryer back on, peering at the load of towels bouncing around. “why don’t you take a nice shower? warm you up,”

“‘kay,” jaskier acquiesced, slinking into the bathroom. geralt frowned after him.

typically, getting jaskier to shower right after work takes some cajoling, several bribes on both sides, all that.

today, the water turns on without any music to cover the sound, and geralt hears jaskier snuffle to himself before a small, broken sound escapes.

he won’t walk in on his husband crying. he won’t embarrass him when he waited until the shower was on and put on a face for geralt in the laundry room.

that’s what geralt chanted to himself, anyway, while he heaped blankets up on the bed and jogged back into the kitchen.

he took a small container out of the cabinet and double checked the instructions. only a bit of water and a minute in the microwave, and jaskier would have a sweet treat waiting for him in the nest geralt was building.

he gathered some water bottles, a sandwich, and jaskier’s favourite of geralt’s tee shirts that geralt thankfully had to save from the hamper. jaskier didn’t have geralt’s nose, but he could still scent his husband and it tended to calm him down plenty.

til his dying breath, geralt would deny that he rolled around on the nest blankets to make it warm and smell like him, but it was the quickest way and without music or the promise of geralt joining him, jaskier could be done in moments.

when geralt was satisfied that the clean blankets smelled a little more like home, he went to get a warm towel out of the dryer and swaddle his husband up for a trip to the nest.

he found jaskier sitting on the floor, arms wrapped around his knees.

he couldnt say anything that didnt feel too trite, too simple, too shallow, for what that image made his heart do in his chest. he simply got undressed and sat down next to him.

“bad day,” jaskier breathed. geralt, with soft hands and a softer heart, took the spray from the wall and began to wash jaskier’s hair.

jaskier began to cry again, but this time quietly. jaskier hated it when he cried, hated how much he cried, so geralt merely began humming for him while he threaded his fingers through auburn locks to remove the soap.

“i’m an artist, aren’t i?” jaskier finally asked.

“of course,” geralt said, cupping jaskier’s cheek to get him to look him in the eye. “of course you are. one of the best i’ve ever known.”

“i… geralt, i’m working at a fast food joint. i’m getting sandwiches thrown at me by customers, i’m getting barked at by my boss. i haven’t composed in almost a week.”

“you don’t have to always be writing to be an artist,” geralt said, sitting back on his haunches. “am i a witcher?”

“of course,”

“right now? when i’m sitting in the shower with you?”

“… quit it,” jaskier replied, cottoning on to geralt’s meaning and pushing his little head into geralt’s chest.

“i’m a witcher when i wake, and when i go to sleep, and every second in between.”

“that’s different,” jaskier mumbled as best he could with the hot water pouring down the back of his neck. geralt only held him, rocking him back and forth ever so slightly.

See the full post

26 notes - Posted June 20, 2022

#3

no need to measure for curtains, he said

they’ll surely be fine, he said

no way in hell they’ll turn out to be some kinda cock-height peep show for the entire main street of your hometown, he also said, strangely specific and also even stranger, wrong

29 notes - Posted March 13, 2022

#2

For the hurt comfort list? "you are what's important right now" with whoever you like. Thanks!

jaskier could’ve blinked and missed it. he almost wished he had; on one hand, he was on his feet before geralt even hit the ground.

on the other, the image of the kikimore’s leg bursting through his boyfriend wouldn’t stop replaying every time he closed his eyes.

his badass boyfriend that lopped its head off right after, mind, but still.

“don’t move!” jaskier chided again, handing geralt his water. “i’m right here, love. i’m ready and willing.”

“i just wanted a drink,” geralt pouted. well, okay. less of a physical, facial, or vocal pout and more of a slight tightness around the eyes, but this was jaskier. he knew geralt better than geralt knew geralt.

“and i just want you to get back to feeling better.” he countered.

“you can’t sit here and hand me my water all night, jaskier. you have an audience downstairs and you’ll get bored.”

“none of those people matter to me. you are what’s important to me right now.” jaskier replied, folding himself into his witcher’s side gently. “besides, i can think of a few ways to entertain ourselves.”

“i thought you didnt want me to move.”

“for this, you won’t have to.” jaskier said, waggling his eyebrows. “tell me a story?”

geralt burst into surprised laughter before he winced, clutching his chest.

“okay, okay. what do you want to hear?”

jaskier wrapped his arms around geralt, snuggling in close. he could hear the thud of geralt’s heart and feel him breathing, and honestly? that was enough for a simple bard like himself.

“anything, love.” geralt held him with his good arm, resting his cheek on top of jaskier’s head. “anything you’d like.”

71 notes - Posted July 18, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

jaskier whumpers be like

609 notes - Posted October 27, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[hospitalterrorizer]

diary62

11/12-13/2023

sunday - monday

single is out now, wow.

my mom texted me a bit ago, just because, which is nice. in other news i finally put out the single i've been sitting on/trying to get right, and i got it right today, by adding a tiny bit to the left channel, and remixing the b side, which was very easy, now that i'm used to that process. like i said in the main post, the cover art had to be messed w/ to get it right for various platforms, the png was too big and all that stuff. when i make the next cover it needs to be at 3000x3000, which bites kind of, i like how much you can do w/ 5000x5000.

anyway, here is the image as it is as a jpg (actually png):

and there is the song, is it even possible to link to playlists on tumblr? also i can't even put anything abt this on instagram, how weird and annoying.

okay i got the insta thing to work (they too cannot handle the 5kx5k image and instead wanted it to be 50% the size (but they would not tell me that!!)). i wonder what i'm gonna do tomorrow, with music or cooking or anything really. i wanted to get this out because i want people to hear this if they come to me from that interview i did (lol), so they get a better idea of where i'm at musically i guess. this isn't really super representative of the whole record still though, but i like that. it's different angles on roughly the same kind of sound(s)/idea(s). i really like the ugly feedback stuff i added today.

all the weird hiccups i ran into today w/ cover art was really baffling, it's not like anyone is gonna notice this stuff really but i don't really like how it looks at 50% size because it makes some of the pixellations weird (i overuse dithering/indexed images in a weird way where they overlap and create new patterns (i hope)) this whole process fucking with the things i do, sort of. i don't think it's absent entirely it's just different/more disordered. if i focus on 3k x 3k and a pretty precise colorspace (that i need to figure out) then i think i'll be good. what i'm thinking of is doing 2 different 16 color palettes for 2 different sides of the collage / different pieces. so certain things can pop, i guess. anyways i guess sometime soon i should assemble the things i want to use for the cover art, and create at least the one thing i am certain on wanting for it (pink and black bull's eye thingy).

also i was able to get the image on sc to just be the jpg of the real cover, which is kind of crazy to me, but whatever.

regarding my life as i live it, nothing really happened, my gf dyed her hair blonde, which is funny, it's already blonde. she's been doing this a while but it makes me wonder, i guess, about how she likes it more blonde, more than natural. it looks good on her, it's just funny how i thought it was pretty bright normally, but apparently not bright enough, i wonder if it corresponds to how she imagines herself, i remember the first time, it was very crazy to her, it felt/looked perfect on her, it was sort of like she was meant to be that cartoonishly blonde, in like a 1970s anime kind of way.

and now i am just sat here eating pretzels to stave of cravings for sweets (trying to keep my mouth occupied i guess (i do that a lot)).

anyway i am tired, i ought to just turn in soon, soon:

byebye!!!!!!!

[digitalvoidheart]

I'm dying Internally I can't-XD

Look

First image is of my humanities version of Huggy Wuggy

Dafaq? But okay I guess

I did another of my pfp later but deleted it but it turned into a woman snow boarding too

Next! An old outer tale Frans pic

I soon realised I chose a snow anime filter XD

I swapped after that

Ngl tthis one looks really nice. Might use the pic for inspo

And here's another

IT DDOESN'T EVEN LOOK ANYTHING LI-

By now I'm guffawing aight?

But this one's the kicker. I tried my pfp on another filter...

*You hear Void's ugly and loud cackling and laughter in the distance* XD

AHAAAAAAAAGHAGAXAHACAJVSJSVDJS-

Anyways. If any artists wanna have a laugh at an ai's interpretation of THEIR OWN doodles the apps name is on the pics X3c

(again no one should take another's art and try it. Find something you did and DIY)

Gonna do some stupid shit and try an anime ai art app with my art

I don't support it but I wanna have a laugh at what they can do with my old art

Will post the results once I get em

(I advise Noone else to use my art for such matter. I ask nicely)

[burnyouwithacigarettelighter]

part i, autonomy in your coherence | c.g

With something like time that runs round with the world — ignoring it’s inhabitants and stealing things that you’d hidden away for safekeeping — you’ve taken up the hobby of art, furiously sketching faces that are six-feet under.

The skill is beautiful and horrific all the same, watching like a person with amnesia as the portraits begin to lose their depth, the freshness, the personality that came free with who you’d chosen to print on the page.

You’ve forgotten your feelings for Carl, because he didn’t feel the same.

You just wished you did a better job at it.

WARNINGS: mentions of death, suicide ideation

this is a continuation of watch you burn away and i recommend you read that, first! this is also part of a series, so here is the masterlist if you need it!

(cross-posted on ao3!)

Your father once told you he had a patient that died from heartbreak.

“Your heart can’t really break, though, right?” You’d said. A doctor for a father and a laboratory technician for a mother made you more than aware of things, seeing through the myths and pretty white lies of figures like Santa and the tooth fairy.

(They had gone through with it anyway, because although their child knew, it was a gateway to normality in such a busy home.)

Your father scratched his chin, unsure how to respond. “My patient had died from a broken heart, though the process wasn’t as simple as it’s term name. A broken heart — the nonliteral meaning — can be the cause and the domino toppling to many things that could lead to death.”

“Like what?” You’d said with little admission into the conversation, having been flicking through a novel you’d picked up a while back (which featured a one eyed pirate and his partner who’d ended up dying in the end — not that you knew, yet, at least.)

“I don’t know, er,” Your father swirled his coffee lightly, gesturing wildly with his free hand, “Mental health issues, for one. Erratic actions, depression, a lost sense of self. Obsession.”

“Huh,” You muttered, looking up at your father for the first time. “A lost sense of self? Really?”

“What is your father teaching you?” Your mother said, stepping into the kitchen with a questioning expression. The conversation ended there, without so much as a thought after.

You wish you pried your father for further answers. What you’d give to get the workaholic of a man to dump his duo psychology medical major thoughts unto you with little care.

The knowledge would be gold in your time of need, when pulling and pushing distance further between you was like venturing through a field of thorns.

(Perhaps you just missed your parents. But that couldn’t be it, right? They’d died and you had lived, their blood on your hands and the gun in your fingers, their glazed over eyes and your own that nearly matched, cold and willing without a drop of emotion.)

But you’d gotten through it for him— without him. Without anyone, quietly harboring scratches and bleeding from the field with little effort.

If someone asked, you would tell them with full and honest confidence that you harboured no more attachments. You were a naive teenager, running through your feet and over yourself for something that was just a crush.

Crushes are — in their whole singularity and purpose —  temporary.

They are brief, and momentarily something that causes ripples and waves in your thoughts, just the slightest mention or faint sight makes you detour down a road of sickly sweet dreams and fantasies.

He was first love (like? You didn’t love him, no, it was a crush and it was something for the unattainable and the inappropriate — in which with full truth, he was.) so you poured the honey glazed remembrances and rose coloured lenses over your memories, because he was a first love, and you know that those were cracks in the heart, growing vines and constricting the part that was him — the part that’d always, always be there, without a doubt.

(However much you didn’t want it to be.)

The leaves and the venomous flowers that sprout in decaying grooves come with age, and you are older now.

You bear fresh scars that litter your entire being and wear newly buried bones of people who were once not just that, the dirt still sitting in the crevices of your nails, and you seem to forget their voices with each passing day.

With something like time that runs round with the world — ignoring it’s inhabitants and stealing things that you’d hidden away for safekeeping — you’ve taken up the hobby of art, furiously sketching faces that are six-feet under.

The skill is beautiful and horrific all the same, watching like a person with amnesia as the portraits begin to lose their depth, the freshness, the personality that came free with who you’d chosen to print on the page.

More and more, the faces look like reference art rather than a taken from life picture, which was all telling them to sit still and watching their eyes crinkle at the edges when you show them the result, voices echoing and asking if they could have it.

Everyday, as it has become a peevish habit like biting your nails or obsessively reminding yourself your stove is off, you draw pictures of everyone.

If you are close enough with them, you ask the subject to sit and model for you, analyzing every breath and laugh they take when you crack a joke or engage them in meaningless conversation just to see how the light hits their brows when they raise, the shadows pooling in their aging lines.

Everyday, you wish and hope and even fucking pray that their portraits continue to be something of anxious routine, rather than trying to dump their image out of your head and onto paper so you can see their faces one more time.

His image seems to change with each moment he sits in for you, once a face with two piercing blues, then a patch and eyes that looked at the dusty wooden floor, and later, someone who looks at you straight, something that told you he was a survivor, who bore his battles proudly, the scar on the right of his face sitting ruggedly and bewitchingly.

You draw him, exactly the way you see him, and when you show him the picture, he laughs, and says “You made me look too pretty,” and you shake your head, “It’s exactly the way I see you.”

You do her, too, upon request. When she sits, you draw her almost like it was professional, drawing the curvature of her face with exact precision, intense shading, marking the features she holds. The dip in her nose, the straight of her hair.

(You often forget who you’re drawing in these moments, and when you step away from the canvas you’re hit with whiplash. It’s subconscious, the way you do these things to please him, wanting to see so clearly how his face spreads delicately with delight.)

It takes a little while for you to convince Ron. When you first propose the drawing, he gives you a confused face, before walking off to do shooting practice. He’s gotten better with the gun over the years, and doesn’t respond when you tell him you know why.

(His mother didn’t come out of it alive, and his brother didn’t come back without harm. The younger boy was alive, but would grow up with only his brother by his side and one less limb to account for.)

The second time, he makes a snide comment, albeit with no bite, about how ‘you must be a horrible artist, to ask me of all people to model for you.’

The third time, you’ve dragged him to the small office you makeshifted for the drawings in the garage. He studies every slit of paper you’ve ripped out of your book, the unfinished sketches or yet-to-be painted canvases piling up against the walls. Complete works sit proudly on your wall, displayed for the world to see.

His hands hover over the paints sitting on your desk, charcoal, dirt, sticks, paintbrushes, handmade dyes, wallpaper cut-outs.

“Why?” Ron says curiously.

“‘Why?’ what?” You echo, fiddling with a fork you grabbed from the kitchen, splaying out a thick lather combination of beet dye and cement onto your finger to check the consistency.

“Why do you draw these portraits? I get the others because,” He says, leaving the words “because they’re dead” hanging in the air between you two in mutual and regretful acknowledgement, “But you draw these everyday. You drag Carl and Enid off, or just sit on the benches and draw Maggie and Glenn knee-deep in the dirt.”

You sigh a dreadful breath, wiping the rest of the beet-cement mix onto the page with the pad of your fore-finger. “We’ll forget them one day.”

He looks at you, unblinking. The dead, the gone, and the soon to be long forgotten only existed in your memories, in your words, and when the time came that the world had moved on and stopped, they would cease. Their whole memory relied on the living, nothing about them able to reach and grasp life on their own. Memory was all that was left, and it was all you could do to wash away regret.

“And the rest?”

You bite your tongue hesitantly, your movements rigid, “You see their portraits. Everyday they get less and less coherent. When — when time comes , these drawings will be the only thing getting me by.” You whispered.

The ball had dropped. Coping and grief in it’s big and ugly form, preying on your conscious hungrily, taking shelter in your largest worries. Claws sunken in your flesh, the monster was a thing that felt like it would never go away, because it would loom right alongside death itself, watching and waiting for the moment they’d deemed someones time to have been enough.

(It would never be enough. Enough meant they’d pop in from next door and ask to borrow something, enough meant they’d swipe dirt across your face to make you angry — enough meant they would come in everyday and sit for their portrait once more.)

A creaking on the floorboard caught your attention, eyes watching as Ron’s feet walk to the corner of the room, before hopping onto the wooden seat with little effort.

“I’m not going. I never will. But — do it anyway. I’d… like to see how I look on paper.” He said cheekily, picking up a thin pencil off your desk and handing it out to you.

So you did. Seconds turned to minutes and minutes snowballed into hours in the dim lighting of the garage, asking the blond to turn his body, stretch his head and make different expressions, fulfilling and destroying the little worm of worry sitting in your head.

When you’re done with the charcoal, turning it around for Ron to see and to inspect, he asks, “What about you?”

“And what about me?” You say. His questions never make sense without further discussion, but the boy always has to wait for you to pry and ask him to elaborate.

“You don’t have any drawings of yourself. You’re the artist, the photographer, the one who makes these things that will stay longer than the memories and the words — so what about you?”

It’s rare that Ron delves into his emotions and the things he really means, but when he does, it’s something that stays, for a long while.

“I,” You didn’t have an answer for it. You weren’t one to do a self-portrait, it not being the same as having someone to sit and take from. “I don’t want to.” You finished simply, an ice cold realization coming to reality in you.

“Why?” He says the same words as before, but the words hold a heavy weight.

“I don’t know.”

You knew.

Maybe one day, you’d wished that you’d wash away like seafoam on the beach. You wouldn’t leave a single portrait behind of you, and the memories and the words were left mum behind his lips, because you knew how he got in a loss.

Quiet and unfeeling, it was so selfish of you that you’d counted on how he got in that state to leave you behind, neglecting you like the fruits of your memories you’d never get to bear.

Ron’s gaze bore into you like he knew exactly what you were thinking, telepathically taking in every thought you’d conveyed at your dispense.

“You should.” Is all he says, before stepping off the wooden stool and out the door.

What was wrong with you? You feel so… entirely foolish. Obsolete. Embarrassing.

You walked past the remnants of those who were gone everyday, obsessively creating canvas over canvas of them and the only thing you could think was that you’d wish to position yourself beside them?

This world was catching up to you, and fast, but you’d just have to run faster than it could.

[mcmansionhell]

Underground, Part 1

[Author’s Note: A year ago, when waiting for the DC Metro, I came up with an idea for a short story involving two realtors and the infamous Las Vegas Underground House, typed up an outline, and shoved it away in my documents where it sat neglected until this month. The house recently resurfaced on Twitter, and combined with almost a year of quarantine, the story quickly materialized. Though I rarely write fiction, I decided I’d give it a shot as a kind of novelty McMansion Hell post. I’ve peppered the story with photos from the house to break up the walls of text. Hopefully you find it entertaining. I look forward to returning next month with the second installment of this as well as our regularly scheduled McMansion content. Happy New Year!

Warning: there’s lots of swearing in this.]

Underground

Back in 1997, Mathieu Rino, the son of two Finnish mechanical engineers who may or may not have worked intimately with the US State Department, changed his name to Jay Renault in order to sell more houses. It worked wonders.

He gets out of the car, shuts the door harder than he should. Renault wrinkles his nose. It’s a miserable Las Vegas afternoon - a sizzling, dry heat pools in ripples above the asphalt. The desert is a place that is full of interesting and diverse forms of life, but Jay’s the kind of American who sees it all as empty square-footage. He frowns at the dirt dusting up his alligator-skin loafers but then remembers that every lot, after all, has potential. Renault wipes the sweat from his leathery face, slicks back his stringy blond hair and adjusts the aviators on the bridge of his nose. The Breitling diving watch crowding his wrist looks especially big in the afternoon glare. He glances at it.

“Shit,” he says. The door on the other side of the car closes, as though in response. 

If Jay Renault is the consummate rich, out-of-touch Gen-Xer trying to sell houses to other rich, out-of-touch Gen-Xers, then Robert Little is his millennial counterpart. Both are very good at their jobs. Robert adjusts his tie in the reflection of the Porsche window, purses his lips. He’s Vegas-showman attractive, with dark hair, a decent tan, and a too-bright smile - the kind of attractive that ruins marriages but makes for an excellent divorcee. Mildly sleazy.

“Help me with these platters, will you?” Renault gestures, popping the trunk. Robert does not want to sweat too much before an open house, but he obliges anyway. They’re both wearing suits. The heat is unbearable. A spread of charcuterie in one hand, Jay double-checks his pockets for the house keys, presses the button that locks his car. 

Both men sigh, and their eyes slowly trail up to the little stucco house sitting smack dab in the center of an enormous lot, a sea of gravel punctuated by a few sickly palms. The house has the distinct appearance of being made of cardboard, ticky-tacky, a show prop. Burnt orange awnings don its narrow windows, which somehow makes it look even more fake. 

“Here we go again,” Jay mutters, fishing the keys out of his pocket. He jiggles them until the splintered plywood door opens with a croak, revealing a dark and drab interior – dusty, even though the cleaners were here yesterday. Robert kicks the door shut with his foot behind him.

 “Christ,” he swears, eyes trailing over the terrible ecru sponge paint adorning the walls. “This shit is so bleak.”

The surface-level house is mostly empty. There’s nothing for them to see or attend to there, and so the men step through a narrow hallway at the end of which is an elevator. They could take the stairs, but don’t want to risk it with the platters. After all, they were quite expensive. Renault elbows the button and the doors part. 

“Let’s just get this over with,” he says as they step inside. The fluorescent lights above them buzz something awful. A cheery metal sign welcomes them to “Tex’s Hideaway.” Beneath it is an eldritch image of a cave, foreboding. Robert’s stomach’s in knots. Ever since the company assigned him to this property, he’s been terrified of it. He tells himself that the house is, in fact, creepy, that it is completely normal for him to be ill at ease. The elevator’s ding is harsh and mechanical. They step out. Jay flips a switch and the basement is flooded with eerie light. 

It’s famous, this house - The Las Vegas Underground House. The two realtors refer to it simply as “the bunker.” Built by an eccentric millionaire at the height of Cold War hysteria, it’s six-thousand square feet of paranoid, aspirational fantasy. The first thing anyone notices is the carpet – too-green, meant to resemble grass, sprawling out lawn-like, bookmarked by fake trees, each a front for a steel beam. Nothing can grow here. It imitates life, unable to sustain it. The leaves of the ficuses seem particularly plastic.

Bistro sets scatter the ‘yard’ (if one can call it that), and there’s plenty of outdoor activities – a parquet dance floor complete with pole and disco ball, a putt putt course, an outdoor grill made to look like it’s nestled in a rock, but in reality better resembles a baked potato. The pool and hot tub, both sculpted in concrete and fiberglass mimicking a natural rock formation, are less Playboy grotto and more Fred Flintstone. It’s a very seventies idea of fun.

Then, of course, there’s the house. That fucking house. 

A house built underground in 1978 was always meant to be a mansard – the mansard roof was a historical inevitability. The only other option was International Style modernism, but the millionaire and his wife were red-blooded anti-Communists. Hence, the mansard. Robert thinks the house looks like a fast-food restaurant. Jay thinks it looks like a lawn and tennis club he once attended as a child where he took badminton lessons from a swarthy Czech man named Jan. It’s drab and squat, made more open by big floor-to-ceiling windows nestled under fresh-looking cedar shingles. There’s no weather down here to shrivel them up.

“Shall we?” Jay drawls. The two make their way into the kitchen and set the platters down on the white tile countertop. Robert leans up against the island, careful of the oversized hood looming over the electric stovetop. He eyes the white cabinets, accented with Barbie pink trim. The matching linoleum floor squeaks under his Italian loafers. 

“I don’t understand why we bother doing this,” Robert complains. “Nobody’s seriously going to buy this shit, and the company’s out a hundred bucks for party platters.”

“It’s the same every time,” Renault agrees. “The only people who show up are Instagram kids and the crazies - you know, the same kind of freaks who’d pay money to see Chernobyl.” 

“Dark tourism, they call it.”

Jay checks his watch again. Being in here makes him nervous.

“Still an hour until open house,” he mutters. “I wish we could get drunk.”

Robert exhales deeply. He also wishes he could get drunk, but still, a job’s a job.

“I guess we should check to see if everything’s good to go.”

The men head into the living room. The beamed, slanted ceiling gives it a mid-century vibe, but the staging muddles the aura. Jay remembers making the call to the staging company. “Give us your spares,” he told them, “Whatever it is you’re not gonna miss. Nobody’ll ever buy this house anyway.” 

The result is eclectic – a mix of office furniture, neo-Tuscan McMansion garb, and stuffy waiting-room lamps, all scattered atop popcorn-butter shag carpeting. Hideous, Robert thinks. Then there’s the ‘entertaining’ room, which is a particular pain in the ass to them, because the carpet was so disgusting, they had to replace it with that fake wood floor just to be able to stand being in there for more than five minutes. There’s a heady stone fireplace on one wall, the kind they don’t make anymore, a hearth. Next to it, equally hedonistic, a full bar. Through some doors, a red-painted room with a pool table and paintings of girls in fedoras on the wall. It’s all so cheap, really. Jay pulls out a folded piece of paper out of his jacket pocket along with a pen. He ticks some boxes and moves on.

The dining room’s the worst to Robert. Somehow the ugly floral pattern on the curtains stretches up in bloomer-like into a frilly cornice, carried through to the wallpaper and the ceiling, inescapable, suffocating. It smells like mothballs and old fabric. The whole house smells like that. 

The master bedroom’s the most normal – if anything in this house could be called normal. Mismatched art and staging furniture crowd blank walls. When someone comes into a house, Jay told Robert all those years ago, they should be able to picture themselves living in it. That’s the goal of staging. 

There’s two more bedrooms. The men go through them quickly. The first isn’t so bad – claustrophobic, but acceptable – but the saccharine pink tuille wallpaper of the second gives Renault a sympathetic toothache. The pair return to the kitchen to wait.

Both men are itching to check their phones, but there’s no point – there’s no signal in here, none whatsoever. Renault, cynical to the core, thinks about marketing the house to the anti-5G people. It’s unsettlingly quiet. The two men have no choice but to entertain themselves the old-fashioned way, through small talk.

“It’s really fucked up, when you think about it,” Renault muses.

“What is?”

“The house, Bob.”

Robert hates being called Bob. He’s told Jay that hundreds of times, and yet…

“Yeah,” Robert mutters, annoyed.

“No, really. Like, imagine. You’re rich, you founded a major multinational company marketing hairbrushes to stay-at-home moms, and what do you decide to do with your money? Move to Vegas and build a fucking bunker. Like, imagine thinking the end of the world is just around the corner, forcing your poor wife to live there for ten, fifteen years, and then dying, a paranoid old man.” Renault finds the whole thing rather poetic. 

“The Russkies really got to poor ol’ Henderson, didn’t they?” Robert snickers.

“The wife’s more tragic if you ask me,” Renault drawls. “The second that batshit old coot died, she called a guy to build a front house on top of this one, since she already owned the lot. Poor woman probably hadn’t seen sunlight in God knows how long.”

“Surely they had to get groceries.”

Jay frowns. Robert has no sense of drama, he thinks. Bad trait for a realtor.

“Still,” he murmurs. “It’s sad.”

“I would have gotten a divorce, if I were her,” the younger man says, as though it were obvious. It’s Jay’s turn to laugh.

“I’ve had three of those, and trust me, it’s not as easy as you think.”

“You’re seeing some new girl now, aren’t you?” Robert doesn’t really care, he just knows Jay likes to talk about himself, and talking fills the time.  

“Yeah. Casino girl. Twenty-six.”

“And how old are you again?”

“None of your business.”

“Did you see the renderings I emailed to you?” Robert asks briskly, not wanting to discuss Jay’s sex life any further.

“What renderings?”

“Of this house, what it could look like.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Jay has not seen the renderings.

“If it were rezoned,” Robert continues, feeling very smart, “It could be a tourist attraction - put a nice visitor’s center on the lot, make it sleek and modern. Sell trinkets. It’s a nice parcel, close to the Strip - some clever investor could make it into a Museum of Ice Cream-type thing, you know?”

“Museum of Ice Cream?”

“In New York. It’s, not, like, educational or anything. Really, it’s just a bunch of colorful rooms where kids come to take pictures of themselves.”

“Instagram,” Jay mutters. “You know, I just sold a penthouse the other week to an Instagram influencer. Takes pictures of herself on the beach to sell face cream or some shit. Eight-point-two million dollars.”

“Jesus,” Robert whistles. “Fat commission.”

“You’re telling me. My oldest daughter turns sixteen this year. She’s getting a Mazda for Christmas.”

“You ever see that show, My Super Sweet Sixteen? On MTV? Where rich kids got, like, rappers to perform at their birthday parties? Every time at the end, some guy would pull up in, like, an Escalade with a big pink bow on it and all the kids would scream.”

“Sounds stupid,” Jay says.

“It was stupid.”

It’s Robert’s turn to check his watch, a dainty gold Rolex.

“Fuck, still thirty minutes.”

“Time really does stand still in here, doesn’t it?” Jay remarks.

“We should have left the office a little later,” Robert complains. “The charcuterie is going to get –“

A deafening sound roars through the house and a violent, explosive tremor throws both men on the ground, shakes the walls and everything between them. The power’s out for a few seconds before there’s a flicker, and light fills the room again. Two backup generators, reads Jay’s description in the listing - an appeal to the prepper demographic, which trends higher in income than non-preppers. For a moment, the only things either are conscious of are the harsh flourescent lighting and the ringing in their ears. Time slows, everything seems muted and too bright. Robert rubs the side of his face, pulls back his hand and sees blood.

“Christ,” he chokes out. “What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know,” Jay breathes, looking at his hands, trying to determine if he’s got a concussion. The results are inconclusive – everything’s slow and fuzzy, but after a moment, he thinks it might just be shock.

“It sounded like a fucking 747 just nosedived on top of us.” 

“Yeah, Jesus.” Jay’s still staring at his fingers in a daze. “You okay?”

“I think so,” Robert grumbles. Jay gives him a cursory examination.

“Nothing that needs stitches,” he reports bluntly. Robert’s relieved. His face sells a lot of houses to a lot of lonely women and a few lonely men. There’s a muffled whine, which the two men soon recognize as a throng of sirens. Both of them try to calm the panic rising in their chests, to no avail.

“Whatever the fuck happened,” Jay says, trying to make light of the situation, “At least we’re in here. The bunker.”

Fear forms in the whites of Robert’s eyes.

“What if we’re stuck in here,” he whispers, afraid to speak such a thing into the world. The fear spreads to his companion.

“Try the elevator,” Jay urges, and Robert gets up, wobbles a little as his head sorts itself out, and leaves. A moment later, Jay hears him swear a blue streak, and from the kitchen window, sees him standing before the closed metal doors, staring at his feet. His pulse racing, Renault jogs out to see for himself.

“It’s dead,” Robert murmurs. 

“Whatever happened,” Jay says cautiously, rubbing the back of his still-sore neck, “It must have been pretty bad. Like, I don’t think we should go up yet. Besides, surely the office knows we’re still down here.”

“Right, right,” the younger man breathes, trying to reassure himself.

“Let’s just wait it out. I’m sure everything’s fine.” The way Jay says it does not make Robert feel any better. 

“Okay,” the younger man grumbles. “I’m getting a fucking drink, though.”

“Yeah, Jesus. That’s the best idea you’ve had all day.” Renault shoves his hands in his suit pocket to keep them from trembling.  

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[awlumii]

ooh id love to hear ur tangent on why he keeps his hand and wrist bandaged! someone said its prevision. hunt decree and hes dressed up for 😐 PLEASE BRO PLE

anyways. that image kind of reminds me of when albedo had a cafe art crossover and it showed his bare arms and we all went feral over it. NOW WE HAVE MORE KAZUHA SKIN SHOWING HAURGGHHHHHEG

oh! well i mean my ideas aren't original in any way, i just like talking about it, but

the first reason was brought up by the anon who mentioned it earlier; he probably wraps his hand for support. i believe kazuha invented his own bladework and because of the immense amount of practice and time it would take to perfect something like that, he likely has the bandages to ease any strain

the second reason is that one theory about his friend's vision burning his hand. cause in his cutscene during the archon quest, when he took the dying vision, he wasn't wearing any such bandages... but in the present, he is. personally i like this one for drama reasons because he either: a) doesn't want anyone to see the ugly scars or b) is still in excruciating pain from time to time

and on that note, i just wanna say that i am a dramatic bitch and would like to write something about kazuha hiding his hand from you as the pain progressively worsens because of how often he's using it... and he'll be damned if he lets you take the bandages off to see how bad his hand looks

[algernoninwonderland]

'Lie' - wow, that's an episode and stuff. It had some genuinely great ideas and some sincerely terrible things in it too, it left a bitter taste in my mouth and I wish it hadn't

The Good

Chat Noir truly is a cat, overdramatic and teasing and inconsiderate and flawed, that's great.

He drinks milk when he's sad. It's genuinely funny!

All these parallels between the Tsurugis and the Agrestes. Some basic directing ideas but they work really well.

Kagami likes Toulouse Lautrec, she's a perfectionist artist and has to keep it a secret from her mother. And this isn't a hobby related to Adrien or her family's legacy, it's the thing she enjoys doing on her own. It's a good idea!

The repetitiveness of the "throwing the paper ball in the bin" motive. That's basic directing, again. But it works well. I like it when things work well, and sometimes they do.

Kagami sees through the lies of the Jedi Adrien's facade in a way none of the other characters have this far. I'd go as far as to say that she's a lot more perceptive about him than Marinette.

She's really assertive and that isn't shown to be necessarily an absolutely bad thing, or an absolutely good thing. There's some nuance in there. Can you believe it?

Nice fencing scene there, all these sparks weren't really necessary but it's done competently. They got the movements and the speed right.

The show really hammers down the fact that being friends/dating a superhero without knowing their secret identity means you're forced to deal with them vanishing all the time and hiding things from you and that it's pretty terrible. Kagami's expression progressively sours as Adrien is shown to disappear more and more. That's good directing.

Some good character blocking and shot composition during the scene taking place outside the Hôtel de Ville.

“A cop never lies!” “You're lying!”

Bob Roth calling out Jagged Stone.

Fang, the true Best Boy of this show.

Some really stellar voice acting from Benjamin Bollen. He's always good.

Kagami isn't the bad guy for taking her distances with Adrien! Wowie!

The Bad

Cheap ship teasing is cheap.

Would they really leave Adrien making a sadder face in that TV show thing? Nah, that's a moment that completely breaks that conceit.

Portraiture as the capture of the truth within people, “portraits can't lie” and all that stuff. The art historian within me is shrivelling.

The show is mixing up a lot of stuff for the sake of this “truth and honesty and lies” and remains very superficial about these things.

What is Adrien's “true self” anyway? Is his being a clown as Chat Noir part of his facade or not? It's really interesting and that would require an episode of its own but no, have a handful of minutes instead, that should do the trick, right? No it doesn't…

Everything after the 13 minute mark, really.

What kind of villain design is that? What is it meant to convey? Liars are paralysed… That's it? Wow. I'm genuinely impressed. Incredible stuff. I am awed.

That white ball of light means some pretty ugly rendering. Like, really ugly. There's exactly one good-looking shot during this akuma fight and it's the one they used in the season's trailer.

DQ Animation and Artage Studio are getting better. They're still not as good as SAMG. Which means that the character acting is really wooden during the more subtle moments, and generally not as good as the scenes would require. Character make weird faces that don't quite work during some scenes. It's not distractingly awful but it's not good.

It's a show with a fandom that uses every little character detail to call a character they don't like the literal devil. Kagami expressing her anger physically is a double-edged sword.

Some really weird shots with weird camerawork.

The Ugly

Do you remember when Marinette said she loved Adrien because he was kind and caring and all of that stuff and then started drooling over the picture-perfect, airbrushed image of him instead of trying to get to know him as a person, meaning that she's in love with his image? But then the show still tried to push the idea that she was truly in love with him as a person? They're still doing this now. We've had the exact same joke for like two seasons. And yet we're meant to root for Adrien and Marinette to get together because…???

Chat Noir acts irresponsibly, yet has immense responsibilities, the show portrays him as funny and as always it’s inconsequential, he never has to face the consequences of his actions for more than five seconds

That scene with Chloé and Sabrina. Is is supposed to be funny? Is it supposed to be awful? I don't know. It was just rubbish.

I get that the point is that Kagami has to lie to spend more time with Adrien and that she's done so during Ikari Gozen already but are you sure this is the same character who needed an app to talk to people just a couple of episodes ago? The same character who absolutely despised liars earlier on? Why not show her second-guessing herself then?

She's a fast learner, for sure, she's been shown to get better at complimenting Marinette in the span of just two episodes, but this is a whole other level of off-screen character development. She used to lie by omission, now she's a very chatty liar.

Which just confirms that in Miraculous, characters change radically to accommodate the episode's theme. They have no integrity, no internal coherence. It's a recurring flaw with the writing and it's never been as glaring as it is now.

That cheese analogy is awful and gross. I already thought that the "changing targets" stuff from the earlier seasons was awful but this is just as bad. So people you want to date are like game or fermented milk, then. How romantic. Not objectifying at all. What a great conception of what relationships are like.

Some pretty awful writing. Chat Noir "dying” was cheap and fell completely flat and the dialogue came straight out of a Wattpad fic.

Shadow Moth's “Noooooooo”, straight out of Revenge of the Siths.

And now the lesson of the episode is… Love Square, Hell Yeah? Really?

What was that final scene? It's rushed and stupid and we're meant to be satisfied with it but it's the worst thing ever and “sometimes we must lie but we know we can trust each other” is such a hypocritical line when you take the show as it has been this far. And yet you're meant to clap and be happy about it?

This episode is a mess and I don't know what we're supposed to do with it. Give Kagami her own show.

[kurt-nightcrawler]

Decay: part II

𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐭𝐨𝐧 𝐈𝐈𝐈 𝐱 𝐌𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞! 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

Warnings: this talks about alcoholism, implications of sex, mentions of technical assault (Jessie kissed Warren while he was drunk and she made him think she was Mother Nature!), also we get into Warren’s backstory a bit. I’m not trying to make anyone out to be a villain, but the story overall is much more upsetting than usual.

Word Count: 5.4K

A/N: I hope you guys enjoy! Not exactly the mood needed right now— I am very sorry, but I’m working on a much happier piece for Mother Nature and Warren! I’ll try to have it out before the end of the month!

Part 1 if you need a refresher!

Warren didn’t want to tell anyone about what happened. He wanted to pretend it never happened. To just hole up the memory of the night deep into his mind. He always hid and pushed away trauma. Why should this be any different?

His friends wanted to get Alex or maybe even Charles involved, but he protested. 

“It’s my word against her’s.” 

“Yeah, but everyone’s going to support you, and Jean and Charles are telepathic—”

“What can I really do? Press charges? If I do that then and use Jean or Charles to back me up, it becomes a whole mutant’s rights issue. It’s not worth it.” 

(Y/N) hated seeing Warren look so defeated. Jessie going about Xavier’s unscathed by everyone who wasn’t close with Warren, and him thinking it was his fault. 

(Y/N) had said she must have eaten something bad at the Halloween party, causing her to feel sick and sprout poison ivy. Also why all the plants died. 

If Hank and Charles could tell she was lying, they didn’t say anything. 

Rumors started amongst students about what had happened at the party— if Warren had actually cheated on (Y/N), if he did something to Jessie, or if Jessie forced herself onto him. 

Warren didn’t like the rumors involving (Y/N) in the mess. He didn’t like the stares and whispers they got when people saw them together. 

“Poor girl, staying with him even after he cheated.”

“Maybe she’s too naive to realize.”

“I knew they’d never work out— (Y/N)’s too good for him.”

“I bet he forced her into going out with him.” 

“I mean… he’s not ugly—”

“Yeah, but he’s not a good person and (Y/N) is!”

It made him sick to his stomach. Warren didn’t force her into anything— and he thought he had changed, that people were finally trusting him. 

Guess he was wrong.

—

Warren wasn’t even paying attention in his environmental sciences class. They were watching a video on how a plant species can be invasive, required to take notes on it. 

Warren was texting (Y/N), phone brightness turned down all the way. He just wanted to go to bed for a while and ignore the real world.

When the bell rang, dismissing students, Alex told everyone they’d finish the video, next class. 

Warren got up to leave, but Alex stopped him. 

“You doing alright?” 

“Uh, yeah.” He lied. “I’m not in trouble am I?” 

Alex hesitated to answer. 

“No.”

Warren nodded, noticeably nervous. 

“There’s a rumor going around saying you assaulted Jessie Rowe.”

Warren’s heart fell into his stomach. “I didn’t.”

“Okay… But something happened, didn’t it?” 

Warren didn’t respond.

“Warren, you have to tell me what happened.” 

“I got tipsy and she kissed me. I thought she was (Y/N), but then (Y/N) walked in and Jessie tried to act like I tried to kiss her.”

 Warren’s eyes were pleading— pleading for Alex to not get mad at him for drinking, or mad at him for not speaking sooner. 

“Um, no one got hurt, and now there’s just a rumor going around, so you can like, give me detention for drinking or whatever it’s fine—”

 “I’m going to have to tell Professor Xavier,” Alex told him. 

“Please don’t tell him I was drinking! I can’t— I won’t—”

Alex could see the desperation in his eyes. Warren had nowhere else to go. He, like many other students, depended on Xaiver’s entirely.  

“You’re a good kid Warren— you’ve opened up to others, you were sober for almost six months, you have a good group of friends and even a girlfriend— Charles isn’t going to punish you. I just don’t want you to spiral down and lose all the progress you’ve made…” 

“I just,” Warren rubbed his eyes. “Don’t wanna make a big deal about it. I’d rather it just blows over. Everyone will eventually forget about it anyway.” 

“Are you aware of the rumors involving (Y/N)?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Okay, so, this involves her and Jessie. I know—” 

Alex and Warren turned their heads to the door. Someone was opening it. 

(Y/N) stepped inside. Warren hadn’t shown up to the library during their shared free period like he said he would, so she was worried about him. Plus, he hadn’t been doing too well since the Halloween party…. Neither of them had been. 

Her eyes were pink and purple— she was full of worry for her boyfriend. 

“Oh!” She gaped, soon as she saw Warren and Alex sitting at his desk, in the middle of what looked like an important conversation. 

“Sorry, am I interrupting?” She asked. 

“No. You can stay.” Warren told her. (Y/N) dragged a chair over and sat next to him.

“Right, as I was saying, Charles isn’t going to expel you, but he might want to make a police report. I’m not sure what good it will do, but—”

“I don’t want to. It’s not going to do anything but cause problems.” 

(Y/N) was immensely confused. She had no idea what they were talking about. 

“We’re gonna talk to Jessie, maybe a few of your friends, and knowing Charles, he won’t expel either of you. We’ll do everything we can to get the rumors to stop…” 

Oh! It finally clicked in her mind. 

It was about the party. 

“Okay… Thank— thank you, Alex.” 

“Yeah, we should go to Charles’s office— what class do you guys have next?” 

“I have lunch.”

“AP art.”

“That’s… Ms. Burnwood, right, (Y/N)?” 

She nodded.  

“I’ll make sure your absence is excused.” 

“Thanks.”

Alex took them up to Charles’s office. Warren then explained everything that happened, while trying to not get his friends in trouble for also drinking. 

Jessie was brought up to Charles’s office and questioned. She caved pretty easily, with (Y/N) glaring at her the whole time, and amid their telepathic principal, lying wouldn’t do her any good. 

Jessie was “grounded”— she couldn’t leave campus during the semester until after Thanksgiving break— she was also to stop encouraging the rumors, and had to talk with one of the school counselors once a week until they deemed it no longer necessary. Jessie’s parents weren’t in the picture, so notifying them wouldn’t do any good. 

Warren’s punishment was less severe, he couldn’t be out later than nine on weekends, (just until Thanksgiving break) and he was required to go to group therapy to help him deal with his former alcoholism and past traumas, for the rest of the school year.  

—

“You don’t have to tell me what goes on at group therapy.” (Y/N) told him. 

“I know.” 

“You don’t have to tell anyone.” 

Warren smiled a little, “I know.” 

“Okay…” (Y/N) kisses his cheek. 

Warren wrapped his arm around her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I hope it goes well… it should.” 

(Y/N) nodded, “Yeah… Here,” Her hand was in a fist. When she opened it, she revealed a daisy and a four-leaf clover. 

“You don’t really need luck or anything but, um, I thought, you know—“ 

Warren accepted the small gift, taking it from her hand. “Thanks, baby. I love it.” 

—

Group therapy was awkward. Warren hated it. He knew it would be good to talk about… well, everything, probably, but he had a hard time opening up to total strangers. 

“Alright, in case you’re new or don’t remember, my name is Allison… We have a new member with us today, he’s going to be with us for a while.” Allison looked at Warren. “Why don’t you introduce yourself?”

“Okay… Um, my name is Warren.”  

Everyone replied with, “Hi, Warren.” 

“And um, I’m a mutant.” 

Allison smiled, “That’s great! Do you go flying a lot? 

“Uh, yeah.”

“What kind of metal are your wings made of?” A girl with washed-out blue hair asked.

“Titanium, I think.” 

“Well, Warren, welcome to the group,” Allison interjected, trying to steer the conversation elsewhere. “Now, we’re going to do an ice breaker of sorts, and then just have like, regular conversation. We can all go around and say our favorite color and why.” 

Warren blinked. He didn’t— he didn’t have a favorite color. 

“And don’t say you don’t have a favorite color. If you can’t pick a favorite, choose one you hate the least… We can start with Trey.” 

Warren thought of color options—

Black?  No. Black wasn't his favorite, despite being 95% of his wardrobe. It absorbed the most light, helping him blend in with the darkness and look tough, something he needed in Germany. 

Blue— The color of Kurt— his roommate and friend, who he tried to kill. Twice. Something he still felt remorse over. And Apocalypse. The man who gave him the metal wings and tattoos, forcing him to aid in mass destruction, only to leave him for dead when he was no longer useful.

Red— the color of Alex’s plasma beams. And how the Horsemen were a result in him almost dying.

White and Silver— the colors of his wings. Past and present. How each reflected hardships from Warren’s life. How he hated them and a child and almost resorted back to that self-deprecation when they shifted into metal and the consequences finally sank in. 

But what about green? The color of healthy plants that thrive. The color of (Y/N)’s eyes when she’s happy.

Warren liked the color, despite (Y/N)’s eyes rarely being green around him. However, it didn’t mean she was unhappy with him.

Her eyes were pink around him. A way of saying “I love you” without actually saying it. The pink meant she cared about him more than most people— that she trusted him, accepted him for who he was despite his past, and that she would be there for him when he needed her. 

Not many people could say they would do those things for Warren, or that they had.

His father cared more about the family name and how his son couldn’t possibly be a freak. His mother didn’t want his wings to tarnish her image, and while she was still his mother, she left him on his own most of the time. 

And how all his past relationships and flings— they didn’t have much meaning. There was never any real affection behind them. They saw the cage fighting king and wanted a piece of that. 

(Y/N) looked past all of that. She saw how he responded to what life threw at him. She saw the tough guy act, the big softie, the broken boy who ran away in fear, the man who thought he wasn’t good enough— she brought out his good side, making him realize he deserved happiness, love, and a home, that when you hit rock bottom, you can only go up from there. 

He decided pink was his favorite color, because it showed someone cared for him in ways he wasn’t used to. He would do anything to keep it around forever.

“Warren, what’s your favorite color?” 

“Pink.” 

He got a few funny looks. They were probably expecting him to say black, based on his general aesthetic. 

“And why is that?”

“Um, it’s my girlfriend’s eye color… she’s also a mutant.” 

Allison smiled, “That’s very sweet.” 

She moved on to the next person, “Rose, what’s your favorite color?” 

She said, “Green.” But Warren wasn’t paying attention to why. 

The ice breaker eventually ended, and Allison shifted the discussion to other things. 

“Now Warren, since you’re new, usually new members spend most of their first meeting talking about themselves. Just so we can get to know you and whatnot.”

“Okay… um… anything specific you want to know?” 

“Why don’t you start from the beginning?” 

“Okay… So, I was born into a really small family. Just me, my mom, my father, and his brother. I don’t really know what happened to my grandparents. I never asked... 

When I was three we moved from Westminster to Centerport.”

“Where’s that located?”

“Oh, uh, Westminster’s close to London.” 

Allison looked impressed. 

“I went to a private all-boys school when I was little. I don’t remember the name of it though.” 

“Were you born with your wings?” Allison asked.

“No.” Warren responded. “They started to grow when I was eleven… I was terrified. I spent almost every day trying to rip them out… but once all the feathers are gone, you’re left with nothing but bone. It hurt like hell, but I used a pocket knife and a razor to try and cut them or at least file the bone down.” 

“It wasn’t hard… but it hurt a lot. I spent so much time worrying about my wings and if people would discover them, that I started to fall behind in school… I wasn’t like failing or anything, I had access to all kinds of tutors and everything, but my parents quickly found out I was falling behind. My father was barely aware, telling my mom to ‘deal with it.’ She tried her best, but I was so scared of them discovering my wings…”

   Warren sighed, “My parents had a beach house in Italy, and we were supposed to go there for my fall break. I was so terrified. I couldn’t go swimming, they’d see my wings… But I couldn’t find a way out of the trip. I was twelve at the time and my mom… She saw my back when I came out of the shower...”   

“She screamed, and my father came running to us. When he saw my back, he was disgusted. The look on his face was drilled into my skull for years. And it wasn’t even that bad, they were just growing back after being cut, so they weren’t even that big… but I just remember how scared my mom was, and how disgusted my father was… I just started crying and apologizing, but it didn’t do anything.” 

“We left our trip four days early and I was pulled out of school. My parents decided to homeschool me, which basically meant, cut all contact with everyone from school and have a few tutors come to the house.” 

“Did you have contact with anyone outside of your home?”

“I saw some family friends, and one or two kids of my parent’s friends… my parents hired countless doctors and all kinds of people, doing tests on me, trying to find a “cure”. Every time they failed my parents just got more upset— I was becoming a waste of time and money. They were becoming more distant and cold, wrapping themselves up in their work, and I was locked up.”

“What happened to your wings?”

“My mom said the scars they would leave were ugly, but I was forced to let them grow out.” 

“My parents were arguing a lot, always sad or angry… mostly because of my wings… I was getting tired, tired of hiding, tired of the arguing, I wanted it all to stop…”

“Can you please stop?” Warren thought he was going to cry. 

His father glared at him, disgusted by the wings, and how his son was on the verge of tears. 

Warren could hear his parents arguing from down the hall. That’s all they seemed to do when they were home— fight. 

Warren blamed himself. If he was just normal. If he didn’t have those damn wings!

He wanted them to stop. He’d do anything to make them stop. 

Warren thought about getting on to the roof and jumping. Not even flying down, just falling to his end. His end of suffering, and his loveless, lonely existence. 

“Are you going to do it?” 

Warren looked over his shoulder to find his father standing behind him. Watching him peer out the highest window in the house. 

“No! I— I’m sorry! I wasn’t—”

His father scoffed. “Did I raise a coward?”

Warren couldn’t look him in the eyes. “No sir.”

“I’ve scheduled for you to have spinal surgery next week. Your doctor is coming to prep and evaluate you for it. This surgery should fix you.”

Warren’s eyes were closed, trying not to imagine the pain, trying to not cry in front of his father. 

“Or you can fall out the window… in a freak accident.” 

“So I jumped out the window. I didn’t fall to my death as he had hoped, but I flew. I flew far away. I flew across the Atlantic for a few hours before I started to get tired. I spotted a ship and I got close. It was a fishing boat, a large one. The crew let me stay for the night until they went back to land… After that, I flew from São Miguel to Cascais. From there I just kind of fucked around Europe.” 

Warren sighed. Allison told him to take all the time he needed and he could stop if he wanted for the day. Let someone else talk. 

Warren nodded and kept quiet for the rest of the meeting. 

—

Alex picked him up when the meeting ended. Alex didn’t ask about the meeting. It wasn’t his business and he knew Warren would talk when he was ready. 

“Where do the others think I went?” Warren asked. 

“Training. They’re busy anyway, most didn’t notice you were gone.” 

Warren silently nodded. 

Alex pulled into Xavier’s garage, parking and letting Warren slip out and go up to his room. 

Warren kicked his shoes off and laid on his bed, putting in his earbuds and playing some soft songs. 

(Y/N) was heading up to Warren’s room to use his shower. She was covered in paint, for she helped clean up after the fourth graders used the art room. 

(Y/N) knocked on the door, making sure no one was there before she entered. 

Warren didn’t hear her and (Y/N) almost didn’t notice him laying on the bed. When she did, however, her entire demeanor changed. 

“Hi, Angel!” She went over to practically smother him in light kisses. 

Warren pulled out his earbuds and smiled. “Hi, Flower.”

“When did you get home?” She asked, scooting over to the open side of the bed. 

“Like ten minutes ago. What have you been up to?” 

“I got paint all over me,” (Y/N) frowned. “I was going to take a shower and wash it off.” 

“You can do that. I was just kind of laying here.” 

(Y/N) bit her lip, unsure of how to handle the situation. 

“If you disassociate your whole day will feel off. You should take a nice relaxing shower with me, instead.” 

Warren chuckled. 

“Not like that, Bird brain!” She exclaimed. “We can use one of my lush bath bombs and my rose-scented exfoliator.” 

“Are you saying I smell?” Warren joked. 

“Eh,” (Y/N) shrugged before slipping her bra off and throwing it in the hamper. 

Warren scoffed and wrapped his arms around (Y/N), peppering her neck in kisses. “How dare you!” He teased. 

“Ah!” (Y/N) laughed. Warren’s lips on her neck tickled her skin. “That’s why I’m going to bathe.”

“Fine, fine. I’ll join you.” 

(Y/N) hummed in victory, wiggling out of Warren’s grip, and headed into the bathroom to grab her stuff. 

The last time she used the girls’ communal showers was before they were even dating. (Y/N)’s toothbrush made its way into Warren and Kurt’s bathroom, then her shampoo and conditioner, and then eventually most of all her other hygiene products. 

(Y/N) set her soap and other things on the edge of the tub and drew up warm water, filling the bathtub up about halfway. 

She sprinkled in rose petals and got Warren into the bathroom. They both stripped off their clothes and stepped in the tub. A bit difficult, for Warren had to fold his wings back and get in first, with (Y/N) practically sitting in his lap, face to face, but they made do. 

(Y/N) dropped an orange bath bomb in the water and grabbed her jar of exfoliating scrub, rubbing it on her arms and legs to help remove the paint. 

Warren closed his eyes and rested his chin on her shoulder. 

“How’d it go today?” (Y/N) asked as she grabbed a bar of soap and rubbed it onto her skin. 

He didn’t respond. 

“I’m sorry…” She murmured. 

“Don’t apologize. It wasn’t terrible… I talked a little bit about my parents.” 

(Y/N) nodded as she applied her rose exfoliator onto Warren’s skin. 

“I’m really sorry…” Warren let out. He sounded as if he was on the verge of tears. 

“Baby,” (Y/N) looked into his eyes. “it’s okay.” 

“I— I just—“ Warren hiccuped, letting out a choked sob and releasing some tears from his eyes. 

(Y/N) rubbed his back, avoiding the tender spot around his wings, whispering, “Let it out, it’s okay, Angel.” 

Warren silently cried into (Y/N)‘s shoulder. Her arms wrapped around him in comfort. The emotions he felt almost made him sick— love and affection— and a lot of it too. He couldn’t remember a time before when he felt like that. He never wanted to leave (Y/N)‘s embrace. 

Warren lifted his head up and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. 

“Sorry— um—“ 

“It’s okay.” (Y/N) cupped his face in her hands, leaving a kiss on each cheek. “Want me to wash your hair?” 

Warren nodded. 

“C’mere—” (Y/N) grabbed the shampoo from the bathtub ledge, pouring some in her hands, and then lathering it into Warren’s mop of curls. 

Her hands gently massaging his scalp felt like a touch of heaven to Warren. He didn’t want to cry again, but he couldn’t help himself.  (Y/N) was heartbroken at her boyfriend’s demeanor, but it was good he was letting it all out.  

She finished washing his hair and drained the tub— them both getting out— Warren holding onto (Y/N) as she gently dried them both off. 

“Thank you, He mumbled.

“Of course, Baby…”   

—

Most of their dates shifted to either being at the mansion or during the day. Warren felt bad, having to limit things for them, but (Y/N) didn’t care. 

“We can do more stuff during the day… And at night all our friends will be gone… We’ll be all alone…” (Y/N)’s tone was almost teasing. Warren had to chuckle to himself, she was doing her best to make the situation work.

His second group meeting was set a bit later in the day, around 6 pm on a Saturday. Warren told (Y/N) he probably wouldn’t be back until after dark. 

“Call me if you need me. I’ll be here—” She motioned to her empty bedroom. 

“Don’t have too much fun without me,” He teased.  

“You too, Baby.” 

Warren drove himself to his second group therapy meeting. Alex offered to drive again, but Warren felt bad having him taking time out of his day to drive him to group therapy. 

Not everyone who was at the first meeting was at the second one— but Warren saw some familiar faces. 

“Hey, Warren! Welcome back,” Allison greeted him. 

“Hi.” 

He took a seat near a guy in a grey hoodie with an eyebrow piercing. 

“Alright everyone, we’re going to go around, say our name, and if we have any pets. If you don’t that’s okay! You can say, what kind of animals you’re interested in. Let’s start with Collin…”

Warren zoned out for a bit until it was his turn. He didn’t have a pet, and he didn’t really have an interest in a specific animal. People made jokes about him being a bird, but he didn’t necessarily have a connection with them. 

“I don’t have a pet… My girlfriend has a lot of plants though…” 

“Ooo! What kind?” 

“Um… Almost all kinds— her mutation helps grow them and stuff…”

“That’s cool.” Someone commented.

Warren awkwardly nodded. The ice breaker continued around the circle, and when finished, Allison had some people give updates on how they had been since the last meeting, others talked about how they were feeling in general. 

“Warren—”

“Yeah?” He asked. 

“Do you want to continue talking from where you left off last week?”  

“I can, sure.” 

The floor was given to him, and Warren continued his “backstory”. 

“I ended up in Germany. Messing around, staying overnight on stranger’s couches. I tried to find work, but it was hard being almost 15 at this point and no papers… I ran into muggers and they tried to, well, rob me, but I fought back. I wasn’t very good but it got them off and away from me… I ended up in a bar… The last thing I remember was falling asleep and then waking up in a locker room of sorts. A bunch of men shouting in German, um, some in English, but basically I was told to go out into ‘the ring’. People were watching— shouting and cheering, for the other guy in the ring. He was kind of short and hairy, but he had these claws, and he could really kick ass. I barely made it out of there— I didn’t win— but I didn’t die. People enjoyed watching us. They cheered, calling him Wolve-something, and they called me, Angel.” 

“I wanted to leave, but the people running the ring gave me some money and I found a place to stay for the night… the job offers weren’t exactly lining up… so I agreed to more fights. I got really good, fighting other mutants, probably in the same situation as me, but I quickly realized, kill, or be killed…” 

Warren quickly realized people had very concerned looks on their faces. “I didn’t kill anyone! But I did beat them up pretty badly— the more fights I won the more money I got— and it was that or die… I did it for about two years before I met someone… 

I was alone at a bar, I was bruised and a bit bloody, and this girl with purple hair came up to me. She was one of the guards in the fight club— she worked for some guy named Caliban, I think. I don’t remember… Anyway, her name was Betsy. She said she’d been watching me for a while, saying my fighting was impressive but could be improved… Uh, She offered to help me out, and we went back to her place. She helped clean up the blood on me, and um, then we made out, and I spent the night… This went on for a while, she’d watch me fight and give me tips and pointers, and we’d make out and stuff…”   

“How long is, awhile?” Allison asked.

“Um, Like two-ish years? I don’t know— but um, we had this like thing going on, and I thought we were maybe dating? I dunno. But whatever we had I fucked up.”

Warren groaned as Betsy aggressively pressed her mouth against his. He had just won another fight and went back to her place to “celebrate”. 

“God, B… I love you...” 

 Betsy froze, her body tensing up. 

“What?”

Warren panicked, her face did not seem pleased. “It slipped out— I’m sorry—”

“No… You don’t mean it… We can’t be together.”

“What do you mean?” He asked. “I thought we were together.” 

“Angel— this isn’t a relationship— we just fuck while I give you some pointers on your punches.”

“I know this isn’t traditional, we don’t go out on dates—”

“You don’t love me! We’re too young— I’ll lose my job. I spend all this time one you so I don’t lose my job, you’re the best fighter—”

“You keep me trapped here?” Warren asked, slowly piecing things together. 

“It’s not like that—” She tried to explain. 

“I’ve tried to quit fighting for almost a year now! I told you I wanted to leave, and this whole time you’ve been keeping me here?” 

“You’re young and naive, and I’d lose my job, everything—” 

Warren stood up, ignoring Betsy’s excuses. 

“Where are you going?” 

“Away. Since we’re not together and I don’t love you.” Warren slammed the door behind him and headed back to the ring. He needed to let out his anger. 

—

Warren went on a winning streak— he won ten fights in a row— the feeling was borderline euphoric, the crowds cheering for their champion, Warren getting to sink someone’s teeth in or watch them fall to the ground. 

Warren was amped up for his eleventh fight— the announcer was talking about his next opponent— 

“The Incredible Nightcrawler!” 

A lanky, devil looking, blue boy fell out of a cage onto the floor of the ring. Warren circled him for a moment before meeting him on the ground. 

He wasn’t fighting, just teleporting around the cage in small bursts. 

“Fight!” Warren yelled at him. “Or they’ll kill us both!” 

The blue boy looked terrified, but he fought back when Warren attacked him. 

At one point he managed to drag Warren against the side of the electric cage, burning his wing. 

“Ah!” Warren cried out in pain. Suddenly he saw the blue devil escape from the bottom, so in a risky move, he flew up and ripped off the upper walls of the cage, and flew out. His flying was wonky and jagged for one of his wings was broken.

Warren had nowhere to go, so he went back to the one place he shouldn’t have— 

Betsy’s place. 

—

“I was drunk as shit and angry and this blue wrinkly man came with Betsy and some other girl I didn’t recognize, and he just held his hand out and metal grew out of my back and on top of my wings. I was healed, in a way, but also it kind of ruined my life. The blue man also just held his hand  out and gave me these tattoos…”

“You weren’t one of the horsemen with Apocalypse, were you? Like last spring I think… Out in Cario?” One girl in the circle asked.

“Yeah… Um, I never killed anyone, and I don’t do that anymore. The X-Men took me in and I’m trying to get my shit together.” 

“We don’t judge here, and from what I’ve heard, the X-Men do great things! Like the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man.” Others in the group murmured in agreement. 

“You’re built like a transformer dude,” The guy sitting next to him commented. 

“Thanks…” 

“I think you can do a lot of good, Warren. You’ve spent a lot of time running from your problems, but you seem like you’re grounded now… I was told you came here because you relapsed.”   

“It was an accident— I haven’t drank since.” 

“And that’s good! It can be really hard to open up and talk about your past, but you did it…”

Warren nodded along to what Allison said. 

“I think you can do even better if you acknowledge your mistakes and learn from them… and don’t be afraid, don’t push them into the back of your mind… I think— if you haven’t already— talk to your girlfriend about some of this. Doesn’t have to be a lot or all at once, but being open and honest does good in relationships.”

“Yeah, um, sounds good.” Warren’s heart fell into his stomach. He was terrified to talk about all of this with (Y/N).

She didn’t deserve the burden. (Y/N)  was this innocent, happy, light in his life. Warren didn’t want to ruin that. 

He thought (Y/N) was too good for him, and she would eventually realize that and leave him.  

But he trusted her. He trusted (Y/N) with his life. Perhaps a bit foolish, but he rarely ever felt sure about those types of things. He decided to trust his intuition.

—

Warren drove home in silence. 

He pulled into the garage and put the keys on the key rack before heading up to (Y/N)’s room. 

He didn’t even bother knocking on the door. He just walked right in and flopped onto the bed, in (Y/N)’s lap.

She was surprised, but she quickly came to her senses and tried to figure out what happened. 

“Baby?...” (Y/N) looked down at Warren’s face as she tucked a piece of his hair behind his ear. 

“I…” Warren burst into tears, all his bottled up emotions coming out at once. 

“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” Warren sat up and (Y/N) hugged him tightly. 

“I have… things… I want to tell you… about my past…” Warren scrunched his nose. 

“My parents and other stuff… but I’m scared.” He admitted.  

“Warren, baby, I’m not going anywhere. Tell me whatever you need to, whenever you feel ready, okay?” 

He slowly nodded, still crying. 

(Y/N) kissed his forehead and rubbed his back, being silent and supportive. 

“Can… Can you promise me… Promise me you won’t leave because of my past. I’ve done really bad shit and—” 

“I promise I’m not going anywhere. I mean it.” She reassured him.  

Warren wiped his nose with the back of his hand, his tears slowing down.

“Thanks…” He mumbled.

“Of course, anything for you, Angel.” 

[barricadebops]

As I'm about 99.9% positive you would agree, I will never understand why people say that Enjolras isn't a good friend or wouldn't be a good boyfriend. Like I get that the revolution and his work was important to him (I personally believe that he would balance his friends and work to the best of his ability), but you cannot tell me that he wouldn't drop everything, including his work, at a moment's notice if a friend needed him. This is something that I believe wholeheartedly, and someone would have to pry this head canon/belief/whatever you want to call it out of my cold dead fingers.

Yes, I of course agree with this 100%. I really don't understand why people would say that either, it is just not him! The thing about Enjolras is that he cares so much, enough to the point where it was what got him killed. Some may argue that he cares more for his cause than for people, and I would say that is because they are viewing the cause and people as two different concepts, when, in reality, they are actually one and the same! Because Enjolras' cause is the people and that includes all people—the common man Feuilly, his (probably previously) wealthy friend Combeferre, and even the man who on several occasions has let him down, disappointed him, and given him all the reason not to trust him, Grantaire. If his cause is the people, how could he ever feel cold towards the people who matter most to him?

I think the idea a vast amount of people have that Enjolras doesn't love comes from the fact that canonically Enjolras does not experience romantic love, and frankly, this sort of thinking is rather dangerous, because it erases the fact that love comes in so many more forms than just romance. Enjolras is filled with an incredible amount of love—love for his friends, love for the people around him, and love for the future, and every one of those aspects links back to the love he feels for those who surround him. It is the love for the people he would encounter everyday while walking on the streets, it is the love for the people he would meet when he would go to buy his bread, it is the love for the friends who would look to him as their beloved friend and leader—it is his love for these people that he launches an entire rebellion— and subsequently dies for it, too. His ideals are defined by the motto of France—liberty, equality, and fraternity—but these ideals are driven by his greatest ideal of all, the one he hold key above others: love, and he makes his value of the ideal abundantly evident in his speech following the execution of Le Cabuc when he says:

"This is a bad moment to mention the word 'love.' I mention it anyway, and I glorify it. Love, the future belongs to you... In the future there will be no killing, the earth will be radiant, the human race will love." (5.12.8.)

From this, it is quite clear that Enjolras does not just experience love, but feels one of the highest and most greatest forms of it, so the characterization that he knows not of the feeling of love is quite unfounded.

He absolutely does love his friends to death. The one time we see him ready to forsake his ideals is when rather than keep the valuable spy Javert, who holds information about the rebels at the barricades, he is willing to hold an exchange so that they may bring back Jehan Prouvaire.

"'Yes,' replied Enjolras. 'But not as much as by Jean Prouvaire's life.'" (5.14.5)

He also sees so much good in his friends, he believes in them wholeheartedly, and for Enjolras, his belief is his expression of love.

"He composed, in his own mind, with Combeferre’s philosophical and penetrating eloquence, Feuilly’s cosmopolitan enthusiasm, Courfeyrac’s dash, Bahorel’s smile, Jean Prouvaire’s melancholy, Joly’s science, Bossuet’s sarcasms, a sort of electric spark which took fire nearly everywhere at once." (5.1.6.)

I've always loved this passage because it allows us to glimpse into Enjolras' mind and see how he truly thinks of his friends, and the way he sees them is incredibly sweet. He sees these people as his brothers who are capable of amazing feats, who are just as passionate as he is, and will be the ones to help him fight for the future. The love he holds for them is incredible, and though we get to see inside of Enjolras' head so little, this passage here is quite enough to inform the reader of just how much Enjolras draws joy from his friends.

In terms of the canonicity of the brick, I have always seen Enjolras' final moment as him realizing and accepting Grantaire's love for him (I would also argue that this moment is also when Grantaire himself, having not known exactly what it was he felt for Enjolras, also realized what exactly he felt for him), but dying with him only as a friend, but the fact that he smiles, and that it is him who extends his hand towards Grantaire says a lot about how strong his platonic love for his friends is. And of course, once again it is not just for his friends; far too many people see Enjolras as a man willing to sacrifice whoever and whatever in order to accomplish his goals, but his words once he discovers that Paris has abandoned their barricade say otherwise. When the rebels stubbornly insist that they all remain, no doubt fantasizing of dying "heroic martyr deaths," rather than encourage them, he instead essentially chides them by reminding them that:

"Vain-glory is wasteful[,]" (5.1.14)

so to paint him as merciless holds no merit. I feel as if this image comes from the quote:

"Enjolras was a charming young man capable of being terrible." (4.4.1.)

While yes, it is very capable for Enjolras to turn ruthless, the key word in that sentence is capable. The word that preceeds it, the one that follows after the definite word was, is the word charming, and the fact that charming is put before terrible holds great significance. Enjolras' first instinct, what comes to him naturally, is to do good, to be good, to be charming. He can be terrible, yes, but he must put his mind into doing so, whereas being a good person comes to him without thinking. Many tend to ignore the first part of the sentence in favour of the second, and they twist it to mean that his first instinct is to do bad instead of good, which really does not define his character at all.

Perhaps the biggest contributor to the misinterpretation of Enjolras' character is the way people have read his dynamic with Grantaire, and the way the lines between canon and fanon Grantaire have been so thoroughly blurred that it has ended up distorting Enjolras' image while erasing major parts of Grantaire's character that makes him the character and to a greater extent, metaphorical representation he is. I will not lie; I write fanfiction, and the version of Grantaire that I write into my stories is most definitely his fanon image; in other words, he is a vastly improved version. But it is incredibly important to acknowledge the way the two concepts deviate from each other, or you'll end up with a situation in which the character you have in mind isn't really the original character itself. It's okay for people to have different perceptions! Everyone understand literature differently, and that's the beauty of the arts! I think it's totally cool that everyone believes in characters in different ways! But for me, it really bothers me the way the fandom tends to paint Grantaire as a saint while portraying Enjolras as a character who always seems to know less than Grantaire, always is on a lower platform than Grantaire, and is always harsh and unjust towards Grantaire, because it simply is not true. A lot about Grantaire is ignored in terms of the canonicity of the brick. For example, it is true that Grantaire is, in fact, ugly, and he's described that way for a specific element of the narrative that Victor Hugo is writing in (@lilys-hazel-eyes is writing a great analysis on morality represented by beauty, which is exactly the point here—you should definitely go check it out!) In the brick, Victor Hugo describes Grantaire's cynicsm to be the "dry-rot of intellect" (4.4.1.) Hugo's stance on nihilism and cynicism is made quite evident in the way he portrays Grantaire, a character meant to represent the physical manifestation of cynicism (some say that he's the physical embodiment of Paris itself and I think that's a really neat reading on that!)

"A rover, a gambler, a libertine, often drunk... Grantaire, with insidious doubt creeping through him, loved to watch faith soar in Enjolras... his soft, yielding, disclocated, sickly, shapeless ideas..." (4.4.1.)

From these descriptions, it is quite clear what sort of opinion Victor Hugo holds of cynics, which is why Grantaire's characterization is so deliberate. He is trying to make a commentary here about the harm those who do not hold passion or belief can do, to both themselves and society. It is why Grantaire's redeeming moment is the one in which he finally comes to accept the hope of the revolution and proves through action his belief in Enjolras.

In terms of what is presented in the brick, Grantaire does not exactly have much to really defend him. Often drunk, he expends his energy into drunk rambles rather than meaningful meeting contributions, (though admittedly, he does say some rather valid and eloquent things within his rambles—the quote "Take away 'Cotton is King,' what remains of America?" [4.4.4] comes to mind) he deliberately pokes and bothers people as seen when he calls Enjolras "heartless," (5.1.6) and when given a task, does not hold up his end of the deal and ger it done despite having asked for it in the first place. Enjolras' doubt in him is actually entirely understandable; after all, what has Grantaire really done to prove himself trustworthy and reliable? When Enjolras asks if "[he is] good for anything" (5.1.6) the question is, likely in his eyes, genuine rather than insulting. And even when he has every reason not to, Enjolras still puts his faith into Grantaire to get something of extreme importance done for him, which I do think says a lot about Enjolras' willingness to believe in the best in people.

Victor Hugo ends the chapter right before we can see Enjolras' reaction to Grantaire's failure, and while this part, I will say, is up for interpretation, personally I have always extrapolated that the most emotion this would draw from him is disappointment—though it is disappointment that he definitely thinks he should have seen coming, rather than imagining him as getting insanely mad at Grantaire.

Their next interaction is during the rebellion itself, during which Enjolras is put under quite a bit of stress and Grantaire's behaviour really is not helping matters, so him snapping is actually very believable, if a little harsh.

The Enjolras seen in fanon, derived from these interactions, always seems so harsh, so rash when he speaks to Grantaire and therefore is characterized as rash and reckless in general, and generally seems to not understand emotion very well, which is very unlike him. Rather than harsh, I would say that with the exception of course of the rebellion at the barricade and the lead up to that time, Enjolras actually seems to be quite calm.

"All held their peace, and Enjolras bowed his head." (4.4.5.)

Rather than instantly explode at Marius for his rather awful beliefs of Napoleon, instead, Enjolras keeps calm and silent, which demonstrates what an incredible depth of patience he has. And as for Enjolras not understanding emotion, when it comes to fanworks, I'm generally tolerant of people holding different perceptions for different characters, but of all perceptions, this one is one I cannot begin to comprehend, and this is one that I will say that to say he knows not of emotion is to have wrongly read his character.

"And a tear trickled slowly down Enjolras' marble cheek." (5.1.8.)

I simply cannot allow myself to believe that the man who cried at the prospect of having to shoot the artillerman, who calls him his "brother," who is no doubt thinking that had circumstances been different, the action he would be taking would not be necessary—I do not believe this is a man who would not understand feelings and emotions.

The Grantaire in the book who has "the dry rot of intellect," (4.4.1) only ever makes unnecessary rants during meetings, and is very much untrustworthy, is a far outcry from the Grantaire who bases his cyncism on being what he would say is being "well informed," often makes valid points in meetings, and proves himself reliable. Similarly, the Enjolras that is thoughful, as he proves himself to be in his "Outlook from the Top of the Barricade" speech, still chooses to believe in the best in others despite being given every reason not to, and is actually quite patient, is very different from his rash and reckless, short tempered, seems-to-hate-Grantaire, fanon counterpart.

Of course, if you take characters who are shaped by their surroundings and circumstances in the nineteenth century and adapt them to fit the scene of the twenty-first century, it's obvious things are going to change! However, I think it's important to keep these key traits in mind when doing so, and more often than not, it is these key traits that end up getting mangled. When one sticks to these traits, it's easy to say Enjolras would be a wondeful friend/boyfriend (if you see him as having one.) Enjolras' whole deal is loving and caring immensely, and to put his absolute one hundred percent effort into everything he does, and that includes into his friendships and relationships.

Once again, I'm not bashing on the fandom here, I'm part of it. I'll repeat again, I too write with the fanon image of Grantaire in my head. Everyone takes away different things from literature, and that's fine! This is simply how I have interpreted it.

One more note on Enjolras.

Les Amis de l'ABC absolutely love Enjolras. The way Enjolras' character has been misinterpreted has ended up having an effect on the way the Amis are looked at as well. The Amis are all so passionate about the revolution, they attend meetings because they truly do believe in the change they can create in their world, so I'll never truly understand the characterization of the Amis as laughing at Enjolras' devotion to the cause, or finding his passion for it stupid or bothersome. Victor Hugo himself describes just how passionate of a group they are:

"All these young men who differed so greatly, and who, on the whole can only be discussed seriously, held the same religion: Progress... The most giddy of them became solemn when they pronounced that date: '89... the pure blood of principle ran in their veins. They attached themselves, without immediate shades, to incorruptible right and absolute duty." (4.4.1.)

Everyone here, with the exception of Grantaire, is here because they believe wholeheartedly in the revolution. This is not something Enjolras forced upon them, this is not something they groan when thinking about, it is something they all believe in so passionately. It is not something they make fun of him for.

"Affiliated and initiated, they sketched out the ideal underground." (4.4.1.)

They are all here by choice, by will, and by the values they hold close to their heart, and so to say Enjolras is someone who constantly whines about his cause and the others think he needs to lighten up is both an insult to him and the rest. Furthermore, the Amis really love Enjolras, and not just as their leader, but as a beloved friend, and as strongly as I believe Enjolras would drop all of his work to help any of the Amis when they are in need, I believe the Amis would do the same for him. The unity of Les Amis de l'ABC says a lot about the kind of charismatic leader Enjolras is, and his friends most definitely adore him.

So yeah, anon, I 100% agree, and rest assured, if they try and take this canon fact away, they'll have to pry it from both our sets of our cold dead fingers.

[oneweekoneband]

her Nebraska (1982)

In July I flew to Massachusetts with a plague on, and I felt that it was wrong, but my mother had begged and I’d been out of work for months. Mornings there I ran in long, uneven ovals on the same roads I’d memorized in high school. There’s no sidewalks, but the few feet of dirt between the craggy pavement and the open mouths of the fields serve all right for a single body in motion. When a truck comes up close from behind, the ground shakes, and I step away bouncingly from the street toward thigh-high yellow weeds and grass, and keep going. I was slowly picking my way back in that dirt, sweat-slick from only a plodding couple of miles in peak summer heat, and sucking the wet cotton of my mask in between my teeth on every inhale, when Taylor Swift announced she was releasing a surprise album produced by the guy from The National. Not the guy from The National, like, the voice, but the guy from The National whose photo was circulated on Twitter earlier this year as some kind of antifa super soldier, which isn’t the case, but would’ve been rad. First, I stopped dead to send some outraged, misspelled text messages, and then I ran home faster than I’d moved in years.

Tall, blonde, patrician pop star Taylor Swift is to me something like a cross-between a wife and a boogeyman. Bound we’ve been since we were really children. Time and its changes haven’t rid me of her, and what’s worse is I have never quite been able to wish they would, though I claim as much all the time. Countless hours of my one wild and precious life have been spent on endlessly analyzing the minutiae of Taylor Swift’s music, the mind that made it, the real world events which influenced it. And though all the while I have known she is only a person, and that people, while each strange and lovely in their own ways, are, in the end, mostly dull, needful in just the regular manner, the fantasy is better, the sick dream of a megalomaniac songstress, curious, thrilling, probably evil, and I choose that. I don’t know Taylor Alison Swift, born to this world in, I presume, the usual way. But my Taylor Swift? I’m a renowned expert. I’ve always eaten up stories—movies, music, celebrity news, the one my grandfather tells about falling off his bike once in Ireland as a boy and his face “cracking open like an egg”—like a starved dog. I’m obsessive about my interests, but not inclined to intense fandom, and certainly not fandom in the mode of the stan. For one, I’m too self-absorbed. But caring intensely for a famous person is falling in love with a ghost, and that’s all right—I mean, what the hell? We’re here together just dying... Let’s enjoy—but is an affair best undertaken with the knowledge that everyone alive has their own complex interiority, as unruly as your own, and that you, a stranger, are not in any real way connected to the lawless, blurry middle of that celebrity, and will never be. It’s freeing and fun to know this. I mean, these people are basically in your employ. Glamorous dollhouse dwellers. Acknowledging that uncrossable distance allows for a different, healthier closeness of pure imagination. My feelings, then, can comfortably be at once both fiercely intense and entirely silly. I am a foremost scholar in the art of the Taylor Swift who exists in my head. The real person raised in Pennsylvania I don’t know at all. I have some conjectures on the matter, and, as with all my conjectures, every hackneyed theory, each picky little opinion, I’m sure they’re perfect, brilliant, just absolutely right, but that’s still all they are. Taylor Swift, figure of the cultural imagination, is the Jodie Comer to my Sandra Oh in Killing Eve, annoying and pretty in frills, taunting me endlessly and holding us trapped together in a dance of most enchanting death. But the real Taylor Swift has favorite bed sheets and a social security number and a British boyfriend, none of which I have any desire to know about, and if I saw her at a restaurant I’d politely avert my eyes before, yes, dive-bombing the group text. There’s nobody on Earth I’d stand in line to speak to, but then I’ve been speaking to a certain figment of Taylor Swift for nearly half my life.

I went to a Taylor Swift concert the night before I moved into college in 2009. My father’s work friend, firefighter by day, near professional gambler by night, got comped tickets to the Fearless Tour stop taking place at the nearby casino, and he let me have them as a reward, mainly, for happening to be seventeen. Live in-person and performed acoustically, “Fifteen” made me cry. A few years after that, in the thick, sticky part of my first post-college summer, I wrote approximately twenty-three million words about her in these very pages.  (”Pages”) At that point, Taylor’s most recent release was 2012’s Red, and the work I produced that long ago July about Taylor and her career, writing I was fairly pleased with at the time, feels now, besides just being extremely clearly written by a twenty-one year old, strange to me for the way it favors the sweet over the sour almost uniformly. There is a wholesome kind of ardor in that writing which maybe I’ve outgrown the ability to hold. Or maybe Taylor just proceeded to spend the next half a decade plus releasing one bad single after another, and it was taste—and trespasses against taste—and not some shift in my nature which altered the tenor of our bond. I have real love for my particular image, gleaned from public statements and published art, of smart, bizarre famous woman Taylor Swift, and I admire the bulk of her output very much. I’m just no longer so inclined to fawn. This is not to say I am here to offer a Taylor Swift hate screed. I couldn’t swing it, and, anyway, I’m not a pop feminist-for-hire circa 2010. But we’re older now. Things are different. At twenty-eight, twenty-nine this month—Taylor will, also this December, turn thirty-one—I regard Taylor Swift warily, like an ex with whom you have a tentative friendship, perpetually on the brink of falling one way or the other into hatred or delight, only to wobble back the opposite direction again at the slightest provocation, but still, despite best efforts, even, I regard her all the time. 

folklore was released at midnight on July 24th 2020, but I was at a cabin in rural Vermont without Internet or cell service. I drank Bud Light seltzers with my mother while watching the eerie pandemic return of Major League Baseball, and when I got into a strange bed there I stewed, knowing there were people out in the world all over who were hearing Taylor Swift songs I never had, and that this was a fundamental wrong, a disruption in the balance of the universe. I listened to it the next morning in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. 

And folklore is great. That’s the terrible thing. Slightly less great, maybe, than some people have insisted, tricked, I think, by just the pronounced shift in sound. But it’s great. A little gift I asked for a thousand times and was still surprised to get, like a wife who didn’t expect her henpecked husband to ever follow through and buy the paraffin wax hand bath as-see-on-TV. For years, I’ve been halfheartedly insisting that Taylor had a great album in her. I’d say it even, perhaps especially, while she stubbornly fed me gruel. Or worse, gruel with the occasional whiff of something better. With a ripe, little raspberry dropped into the slop. The bright, villainous thrill of “Getaway Car” made me believe Taylor, my Taylor, was in there somewhere under the lacquer of sequins and synth, which, while not objectionable by default, seemed a costume, and an ill-fitting one. The lived-in world of “Cornelia Street” made those old scars sting. That gay “Delicate” video. When she did “Call It What You Want” on SNL and played guitar while wearing an ugly sweater. If the abominable “ME!”, lead single off Lover, was the stick, 1989’s “Clean” was the carrot. I was Charlie Brown, and Taylor my Lucy, yanking the football back again and again. Over drinks I still yelled that Taylor Swift’s next album would be, “her Nebraska”, referring to my favorite Bruce Springsteen record, and learned to live with that egg on my face for good. I suppose I even came to like it. There was something inherently funny in taking up, like, “blind faith in the as of yet untapped greater artistic potential of massively wealthy and popular singer Taylor Swift” as my totally inane personal cause du jour, and eventually it was a bit, a gag I performed to be obstinate and didactic, but way down somewhere awful near my kidneys I meant it the whole while. And then she did it. A pandemic befell the world and amid a sea of human suffering Taylor Swift remembered she can write. She wrote, and with a massive, crucial assist from Aaron Dessner, whose music on this record is sometimes so beautiful it actually angers me, as the last thing I needed in already perilous times was to be made to try and marry my uniquely perverse emotional responses to beloved divorced dad band The National and fucking Taylor Swift,  she made an album which, if not her Nebraska, per se (I’ve come to realize that a major part of believing Taylor Swift will one day make an album I find as quietly devastating and gorgeous as Nebraska is knowing that no album will ever actually be Her Nebraska... That each will, rather, to me, be more and more evidence that it’s coming still, more proof that the limit is untouched, on and on ad infinitum, or at least until the seas take us into a place of salty peace.) is a shocking credit to all my hard-fought and deluded confidence. folklore is great. This fact has made me feel almost equally as disoriented from my understanding of the world as the time-melting COVID-19 lockdowns have, and it turned my Spotify year in review annual collective AI humiliation kink thing into a glaring indictment of my mental state, but still, I mean... It’s great.

In talking about folklore a bit this week, there are a number of specific topics I intend to cover—what a thrill it is to hear Taylor say “fuck”; Taylor’s terrifying birth chart; the astoundingly perfect bridge of “the last great american dynasty”; “because my ass is located at the back of my body”; the bit in last year’s “Lover” where deranged WASP Taylor Swift implies that to “leave the Christmas lights up til January” is some signifier of being a love-struck bohemian, when actually everyone who doesn’t employ domestic staff to take their lights down does this; how reputation is the best of the Taylor Swift records released in the latter half of the 2010s, actually, and the people who can’t see that are cowards—but intend mostly to let the muse move me where she will. Against the advice of my better angels, she—that tie-in marketing eldritch terror—always does.

[n-blanca-archived]

BESTIE i am gonna rant and i wont tag it because I feel really stupid and like none of this will make sense, so if you actually see this hi, i hope you’re doing well. 

anyway, 

below the cut are mha spoilers? not...really, i think. discarded drafts of the cover art for volume 30, as well as the inside illustration. though obviously that implies that if you havent been keeping up with the manga, for the love of god look away, thanks <3

The Above image is a rough draft for the cover of volume 40, of my hero academia. It depicts one bakugou katsuki, most notably in his well known middle school uniform, bleeding from the mouth and visibly hurt.

this is draft 2 for cover 40

 This time, the image shows Midoriya Izuku, badly injured and overwhelmed by his own quirk. Surrounding him are the bodies of the people who died during that battle, but most notably Bakugou Katsuki. He did not die, but his grave injury is what prompts Izuku to push himself past his prior point of exhaustion. or more simply put i suppose, he snaps LMAO. 

And....holy fuck. I have a LOT to say about the first one, namely.

Because that boy isn't OUR bakugou. He's the Bakugou we left behind very early on in season 1. And that means so much.

Having that injured, middle school bakugou says that that version of bakugou is good and dead. That this blow- this grave injury that he took for deku- is his absolute tipping point into becoming a hero.

From what we've seen so far, Bakugou's progress has been honestly astounding. He acknowledges other people's power and works with them fairly well, he improves himself and his ideologies, and he becomes more analytical, less reckless.

but...this. The absolute FINAL nail in the coffin, almost literally. Bakugou almost dying for deku is his truest act of heroism and it symbolizes the death of the earlier Bakugou Katsuki, the one we were first introduced to.

Bakugou's never been the most heroic in a traditonal sense. His whole thing was that he won to save, versus deku's save to win.

But in that moment, fearing for Deku's life, he moved before he could think- which would be out of character, except for the fact that we know Katsuki's actions regarding Deku have never really made sense. There was something about deku that always made Katsuki something more than what he actually was.It used to make him a bully, a volatile version of himself that said things without thinking and let his dangerous palms crackle and boom without regard. (this feels like im saying he was only ever a bully to deku, which i don’t fully believe....i think deku was his main victim/target, but middle school Katsuki was not a good person, and while i won’t judge him for that because who was actually a good person in middle school, i won’t sit here and say that it was deku’s fault that Katuski was so volatile. because it wasn’t. maybe i’ll reword this later? when im not delirous. yeah.) 

but..this time, it made him a hero. Just this once, finally, Katsuki's ugly bias towards deku pushed him to save rather than to win. And I think less because it was inherently deku- damn okay i’ve had this talk with both my sister and best friend multiple times but here’s the thing-

regardless of who it had been, I think Katsuki would have saved them. But just the fact that it was Deku made it instinctual, something he physically did not ge tthe chance to think about before he had pulled the other boy out of immediate harm’s way. 

...i lied i’ll make another post for the 2nd picture cuz this looks a little long to me LMAO 

EDIT(literally 3 minutes after the initial posting PJAKEHD): i lied AGAIN look at me being a stupid lil indecisive nb wow. im gonna tag it no i suppose cuz i didnt tag spoilers or the boys smh