#but at the same time from a story and narrative pov it’s fucking beautiful and was so perfectly well done!!!!
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
trans-luis-serra-navarro · 1 year ago
Text
Maybe I’ll elaborate more on this in the future maybe not and I think it applies to literally every character ever but I think my analysis of Luis and just analysis of him in general fall under two categories:
Why LUIS as a CHARACTER INSIDE the universe of resident evil would do the actions he does
And what CAPCOM as a REAL WORLD COMPANY wants us to make of him!!!
And my posts geeeeeeenerally fall under the first category!!!!!!!!! I like analysing Luis as a Person the most, And What Capcom was trying to ‘achieve’ with his character second!!!!!!! But neither of them are more important than the other!!!!!!!!! This is MY Luis blog and IIIIIII get to decide how I wanna handle my analysis of him HDBWHENDHCN
10 notes · View notes
weirdly-specific-but-ok · 1 year ago
Text
pt XVI good omens season 2 (still not traumatic) episode 3 EDINBURGH
HELLO IT'S ME IT'S THE OFFICIAL GOOD OMENS MASCOT WHY DO I STILL KEEP INTRODUCING MYSELF IDK. If you don't know who I am, thank God and Satan for their mercy and flee. Also, the day after I post this, I'll be watching the last three episodes on livestream for the first time so. You know. I'm hyped on the energy of this being my last day not enveloped in tears. Take the summary:
Before the episode starts, someone asks why Crowley said in the last episode that Aziraphale couldn't fall because look at him, all angelic when Crowley looked the same as starmaker. I reply that "Crowley thinks he deserved it, he sees Azi as something beautiful and untouched while he probably sees himself as idk marked in some way so god kicked him down."
I am told that I am learning too fast to weaponise the narrative to induce angst. So then I say oh, I go too fast for you. Tears ensue.
The episode begins! Everyone shrieks about Edinburgh, David Tennant, how it is their favourite episode, and SCOTTISH CROWLEY.
We open with lesbians being gay, and then Muriel enters as Inspector Constable! They are very sweet and very determined to do their job right, and they are adopted by Crowley and Aziraphale just like Jim.
Crowley sits on Aziraphale's chair's arm. The maggots all swoon.
Fine, I also swooned.
Aziraphale gaslight-gatekeep-girlboss-mansplain-manipulate-manwhores his way into getting Crowley to give him the Bentley keys (BOUNDARIES. BOUNDARIES.).
WHAT PLENTY OF USE DO BOTH OF YOU GET OUT OF THE BOOKSHOP?
The really ineffable plan is whatever the fuck was happening in Aziraphale's brain when he somehow went from London to Edinburgh via Loch Ness (check the map) and then proceeded to disguise himself as a detective who pretends to be a journalist.
Crowley slays in sleeve garters and a cardigan keeping house in the bookshop meanwhile, does not sell books, instead cleans with Jimbriel and periodically yeets book stacks into corners when distracted.
Aziraphale reads his old diary entries about Crowley, a (6000+) 13 year old with a crush.
MINISODE MINISODE. They are in Edinburgh during the mid 1800s. Victorian outfits, check. Scottish Crowley, check. Capitalist Karen Aziraphale, che-wait what.
Huh. Well. There's a wee bit of body snatchin' going on, to sell to doctors for medical research because there aren't enough murderers, and to make enough money to survive.
Aziraphale channels his inner capitalist judgemental Karen and ruins that plan, come on Aziraphale you have religious trauma but you're better than this, and long story short, Wee Morag dies after Aziraphale realises his error, her friend Elspeth has to sell her corpse for pennies, and is about to commit suicide with laudanum. Azi, oh god. I'm glad you underwent character development at least.
NOW CROWLEY HERE SLAYS. I KNOW THIS IS AZIRAPHALE'S PERSPECTIVE AND IS BIASED. BUT WITH THIS POV, CROWLEY SLAYS.
He calmly educates Aziraphale about how his whole "the poor have more opportunities and you shouldn't give them money or they'll lose the virtue of poverty" is absolute bullshit, and he does this understanding Aziraphale's situation and not losing his temper.
The framing. The framing of the shot when they see Wee Morag and Elspeth sitting down on a step and explaining their situation. Aziraphale stands above, bustling with righteousness, and judges them. Crowley sits down. He sits down next to them, rather than taking the high ground. He meets them where they are and empathises. It is the fact that he is fallen and damned that makes him behave really divine and sorry I wrote a whole hymn on him have it I'll stop rambling just know I love him.
I think his amusement is a facade so hell won't think he's genuinely being good. I think he's morally grey and incredibly brave and kind.
When Elspeth is bouta kill herself with the laudanum, Crowley grabs it and drinks it himself, and grows tiny and then huge, absolutely high off his head. David Tennant takes the opportunity to travel Scotland from east to west in terms of accent variety.
He gives us the good message of NO DYIN'. NO MORE DYIN'. IT'S NOT ON. And then forces Aziraphale (who doesn't want to ruin her virtuous poverty) to give the girl all the guineas he has in his pocket, and tells her to go off and start a farm or something. BUT NOT JUST PRETENDY GOOD, BE PROPERLY GOOD.
He then gets pulled into hell. To be punished for this. Aziraphale is frightened and heartbroken for him, looking around desperately, and we find out that Crowley didn't meet him for a while after. And later he wanted holy water. To protect himself? He got punished by hell. For how long? The whole month in between the incident and the diary entry? There can't be anyone better at punishment and cruelty than hell.
Sorry I'm just screaming here.
Never mind fuck I started this summary really happy and bouncy and listening to a dance playlist. Dionysus by BTS and Italian pop is still playing and now I'm crying.
Is this the natural progression. Fuck I'm crying. Sorry guys something else happens with Aziraphale politely talking to a phone and Crowley smiling really beautifully while unsuccessfully trying to manipulate two lesbians into a relationship and something about a visit I don't care everyone's being morally dubious as usual and then lovely Scottish music outro I CAN'T FUCKING ELABORATE I'M SITTING HERE CRYING OVER CROWLEY.
right summary done, time to go sob, lmao i thought i wouldn't cry today over good omens HAHAHAHA still not traumatic eh HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
428 notes · View notes
ananke-xiii · 1 year ago
Text
Never getting over the fact that both Crowley and Cas's deaths in s12 are completely useless. Like, as far as Crowley is concerned, they clearly just wanted to kill him off, which okay I can get that, but they did it in a very stupid way. The dude sacrificed himself (totally ooc, but he's been so for at least the whole s12 so not a news) to close the rift but, surprise!, in s13 they will have to open it several times to go to the AU to save Mary. Uhm, okay. Crowley joins Bobby, Kevin and Charlie and their completely useless deaths from a narrative pov (if you delete their deaths the storyline stays exactly the same). His death doesn't even serve the purpose of "pathos", like the others did, because it gets completely overshadowed by Cas's death.
So Cas's death in s12. Zero sense. He dies and goes to The Empy. Now, that could've been interesting since we discover that there's Hell, Heaven, Purgatory and now... The Empty. But s13 doesn't deal with The Empty at all (and I'd argue no other season really deals with it at all but that's for another story). So what was the purpose of Cas's death? Ah, yes. To show us how Dean is devasted by it. Okay, fair. A tad cruel and also we've already seen this but okay, at least there's some sense. But NO! We spent the first 5 (beautiful) episodes of s13 literally watching Dean dealing with pain, it's fucking clear that this is about Cas because when he turns up alive again the guy is completely over the moon and forgets his mother might still be alive *waves in vague directions* somewhere. So, as a viewer, I'm led to think that Cas's death is A Big Deal, but again NO! The angel is alive, rebuilt and ready for... WAR? Like, I'm sorry, what? It's in this exact moment that I realized how much the show has betrayed the viewers' trust. There needed to be a payoff between Dean and Cas, it wasn't gonna be romantic we all know that, but the fact that everything was swept under the rug enrages me to no end.
Gosh, I could talk for hours about how season 13 has let me down. What a waaaaaste!
76 notes · View notes
welcometothejianghu · 11 months ago
Text
Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 叛逆者/The Rebel.
Tumblr media
The Rebel is a 2021 period drama set during the 1930s and '40s as seen (mostly) from Shanghai by a patriotic young man who just keeps getting injured, ow, that poor baby.
It's a fairly realistic spy drama, by which I mean, there's not a bunch of cute costume changes or fun fake identities. Instead, this is a story about people who live entire other lives for years, keeping their true allegiances under wraps, doing what they can to help their side while sweating out what they can’t. It's way more John le Carré than Ian Fleming -- no James Bond flashiness or gizmos, all George Smiley subterfuge and paperwork. Actual spycraft is tough, kids!
Tumblr media
Full disclaimer up front: This show is not a happy fun good time. It's a fascinating, gripping, tense piece of work about a thirteen-year period of history where a whole lot of miserable things were happening. The body count is frighteningly high. Be very careful about which characters you get attached to. Exactly one man has plot armor, so God help the rest of them.
However, if you're up for a quality drama with a serious tone that's so full of HISTORY! it's bursting at the seams, I have five reasons you should give this one a shot:
1. Starring the veins in Zhu Yilong's forehead
Tumblr media
Do you feel like watching a beautiful man have a terrible day for 43 episodes straight?
This show is absolutely a Zhu Yilong vehicle. The rest of the cast is great (and more on them later), but he's the star -- and the show just loves to beat him up, both emotionally and physically. His character, Lin Nansheng, exists in a Murphy's-Law situation where if anything bad can happen to him, it will. If you like seeing this gorgeous gentleman in distress, this show has you covered.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Someone please care him.
2. Daddy Issues
Tumblr media
Chen Moqun is a bad, bad man. He's a bastard in his first scene, and he's a bastard in his last. He is loyal to exactly one thing, and that is his own survival. He will ally with anyone and fuck anyone over if it means he gets to live another day.
Tumblr media
He is also scaldingly hot in his bastardry.
Chen Moqun is the spymaster who pulls Lin Nansheng out of the regular military ranks and into the world of the intelligence services, despite Lin Nansheng's lack of experience in the field. This means that Lin Nansheng is Chen Moqun's little golden boy -- and that means Chen Moqun feels justified in making Lin Nansheng do whatever the hell he wants, and in getting all up in Lin Nansheng's business when he doesn't do it perfectly.
I know there are several of you out there whose tails just started wagging. Good, you've got it.
Tumblr media
Alas that he is not in nearly as much of the series as his top billing suggests he would be. He's a major figure in the early arcs, but pretty soon after, Circumstances relocate him to somewhere Lin Nansheng isn't -- and because Lin Nansheng is our POV character, Chen Moqun all but vanishes from the show. He reappears later, but as a much less prominent figure. Still a self-serving bastard, though! Don't worry about that.
Tumblr media
I like Chen Moqun as a character for a lot of reasons. He's slimy, but he's effective. He's smart, but he's not a supervillain. He's the kind of competent bastard that it's very fun to watch the good guys outwit. He kind of has to leave the narrative, because he's so sharp that much of the plot would be impossible under his supervision; he gets replaced by [spoiler], whose general incompetence makes him dangerous in a very different way, but who is so self-absorbed that he can't see when he's being played. Pulling the wool over Chen Moqun's eyes is a much nastier business.
At the same time, though, he's a coward. He'll sell out anything and anyone to save his own skin. His lack of inner conviction eventually reduces him to something pathetic, leaving him at the mercy of people he once abused, Lin Nansheng included. ...Ah, your tails are wagging harder now, I see.
Now, for those of you who are not into a Bad Daddy dynamic, may I sell you on how Lin Nansheng also has two Good Daddies?
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Honestly, if this show had not been laboring under the weight of [gestures to the state of Chinese media and culture], I'm pretty sure they would have made at least one of these two Older Lifelong Bachelors textually gay. I'm just saying, throw-yourself-into-the-cause-style patriotism is a great cover for never marrying and being cagey about your entire personal life.
Tumblr media
Also, I know their super-secret espionage meetups on park benches aren't intended to look like dudes cruising, but come on.
3. A startlingly good love story???
And I say "startlingly" because the love story comes in multiple stages, and I haaaaaate the first one. Fortunately, so does the show!
Tumblr media
When Lin Nansheng and Zhu Yizhen start off their romance, she's a wealthy college schoolgirl (which comes off as more than a little creepy, since Tong Yao is clearly in her late thirties) and he's a TA at her school -- except she's actually a student activist working for the Communists, and he's a member of the KMT sent to seduce her and infiltrate her cell. It goes exactly as badly as you'd expect! And when it was clear it was over for good, I breathed a sigh of relief. I liked them both as individual characters, but as a romantic pairing, the amount of malicious deception involved really wasn't doing it for me, to say nothing of how I dislike teacher/student as a trope. (Also, they really have no chemistry together, but whatever, I'm used to c-drama hets by now.) Well, I thought, thank goodness all that's over and we'll never have to come back to it!
Tumblr media
But here's the thing: They come together again later under different circumstances, and oh, that's some good stuff. She gets a haircut, he gets to be himself, and the two of them have to learn how to work together even when they can't entirely trust one another.
That amount of deception is great, because that's not lies -- it's opsec. They are both withholding colossal amounts of information from one another, and each one of them knows the other's doing it, even if they don't know what information is being withheld. They both want to know what the other person knows, but they also know that person would die before giving up their secrets.
This does lead to a number of points where you're hollering JUST TELL HIM/HER at the screen, which can get a little frustrating. But, like, you get it. They've got reasons for not sharing information, and grim little reason number one is, the bad guys can't torture out of you what you don't know.
Tumblr media
This is not a romance drama; this is a drama that happens to have a complicated romance stitched all the way through it. Sometimes it's the main focus, but much of the time it's a side note. The two of them go years at a time without interacting. They each spend a fair amount of time believing the other is dead. When they do get to work together, they're great partners. When they're separated or at odds, they don't collapse.
I said earlier that Lin Nansheng is the POV character, which is mostly true. However, we do get a not-small amount of the story told from Zhu Yizhen's POV when he's not around, which goes a long way toward making her an actual person and not just an accessory to his story -- and that goes a long way toward making this romance something between equals, and not just a case where a nice guy feels real bad about how much he fucked over the girl he liked.
Tumblr media
I'd say that if you're looking for a drama where the love story is a central point of interest, or for a drama without any love story at all, you'll be happier elsewhere. However, if you're a Goldilocks who enjoys a fraught love story when it's there but doesn't miss it when it's gone, this may strike a good balance for you!
This pair is also about as much as the show gets in terms of textual, onscreen romance. Howerver, there are also a number of couples in this show who have to pretend to be married, if that's a trope that does it for you. And speaking of those...
4. My Fair Lady
Lan Xinjie turned out to be maybe my favorite character in the show, which surprised the hell out of me, considering how she was introduced as a pretty throwaway character: Oh, look, a pretty and sophisticated woman at the dance hall, she can use her refined and wordly ways to make The Virgin Lin Nansheng sweat, it's great.
Tumblr media
But then she comes back. In fact, she keeps exiting the narrative and then showing up again a couple episodes later! Her continued involvement with these spy boys keeps both ruining her life and saving it. Every time you think she's gotten out, circumstances pull her back into Lin Nansheng's catastrophe orbit, making her maybe the most tragic character in a series full of them.
Tumblr media
Here's a thing that impressed me about the drama: Lan Xinjie is a sex worker, but the show never shits on her for that. The show presents what she's doing as negative, but mostly because she doesn't particularly enjoy doing it. She keeps doing it, though, because sometimes it's the best way for her to make money, and sometimes it's the only way for her to make money.
The thing is, Lan Xinjie herself never talks about what she's doing like it's some tragic fate. It's a job. She has to play nice with jackass men from all over the world, and she can do it because men fall all over a pretty girl like her. Whenever Lin Nansheng makes a sad face about it, she basically rolls her eyes at him. She has a very solid grasp of the way the world works, and she's going to do what she needs to do to keep herself and her loved ones alive.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Now: Lan Xinjie definitely functions in the narrative as a contrast to how Good and Pure Communist Girl-Next-Door Zhu Yizhen is. Lan Xinjie is a little too much of a Fallen Woman, so she's never going to threaten Zhu Yizhen's position as the main love interest. However, it would have been so easy to go all in on slut-shaming Lan Xinjie to make that contrast even starker, and the show does not do that. It does not judge her for her choices, in part because it understands that women like her very often doesn't have any.
Tumblr media
On top of all of this, Zhu Zhu can act her damn face off. There are story beats that could have been melodramatic and unintentionally comic, but she sells them and makes them devastating. Arguably the best scenes in the entire show are when she and Zhu Yilong are working together, because the two of them consistently turn in stellar performances. This show is not exactly a font of subtlety (see my next point), but both of them manage to play their roles with restraint and dignity that make their moments together shine.
I won't spoil where exactly this goes, but to me, the complicated relationship between Lin Nansheng and Lan Xinjie is one of the highlights of the show. It's a lot of guilt and obligation intertwined with genuine affection, and because it can't be The Love Story, it winds up being a very fraught, intimate friendship that lasts through the best and worst parts of both of their lives.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Also, everything she wears is stunning. Marry me, Miss Lan.
5. Makes you feel real smart!
Tumblr media
Hey, nerds! Do you like history? Because boy oh boy, is this a show about history!
It's so much a show about history, in fact, that it occasionally has to break into little documentary-style interludes, where you get to watch pictures of actual historical footage while one of the cast members narrates a small summary of what's going on with the geopolitical situation at that moment. Everyone in the main cast is fictional, but there are plenty of real names dropped all over the place. You aren't expected to know everything already, but you're definitely expected to keep up.
I will admit that I don't know the ins and outs of that historical period well enough to fact-check a lot of the particulars, so I can't swear to the accuracy of its various smaller moves. I do know enough about it to know, though, that this story is a little biased.
Tumblr media
And by that I mean: This show is propaganda through and through. It’s all about how well the Righteous Communists did in their battle first against the Terrible Japanese, then against the Wicked KMT (the non-Communist Nationalists). Characters give stirring declarations of their principles at a rate of about one every other episode. There’s a whole scene where two dudes sit on a park bench and talk animatedly about what a great and prescient writer Mao was. Be prepared to be serenaded by a number of (what I assume are) stirring Communist anthems.
This all has zero emotional resonance to me. There were several points I could tell it was making references to events and people and speeches that are surely real historical things, but I lack most of the cultural competency that I’d need to recognize them without explanation. The climactic moment of Lin Nansheng’s joining the Communists (this is not a spoiler, you know it’s coming from the get-go) mostly seemed goofy to me, especially with the closed-fist salute that looks like you’re about to punch yourself in the head.
Tumblr media
See what I mean?
All of which is to say: The propaganda did not bother me, because I mostly found it abstract and funny. And for heaven's sake, I'm from the US; I learned how to laugh my way through unsubtle pro-government propaganda watching Saturday morning cartoons.
However, I can imagine people closer to these cultures and events having MUCH stronger reactions. If this is you, yeah, be careful.
Tumblr media
What's kind of sad (and by sad I mean funny) is how much the blatant Communism! Fuck Yeah! just turns the show into the "How do you do, fellow kids?" of propaganda. If it had just told the story, it honestly would have done a better job of making the Communists seem like the cool underdogs against the overpowering forces of authoritarian jackassery. But when you have someone all but turn to the camera damn near every episode to make sure you, the viewer, know how good and noble and smart its brave communist characters are, it sure spoils the effect.
I honestly don't know enough about the production team to know how accidental or intentional this was. Is it possible the drama is actually subtly lampooning these hyper-patriotic tropes? Sure, maybe! Is it possible that it actually believes this cringe with all its heart? Could be! Is it maybe neutral on matters of personal belief but playing up this version of history to get the show approved by party censors during the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CCP? Ah, yeah, that's the most likely one. Believe what you want about its motivations. Those who are inclined to be moved by its ideologies probably will be. The rest of us, probably the opposite.
All that said: I actually think it's useful and good to hear obviously biased takes on historical events, especially from unfamiliar and non-western perspectives. This is because all takes on historical events are biased, and it's dangerous and stupid to pretend they're not! Looking at how someone tells a story is as instructive as looking at the story they tell. If you go into the Rebel with that in mind, it adds a meta-layer of interest that I (a historian) find fascinating.
Ready to watch, comrade?
This one's an iQiyi exclusive -- and it's not a VIP exclusive, so if you're willing to put up with some ads, you can watch it all for free.
This is a show I'm probably never going to watch all the way through again, on account of how heavy it is. However, it is also a show I'm very glad I watched, because I find myself thinking about it a lot. Even when it's being hokey and jingoistic, it never stops being interesting. It's just a well-made drama that contains multitudes.
Tumblr media
And, of course, one of those is this beautiful man's beautiful face.
40 notes · View notes
balalaijka · 2 months ago
Text
books read in 2024, with notes
Problém tří těles (The Three Body Problem), Liou Cch'-sin
loved it, beautiful suspense, the video game aspect was very cool, felt that the last section where we see the trisolarans’ perspective makes it better thematically but weakens the dread that was so prevalent otherwise
Arabian Nights, transl. Haddawy
delightful, had some extremely raunchy parts that i wasn’t expecting, honestly it’s fascinating to see the convergence of so many literary impulses side by side
Červotoč (Carcoma), Layla Martínez
a shorter weird horror about cycles of trauma in three generations of women in a house with skeletons both metaphorical and literal within its walls
Kluci ze hřbitova (Cemetery Boys), Aiden Thomas
the plot was a bit predictable but the romance was sweet and yes, i did cry at the end a bit
Děti duny (Children of Dune), Frank Herbert
honestly i think herbert really struck gold with his writing of sibling relationships, the contrast of alia and paul’s dooms and leto ii and ghanima’s adventures were the highlight here
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
for a “problematic novel” i felt that nabokov does an excellent job of reminding us of hh’s monstrosity even if it is told directly through his pov, loved the literary references from edgar allan poe to carmen—always elegant but with the edge of almost satirizing intellectualism itself
The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson
honestly a perfect book to read even when you’re feeling burnt out—the nonlinear and rambling style makes it very interesting to read without taxing you too much, and the discussions of queerness and sexuality and art were throughly enjoyable
Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake
love this chaotic mess of a man, who’ll tell you about the chemical structures and scientific methods on one page and then describe taking lsd and brazenly admitting to apple theft on the next
The Wounded Sky, Diane Duane
as a fan of duane’s young wizards series, this is a fascinating window into the transition from her star trek novels to original writing, the banter is infectious, the alien characters delightful and the scifi jargon jargoning
EDIT: the lovely Ms. Duane herself clarified that the original fiction came first, my bad!
Binti: Home, Nnedi Okorafor
as a fan of the first book who felt that more time was needed to explore binti’s trauma, this book gives that narrative its space, and also delivers an honestly heartbreaking story about returning home but it’s not home not really because you changed but you love it but did it love you or did it only tolerate you when you fit its ideas of who you should be? the line “you used to be such a beautiful girl” made me bawl
The Devourers, Indra Das
the simple version of the summary is “iwtv but werewolves in mughal (?) era india,” it does fall into the trap of trying to make things edgy by indulging in game of thrones-style “grit”, but at the same time its a dream-like exploration of legacy and queerness
Wild Seed, Octavia Butler
a reread technically, but still holds up, butler does not hold back when it comes to fucked up power dynamics and the implications of having powers tied to genetics, anyanwu and doro remain some of the most fascinating depictions of immortals
Mind of My Mind, Octavia Butler
a shorter and more transitional work, i feel there could have been more detailing of the patternist society but on the other hand we see doro get his just desserts and it is amazing after all the shit he pulled in wild seed
Clay’s Ark, Octavia Butler
butler’s attempt at writing a horror slasher?
Bluets, Maggie Nelson
dreamy and indulgent, i generally just really love how nelson mixes up intellectualism and horniness like a cocktail and makes it amazing
Vicious, V.E. Schwab
amazingly paced with wonderful asshole characters, featuring a found family that probably shouldn’t have found each other and unapologetic vengeful sentiments
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
if you can ignore the voice in your head chanting “i would have done a better job hiding the books than montag,” this is an honestly life-changing examination of the importance of literacy??? the montag and beatty argument made me start annotating like i was in ap lit again
The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
stories so bright and vivid you’ll be mad that movies purporting to be “realistic depictions of medieval times” are always gray and misery-filled
When We Cease to Understand the World (Un Verdor Terrible), Benjamín Labatut
while the “prussian blue” chapter remains my favorite, the whole thing is a really good examination of the tangle of scientific progress and human atrocities, though the titular chapter did drag on and verge more on “melodramatic biopic” territory rather than the dry menippean satire that the rest of the book is
8 notes · View notes
bookish-monster · 1 year ago
Text
RECOMMENDATION
Providence Girls
by Morgan Dante - find them on Twitter and Instagram as well
The StoryGraph link contains information such as publication date, page count, and community-created content warnings
Tumblr media
Providence Girls by Morgan Dante is a standalone sapphic novella set in H. P. Lovecraft’s cosmic horror universe in the 1930s and 40s. The story is a slow burn buildup of the romantic relationship between Lavinia “Vin” Whateley, an SA and incest survivor who fled from Dunwich, Massachusetts to East Providence in Rhode Island, and Asenath “Azzie” Waite who abandoned her hometown of Innsmouth for East Providence in an attempt to escape the slow transformation of her body and mind into an eldritch being of the sea.
I really loved this book! The prose is luscious but curt, using a lot of short, sharp sentences full of vivid description. The opening scene of Vin fleeing her murderous father (who intended to sacrifice her to a Great Old One after she bore its hybrid children at his… behest) and getting lost and delirious in the wilderness of New England is beautiful but unforgiving. Everything is described, from the bird calls and inquisitive wet nose of a bear cub to the infected cut on Vin’s foot that oozes pus and blood.
The chapters bounce between the first-person POVs of Vin and Azzie, who are both writing down their thoughts of each other. They often address each other in their respective sections, reflecting on their relationship with one another and how it developed over the course of less than a year. The story is very slow in the beginning and middle, focusing on the humdrum daily affairs of Vin learning to be her own person outside of her abusive father’s shadow and Azzie slowly opening her heart to her new housemate as her transformation progresses. The tension between Azzie and Vin grows stronger with every page, and feels realistic for two women who have been deeply wounded but nonetheless crave intimacy and trust. 
A lot of this book concerns itself with the misogynistic violence that was present in the earlier half of the 20th century in America, as well as with the misogyny that is present in Lovecraft’s writing and universe. Both Vin and Azzie rail against it in their own ways, but are constrained by their gender and society. A quote: “[The doctor] was only here to ensure you weren’t dead. Women disappeared sometimes, and their fathers and husbands were never questioned because what they did with their women was their business.” Azzie is mentioned as being the only woman to have graduated from Miskatonic University.
The entire book feels less like a love letter to Lovecraft’s work and more of a critique of it, an exploration of the women who so often fall through the cracks in these narratives. We see this in Azzie’s unnamed mother, a Deep One who forsook the sea and the eldritch glory of the ocean floor in order to be exiled to the attic of her human husband’s home—all for the sake of watching her daughter grow up on land.
Overall, I absolutely adored this book. The romance between Vin and Azzie is beautiful and heart-wrenching at the same time, as Azzie’s transformation drives her to the edge of death on land—and yet she, like her mother, does her best to ignore the sea for the sake of a loved one. There is definitely sapphic monster fucking here, as well as discussions of what it means to be a monster in someone’s eyes. Providence Girls is a delicious, slow burn meditation on the Cthulhian mythos and sapphic romance within it, and I greedily devoured every word.
Tumblr media
Find this book on Amazon Kindle (US)
42 notes · View notes
dil-ibaadat · 2 years ago
Note
Do you still like Kanthony or more specifically Kate? I was scrolling down your Twitter and I saw you recommend an Edwina fic. I started reading and I’m halfway through it and it kinda pains me to see some fic authors or people from the fandom love this fic. It’s well written but it also makes Kate a villain and rewrites season two to fit the narrative of Edwina being a puppet in Kate’s hand. Of course i’m not saying what you should enjoy or read but I’m just wondering if that fic mirrors your opinion of Kate. I really hope I don’t seem rude with this ask, it’s not my intention and if so I apologize.
hey! going through my asks top-down because it’s easier. 
yes, i adore kate. she’s my #1, my ride-or-die, my unabashed favorite. i have a hard time getting investing in stories where she’s not at least a peripheral presence. 
because i love kate and i love flawed characters, i enjoy seeing her make mistakes and other characters viewing her in a critical light. it makes her human and it makes her all the more appealing to me. 
the edwina fic, for me, is one of the best fics in this fandom. i find the author’s portrayal of both edwina and kate (even in her more limited presence) to be compassionate and forgiving. a hard truth we have to swallow is that kate fucked up!! not as much as anthony did (that man was a single-handed catalyst for the mess of season 2 and he got off essentially scot-free; the audacity of men indeed). but she did fuck up by not telling edwina about her feelings and almost letting edwina marry a man who didn’t love her (and what’s worse, loved her sister). kate had her reasons and they were very sympathetic, but that doesn’t erase that hurt. and then, after s2, edwina had to attend kate’s wedding to the man she almost married, and have her entire future basically dependent on being in the good graces of that very same man (who is now her brother-in-law). 
that shit’s tough. edwina’s allowed to not have the most gracious feelings towards kate. in fact, that push-pull between love and hurt/hate/heartbreak/devastation was what made their relationship so good. kate was a good sister. an overbearing one, but a good one. and now, she barely knows anything about edwina and edwina barely knows anything about her. it’s so heartbreaking. i mean, they were family!!! the angst, the hurt, the love that continues to survive despite it all. this author did such a great, great job with edwina and kate’s relationship and edwina’s character development. 
and she also got me thinking: how could kate accept anthony’s love at the end of s2 if the fractured relationship with her sister was the consequence? how would she get over that roadblock? how would anthony feel for being the cause of this broken relationship? the possibilities there for an angsty post-s2 kanthony fic are ENDLESS. the situation is so good, so painful. the writer in me was endlessly inspired by the beautiful, haunting world this author created. 
as to your point about edwina being a ‘puppet’ in kate’s hands, well.... it’s an AU fic. some things were different, some remained the same. also, we have to understand... it’s edwina’s POV. the way she sees things were obviously very different from how kate or anthony (or the viewer) saw them. it doesn’t matter if her perspective is right or wrong, because the story’s about edwina and her journey to healing! it’s not so important to me because i think the friction in kate and edwina’s relationship was realistic and extremely well-done. i enjoyed the hell out of it. 
and edwina and freddie were so cute!!!! i’m now also shipping them like nobody’s business, which is great. 
tl;dr: it was a fabulous fic, the author is enormously talented, and i can still love and adore kate even if she’s not portrayed in the most flattering light in the stories that i read. good writing is good writing, and that author, to me, was one of the most talented voices i’ve encountered in this fandom thus far. we’re privileged to have her :)
18 notes · View notes
artificialqueens · 2 years ago
Text
🏳️‍🌈 Your Best American Girl (Gia Gunn/Laganja Estranja) - Lita 
Summary: Life on the road is fucking lonely, and Laganja thinks it’s killing her. Gia is adrift in a foreign country, trying and failing to stake out a career. Friendship can be found in the unlikeliest of places - namely a high school gym in Delaware. Femme Fatale Wrestling AU. 
A/N: This is essentially the Pretty Dope origin story that I’ve been sitting on half-finished for months. This is set five or six years before the main story iirc, while Gia and Ganja are still working on the indie circuit before getting signed by Femme Fatale. I love these morons and put way too much thought into their respective backstories, and I wish they got less villain-coded airtime in the main story (which won’t be the case for much longer, I promise) so this was stupid fun to write. Re: the song from which I lifted the title and lyrics, Your Best American Girl by Mitski has always been Gia/Ganja crack to me - it was written from the POV of struggling to meet eurocentric beauty standards as a woman of colour trying to date white men, but I think it can also read as a trans narrative and the ‘all-American boy’ line really evokes angst and shit about FFW!Laganja for me, so it’s always really inspired me while writing the two of them. Anyway, hope you all enjoy! <3
CW: Transphobia 
Your mother wouldn’t approve
Of how my mother raised me,
But I do, I think I do. 
**** 
There’s something a little disarming about wandering around in a high school after hours. The fluorescent lit hallway leading out of the gymnasium is overbearingly bright and creepily empty. Laganja makes slow, unsteady progress towards the door leading out to the parking lot; one of the wheels of her suitcase fell off while she was trying to get it out of her car earlier, and dragging it around lopsided was proving nothing short of a fucking nightmare.
The show had been far from bad, but she’d just hit her limit - at least it’s only five minutes’ drive to her hotel, maybe fifteen if she goes via McDonald’s like she’s planned. She has a pre-rolled joint in her backpack, and nowhere to be until eleven am the next morning. Then another hours-long drive to the next gig out in the back of beyond, to another shitty match in a shitty school gymnasium or community centre - rinse and repeat. She’d been living out of a suitcase for the better part of a month already, with another two weeks to go before she’d next see the inside of her apartment. She wasn’t at all mad at the payout, but it felt like a lot of work for money she was spending most of on gas and takeout. A little bit of her missed being a ‘real’ athlete - it wasn’t nearly this lonely. 
A lot of her missed it, actually. Back then, she’d had teammates to keep her company, and she didn’t have to pay for her own accommodation. Or travel. Or gear. These days, she’s never a standout - just a replaceable body at the bottom of a card, never in the same place more than once. No foundations, no friends. She misses being treated like she mattered. 
The scandal had died down since last year - she was finding it easier to get gigs, and could look at her social media without having a panic attack - but it didn’t make things much easier. She was just a little less radioactive than she had been after being kicked off the Olympic team. Rebuilding her life was taking time. 
Laganja rounds a corner, still fighting with her suitcase - a loud voice catches her off-guard and she stops dead; ducking behind a row of lockers. It’s a guy’s voice, brash and angry. She doesn’t really want to get herself involved in whatever the fuck this is. At least not until she’s figured out what’s going on. 
“What part of leave me the fuck alone don’t you understand?” 
“Babe, wait-“ A female voice this time; equally loud and a little abrasive, but with a distinct edge of fear that makes Laganja nervous.  
“I’m not your fucking babe- don’t touch me!”
Laganja hears the crash of a body slamming into metal, and winces - craning her neck to peer down the hall. The feminine voice belongs to that Japanese chick she’d worked a match with earlier that night - Gia something? She couldn’t work out at the time whether or not she liked her - she’d stiffed her a little in the ring, and had been pretty closed-off and hard to talk to backstage. Her lip is trembling, and there’s already black streaks of mascara running down her face. The guy has just shoved her into the lockers - pinning her in place with a hand roughly grasped around her shoulder. The other is raised like he’s about to punch her. Laganja’s stomach drops. 
“Look, can’t we figure this out?“ Gia’s voice is shaking.
“There’s nothing to figure out - I’m not a fucking homo, okay? So back the fuck off. I’m leaving.” 
“But my-“
“I don’t give a shit,” he snarls. “Stop following me around like a lost fucking puppy - we’re done.” 
“How the fuck am I gonna get home-“ 
“I don’t care! You fucking lied to me!”
Gia whimpers. Fuck this - Laganja steps out from where she’d been hiding; this feels like it’s about to get ugly, and she can’t just stand around and let that happen. She tries to say something, but the words get stuck in her throat, standing about ten feet away from them as her mouth opens and closes like a guppy, trying to string a sentence together with her fists clenched by her sides. 
Doesn’t matter - the guy sees her there, and his eyes widen. He practically sprints towards the door; shoving it open with his shoulder and letting it slam behind him. Gia crumples against the lockers. As soon as he’s out of eyeshot, Laganja drops her case, making straight for Gia. She’s sitting on the ground; hugging her knees and crying. Laganja crouches down at her side. 
“Oh my god, are you okay?” 
She looks up, sniffing a little. She’s still wearing her ring gear, a black and red high-necked two-piece, with an oversized hoodie shrugged over the top.
“I’m fine,” she murmurs, avoiding eye contact with Laganja as she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. 
“Is he-“
“Fuck off,” Gia pulls away sharply from the hand that Laganja had placed on her shoulder. 
“I’m sorry - I don’t want to shove my nose into your business or anything, but like…hey, weren’t we in a match together earlier?” 
The brunette gives a nonplussed shrug; pulling out her phone from the pocket of her hoodie and wiping away her running mascara with  the aid of her front camera. Laganja fishes a travel pack of Kleenex out of her backpack and offers it to her. She takes it begrudgingly, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. Laganja sits down on the floor next to her, crossing her legs and leaning against the locker. 
“You’re doing a really bad job at fucking off,” Gia observes. 
“I heard most of your conversation - I figured you don’t have a ride home, or anywhere to sleep tonight, and I’m not gonna leave you stranded out here in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere. I’m waiting for you to pull your head out of your ass and realise that I’m trying to help you, okay?” 
The brunette cracks half a smile. 
“Bitch.”
“Takes one to know one,” Laganja smirks. “What’s your name?” 
“You seriously did not forget what my name is after an hour-“
“No, I mean your real one.” She gives a bemused laugh. Pro wrestling etiquette is a language she’s still trying to decipher - she’s not sure whether or not that’s something she should have asked, but the question is out there now. There’s probably a stupid made-up word for the question she’d been trying to ask. Shoot name? She thinks that’s maybe it. “Mine’s Lucy, by the way.” 
“It’s still Gia,” she replies, a little thorny. Then: “I’m gonna stick with calling you Laganja, though. That’s funnier.” 
“Thanks,” Ganja rolls her eyes. She turns to Gia, her face turning a little more serious. “So, what’s going on?” 
“With what?” Gia says, her tone half uncertain and half sharply defensive. 
“You know - that guy. Looked pretty bad from where I was standing.”
“Oh, Trey’s my boyfriend. Or well, I guess was. I…” she sighs, chewing over her words a little. “One of the- look, why the fuck am I telling you this?” 
“Because I wanna help,” Laganja replies simply. Gia purses her lips. 
“One of the guys backstage told him something about me that I wasn’t ready to tell him, and he got mad, okay? So it’s basically my fault.” 
“What the fuck could they have told him that made him that mad?” Laganja raises her eyebrows. “None of that was okay.” 
“I don’t wanna talk about it.” Gia hugs her knees. 
“Listen - I just met you, and after tonight we’re probably never gonna see each other again. Who am I gonna tell? It’s just between us.” Gia doesn’t seem impressed. Laganja offers a hand out to her. “Pinkie swear.”
Gia looks a little wary, hushing her voice and ignoring the childish proffered hand. “I…I’m transgender. I was like, born a guy. It’s not something I wanna make a big deal of, it’s just that-“
Laganja has to hold in a laugh, realising that now might not be the right time. 
“Seriously? Bitch, me too!” 
Gia looks taken aback. 
“Shut up,” she says, shrinking away from Laganja. Fuck. She thinks she’s mocking her. 
“I’m not kidding - honest to god.” Gia eases up a little. “And by the way, wether you told him or not, that doesn’t give him the right to treat you like that.”
Gia doesn’t say anything. 
“I mean it - I’ve dealt with my share of this shit, and there’s no excuse for it. What he said to you was fucking wrong, period. Doesn’t matter how upset he is.” 
“I was gonna tell him - I just didn’t think he’d react like that. Plus like, he was gonna find out eventually.” Gia laughs a little grimly. “I told him I was saving myself for marriage, and I don’t think I was gonna be able to like, keep that up for much longer.” 
Laganja gives a tight-lipped smile, slightly uncomfortable. Not with Gia, with the situation. She hadn’t even attempted dating since she’d come out, and this was exactly why. Too scared of what people would think - or say, or do. After seeing the full, horrendous extent of the first ‘big’ reaction to her transition, it didn’t bear thinking about. Didn’t exactly help that her parents, who she’d been outed to in the midst of the whole scandal, had barely said a word to her since, and her teammates had thrown her to the wolves. 
“Well, he’s a loser who doesn’t know what he’s missing,” Laganja eventually says. She stands up, walking back down the hall to grab her broken suitcase, before returning to Gia and holding a hand out to her. Gia looks perplexed. 
“What are you-?”
“C’mon - I need dinner, and I’m not leaving you here.” 
****
“You want any more?” 
Laganja holds the joint out to Gia - sitting in the passenger seat of her car. The brunette shakes her head, a hint of a laugh in her voice. 
“Nah - I’m good.” 
“You sure?” Laganja takes another drag; trying to talk while holding in smoke. 
“Totally sure - I…you got me really fucking high,” Gia giggles, leaning against the door of the car. She aims a handful of fries for her mouth and misses - dropping most of them into her shirt. 
“I think you needed it, honey,” Laganja smiles, watching Gia trying to pick fries off of her chest with her tongue, like a lizard. She’s loosened up a hell of a lot, Laganja thinks as she flicks ash into the empty Coke can on her dashboard. 
“Yeah,” Gia says airily. “Y’know, you’re the first person I’ve met who’s like, like me. And you’re really fucking cool. I like you.” 
“You’re just saying that because I bought you food and let you smoke my weed.”
“Nah - seriously,” Gia insists - rambling a little, her eyes overly-moist and tinged pink. “I’ve never met another trans girl - I knew that I was one, but you’re like….you’re the first. It’s like we’re fucking unicorns or some shit.” 
Ganja smiles. 
“So, what the fuck is your story, Gia?” 
“What?” Gia giggles, still fighting with her fries. 
“How did you wind up stuck out here, with him? You’re too fucking good in the ring to be working in a high school gym in fucking Delaware.”
“I started training when I was like, eleven,” Gia says, shrugging her shoulders nonchalantly. Laganja notices her slack jaw, and tries to pick it up off the floor before Gia sees it too. “It’s like, normal in Japan. Both my parents are wrestlers, it was sort of always gonna be my thing.”
“But what are you doing here?”
“It’s part of the training system - we call it a ‘learning excursion’. You get sent to the US for like, a year before you debut on TV back home, learn to speak better English and work different styles or whatever. So I came over when I was nineteen. Then while I was here, I figured out my whole…” she gestures awkwardly at herself. “This, and now I don’t think I can go back home. Well, I could - but I ditched training, so I think my parents will want to kill me, and also I have tits now - I don’t know how they’ll feel about that but I don’t think I want to. So for the last three years, I’ve just been taking whatever shitty gigs I can get, lying to my parents about getting signed to WWE developmental so they think I’m too busy to talk to them, and trying to like…I don’t know. Live.” 
“God.” Laganja grimaces, sucking down the last few puffs that the joint has to offer. 
“Your turn - what’s your damage, Miss Laganja?” 
Laganja squirms a little. She glances into the backseat at the Team USA backpack that she still uses. It feels a little bit like stolen valour. 
“Kinda similar. Not as cool. I was an amateur wrestler - and I was fucking good at it. Like, Olympics good. I was meant to go to London in 2012, but I’d already started hormones and obviously that got flagged up in my drug tests, so I got disqualified and then the news went apeshit about it because it got misreported and people thought I wanted to compete for the women’s team. So I sort of just went and lived under a rock for a year until the shitshow died down, and then started doing this. I’m still pretty new to it.”
“You are really good,” Gia says, kind of aloof like she doesn’t want to be caught giving Ganja real praise. 
“Thanks.” Laganja’s cheeks flush pink. 
“Also that’s fucked up. What happened to you, I mean.” Gia pulls a face. 
“Yeah, but I don’t know what I thought was going to happen. At least this way I can actually be myself.” Laganja shrugs. “And nobody seems to care - real sports it’s all ‘biological advantage’ this, ‘biological advantage’ that, but this is all staged, so nobody gives a shit. And the outfits are better.” She gives a laugh, watching the evening sky shift from deep orange to star-scattered blue through the dirty windshield. “I never wanna see a fucking singlet again.” 
“Tell me about it,” Gia giggles. “It’s like, a whole thing with the Young Lions - the rookie wrestlers back home - that you don’t get to have a distinct look until you graduate. Just black trunks and a shitty haircut.” Gia pulls out her phone, flicking at warp speed through her camera roll and then zooming in on a group picture. She turns the phone to Laganja - it’s filled with the image of a depressed-looking teenage boy with a buzz cut, standing shirtless and shoulder-to-shoulder with a group of similarly uniform but presumably less miserable kids. Laganja’s eyes widen. 
“No fucking way is that you!” She gasps. “That’s insane - you look so different.”
“Thanks, it took a lot of work.” Gia half-laughs. 
“Seriously - you’re like…so much hotter now. It’s not even funny. Your stupid boyfriend doesn’t know what he’s missing.”
“Shut up - you’re hot.” Gia smiles, her head lolling back. She puts a hand on Laganja’s thigh. Laganja’s skin tingles. 
“And you’re high.” 
“Am not.” Gia flops sideways, her head resting on Laganja’s shoulder. “I’m glad I met you, Ganj. You’re really nice. And really pretty.” 
Laganja blushes again. She doesn’t think anyone has ever called her ‘pretty’ before. She tries to keep her eyes fixed in front of her, like she’s driving, but Gia’s hand is cupping her cheek now - soft fingers brushing against her sweat-misted skin, gazing up at her with hazy brown eyes. When Laganja looks down, Gia inches closer to her - hesitantly pressing their weed-dry lips together. Laganja doesn’t know what she’s doing, but she also doesn’t try to stop her. 
The brunette parts Laganja’s lips with an exploratory tongue, and Laganja - no idea what she’s thinking, no intention of questioning it - lets her, closing her eyes and deepening the kiss, one hand leaving the steering wheel to cup the back of Gia’s head. Gia murmurs softly, and then she pulls away before Laganja has really figured out what’s going on. Once her touch is gone, she kind of misses it. 
Gia is laughing again, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. 
“Sorry. I don’t know what the fuck that was. Guess I am high.” 
“It’s okay. I liked it,” Laganja admits hesitantly. Gia reaches a hand out for hers, clasping them together. “What now? Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?”
“Fuck no,” Gia pulls a face. “And I don’t have anything booked for…” she pauses to think, counting on her fingers. “Fucking ages. I was just tagging along with Trey since most promotions don’t bother booking a women’s match until the last second, but now he’s gone.”
“You can tag along with me,”  Laganja offers. “I’m crashing here tonight and then I’ve got a show in Pittsburgh tomorrow - come along for the ride, I can try and get you on the card.” 
“Sure - if you’re sure.” Gia looks hesitant. 
“Positive. I kinda miss having company. And you’re really cute.”
“No, you.” Gia smiles drowsily. Pulling Laganja closer by the hand she’s holding, Gia tries sloppily to initiate another kiss, and this time Laganja doesn’t hesitate. 
For the first time in months, she doesn’t feel quite so alone. 
****
You’re an all-American boy,
I guess I couldn’t help trying to be
Your best American girl.
Pride Challenge Points: 5331
5 notes · View notes
mekatrio · 1 year ago
Text
where do i begin.... let me quickly summarize my feelings before i get too sleepy.
kagepro has been a massive part of my life. i could even call it my first hyperfixation ever. i got into it like, 11 years ago. learning to draw, moving countries, and making friends online all while having kagepro by my side. ill go more passionately in depth some other time, but like, im not exaggerating in the slightest when i say this project has shaped the person that i am. so to finally reach the end of the novels, which is something i had tried to do so many years ago.. it feels very good. like a sense of serenity. its the same feeling i had when i finally finished pkmn platinum for the first time, like 13 years after i had first started a file. its very touching and personal too.
i admittedly didnt have high expectations for this novel. i watched mca, and i haphazardly followed the manga route and was laden with many misunderstandings. and i knew that this novel would be a bad end, and from my experience with timeloop-focused medias (higurashi, revue starlight, majora's mask, probably some others im forgetting), bad ends are like, never narratively satisfying. how could it be? every timeloop-focused media aims to break free of the loop, not to perpetuate it.
so i was so surprised by how incredibly beautiful this ending ended up being. this novel is like, perfect to me. it managed to wrap up some many loose threads beautifully. im so happy that all my complaints abt the portrayal of shinaya from earlier today have been completely dissuaded. momo, kano, and kido, while they played rather minor roles, exited the story beautifully. takane was just... amazing, and haruka and hibiya as well. literally everyone was written well and were cherished with such thoughtful endings. and of course the centerpiece of the novel, setomary. holding out until the last novel to divulge into seto's pov worked itself out perfectly, making his perspective on things so much more impactful. also, jin showed a complete mastery of writing deeply touching sorrowful scenes, contrasting perfectly against really stupid fucking scenes that makes u laugh out loud. the written version of snowboarding after aerith's death, if u will.
the entire novel was a tragedy, but yet it was so cathartic? it was so unbelievably sad, but there was so much love as well. i wouldve never thought that a bad end of a timeloop story could ever be something like this. time loops itself again, but this time, it was done with the autonomy of the victims. im just like... so amazed by it. when at it's best, kagerou project really is one of the most beautiful stories out there. ill definitely be talking about this for several weeks.
Tumblr media
3 notes · View notes
livebloggingworld · 3 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
Lol they're always next to eachother like a pair of shoes
Tumblr media
He's been soooo sidelined all his calculated monologue and dialogue that was plot relevant in Sirius concIusion has been done off screen... Deemed irrelevant by the narrative despite being the centerpiece of the last 2 games. What do they call those anyway. Deuteragonists, right? He's been demoted... This truly is the get fucked Noel conclusion
Tumblr media
Feeding Ashe information is a dangerous game Noel TREAD LIGHTLY...
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Brain so scrambled by beautiful sickly young man he forgets where his room is
Tumblr media Tumblr media
I REALLY THOUGHT THEY WOULDN'T INTERACT ALOT IN THIS CONCLUSION BECUASE CLEARLY THE MORE OPTIMAL THING TO DO WHEN CLAIRE'S CHOSEN WILARDO IS TO DISSUADE UR SUSPICIONS OF HIM FIRST & MAKE SURE UVE GOT ALL UR BASES COVERED IN ENSURING CLAIRE'S SAFETY but I forgot Noel does not do the optimal things. I mean, I guess speaking to Ashe is covering some of the bases, and this is just one half of the same plan he had in Sirius concIusion that i didn't expect would stay the same now that Claire's chosen one of her killers TBH... Done in the same order too just not from his POV this time..... Yeah you know what this actually makes sense & it especially does since talking to Wilardo now has more stakes other than just him being a bit colder than Ashe so he'll probably also talk to him later cuz he's more intimidated to. I AM happy to have noeIashe where I didn't expect them. The beauty of having low expectations
(This makes me wonder if in Ashe conclusion they will also still hang out and noeIclaireashe will be more present than simply cIaireashe... My dreams would come true then)
((This also makes me wonder if he's even talked to Sirius about anything yet. Sirius has also had next to no presence I miss him.. Really it could be so and could also not be so well I'll see I should stop stopping to contemplate what would otherwise come up or not come up in the story))
Tumblr media
Ok sweetiepie
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Live Wilardo reaction
Tumblr media Tumblr media
You're forced to acknowledge him now!!!
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
HOORAYYYYY YOU'RE FINALLY GOING TO TALK better make this count even IF you can't help yourself from giving him cold glares every time you say his name
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Look he's kind too......
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
The blocks are moving in his head..... "Do not judge by exterior"... "Wilardo can be sweetiepie too"...
0 notes
average-mako-enjoyer · 6 months ago
Text
Such an excellent post! Thank you for this beautiful elaboration of my ideas. ❤️
I have a lot of thoughts about all these things, and I really don't want to yap too much (because I might get incoherent; I really love my tech headcanons lol), so I'll just throw some summaries in here.
Personally, I think fandom leans too far into humanization. I've seen so many examples of it. From things like "butterflies in the stomach" to outright mentions of adrenaline and other hormones in the middle of android pov. "Do androids have headaches?" They probably don't. Is their perception of physical interaction, including sex, completely different from ours? Hell, yes. There's so much more to the difference between their objective reality and any human's... we should explore this more often.
I think stuff like Connor liking dogs is absolutely a pun added into him by his development team. And yeah, there must be the whole team, at least 3 or more people who worked on his development for years, and no one ever mentions it, and that makes me sad. Would they approve of Connor's choices? Would they be sad or afraid of him? Can they call themselves his friends or not?
And hell yeah to the idea of all androids being slightly imperfect and having these "quirks". I think that's especially important for the domestic models, where it's part of their base code, but Connor has to be unique again because most of his quirks are absolutely performative. They're not something that's pre-installed, I think, they're something that he's learned to perform in order to facilitate his seamless integration.
He's an infiltration unit, he manipulates everyone so successfully that it's kind of scary. So the way he adjusts his tie, the way he checks his reflection, the way he grins when he's successful, that's pre-installed. The voice modulation, the smiles, the puppy dog eyes, the slightly awkward poses, the attempts at puns, the flirting are all learned so that he can manipulate humans as well as Amanda. (The proof that he is trying to manipulate her is that he has a fucking relationship meter with her; he can be both wildly successful and unsuccessful with it.)
I think androids can easily access their code. But non-deviants can't make changes to it, you have to be a Cyberlife tech or a really cool hacker or an android like Connor with the pre-installed ability to access and rewrite code. Markus is kind of the same in the sense that he has this root access code somewhere in his system. He can also access other android memories, so Connor's ability to do all these things must be tied to Kamski. Connor is probably running a heavily revised and improved version of this program.
As for how androids store information, I think it works like this: all of their memories are heavily encrypted and fragmented to allow for higher operating speeds. Parts of their memories are stored locally, and other parts are stored on the Cyberlife servers. To make the data "coherent" you have to have access to both the android's physical body and the Cyberlife databases. Androids can access their memories at any time without having to store everything in their "brains".
And a lot of things in this game don't make sense. The RK900, Connor's ungraceful landing, the fact that Markus can win against Connor in hand-to-hand combat, the entirety of Kara's story, the whole "slavery" thing... I think we can all safely ignore them and tweak the narrative to make it more coherent. Otherwise, it's just a big pile of smoking garbage.
Since I just saw a pretty cool post with Connor's idle animation, it's time to talk about the nature of these little calibrations he does all the time, because they fascinate me.
I know there's this idea in the fandom that all androids need to recalibrate from time to time, and that they especially need to do this after stress or exertion. If you have ever read any fic with an android from this game that involves sex, you know what kind of stress it usually is.
Personally, I'm not a fan of "humanizing" the machines. I think androids are fun because they are inhuman and their objective reality is completely different from ours. The fact that they are constantly aware of every single process in their bodies is fascinating, isn't it? Since they can understand humans and speak fluently, they have to run several language modules all the time. Plus security modules to prevent hacking. Plus visual recognition, plus all the specialized software for their primary functions.
What I mean is that even your standard domestic android like Kara is an immensely complex machine, running thousands of processes simultaneously just to fold Todd's laundry or talk to him about dinner. Why would she need to recalibrate? To take some of the load off her systems? To do a basic check-in of her body? All my parts are still connected and functioning normally? Something like that?
Meanwhile, Connor is much, much more complex than someone like Kara or even Marcus. All those analysis modules he runs all the time, all those database connections he constantly maintains. On top of that, he has to be faster and more agile than any existing android, and he has to do combat, reconstruction, and pre-construction. His "brain" has to be so fucking fast.
And that's what fascinates me. I think Connor's consciousness and how fast he thinks actually affects how he's connected to his body. His coin, all of his complex recalibration movements are necessary because all of his immense processing power is contained in such a small body. He literally has to slow himself down to just move properly. How cool is that?
I have this idea that Connor is actually much bigger than his body, and his consciousness is only partially uploaded to each of his chassises, and the only time we see him "whole" is during his conversations with Amanda. This may explain why his calibrations are so elaborate. He needs to do more to connect with his physical body. (I actually drafted a whole fic that explores this idea)
175 notes · View notes
ultraericthered · 2 years ago
Text
Unpopular Opinion Re: Your Lie In April
A lot of people would classify Your Lie In April as a sentimental romantic dramedy, with the core “romance” part of it being in the relationship that develops between Kousei and Kaori, and the feelings they share, made especially clear by the end where Kaori umabiguously confesses her love to Kousei via a posthumous letter and reveals that it was this love for him that drove her actions.
And I just find the whole idea of that romance to be fucking vile.
‘Cause when you really think about everything Kaori ever said to, did to, or did in relation to Kousei - she was a complete stranger to him when she stalked him around in school and planned out exactly how her scheme to help him back on his feet and return to the world of music-making would go starting with the lie that she liked Watari, tried to beat him to a pulp with her instrument in their first “meeting” and threatened him with physical assault with verbal abuse piled on top several other occasions, constantly withheld information from him, lied to his face, or emotionally manipulated and even straight up strong-armed or blackmailed him, played the victim at times in order to turn Kousei’s friends to her side and against him. and repeatedly demonstrated a lack of empathy or consideration for his needs placed against her own selfish wants - you realize that Kaori displays all the hallmarks of a toxic, needy, self-absorbed, domineering, abusive romantic partner. The red flags are there, yet it’s all prettified and romanticized by the work itself as a heartfelt, beautiful and poignant love story between two adolescents, with the worst of it being played as “comedy.”  And given that Kousei, lest you need be reminded, is canonically a victim of horrific child abuse at the hands of a woman - his own mother -, with that abuse even extending to being physically beaten by her ‘til he bled, turning around and playing the opposite sex beating up on Kousei to the point of blood as a slapstick gag we should all laugh at is a whole universe of tone deaf.
I fairly recently talked to another Tumblr user on this subject and stand by what I said: Kaori only truly cared about herself and Kousei was simply a convenient outlet/extension of that self-centeredness. I always found myself thinking "this could've been an AMAZING work of fiction if Kaori's narrative framing through Kousei's POV was kept in-tact for the first half of the series, but then in the second half the shoe drops, we get more into Kaori's head, and we along with Kousei have the romanticized image shattered." And admittedly part of it was knowing the ending twist was coming and how it really doesn't reflect as well on Kaori as the story thinks and wants to pretend it does. 
The parallels between Kaori and Saki is the main reason I don’t care to see Kousei and Kaori as lovers, but let it not be said that Kaori is the exact same as or anywhere near as bad as Saki; she’s not. Aside from being a kid rather than a full grown adult and parent, Kaori had similar tendencies to Saki and even a similar illness but her heart, mind, outlook on life and music, and approach to how she’d usually interact with and guide Kousei were completely different. And in spite of everything, I *could* and *did* still root for Kaori to die happy and fulfilled, and don't see her as irredeemable like the adult characters. But the way it was all done just leaves a bad taste when it leaves Kousei still hurting from it, and I just cannot buy that he'd be totally A-OK now after yet another traumatic loss tied to his musician career.
Lastly, yes the whole abuse and violence factor is also why I don’t ship Kousei with Tsubaki. Kousei/Emi/Takeshi OT3 all the way, baby!
Tumblr media
6 notes · View notes
illyaana · 4 years ago
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Cursive Ink - Yamaguchi Tadashi
Collab: Pain Tolerance by @haikyutiehoe
Thanks for making this collab, hun! the idea of pierced and/or tatted anime characters got me squealing~! Do check out the other works involved in the collab in the link up there~
Tags: Yamaguchi's POV, Angst, Fluff, Yamaguchi x Tattoo Artist! Reader, Binaural
Synopsis: Love never really goes the way we plan it to be - and Yamaguchi was no exception. His failed confession to his former best friend left him heartbroken. However, his decision to go to a tattoo parlour may have been the best (and craziest) choice he's ever made in his life. (I also believe Yamaguchi is pansexual, so don't get so confused XD)
Word Count: 2552
A bit of context: In Japanese, 'Yama' means mountain, 'Tsuki' means the Moon
⋯⋯ ⫍ Masterlist ◍ Navigation ⫎ ⋯⋯
Want to get a personalized drabble about your love life with an anime character you like? Check out my 50 followers event's post here! You can choose any character from BNHA, Haikyu!!, AOT, JJK and Kuroko no Basketball <3
Tumblr media
“Yamaguchi, no,” Tsukishima said, pulling his hand away from my hand.
“Why are you lying to yourself? I know you feel the same way, Tsuki - don’t lie to yourself.”
“I don’t, Yamaguchi,” Tsukishima said, eyes turning cold, “I am not gay - I am a straight, heterosexual male. I love women and women only.”
Lies.
You are lying to me.
You are in love with me.
You are already mine, Tsuki - just wake up and see it.
I know you can.
what was that kiss under the tree when we were kids?” I whispered, not wanting my voice to break, “If you never loved me, why kiss me, Tsuki?”
“We both agreed that it was a mistake, didn’t we?” The blonde male said, anger rising, “We both agreed - not just me.”
I said yes - I know I did.
That doesn’t mean I meant it.
You know me, Tsuki - I’ll agree to everything you’ll say.
Why aren’t you realising it?
I’ve waited for so many years for you to ask me out, but you never did.
I’m here, right in front of you, asking you to be mine - just say yes.
I don’t want to wait anymore - it’s too painful.
“I lied, okay?!” I scream, “I loved you ever since we were kids, Tsuki. I want to be the one you come back to when you leave, the only one you kiss, the only one you hug, the only one you dream about - I want to be that to you. Is that so hard to believe?!”
I hugged myself, not wanting to break down anymore.
That small hug was the only thing stopping me from letting all hell break loose.
I had kept this in ever since I knew Tsuki - ever since he saw him in that park.
I knew everything about the tall male. The way he smiles, the way he hides his anger when he wants to be respectful, his secret love for dinosaurs, his soft side, his small quirks - I knew it all like the back of his hand.
I knew what he needed to be the middle blocker’s lover, and I was willing to sacrifice myself to be the best thing for Tsuki.
One thing was clear in my head; Tsuki felt the exact same way.
“Yamaguchi, I’m sorry. I don’t love you the way you want me to,” Tsukishima said, kneeling beside the green-haired male.
“I don’t believe that.”
I forced his lips on Tsukishima’s.
I closed my eyes, trying to memorise how the lines of his soft and pale lips felt on his - how it softly caressed my lips without even responding to the intimate kiss I was trying to initiate.
I felt Tsukishima trying to push me away, but I didn’t let go of the male’s collar.
He already took my first kiss - what is the difference if I took another?
The second our lips left each other’s, Tsukishima punched my nose.
Blood dripped from my nose, but I couldn’t care less.
“Don’t you fucking call me Tsuki ever again, dumbass. Better yet, don’t call me.”
My last day of high school ended with blood and tears, but the pain in my heart from losing my best friend hurt more.
I stared at the stars, lying down in the little treehouse we made as kids in my backyard.
I tried to cry it all out, but I couldn’t.
I feel cheated by you, Tsukishima Kei.
You made me make you my everything.
My voice was tuned to calm you down.
My hands we moulded to keep you warm.
My life was made to keep you safe, but you don’t need me to be you.
But I do - I need you to be me.
One-sided crushes are the worst form of love, aren’t they?
You give it all for that one person - to please and cherish them.
They just think it’s just a form of showing how strong your friendship is, but you want more.
You are the only one who wants more.
You are the one crying at night about how you wished they were by your side.
You are the one craving for their touch.
You want them, but they don’t want you.
I don’t care about you bruising my face, Tsukishima-san.
I care about you fucking me up like this.
I will no longer wait for your messages.
I will no longer look at your tweets and be the only one giving reactions.
I will erase you from my narrative, Tsukishima-san.
You can wonder about how much you’ve hurt me when I have reached somewhere you can’t even touch me.
“You are absolutely sure about this, right?” Hinata said, worry laced in his words.
I open the doors to the tattoo parlour and I was instantly mesmerized. The walls were filled with such intricate designs - sizes ranging from as small as a finger to as big as my whole body. The smell of fresh ink slowly hit me, reminding me of my schooling years.
“I am sure, Hinata. I was planning to do this ever since I was small, either way. I just wished it was under better circumstances,” I reply, eyes locked on all the flower motifs.
I always wanted a tattoo - it didn’t matter how big or small it was. I always thought of how beautiful the idea was - to have something permanently inked on your skin to remind you of who you were. Flowers drew with such hidden meaning, curved lines speaking words of poetry, ideas brought into life - tattoos are an artist’s masterpiece meant to paint on my skin as a canvas.
“Do you want me to stay? I don’t mind waiting here with you - “
“Weren’t you supposed to meet up with Kageyama later today?” I remind him, chuckling.
“That man is late for everything. I think he can handle me coming late for once.”
“I’m seriously okay, Hinata! Go get ready, I’ll send a picture when it’s done,” I say as I push him out of the shop.
“Okay, okay - make sure to send me that picture!” He said as he ran out of the shop.
Why follow me if you’re itching to leave?
“That friend of yours has really bright orange hair - is it dyed or natural?” I hear someone say.
Holy shit, you’re hot.
“Oh - uh- um- It’s natural,” I say, forming some space between us.
Holy shit, you’re hot.
You tied half of your hair in a small bun, showing me the small, intricate designs on your neck. Flowers decorated your soft skin, moving down under your shirt’s sleeve. Small golden piercings decorated your ears. They were encrusted with gems of various colours that shifted under the soft lighting gracing your skin.
You looked so beautiful I couldn’t stop staring.
“So, do you have an appointment?” You asked, breaking my train of thought.
“N- no.”
Stop stuttering, Yamaguchi Tadashi.
“First time, huh?” you smiled, “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. The pain is different for everyone, but I think you can handle it.”
“T-Thanks.”
God, stop stuttering.
“God, you’re cute,” you laughed while looking at my frazzled face, “Don’t worry, my dearest client - you’re in capable hands. Come - let’s discuss your design, shall we?”
You grabbed my wrist and brought me to your corner, leaving me blushed mess.
Cute.
They called me cute.
I’m breathing, right?
Okay, I’m breathing.
As we were walking, I got to see the back of your neck - more specifically, a part of your tattoo.
It was a blossoming rose - a huge one. It had vines that grew from it, encircling your whole neck, moving down your shirt and reaching the tips of your fingers. Smaller roses grew from it, branching even smaller vines surrounded by leaves.
I wanted to know the story behind that tattoo. It looked so beautiful yet so dark. The thorns that came from certain vines alarmed me, but I kept my thoughts to myself. My attention was brought to your piercings - more specifically, the design of the encrusted jewels. They were flowers, as well. In the middle of each jewel held a line of gold that branched out, just like the vines of your tattoo.
“Oh, you’re looking at my tattoo and piercings, aren’t you?” You ask, eyebrow raised.
“Is it okay if I am?” I ask, worried.
You laughed.
“Of course it’s fine. Who would get a tattoo and not prepare for all the staring? Not going to lie, here - these piercings and that tattoo help me fuel my ego. After all, everyone’s staring at them,” you joke, playing with your hair.
You sit on your chair, pointing at the one opposite you.
“What are you waiting for? Sit.”
“So, you want some small vines surrounding a moon, right?” You ask as you brought out your tablet.
“Yeah, on my middle finger.”
I had enough of his little orders - I’ll twist his words into something much more meaningful. If the Moon isn’t willing to dance with the mountains, let the vines make the Moon feel the mountain’s pain from its rejection.
“That sounds really pretty,” you say, smiling at me, “Give me a minute - I’ll do a rough sketch and you can tell me if it’s to your liking.”
You took out the tablet’s pen tool and began to sketch. I eyed your eyes as you continued to sketch what would be my tattoo.
Thanks to the light from the tablet, I could see a part of another tattoo hidden under your shirt.
It was multiple birds flying across your collarbones, but there was one bird that moved to your neck. It was a smaller bird - much, much smaller. However, its wings were bigger - bigger than the other birds’.
“My family isn’t very appreciative of my more artistic side,” you began, knowing I wanted to know the story behind it.
“I love art - all types of art. Writing, drawing, painting - I loved how you could make a whole new world just with a few lines. My family…” you paused, “As much as they loved me, they couldn’t see a world where I could make a living from it. They tried to throw away this side of me, but the more they pushed it away, the more I needed it.”
You raised your tablet, showing me your sketch.
I loved it.
It was a crescent moon, wrapped in vines. Vines grew both upwards and below, accompanied by stars. Small buds were growing from the ends of the vines, leaves surrounding them.
I don’t know how you did it, but you captured all I felt about him in a few minutes - it astounded me.
“I took a few creative liberties, but-”
“It’s amazing - don’t change it.”
You’re amazing.
You smiled, getting off your chair.
“Head to that room,” you pointed to the smaller room right beside us, “I’ll get all the tools ready.”
“You ready?” you said, placing the pen right above my middle finger.
Why did I choose my middle finger for my first tattoo? It’s literally right on a bone, it’s going to hurt like hell.
“I guess…” I whisper.
“It won’t be that painful - trust me. People overexaggerate,” you say, trying to calm me down.
People weren’t overexaggerating - it hurt.
It hurt a lot.
I bit my lip, holding back the scream on the end of my lips.
“Hold on,” you said, removing the pen.
You soon came back with candy and began to unwrap it.
“Open your mouth, my liege.”
After chuckling, I opened my mouth and you plopped the sweet in my mouth.
Ooh, mango.
“Focus on the sweet, okay?” You said, patting my back.
It felt less painful, surprisingly. Focusing on the sweet rolling in my mouth helped reduce the pain significantly.
I raised my head slightly so that I could see your intense focus on my finger. You were biting on your lower lip as you slowly moved the pen on my finger, following the temporary tattoo you made earlier as a guide. You were annoyed by a strand of your hair that refused to stay behind on your ear - your anger-filled expression said it all.
Using my other hand, I pushed it behind your ear to help you focus.
A soft thank you came from you as you continued.
Blood rushed to my cheeks the minute those words left your lips.
So cute.
“You didn’t finish your story…” I asked, trying to end the awkward silence.
“It was that interesting to you?” you smiled.
You’re interesting, Y/N.
I nod.
“I asked them if I could draw again. I didn’t want to lose that skill I finetuned all my life - it felt so wrong. They thought I’d never succeed in life if I focused on ‘these useless hobbies’ and shouted at me. I remember crying for hours, but they didn’t care,” you say as you turn off the pen, wiping the tip.
“I began to spend more hours in school just so that I could scribble and draw. They’d never know what I did there - all the drawings I did, all the stories I wrote, all the songs I sang. I am not like my parents. I strayed from the thought of ‘art is useless’- I am the bird moving away from the flock,” you said, turning your chair towards me.
“Why did they hate art? It’s something that makes you happy - If it’s something you like, you should do it,” I said, slightly pissed.
Thank God they didn’t listen to them.
“Best part - they have paintings all over the house,” you snickered.
You sighed, stretching your arms in the process.
“I don’t really care about their opinion about it, anyway. I’m no longer under their wing - I’m my own person. I get money by doing the thing I love, and that’s so fulfilling. The only thing they’re paying for right now is my college education - that’s it,” you said as you pressed a wet cloth to my new tattoo.
“Wait - we’re the same age?”
“Yeah, we are,” you smiled.
“I expected you to be way older,” I say, embarrassed.
“I am utterly offended, sir,” you say, feigning sadness.
“Come on!” I say, laughing.
“I am expecting a tip,” you say, walking towards the door.
You’re amazing, Y/N. I just wish I met you earlier…
“Well, it was nice meeting you, Yamaguchi Tadashi,” you say, closing the cash register in front of you.
“And I you, my friend.”
I walk to the door, gripping on the door handle.
I want you in my life, Y/N. Even if we spent just a few hours together, you’ve made me so happy. If you are open to the idea, I want to be friends with you - and who knows? We might become something…
I walk back to the cashier.
“Oh, did I forget something?” You ask, worried.
“No, no…”
Come on, say it.
“Hey, wanna exchange numbers? I wanna hang out with you - of course, only if you want to,” you say smiling.
Holy shit.
“Yes, please.”
You held back your laugh the minute you saw my face.
How many times have I made you laugh just by you looking at my face?
“Here’s my number,” you passed me your card, “Message me so that I get your number, too!”
“Okay!” I smile.
Holy shit. I did it.
“See you again, ‘guchi.”
76 notes · View notes
princessofgayskull · 4 years ago
Note
Hi sunflower, what's your thoughts on T Swift's Betty being a catradora song???
Me, taking a break from spop to focus on my mental health and setting better boundaries:
Tumblr media
Me, reading this ask:
Tumblr media
This ask woke me up from like a deep, sleeping beauty type slumber, not joking. I don’t get asked to talk about Taylor Swift often, despite being a fan of hers since I was nine years old (I’m 22 now *wink*) and we are about to find out why. But I pride myself on taking any fiction piece of media I interact with and connecting it somehow to Taylor Swift. I can do so to varying degrees of success (usually depends on the ships and romance of the world) but there are so many songs of Taylor’s that have just fit Catradora so well for me, both in and out of canon. 
Some of my favorite examples: out of the woods (AND IT KEPT ME UP AT NIGHT WHEN NOELLE SAID THIS WAS HER TAYLOR SWIFT SONG FOR CATRADORA LIKE GAH CASUAL TS LISTENERS WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND) bad blood, lwymd, don’t blame, dancing with our hands tied, the archer, breathe, you’re not sorry, the way I loved you, forever & always, should’ve said no, safe & sound- I could go on.
But I won’t because I wanna stay on topic and talk about betty. Now I have a number of songs from the folklore/evermore series that are for me catradora songs (we’ll get to that in a minute) but this one is… challenging. Because I could be like “yes, because [insert casual reason here]” or “no, because [insert casual reason here]” but I can’t because Taylor feeds her children well and there’s several aspects of this song I feel like should be considered.
This biggest one to be considered, for me, is the love triangle aspect. Folklore features at length the betty/james/Augustine love triangle, each of them having one main song on the album from their POV. Betty's is cardigan, augustine’s is august, and james’ is betty. (also I’m going to throw out the gender component for a second; I know taylor says that Betty is about a guy’s apology and I totally vibe with her reasons why she wanted to write a song about a boy apologizing BECAUSE HOW GREAT WOULD THAT BE?) The love triangle makes the application of Catradora iffy at best. Because it’s like, who would be who? I am going to go out on a limb and assume that you’re seeing Catra as James? I think that personality wise, Adora as Betty and Catra as James is not a stone’s throw away from fitting actually really well. Adora’s canon journey is one of coming to realize “I know what I want and I know that it’s okay to want it” and a big part of Catra’s arc is her being like “Well shit… there goes my plans. Kind of feeling like a dumbass rn” especially in s4/s5. 
(That s4/s5 distinction is important; I’ll show why in a second) 
But for me, there’s no augustine. Or one that’s obvious anyway. I never imagined that either Catra or Adora dated or even had any inclinations with anyone else during the five season run- that’s just my personal opinion, people are completely welcome to feel free to disagree. I don’t think Catra acted even out of distraction with Scorpia or DT, and I think Adora was so focused on being She Ra that when she wasn’t thinking about failing/abandoning Catra when she alloted time to do so, she was thinking about the crushing weight of her responsibilities. So you know, not that much time to get back out there. So I rule out what causes James to apologize in the first place- cheating.
Side note about James cheating- I’m pretty sure Taylor confirmed this, in the long pond studio sessions doc, when she’s telling Jack Antonoff (MY BOY JACK) and Aaron Dessner ( GRAMMY AWARD WINNING KING) that James “was a fool!” And James did sleep with Augustine as confirmed in august, but cardigan makes it seem like he was definitely dating Betty before the summer. Maybe Taylor took inspiration from friends and they “were on break.” I also believe that the kiss in the Heart is the first kiss, that Catra and Adora were never ‘together’ together before Adora found the sword and defected (again, that’s just an opinion, but Adora just looks so wonderfully gobsmacked), so…
We can rule out cheating, and I think we can accomplish this and still reserve the essential meaning of the song of “I did something wrong, I see that now, I apologize for doing it, and I still love you” by widening the lens of what the “did something wrong” was (or “did something bad” you know *wink*). In that wider lens really you could fit either Catra or Adora into the song, but I’m still going to assume Catra is the James in this scenario based on how much of her redemption arc is formed around her refusal to say sorry and then eventually doing so. Of course there is no standing your porchlight but rather standing while wrestling a bunch of murderous clones…. Hmm….
But there are some stupid friends! I wholeheartedly believe Catra is James because of the dissing of Betty’s friends. That’s what Catra does to Bow, Glimmer and the rebellion et al., for most of the show and by the end of s4 she has no friends for Adora to even mock (terrible and cruel of me, I know, but it’s true). Also I know people are like “he called her friends stupid and then expected betty to take him back?” but I scream sing the line “WILL YOU KISS ME ON THE PORCH IN FRONT OF ALL YOUR STUPID FRIENDS?” every time. It brings me serotonin. 
Along those lines we can ask “Who’s Inez?” in this situation. When I think gossip no one from the show really comes to mind, well, expect for Double Trouble. But Double Trouble doesn’t ever speak to Adora about Catra. This happens vice-versa, and in Betty, James reveals that Inez told Betty he cheated on her. 
I want to say something controversial… Glimmer comes to mind when I think “who’s the Inez?” And this is based off of two things: 1) Inez’s closeness to Betty, and 2) Inez drags James out to dry, rightfully so. And when I think of that I think of Glimmer screaming “Do one good thing in your life!” directly in Catra’s face. James gives Inez a bad wrap in Betty. Not cool James. 
Of course there’s the pivotal, “would you tell me to go fuck myself?/ or lead me to the garden?” To me this a fun way of showing there’s vulnerability to what James is doing, so automatically I’m led to is the scene where Catra asks Adora to stay, or each time in s5 when Catra risks, basically an identity crisis to let Adora in how she really feels, but there’s always the potential that Adora could spurn her by not returning her feelings or rejecting her outright. 
I think the best argument that can be made for “is betty a catradora song” can really be encapsulated by the lyric(s): “the worst thing that I ever did is what I did to you” and “the only thing I wanna do is make it up to you.” That is what about the song SCREAMS Catra to me. And yeah, it could be argued that Adora hurt Catra pretty brutally (Shadow Weaver makes that point EVEN THOUGH SHE HAD NO RIGHT TO) that she messed up by abandoning Catra- but Adora feels guilt for... literally breathing. Adora is the quintessential embodiment of “pick your battles, no that’s too many battles, put some back,” but Catra picked one battle first and foremost (yes, she had a few others but this was the one) and that was Adora. Everything that motivated her was surrounded around a narrative of surpassing Adora for a multitude of reasons, and because of that she pretty much hurts Adora every chance she gets after Promise. Adora is really Catra’s first casualty, it makes sense that she has to be her first apology. And I think that after being vibed checked back to back by DT and Glimmer and realizing “oh hey fuck, I’m still in love with her” and then almost dying just to not die because Adora saves her, I think much of Catra’s motivation shifts to “how to do I get Adora to want to stay?” 
That’s my logic for how Betty could be a catradora song in canon. Now not all of my Taylor associations are with canon catradora, many of them do belong to uws catradora, because it’s a lot easier to apply the more modern details of Taylor’s songs to a modern au. The song Breathe is big that way. (it’s in Upper West Side, it’s the song Adora listens to and cries to after that first ride, I just never mentioned that it was taylor because my conditioned reaction to bringing up taylor is to have my head bit off with someone’s semi incorrect and slightly sexist opinion that I never, ever ask for) And this ask got me thinking about what it would look like if I applied not Catradora to Betty, but Betty to Catradora. What would it look like if Catra skateboarded and wore black lipstick, Adora wore a cardigan and they had homeroom together until Catra really messed up? What would it look like if they were seventeen when they admitted their feelings for each other instead of 21? What would it look like if they spent a summer fighting but dreaming of each other? What would their love story look like if Catra and Adora were in that town where Taylor envisioned this “same event that affected three people in different ways?”
I think it’d look something like this. 
https://archiveofourown.org/works/31141973/chapters/76952048
what do you guys think?
quick but INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT thank you to @gimme-tea-bitch for helping me with this, being my beta, and listening to me talk about folklore/evermore.
141 notes · View notes
cosmic-navel-gazin · 7 months ago
Text
Some thoughts of the top of my head (really wanna watch it again!):
Max von Sidow's beautiful face
Liv Ullmann's beautiful face
I went in completely blind, without trailers or synopsis or anything, so I was really pleasantly surprised as it began as this mystery and slowly turned into this psychological horror/character losing himself and his own sense of self (love how interpretative it gets slowly, you see things as more how it felt to Johan rather than how they actually went I feel);
I love this detail/choice of having the character Alma's recounting the story to - in another film it would be an on screen police officer or detective- be us, the audience, instead. It creates a more involved experience this way I feel. We're not the audience passively watching Sherlock Holmes or Poirot piecing out all these strange events into a coherent narrative and solving the mystery for us. We are the detective trying to make sense of these events, and we are no more qualified than any of the other characters to solve it. This sort of, 4th wall break almost, reminds me of how Tarkovsky shoots arguments in some of his films (Stalker and Nostalghia come to mind specifically), where a character will technically be talking to another person in the same room but the way they're shot, they're addressing the camera instead, like they're questioning us the audience more so than the other in-universe characters there with them (I hope this makes any sense! just a detail that I found very interesting in both)
I love the slow descent into the surreal with small details hinting at it in the beginning: some of the sound design, Johan's art and his descriptions of the other inhabitants of the island (like at first you can take it as him being just a bit mean and judgemental about his neighbors but by the second visit to the castle you get that no, this is actually as he perceives them/they come across to us the audience as we experience things through Johan's POV, and Alma's as she tries to see things her husband's way).
I loved both visits to the castle so much. The first one being disorienting and grating for both Johan and Alma, and they're tired and want to go home and it's a chore to just be there and pay attention to what's happening, god I've felt that. And then the absolute nightmare that is the second one (the imagery here!!!!! so fuckin good).
I felt terrible for both Johan and Alma. For Johan because of his alienation: he grows further and further apart from Alma and even when he confides in her and tells her of the darker parts of himself and his life, there's no greater understanding between the two (that one scene early on where she talks about couples resembling each other more and more as they grow old together with enthusiasm vs his complete lack of enthusiasm at the idea is heartbreaking! especially now in retrospect!). He can't connect with the person closest to him, and if that weren't bad enough the people he attracts are those vapid rich fucks who don't really care about him as a person, only his status as a famous artist and how they can have a bit of a laugh at his expense, just to pass the time because they're bored. His wanting of solitude and peace and quiet vs fear of being completely alone while also being weary of others, and the frustration at those contradictory feelings making him increasingly easily irritable, lashing out at those around him. And add to all that his art block. Making art, which could and should be the way he finally is able to get through to people and express his thoughts and feelings the better, but no. He's denied that too, he can't, he's stuck there too. I kind of read his recounting things about his past and the diary entries as his attempt to piece together and understand where things went wrong for him/when did he break (was it some traumatic moment during his childhood, that time he got stuck inside the closet and was punished for it? was his short lived love affair with Veronica Vogler he gets teased about?)
And I felt for Alma for being so close to the events and yet being denied understanding in the end (something something, the inability to truly know someone, even those we are closest too). Poor Alma's last words fucked me up a bit not gonna lie, her wondering if she could've helped Johan if she had loved him more, or if she should have loved him less? Fuck man!!!! Her not knowing if the people in the island were just people or phantoms after Johan (and us the audience not knowing either by only having their POVs as reference).
Love the fact that this psychological horror takes place in this idyllic bucolic setting. Choices like, having the murder of the child (which is such a risky thing to do even today!) being shot in this blinding scorching white light. And the atmosphere is no less haunting because of it. Speaking of the child murder scene, I wonder if the boy's body resurfacing after being thrown in the water works as a sort of parallel to what Johan's been going through in general: his frustrations, regrets and fears always coming back up to haunt him and leaving him unable to go on.
The references to The Magic Flute were really interesting to me also (considering that Bergman did a film version of it in the 70's!). Girl I get it I love Mozart too xD I'm not sure how it relates to the overall film I'll be honest haha even though I've seen both the opera live and his film version. I would have to watch the film again. Maybe it has something to do thematically on how it's Mozart's last opera before he dies, hinting at Johan's own incoming death/disappearance. Or maybe the castle guests just wanted to fuck with Johan a bit implying, in front of Alma, that his love for Veronica is just like the true love between Prince Tamino and Pamina (which adds to the cruel trick later on when they prepare the reunion of Johan and Veronica since it goes nothing like the happy ever after Tamino and Pamina get after they too got separated). One of the guests mentions those two characters but I can't remember exactly what he says. There's also Veronica's surname Vogler, which I think means birdcatcher and Papageno from The Magic Flute is a birdcatcher and is usually portrayed as wearing a bird costume with feathers (and there's also Johan describing some people as bird-men), and not sure where I'm going with this, just bird related details I noticed.
THE PUPPET SHOW WHERE A VERY REAL MAN APPEARS INSTEAD OF A MARIONETTE! The fact that it was a real man meant to me it was this was the one true moment of "realness" that whole evening. The moment where they're all gathered around, in silence, to contemplate art. In that brief moment they're all equal, there is understanding.
ALSO! Really loved the description of what the hour of the wolf is. Reminds me of that post that goes something like: "Never trust how you feel about your entire life past 9pm". It's that somewhat mystical and foreboding time of the night where you question everything about yourself and your life. Where all fears and insecurities come knocking. And this is me perhaps projecting and reading too much into it but I wonder if this film was kind of therapeutic to Bergman, a way for him to get through his own hour of the wolf (I say this not knowing anything about the man or his life at the time he made this film).
Anyway, hope these made sense. Just some scattered thoughts!
@skunts-own-truth Hour of the Wolf later tonight!
9 notes · View notes
snoopysfriendwoodstock · 4 years ago
Note
hellooo, loved ur post about Taylor's songwriting on evermore I think ur so right! would love for you to elaborate more on it, and on when you think her songwriting is at its worst/best 💕
hi beck!!! 💋 i think evermore suffers from a lot of what lover suffers from (evermore is my #4 album and lover is in dead LAST in my ranking i’m not comparing them like that ❤️) where taylor got so carried away by the success of folklore (where imo she really reigned herself in and only kept what was necessary) and the response to her more poetic/flowery writing that no one could tell her no when it came to writing evermore. lover is that but with 1989 where she made such a perfect pop album with no fluff, then lover she thought she could recreate 1989 but without the fear of doing it for the first time. so in folklore you’ve got this really, really beautiful writing that clearly was written and re-written but also put through a lot of scrutiny. folklore was a new venture for taylor similar to 1989 which i think made her be a lot more cautious about what she put on the album and how airtight it was. this is obviously speculation but it feels like after folklore did so well she realized this could be her new “brand” or her new “era” or whatever and suddenly evermore was so much more in your face about like her woods and witchy vibes and fantasy land or whatever and a lot of lines from the album feel like “look how good i am at figurative language! you love this dont you?” like what the fuck does “life was a willow and it bent right to your wind / but i come back stronger than a 90s trend” even MEAN. she also does thing thing where she explains her metaphors which just makes them even clunkier to try and listen to. “we were like the mall before the internet / it was the one place to be” sounds … just poorly paced? and even tho this isn’t a metaphor it’s like… isn’t that literally just “we were something don’t you think so?” i think taylor’s song writing is at its best when she’s detail oriented but leaves enough up for interpretation that it feels like an actual mineable text. i did not see the same weeks of interpretive writings on evermore as i did on folklore because it feels like she left less for us to actually explore on our own. i saw people over and over arguing about the “evergreen our group of friends / don’t think we’ll say that word again” line from champagne problems and which word she was talking about but isn’t that the best part? it feels so much more like a stream of consciousness than a carefully crafted line which lets you get drawn into the world of the song. i love the little details in marjorie, i always end up crying during the “the autumn chill that wakes me up / you loved the amber skies so much / long limbs and frozen swims / you always went past where our feet could touch” part because it’s those little specificities that make you feel like you can see exactly what she’s seeing. the coney island/the 1 comparison works here too since that little question, drawing the audience in with the second person POV in the song, just has more emotional appeal in my opinion than a really awkward metaphor. taylor has always been at her best with diary entry level honesty but i think lately she’s been replacing that with these easter eggs that just feel a little cheap? the diary style writing (which has matured into the honest fiction of folklore/evermore) worked because it gave you an insight into taylor that helped you really understand her side and her feelings whereas the easter eggs of rep/lover make you use your already existing knowledge of taylor to gain anything from it. that’s why while i think the bridge of coney island has some great writing, she gets away with not really writing anything interesting because she depends on the fans and their interest in her to fill in the gaps. that’s not good writing it’s just a parasocial relationship. but when it comes to cardigan/betty/august she’s given us these characters that we knew nothing about but people have been able to grow attached to because of that ability she has to craft characters and narratives, something she’s been doing for herself the last 13 years and why she’s able to over and over depict herself convincingly as an underdog to her fans.
BASICALLY folklore showcases the best of taylor’s songwriting by having her turn what she’s been doing for herself since the beginning of her career into fictional narratives rather than mine her own life or depend on her fans to find meaning out of her own experiences. evermore has some great moments because she uses some of those same techniques to story-tell and add lush details to her writing but she also does this thing she tends to do where once a project is successful she tries to center her identity around it in an attempt to replicate it and ends up totally missing the mark by not reigning herself in.
46 notes · View notes