#but human nonetheless

[purpleghoul87]

mike prepares for the job interview

since u guys seem to really enjoy the recently-scooped michael ... here's some more ... but it's a prequel to the first post >:D

[ part 1 if you missed it <3 ]

[clouvu]

Cooking up an older Clervie outfit design so I don't have to keep drawing her looking like her child self but Long

[astrhae]

Do I look like I run a bookshop?

Anthony J. Crowley, aka The Co. to A.Z. Fell and Co.

[checkadii]

When he heard the death rattle, Gilgamesh moaned like a dove. His face grew dark. “Beloved, wait, don’t leave me. Dearest of men, don’t die, don’t let them take you from me.”

[steakout-05]

i have an interesting little piece of Star Trek TNG media to share today, it's pretty obscure and i've seen literally no discussion of it online at all. my dad is a really big fan of Star Trek, especially Star Trek TNG, and he has this DVD box set of season 1 of the show. it was released around 2002-2003 and it's this big bulky gray capsule box that contains a foldable disc sleeve thing, and most importantly, a little pamphlet that holds descriptions for the main characters of the series. it's a really neat little piece of media, but what i want to focus on is how it describes Data, because i think it's very interesting.

(apologies for the glare)

"Data - A unique and super-intelligent android, Data was created by the genius Dr Noonien Soong to be as human as possible. However, powerful though as his positronic brain might be, Data is unable to comprehend emotion."

the language it uses to describe Data and his relationship with emotions is really intriguing to me. it doesn't say he cannot feel emotions, but rather than he can't comprehend them. it's pretty commonly agreed on in the Star Trek fandom that Data can absolutely feel emotions, but he just can't process or express them in a human-like way. the show is not very good at convincing people that Data is an unfeeling automaton, lol. he definitely feels things, but he's convinced that he can't because he doesn't feel things like a human does. i feel like this pamphlet corroborates that in a way. just,, the language of "unable to comprehend" rather then "unable to feel" comes off as a very deliberate choice with this in mind. characters in the show, including Data himself, will always say that he cannot feel emotions first and foremost, and it feels significant to me that a piece of official media would instead focus more on Data having trouble comprehending emotion. comprehending something and feeling something are two very different things. i feel like this is important.

i'll try to see if i can get the whole pamphlet scanned and uploaded online. again, it's quite an obscure piece of media and i can't seem to find it anywhere. i don't know if i'll be able to account for pamphlets that were released with dvds of the later seasons as i think we only have the season 1 box from this set. i hope they all get found and scanned someday!!

[silna-pdf]

Holy crap that will never happen

[doobledabbadoo]

french tomato but 10% more bastard

[fishuijuu]

My hero, please remain as you are.

For if this blade were to pierce your brave heart, I'd have no choice but to revere how much you've grown while I stood still.

You should be happy, happier than anyone.

[books-are-my-life-stuff]

Kitaro Tanjou: Gegege no Nazo

In Japanese theaters November 17

[edwards-exploit]

Hmmm, Big World Big Adventures (2018) looks a bit different.... hey, where did my copy of Around The World In 80 Days go????

different version (w/o banner) under the cut

[d-llahanspade]

[spoopy-moose]

Shamans’ Daughter, Order’s Mother

[uncanny-tranny]

I promise you can speak about and denounce undesirable behaviour without attributing it to some in-born, immutable, unchanging trait that you must "civilize" away.

In this specific instance that inspired this, you really don't need to attribute bad behaviour that's done by a man with unchanging character traits. This isn't even solely about men, because doing this affects everyone, men included.

"Men needed to be civilized out of behaving this way!" Who are you expecting to be doing the civilizing and why? This is just defending the idea that women are responsible for training up men - the millenia-old idea that a man's failings are actually a woman's fault, not his.

As a man, I am responsible for my actions. You don't need to dehumanize me in order to preserve your misogyny and your need to hate a group of men. Don't get me wrong, this rhetoric absolutely is not good for men to face. It especially targets men who have experiences with marginalized identities. If you're on my page, you know that this is something I deal with personally, have personal stakes in that affect my life daily. I just also think we really need to remember that this issue exists in a context where women and other folks will inevitably be punished as a direct result of these ideas as well.

I need to make that last part emphatically clear: even if this rhetoric (somehow) only hurt men, it would still be wrong. It would still be wrong! I want to - as a man - remind people (especially those who already have decided to dehumanize entire groups of people) that nobody is safe from being exempt from punishment due to this rhetoric.

[cowboybrunch]

over medium

hi taglist!

@dyrewrites @aintgonnatakethis @aspiring-dreamer @saturnine-saturneight @gioiaalbanoart

@tragedycoded @sableglass @the-golden-comet @wyked-ao3 @deanwax

@leahnardo-da-veggie

[faithandfairies]

Re-visiting Antoinette

So, I've been re-watching the show and it has me coming back to Antoinette. Which, I think I always come back to Antoinette because she is important, just not in the way a lot of people think.

The thing is, Louis and Lestat don't communicate properly so you have to look at their actions to figure out where they are at mentally and emotionally at any given time. And painting a more complete picture of Lestat's actions in relation to Antoinette and her purpose according to Lestat does that.

You see, I think by the time Antoinette enters, Lestat feels like he is losing Louis. Their relationship is going down the drain because they're not communicating properly and on top of that Louis isn't feeding well so he doesn't have energy for the parts of their relationship that do work. Louis' lack of proper feeding though is tied to his feelings, his humanity. And his shame of what he is, for which Lestat partly blames himself because of how he handled Louis' turning and their relationship.

And so Lestat starts trying to re-write history to get Louis back. Fix the mistakes he made in the past that Louis holds against him to get Louis back in the present but also as a way to remind Louis of the good times. And he uses Antoinette to do that.

As such Lestat casts Antoinette in the role of Ernesto. Because that's where everything started to go wrong in their relationship. Louis being disgusted with how and why Lestat kills. In Louis' opinion Lestat should never have killed Ernesto. At the very least not in the way he did.

Just like Ernesto Antoinette is a musician. And just like with Ernesto as she leaves Lestat is looking at her like he wants to drain her but he doesn't at that point even though I believe he wants to.

He then also uses Antoinette to remind Louis of his courting period with him. I think Lestat's intention with Antoinette is for Louis to miss him during that two week period as he lavishes all of his attention on someone other than Louis only to then try to seduce him at the end of it, recreating the first time he and Louis slept together after their two week courting period with Antoinette in the role of Lily. Also using the fact that Louis is hungry to try to get him to feed.

I genuinely think Lestat would have killed Antoinette if his plan had worked here. Drained her with Louis most likely. Ernesto's death, but with different circumstances. No humiliation, no torture, just pleasure and lulling her into a false sense of security so Louis can feed. Trying to listen to the objections Louis had to the way Lestat killed. Because the killing itself is non-negotiable, but the circumstances can be negotiated. Lestat is willing to hunt for Louis, and in whatever way that will make it more likely that Louis will feed human.

Lestat's genuinely trying to find viable alternatives for Louis to feed on. Because Louis isn't opposed to feeding on animals. But that isn't a sufficient diet. So what is the human equivalent of an animal to Louis? Louis is opposed to feeding on black people because he considers them his people. Louis is also gay, attracted to his own sex, so all men might be off the table. So I think Lestat goes, would white women suffice? Would that be impersonal enough? Or do you need it to be more personal? Would a white woman that looks like me make you angry enough to feed if you can direct your anger at her? Since male criminals don't do the trick? Or do you need variety of the sexual sort? Do you need to have sex that then devolves into you draining your victim in the heat of the moment?

And I mean, Lestat hit the nail on the head too, you've got to give him that. He knows Louis very well. Because Louis in Paris feeds on humans when he hallucinates his victims as Lestat and directs his anger at them. And in San Francisco Louis sleeps with his victims then drains them. They need so much therapy by the way.

But then here that doesn't work. Louis leaves to feed on animals instead of joining Lestat and Antoinette. So Lestat's like okay, I've got to go back even further. Fix every mistake I've ever made with Louis. Not kill Lily, not turn Louis two weeks into knowing him and use Antoinette to represent that. And so he continues to cast Antoinette in the role of Lily and adds Louis-stand-in and doesn't kill or turn Antoinette. Instead he continues a relationship with her as a human.

But I think Lestat's also realizing it won't make a difference, even if he has learned from his mistakes. I think his relationship with her devolves into a form of self-flagellation through her then. Because he can't turn back time and not turn Louis after only two weeks of knowing him, ease him into things so that Louis doesn't hate Lestat and himself for what they both are. So that he doesn't want to hurt himself and Lestat for what they both are.

I think Antoinette also ended up becoming a way to bridge the gap between Lestat's vampirism and his humanity to save his relationship with Louis when Louis became hard to reach, because Lestat stopped being able to read Louis' mind to understand him and because they didn't communicate well. And because Lestat kept making missteps that created an increasingly larger chasm between them.

Because that's one of the problems, although Lestat understood where Louis thought he went wrong enough to try to fix it I don't think Lestat fully understood why Louis thought certain decisions Lestat made were wrong, why Louis saw things the way he did. Lestat acts on instinct a lot, having been a vampire for as long as he's been by the time he meets Louis and having embraced it as he has. He just doesn't think about things the same way Louis does or at all.

He left Antoinette human as long as he did because it was beneficial to him, because it meant she could help him understand Louis' human side, to be a confidante and a sounding board, but it also genuinely offered a layer of protection to him and Louis for him to be seen with a woman when he and Louis were suspected to be lovers by the town.

Until of course it was more beneficial to have her as a vampire. And of course her love becomes a stand-in for the love he wishes he got from Louis, that he feels he could have gotten from Louis if he'd handled things differently with him.

The thing is, just like everything else in Lestat's mind his involvement with Antoinette is for Louis. It's just that Lestat being Lestat everything he does or thinks he does for Louis alone he's usually also doing for himself.

[wolfkitty42]

Look how far we've come

To celebrate the new Umbrashard video

bonus below cut