#but it can’t have been accidental

[phlorealcalicanto]

I just read all of Worm in like a month and I kept frantically reaching for the next chapter thinking surely, SURELY this is the one where the tension between Taylor and Rachel reaches a breaking point and they fuck messy style while some unspeakable calamity happens around them. And it just. never happens. (the fucking I mean, the calamities keep happening a bunch)

[a-stars-art-blog]

Finished the wips from yesterday

[spirited-splashes]

pines family bonding for the soul

[milk-ly]

Kotoko and her connection to Dante’s Inferno’s Satan

Disclaimer: This is just about symbolism and I know how it sounds but I promise I’m not trying to imply anything or demonize her! I love Kotoko! Ive just been repeatedly noticing details about the parallel for several months now and I just really want to bring it up! This is just an analysis of the details MILGRAM has provided for it. I’m incredibly sorry if I make a mistake!

Kotoko has a lot of parallels to Dante’s Inferno Satan, especially in relation to Es.

To make sure we’re all on the same page, Dante’s Inferno is a Christian poem that outlines the 9 circles of hell. MILGRAM directly references Dante’s Inferno by quoting it in all the t2 door arts.

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter.” A quote derived from a sign at the gate of hell in the poem.

Each ring of Hell contains sinners with different levels of sins, and each ring’s sin was meant to be worse the further inside you go. Ive seen a couple theories that each prisoner correlates with a specific ring of hell. (Ex: Haruka is ring 1, Limbo; Yuno is ring 2, lust; etc)

But Dante’s Inferno only outlines 9 rings, what about our 10th prisoner, Kotoko?

While it could be that she’s again the “outsider” to the other prisoners, the last section of the 9th ring of Hell is significant because it is the center of Hell, containing Satan. So it could be reasonably argued that Kotoko correlates with it.

MILGRAM already has a TON of religious references. One that I’ve seen pointed out is how it seems the cover art of each novel is a reference to a famous Christian art piece.

The Es in each novel seems to be where Jesus relatively is. Remember that Jesus is both the son of God AND God. God gives sinners their judgements which sounds very similar to Es and how they're giving the prisoners (the human sinners) their verdicts.

Plus, the quote Milgram quotes is on the doors the prisoners are entering, and in Dante’s inferno, it’s on the gate of hell so you can compare or theorize that MILGRAM is a parallel to (or straight up is) purgatory. And Es, being the one who decides the verdict, parallels God.

Also, her t2 VD is named “YONAH,” which is the masculine version of the name Jonah. Not only does this relate to her themes of masculinity again, Jonah is a name that originates from Hebrew origins which means “dove.”

It is also a reference to the book of Jonah. A main theme of this book is “Jonah wants God to operate on his timeline [...] He wanted God to dole out punishment on his clock instead of according to God's plan. Yet God showed Jonah that in his infinite wisdom, he can't and will not be rushed.” Which is pretty much exactly what happens in YONAH, and also once again compares Es to God.

Dante’s Inferno’s Satan was an angel, a splendid being, apparently the most perfect of God's creatures… an “Angel of light.” We/Es deemed Kotoko innocent in t1. She had the highest innocent percentage in t1 too because a lot of people thought her murder was justified. You know, the most perfect of God’s creatures. The most perfect out of the prisoners.

“We really can work together.”

But then Satan tried to usurp God.

“If you don’t have the strength on your own, let me take care of it. Es! I can do it in MILGRAM!”

Kotoko wants to be the prison guard because Es isn’t capable in her eyes.

Satan was ultimately sent to Hell and punished as "the ultimate sinner" for his betrayal of trying to usurp God.

We are now punishing Kotoko for her attempts to judge the prisoners herself and “usurp” Es. It works even better now that she has the highest guilty percentage in all of MILGRAM so far as the “ultimate sinner.”

As a lot know, Fuuta also has tons of religious references too. (Ex. His VD is titled Baptism by Fire) By him also passing judgements onto people, you could say that he was trying to play God.

What is that saying about us, the audience, then? And our parallel/foil to Fuuta/Kotoko?

Dante’s Inferno as a whole is very much based around the idea of “evil will be punished,” which not only encapsulates Kotoko’s ideals but MILGRAM’s as well. It makes sense that MILGRAM says that Kotoko is a perfect parallel to the facility.

(I also wanna mention that there's something that could be said about the holy trinity in relation to Es + the audience + jackalope. For example, how Jesus is God in the flesh and Es is the audience "in the flesh," by acting as a personified version of us to interact with the "human sinnners" but I feel like I might be going into tinfoil hat territory.)

[monsterboyblood]

I’ve decided that Bass is by far the funniest MM character to have a transmasc headcanon about because he’s so aggressive about his own self image that if Wily tried to activate him and he didn’t like a single aspect of himself he’d for sure just go “Oh absolutely fucking not. Try again.”

[patheticpat]

Told my girlfriend if she could guess who Loop actually was I’d divulge who the people helping the cast in my au and she fucking IMMEDIATELY guessed Siffrin, fuck my inter life lmfao

[angelnumber27]

I dont think some people understand how truly awful and hellish withdrawals from some psych medications are.

[whatsfourteenupto]

Today, Fourteen made Martha Smith-Jones literally call her husband to tell him that he was actually rather bummed Mickey didn’t come with her and August to visit for the weekend. When asked to repeat themselves because Mickey did not believe her, they became predictably huffy and informed all present that he would not be saying it again, and if Mickey had wanted to hear it himself, he should’ve come in the first place. Followed by a definitely-not-enthusiastic offer to go pick him up in the TARDIS.

[emry-stars-art]

What was Abrams favorite thing that Andrew gave him during his courting attempts?

Okay I’ve been sitting on this one because I was trying to give it my best answer and like. I still don’t know lol

I know that people in the replies and tags are going to have incredible answers as well so I want this to be more of a “here’s a collection of things he likes the most” and I get to start so here’s my take:

It’s a book. I hear your valid confusion but LISTEN. In the stretch before Abram finally realizes what’s been going on with the gifts/etc, Andrew gives Abram a book - could be poetry, could be a romance story, idk - with a ribbon just barely peeking out of one page. Abram, obviously, doesn’t think much of it and he’s never been big on reading (I don’t know why I never have Neil liking to read lol is that canon) so he keeps the book on his dresser or something like “I’ll get around to it if he insists”

And then after Abram actually, clearly says he can accept Andrew’s advances, Andrew remembers about it and realizes Abram must not have ever opened the book because he would have figured this all out before now if he had

He asks him about it, if he ever read it, and Abram’s like “…no”

So Andrew tells him to. Later, when Abram’s back in his room, he picks up the book and checks out the first page, and it’s something pretty obviously unimportant or unrelated. And the next page. Eventually he thinks to check the ribbon; he flips to the pages and somewhere on them a quote is underlined in steady deep blue ink:

My glances through the eyes of friendship grow more brief by the day. You remain in the kindest, softest embrace of my heart, but now I find myself watching, hopeful, and friends do not look at friends the way I sometimes look at you.

Stunned, in a word.

But this is something he can figure out. This isn’t flowers - they’re lovely but die so quickly, and Abram doesn’t know the language of them or which ones Andrew would like. It isn’t meals shared, because that’s too common by now. It isn’t direct words or actions of affection because those are far too awkward for someone with so little experience with them. But Abram looks at this book, sees exactly what to do with it, and he knows certainly that this is a way the prince wouldn’t mind communicating because he was the first to do it. Abram doesn’t even have to be around when Andrew reads it.

So Abram spends the next several days scanning the book when he has time, finding many quotes he could perhaps imagine returning, finding a few he keeps marked just in case. Then he finds one that he doesn’t even bother marking with a scrap paper, he immediately picks up his pen and underlines it.

I look at the moon and she has your face: the brightest thing in my sky, the most beautiful, and so, so far away.

(And @jtl-fics had the sweetest idea of Abram pressing and keeping the flowers from the bouquet Andrew gets him in this post; and that he uses some to make bookmarks probably because he knows how much the prince likes books. He would definitely use one of those bookmarks to mark the page he underlined rather than the scrap ribbon 🥰)

Anyway the next time Abram sees the prince he wordlessly hands him back the book. Andrew sees the new mark but doesn’t try to open it yet (which relieves Abram more than he’ll admit), just keeping it under his arm until he has somewhere to put it. But it doesn’t take him near as long to find another quote, since he tends to get distracted reading the context or surrounding passages; he underlines the very next sentence and gets the book back to Abram the next morning. Understanding the risk of Abram’s misunderstanding and completely willing to explain himself in plain terms when Abram asks. Still with the pressed flower bookmark.

To have you near enough to touch should surely destroy me.

When Abram opens it later he first sees that the pages look very familiar - those passages look very familiar - that quote is certainly familiar. And he gets very worried very quickly. Maybe Andrew didn’t like that one, maybe Abram had chosen wrong and he didn’t know how to do this as well as he’d thought. But he doesn’t close it fast enough not to finally, mercifully read on and realize that some of the ink on the page is not his own black ink. After it, dark enough to almost be black in the wrong light, is Andrew’s dark blue.

But after reading Andrew’s quote he does in fact close the book quickly, sitting back and just staring, mostly because he’d surprised himself; he won’t know Andrew’s intention for certain until he asks, but this time - likely for the first time - Abram looks at the word destroy and doesn’t immediately think of the harm he’s done. (Andrew’s new, unfamiliar way with words had to work it’s way into Abram’s understanding eventually.)

They go on as long as there’s still quotes they like in the book, and only once does Andrew get frustrated that Abram stole one of his before he could get around to using it.

Anyway thank you for the sweet ask, here’s a quick sketch of Andrew reading to Abram in the library

[mimikip4744]

Y’all I had another weird drdt dream last night where the drdt cast were like digimon tamers and had digimon partners and shit like that, and I don’t remember much from it other than the fact that they were, like, in the digital world and had to save it from some unknown force like in most digimon stories. Anyways, the only things I remember from it is that Min’s partner was Kunemon (which is funny because not only is it a bug but it also has electric powers and you know-) and that Rose had an existencial crisis. So that was interesting I suppose. Anyways-

[daisyachain]

I wonder what the thought process was behind introducing Mel into the Jayce-Viktor subplot specifically. The game lore has them as a bread-and-butter flip of the superhero/supervillain dynamic where the supervillain is noble and the superhero is a jerk. Also hewing to the superhero/supervillain tropes, they’re close friends before they have an explosive blowup that turns them into devoted rivals. Classic, well-trodden, tropey set of mutually obsessed characters who read like X and Magneto (films) or Spider-Man and Green Goblin (Raimi films) or Wolverine and Sabretooth or Obi-Wan and Anakin or any one of approximately five billion matched sets.

While the superhero/supervillain sets have one more prominent character (the hero), Jayce and Viktor are designed to be equal parts of it in a trite well-neither-one-is-actually-good storyline. They’re specifically created to be equal and opposite. Mel is inserted right into the subplot of both of that duo. More on that later.

Now, Jinx and Vi are also a matched set of stories. From game lore, Vi is tied to Caitlyn’s lore. Arguably Sevika, Isha, Vander, Silco are inserted between them in much the same way. From just the basic source material, Viktor technically has Blitzcrank as his other major lore connection. Plus it’s League. Treating the source material with reverence…probs not a good idea for writing a narrative. Arcane has to sand down the really rough-sketched archetypes into something resembling a proper story.

The web of connections between the Zaun and Piltover characters does get fleshed out. Jayce gets connected to Caitlyn as her mentor-figure and (much more loosely) Vi as a bash bro. Viktor gets Sky as an OC story partner. Mel should be just another node in the spreading network that Arcane builds between the existing lore points.

What stands out is that she doesn’t have clear ties to the existing lore Jayce lab—as a new MC/Champion, it does make some sense to have her be her own central node rather than an accessory. She spends most of her time with new characters or with Jayce. In s1, mostly Jayce, in s2, mostly herself. Her alliance with Caitlyn starts up pretty abruptly at the 11th hour. Mel feels disconnected from the cast in a way that can highlight her as a sort of third party third way political leader, but also one that puts a lot of pressure on her relationship with Jayce to express and carry her character

The cracks become clearer when you refer to her mom. Ambessa’s in the same spot as a new champion, her only proper connection is to her OC daughter, and she integrates much more seamlessly into the show for better or for worse. Mel’s relationships with her spy, her assistant, Heimerdinger even Viktor show off Mel’s professional side, which tells us precious little about her under that surface. Jayce and Ambessa are the ones around which she reveals a little more. Ambessa, on the other hand, lives out loud and has a pretty emotionally intense connection with daughter (domineering mom), her henchman (possibly more…?), and Caitlyn (substitute evil daughter). Singed and Viktor are also in her posse, but we won’t count them as their dynamics with her aren’t illuminating.

Mel is a pivotal character in Arcane, more plot-critical than the nominal main (Vi) with far more screentime than the fan favourite (Ekko), and one of the few mains who doesn’t do a stint as a villain (alongside Vi and Jayce). Her role in the plot is to push Jayce’s research to the point where his magic becomes practicable (s1), then to take responsibility for her mother’s misdeeds (s2). She and Jayce arguably form the Big Good alliance to Ambessa and Viktor’s Big Bad; while not the emotional core of the show, those four get the last word in on the plot while the Vi-Jinx subplot gets foundered upon the rocks of ‘i forgor.’ (The character stuff for Vi and Jinx remains strong; they just cease to have any impact on the things that happen in the story). Mel is also The Mage; more than the hextech, she embodies the discovery that the show is supposed to be about.

So: Mel is the one true mage character in a series called Arcane and the one main character that Arcane needed to set up within its own runtime. The only connection she is given to the remaining world is via a relationship with Jayce, a character locked in binary orbit around one (1) single other character in the source material. It does make sense to have Mel introduced meddling in magic, pushing forward the research that will ultimately clue her into her own powers.

It does feel awkward to have her interactions be with a character who textually canonically is always thinking about something else. Mel is the one who gives Jayce the ideas that escape him—the mettle to reach beyond his caution, the sway and savvy to enter politics—because they’re living in two completely different worlds. The substance of their connection isn’t bonding over any shared interest in the process of discovery (Mel clearly holds her own as an arcanist as we see from her diagrams in the mind prison, but it’s not on screen) or in games of words/meanings/people (THE key character trait for Jayce is him being the most tone deaf man in the world). They are interested in magic, but the substance of their interactions is them each saying things at each other without communicating. The most intense moments in their relationship are mediated, triggered, or broken by Viktor of all people [trombone noises]. Who Mel doesn’t know from Adam.

In other words, Mel doesn’t have many characters to bounce off of to show different parts of her personality. The intent was to have her come off as cold in public with a soft side for Jayce, but we see so much of her soft side that she comes off as a straightforward nice rich girl coming out of her shell. To my memory, she doesn’t spend any time having much proper dialogue with Caitlyn (the nice rich girl gone cold to her cold rich girl gone nice), Viktor (literally always there), or even Silco (a fellow icy diplomat with a soft spot). While Jayce is around, she’s his girlfriend, which doesn’t work because Jayce is permanently, unilaterally, and plot-endingly tied to a different character to the exclusion of all else, carried from og lore into the tv show.

When Jayce isn’t around, her interactions with her spy do something to give her back her personality of a ruthlessly efficient operator. However, she gets locked in Character Development prison for half of s2 and fights her way out by…force of personality. Her magic use isn’t tied to the empathy that’s supposedly the source, and we don’t see her analyze it or take it to bits as fellow scientist Viktor does. As someone else pointed out, she loses the cunning part of her that makes her Mel and becomes just a white mage for the entire last quarter until she pulls her Black Rose double cross. Which is cool.

All that is to say in a very disjointed way: Mel has a lot riding on her, but it doesn’t come together. Jayce takes up a lot of her screentime for a relationship ultimately written to end, and not just to end, but to be preceded consumed and eclipsed by Jayce’s existing lore. She’s isolated by a cast of OCs without making the logical connections to the other main characters, and she doesn’t even have a distinct relationship written for a man she’s spent years with in the trenches (Viktor). She lacks a showy personality in a series full of characters designed to be as over-the-top hammy as possible, she lacks stakes in the pre-existing characters’ fight, and her ultimate power-up does not tap into her most distinct traits (thinking outside the box). She does get one crowning moment, but I was waiting a very long time for her to get out of them chains.

[gaybearwedding]

hi hi hello i have been gone forever due to various reasons such as “work” and “mental illness” and “having developed a kpop hyperfixation that has been occupying most of my attention recently” but i need everyone to know that i saw off book live twice last week (in philly with a friend and then in nyc with my girlfriend) and it was truly so everything. i didn’t get many pictures but i did get a few and none of them are very good but one of them is of jess’ amazing stool balancing act and that’s all i need really

[goldkirk]

My five happy things for the day

• paper that has a good feeling texture

• things not feeling like an emergency EVERY second of the day, only part of the time

• the fact that these cheapo stamp ink pads from Walmart a few years ago somehow still have a bit of functioning ink not dried out?

• I’m able to track and retain conversations for longer periods of time again, I’m finally finally finally feeling some progress

• putting on a warm hoodie or coat when feeling chilled

[radioscientist]

Me: *delusional* Maybe when I watch Marineford this time Ace will be rescued and hang out with Luffy and Whitebeard

[valeress]

rambling again

[arolesbianism]

Finallly got around to properly designing Demonstrator! She’s silly