#every-dream-counts

[quotelr]

You rarely get closure when you leave something unknown.

Karishma Magvani

[nonexistent-alfa]

LCF readers at the start of the story when the side characters mistook Cale to be a "good person": pfft, you fools. You couldn't have been more wrong about him. You've all just been scammed. That guy is only using you for his own benefit.

LCF readers a few hundred chapters in: wait- they actually were kinda right?? We were the fools who got scammed into believing whatever he said? Goddamn.

[kaiserouo]

if ordan karris wanna complete that sentence does that mean he also likes us?

[everysongineverykey]

very pleased to report that i tried literally counting sheep last night and got my first full night's sleep in like a week in a long period of sleepless nights!!

[nelyoslegalteam]

"average mirkwood citizen gets haunted 3 times a year" factoid actualy just statistical error. average mirkwood citizen gets haunted 0 times per year. The Union of Murdoc, who live in the woods & get haunted over 10,000 times each day, are an outlier adn should not have been counted

[luthanraels-bignaturals]

speedy sequel to my last girlving post.

she partakes in the good christian pleasure of sewing immediately after she has dreams like this (obviously planted in her mind by satan and his unholy machinations to tempt her)

this is how jacko got his quilt and matching sleeping cap

[satosktty]

satoru would be a physics major ( by choice even as a nepo baby ) that's talented in fashion and art studies because everything exists in a context—when sukuna ( a current fashion major ) meets satoru he's taken a back on how satoru seems to come up with ideas far better more beautiful than most of his classmates and himself could ever come up with, things that are on the level of the greats he likes.

but as he sticks around satoru he realizes that satoru's idea are so authentic because he doesn't think about fashion being about fashion. satoru takes fashion and the arts as things that always connect to life and because satoru has lived his life sneaking away from his family to enjoy things, he goes to places that are grimey with the worst people imaginable and come out with an even greater insight on life and persepctive. therefore, he can understand art better than someone in art college that is simply copying basquiat.

for example in black swan; nina couldn't play the roll of the black swan even though she had been obsessed with ballerina for years because the story isn't about ballet. it's about romance, and Nina's never experienced that.

satoru remains completely unaware of his gift and just sends sukuna more and more of the designs he came up with.

tldr: autistic manic pixie outdoes fashion major future boyfriend

[juricore]

rosalie getting straight up carmilla'd in the berubara side story like are you joking. are you fucking kidding me. i know the countess is like killing young maidens and bathing in their blood and whatever but seeing her kiss rosalie on the mouth before the reveal had me like 😮 why tf is this girl. written in the 70s. living every gay woman's bodice ripper/period drama/gothic romance DREAM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[funkily]

IM SORRY FALSE I COULD ONLY DO 12 .. she probably wouldve swept anyways like tbh .

youre legally required to tell me why btw . try and vote before looking at prev tags though so we have your unbiased opinion

[sisterdivinium]

You know, the reason why I'm sceptical over communities on Tumblr is because I think the issue is not how it was lacking in a community feature but how there seems to be a lack of a community mindframe for a lot of the userbase. There's only so much you can do when a lot of people have devolved into only ever using likes rather than actually getting in touch with others -- and there's only so much conversation you can withstand when every new addition equates to reblogging a post in full and potentially annoying your followers with "walls of text" (since, let's be real, this isn't a text-forward website)...

[rainystressed247]

Bonding with a totally voluntary friend (nf at all!)

[gobbluthbutagirl]

packing for my trip this week and i’m like when was the last time i actually went on a vacation that involved a flight…well it was 19 years ago. and 19 years ago i was 7 so i’m sure i was only minimally involved in the packing process

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[kyouka-supremacy]

Mmmhh...

[definitelynotshouting]

hihiiiii i’m back and i promise i’ll spell grian correctly this time lmaoo (post-writing here, there are lots of words lmao sorry)

i’ll try and be a bit more coherent since i’m not half asleep but god. how watchers themselves work in the hunger au is already so so interesting to me, especially with how grian is basically playing the wolf in sheep’s clothing. like he is a predator, here. but he remembers being a sheep, remembers being eaten, so no matter how hungry he gets, he tries so hard not to do that to the rest of his friends. but he’s still a wolf surrounded by sheep who all think he’s just a fellow sheep and he can’t survive on the same things that they can. and the sheep are right to be scared of him when they find out he’s a wolf but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s tried so hard not to hurt any of them and GOD the narrative dissonance (i think that’s the right term?) is so good between the reader perceiving everything through grian’s eyes because like. if it was the hermits of the traffic smp members he’s be portrayed so differently, especially with how much incomplete and unique information every individual has. like the traffic members all being scared that they’re going to be dragged into a game again so even if they want grian back they have to get past that barrier, and the hermits having to learn to distinguish or accept the grian they knew and the grian they kicked. and grian being the narrator, especially with his own hatred toward his needs as a watcher and his own feelings toward his former friends, creates this super strange effect where you can’t forget what he’s done because they victims are there but also you can’t help feel sympathy for him purely because he is so scared of himself that he is forcing himself to die. i’m not saying he’s irredeemable, it’s just a super cool writing decision that enhances the emotional elements to the story so much.

that shines a lot with how watchers enhance emotions, but it’s also soooo clear with pearl specifically because they’ve known each other for so long and through so much. and it’s such a highlight to both their relationship and grian’s situation that grian still struggles so much to read her. it’s dizzying almost, the way that grian is so good at reading emotions because it’s a latent ability he has but this one person foils all of it. and he knew, back when they were friends, how to traverse that because he didn’t need that ability to know her as a person, but now that there’s so much distance between them he has absolutely no idea how to traverse that. because he knows the minefield pattern has changed, knows that he was the one to change them, but all the soils settled and she’s acting like he still has the pattern memorised so what is there for him to do but do the same dance they used to. and then when those mines blow up as he knew they would he has no idea how to recover because he’s seen them explode but he’s never been in the blast area. and it’s so so interesting because for everyone else he can infer, and with pearl he still knows enough about her to guess, but she’s not giving him information in the way he knows her to frequent and it’s. it took me until my second read to fully understand the implications of their conversation (the couch thing, tilly, the cows) but i did and it’s so well written. i don’t know if it was your intention, it might’ve just been a side effect of me having to reread it while more attentive to that stuff, but somehow that only sucked me into the narrative further because i felt just as confused as grian for half of it and it all hit harder somehow so massive kudos lmao!!

grian and mumbo’s relationship, especially when juxtaposed with scar’s is also super duper interesting. like, on their own they’re so nice to pick apart too, but there’s so many additional flavours when looking through them as a trio. like, mumbo is angry, rightfully so. grian got kicked, ran from them for months, and then when they actually caught up to them it was because he (in their eyes) tried to overdose on weakness potions and begged them to kill him. and from what tango said they likely didn’t all know his biological resistance to potion effects, and tango doesn’t know that he’s purposefully making them think he’s more resistant than he is so that he can confidently have enough to od on and. god they were best friends. and he dragged you into a game, slaughtered you over what to a red life was just a little joke, kept the fact that he was behind the games a secret, then when you see him after a year it’s him dying in the void begging you to end him. and mumbo’s angry, and the anger is all his even though grian keeps unintentionally heightening it (both with his abilities and his not-quite-resigned attitude) and. and you can’t pretend this is in any way normal bc that is your former best friend and that’s so stark when compared to scar who tries to meet grian where he is and keep him comfortable. like, mumbo isn’t used to grian in the games, but scar was betrayed him and was betrayed by him in turn. they know this dance, they’ve lived it thrice over, this is anger that he’s learned and he recognises and he can let go of. and that doesn’t mean it’s gone, but he’s used to it, he knows that letting it fester between them won’t change anything, especially when they found grian half-dead and their priority has to be getting him better. so he jokes and he falls into their old habits because he misses that, and mumbo does too, but neither of them know what to do to help him, and they show that in such different ways. and neither of them are unfair or incorrect in their anger or their comfort, because both of them are hurting people trying to navigate another hurting person.

i love love love the way you write tango too. i’ve already said the whole peak guy thing so i’ll skip that. but i love how honest he is about why he’s there. like. he’s angry. he’s angry in the same way that mumbo is, he feels betrayed by someone he trusted, he doesn’t know what to do to help (both because of his biology and because no-one knows what to do when someone else is in a crisis, especially with complex feelings about that person). and it’s so realistic that the thing that makes him want to help, that got him to follow xisuma and pearl and mumbo and scar wasn’t any sense of anger or duty or anything but was that someone who mattered to him couldn’t go. tango wants to give jimmy that sense of closure, regardless of his own feelings, because grian and jimmy were close and then they weren’t and then grian just up and disappeared. and that’s supposed to in and of itself be the solution but it isn’t, not when you don’t even know why he created these games in the first place, not when you knew each other for so long, not when your relationship dynamic was about as “cruel” as you knew this person to be. and even in those jokes and jabs the grian you knew never would’ve revelled in that suffering enough to make a game out of it, enough to drag fourteen to sixteen other people into it. and even in those games, grian was supposed to be the ringleader, so why did he seem so miserable during (and after, though jimmy wouldn’t know that unless a hermit [LIKE TANGO] told him) (also excluding the more lighthearted moments [southlanders aha bit] and red lives [semi-unpredictability is average red life behaviour]). also the trust that he gives grian and what he says because grian can barely do anything on his own anymore because he’s so weak and tango doesn’t want to make him think he’s taking away more of his agency and grian is much less likely to lie than he is to bend the truth or avoid subjects altogether and. something something the fastest way to earn trust is to give it also applies to rebuilding trust.

also xisuma and. i said the gold star on his helmet as a joke but now i can’t stop thinking about hermits just petting stickers all over his helmet until he can’t see and has to get another one (he would never remove the stickers, those are special!!) (let him rest he already has a wall full of helmets he can’t used not even because they’re destroyed but he can’t see there are too many where do hermits keep finding them!!). i can’t keep saying the relationships are interesting but they are and i don’t have a better adjective sorry lmao. but the way that xisuma, especially in the world they’re on, has to be so many places at once; he has to take care of his hermits, and keep the world stable because its not meant to be multiplayer, and he has to keep up with grian because that’s the whole reason they left, and he has to try and help build or gather supplies when he has the chance. and he’s spread so thin that when grian says something concerning (as he’s wont to do) there isn’t much he can do because he’s stressed and he’s busy and grian is so emotionally constipated it’s not even funny. and because he’s so busy and everyone’s so busy and concerned none of them are even thinking to put all of their information together because they just assume grian doesn’t say anything (AS HE’S WONT TO DO) or they all know the same stuff about him. and xisuma is too busy to pull everyone together because that’s usually his role as admin (when he’s not being a wet rag of a man [affectionate]) on hermitcraft and everyone is struggling so much with their own emotions and grappling the fact that the weak and depressed guy they chased down for two months and is half-dead is the same grian that would regularly pull pranks and didn’t even argue when they decided to kick him from hermitcraft. and xisuma also looking at grian and seeing his own failure as an admit because even though he made a reasonable decision that was backed by his server members looking at the ramifications is shaking him, especially considering the fact that grian is someone he used to consider a friend. and now he’s looking at a man that begged them to kill him and is slowly starving to death and doesn’t even seem that upset about it and what else if there for him to do but question if he could’ve changed this if he put his foot down and kept grian on the server despite the danger that could put them in (especially since they don’t know what directly caused the games, they just know that grian was responsible, not why he did or if he could even control that he did it).

ok i had more thoughts than i thought i did about these guys. and your writing!!!!! quality!!!!!!!! delectable!!!!!!!!!!! gourmet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! thank you for the meal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! have a lovely day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! drink water!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ANON,,,,, you flatter me SO MUCH with this analysis oh my gods???? I am SO so happy that all of this is shining through, the complexities that im going for and the different, subtle dynamics. Also very very grateful that the fact that everyone so far has different information is something that is very apparent; i was admittedly worried it would cause a lot of confusion, so its really nice to see someone picking all of that up!!!

Oughhhhh i am ESPECIALLY super glad the subtleties of the pearl and grian convo in chapter 5 were picked up on. I think my actual and legitimate "stage direction" for myself in that chapter was, and i quote:

"PEARRRLLLLLLL. they should talk. well okay they NEED to talk. but they should talk abt anything OTHER than what they want to" 😂😂😂😂😂

Which then birthed that EXTREMELY roundabout conversation with the cows, and tilly, and pearl not necessarily knowing everything but making some highly educated guesses. Honestly, the play-by-play of that convo was so interesting to write-- if anybody ever wants a sorta behind the scenes review abt it, i would be SO happy to explain what i was going for during that entire scene

Anyway anon i LOVE your thoughts you have SPOILED ME with them and i appreciate you so so much, this is so kind and sweet and i am vibrating as i continue chugging away at chap 6 bc i hope i can make that just as enjoyable as the rest of the story

[binders-and-beanies]

I hate rich people and no I’m not just talking about billionaires