#extremely self indulgent gifset

[zhouxiangs]

MY STAND-IN (2024) | Episode 2

[pureanonofficial]

SERKAN KAYA as LUIGI LUCHENI | ELISABETH DAS MUSICAL (2005)

[jentlemahae]

MARK LEE / WE YOUNG (170816)

[doffyslittledove]

making an extremely self indulgent gifset :)

[dragonseeds]

your post about emma reminded me of when hotd first started airing and i saw a lot of people talk about how they would be more on board with daemyra if the age gap was smaller, even just visually (i.e. having a younger actor playing daemon in the first half) but that still would not change that he's her uncle and how it's a inherently troubled relationship based on that and all the other power, age and gender dynamics at play. so this whole disscusion is very interesting to me.

oh yes! i was actually thinking about the way people reacted to them and a few other notable asoiaf relationships when i made that post. very extremely fascinated by the line between like someone sincerely believing from the start that liking daemon and rhaenyra is sick due to the age gap as much as the dynastic incest/daemon’s behavior and then turning around and reblogging an emma (2020) gifset, when they have the same age difference and mr. knightley is similarly positioned within and on the periphery of emma’s family. he’s no gothic uncle, but he is an older brother figure through their siblings’ marriage/proximity and that’s a role daemon shifts into with rhaenyra from time to time, due to his position as heir to viserys (paternal role of king, death of their father) and a fruitless need for his love, respect, and attention that mirrors rhaenyra’s—something they recognize in each other. (crucial to emma and mr. knightley’s success as a couple is that he understands her relationship with her father, that he loves him and indulges him as well.)

i’d never heard anyone say they would have been into daemyra if he didn’t look so much older aksjdks that’s a level of self-awareness i respect. it’s also exactly what they did with emma and mr. knightley in clueless, making josh cher’s (ex) step-brother and closing the gap by about a decade, to account for cher still being a teenager in high school. and it worked! whereas like… there’s no avoiding awareness of the age gap with MA and MS, or their insane chemistry, and if it’s not avoidable or easily rationalized then what? like i agree i’m so curious why would it be better or easier to ship if he just looked younger despite not actually canonically being any younger? i personally really love them because they are sickos

i wish more people were enjoyers of just. not knowing precisely how you feel about a relationship or a character—or, maybe more accurately, feeling many many layers of things about it at once, often contradictory, and being okay with that and willing to engage with it? but it’s interesting to see like. what relationships people are vocally uncomfortable with and which negative aspects are focused on in comparisons to other similar relationships.

[littleragondin]

Episode 1 truly said "look at Uea's beautiful hands" and I didn't need to be told twice.

Points for King's too...

Other sets in the Hands Series: Ep.1, 4, 5, 6, 7

[zelkam]

lan wangji + flowers

+ bonus:

[danylives]

Johnny Lawrence + that reaction™ he has whenever Daniel LaRusso is walking away in anger

[spectre1]

making an edit w mitski lyrics. feeling unwell 😵‍💫😶

[iridescentides]

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[tacituskilgores]

[number5theboy]

it might be hard to pick, but what's your favourite greek myth parallel/reference/allusion in regards to five? (i hope i phrased that right lmao)

for me it's still odysseus because you know. metis and long journeys and inability to adjust to peace after a lifetime of war and being held captive by a woman and having "no name" to hold him back and being extremely arrogant and hypocritical yadda yadda yadda. (i like the sisyphus references too, but i dont really consider five to be an ~absurd hero~, especially after s3. he clings to meaning in the apocalypse but in the face of his existence turning out to be absurd he does give up, kind of).

Hey Anon, first of all, congrats on sending in probably my favourite ask I've ever received. I was genuinely so excited to answer this that I kept it for when I would be in the mood and able to savour it, and before I knew it, a month has passed, so sorry about that, I hope you'll see this. But now I've just come off making a mythology-centred Five-gifset and my mind is buzzing, so there will never be a better time.

I once did an entire, very self-indulgent gifset about figures in Greek mythology that Five reminds me off, because to me, he thematically fits into that kind of storytelling. Very powerful, very skilled, fatally flawed, fucks around and finds out, all that jazz. The fact the writers have made a dozen mannequin jokes and yet haven't tossed in a Pygmalion reference yet is baffling to me. But I think Sisyphus and Odysseus are the only direct comparisons made in the text, and I do love them both. Me elaborating on why both of them are really neat connections under the cut.

I agree with you, I like the Odysseus one better, mostly because it's a really satisfying comparison. Yes to everything you said, the combination of wisdom and cunning, the long journey motivated by finding his way back to his family, his inability to find peace once he'd gotten them back because his time away - both the erring and the fighting - changed him, the women that keeps him, the absence of a name, the arrogance, the hypocrisy. I'd like to add the reluctance to fight paired with a high level of fighting skill, the tendency to try and talk things out first, the ability to read people well, the way people around him tend to die, the fact that his fatal flaw is pride/hubris, a character paying for his transgressions.

It's a very interesting character to compare Five to, because Odysseus is definitely one of the most nuanced and most versatile characters from Greek mythology, and I like how much the two have in common. But what I find even better is that there are a few key differences that make Five more than just a superhero take on Odysseus. There's the obvious fact that Five got reverted back into a child, and that he started his journey a lot younger, so what he longs to find his way back to is a different version of family from Odysseus. Odysseus also has a certain amount of obedience to authority, he knows how things ought to go and primarily tries to operate within boundaries set, while Five is pretty much ungovernable, he is constant to question and defy authority. Five also has time-travelling powers and technically the ability to undo everything that has gone wrong, but he just doesn't manage, he keeps overestimating himself and making things worse, which adds to his pathos. They are quite similar, but there is just enough of a spin to Five where the comparison is very much warranted but not tired. It tickles that particular part of me that loved Odysseus at age 10 when I first learnt about Greek mythology.

As for Sisyphus...I'm kind of splitting this in two, one part about the Sisyphus from the original myths and one about him as an absurd hero because Camus be Camus-ing.

Sisyphus is so known for his eternal punishment, because it is truly a wonderful image for a neverending, meaningless task, that it tends to be forgotten what he did to deserve this fate. Sisyphus was sentenced because he cheated death, not once, but twice, by finding new ways to escape it. So when Five says, "I've cheated time so much, I guess I thought I'd somehow cheat death", that hits, first of all because the writers literally forgot that Five had already cheated death by rewinding time and saving his siblings and himself from their certain demise, and secondly because that realisation of one's own mortality is part of the Sisyphus myth, in my opinion. Fun fact, in some, non-Homeric versions, Sisyphus is said to be the father of Odysseus, so being a cunning dickhead who pisses off gods is apparently a heritable trait. This tidbit about cheating death, paired with the endlessly repeating punishment, which the show alludes to via world's biggest ball of twine (Five replying "seems pretty big to me" when Klaus says that he thought it would be a lot bigger is a moment that I hold very dear) is just a good bit to compare with Five. He technically cheated death by turned time forward and bypassing the death of the entire human race, he cheated death again by turning time backwards, and he keeps living despite everything. At the same time, he chases his obligations, trying to keep the world alive, and surviving, in a seemingly endless repeating cycle. I really like the allusion to Sisyphus too, because it too is very warranted but it's not just a direct adaptation with superhero veneer.

As for Sisyphus as an absurd hero...it's been a while since I've read Camus, but the fact that Five, right after comparing his obligations to his family to a ball he keeps watching roll down a hill, asks, "and what's the point?" does suggest that the writers did mean the more meaningless side of the Sisyphus myth, likely tinged by Camus and his eternal obsession with the absurd. As far as I remember, his take on the myth is that realising and acknowledging the meaninglessness trumps the absurd and allows to reach a state of accepting serenity. I think whether Five, specifically in s3, falls into the role of an absurd hero really depends on interpretation. He doesn't in s1 and s2, because his meaningless, ever-continuing task (working to save the world from an impending apocalypse) is pursued with no acknowledgement of the underlying absurdity of trying to save the entire world that keeps changing and slipping away. In s3, there's a shift. Five gives up. Kind of. Sort of. Not really. I don't know. To be an absurd hero, he would have to acknowledge the situation and still continue his task, content with what he is doing because he is aware of its meaninglessness. A key quote from Camus that I am absolutely nicking from Wikipedia because I am not re-reading that and do in-depth literary anaylsis for a throw-away line from a silly Netflix show, is that "there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn". Five talks about fate in s3. He says that fate doesn't care for whether he is ready to face whatever it has in store for him, and then again, he tells Reginald that it's time they accept their fate and let the world end. And Five gives up. He stops pursuing the task...for a time. Because he was ready to let the world go and see what, if anything, is on the other side. Until the finale, where he is back in survival mode. He's the one to find the sigil, his decision is what ends the last guardian and culminates in Reginald (and Allison) resetting the world. So, does the act of giving up keep him from being an absurd hero? Or was that uptick, working towards saving it despite everything he knew, despite knowing it can't work out well, the action of an absurd hero? I don't know. Not quite, I think, because I don't think Five has ever reached that moment of contentment at the realisation of the meaninglessness of everything he's chased for his entire life. But it is fun to think about. I'm a bigger fan of using the original myth rather than Camus' interpretation of it, because that one was very much written with the meaninglessness of labour under capitalism in mind, which is not quite something that the Umbrella Academy is dealing with, Five even less, and I like the detail about cheating death being the thing that condemns Sisyphus to his endless, meaningless, repetitive task, and Camus doesn't delve into how Sisyphus came to be stuck on that hill.

[xinyuehui]

Hello :3

What is Mr. Bad about it? Your gifsets made me want to watch it, but the title doesn't convince me lololol. It sounds like the ML is you know... a bad guy (?)

English titles of Chinese dramas is sometimes not very appealing ����😂 Ignore the bad naming

Are we ready for my really bad description, let's go (꜆˶ᵔᵕᵔ˶)꜆

We have female lead Nan Xing!

She writes fanfics in her free time. Posted her self indulgence fanfic about her favourite author and herself online, ended getting hate for bad writing and boring ass villain. To combat the haters, she introduces a brand new villain who is the worstest boy in the universe.

And that's Xiao Wudi aka a person that is a serpent that hides in the abyss who spies on the human world. He is a thorn that pierces the human heart. He is your fear that's omnipresent. He is Hehuan Gong Zi, Xiao Wudi. (Description provided by Nan Xing)

One day Nan Xing walked past a fountain and accidentally wishes for an unforgettable relationship. The fairy god of the fountain heard her and brought Xiao Wudi, an ancient to 21st Century, to become her unforgettable lover!

Xiao Wudi simply thought Nan Xing brought him to the 21st Century from the Ming dynasty using unexplainable wormhole science, he threatens her to send him back! Little did he know, he's merely a character she made up!

Here starts a series of funny events, Nan Xing trying to work hard on her new job while Xiao Wudi is up to mischievous no good trying to find her a boyfriend so her wish is granted, that way he can go back to the Ming dynasty. But is that all?? Is Xiao Wudi really here to grant her wish, or does he have a deeper mission he needs to fulfil????

The side ship is of a girlboss CEO (Ye Qing) and her useless writer boyfriend (Lu Zichen) who's trying to catch her attention, but all she thinks about is work!

He said let's go bungee jumping because she loves extreme sports.

Also him:

He fainted and she took him to the hospital in the end lol they are equally as cute (✿◠‿◠)

Note: It's a happy ending! However it might be a little confusing because Chinese censorship don't allow "time travelling" so they try to go around that in the end, but it doesn't affect the main body of the story.

[phantsmenace]

MOTN Special (Yes, Again) - Dmitry Ermak Edition

Part II

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💞 Welcome to another episode of "Persie being enterily self-indulgent and overanalyzing things!" 💞

This is also part of "Persie's Birthmonth Special".

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Need I say something other than eargasm?

Remember that this Christine always get nervous when she remembers that:

Angel is strangely shaped as an extremely attractive man, who doesn't know how to blink;

Said Angel may or may not have kidnapped her, even though his lair is lowkey cozy (why so many candles, though?);

Aren't they like. Just below the Opera house. Huh. Why did they go through a sewer again?

So, what does the Phantom do when she gets antsy?

He gets closer to show dominance to calm her down.

And boy, will he come close.

Poof. Works like magic.

Oh the slight yearning. Oh, the way he unwillingly slips out of his burning, controlled seduction. We love that. He looks so... Relieved, yet touch-starved here. Is it just me? Do you see it too? Do you see his thumb caressing her ever-so-softly?

And... Speaking of touch-starved.

Oh my God. Oh my God.

It looks like he was about to nibble her earlobe, I'm absolutely devasted.

She's thinks of his strange mask for only a second, but he holds her hand and... She looks so trusting again. So innocent.

Don't trust the Evil Top.

This man is so proud of himself for his stupid shrine for 3.5 seconds....

But then she faints, of course. She should have run.

He's still like, hang on- I got this.

Spoilers: He does not got this.

Oh, this sweetness! He finally cracks again, just a bit: perhaps revealing that, even with his stupidly confident facade, there's still so much vulnerability inside of him.

He does not even dare to touch her hair- Even though he was actively trying to seduce her a few seconds ago.

Also...

Phants.

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I would have put more gifs in between, but Tumblr won't let me... So you might get some extras here and there ;)

Part 1 here.

I hope you're satisfied! I'll do a set of his PONR at some point but... I'll first finish Mr. Schkoldychenko (<3)'s PONR and Final Lair. Because I want to torture myself. 🥲

Stay tuned for more gifsets! I'll still try to be very active on March, okay?

Be safe, stay kind, and... Enjoy the Phants!

- Persie

[scoopsgf]

Hi, Bee Dee! Big fan of yours here, I’m in the middle of a writer crisis today and would like to bother you asking for advice, hope you won’t mind!

So, I write for this pairing that has a very small fandom and most of the time I ignore the fact that 8 people (max) will read this fic I spent weeks planning and working on and putting all my love into, because... well, I’m doing it mostly because I love the ship and I want to tell stories about them. I tell myself it’s mostly self-indulging but you know how it goes. When you release it in the world, all you want is to talk about it and you want people to be excited about it too, and tell you which were they favorite parts, etc. Then you get 0 comments and 1 dm telling you what they liked but they don’t want to keep talking about that thing you’re so passionate about. They move on quickly bc that story wasn’t stuck in their heads for a long time like it was in yours, I’m left empty after this, then I start working on a new draft because all I can dream about are stories involving these two idiots. I feel so alone and egocentric when I whine about it, but it really hurts, how do you deal with these type of feeling? I’ve seen you feel bummed that X chapter didn’t get many comments or kudos, that’s why I’m asking. I know you can feel this way too even though usually you get lots of people interested and excited for your work (as you should!), I just wanted to hear from someone that seems as in love to what they write as I am for what I write (writing is the thing I love the most in life), how do I stop expecting something I know I won’t get? (I know this feeling won’t last (I’ll distract myself from it soon enough) but today my brain is totally crushing me and making me feel so so small :()

honestly, i think most writers—as soon as they publish their work—hope for some kind of feedback. i mostly tend to feel this sort of worried/anxious hopelessness when i notice a dip in engagement or feedback (which i monitor extremely closely bc i’m insane). if a chapter gets like 30 comments (rlly good feedback) and then the next one only gets 20, i panic and wonder what happened to the other ten people and why this chapter fell short of the mark. it’s mostly about wanting to ensure that i’m still satisfying the ppl reading my fics and not boring them. and tbh, i’m really tired of the narrative that writers should feel ashamed for wanting feedback! we put this stuff out there for free and many of us are working around jobs and school and even kids, but we’re doing it because we love the material and it’s fun and it creates this sense of community. i don’t think there’s anything wrong with wishing for that, especially when it comes to smaller fandoms. bigger ones like HP are so huge you have niches within them, like people who only care about the marauders or people who solely stan draco malfoy. smaller fandoms require constant engagement to keep going, which is why it’s important that people put in a tiny bit of effort to rb the gifsets content creators spend hours making, and talk to each other about this opinion or that, and leave a comment on a fic or rb it to boost it. i think my best advice for you would be to keep writing, keep publishing, but also make sure to engage with other people in your fandom. give as good as you get! reply to any comments you receive, comment on other people’s work, get to know people and try to foster that bond through fandom! and write. like really, all the time. the more you write the better you’ll be. writing is like a muscle that needs constant flexing to stay in shape. on that note, read too. you’ll come across new words and ways of thinking that influence your work and make it better. and try to do it just for you at the end of the day. write everything before publishing so a story is your own before it’s anyone else’s <3