#he doesn't really care about the motives of the cult he just doesn't want to think about the future anymore

[keii]

Mint Eye Yoosung making a reappearance. Despite the red flags in his head, he keeps coming back to MC's quarters since Saeran is usually busy to check up on her.

[casuallyanidiot]

what do you think of yandere priest but in more of a cult vibe?

Like a mother and young adult reader came to the neighborhood and the mother joined the "church" and became crazy religious

Okay, here me out, yandere priest to a cult that's not really a cult, but some multi level marketing scheme.

Tw. for age gap, financial abuse, and religious themes

He's less motivated by faith than he is his own greed. He loves living in luxury scoffs at the notion that he should be more humble. He worms his way into a quaint, suburban neighborhood slowly but surely over several years and drips in bits and pieces of information about a company that's just guaranteed to make you money.

You get to work from home! Be your own boss! And the products themselves work miracles!

Yandere Priest who is calm, charismatic, suave, and oh so charming. Most of the flock he tends to don't even realize he's scamming them out of their life's savings. They're all just far too dumb to even think of him in a negative light.

You and your mom moved to the neighborhood after finally managing to improve your financial situation. You were enrolled in a local community college and had several low paying jobs along with your mother, and the two of you lived frugally until you could afford enough to live in a nicer part of town than the one you had been stuck in your entire life.

The two of you are welcomed warmly by the church, the community, and yandere priest. Your mom is happy to have found such a nice place to live, and she's instantly enticed by the promises of making money through joining the congregation. She gets a bit of success through it at first, and soon she's hooked.

You however, don't buy it one bit.

Yandere priest is intrigued by you. While your mother begins to zealously preach the word of the bible and the word of his money, you seem to have an inherent distrust for him. It makes sense, he thinks. He essentially just views your little family as another wallet in his collection. Still, as much as he understands you, a poor little lamb who wasn't joined his flock yet, he can't let you roam free lest you lead others astray.

It's then he really starts to lay the charm on thick. You remain unconvinced despite the fact that he begins to visit your home often (It's an honor by the way. Your mother knows her place. She graciously welcomes him in and shouts at you when you don't show him respect.), and he catches you scowling at him when you think no one is looking.

You're just so frustrating to him. At first you were like a little challenge to beat, something that he had to work to get for once, but you're proving to be a true pain in the neck. You cats doubt on his name to anyone who'll listen, argue with your mom and try to get her to quit his church often, and he's even caught you trying to snoop around in some financial documents of others around the neighborhood. He begins to think of you as less of a lamb and more of a vixen.

It doesn't help that you're pretty and cute. You're a young faced, rebellious spit fire who calls him out like no one has before, and even though he grits his teeth every time you glare at him, he can't help but love it.

For the first time in a life, he actually has someone he would even deign to call an equal.

Just like with all the money he's sucked out of these poor people, he didn't care that you're practically half his age, or that he could ruin your life with a few words. No, all he wanted was for you to finally just give up, to just set aside your pride and let him win.

All the while, your mother has been changing. She was once a sweet if not ditzy woman who would do anything to protect her child, though now she was wrapped up in the same greed that had been running through this neighborhood since he sunk his teeth in it. Your finances had been depleted despite the fact that she insisted that the church's company was legitimate and making good money. While the two of you had been close, she would yell at you for anything that went out of line from what the church and Yandere priest preached.

You were losing your mother, your community, your hope. If this habit of her spending all of your money on the church continued, soon you were worried that you wouldn't be able to pay for the house or your tuition. You were desperate to get your life back in order, and who but him would be there with a single, honeyed option left for you?

Yandere priest was certain that if he bled you dry just a little longer, you'd eventually accept his oh so gracious offer and finally fall into his hands.

[transmutationisms]

Did you like season 1 of severence? I'm halfway thru it and though I think the concept is good I think I'm doomed to be disappointed bc the writers/show runners are not going to be communists about it

yea the labour politics do become increasingly strained and annoying (as i believe @familyabolisher once wrote, "who cleans the severed floor?") but also on a more facile level i just didn't think it was a particularly good show lmao. like it works best when the sci-fi concept is being used to exaggerate and satirise the affective demands placed on workers—with of course the eternal caveat that the show is only about white collar office workers, while much of the commentary, like their elaborate self flagellation rituals, would actually be more incisive & effective if it were applied to the aforementioned blue collar staff, service workers, &c—but then by the end of the season it's fully veering into oc/cult sensationalism in ways i just found boring & lazy.

there are also writing decisions that seem ill planned, like for example if they wanted pete and gemma to be characters they should have just written them as characters rather than doing these fakeout death reveals, which would have also made mark's development stronger (whatever his name is gives a good performance relative to the material he's given, but it's soooo silly how much mark suffers from "is characterised by things we are told are true but which in the writing are repeatedly demonstrated not to be true" syndrome lmao). i also just think patricia arquette's character is badly written and weirdly performed. some of the cinematography is fun but some of it is sort of generically glossy in a way that aesthetically signifies 'prestige tv' and little else. i don't really see a second season being good honestly i just don't think it's set up well.

on the broader cultural level i am v interested in what seems to be a loose trend of films and shows motivated by anxiety over internal conflict or psychological multiplicity—think inside out, the substance, severance, etc. the conceits in these properties are to elevate feelings of ambivalence or internal inconsistency to the point where the psychology actually fractures into wholly distinct individual entities; i don't think it's coincidental we see some of these concerns at the same time as the popularity of psychiatric discourses that either ignore or purport to resolve such internal conflict, and that pathologise multiplicity as non-functional, anti-social, and economically unproductive. severance does at least gesture in the direction of foregrounding economic alienation in the etiology of this unease, but again the further it goes into the stupid literal cult shit the less i think those ideas are likely to be interrogated to any interesting ends. yknow, it just becomes recuperative work at a certain point, where there's a shift from using the severed floor to comment on its physically existent counterparts, to using the severed floor to comment on "hey wouldn't this be fucked up?" & this show simply doesn't slay hard enough for me to care if it's the latter

[alliwantistowearcomfypants]

I'm not gonna lie, I think mandalorian should have ended at season 2. It just buttoned up so well, and the message was incredible. It was touching and sad. And then, like a month later, it didn't matter. Season 3 was so disappointing to me, and I think a big reason for that is because it lacked that simplicity the first 2 seasons had. The show was just about a damaged man finding his humanity and helping various people along the way. I know that not everyone loved the simplicity, but I think it was the best thing the show had going for it. Star Wars often suffers from stuffing so much crap in the story that it forgets to add character arcs.

The first 2 seasons are super character focused. The plot is so intertwined with Dins' character growth that it doesn't focus on the big picture. But in s3, Din barely has any growth as a character. There's stuff happening left and right, but Din doesn't really have any emotional stakes in it. Him trying to get his mandalorian status back feels hallow because we literally just watched 2 whole seasons of him breaking away from it. One of the biggest character moments for him was taking off his helmet for grogu. He's telling grogu that he matters more. That he would give it all up for him. It's so touching and feels like his character's natural progression. And then we're supposed to care when all of a sudden he wants back into the morally questionable pseudo cult he broke away from for his baby? I don't care! That plot point also resolves itself in like 3 episodes with little to no confluct, so now what. He wants to help Bo Katan. Ok. Why. No idea. He's kinda just there, watching things happen around him. There's no inner conflict or tough decisions he needs to make. His character arc is over, and you can tell the writers didn't know what to do with him.

The show is honestly focused more on bo katan than din. Which, no hate to her, but I'm not here for her. She's treated like a wronged princess, not like a deeply flawed terrorist who saw the error of her ways way too late. She literally aided in getting her planet overrun by crime leaders and sith. And the show just brushes past that. They don't even mention Satine, which could have been a great way to humanize Bo. Have her struggle with the fact that she got her sister killed. Have her wanting to restore mandalor for her sister, who died trying to protect it. It would have been so much more impactful if Bo Katan's motivation was out of guilt for getting her sister killed and planet overrun. She could have slowly opened up about her complicated relationship with her sister. She could have had an obi wan kenobi type arc. Learning the only thing she can do is move forward. Try to right her wrongs. Restore Mandalore in the name of her flawed but deeply devoted sister. I do not understand why they didn't at least touch on Bo's personal ties to the planet. She feels so one dimensional, and they could have easily made her more interesting. Or at least motivating.

My biggest problem with the show is that I didn't really care. I didn't care about Bo Katan's goals or Din's. And I think the biggest reason is because the show forgot to add character moments that tied them to the things they want in a personal way. Also, Din's baptism thing was stupid. Just cut that out entirely. No one wanted that.

[divorcemotif]

one of the most interesting facets of martins character imo is that for how much his identity is centred around caring for & about other ppl, he's actually remarkably impatient, quick to frustration, and dismissive when he doesn't understand them. theres definitely a thing where martin believes he knows better than the people around him when he really just wants things to be simpler: he's ready to dig his heels in and dismiss other ppl/ideas as irrational when he's unwilling to actually engage with them or challenge his own worldview. he's sometimes right in a broad sense about jons actions being bad for him--in season 4, like, yeah, impulsively jumping on a boat to norway to antagonize an evil cult is pretty dangerous and maybe jon & basira should have thought it through a bit more beforehand. but hes unable to connect the dots himself abt why jon might do that; he's immediately too exasperated with the situation to really engage with it past insistence on the righteousness of his own perspective. which is kind of a dangerous tendency in combination with how broadly unwilling he is to examine his own motivations either: he doesnt think he's important enough for his actions to really matter, but they do, and his motivations are more complicated than wanting everyone to be ok--more than hes willing to admit to himself. season 4 is so interesting for how ready he is to dismiss challenges to his perception of jon: jon would only have fed on jess tyrell if he was possessed, jon would never really want to escape the institute with him. in 158 when he calls jon his reason it's kind of double-edged: how much is it that he would do anything to protect jon, and how much is protecting jon his justification for continuing to indulge his passive suicidality via self-isolation? if he wants jon at a safe distance where he can sacrifice himself for him without having to actually face him, then certainly knowing better than jon means he never has to engage with what jon like. actually wants or is doing

[autistichalsin]

I love my mom but the lying and guilt tripping gets to be so much sometimes.

IE she overheard me talking about getting my brother a ticket to fly to comic con with us. She got pissed about money (fair enough I guess since he still lives with her and my dad) but then I brought up we were helping, and she got mad at me saying she missed my college graduation because of money so why didn't we help?

I just about lost it. I BEGGED her to come. I offered to pay for all the hotels or plane tickets. She's scared of flying so wouldn't do that, and won't let my dad go anywhere without her, so that was a no. And she said the drive was way too long, she'd be really uncomfortable, and my dad couldn't take that long off work.

She didn't come because she didn't think it was important. Bottom line.

In fact, I even mentioned at one point before the graduation I was grateful, as much as the pandemic sucked, that the graduation would be getting livestreamed because it meant she and my dad would see it no matter what. And she (granted, drinking at the time, but still) said it was horrible for me to celebrate people dying just so I could have a graduation.

EVERY TIME I brought up my graduation, she never showed the slightest interest, nor the slightest bit of sympathy that she was missing it. She went out of her way to blame me, act like I was the one being unreasonable. She continued showing absolutely no interest for my Masters graduation, so that I ended up not even bothering to travel (online program) because I knew no one would be there for me anyway, so why bother.

I didn't even get to go to my high school graduation, because it was an online program on the other side of the state. I had to be held back a year when depression hampered my academic performance, and my older siblings had already dropped out; in desperation, trying to motivate me not to do the same, my dad promised me that if I made it, they would too. So I worked through, got the credits I needed... and nope. My mom screamed that my dad spent too much on getting the car up to pass inspection standards (how does that even make sense) and that we therefore couldn't afford to go. So I didn't get to attend that either.

And you know what? Honestly, I made my peace with it- with the fact that my mom will never care about me the way she cares about my sister, that she just doesn't think my successes are worth celebrating (unless she can brag to someone online to seem like a good parent, I guess) and lacks the empathy to understand why me having my parents with me at major life events is a big deal. I worked through that and made my peace with it and have quietly decided I am not even going to bother inviting them to any future events I have, unless maybe I get married one day, I guess, though I feel she'd still try to find excuses not to go to that if it was more than a four hour drive from her.

I could deal with all that. But she fucking LIED about it to guilt trip me. She lied that she WANTED to come and it was money preventing her. That I never tried to help her get to me. And that's the part that hurts the most. That she wasn't there to celebrate when it mattered, but now has the nerve to lie about it and play victim, as though I'm the reason she wasn't there.

She always does this shit! When I was a senior in undergrad, there was an undergraduate research symposium everyone in my major was required to present at. It was ALSO on Zoom, so no excuse not to make it. I asked her and my dad multiple times if they'd like to see my present my research paper on a Japanese death cult and the effects it had on Japanese culture. They BOTH declined. So I invited my grandma, who was happy to be invited, and my best friend even walked her through setting up Zoom for the first time. AFTER the event, when I was telling my mom and dad on the phone about my grandma loving my presentation, THEN my mom got livid and said she had NEVER been invited, and of COURSE she would have come if she had the chance, why did I invite my grandma and not her?

She doesn't want to share in important things with me but then she gets pissed if I then share them with others instead. I guess she wants to feel so important that her declining would make me refuse entirely instead (as with my Masters degree ceremony?) I don't know.

I'm just tired of this man.

[full-clown-car]

Something I really liked about Midsommar is how well they established how smart, well-educated people can still be horrible in their own right. Christian, Mark, and Josh are all anthropology graduate students, with Josh even being clearly well-versed and dedicated to the field. He reads books about niche cultures as a hobby, while on travel. He knows what an attestupa is and is eager, if somewhat apprehensive, to see a real one in person. He clearly goes in ready to view it with an open mind to the cultural practice, even if he knows how disturbing it's going to be, just for the sake of his own education. And he still fucking sucks as a person.

I think it's well enough established that Christian and Mark are kind of assholes, and also that they're mediocre at best in the field of anthropology. Mark's reaction to the grief shown by the Harga over his urinating on their sacred tree shows that he has no capability to open his mind to the cultural experience they're having about the defilement of this monument to the deceased. He wouldn't be able to adequately educate an outsider on their relationship to the spiritual world, because he is entirely closed off to that experience. You get the sense that this entire trip to Halsingland is, like, a super weird vacation for him. He cares a great deal about the experience of their drug trip and wants them to all come on together, but not because of any particular connection to the way the Harga use the hallucinogens. He just wants to go to a festival on vacation and do drugs.

(And yes, I know that the Harga are a cult. Midsommar is not setting up the viewer to think of their practices as such a great thing. I'm just talking about what the mindset should have been like from an anthropological perspective. Participants should be willing to participate with the purpose of learning what this means to the culture in which they are immersing. Mark and Christian have failed at that profoundly, and even Josh lets his curiosity get the better of him when he refuses to respect the way the Harga elders view their book of sacred paintings.)

And then there's Christian. I really like the way his character has been built, because we can see that he is consistently indecisive and directionless as a character. This isn't just reflected in his failure to end his relationship with Dani even as he began to experience feelings that it wasn't what he wanted. Christian seeks safety in the past of least resistance in all regards. We see it when Josh gets angry at him for copying his thesis. Josh isn't just angry about that, he's angry because he's observed that Christian has been a hanger-on through the duration of their graduate career. How did Christian even end up in grad school for anthropology anyway? We don't know - possibly he chose anthropology as his major in undergrad because he didn't know what else to commit to, and proceeded on to grad school when an immediate career path didn't present itself to him. Whatever the reason, we can see that in all aspects of his life, Christian doesn't really seem to fully understand why he is where he is, but he lacks the motivation to examine where he truly wants to be and take the necessary steps to get himself there. So now he's found himself in the position of needing a thesis done, not knowing exactly what he wants to say but having the opportunity to write about a once-in-a-lifetime cultural practice and knowing he can probably coast on a paper about that. He offers to collab with Josh, proposing it as a favor to him, which Josh sees right through because he can tell that Christian wants to collab with him because Christian will not be able to fabricate any real ideas about this experience on his own.

But Josh, man. Josh knows what he's doing. We see Josh reading the text on historical Northern European tribal symbols on his way to the Midsommar festival. Josh asks questions of all members of the Harga and deliberately arranges opportunities to learn about their culture. But let's talk about Josh's fallacies. He sees himself as an academic before being, you know, a person. His failure to truly connect with the Harga is reflected in his inability to connect with other humans in his own group. Let's talk about his relationship with Dani. He doesn't respect her because Christian doesn't respect her, and he likely sees her as an inconvenient hanger-on to his anthropological trip. Like all of Christian's friend group, he is well aware that Dani has recently experienced a major life trauma revolving around the act of taking one's own life and that of others. And yet, though we see that, unlike the others, he has a good idea of what's coming at the attestupa, he doesn't bother to warn Dani. It would take him all of ten seconds to gather an ounce of human compassion and be like, hey, you're not in anthropology, and you're really struggling right now, you might wanna hang back for this one. But Josh doesn't bother. If it's not serving his own academic career, he simply doesn't care.

Josh's failure to connect to humanity reflects in his failure as an anthropologist. A skilled immersive anthropologist remains empathetic and in active participation with the cultural views of the culture they have joined - or at least, open to them. From an anthropological standpoint, Josh should have gone along with the Harga elder's refusal to allow documentation of the Oracle's paintings, in the name of participating in the way the Harga view those paintings. But he was so tantalized by the prospect of writing about material that no other anthropologist had yet seen that he chose to violate the terms of existence held sacred by the group in the first place.

I see a lot of people talking about how cults recruit vulnerable people, and how this made it easy for Pelle to target Dani as a potential new member. This is very true. But there were weaknesses to exploit in the others that show exactly how they were drawn to Pelle as well. Mark absolutely does not understand what he's doing in fieldwork. He sees it all as, like, this far-out trippy vacation and he goes into it having absolutely no idea what mentality is required of him as an anthropological professional. Christian himself is vulnerable in his own way, confused about what he wants in life and relying on others to give him the direction he's not courageous enough to take. And Josh is so hungry to be the best academic in the field, so absorbed in the nature of his own work, that he is functionally wearing blinders to the human perspective required to be a decent participant of that work. Josh is a stellar researcher, but he sucks at immersive work. This is a weak point that Pelle absolutely takes advantage of, because of course Josh will jump at the chance to see the Harga in action without questioning what will be required of his own living perspective while engaging in Harga life activities.

These people are all meant to be a group of intelligent, driven young men, and yet they all still kinda suck. Even Josh, arguably the smartest of the group, kinda sucks as a person. I definitely think that Midsommar calls upon the viewer to examine that in professionals amid certain academic fields, and to highlight where many of these people think they are protected by their status as so-called professionals and where it makes them blind to their own vast personal fallacies.

[bastart13]

How would you rank the generals?

In how much I like them? Incredibly hard to say.

The generals have a fantastic group dynamic with them all being one insult away from killing each other despite having to share a breakfast table and ostensibly protect each other in war. That and the fact they each take a role as primary/secondary (second to the Witch Queen) antagonists in their corresponding protagonist's routes means I end up like one of them the most in different contexts.

Magnus is probably the least overtly entertaining, being the most serious and focused of the generals, but he gets some of the best fight scenes (special shout out to his final fight with Helena) and I enjoy both his pragmatism and absolute inability to kill without monologuing first. He's a straightforward bloothirsty man looking for power and I honestly respect the lack of complex motivation. Also, him getting addicted to soap operas in the modern world is some of the hardest I've laughed in the entire game.

Lennox is a bitch and I love it. His vibes are rancid and I have no idea how anyone trusts him enough to join his cult, but at the same time, I can see it. Despite being a coward and probably the least physically imposing of the generals, he can take a hit! Saerys has enough power to punch a tree in half and can outrun a horse, but Lennox can still put up a fight with him. He probably has the most entertaining dynamic with the other generals for being a manipulative shit, especially with how much Helena hates his guts.

Jinhai, then, has a really fun dynamic as the one general who kind of doesn't care about the Witch Queen. He's the most independent and really only cares about himself and indulging whatever freedoms and whims he wants, having more of a mutually beneficial relationship with her. This gives him great moments where they're all moments from tearing each other to pieces and he's just smiling and egging them on. I always laugh with how his reaction to Helena or Alain falling in love with the MC is just "fuck already and get it over with, we have bigger things going on."

...This is all outside of the moments where they die off like cannon fodder because the other routes remember they need to take them down one by one. Shout out to Magnus who gets sent to the shadow realm on a trip to town.

(Also Helena and Alain are also very funny as antagonists because they're played so much creepier. Helena and Alain be normal challenge, impossible. They've already kidnapped the MC and started stroking her hair)

[asingleshampdition]

Sympathy for Jin Shirato

In all honesty, I actually feel just as, if not worse for Jin, than I do Chidori; especially in Reload, despite Chidori being the most fleshed out of the Strega three. This character analysis will not include developments from Shadow Cry, as I'm not aware of most of its contents enough to include it. (P.S. There are no visuals because for some reason, Tumblr doesn't want to save with them.) I think the motivations of the three Strega members are very important. All of them came from the same background, as child experiments; and thus, we can draw fair conclusions from them.

Takaya wants to get back at the world for hurting him. He's a man who is very weak-willed, and wishes for death, as long as it means others come along with him. He's adopted this view in which his only purpose in life is to bring everyone down with him: as he's been granted the power to do such (in the form of Hypnos), he's under the impression that his life is meaningless otherwise. This is why he's so unwilling to give up the Dark Hour to SEES; he's unwilling to start over, because in his mind, he's built up meaning for himself. Takaya doesn't really care for anyone; everyone he comes across, to him, is either an asset he can use to achieve his goal (Jin and Chidori), or an obstacle (SEES). As much as I'd like to believe Takaya genuinely did care for Jin and Chidori, I can't see it. At the end of the game, Takaya becomes a cult leader; Strega had always had parallels to such, and cult leaders, like Takaya, don't typically care about their followers. Rather, they see them as tools, to get their way. From my point of view, Takaya is an irredeemable piece of garbage, in the games, and cannot compare to Jin or Chidori in terms of sympathizing potential. As previously stated, I'm not accounting for Shadow Cry in this post, so I don't really know how the pathetic wet cat man is portrayed there. Chidori's motivation is that she, quite literally, has no motivation. She finds no purpose in life, and therefore, doesn't really care what happens either way. In her eyes, dying just means she'll never wake up again, and the end of the Dark Hour? "Cool, more days to live until I inevitably die," is probably what she would've made of it. Either that, or, "oh no, Medea!" Chidori's motivations are so radically different than both Takaya and Jin's motivations, and I believe this is why she was able to break away from such a cynical, nihilistic line of thought, much more easily than the other two. The only reason she followed, and was loyal, to Strega, was because Jin and Takaya were similar to her. Other than that, she held no regard for them, and did not consider them friends. It did not matter, to her, who she followed. If Takaya had been a better guy, maybe with hopes of reform, she probably would've turned out better as well. The only person she really cared about, until Junpei, was herself; as selfish as that sounds. She considers Medea her only true friend, as a representation of how she isolates herself, in order to not be afraid of death. So, where does that leave Jin? I believe Jin, unlike Takaya and Chidori, possesses a trait that neither of the other two have: genuine care for the few people close to him. The reason Jin doesn't want the Dark Hour to disappear is very similar to Takaya's; however, as shown in Reload, this isn't really the case. We have to remember that Takaya, essentially being a cult leader, even before he starts such, is incredibly manipulative and charismatic. Think of Jin as a young, impressionable dude, who is at an incredibly low point in his life; someone who is emotionally vulnerable, someone who can be targeted. The perfect candidate for a potential cult member. Then comes along Takaya: someone who is kind to him. Someone who treats him with dignity, with respect; someone who is there for him when he needs it most. Someone who 'saves' him. Kind of like Chidori, I believe Jin could've fallen for anyone; it didn't have to be for Takaya, it just had to be someone who was kind to him during the darkest time of his life. Unfortunately for him, Takaya does not truly care for him, unlike the vice versa, and whatever kindness Jin experienced from Takaya may or may not have been an act of manipulation. Kind of like how cults usually target young, impressionable, emotionally vulnerable individuals. Jin was manipulated into siding with Takaya; and kind of like a cult member and a cult leader, the member would align with the leader's ideals. Therefore, I do not believe Jin's true reason for standing against the Dark Hour's absence is the same as Takaya's.

This is not to say Jin doesn't have a 'real' reason; unlike Chidori, I believe he does. His statements on 10/31, being: "If the Dark Hour disappears, we might forget everything that happened, won't we? / I'd forget you and Chidori, the things we did together, our time at the facility... All of it." I find this line an incredibly simple way of painting Jin in a sympathetic way; and yet, it's incredibly tactful. Jin values the time he's spent with Takaya and Chidori; he values them. To him, they're like family. They are what SEES is to Makoto/the protagonist: his friends, the only friends he's ever had, and he'd rather die than forget about them. The only problem is that both Takaya and Chidori hold little to no regard for him. I'm somewhat sure he knows this, and yet, he still chooses to view them in such a way; even after Chidori pays virtually no mind to him as a person, and when Takaya separates from him in the final stretch of Tartarus, knowing that Jin would probably die.

This conclusion does raise some questions, though; when Chidori sacrificed herself for Junpei, why didn't Jin say anything? Rather, why didn't he try and stop her? After all, he's mostly silent, and Takaya does most of the talking during the sequence. Strega's philosophy on death is to not fear it, as it is inevitable. Perhaps this is also why Jin does not show sadness when Chidori dies? To Jin, as well as Takaya and Chidori, they've accepted that they will all die someday, because of the suppressants, as well as their Personas. Jin doesn't view Chidori's death as sad, not because he doesn't care for her, but because Strega has already established that death is inevitable for people like them. Another potential reason for Jin supposedly not caring for Chidori's death is the presence of Takaya. As a cult member is to a cult leader, Jin is dependent on Takaya. Since Takaya only views Chidori as a pawn, perhaps Jin would take on Takaya's view on the matter; to Jin, Takaya is wiser than anyone else. I really can't think of any other reasons as to why Jin wouldn't show much emotion during Chidori's death, other than either one: Jin specifically referring to Takaya, and only adding Chidori in as an afterthought, in his quote, or two: bad writing. The first one I doubt, as I feel like Jin would be one of the last people to tell a half-truth (to Takaya, of all people, to boot); especially since his last name is Shirato (white door), referring to how he can't keep his fatass mouth shut when talking about important information with SEES. I don't really think the writers would make such an oversight; adding Jin's sympathetic statement, and then forgetting to make him sympathetic otherwise. Not saying it's not possible; it definitely was, considering the quality of the villains' writing in the older versions of Persona 3. I just find it unlikely. This all just goes to show that Jin could've ended up just like the SEES members, if not to a greater extent than Chidori. He loved the ones he was close to, and he believed in bonds, to some extent. Of course, maybe not in the way SEES does, but the point is that he did; and bonds are the entire premise of the Persona series. Takaya never believed in bonds at all, throughout the entire game; he's too focused on himself, so he's out of the question. Chidori doesn't believe in bonds until Junpei shows up, even with Jin and Takaya in the picture. Jin is the only Strega member who would go as far to die for his found family, the only member who loved his companions from the start.

The more I think about it, the less I really blame Jin for who he became. Like I've mentioned before, you have to think of Jin as a cult member. A cult member who was 'indoctrinated' by Takaya, because he was naive, impressionable, and a lost soul; looking for someone to love him, respect him, stay by his side, and 'save' him. Would you fault a lost soul, someone who is incredibly emotionally vulnerable, as well as naive, for being manipulated into a cult? Sure, you could view Jin as 'stupid' for falling for Takaya, but that's the thing: people who become cult members aren't always stupid. They could be the brightest, most mature person you know; and that's not the point. Cults target people who are lonely; who want love. No matter how bright, mature, talented, well-read you are; at the end of the day, you are not immune to manipulation, if the manipulators pull the right strings. I think that's what's most scary about Jin: his story revolves around how someone so bright, so talented, someone who was one the right track, who more or less had the right mindset about relationships, was thrown off course, because he was also lonely, naive, and lost. It's very similar to many people who join cults; his character, even in Reload, can be written off as just some cynical, Takaya-obsessed bomb maniac, kind of like how a lot of people write cult members off as off-putting, evil, and sadistic. I think Reload did a terrific job at exploring this part of his character, even if it was just a few extra scenes. Or maybe I'm just overanalyzing because he's my favorite character lmao, who knows?

[beevean]

I saw a few Netflix-vania nocturne clips.

And I feel maybe, unless im mistaken, maybe the series could’ve benefited on focusing on the themes of bloodlines and humanity.

Elisabeth is apparently Dracula’s niece. Richter is a Belmont. His game counterpart’s theme is about how the Belmonts have a responsibility against not just the vampires but Dracula.

Maria is related to the Belmonts to a degree. She could’ve been wondering why can’t she be destined to fight against evil such as Dracula, while richter’s favored because he’s the current last of the Belmonts.

So she’d double down on fighting evil in her own way. By killing everything that makes the world worse or bad, such as “stupid old men.” That could’ve played into what I assume was meant to be her dark side summoning or something.

Could’ve played into the motivations for humanity and its cults constantly resurrecting Dracula.

Maybe I’ll think up more stuff later. There’s a lot on my mind.

Your first mistake is assuming that Nocturne even cares about Dracula. They don't. Dracula is, AFAWK, alive and well somewhere completely unbothered by this vampire messiah wanting to conquer the world. He came back in S4, decided to chill with Lisa while Alucard cried for the death of his parents, and that was it.

They assured that Richter's arc will involve his legacy, and in S2 he talks about how the death of his mother made him realize that she died for nothing, but so far it rings hollow because Ricther, simply, doesn't really have a legacy beyond being a generic vampire hunter. Trevor didn't even kill Dracula, and we know nothing about Christopher, Soleil and Simon (we know that Juste fell into depression after Maxim and Lydie were killed by a random vampire). So far, nothing happened that would make him doubt the very purpose of his life like in SoTN.

I like Maria's corruption arc, and the idea of her falling deeper into a black-and-white mentality befitting her young age. The problem is that she was already bitter and aggressive in S1 as a fervent revolutionary, so her descent into darkness doesn't have a lot of impact.

Anyway, this story doesn't want to be about Castlevania, and at this point I'm not sure what it wants to be about. Colonialism, maybe.

[makingfanfictionstosleep]

My First But Not My Last.

Pairing : Gojo x Femreader, Geto x Femreader

Setting : Started from Pre-Cult Suguru Geto // Modified that Kenjaku will not totally take over Geto's subconscious later on // Girl bff Shoko, Mei Mei & Utahime, Strong sorcerer reader // Death, Murder Spree, Romance, Lemons.

Rating : Mature || m i n o r s d o n o t i n t e r a c t

Part 2 : Why?

<< Previous ...... Next >>

How did it turn out this way?

You sat on your couch..

On yours & his couch..

Where you would talk about random stuff...

Where you would sit lazily with a book on one hand, while the other mssages his head on your lap...

Where you would argue about something petty which xh would turn into a passionate make out session...

Where he would sit down surfing tv channels while you sit comfortably on his lap, his other hand caressing your thighs...

Where you would find him asleep while waiting for you on days when you did missions apart...

Yours & Suguru's.

Now, you don't know what you did wrong & when did it all fall apart.

You were there as much as Satoru was, as he is an unofficial resident in your place.

You were beside him, always.

How could you have missed it?

You knew his smiles were fake.

His cheerful attitude was a mask.

You knew it, but you trusted his words every time you asked.

"Baby, you worry too much."

"I'm fine, really."

"I love that you care about me, but I'm just tired. That's all. I promise, baby."

Because you wanted to believe that he truly was fine.

Even if your gut tells you that something was wrong.

If only you knew that night would be the last time time you'd hug him, see him, kiss him, make love to him...

If only you knew, then you would never have let him go.

"Come on baby," he rasped against your ear, "I want to hear you.," while he pumped his fingers inside you, rubbing the spot that made your eyes roll at the back of your skull, whimpering as he continuously fuck you with his long, calloused fingers, making you cum in seconds.

You breathed heavily, legs still shaking as he went down on you, hands spreading your legs in front of him, his tongue tracing your wet entrance.

Only then did you undertand why he took his time. It was passionate, it was raw. He traced every part of your body, marked every inch of your body - like memorizing it.

Because it was the last time he would make love to you.

"Mmmm, Suguru," you moaned as you bounced on his huge shaft, your ass tingling from being slapped by his big hands, "Oh fuuuuck," you held on to his shoulders for your dear life as he gripped your ass & thrusted into you mercilessly.

"Like that, baby?"

"Mhmmm," you half moaned, half nodded as he hit your sensitjve spot over & over with his poweful thrusts, "Oh Suguru, yes please please please baby."

You came on his member as he kept his pace using your juices as a lubricant. He bit your shoulder as you dug your nails into his back hissing at the pain & pleasure.

He flipped you on all fours, pushing your head down the bed as he slammed himself into you, making you cry his name. He slapped your ass over & over but you couldn't care less because it feels so good.

If only you knew.

If only you pressed for more... For him to spill it out because you can feel that something is wrong & that he doesn't have to hide from you... That you love him very much that you wanted to carry whatever burdens him together.

Satoru knew how you feel because he is as guilty & puzzled as you are.

You woke up alone in that big bed.

Drawers empty.

His number unattended.

No leads.

No residuals.

Nothing.

"Suguru Geto murdered his entire family along with many other non-sorcerers."

Only then you heard the news from Yaga-sensei...

You couldn't believe it.

Because he's your Suguru.

Your gentle giant.

"... Sentenced to death."

Your safe haven.

Your rock.

Shoko tried to call you, but Suguru stopped her because he said he might be swayed from his motive, from the path that he chose to take.

She said that he knew that you would do everything to stop him, to change his mind & that you would win. But that will make him miserable.

That will make him full of regrets

Full of 'what ifs'.

You loved him

You still do.

But maybe it was not enough for him.

And that broke your heart into pieces.

Because Suguru Geto was your first.

And you always thought he would be your last.

A/N : Typed on my phone. Gradually proofreading typos. Please bear with me.

[inexplicablepeas]

So I realized that I never shared my Blood & Gold re-read thoughts due to shadow-ban issues on the old blog, thoughts under the cut! It's long!

It was interesting to read this immediately after TVA, it really highlighted Anne's talent for developing distinct voices for her characters as the two books are so different in structure and voice. Where TVA is fevered and rambling with tonnes of evocative metaphor this is logically ordered and somewhat detached. This has none of Lestat's conspiratorial chumminess interspersed with catastrophic existential crises, none of Louis' melancholy poeticism, we're just getting straight facts from Mr Marius . So Marius' voice is a bit drier than a lot of the other narrators in the chronicles but that does feel correct and it gives the book a bit of a cosier and more chill vibe than most of the other entries. It's like story time with Marius. 

It's interesting that this one isn't framed as a book being written for publication but as a quiet and private conversation between a lonely guy and a stranger who showed up on his door step happy to listen to him. I think that makes sense for Marius, he doesn't seem like he would publish his life story, he's too private and he would probably have been more tactful land less honest about certain things if it was for publication - less interesting for us!

You do still have to read a lot of his inner journey between the lines nonetheless. He's not really telling you how he was doing day to day after he abandoned Pandora entirely (following an argument about how to deal with the emerging cult of satan worshippers) then spent centuries in Rome pretending he wasn't dying for Avicus' (and Mael's?) company while letting partying mortals have run of his house as he painted the walls subconsciously with dozens of Pandora faces... but you can imagine, he's probably not feeling great!

It was fascinating to get more detail on how he was recruited to be keeper of the parents and to see his tense arms-length relationship with Mael play out over the years. Eudoxia is a great addition to the story as brief as her time in it is and getting his version of Armand's story is very welcome (and of course interesting to contrast with Armand's telling). Getting more Bianca was also welcome, she's such a big presence in TVA, I liked getting Marius' perspective there. 

I've got some of the same kind of complaints I had with TVA about what was left out. I guess that structuring a life story that spans millenia is no easy task and it's inevitable that some stuff is gonna get left out. Anne probably didn't want to rehash the same events form different perspectives over and over again but I really was disappointed that the narrative doesn't touch on his thoughts on his reunion with Armand in QotD, the brief Night Island coven times, how Daniel came to be in his care (???), his reaction to Armand's suicide attempt (!?), how was it that he and Santino ended up being the team on clean up duty together for that anyway (???), his reaction to learning that Armand was in fact alive(!) and his subsequent turning of Benji and Sybelle.

Marius:

And Pandora of course, I hadn't read her book at the time of reading this so I was disappointed about how little detail we get on the centuries they spent together. You can imagine his motivations for leaving a lot of this stuff out, it seems that some things are still too painful to talk about and he is also telling a specific story to a specific audience here (to influence a particular outcome, perhaps? *squints suspiciously at Marius*) so it makes sense for him to brush over or leave some things out entirely but it's not always the most satisfying result for a reader that's already invested in these characters and their stories.

The framing device with Thorne is great, I can't emphasize enough how immediately I fell in love with this guy, this stoic but sensitive viking titan of a vampire. I found the final chapter to be the most exciting really, I guess because where most of the story is Marius explaining from his perspective why he's alone (apart from Daniel who doesn't count because he's too obsessed with his model cities, sorry Daniel!), it's all a foregone conclusion where we're heading and we know what happens to most of the major characters but once we get back to Thorne's contemporary POV hey, anything can happen! And thanks to Thorne, stuff does happen! He's kind of the MVP of this book. We also get a teeny bit of Daniel in the framing chapters at the start of the book and hey, it's nice to see him alive and still sassy, if a little worse for wear.

Overall I find it a pretty enjoyable vampire chronicle. I do love the lore of Anne's vampire universe, how rich it is both with historical details and with her own world building and Marius is, of course, very key to it as guardian of the parents for millennia, so I do want to know everything about him and I'm glad this book was written to give us more of his story. His chronicle of his very lonely life, caused in no small part by his own stubbornness and terror of losing control is sad and often frustrating but I did find all of it a compelling read. He's a very strange guy and it really is fascinating to get more of his perspective, even if he doesn't quite have the zazz of a Lestat or the poetry of a Louis.

[jotadoul]

upon finishing the series, my partner immediately fired up the film lol... third time's a charm.

and i genuinely don't understand why it gets such a bad rap! i understand wanting to see everyone interact more, but you already watched the series— you already know the basis and basics of their relationships and character, only now they've been thrown together through different circumstances. was the film, like many other adaptations, expected to be pure fan service? aside from playing some of the hits, the film doesn't seek to explore that. instead it's trying to affirm (and by doing so, critique/adjust) the deeper messages which were present in the series, but do it in a way where nothing else is meant to distract from the meaning. we already got the show, where all the core elements exist, but now it's about tightening the focus on what was intended to be said.

right off the rip it's such a stunning array of visuals and choreography, and a really smart lesson in unspoken worldbuilding which i think should be taken to heart by any prospective fantasy writer (or writers in general.) like it's a really smart detail that everyone on the black dragon ship* has to wear oxygen masks, but van doesn't, a) because he's clearly used to flying, b) this is much like the people of the himalayas who are used to living at altitude.

like it's important in the series and film that the nepal/tibet influences be known, like even through the continued inclusion of the yaks. it's great that the abaharaki (a word i've been studying heavily lol) caravan is a ship on land complete with sails. what does that mean for the terrain it most commonly traverses? but all these things just set up a fully lived-in world. they don't actually matter for the storytelling at all. what matters to the story is only the things the characters interact with/care about intimately. and that's how you learn— without needing to be told what to pay attention to, because the people you care about show you.

* (which of course looks like a dragon... badass... and cool that folken abandoned his wings and must fly around in airships, a cool form of self-torture i am certain. and "abandoning his wings" is in contrast to hitomi gaining hers, so i imagine that if it's physical— tearing them out— it's only because it's metaphorical, a symbol of his becoming disaffected and despairing.)

there is really no exposition, everything is told through action. i think it's great that we hear from

the bard of freid

the gadarasarai song

mole man's own predictions

sora's song

to really build out the world and ground the legend within it without actually allowing the audience to linger on/ask for more than what is directly shown. we're not doing tolkein here. tolkein drags. we're going for emotion, not information.

sora also, like varie, corresponds to the concept of a celestial maiden, which we know means her relationship is fated for doom— unlike varie, sora knows this/says this, whereas we can assume varie knew this and that it dictated her relationship with her husband and sons. she did marry a dragonkiller, after all. of course her wish is to stay there with folken, and of course death doesn't quite affect her in the same way. also it's awesome that folken stole the dragon fossil from his dad's house lol.

based on his role and motivations in the film (and drama CD) i assume that because van was too wounded, and hitomi obviously doesn't know the way, that it was jajuka, after hearing hitomi's heartfelt plea, who took her and van to adom. because that also speaks to his actions at the end.

i think people would be a lot happier with the film if there was a third cycle to witness. that's in some ways fixed by the drama CDs, but clearly they're not accessible to big portions of the audience. we're basically working within the framework of saṃsāra here. it's reasonable to be tripped up by a series which presents itself with european inspiration, but it still was made within a totally different cultural canon, and it's exploring both the intangible concept of fate and thru physical action/reaction— they even mention karma by name. it's not just a colloquial shorthand, but an actual thing. like any religion, buddhism can have a negative impact on people and i think escaflowne in full, but especially the film (note the shrine where a mech is represented similar to a colossal buddha) is interrogating the idea of the inevitable cycle of suffering, and, obviously, breaking it. linking that to war is a bold move! and both the film and show mean to tell us that conflict is going to exist. you cannot grant everyone's wishes, and because you can't, you need to figure out how to deal with conflict as opposed to avoiding or displacing it.

despite still being an exercise in visual literacy and inference, the film's purpose is to double down on and make certain implicit elements of the show more explicit, so that you in turn reflect on their representation in the series. that's what i mean about it being in conversation with itself. not merely referencing itself, but addressing itself.

i'm thinking about the scene where hitomi and yukari are sitting on the stairs after seemingly having a good day. we don't know how long they've sat there, but the first thing we see yukari say doesn't imply it's the first thing she's said. hitomi is sitting far away from her. the little wrinkle in hitomi's nose shows she's angry without us seeing her face. the empty bottle is on its side, which to me implies it was tossed there. we see the exit sign for the track. we see hitomi despondent, suspended motionless in the doorway. it's so affecting.

hitomi has ample anxiety in the series but we only get to see how that affects things on gaea. to instead show her with debilitating depression makes so much sense. and it hits so hard because it has an effect on the people around her on earth just as it has an effect on gaea. but it isn't condemnatory as it is in the show. it is WHOLLY sympathetic, despite and because of it being hard. it isn't a representation everyone wants to see— that you can be both a victim of severe illness and commit harm of this kind— but the harm that she causes is just realistic. it's not overblown. it's sad. it hurts and she is hurt by it in turn. and seeing her so desperate to disappear emphasises the nature of folken's appearance on earth. he feels very similar. it's grown into something much more fearsome, but he appears to her when he's... what, 10? 15? so we can only imagine what state he was in to accomplish that. bound by sorrow...

for all that he says, it's only at the end when folken actually explains that he intends to destroy the world to break the bonds of his and all suffering, and van's as well. that the sorrow of the world has crushed him. and hitomi and van's reactions to this are not of anger but of shock and desperation, at finally cracking his motivations, and they're so much sadder than expected. he can't have van come closer to him as he dies... he's been avoidant, he could've wiped out van personally but no, he couldn't. just like in the series, van is kept away from him, he keeps van away from him, out of care for van's safety— in the film, i assume that having van near him would break him. to be confronted by, challenged by, the truth of his emotions. that deep love. and doesn't want van to see him dying, either, to cause more pain. it clearly overwhelms him.

i've heard criticism that the film is too dark and brutal and that this took audiences by surprise, but that confuses me. the show was also incredibly brutal. there was graphic death and hard, complicated, distressing emotion. it was the packaging, the window dressing, which softened it to a viewer's eyes. but think of the death of the duke of freid. unbelievably raw and upsetting. the film's art style just makes that brutality more visceral. hitomi being petrified with fear when van and allen start fighting right in front of her is how we would also act— frightened of this world where violence is the common language— but from our distance, it just looks badass to us. but it needs to look this way not only because it's beautiful but so that the story can tell you no, it isn't, it's no way to live. the story is telling you that living this way, that power and violence are burdens which deplete you and isolate you, and at great scale, destroys the world. in this way it is a very political show just like all mecha stories tend to be.

i have a lot more to say but i'll stop here, ha ha.

also no shade to the dubs but they are bad. they're more like line reading than anything and so much crucial emotion is straight up lost... not only emotion, but important flourishes from the japanese actors like a character's teeth being clenched, or the slurring from a character's face pressed against a surface, the wavering of nervousness, or letting their voices become ragged and raw and scratchy and strained, rather than the strain of keeping it uniform regardless of what's going on. people still talk about how dilandau's VA had the RANGE. idk i got psychic damage seeing how many people on reddit were watching the dub, the NEW dub with that fucking freak sex pest in the roster. like alright... sure... you're going to miss a whole half of the experience, but, enjoy.

[potatoqueensays]

Heyoo 👀 So you said you could/Should make a post just for Bill and I am interested in his role considering the horrors you'll put him through (no pressure tho)

YEAH OF COURSE!!!!

(ignoring the fact I posted this early oughhhhh I hate you Tumblr 💥💥💥)

Unfortunately I do not have my collab partner on this one cause he's busy so you get my unfiltered thoughts 💪

I'll go up until weirdmageddon (calling it normageddon for now) cause that should be it's whole entire post, and also some more details will be with the mystery twins, not too much to miss ofc!!

Warning for torture and stuff, proooobably should've done that with the other post and stuff but I was tired 🤷‍♀️

Also Bill will be addressed as Will Cypher only right before he meets the mystery twins. Keeping some stuff from the original au but still with my spin, ya feel?

LETS GO!!!

So Billy! Little guy. Totally not an interdimensional freak yuh huh. Born with his defect (I hc it to be his eye being in the middle) that ostracized him from society. Parents tried to give him help and restrict his vision of beyond the 2D world, but he wanted more. In an attempt of freeing his world from their limited vision, he ended up destroying Euclydia in a massacre. Only thing left was a single speck that he keeps under his hat wink wink

Now when meeting the henchmaniacs, they don't go the full mile and instead do petty theft and trickster stuff. Bill isn't as much of a crazed lunatic like in canon so his actions are more subdued.

My drawing for timeline reference :)

Parties are still a big interest for him ofc, just....a little less arson. Now the nightmare realm is still receding in itself, so Bill still has the motive to make the portal cause he hears the prophecy of merging the realms.

He still goes to Earth and Gravity Falls. Prophecy is still considered deadly as yes, merging the realms is still very very deadly. Bill doesn't know this yet (tho even if he did he probably wouldn't care)

The Silas Birchtree stuff still happens, but the cult stuff kinda happens on its own without Bill forcing a cult to be made. It kinda just happens and he's like "aight"

Now this goes up until he's summoned to Gravity Falls by Ford. He can tell the scientist has potential and could make the portal for him, so they make their deal. Bill asking for the portal while Ford asks for power and knowledge in return.

Bill stands by, giving direct orders of what's needed for the portal yadda yadda. But it gets interesting once he notes that McGucket is having second thoughts (Fidds will also have a post cause he's very important in normageddon)

Bill constantly nags Ford, giving (mostly) empty threats to harm him. He gives him dreams of power when the man does manage to get sleep. Bill has a very distant understanding of how humans work here, due to possessing a corpse from his previous work and he himself doesn't really need to fill needs like humans.

Once McGucket is thrown into the portal all bets are off with Ford. Initially Bill appreciates the quick disposal of an interruption, but he reminds Ford the portal needs to be built. Constantly.

Ford is fed up with the nagging, he takes to letting his frustrations out on Bill. Bill doesn't bother giving the dreams anymore to Ford, just bugging the man whenever he's awake. Ford doesn't have a stable sleep schedule anyway after McGucket.

Eventually, Ford asks about possession due to him being a demon. Bill takes him up on the offer, but quickly regrets it as Ford is extremely hungry and sleep deprived. The hell is dizziness to him? Why does it suck so much?

Ford tells him he'd like to research him for the journal. Since Bill doesn't have a physical form, Ford takes to studying him while he's asleep or in the mind scape with Bill in his body.

He tests the limits of Bill with electro shocks, acid, nuclear waste. He blasts loud synthesized music while Bill is in his body and gaslights him for research.

They don't go out partying or for karaoke like the journal states. In this I imagine the journal is filled with scientific jargon on Bill and his limits. Ford is testing what limits a demon has since he isn't human.

Bill can't do anything about it, because Ford asked for knowledge in the deal. Unlike canon, Bill has to stick to deals and unless the deal breaks or Ford dies, he's stuck.

And he really wants this portal to work.

Soon Stan is brought in as the next assistant, and Bill gets a break from all the torture. He retreats to the mindscape to watch from a distance, hoping Ford doesn't get interrupted from work.

Unfortunately, Stanley leaves the project and Ford tries to go solo. When Bill tells him one more time with the threat of taking his eyes, Ford focuses more on torturing him. In the mindscape an altercation came up that ended with Bill's hat crushed, and the speck of his dimension used as leverage.

Needless to say he goes silent.

Drawing ref I did of Bill for this part 🎉

His color becomes more desaturated the more time goes on, less articulate and chatty. Ford is still working on the portal from the side, so he can't call off the deal. Ford falls in and out of sleep in free time, with Bill trying to possess him and actually get Ford to call off the deal. Even if it'll stall the merge, he could always try far far in the future, when Ford is dead.

Unfortunately it doesn't work, nightmares don't work either, as Ford just pushes back harder and digs up trauma of Euclydia.

Bill can try to get Ford to fall off the water tower all he wants, but when the body he's piloting is operating off of gallons off coffee and loud music it's hard to get a grip on reality.

Soon enough Mrs. Gleeful comes into the picture, and another break is given to Bill. As much as the years that pass by should seem like seconds to him, every second with Ford feels like years.

Bill can only watch from the mindscape as Ford uses the memory gun on Mrs. Gleeful, treating her like some machine that just needs a good reboot.

When Stanley finally confronts Ford, Bill thought he'd finally get a reprieve. Ford would call off the project since he has no materials, and he'd grow bored.

Unfortunately that's very much the opposite. Ford is locked in the bunker and tied to Bill, since he has to fill his end of the deal still. The shapeshifter talks circles around Ford, filling his head with ideas. Ford tortures Bill in his body, sometimes even forgoing pain meds for his eye so Bill can feel the pain.

Bill is forced to still give visions when Ford sleeps, and it only makes him more insane. His ego already growing to new heights as Bill can only watch.

Sometimes he tries to talk to the shapeshifter in the mindscape to get him to kill Ford, but they both know Ford could deal with them in a heartbeat.

When Bill is alone with himself, he thinks of forgoing his identity, changing his name and packing his bags to run off to some far away dimension.

Eventually some kids summon him in 2012. The pines twins.

Art I did of Will. His bowtie is skewed and his hat is still crushed. His cane is more than a prop sometimes. He's also fully blue now. Depressed and irritated with everything.

In the heat of the moment he tells the Mason kid he'll call him Dipper if they call him Will.

The new deal is to get inside of the head of a one Bud Gleeful for the deed to a shack. The same shack Ford had. He knows the twins are probably gonna just take back the shack anyway, but as long as it's not Ford's he doesn't care.

He takes the deal, going through memories and occasionally seeing Mrs. Gleeful. He feels a little bad for the guy, thinking his wife went missing when she's actually in the same town but practically lobotomized.

He almost succeeds, when Gideon and Pacifica steal back the code. The twins call the deal off, and he lets the anger get to him. Years of repressed anger at Ford will do that to ya.

Eventually when it's all over, the twins offer him to make it up to them with a deal. Accompany them to steal back a journal. Hey, if he's away from Ford, he'll take it. Plus they're kids, they probably just need a bodyguard.

They do not need a bodyguard.

I am telling you now, he is NOT a slave like in the original au. That kinda irks me a little, plus the twins are kids so why would they need a slave?

So Will is glorified butler right now. Used as a footrest or something to get drinks. They don't even bother to talk to him like a person.

He had hope in shooting star, seeing as she had a bit more empathy than her brother. But she uses him as a table for arts and crafts or a mannequin for sweaters.

So he's fed up with the pines family. Hell they didn't even tell Stanley! Will has half a mind to torment the guy to free him. He's the one that locked sixer away!

When the events of sock opera arrive, the twins ask him to retrieve the journal from Gideon. In an attempt to get it, he makes a hurried deal for a vessel to let Gideon get the code to a laptop. Seems to be McGucket's by the make of it.

He throws the laptop out of the window, being reminded of Ford after a comment from Gideon about the pines twins.

Luckily Gideon's body is more maintained than Ford, and Will can almost walk down the stairs without tripping!

Gideon pleads with him from the mindscape, saying how much the pines have been a nuisance. They have a talk before going to Pacifica's pageant (I should make a post more in depth about the kids on their own huh 🤷‍♀️)

They come to an agreement about the pines, and he makes a deal with Gideon to help him against them for the future.

He doesn't give the journal to the twins, Mabel and Pacifica fight on stage, Dipper does some backstage tricks. But they make it out okay. Oh also instead of "Bipper" it's Wideon. Widdle Wideon!!! (Very proud of that)

He joins the Gleeful's side after the events of it, sometimes asking Gideon to burn that journal of his.

Anyway!! That's where I'll leave it until the normageddon post. Still gotta get all my refs made and stuff before I can do that. I'm pretty happy with where I have it rn. Leaving Bill a little more in character than just a sad boy who's enslaved.

Thank you so much for your ask!! This was a lot of fun to lay out again!!! 🫶

[haljathefangirlcat]

Help. I think I'm actually hooked on the 2024 Fallen series. Yeah, Fallen like the paranormal romance YA Lauren Kate novel that I never read because every plot summary made it sound like simply another Twilight rip-off thing with a brooding male lead who just had to treat the Too Stupid To Live female lead like shit from the get-go "for her own good" or whatever. Also Fallen like the movie adaptation I'm like 98% sure I did watch at least once when it aired on tv and I said "eh, let's give it a try" but I remember absolutely nothing of except it being bland and boring and maaaybe also the opening scene.

I said "eh, let's give it a try" again with the series because my mom was like "oh, I heard this is good." And... it actually is good?? Not "masterpiece" or "pretty much flawless" good, or even "I'll probably still be obsessing over this in a few years" good, maybe, but "this feels pretty well-paced and I'm having fun and feeling emotions (and even feels), I'm actually curious about the solution to the mystery (even if I already know what I assume will be the main part of it) and care about the main cast of characters and want to find out more about the more minor ones, and... well, I just want to keep watching this to the end" good. "Do I have the wrong Fallen entirely in mind or was I just being a dick way back when" good.

I'm also glad to report that, four episodes in, the male lead is not a brooding asshole, the heroine does some very, very risky stuff but actually plans it through with her friends and allies instead of going off alone for no good reason except artificially amp up the drama, and I quite like them both. I don't particularly ship them (yet?), but their romance isn't some kind of grating insta-melodrama that just keeps building up and up to obscure anything interesting in the show, either. They're kind of cute, actually. I could do without the hints of a love triangle already sprinkled here and there, but the same "well, at least it's not being focused on ad nauseam" applies. And it's compensated by the fact I mostly like the other guy (in a kind of light "wanna put him in a petri dish and study him" way, at that) and also the male lead gets to have platonic female friends he cares about without the female lead needing to have a conniption over it. Plus, the way the characters go about expressing attraction feels a lot more understated than I would have expected. Which may be a weird thing to like in a romance series, but it just fits?? Between the horrors and all the deaths and gaslighting and "fuck it, we need a way to break out/find the truth"??

I have no idea how much was really changed from the book, or how. I do know that at certain points I happened to think "oh, god, here's Quirky Best Friend/Quirky Anxious Loser Best Friend/Unreasonably Petty Bitch 1/Unreasonably Petty Bitch 2 to really bring in that 2k YA Spirit. Can't avoid the high school dynamics even in a mental-institution/rehab-centre-as-a-front-for-some-kind-of-creepy-sect setting, I guess"... and now I really need all those girls to make it out okay, please.

Hell, I'm even interested in the creepy sect people. And not just in a "the heroes suck so bad that I'll get what I can from the villains" sense. I genuinely like that they disagree on how to run and protect their little cult and they seem to have their own motivations and inner struggles, and that the implication that they may be doing it all for A Higher Purpose doesn't make any of it seem any less fucked up and terrible and hurtful.

I'm not sure I'd wholeheartedly rec this show without a "yeah, the setting is literally a mental-institution/rehab-centre-as-a-front-for-some-kind-of-creepy-sect, and it goes into some really dark places in that context" caveat, as well as another one about how I'm not qualified to talk about how realistic or tactful its portrayals of mental illness, self-harm, anger management issues, emotional and mental abuse, etc. may be. I can say there's a sexually abusive relationship in it that I found depressingly believable in its build-up, with the actual sexual abuse itself kept mercifully off-screen. Aside from all this, there's a non-white character who tends to act as a bit of a handyman/Guy Who Finds Useful Stuff for the white leads' plans? But I feel he has potential to be more than that and I hope he gets some more depth or development.

All in all? I've seen Tumblr go crazy over things I found way worse in quality. And I might have a couple of femslash ships for it already. So, I'm hoping for both a second season and at least a bit of a fandom, lol.

[moonlitscales]

Do you have any Oc’s?

OMGOMGOMG!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

I'll start this w/ I have a blog just for my OCs/art!!! (I promise I'm not self promoting 💀)

Okay this will now be a mini rant on my OCs bc I've been WAAAITING to answer this!!!!1!!1!1!!!! (tweaking while writing this)

My current biggest OCs with a story are Sia, Nova, Diana, and Annie. Their story centers around a cult (motivation currently unknown), that is following Sia and Nova every town they move. Nova is Sia's older sister and raised her from a baby when Nova was only around 7-8 years old. The sister move towns almost every year, yet Diana appears in almost every one.

Diana is Sia's closest friend and secret stalker. Annie doesn't come up much, but has a history with Nova that isn't the best. Sia is unaware but suspicious of the cult, Nova does her best to stay as far away from any signs of it, and Diana and Annie and members said cult.

These are all their designs and a few things about them!!!

Sia Kitlen:

-She is a Siamese cat (surprise) with a liking more towards the scene style and listens to music a lot. She's pretty sociable and loves making friends even if she wont see them for long. She is a demigirl (she/they) and a Omnisexual with a preference for women.

I have a whole post just for her!!

Tid-bits about her I was asked!

Nova Kitlen:

-A black cat and Sias older sister with a TOUGH backstory. She's cold and barely talks to anyone besides her sister. She strives to be a fashion designed since it was what her papa wanted to be before he passed. She is aroace, but has had a romantic history. (not too open to relationships now though) She's almost missing her ring finger on her left hand and has the sigil of the cult branded on her back bc why not 😋

Diana:

-A soft/cutecore bunny who seems to follow the sisters at every town they move to; whether she shows herself or not. She's more soft spoken and gentle with a passion for photography, but is actually a HEAVY stalker and border line yandere. She's apart of the cult (I just don't have a name for them yet 💀) and her purpose is to follow Nova and give updates but really only pays attention to Sia. She's a raging lesbian btw, she thinks everyone's super icky but especially men

Annie:

(okay so I don't actually have a full working design for her yet but shes going be a "scary" or tough dog breed like a pitbull I just need to finish designing it bc she was originally 'human' 💀)

-Annie is a mechanic/inventor who works in her mothers/family business: "Annie and Bells" (her mother). Her family comes first, which was unfortunate when she fell for Nova only to have her pushed away because of the cult. She was originally supposed to only get close to her to get her back into the cults hands but fell for her instead. She a bisexual who really REALLY misses her ex.

Also if you've gotten down to this part that means you've paid enough attention to care and you deserve to know: Sia and Annie were old Welcome home Ocs 😓 I eventually separated them from it, but deAR GOD do I have a scary amount of art shipping Sia and a Wally AU T-T (also here's the cult sigil or something)

(spider :3)

But yeah! Those are my current biggest and most important ocs!!! I do have a few others but those are the ones I'm currently hyperfixating on :333

Here's a few extra just because and i'm bored

Clara is an old Hazbin hotel oc overlord own owns a makeup company and shipped with Velvette bc why not

Kai is literally just a chill beach girl. Made her from an OC challenge w/ my bestie lol