#i LOVE reading too much into things it's my favourite form of “analysis”

[thermodynamic-comedian]

i bring a sort of "sanders sides poses some genuinely interesting questions about identity and how we define and seperate parts of ourselves" vibe to the club that nobody likes.

[adoregojo]

secret admirer.

hihihihihihihihi, i cannot believe i actually slept for two days in a row? wth? and also that i never did this kind of posts? im such a lazy bum mb yall, I promise I'll write a real fic soon. summary: bllk characters as your secret admirers: isagi, bachira, chigiri, reo. how they fell, what do they do, how did they confess.

isagi.y

him. just him.

you once held his shirt collar to stop him from planting flatly on the floor.

and when you walked away, you walked with his heart in your palms.

yea, just like that

but honestly, isagi himself didn't knew he was such a big sap inside

and the moment he realised you two shared a few classes was the second he almost kneeled and thanked the sky itself for this.

an absolute swoon from looking at your side profile.

he once was long gone within the abyss of daydreaming about you, he genuinely just couldn't look away.

then got called out by the teacher for being too distracted.

definitely prayed that you didn't see that.

writes your name unintentionally in his notebook.

gets so embarrassed about it later and rips the paper.

still dose it again the next day and almost ripped the whole book apart form cringing at himself.

he once was musing over you too much to the point that your name slipped out unwittingly on the dinner table.

his parents couldn't stop teasing him about it, wondering when they would see you walking down their house door.

leaves love notes in your locker almost everyday.

it's something short and simple like: "you look pretty today."

then when he goes home he'll realize how dumb that was because you literally look the prettiest everyday.

dumb, dumby.

takes time to make the first move though.

he just feels like you're way, farther away from his reach.

it's okay, he still considers himself lucky to be one of those who got admire you.

he just hoped you saw him behind all of them, even if it was a glance.

chigiri.h

omgg pretty boyyy

despite chigiri being a confident and self-reliant, the trigger words of his old injury was like a pulling a pin of a grenade to his still-raw sorrowness. something that'll always haunt him.

and what dose he dare to say when they were nothing but truthful? like a salt to his wounds, he tends to just take it and suck it up, or at least try to ignore it for his sake.

but everything flipped when you stood up for him.

from that moment on. chigiri knew that he was far a goner.

out of everyone here he's definitely the most romantic one.

reads all your favourite books and analysis it.

probably named a cat after you.

like isagi he writes love letters for you.

just a little too poetic..

it it's short then it's something like: "loving you is like breathing." or "i hope your days are filled with the same joy you give me with your existence only."

but mostly is: "my definition of love, i see the true meaning of living behind your hue of life. you shall lighten my soul with your existence alone, i was born to see you shin each day, witnessing you is a blessing from heaven itself. the day that i stop seeing you as the owner of the stars is the day my body shall vanish, yet my soul will know it way back to you. from your only and one your admirer."

what a lovesick clown.

he might be a smooth talker on the outside, but trust me the butterflies of sentimental keeps on swirling in his stomach on the sight of you.

told his mother and sister about you.

it was his biggest regrets.

because the next day his sister shouted your name in a demand for you to spend the night for the 'meeting of the future in law'.

he had to physically drag her back to the car, freaking embarrassing.

couldn't meet your eyes for a while after that.

wants to hold your hand.

like, really badly.

it's just that feeling your skin against his cold, pristine hands must've feel like the loveliest, cosiest thing.

the thoughts alone are making him go crazy.

he confessed first, just couldn't help himself.

he just hoped if you would go to the end of the world alongside with him.

bachira.m

the sunshine boy himself.

the definition of fell first AND fell harder.

it all started when the class was ordered to work as duo for a project, something he always despised.

you may say that because bachira was definitely not having the word 'smart' in his book, you'd be right actually.

but mainly since no one really wanted to group up with him.

it was embarrassing, to just sit there and wait to be picked was putting him under the lights that pointed him out as the most pitiful creature in the room.

then you pocked him on the shoulder, and asked him if he wanted to be your partner.

and when he didn't see the sarcasm reeking from you, he knew he tripped hard, and couldn't find it anywhere in his feet to back him up.

it was strange, bachira never had a company, let alone a crush.

but the signs were there, and were painfully vulnerable.

painted you in art class multiple times; you with a smile, you reading a book, you sniffing a sunflower.

maybe also you and him... holding hands or hugging...

stares at your face a way, way too long.

he tells himself it's to crave your features better and detailed.

even he doesn't believe that however.

he draws your eyes a lot.

his second favourite colour is your eyes hue.

he was never the best at writing romantic poems, and his hand writing is just........

so he insisted gets you a gift!

which is a rock.

yes you heard me, rock.

he would even paint a little face with a smile on it and leave it on your desk by the end of the day.

almost went bald from joy when you had it hanging as a small march on your bag.

and when you had a bad day, that goes unnoticed by him.

so imagine your surprise when you would find two pairs of rocks, one kissing the other who had a sad expression on it face.

that somehow that foster a blissful smile on your face. like that little action extinct any remains of the past negative you carried.

and bachira was more than happy to be the reason for your happiness.

definitely rambles about you to his mom.

and his monster.

he once ha a dream about you two smooching.

cried when he woke up because he wanted it to be real more than anything.

you two confessed first, at the same time.

and boy was he dancing on cloud nine at it.

he almost smooch you that moment and then.

reo.m

it's mister perfect everyone, cheer.

you fell first, he fell harder.

no, literally. you fell. tripped flat on the floor.

and somehow, that made the reo mikage heart move.

?????????

love at first (fall??) sight.

he definitely leaves a trail of gifts for you everywhere.

your chair, desk, locker, bag.

he switches between chocolate and flowers to letters and perfumes, necklaces, etc..

you say how he picked them?

easy, see something that reminds him of you, he buys.

and it's pretty foolish since he sees you in almost everything.

reo is convinced that you're within everything that shins beautifully.

he actually paid the teachers to let him be in the same classroom as you.

paid even more to get a seat next to you.

rip to whoever was sitting next to you.

he once heard that a guy was bothering you.

the next day the guy was the talking of school because he suddenly moved out of town due to his dad losing his job.

hm, must be karma then.

has a shrine of you.

but you didn't hear that from me.

talks about you none stop to nagi and ba-ya.

genuinely sobbed when he imagined you with someone else.

has a flight under your name.

made a makeshift doll of you so he can practice his confessions on.

had a mental breakdown of the idea of you rejecting him.

reo can the most horrible, miserable day to a human kind to live.

then he sees you smiling

BOOM

he's all happy and smiling again, also a little giddy.

you once greeted him good morning, the next day he was planing what ring would suit you the most.

had two planes to write on the sky: 'will you go out with me?' and your name next to it in a shade of a heart.

now, you definitely cannot reject that. (Please don't)

have a nice day everyone.

[ozwriterchick]

Spencer Reid fic...

A/Note: This is my first Spencer Reid fic so please be kind. This fic is thanks to @navybrat817 who convinced me to give it a go when I had no faith in being able to write this loveable character.

Characters: Spencer Reid, Other BAU team members; Reader (1 mention of Y/N)

CW: Secret relationship; a bit of angst but not much; some fluff; happy ending; Spencer being a forgetful genius (yes, he's a warning); If i missed anything, let me know

W/C: Approx 2080

Dividers by @firefly-graphics

“Spence, you promised.” You sighed.  This was not the start to your morning you had expected.

Your fiancée, Dr Spencer Reid, lifted his head from his breakfast reading material with a confused look on his face.  He might be a genius with an eidetic memory and one of the main players in the FBI’s famed Behavioural Analysis Unit at Quantico, but he seemed to easily forget the most basic things.

His confusion only lasted until he saw the stack of envelopes in your hand.  “I was supposed to send those, wasn’t I?” he asked.

“They were supposed to go out a week ago Spencer.  The RSVP date is next week!” you reiterated.

“I’m sorry Maat, I’ll send them today.”

You blushed, after all this time, the pet name he gave you when he found out your job and obsession still works on you.

On your 2nd date, Spencer asked what you do for a living.  This led to a deep discussion about your work as a librarian at the Smithsonian and your overpowering obsession with all things ancient history.  In particular, the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt, Rome & Greece.

His question of which were your favourites didn’t take long for you to answer.

“Well,” you began “My favourite god is Anubis.  He’s the jackal-headed god of the Egyptian Afterlife and mummification and that kind of thing.  Without Anubis, none of the Pharaohs could enter the eternal afterlife.  He weighed their souls and guided the dead, rich and poor, into the Afterlife.”  You realised he’d gone silent and that maybe you’d just word vomited at him and had probably said Afterlife way too many times. You hoped you hadn’t scared him off.

You looked up at him and opened your mouth to apologize, when you saw such a look of awe on his face that you hadn’t seen on a date in a long time, well if you’re being honest, you’ve probably never seen it.  He’d tell you on the day he proposed that his is when he fell in love with you.  When he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with you.

You then, in much fewer words, told him your favourite goddess was Gaia, the Greek goddess of the Earth.

Spencer resolved, at that moment, to read everything he could about these gods and goddesses so he could converse knowledgeably with you.

After he'd done his research, which involved speed reading everything he could find, he decided you were his Maat.  Maat is the goddess of Justice, Harmony and Balance.  When he called you this for the first time, you asked why.  He simply replied that you bring Harmony and Balance are what you bring to his life, it’s what you are for him.

“You’re probably best giving the ones out at work you know, you see them every day.”

He looked at you hesitantly.

“Or are you still not wanting them to know about me?”

This was a small point of contention in your relationship.  Early on, you understood Spencer wanting to keep you safe from the pitfalls of his job.  However, now you are engaged, you thought he’d bring you into that part of his life more.

You know he wants the team, as his pseudo-family, at the wedding, but achieving that would involve actually telling them about you.

Suddenly a plan formed in your brain.  You were glad Spencer’s attention had returned to his breakfast and reading material and he wasn’t looking directly at you, so he didn’t catch on that you were plotting something.

“No, I promise you it’s not that.  There’s just so many important things running through my head at any one time.  I just forgot.”

“Oh, more important than marrying me?” you enquired, a little bit jokingly but also, a little bit seriously.

“Don’t be like that my love, you know that’s not it at all.  I love you so much, I can’t believe I’m the lucky guy that gets to call you my wife soon.”

“I know, it’s just sometimes, I wonder.”

“Well, don’t.   Give them to me, I’ll put them in my satchel now and in the post box on my way to work.”

“Nope, I’m going to send them.  At least that way I know they’re gone and you’re not trying to stall this wedding.”

“Sweetheart” he began, “I’m not stalling.  But if it makes you feel better, then go for it.  At least give me the ones for the team and I’ll give them out today when I get to the office.”

You filtered out the invites for his team, handing them to him and putting the rest in your bag. 

A few minutes later, as he was leaving for work, you gave him a quick peck on the cheek, reminding him that it was his turn to cook tonight.  You smile at the roll of his eyes, he’s not a bad cook but you can guarantee it will be takeout tonight.

You rang Spencer on your lunch break.  He usually took lunch around the same time of day as you, so you knew you could have a conversation without issues of people being around or listening in.  This happened most days he was working in the Quantico office.

During the call, you asked him how his team had reacted to the invitations. You were pretty confident he hadn’t given them out yet and this was all part of the plan.

After he left this morning, you noticed he had, once again, left the envelopes on the kitchen table, forgetting to put them in his satchel.  You knew he hadn’t given them out because he couldn’t, but that also means he hadn’t even tried yet.

“Oh, I haven’t had a chance to give them out yet because…”

“Spencer Walter Reid, I am sensing more and more that there’s something else going on.  If you want to postpone, or cancel, this wedding, you better tell me know.”

Spencer couldn’t believe you would think that, more importantly, he couldn’t believe he’d made you think that.  He knew what the fallout could be of everyone knowing about you and he was just hesitant about that.

"Maat, my love, I’ve never once been hesitant or unsure about marrying you.  It is a big thing, everyone knowing about you, putting you in the line of fire, as it were.  It’s just that massive change that is making me nervous.  Not you.  Not getting married, Never that.”

You sighed loudly. “I believe you Spencer, I just need you to back it up with actions love.  Just promise me they’ll all have their invitations by the end of the day?”

“I promise you, I will give them out today.”

About an hour later, you walked up to the Quantico building asking for SSA Aaron Hotchner, with the envelopes in your bag.  You’d mailed the rest of them, or given them out at your work this morning.

Aaron came down and confirmed your security clearance with the front desk and asked why you didn’t just let Spencer know.  You told him that you’d been waiting on Spencer to give out some invitations and he kept forgetting them so you figured you’d have to do it yourself if you wanted it done, and probably as a surprise.

You hesitated when the lift doors opened on their floor. Were you doing the right thing forcing this to happen?  You didn’t want to irrevocably damage your relationship with Spencer by forcing the meet and greet with the rest of Spencer’s team.

You stepped to the side so that you couldn’t be seen from inside their offices.  “Is this wrong Aaron?” you asked him.  “Maybe I should just take them home and not force this meeting.”

“Listen, you know Spencer loves you, we both know he wants this, but I get why he’s hesitant about, well, sharing you with the team.  Sometimes I wonder, if Hayley hadn’t been exposed to this..”

“Hotch, Spence told me all about what happened, it wasn’t your fault.  I just don’t want to make him angry by forcing the team to meet me, but we are fast approaching the rsvp deadline for this wedding.”

“Do you want me to send him out here.  I really think he’ll be ok with whatever you do.”

“No, let’s do this….” You explain your plan to Hotch who grins like he’s masterminded the whole thing with you.

Hotch opens the door to the BAU offices and walks in with you beside him.  You can’t believe this is the first time you are seeing where Spencer works.  Of course you see the back of his head because his desk kind of faces away from the main doors.  He looks like he’s deeply concentrating on whatever it is that he is reading.

Some of the team members are milling around one of the desks and when you walk in with Hotch they look up to greet him and you see the startled looks on their faces.  They all looked at each other, then back at you and Hotch, waiting for someone to say something.

“Mornin’ Hotch” said the one you pretty much knew to be Derek Morgan.  From Spencer’s detailed descriptions of each person, you were confident you knew who each person was in the group.  “New team member?”

“No Derek.” Hotch replied.

“Well then hello gorgeous Mama” he grabbed your hand to shake it and lifted it to his lips to give you a kiss.

You could see Spencer out of the corner of your eye and he was just working out that a conversation was going on without him that maybe he wanted to be a part of.  You saw him turn around and realise who it was with Hotch.  The look he gave you was both priceless and stunned at the same time.  You could clearly see the confusion on his face as to why you were there.

He stood up hesitantly raising his eyebrows at you.  You gave him a small smile so as not to give anything away.

“Well, I have some invitations for you lovely people to an upcoming event that you might want to attend.  So I came to give them out because my.. ummm.. assistant” you said pinning Spencer with a glare, that none of the team seemed to catch.  “Kept forgetting to post them.”

Spencer heard what you said and his brain was even more confused.  How could you have the invitations, he’d brought them with him that morning.  He lifted his satchel and opened it, realising he had, once again, left them at home.  He looked up at you, suitably apologetic in his glance and then put his head down, got up from his chair and made his way over to the rest of the group as you gave out the envelopes.

“Wait, you forgot Spencer.” Said the one you knew to be JJ.  A sort of best friend to Spencer, who you felt might be the one who felt the most betrayed that he hadn’t told her about you.

“Oh I didn’t forget Spencer” you said. “But maybe you should open the envelopes and you might see why.”

One by one the envelopes were opened and the shocked looks on their faces said it all, as they read:

‘You are cordially invited to the wedding of Y/n Y/l/n and Spencer Reid’

Derek turned to Spencer “Pretty Boy, you dirty dog.  You’ve been gatekeeping this gorgeous woman for how long?”

Spencer walked over to you, put his arm around your waist and replied “Oh, for about 3 years now” he happily turned and gave you a peck on the cheek.

“And you’re getting married?  Spencer, why didn’t you say anything” asked Garcia.

“And why are we only just now meeting her?” JJ again.

“Well, you know with everything, Spence thought it would help keep my safe if as few people as necessary knew about me but, as you can see from those invitations, we’re fast coming up on a certain day that you guys can’t miss.  Please say you’ll all come.  We would so love to have you there and I’d love to get to know all of you better.”

There was a chorus of yes, and of course, and Derek even put in a “try and keep me away”

You were so happy that this had gone well and that Spencer didn’t seem angry at all and that all of his work colleagues really wanted to know you and help celebrate your wedding in a few weeks.

Taglist: @wolfbeanpotion

Let me know if you want to be added.

[tavyliasin]

Villain-Fucker Angst Hours

Good timezone, darlings~ Are you ready to get all up in your feelings? No? Me neither, loves, but here we are regardless so the words are going to flow as they usually do... This is focused on Raphael from Baldur's Gate 3 and his fandom, but the latter section can easily apply to any villain fandom.

Self-Analysis of Devil-Fuckery, Or Why Do I Adore Raphael When He Is Very Obviously Evil: A Short Essay by TavyliaSin (Who Still Cannot Name Anything With Less Than A Full Paragraph) ((NSFW)) (((Game Spoilers)))

The following may discuss heavier topics, but without specifics, so whilst it should be safe for most to read without triggering any difficult memories please be aware of Raphael's entire vibes, the content and context of his story, and I'd also like to mention that this isn't a "woe be us for we are terrible people" piece, it's actually more about:

"There is an inherent kindness and warmth to much of the Raphael fandom, and I think there could be some common threads behind that, pulling us all in closer in a comforting blanket that we wrap around each other to keep out the cold of the world."

So, what in the nine hells am I on about? Well. Raphael-fandom is a wild and wonderful place to be. The rest is in sections, so feel free to skip through to what you feel is relevant to your interests. I am so prone to waffle I should open a restaurant~

Who Are Fans Of Raphael? What Do They Want?

We are feral, unhinged, all sheets to the wind "I want that devil man, carnally, and there is no force in all the planes that could stop me". There's the vanilla to the extreme and every level in between, tops, bottoms, versatiles, Doms, subs, and switches - there are a whole lot of people who would love to get their hands on either (or both) of Raphael's forms, for a simple smooch or something far more spicy~ [edited in] To add on to this, not all of us even desire him in a sexual way, for many it is romantic, soft, or even just the rather pleasant thought of spending an evening with drinks by the hellfire because he would be fascinating company. Aces, Aros, and AroAces may all find themselves well within the devilish corners of fandom too~ which is a whole other essay~ [end edit] So, I see you. I'm one of you. Extremely loud and utterly hingeless in my fan appreciation for Raphael. He's one of my favourites to write about, I seek art of him, and the same goes for his mirrored other half, Haarlep, who I arguably love more despite there being far less content of them in the game.

And the Fandom? The Vibe?

From my experience in the Raphael Fandom areas, we have a very deep and abiding understanding of consent, respect, and treating each other with an absolute and uncompromising kindness. We've had talks about keeping each other safe in fandom, exchanged details of people we have encountered who need to be avoided, even shared details between moderators of different fandom servers to pre-ban people proven to be creeps and/or art thieves. We've also discussed consent, including the issues with it in the game, and how areas of the story can only really be considered dubious at best and could easily be triggering for people. And these discussions have been open, honest, fair, and with the acknowledgement that most of us love these scenes anyway. So there's a sense of care that runs through everything, behind the horny-posting and fan content, behind the endless thirsting after our favourite fictional characters. We have a depth of kindness that warms my sinners soul every time I see it.

What Does This Have To Do With Self-Reflection, Raphael, or Villainy In General?

Well let's look at Raphael. He's a villain, obviously. He's manipulative, devious, and inherently evil by his very nature. He keeps Hope chained in his basement, constantly subjected to endless torture. There's also mention of how Gortash was sold into his service at a young age, clearly not an enjoyable experience given the other details and how things turn out (particularly as Raphael would need Gortash's own plans to fail entirely in order for him to succeed in his own and get that crown). And as fans, we accept that. We don't sit making excuses, or trying to say "well actually Gortash is a little shit and Hope probably deserve it", and we don't shy away from or conveniently ignore those darker sides of him with malicious intent to enable more evil to flourish. What I noticed, when I allowed the thoughts to continue, is that there is a theme here.

If Evil Can Be Loved Then So Can I

That's the core. Of course, darlings, I am not claiming to be a heinous monster. I certainly do not have a laundry list of crimes that would make the devil himself say "Uh, that's a bit much." But I sure as fuck treat myself like I do sometimes. You see, I think a lot of us have that tendency, to judge ourselves far more harshly than anyone else. Our patience, understanding, and forgiveness for others runs deeper than the Mariana Trench, but when it comes to our own flaws? One minor mistake and we think ourselves to be the worst beings ever to disgrace the earth. Thus, the villainy we see reflects how we are treating ourselves. So by loving and accepting all of those things that should be terrible, hated, we are actually learning that no matter how poorly we think of ourselves that we can be worthy of that same love and acceptance. We are extending the affection we are unable to show ourselves to someone we see the worst parts of ourselves amplified within. And that's why villains attract the people with the most kindness. The most forgiveness. Because it takes someone with a truly huge amount of empathy to find love for the embodiment of evil.

Or, IDK, maybe villains are just hot and we're too far down to care.

But wait, before you go!

THERE'S SOMETHING WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT.

All of this is about FICTION. We should never be accepting of the kinds of evil we see in the game irl. We do not owe anyone kindness if they do not show it to us.

What is hot in fiction is not always OK IRL.

Look after yourselves out there, remember that consent is key in all things, and please do try to learn to love yourselves, darlings, you are worthy of it and you should judge yourself by the same standard you judge others. If you are in doubt, if you are worried, if you feel afraid - reach out, talk to someone. There are many who will listen.

Treat yourself as you would treat a friend. You deserve that much.

Oh, and all Raphael fans who understand kindness are welcome around me, any hour of the day, I adore our little fandom circles and would gladly collect all of us together. I'm following a lot of you as soon as I find you, like hunting shiny pokemon~

See you in Avernus, my darling Little Mice, may we all find joy in the Cambion's Embrace~

[writing-for-life]

Nuance in (The Sandman) Fandom

Send me asks about everything Sandman-related!

I thought a lot over the past few days, partly prompted by discourse on here, partly due to a couple of “interesting” asks and messages I received (the type you don’t answer). I *think* they might have been prompted by engaging in discourse on topics like anti-blackness/racism, misogyny/sexism, TERF characters etc in The Sandman.

Fandoms are always getting super sensitive if someone shines a critical lens on their favourite works, authors and characters. So to make this clear (in case it isn’t already obvious from my brain-rot blog):

I love The Sandman. I love Neil Gaiman. I have an extremely soft spot for Dream (and Desire btw, who deserves a lot more character analysis than just being summed up as “villainous, sexy bitch”. One day, perhaps ;)).

I can read The Sandman and just get lost in the story, even after decades and many rereads. 

But I can also view it through a critical lens—these things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Not critical enough or too critical?

As fans, we can get trapped in certain thinking patterns, like:

“My blorbo can do no wrong”-syndrome 

“Characters with flaws are inherently problematic and imply authorial endorsement of those actions” 

“Characterisation and problematic subtext are one and the same” (aka overanalysing and looking for problems where there are none is the death of every story, but failing to see problematic patterns where they are clearly visible is a problem, too).

Don't say anything bad about my favourite character

I think this doesn’t need much further exploration. It’s not my personal way of looking at stories through permanently rose-tinted glasses (I always feel it stalls my experience, but my experience is not everyone else's). Some people prefer that type of escapism, and I’m good with that (although the downside is of course that by not willing to engage with issues, we can unwillingly perpetuate them). Live and let live, ship and let sail. But please, for the love of god: Don’t insult people via their inboxes or messages just because their opinions and preferences don’t align with yours. I’m not going to sugarcoat it or phrase it “nicely”: It’s infantile (and a form of bullying btw), end of.

How can you even like a character who's so horrible? And that author must be equally horrible, too

We have to separate flawed characters, even those who are written to be really problematic, from real-life endorsement of these actions. 

Author, narrator and character are three fundamentally different things, and don’t overlap as much as some people seem to think. 

We can write vile, despicable characters to make a point (for me, Thessaly was always a prime example for this, and I explained why here). We probably hate them as we write them. I don’t know what else to say, but this facet of writing seems to get more and more lost on people, and it’s a worry. Crying for sanitised characterisation is one step away from censorship. We explore what is problematic about people and humanity through story. That’s how we process and learn. It’s nothing new, but it becomes impossible if we can’t write flawed and even disgusting characters. 

Face value…

Since I’m mostly in The Sandman fandom, I often read that its ending is hopeless, and that’s supposedly the entire message. 

It is agonisingly sad, yes. But is it truly hopeless? I personally see it as quite the opposite, but of course that’s my opinion, coloured by my life experiences.

I also get that show-only fans often haven’t read the comics, or at least not the whole arc. And as such, their outlook from what they’ve seen so far (and choose to focus on) has to be different by default. I also understand that many people are quite new to the comics, even if they have read them in their entirety. I’ve sat with them for 30 years, and I still find new things on every reread (and I read it more times than anyone should 🙈), and I still don’t feel like I’ve understood it all. Perhaps because I still haven’t fully understood myself (and it’s unlikely I ever will). If there’s one thing The Sandman isn’t, it’s one-dimensional and easy to grasp in its whole depth.

I just wrote a ginormous meta on it, if you’re interested, it’s here:

Subtext, (not so) glorious subtext

This is where it gets complicated:

We shouldn’t mix up characterisation and story subtext. Overanalysing every line to death will always make us find something that’s “problematic”, when it really isn’t in the wider context of the story.

Zooming in is NOT always a good thing. Sometimes, we actually need to zoom out. 

But subtext *can be* (accidentally) problematic. Even in stories we love. And none of this negates what I previously wrote.

Stories have real-life implications of sorts, and we need to be able to talk about it. That’s where those slightly flabbergasting, hostile inbox messages come in, and I want to expand on that "topic of contention" a bit:

Neil himself confirmed that the Endless basically warp reality, and that this is why, after Dream’s failed relationship with Nada, many black women in his vicinity suffer terrible fates (Ruby and Carla in particular). And that this spell is only broken when he dies, and that it is the reason why Gwen doesn’t suffer the same fate. And said Gwen then gets used as a plot device to basically absolve Hob (who canonically really is a problematic character, whether show-only fans like it or not) from his slaver past. Once again, very clearly: No one is making this up. Neil confirmed it (for the comics, and that was over 20 years ago. It remains to be seen if his stance has changed as we move into that arc in the TV show).

I don't think it is correct to imply that Dream as a character is racist (I've read that, too) because he logically can’t be. He holds *all* the collective unconscious. He is also, strictly speaking, not white. He is everything and nothing, and he shows up in many different ethnicities throughout the whole arc, depending on who looks at him. But Neil played with a subtext here (reality warping due to a bad relationship which then affects everyone with similar physical traits) that will read very differently to a black person than it reads to a white person, and we have to understand why that is an *extremely* slippery slope.

Plus, we are supposed to see Hob, who *was* a racist at some point (you can’t not be if you’re a slave-trader—it’s impossible by default) as redeemed. And yes, he *does* regret deeply, good for him (and if I were saying this aloud, you would hear the sarcasm in my voice, because it is indeed all about him. We are to sympathise/empathise with him and his character growth while there isn’t much mention of the people he maltreated). But also: it was a black woman who basically forgave him (with dialogue that personally makes me cringe). And that black woman who offers forgiveness is not truly a black woman—she is a character written by a white man. And as much as author and character are not the same (see above), there is an inherent sensitivity in that power imbalance that we can't brush under the carpet.

I don’t think Neil is racist. Probably quite the opposite, and I can even see that his intentions were good from a storytelling point of view. BUT intention and impact are two fundamentally different things, and telling the story this way (comic version) betrays blindspots only white people have. Just like women have blindspots when they tell stories about men, and men have blindspots when they tell stories about women (and there are a few of those in The Sandman, too). And and and…

As storytellers, we can’t always speak from lived experience. It’s impossible. And that also means we occasionally make mistakes that look bad in hindsight, even if our intentions were good.

I guess the proof is in the pudding: What do we do when people who *have* that lived experience tell us it looks bad? If they inform us why it is hurtful, plays into old stereotypes etc?

Are we willing to listen and yield (both are the foundations of allyship btw), or are we insisting that our viewpoint as someone *without* lived experience is right? That lived experience extends to all lived experiences (sex/gender, sexual orientation, age...), and from all we’ve heard from Neil so far, it seems important to him to rewrite what he sees differently today. Whether they’ll always get it right for the show—we’ll see. At the moment, it looks a lot better than in the comics, and certain issues are already being handled with a lot more sensitivity, but a few problems remain.

Pushing back on criticism that comes from people with lived experience is problematic—I’d encourage us to think about what it looks like if a white majority in the fandom is basically saying that the opinions of POC are essentially “overreactions” (and yes, that happened).

It’s complicated. The Sandman was written in a different time, and I think we have to distinguish between things that weren’t really problematic at the time but have aged poorly (again, Thessaly springs to mind, and I have lived experience as a queer person during that time, so I can see it in context while at the same time acknowledging that I would make changes to bring it to the present day), and things that were always a problem due to blindspots. They were a problem in 1990, and if they don’t get changed, they are still a problem today.

This fandom is generally so much more open and nicer than others I know. But that doesn’t mean it’s infallible, because it’s full of humans. 

Nuance is sorely needed, in both story interpretation and interaction between said humans.

[gingermintpepper]

hi I love your tags so so much! they were so sweet and so interesting and creative and the whole Aphrodite type of beauty thing sounds really interesting do you have any articles and recommendations to read further into it??

-hogoflight

Hello my fine feathered (I am assuming possession of feathers if you are, indeed, capable of flight) @hogoflight! I'm always always happy to hear that people appreciate my frenzied rambling in the tags :D! I have a lot of articles and recommendations :D!! Ancient Greek notions of beauty and representations of it in their art and sculptures is a pretty well studied topic! There isn't any way for us now to know definitively what the beauty standard was (it varied widely from region to region and culture to culture after all) but here are a couple of my favourite reads about Aphrodite and what her representations tell us about idealised beauty!

Probably the most empirically extensive one I can list is Krönström's thesis which compares statues of Aphrodite and literary text referring to both the goddess and mortal women to determine physical ideals for women in five specific eras of Grecian antiquity. Including measurements of the statues there are many descriptions of Aphrodite as 'curvy' with a 'voluptuous figure' and with 'ample buttocks and bosom'.

"When the beauty traits are described in the texts, they are never extreme or anything that could not be found in normal people just that they are more beautiful in every aspect. Furthermore, the sculptures’ physical forms look healthy, they are tall and have distinct curves. Great examples of this are the Knida sculpture and de Milo (the Melian) sculpture."

Of course, these images are still idealised, and there was still a concept such as 'too fat' or 'too skinny' found in written records (and this thesis even includes analysis of pornographic writings and descriptions of the fashion and stylings of pubic hair of women from different regions!!) but from an interpretational standpoint? There is absolutely no reason why these can't refer to a fuller figure. Height was also a very important factor after all and over the course of many eras, it seems like being well proportioned in addition to the length and appearance of one's hair were the most important factors (and, like Apollo, greater beauty was given to those with curlier hair)

Mireille M. Lee's 'Other Ways of Seeing' essay which talks about the forgotten female viewers of Knidian Aphrodite which is also extremely illuminating on how Aphroditic sexuality and sensuality was perceived totally differently from the well documented male voyeuristic gaze (which was overly preoccupied with the statue's nakedness and therefore over-sensationalised the statue's physical appearance) vs women's perspective on the statue which is more centered on the beauty of simplicity in Aphrodite's garment and decoration and in her power and ability to captivate both in her finery and without it. I think it's especially useful in exploring the importance of finery, jewellry and adornment in representations of Aphroditic beauty.

"Some of the small-scale copies are heavily jeweled, especially those from the eastern Mediterranean, for example the Hellenistic gilded terracotta statuette in the Çanakkale Museum (Fig. 5) in which the goddess wears, in addition to the armband on her (right) arm, the following: a necklace with multiple pendants; cross-bands extending over both shoulders and hips, with a cascading pendant in the center; a coiled snake armband on the left arm and another snake on her left thigh, and a twisted anklet on her right leg. (The left leg has been restored, and might also have featured an anklet.)"

"Jewelry is especially associated with Aphrodite in Greek literature. As seen above, in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, the goddess adorns herself with gold jewelry, dress-pins, and earrings in the shape of flowers (162–3)..."

Finally, and to me, the most important one in the argument for an interpretation of Hyacinthus as fat, beautiful and fundamentally Aphroditic comes from Brilmayer's brilliant brilliant thesis done on Aphrodite's work and influence in Archaic Greek Poetry which does away with all of that masculine preoccupation with physical proportion, measurement and bodily ideals for a focus on a Sapphic Aphroditic ideal centered in clothing, ornamentation and, most importantly cunning as symbols of Aphrodite and ultimately a feminine idealised form of beauty. This paper also discusses Pandora and Helen in these terms and it is just kind of a wonderful read tbh.

"Combining Homeric and Hesiodic elements with her own ideas, she [Sappho] alters the way female beauty is viewed. For example, the Homeric war chariot – a symbol of male, military prowess - comes to symbolise the totality of Aphrodite’s power uniting in itself male and female qualities. Having addressed the concept of beauty directly, Sappho then concludes that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. With the help of Helen of Troy and her beloved Anaktoria, Sappho sets out to reinvent the concept of female beauty as a godlike, subjective quality that may be expressed in many ways, yet remains inspired by Aphrodite."

The conclusion to all of this of course is that Aphroditic ideal beauty is much more fluid compared to its stricter Apolline masculine standard. The nuances and understandings of both are of course, constantly being studied, analysed and scrutinised but really, if Dionysus who was both bearded and clean shorn, effeminate, birthed and rebirthed (and twice gestated!) and strongly associated with vegetation can be popularly portrayed as fat and handsome, why can't Hyacinthus?!

[yesiknowimshort]

this is how i imagine… TIM DRAKE

the bitch is back…. i mean me not tim, but tim is also a bitch.

thank you so much to my followers (i love each and everyone of you <3) for waiting so patiently for me to get myself together (still shaky, so again, posts might be scattered but i will be posting!!).

i wanna start a series where i do these long form character headcanons for the batboys (and maybe girls one day, i’ve just not thought about it aha) and so i obviously had to start with my favourite character of all tjme; tim drake.

obvisouly i’ve already done a suuuuper long analysis of his actual character which you can read here, but i want to do a more theoretical one that’s not necessarily wholly “canonical” but still in character.

a lot of this is also canon/inspired by canon - however, these are still my headcanons.

- to start off with: fuck the uwu-fication of tim drake. he’s a badass who happens to also appear soft sometimes but that does not equal wimp. you can have anxiety and depression and not be a an uwu baby.

- absolutely obsessed with star wars.

- has forced everyone to individually binge the series with him at least once.

- but also love island (he won’t watch the winter season tho) and the real housewives are definitely his guilty pleasures.

- overworks himself on such little sleep that his body giving up and him fainting is a scarily regular occurrence.

- but it’s not for want of trying. oh no. forgot to eat because he was distracted so his limbs are barley holding him up when he runs? ignores it. keeps going.

- he stands up too quickly, collapses, and gets right up and walks it off like he wasn’t just on the floor (p.e teachers would love him).

- absolutely insane martial artist -which people (like most things he can do/does) completely overlook or just don’t care about. this is also canon btw.

- my boy’s only scraping average height -he’s gotta have something to back him up that’s doesn’t rely on being massive n buff.

- he can easily knock anyone to the ground in a second, yet because of his small build and mmmm relatively unhealthy state, it goes unnoticed and sometimes unused -depending on the situation’s needs.

- people always overlook him because of his public persona (and in real life online it’s usually because of uwu tim), but he would be so cruel sometimes.

- seriously -please remember and use his pettiness!

- like he’d punch jason out cold for picking up his stuff and holding it over his head… put itching powder in dick’s boxers and bed for hiding the cases he was working on… roofy damian’s nightly hot chocolate so he’d miss family movie night because damian was pissing him off… true slytherin.

- but just like a lot of the things he does, it goes unnoticed/un-delt-with most of the time so he gets away with it. middle child tings.

- not to mention he literally stalked batman and would run around solving murders and dropping off the evidence to gordon before even being a robin.

- he was on the CIA’s watch list for crying out loud!

- doesn’t break the unassuming facade often, but if he went off the deep end, he’d be gone, and wouldn’t stop until he’s satisfied -or restrained (but that would be near impossible).

- scarily persuasive -some would say manipulative, i would say ambitious. i mean he did wiggle his way into the position of robin with sheer willpower.

- i think one of the reasons i love tim so much and am so fascinated by him is because of his capacity to be a villain so easily if he wanted.

- the guy has considered murder way too often.

- clint barton’s “i could do it!... no one would know!... but i won’t” quip about quicksilver is literally tim’s relationship with villiany.

- like if he decided one day to turn on everyone… in an instant he has control of a multimillion dollar company, can easily gain control the police, has dirt on every single person, and access to anything he decides he wants: and yet he chooses to do good.

- remember -he chose to be a hero. and he repeats this fact a lot.

- he could easily have the world on their knees, and yet people still decide to fuck with him because of their naivety.

- villain tim would be terrifying.

- his childhood and a openly loving and attentive family setting was stolen from him. he was always made out to be “mature for his age” and “quiet and sensible” when in reality he was just neglected and bored.

- being a gifted child always comes with its downfalls. like being so unstimulated by his schooling and classmates that he acts out a little bit out of boredom and a craving for attention from his parents; not to mention the social rejection because he’s too far past his peer's antics.

- he’d be super socially unaware for his age group as a child (kind of like damian i guess). being an only child surrounded by adults (yet forever alone and isolated) would’ve prevented him from ever connecting with fellow kids and their interests.

- (anyone else relate to not ever finding kiddy humour funny in primary school?)

- so now he likes doing a lot of random “childish” things like skating down the halls in the manor, having a gamer chair as his office chair, playing his nintendo switch in his wayne ent. office with his feet rested on the desk when he’s bored, having bento box lunches filled with sugary cereal and roll-ups, having a mini fridge in his office exclusively filled with yakults, iced coffee cartons and redbull, being fully versed in gen z lingo (which he uses correctly don’t worry) that he uses to talk to people he works with and interacts with at galas etc etc.

- likes to leave little notes in library books for the next person to find; often mildly threatening like “i know what you did”, for no other reason other than to have a little gremlin cackle to himself when he thinks about it.

- definitely has nearsightedness, though he hardly ever wears his glasses “because they’re impractical and contacts are torture devices” (bruce practically has to strap him down to get the camera contacts in for patrol).

- when he’s not drinking coffee, he’s chewing gum or mints to counteract the coffee.

- ambidextrous, but favours his left hand meaning his already inconceivably messy quick notes are also smudged by his hand.

- hands are always cold and numb (leading everyone to believe he probably has rayynaud’s syndrome).

- he gets really nervous and tries to avoid people being able to touch his hands, like when they’re handing something to him, or makes sure handshakes are firm and quick -but still respectful- etc (but he loves hand holding, he just worries no one would want to).

- really good at taking in information and his surroundings quickly.

- often points things out to people that would otherwise go unnoticed like “your eyes look really pretty today” or “your freckles have darkened from the sun” or “they ordered two sugars with their coffee… they always order three” etc.

- he doesn’t constantly say the things he’s thinking, but they come out a lot more when he’s losing his filter from fatigue.

- he’s always apologising offhandedly for pointing out things (more annoyed at himself than anything) bc he thinks they’ll think he’s weird or become uncomfortable.

- tim is allergic to almost all nuts except for almonds (wog runs through my veins, i refuse to believe he can’t eat almonds).

- he’s not like epipen allergic, all he needs is some cetirizine.

- bc of this “relatively low risk” (as he would say), if he accidentally eats a nut he’ll usually just not tell anyone while his throat is closing over and his mouth feels like it’s been attacked by mosquitoes.

- he’ll just silently slip away to buy some cetirizine or get some from his pocket/bag.

- this sweet old lady at a charity bake sale once offered tim to try a free slice of her baklava, which of course, has walnuts in it.

- and he was too anxious to refuse so he took it and finished the whole thing in front of her.

- it took him about 20 minutes and to the point where he was crying and his lips looked like they had fillers that he whispered to bruce he was having a reaction.

- bruce was hysterical.

- like- national news “funny internet clip report” hysterical.

- he always carries cetirizine on him now just in case tim does that again.

[lilioopdf]

pepe analysis pepe rambles 

sorry idk i just talk a lot 😭😭 this isn't anything overly pepe it's just my thoughts on his recent interview but i have written pepe fics if anyone thinks they'd rather read that instead 👍

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Q: Who are you good friends with on the grid?

“...friends is a difficult term, so it's hard to say it, I don't know if they will call me it back” PEPEEEE 🙁☹️☹️ darling omg he’s actually just like me because i refrain from calling people my friends or from even saying their name because it feels way too intimate but to know that he feels the same way :( it’s okay if i suffer with feelings like this but pepe?? he is so so loved and i’m sure his friends love him too but ah

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Q: What Is your favourite cheat meal?”

“I don't really have one. Actually, I do. Chocolate Coulant.” indecisive king 😍😍 thinking as he speaks LOL my favourite little rambler 

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Q: If you could relive a moment in your career what would it be?

“... I don't think there is a specific point I would go back to. I've had a lot of highs in my life, a lot of great moments, I've spent lots of years in school, with a lot of my best friends, and last year I had a really nice moment when I received the grades back and you're done with school and you've passed everything you wanted to pass, so that's a rewarding moment. Moments like that are where you feel really happy with yourself and proud that you made it through.” 

so so true idk this isn’t even a pepe analysis it’s just for me to second everything pepe says and like yeah last year i genuinely thought i was close to failing two subjects (one of which i had failed for the past three years) but like i had good people around me who had faith in me and guess what? double distinctions for both so yay but also my anxiety disorder was so bad for one of the subjects and i thought the teacher kept giving me good grades because they felt bad but then it was a national exam and i was graded anonymously by a random teacher in the city and i still got an A and aaaa idk i just get how he feels to know that everything paid off in the end (and it always will, if you learn to love the people and things around you daily, because beauty exists in all forms but especially in the people you love who love you back) but yes everything always works out in the end and i have faith that this season will turn out perfectly well for him in the end, regardless of the way it looks rn

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Q: What would you do as a job if you couldn’t be a racing driver?

“I'd say probably an engineer. I'd still be in the motorsport world because I love it and I probably would have found myself here somehow.” cute, honestly. invisible strings or something… to feel and know that you belong in a place so deeply that you can say with conviction that you would’ve found your way back here regardless of circumstances is sweet and honestly admirable.

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Q: What is your favourite movie or tv show?

“Recently I've been changing a lot. I used to watch many different things and recently I watched anime for the first few times and that's been pulling me in quite a lot. There is a boxing one called Hajime no Ippo, that one is really good, I really like that one, it's a really good show. Film, that's really hard, not sure, maybe Italian Job or Baby driver, those are some good ones, or Oppenheimer, it's really good.” i'm leaving his full response in because i’m sure there are anime lovers who want to hear that but also go pepe i love baby driver too but above all, the fact that he went, “that one is really good, i really like that one, it’s a really good show.” like yes preach pepe!! let the world know just how much you love Hajime no Ippo!!

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Q: What’s the funniest/most embarrassing thing you’ve done?

“I don’t really remember it, but it must have been quite funny. We had a pool where I used to live and I was cycling round it, I was like six, and I had my PJs on and I was just cycling at like 9pm or whatever, and I fell into the pool with the bike. That has to be up there somewhere. I don't remember it, but that's a good one. Not sure my mum was very happy about it.

“I don’t remember it, but it must have been quite funny” and “I don’t remember it, but that’s a good one. Not sure my mum was very happy about it.” he’s so so cute 😭😭

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Q: What is your dream birthday cake?

“It's not a cake but the apple crumble. It's really good. A sweet apple crumble with vanilla ice cream.”

 (“It's really good with the vanilla ice cream on top, that's a good one.” (pepe marti, about chocolate coulant)) hmm there seems to be a bit of a pattern with sweet desserts that come with vanilla ice cream… can’t blame him though i love love love vanilla ice cream too so at least we're twinning in that aspect 😊🤞

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Q: What is your most treasured possession?

“It’s going to sound really spiritual but my friends. It's really hard to keep friends when you are away for so long and I have a really tight group of friends that I belong to and it really helps when you can get back home and you can go do something with them, and you go out and have dinner, it helps you disconnect and also my family.” 

cute. he’s such a sweetheart and he’s so lovely and so open about being grateful about the people in his life and idk i just think it’s so nice. plus the whole thing about keeping friends when you’re away for so long is true but i’m just happy that he actually has a space and community to go home to because home is always where the heart is and at least his heart is safe with people with the he loves.

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Q: What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

“To follow the process…  to follow a plan was his advice to me when I started racing and for life also. It's good advice.” good job pepe👍personally i procrastinated my way through this first semester of my new school but now i will take this piece of advice and draft out a schedule to post my writing pieces of you 😊💗(and also i’m very very sure he’s mentioned this before in a previous interview and i just think it’s so sweet to know that he actually does value his father’s words even after all this time)

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Q: What is your favourite place you’ve ever been to and one you’ve never been to that you’d like to visit?

“I don't have one. I have a lot of places I've really liked, like London, Berlin, Melbourne, a lot of places I've really liked. Not one stood out more to me and one that I would like to see probably Tokyo.” so cute idk i don’t have much to say about this but something about this is just endearing to me

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[longagoitwastuesday]

So so indebted to u for posting those lovely illustrations from Cyrano <333 & even more so for yr tags!! I'm completely in love w yr analysis, please feel free to ramble as long as u wish! Browsing through yr Cyrano de Bergerac tag has given me glimpses of so many adaptations & translations I'd never heard of before! I'll be watching the Solès version next, which I have only discovered today through u ^_^ As for translations, have u read many/all of them? I've only encountered the Renauld & Burgess translations in the wild, & I was curious to hear yr translation thoughts that they might guide my decision on which one I buy first (not necessarily Renauld or Burgess ofc). Have a splendid day & sorry for the likespam! 💙

Sorry for the delay. Don't mind the likespam, I'm glad you enjoyed my tags about Cyrano, and that they could contribute a bit to a further appreciation of the play. I loved it a lot, I got obsessed with it for months. It's always nice to know other people deeply love too that which is loved haha I hope you enjoy the Solès version, it may well be my favourite one!

About translations, I'm touched you're asking me, but I don't really know whether mine is the best opinion to ask. I have read... four or five English translations iirc, the ones I could find online, and I do (and especially did, back when I was reading them) have a lot of opinions about them. However, nor English nor French are my first languages (they are third and fourth respectively, so not even close). I just read and compare translations because that's one of my favourite things to do.

The fact is that no translation is perfect, of course. I barely remember Renauld's, but I think it was quite literal; that's good for understanding the basics of the text, concepts and characters, but form is subject, and there's always something that escapes too literal translations. Thomas and Guillemard's if I recall correctly is similar to Hooker's in cadence. It had some beautiful fragments, some I preferred over Hooker's, but overall I think to recall I liked Hooker's more. If memory serves, Hooker's was the most traditionally poetic and beautiful in my opinion. Burgess' is a whole different thing, with its perks and drawbacks.

Something noticeable in the other translations is that they are too... "epic". They do well the poetic, sorrowful, grief stricken, crushed by regrets aspects of Cyrano and the play in general, but they fall quite short in the funny and even pathetic aspects, and that too is key in Cyrano, both character and play. Given the characteristics of both languages, following the cadence of the French too literally, with those long verses, makes an English version sound far too solemn at times when the French text isn't. Thus Burgess changes the very cadence of the text, adapting it more to the English language. This translation is the one that best sets the different moods in the play, and as I said before form is subject, and that too is key: after all, the poetic aspect of Cyrano is as much true as his angry facet and his goofy one. If Cyrano isn't funny he isn't Cyrano, just as he wouldn't be Cyrano without his devotion to Roxane or his insecurities; Cyrano is who he is precisely because he has all these facets, because one side covers the other, because one trait is born from another, because one facet is used as weapon to protect the others, like a game of mirrors and smoke. We see them at different points through the play, often converging. Burgess' enhances that. He plays with the language itself in form and musicality, with words and absences, with truths masking other truths, with things stated but untold, much like Cyrano does. And the stage directions, poetic and with literary value in their own right in a way that reminded me of Valle Inclán and Oscar Wilde, interact with the text at times in an almost metatextual dimension that enhances that bond Cyrano has with words, giving them a sort of liminal air and strengthening that constant in the play: that words both conceal and unveil Cyrano, that in words he hides and words give him away.

But not all is good, at all. Unlike Hooker, Burgess reads to me as not entirely understanding every facet of the characters, and as if he didn't even like the play all that much, as if he had a bit of a disdainful attitude towards it, and found it too mushy. Which I can understand, but then why do you translate it? In my opinion the Burgess' translation does well bending English to transmit the different moods the French text does, and does pretty well understanding the more solemn, cool, funny, angry, poetic aspects of Cyrano, but less so his devotion, vulnerability, insecurities and his pathetism. It doesn't seem to get Roxane at all, how similar she is to Cyrano, nor why she has so many admirers. It does a very poor job at understanding Christian and his value, and writes him off as stupid imo. While I enjoyed the language aspect of the Burgess translation, I remember being quite angry at certain points reading it because of what it did to the characters and some changes he introduces. I think he did something very questionable with Le Bret and Castel-Jaloux, and I remember being incensed because of Roxane at times (for instance, she doesn't go to Arras in his version, which is a key scene to show just how much fire Roxane has, and that establishes several parallels with Cyrano, in attitude and words, but even in act since she does a bit what Cyrano later does with the nuns in the last act), and being very angry at several choices about Christian too. While not explicitly stated, I think the McAvoy production and the musical both follow this translation, because they too introduce these changes, and they make Christian as a character, and to an extent the entire play, not make sense.

For instance, once such change is that Christian is afraid that Roxane will be cultured (McAvoy's version has that infamous "shit"/"fuck" that I detest), when in the original French it's literally the opposite. He is not afraid she will be cultured, he is afraid she won't, because he does love and appreciate and admires those aspects of her, as he appreciates and admires them in Cyrano. That's key! Just as Cyrano longs to have what Christian has, Christian wants the same! That words escape him doesn't mean he doesn't understand or appreciate them. The dynamics make no sense without this aspect, and Burgess (and the productions that directly or indirectly follow him) constantly erases this core trait of Christian.

Another key moment of Christian Burgess butchers is the scene in Arras in which Christian discovers the truth. Burgess writes their discussion masterfully in form, it's both funny and poignant, but it falls short in concept: when Cyrano tells him the whole discussion about who does Roxane love and what will happen, what they'll do, is academic because they're both going to die, Christian states that dying is his role now. This destroys entirely the thing with Christian wanting Roxane to have the right to know, and the freedom to choose, or to refuse them both. As much as Cyrano proclaims his love for truth and not mincing words even in the face of authority, Cyrano is constantly drunk on lies and mirages, masks and metaphors. It's Christian who wants it all to end, the one who wants real things, the one who wants to risk his own happiness for the chance of his friend's, as well as for the woman he loves to stop living in a lie. That is a very interesting aspect of Christian, and another aspect in which he is written as both paralleling and contrasting Cyrano. It's interesting from a moral perspective and how that works with the characters, but it's also interesting from a conceptual point of view, both in text and metatextually: what they hold most dear, what they most want, what most fulfills them, what they most fear, their different approaches to life, but also metatextually another instance of that tears/blood motif and its ramifications constant through the whole text. Erasing that climatic decision and making him just simply suicidal erases those aspects of Christian and his place in the Christian/Cyrano/Roxane dynamic, all for plain superficial angst, that perhaps hits more in the moment, but holds less meaning.

Being more literal, and more solemn, Hooker's translation (or any of the others, but Hooker's seems to love the characters and understand them) doesn't make these conceptual mistakes. Now, would I not recommend reading Burgess' translation? I can't also say that. I had a lot of fun reading it, despite the occasional anger and indignation haha Would I recommend buying it? I recommend you give an eye to it first, if you're tempted and can initially only buy one.

You can read Burgess' translation entirely in archive.com. You can also find online the complete translations of Renauld, Hooker and Thomas and Guillemard. I also found a fifth one, iirc, but I can't recall it right now (I could give a look). You could read them before choosing, or read your favourite scenes and fragments in the different translations, and choose the one in which you like them better. That's often what I do.

Edit: I've checked to make sure and Roxane does appear in Arras in the translation. It's in the introduction in which it is stated that she doesn't appear in the production for which the translation was made. The conceptualisation of Roxane I criticise and that in my opinion is constant through the text does stay, though.

[liraleinil]

So. I finished reading the Captive Prince trilogy in three days (just the novels, not the short stories) and I am feeling a lot of things, but mostly I'm feeling vaguely frustrated. It's hard to articulate how I feel. I enjoyed the books while I was reading them, even though some parts made me cringe. But that's not the problem.

The problem is the Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett. I feel like at least some people who liked the Captive Prince books would love Dunnett but I've found that recommending the books rarely sticks. 

If you're expecting an epic gay romance, you won't find it in Lymond. But a lot of the other elements in the Captive Prince series are there, along with great writing, a complex cast of characters, and plots and ploys abound. I don't read much historical fiction, but Dunnett was so good, it sucked me completely in, despite knowing very little of the history and setting. (Not so different from reading fantasy, really.) 

Anyway! Spoiler warnings for all the Captive Prince novels and the Lymond Chronicles, though it's less explicit for the latter.

Let's get the obvious thing out of the way. My favourite book series is the Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett, six historical fiction novels set in the 1500s, spanning from Scotland to Europe to Turkey to France, featuring a blond-haired, blue-eyed, minor Scottish nobleman known as Francis Crawford of Lymond. I'm sure other people have pointed out the similarity between the two series and the characters Laurent and Lymond and there has been analysis by people much more eloquent than me. 

I started reading Captive Prince one afternoon and finished it before midnight. I went on to read Prince's Gambit simply because Laurent was acting so Lymond-like that I had to find out what he was up to. I immediately suspected he knew who Damen was from the start because that's the sort of annoying leaps of logic Lymond makes, with his cornflower blue eyes glittering with malice — that's how similar they are.

I'm not one of those people who can't enjoy a book because something like it has already been done before. I'm always looking for books that could bring me back to that same kind of excitement I found when I first read the Lymond Chronicles. One of the reasons I picked up Captive Prince was because of the comparisons made to Lymond.

It's just that I feel a bit cheated that, despite all the similarities, I don't think it would be easy to get people to read the Lymond Chronicles after getting into Captive Prince. It's too dense, too full of historical references, too many quotes in too many languages. Too clever. 

Who knows whether the parallels in the two series were intentional or not. At the start of the first book, The Game of Kings, Lymond gets drunk before he goes off to rob his mother, Sybilla, and set her castle on fire. Here's part of his conversation with her. You can see why everyone around him wants to stab him. He's more loquacious than Laurent, at any rate.

Yes, he even has an older brother. Lymond goes and antagonises Richard almost immediately after this. I think that was the point where I started wondering, This is the man we're supposed to get behind? Quite the antihero, Francis Crawford of Lymond. 

There are other things. They don't play the same part or advance the narrative the same way in both stories, but the fact that they are there just … I'm not even sure what to say. Imitation is the best form of flattery? There are disguises with hilarious consequences, trials where every single piece of evidence is disputed, exhilarating chases over the rooftops of Paris, whips and whipping posts, royal hunts that don't end well, ridiculous acrobatics on horses, babies of indeterminate parentage, your favourite characters ending up dead, Will Scott's mix of hero worship and wanting to strangle Lymond at the same time, and Jerott (I don't even know where we should toss Jerott). 

Sometimes it's just a line, and I end up raising an eyebrow at it because it sounds so Dunnett. I'm not disparaging Pacat here; as I said earlier, I'm frustrated, because I feel more people should enjoy the Lymond Chronicles and Dunnett's writing, but they're not going to, because Dunnett was too clever and made the books too dense and witty and difficult.

If you do start The Game of Kings, though, I ask you to try to get at least to page 100 or so before giving up. That was where I decided that yes, this was definitely worth the effort. 

I don't suppose I'm making much sense, but apparently I feel so strongly about this that I need to make a Tumblr post in an otherwise empty account. Go me.

PS: I liked Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series as well, though the first book is, uh, somewhat disappointing? I don't know if I had too high expectations or what. I loved the later books, though. For some reason, I still haven't read the last book in the series. I suppose I should remedy that.

[samtastical-shitposts]

hi gangy back again to discuss twdg related endeavors.... will contain s4 spoilers if you haven't played

i finished the final season a few hours ago and i am in RUINS!!!! telltale really out to get me by making a lee and clem parallel with clem and aj just for them to tell me she LIVED??? okay i get it guys just leave me alone... way to make me feel like a total dingaling for Shedding a few tears!!!!

i am a kenny guy at heart BUT my favourite of this season aside from clem and aj was most definitely louis, i know, SUPER unpopular opinions guys... news flash, local twdg player likes louis... groundbreaking stuff here guys

on that topic??? if i had known what was going to happen to him upon not saving him im i totally would've saved him over violet???? i pretty quickly saved violet because my clem was dating her and I didn't know they were going to kidnap one of them depending on who i saved ohmygod,,,,, i (NAIVELY) assumed just one of them would be injured and id lose relationship Points... guys i MIGHT be stupid. if i knew he was going to get his tongue cut out and lose the ability to speak i would've saved him over violet!!! and im not a violet hater, i Love her shes my #1 girlfailure loser creature but i mean come on guys,, especially after i learned if i saved louis she would've just lost sight in (correct me if I'm wrong) not two, but one of her eyes??? i mean louis' whole thing is like yknow talking!!! just seeing him curled up in the corner of the cell unable to talk and blood coming from his mouth MAYBE just SLIGHTLY made me regret my choice (i regret it so much ogmygjod)

anyways,,, aside from my yammering, i enjoyed the game so much and im glad i took the time to play it, i don't think i could even pick a favourite season because they were all so so great and i probably shed tears at least once per season!!!!!! the end was great and im glad to have played and i'll probably be thinking about it for the next forever,, writing my own character analysis sheets and drawing the characters constantly will 100% be happening,, anyway thank you for reading my anoyyingly long text post with far too many forms of punctuation and spelling errors

[cursedvibes]

I don’t mean to spread my propaganda but from your interests and your critiques of JJK I think that you would like Hell’s Paradise!

I personally feel that it handled its themes of love, power, and loneliness much better! It’s unfortunate that it’s anime couldn’t convey that :,/

I have actually read Hell's Paradise! Although it has probably been a year or so since I reread it and I only skimmed a bit through the anime to see some of my favourite scenes. Unfortunately, they didn't quite manage to capture the natural horror of the island and the grotesqueness of the soshin and monshin. They ended up looking more goofy than intimidating. I was also a bit disappointed by the voice actor for the yang form of the Tensen. He sounded too much like just some dude. I like the opening though and otherwise the voice actors seemed well chosen.

It does have some themes similar to jjk, although I think it addresses it from a different angle and bases it on other philosophical and mythical backgrounds. Like for example love seems to be a lot more focused on the romantic aspect of it in Jigokuraku, whereas in jjk it is more platonic and about family and found relationships. I wouldn't say one is necessarily better than the other. Jigokuraku is just a bit more...concise? JJK lingers longer on certain side stories, whereas Jigokuraku has a very straight forward plot progression with not that much ambiguity about what is about to happen. It's shorter too, so that contributes to it. Both have things I like very much and some aspects one does better than the other.

I think the stories are most similar in regards to Rien (my fave, who would've thought) and Kenjaku. They are both a similar age, want to optimize their respective magic system and energy source for the sake of a person they care about and use dubious science and human experimentation for that sake, including abusing their "kids". Both are genderqueer in some way and I think the obsessive feelings they have for Jofuku/Tengen are also quite similar. Except in case of Kenjaku you also have the aspect of curiosity and entertainment thrown in with it. I like both of them though, can't say I prefer one over the other, they just highlight different things. Except I think we get to know Kenjaku more as a person than Rien. In his case all the emotional reasons for his crimes get dumped on us at the end and before that he mostly stays distant and calculating.

For any deeper analysis of the two series I'd have to reread Jigokuraku again 😅

[shidiand]

2022 shidi’s review

Best of media

- Umineko no Naku Koro ni

I started Umineko by manga in 2016 and made it to Ep 6, picked up the LP archive version ~1-2 years ago and made it to Ep 3, but this November I finally finished Umineko from beginning to end in its proper visual novel form. It may well be the longest thing I've ever read, and yet the remarkable thing about Umineko is that I believe it hardly squanders a single moment of its immense 1.1 million word count; it by and large fully justifies every use of its tremendous length. I feel that very few works of such length do. There are still things I want to resolve about it; I want to reread it again one day and solve them myself. There are still more things I'll probably carry with me into things I create from here on out. Is there any visual novel with better soundtrack or voice acting? I've become an Umineko Guy, and I will wear this mark with pride.

- Hellsinker.

I first played Hellsinker in 2020, and I delved into about ~75% of the game at that time, but it wasn't until March this year that I finally pushed myself to finish it, and let myself see everything about the game. It's still one of my favourite games ever. One of my favourite experiences ever. A wholly, solitarily unique game uncompromising in its vision; it grants you a glimpse of it and its author's insanity, and I did my best to interpret it. You might bounce off of it, such a game it is. But highly specific games, that can only appeal to certain people, have their charm too. I was a Dead Liar main from beginning to end. I will continue to recommend this game to others until the day I die.

- Defunctland's Disney Channel Theme: A History Mystery A documentary of modest length, but a lovely one. Surely one of my favourite Defunctland videos ever (not that I have watched much of his work), and possibly for a very long time to come.

- action button reviews boku no natsuyasumi A longer documentary, but a remarkable one in how it weaves a deep analysis of the game and Tim Roger's personal stories and reflections into a potent emotional core. Beautifully told.

- Secret Base's Captain Ahab: The Story of Dave Stieb Another long documentary, this time one covering the more cut-and-dry story of Dave Stieb's baseball career, but it wrung much emotion out of me all the same. I'm glad I was able to learn about this single little story of sports history, one episode at a time.

- Nuclear Throne

I also started NT in 2016 and reached a resolution with it that year, but in the depths of my unemployment malaise, on a whim of coincidence (seeing Rami Ismail retweet a video essay about it by @dookasx​), I decided to pick it up again this year, and it soon became my fidget game for killing 20-30 minutes of time. It was not long until I decided to push myself to achieve 100% unlocks to fill a newfound need for closure. Then the madness began. This challenge ran from about April to August. My understanding of the game and how to best build and play to unlock each crowns changed significantly from my 2016 understanding, and I surely improved quite a bit over the course of the challenge, but the Rogue (has weak passive and active abilities) and Melting (has 2 HP instead of 8) runs tested my patience and sanity towards the very end. I can say I have explored this completed game to a very deep degree, and that I would not recommend this challenge to others. There are probably better things I could have done with that time. However, the game is pretty fun.

- Alice to Zouroku

I didn't read or watch Alice to Zouroku for the first time in 2022, but I did do a rewatch of the anime in February, and on that revisit it went quite a ways up my ranking of anime and fiction in general. Something about viewing Sana's experiences through the lens of autism made me just a bit more fond of it, I've been thinking about it from time to time throughout the year. It's a very tender story. The soundtrack of the anime wrings emotions out of me. I didn't actually know that the manga continued after chapter 21 because the scans stop there (ahaha...), and it was such a strange yet not bad place to have an "ending", I respected that. Don't mind that. I recommend it.

- Berserk

I read all of Berserk for the first time this year. I am certain that if I had read this earlier in my life, it would have had a great and lasting influence on me, both in storytelling and art; however, I think works like Vagabond and Tenco's Story had already taken that spot for me years ago, so it was not to be. Yet I was still swept up in awe at this story quite literally larger than the life of its author, of epic confrontations, and pain, and healing. Miura's ability to depict portraits of scale was unmatched. The weight of Guts' legacy, looking back at the web of influence from Guts to every dragonslayer derived from him, is tremendous. Another epic-length story that I feel deserves to be as long as it is.

- Bocchi the Rock

There has been no shortage of effusive praise for the Bocchi the Rock anime, so I will exempt myself from writing much of my own, but it was a very enjoyable experience to watch and share in with the many positive bocchiposters on my Twitter and Tumblr feeds. The music was great, the musical performances blew the bandori scenes I'd been accustomed to out of the water, and it was genuinely quite funny and emotionally cogent. It's got a small cast of characters who simply give off so much personality, it would be hard not to love them.

- Healer Girl

This was a 2022 seasonal that I watched on my own, as I like to do, and it was a delight. A fine mix of lightness and seriousness in its storytelling, charming characters, presented with a musical coating. If that sounds like Bocchi the Rock... yeah, I guess it does. It might not be as insane and radical as BTR, but I think it holds up. You've all heard the good word about BTR. I would recommend giving Healer Girl a try.

- The First 12 Episodes of G Gundam

Okay, this probably doesn't deserve to be on here, not without having finished it first, but G Gundam is such stupid fun. It's just good to go back and watch some shit from a completely different time period and take in the differences. I really liked the orchestra-based soundtrack and stingers. And this Domon Kasshu fella. What a guy. What a classic burning-hearted coolguy.

- Kindred Spirits on the Rooftop

Another late-to-the-party media for me to experience in 2022. Though not without tangible flaws, it managed to tell a charming high-school story from beginning to end. It was a little longer than I expected due to wading through the latter, bonus half of the content that was more often than not an exercise in clicking through scene reruns rearranged for a different character's perspective (but there were enough new scenes that I could tolerate it.) I had no interest in the sex scenes, which were mostly just okay, and ended up zoning out while clicking past them. Even so, the ending made me feel something when it was all over, and perhaps that was enough to push me to faithfully 100% every scene, the seiyuu comments, the drama CDs, the translations on Tumblr of lead writer tweet-comments, whichever AO3 fics interested me enough to read them, the VN podcasters' episodes about it... so, not nothing. Not bad at all. Not an unconditional recommendation, but it was good, to me.

- Urasekai Picnic (vol 5 - 7 and fanfics)

I'd been reading Urapi since 2021, but I got around to reading the latest volumes this year, and the story has continued to develop in ways that bolstered my confidence in the series from "fun, episodical horror encounters with lesbian investigators" to "now we're really getting somewhere with these characters and this plot". The teasers for the upcoming volume 8 are giving me yet more bits of confidence that Urapi might just round out to a properly closed narrative. I also read @rabbiteclair​'s excellent Urapi fanfics this year, which is a notable side point to this item; all quite excellent and capable of making me hallucinate that I read an additional volume or two of Urapi this year at times when I am not fully awake.

Things I did

- Wrote https://shidiand.tumblr.com/intro2touhou. I don't know if it's good. But it's something.

- Wrote some other things. I think this was one of the few times I'd properly finished a major project on my own. It was a catharsis. If you took the time to read it, thank you.

- Drew a few things, not very seriously. I made my friends and my favourite artist smile by drawing their OCs, so I'm happy.

https://akiraita.tumblr.com/post/684828588797837312/as-veil-enjoyer-193-i-like-hina-a-lot-so-here-she

https://twitter.com/shidiand/status/1518375294268104705

https://twitter.com/shidiand/status/1572331492923310081

- Stopped watching vtubers. I took a step back from the excitement of keeping up with streams. I'll be alright.

- Helped archive the N-tone x Dust_Box_49 10th Anniversary collection on Youtube. I was conflicted over doing this permissionless upload. But this music is very important to me.

- Participated in TTRPG with friends. It didn't pan out for me but I was glad I gave it a try. Sometimes exhausting. Always quite engrossing. It was probably the most social I was all year. Thank you to my GM and fellow players.

- Started learning Japanese again. I'm plateauing a bit, and I've only been working on my reading, but I managed to get into a good spot for grammar.

- Started exercising regularly again. Have to take care of this body.

- Got my driver's license. Driving gives me anxiety but it's a little step of responsibility.

- Did not go insane during the long year of unemployment. I regained the will to find a job again by the end of the year.

I'll keep at it going into 2023. I think I can get a job, I'll keep thinking about some original stories. No promises about drawing. Let's become a human once more.

[revothink]

Hello dukhi aatmas! It's been a long time, isn't it? This time, I truly am sorry for being so late :(

It was exams week and after that I had no energy to do anything. I hardly even attended my lectures. Depression has been going strong but I found new fixations that distract me :)

So you guys remember my last post about the movie ♥️🤍💙? I have been obsessed with it. I read the book, found it's fanfiction, character analysis and a whole bunch of things you guys don't want to know. I re-read some old books.

I am reading Percy Jackson again. For the nth time. Percy Jackson was my childhood along with a lot of other literature and TV shows. I found Percy really inspiring. He was a little boy thrust into a world that took his mom away and his whole life was a lie. And he had to prevent World War 3? He was not having fun, that was for sure.

There were a lot of books I read when I was really young. I devoured books like I was starving. And maybe I was. I had no friends and books took me to a new world. I could picture the same friends that the protagonist had. Maybe that's why one of my favourite tropes is found family.

The weather has been very moody lately, like me. The only nice thing is that it gets cold during the night. Oh, how I love the cold. Autumn is one of my favourite seasons although we never actually experience it here. I romanticize Autumn so much. Maybe it is because of the song Autumn Leaves.

I have a lot to say and maybe I will say it today. Life can be really difficult sometimes. It will keep on testing you until you feel like you are worth nothing. And it will keep happening. Not a once-in-a-lifetime experience, I am afraid. But, I believe that your life can go a little less difficult if you try to focus on the good things that living has offered you.

Good food, good music, different forms of media, books and sometimes, good people too. You may not get to enjoy everything life has to offer, but you must try to live. You must try to know at least most of them. I have got you covered with the good music part, but the rest? I am sure you will find your way, little grasshopper (◠⁠‿⁠◕)

Here is one of my current obsessions:

[fruit-of-infidelity]

ok now that i stopped screaming let me try to form a coherent opinion 😫

ig it goes without saying that i really liked ryuuto's route♥ ik i've been screaming throughout it all BUT there's one particular thing that made me appreciate it so much more, simpery aside-

reaching the end specially, i liked the fact that ryuuto started to realize by himself that cordelia isn't what he's after, with little intervention from yui and the power of love (?) i mean, yes, there is some of that, but i feel like ryuuto's realization wasn't only due to yui's intervention when it comes to accept that as a fact, especially when she's literally not there 😭. but yui's kindness naturally got to him, he was just so focused on what he planned; if i were to dig deeper, it's like ryuuto realized that his wants were driven by his childhood/younger mentality only, which is why i'm so glad that he realized that it wasn't going to be any different now that he's grown up, after seeing the patterns and the pain he went through. i love that he realized by himself and undid things himself and killed and !!! yes !!! go off king!!!!! 🛐🛐🛐

i was wondering almost from the start if it was going to be that way or like kanato's vamp end levels of toxic instead (?? i would've enjoyed it regardless probably, i like how it was written so i would've believed it (?) dfhgdj but in all seriousness, i think you did a great job ava!! ♥♥ doing rejet's work better than them as usual 😤💕

also i LOVE the cgs so much 😭 !! my favs may be the kiss at the gazebo (love the lighting), the one of the train and the vampire end one is lovely too ♥♥ and the one w ryuuto going 🤺 @ richter DFGD i just love cordelia!yui being like >:) so much kfgjdfh and yui in general being so sassy tbh i love her 😭

side note; i admit richter is/can be a good father but my appreciation for him kinda ends there i'm sorry 🗿 djfslg

the only thing i'm still curious about is one thing about ryuuto's heartbeat? maybe i'm missing something from hdb bc it's been a while, but does he/sakamakis have a heartbeat or was cordie just messing around as usual? 😭

all in all, i loved it and i'm so ready to read the bad endings too now because i feed off angst and im hungry 👀🍽 Dkgjd AND ofc i'm patiently waiting for the heavens and after story and everything else 🛐🛐

ramble over STAN AVA 🥳🥳💕

// ILYYY ROX ♥️♥️♥️ im a huge slut for you throwing your analysis/thoughts at me, so don't mind me rereading your message fifty times over 🫂♥️♥️

Im really glad you noticed that! I didn't want it to too heavily focused on Yui "falling in love and fixing Ryuuto", especially not over one single route >< Instead, it works so much nicer for him imo if his character development comes from within moreso. The shift between being solely focused on Cordelia in his Dark, then his transition into getting to know Yui on a deeper level that really challenges all he knows with Cordelia in Maniac, and his internal decisions between whether he wants a repeat of his past where he feels comfortable, or a fresh albeit scary start with Yui in Ecstasy is HUGE 😩😭

Thank you so much, you're so so sweet!! 😭♥️♥️ and !!!!! Im so glad you liked the CGs too, they were ROUGH to figure out what i wanted to do and show off, but thank you for being so supportive always ><♥️♥️

also i see that richter slander. just wait until i (hopefully) post his route 🙄 im dragging you down to richter hell whether you like it or not sksk.

As for the heartbeat, omggg. I'm being consistent about rejet's inconsistency 🧍‍♀️ It's up to you to decide, really. Like, Cordie could def be just messing around but also?? I think the vamps have heartbeats in later drama cds/routes that are mentioned so 😤 whatever you'd like to believe, that's the canon sfjslh

BUT AAA !!! Yes yes yes im so excited to next post the other angsty endings (which are my favourite endings) and the afterstory and heaven. ofc, there is also the mini chapters that will be posted right after too which show ryuuto in the other boys' routes. Both more intensely and more of a passing by/background character 😩 BUT im getting ahead of myself because i have only halfway finished those mini chapters ><><

BUT AAA MWAH, BIG KISSES ILY ROX. You're so so sweet 🥺💕 and i cannot wait to read more of your girl's route, too. I am INVESTED !!

[damianbugs]

Hey i just wanted to say, as i think I've worked through almost all of your Batman related fics (I've been trying to pace myself ngl) that you have written some of my favorite pieces for these characters. I really, really love the ways in which you work with everyone's characterization, and how you explore the themes throughout the series as a whole.

You have a really wonderful way of filling in small mundane moments that give a lot of life to characters and their relationships as well! The little gentle things, y'know? My Body's Made of Crushed Little Stars, the Hues in Our Hair Compliment One Another, and Don't You Cry, Dry Your Eyes, are all gonna stick with me for a very long time. There's soooooo much nuance in how responsibility, care, and love are felt (and conveyed).

When it comes to conflict and difficult conversations, you do an excellent job of showing how distinctly different people can handle and think through these sorts of things. And how this is impacted with narrators and POV! I really like how you communicate the depth of interactions and manage to convey the stuff going on behind the scenes in non-narrating characters heads all the while.

I also like the ways in which you write that reflect how people change over the course of their lives - the one you have that's Jason's notebook esp - and how a point of conflict is multifaceted. And how resolution and mutual understanding takes time and work to develop. Things feel earned!

Plus I've really appreciated seeing your thoughts on the metatextual implications of things as well! It's given me lots to think about. Overall i just wanted to say thank you! You're a wonderful author!

oh. oh i'm totally, entirely normal about this and not at all tearing up. not at all.

thank you so much! genuinely. i am eternally grateful you not only read and enjoy my writing but also that you took the time to write such a wonderful comment on it all. i think, as you've said, this will stick with me for a very long time too. i hope you don't mind if i respond to this in equally as much detail to show how thankful i am.

the works you have pointed out coincidentally happen to be some of my favourite ones to ever write, and i am so glad you've felt that through the story too! there's a lot to be forgotten when it comes to these handful of dynamics, but that fact alone means that there are infinite conversations and situations you can pick apart for them. it's so important to me that this is shown in every aspect of the fic, from dialogue to descriptions, so again, can not explain how happy i am that this translated over into your reading experience.

another thing i always try to do is create a story outside of the story, just for the added bonus of realism and empathy i hope to develop in the characters, and!! i'm so so happy you've caught it!! i do not know how to explain how insanely grateful i am to hear your analysis on these aspects of my fics!! totally not tearing up again.

time is another villain in a lot of these characters stories, and regardless of the time of fic or plot, it is a theme i try to incorporate heavily in my writing. it is often the route cause of conflict, but also the most powerful form of healing, for both readers and characters. change can be something so violent, and when it is deconstructed, i find the edges can be softened into something less unbearable and something that allows a story to be told on its own.

oh the meta!!! the meta!!!! you are so wonderful tumblr user bittershins!!! i am so incredibly attached to these characters and the stories they tell by simply existing, and i am surely unbearable in my efforts to make that clear through my writing. thank you for noticing!!!!

thank YOU. sincerely. this means the world to me. i hope you will continue to enjoy reading my works and any pertaining these characters, and i hope you know this has inflated my ego to incredible heights. i am about to make it everyone elses problem. thank you <3 !!!