#i actually cite my sources

[lokiinmediasideblog]

.

[arom-antix]

Hey, just wanted to reach out to say that I found you pointing out and calling this person was really great and you shouldn't have apologized. It was incredibly true what you said, and to be honest it seems out of touch with the reality of a great deal of the japanese fandom, the nuances and their culture. Also, it was as you pointed out, extreme and may I say rude. I want to mention too that the way it was written, as if entitled of the knowledge and the 'explanation' made it all worse in context of the 'fucked up'. The original poster always gets away by using the 'well-written academic'' statement of their 'metas' as an excuse to do or say and make everyone else agree and if not, uses victim narrative and discourses exactly selecting wording for people to agree on it or feel bad.

I don't know if they tagging you in the way they did made you reblog and apologizing/backing up, but no one thought bad about you pointing it out. On the contrary, a lot of people had been bullied and discriminated by this person when they called them out/disagreed going onto lenghts of sending their friends to harass people, and the other persons can't even defend themselves because they are effectively blocked. To quite a few people in the fandom has been done, even accusing them as 'acephobes' (when they're not) or even Nazis by spreading lies. So yeah, I just wanted to say that. I think you were right to call them out publicly.

Thank you very much for this ask. To be completely honest I agree with everything you said here and don't actually feel bad about pointing anything out. I mainly apologised because I didn't want any potentially poor phrasing from my side to cause unnecessary hostility and because I myself have gripes with this person's behaviour but didn't want to cause a scene.

My honest opinion is that they have a serious issue with taking accountability for their own mistakes and highly overestimate their own intellect. If you're reading this, @thegirlwhorideslikeasamurai, sorry if I seem harsh, but it's true. I saw your post lamenting how you're the only academic meta writer / fan in the fandom and I didn't interact then because I honestly do not care enough to start that drama but with the information Blonndiec has just given me, I think it's necessary that someone calls you out.

You're not an academic. You're not beyond the mental capabilities of other fans. You're actually incredibly childish in your metas and analyses and I am not kidding when I say that I was halfheartedly writing essays more academic than every analysis I've seen from you when I was barely a teenager. I don't know how old you are and I frankly don't care. You're not as clever as you think you are.

Also, don't think I didn't notice that you didn't reblog my correction (link here to my correction and here to their "response" for those who didn't see that exchange) of your post so that you could control what your followers saw of the exchange. You're the opposite of an academic. You control information to tailor the narrative, you don't cite your sources properly if at all, you don't format your posts in anything close to how an academic analysis would be, you make unbased claims, you reference posts and canon material without in any way indicating where that information is from, you reference your own (equally unacademic) metas and your conclusions from them without indicating what post it's from or that it's your own theory this new one is based on and instead present it as a common fact, and I could go on and on and on. Your posts are also riddled with logical fallacies and you talk in absolutes and opinions when there's no canon basis to claim such things. I'm sorry, but that's not academic in the slightest.

To be clear, you don't have to be an academic to post on the Internet. You don't have to be anything at all. You could up front be a genuine idiot with no remorse and that's fine. But when you claim to be an academic and also put down the rest of the fandom for not being on your level, you have to be able to back that up. It'd still make you sound like a prick but at least your arrogance would have a basis. It currently does not.

I haven't personally seen the discussions that Blonndiec is referencing and I'm not going to claim anything definitive (because that would be unacademic of me, take notes) but if what they're saying is true and did happen as described, which I have empirical, if anecdotal, evidence to believe could very well be (a friend of mine has personally been blocked by you after they criticised you without actually mentioning your name which I of course can't prove is the reason for the block but the timing is awfully convenient), you should know that you should be ashamed of yourself.

If there's context missing, feel free to enlighten me and call out any incorrect accusations. You have every right to defend yourself. However, I encourage you to cite your sources since you're such an academic. If you don't, then it's just your word against Blonndiec and anyone else who might comment's word and that doesn't prove anything. Don't misunderstand, acephobia and nazi rhetoric should absolutely be called out but only if it's actually happening. False accusations can ruin lives. I hope you know that.

I'm not a fan of calling people out publicly and, again, thank you for this ask, Blonndiec. But considering many of the issues I've personally seen and those I've been informed of by second hand sources were posted publically, I don't really feel bad about calling this out. I could do a full breakdown of just the insulting "academic" comments alone and how there's no academia to be found in said academic metas and, Samurai, if you give me reason to, I will show exactly what I mean point by point (and academically just to give you an example of even low level academia).

If you respond to this, do it in a reblog. That's what a real academic would do. If I'm wrong and you can prove it, you'd have no reason to not show my post in your rebuttal. If I'm right, you'd have every reason to be upfront about your mistakes and how you intend to rectify them. There's nothing wrong with being wrong but there's a lot wrong with refusing to admit to it in a way that lets others peer review you (academic thing, look it up) and come to their own conclusions about the situation. That's what you did when you just @'ed me instead of reblogging my response. A true academic wouldn't hide a peer review. You'd know that if you were one.

I swing in many academic spaces and yet that doesn't make me any kind of expert and I don't claim to be one because I'm not. But since you want to be one so badly, reblog this with a response and show us all how smart you are. I'm dying to know what your academic take on this is.

[right-there-ride-on]

Gyro’s Just as Bad: A Gyjo Essay

its generally understood that gyjo is important to each other, but since sbr is from Johnny’s pov we get his thoughts on the ‘why’ more than gyro’s. Johnny’s side of things also tends to get more emphasis in fanon, which I just wanted to try and illustrate the development of their relationship from Gyro’s pov since I think that’s the part of gyjo that seems the most underexplored.

First thing to note, and something that’s pretty funny, is that Gyro is an asshole to everyone at the start of the race. Through the first stage hes basically this ‘lone rider’ character. Before the race starts, Gyro helps Johnny out by helping him get on the horse, but during the race itself he’s pretty brutal to his competitors. It’s Johnny who chooses to chase him, which Gyro didn’t ask for. But by the end of the stage Johnny’s proved his grit and Gyro allows him to accompany him. It’s cute how quickly he takes Johnny under his wing, especially since he’s still so hostile to everyone else.

Gyro presents himself as this very confident figure, and carries them through the attacks of Mrs. Robinson, Strohiem, and Oyecomova. The Boom-Boom family was more of a team effort between Gyro, Johnny and Tim, and they mostly won thanks to Tusk awakening. It isn’t until Pork Pie Hat Kid attacks and Gyro gets taken out of commission that Johnny is forced to be the one doing the quick thinking and rescuing. I think both Johnny being the one to rescue him and his newfound determination to collect the corpse tickles Gyro, similar to how he was interested in Johnny at the starting line because of Johnny’s stubbornness with Slow Dancer.

I think a big part of the reason Gyro is initially attracted to Johnny is because Johnny has the fortitude to go after what he really wants; unlike Gyro, who, as revealed in True Man’s World, remains to some extent paralyzed by his family’s traditions. So far the only thing Gyro has ever done to differentiate himself from his given role as executioner and eldest son is join the race, supposedly for Marco. Yet as demonstrated with his continued correspondence with Naples and their delivery of the Zombie Horse thread, Gyro did not cut himself off from his country and family entirely. He doesn’t know how to exist without it. Johnny meanwhile is fiercely independent; by contrast Gyro is still dependent on his tradition, country and family to guide his decisions. That’s why I think Marco was only an excuse / smaller factor in Gyro’s choice to join the race than what was initially presented. Gyro left to join the race because he’d never had a chance to develop himself as a person outside of his role as eldest son and executioner. That’s why his question about Marco’s death is about ‘consent’. Marco was supposed to be Gyro’s first solo execution. Marco was imprisoned as a traitor to the crown and by law would need to die. As a prisoner he has no consent to give, and Gyro knows that. The consent Gyro needs is his own. Gyro needs to understand, for himself, who he is and what his actual values are before he ‘consents’ to being the executioner.

In the Third Stage, Gyro admits to himself that “maybe the corpse hunt will help me grow a little.” Like I said, I think that to an extent Marco’s unjust execution was not necessarily the entire reason Gyro came to the race. Gyro may not have recognized it himself, but what he’s looking for is an opportunity to define himself outside of what he knows. Marco isnt what he’s thinking about when he loses the Third Stage; Gyro is thinking about how much he himself is pissed off by the loss. Unconsciously, Gyro recognizes that he’s not just racing for Marco, but to prove something to himself. Moreover, easily winning would prove that he’s fine as he is, and he can back to Naples, ignorant but having in a sense ‘gotten it out of his system’. But losing forces him to reflect, not just on the loss, but on what he’s racing for. That’s why Johnny’s advice is for him ‘to hunger’. Because Gyro still doesn’t really understand his own motivations for racing.

That’s why Ringo’s words about his being a conformist in True Man’s World bother him so badly. Because Gyro knows that, up until that point, he has been a conformist. He still relies on Naples for guidance and Gregorio’s teachings still echo in his head. But his friendship with Johnny is what allows him to break the first of the family traditions he’d so strictly adhered to, and give in to ‘sentimentality’. This is the first ‘new’ value he explicitly chooses to define himself by, and the first part of himself he discovers outside of his ‘conformity’. Gyro risks a lot by going back to confront Ringo. He’s challenging not just Ringo, but himself. Only a ‘true man’, or someone fighting for ‘something’ that they desire for themselves, would have the ‘dark determination’ necessary to beat Ringo. And Gyro finds it. Ringo welcomes him to the true man’s world because he recognizes that Gyro has found something to fight for.

In Catch the Rainbow, Gyro takes Johnny’s advice from the Third Stage and creates another value to define himself by - a hunger to win, for himself. That’s why he tells Diego to gtfo of the way; Gyro’s chasing himself on the Golden Path. Supposedly it’s a path for him alone. Ironically, it’s Johnny who interrupts Gyro and Diego’s battle on the Golden Path. Textually, Johnny realizes Diego is cheating but Gyro is so desperate to win that he doesn’t realize it. Metaphorically, Johnny interrupts to demonstrate that Gyro isn’t done growing yet, and is not yet ready to truly walk the ‘golden path’ of the True Man’s World. He doesn’t yet have the self-definition or subsequent selfish hunger necessary to do it. Only together are Gyro and Johnny able to defeat Diego and continue their pursuit of self-improvement (the corpse parts). However, afterwards Gyro lashes out at Johnny for interrupting, further demonstrating that in many areas he is still immature, childishly taking his feelings out on Johnny instead of waiting for an explanation of why Johnny interfered, and not really listening when he does.

In A Silent Way, Johnny is again what enables Gyro to find his second area of self-definition: mentorship. It’s heavily implied that Gyro is the first one to break Zeppeli tradition and teach the Golden Ratio to someone outside the family; however, he won’t teach Johnny any other way but the Zeppeli family way (‘I can’t do it’ four times), demonstrating his continued struggle between tradition and independence.

Sugar Mountain is iconic, but just as a refresh: at the end of the arc Gyro sees again how much Johnny is willing to give up for him. I think that this shapes his approach to Johnny afterwards; he’s much softer, and more protective. Because of Johnny’s actions in Sugar Mountain, he’s realized that finding his ‘golden path’ isn’t something he can do alone; and that he really does need Johnny as much as Johnny needs him. As noted before, Johnny gave up everything for Gyro. This is the impetus for Gyro to really embrace his role as friend and mentor, no longer afraid that his newly discovered ‘sentimentality’ is a weakness, but embracing Johnny as a trusted companion and deciding that he doesn’t need to be a ‘lone rider’ to win and find the independence and self-definition he’d been looking for. Johnny, not the race, is what pushes Gyro into reflection, soul-searching, and adaptation, embracing the world as it comes instead of adhering to everything he’s been taught.

Gyro defeats his narrative foil in Wekapipo. Wekapipo has abandoned his homeland entirely, and been abandoned by it. He hopes to find a new beginning in America. He too is looking to define himself anew. However, Gyro, now having reconciled what he’s been taught with what he’s learning with Johnny, is able to pull off a miracle. He doesn’t need to be someone new entirely or abandon who he was; he just needed to understand himself. Note that this is also the arc where he finds the golden rectangle in Johnny’s eyes - literally melding where he came from (Golden Ratio, Zeppeli traditions) with what he’s chasing now (self-improvement, alongside Johnny). That’s why Gyro’s allowed to win this stage, and he and Johnny get their one-two finish. Gyro earned his victory against Wekapipo and he earned first place in the stage, he and Johnny finding the best path forward (the golden path) by combining Tusk and a Steel Ball to create their own. Furthermore, Gyro reconnects Wekapipo with Naples by revealing his sister is still alive; thus Wekapipo too is allowed to live and try to reconcile where he came from with where he’s going, starting the journey Gyro now realizes he’s been on.

Frankly I’m tired so I’m not going to get into D4C arc but by the time sbr reaches its climax most of the heavy relationship work for gyjo is done anyway. I hope anyone who questions Gyro’s side of things finds this essay helpful!

[monstermoviedean]

there has got to be a middle ground between "you are only qualified to speak about history if you have at least a phd" and "you are qualified to speak about history because you skimmed some tweets/saw a youtube video/listened to half a podcast once"

[river-gale]

jane eyre and fairy tale references in the mars house by natasha pulley

Let's talk about folklore! TMH references it near-constantly. This post was originally just going to be me chatting about individual references for fun and enrichment, but now I want to talk about what purpose they serve.

A few of them are to describe situations or scenery:

This one is a Sleeping Beauty reference, used to describe what happens when the internet goes out. Sleeping Beauty is also a ballet with music by Tchaikovsky, completed in 1899; a lot of ballets are based on fairy tales, so it makes sense that these are the stories the narrator picks. The story is from January's perspective, and he's a former ballet principal—it's a neat bit of characterization.

He also uses them to talk to and about Gale:

(If you know a specific Tang dynasty novel this is referencing, please tell me, I will give you my hand in marriage.)

This is the plot of Bluebeard!

The second one here is Selene and Endymion. The first one is Jane Eyre, which is not technically a folk tale—it's a novel, a work of Gothic literature by Charlotte Brontë—but, like TMH, it follows the same archetypal plot of plenty of folk tales. A vulnerable person, usually a young woman and sometimes poor, has to marry someone powerful and monstrous—an animal, a dragon, an invisible god, a serial murderer, a nobleman who's keeping his ex-wife locked in the attic, or in the case of TMH, a CEO who is also a xenophobic demagogue who may or may not have murdered their last spouse. This is why January references Bluebeard. He's in the exact same type of story.

There's an equivalent feminine archetype of the Monster Bridegroom—the Swan Maiden and related tales—but the allusions in TMH tend towards the Monster Bridegroom version, just because it works better for the themes of power dynamics and different kinds of power.

The thing that makes TMH interesting, though, is that it isn't just an Monster Bridegroom folktale from January's perspective. It's also one from River's. January is marrying an incredibly wealthy and influential politician who wants people like him permanently disabled; River is marrying someone with superhuman strength who belongs to the same group as the person who recently ripped off their leg. If we take "monstrous" to mean alien, powerful, and potentially dangerous, then that's exactly what they are to each other—and what the animal spouses in Monster Bridegroom myths are.

And the allusions in the book reflect that, because they're also used to describe January.

Could be a lot of things—many different cultures have Things In Ponds That Eat You, and that's beautiful—but my first thought is kelpies.

A generic one.

January's Swan King thing! (And then they kiss about it!!)

I don't have a quote for this one, but Earthstrongers—and January in particular—are often compared to polar bears. (He's got polar-bear-colored hair.) It's very East of the Sun, West of the Moon.

The double fairy tale plot of this book is super cool—they're each the same fairy tale archetype to each other—but possibly even cooler is that Jane Eyre does a really similar thing with its fairy tale allusions!

The first speaker is Rochester, and the second is Jane. He's her monster bridegroom (due to the attic wife situation), but he frequently alludes to changeling and fairy stories when speaking about her. It adds some depth to the Jane Eyre reference in TMH!

It also recalls this passage from TMH:

Because at their hearts, Jane Eyre and TMH are both stories about class boundaries and power dynamics being transcended by the ability to match someone's freak.

[oxymoronicdumbass]

if i have to sit through one more conversation in which i have to listen to someone chirp about the benefits of AI, i am going to stab someone

[larkr]

okay, i think i’ve managed to make a cohesive timeline for PGR ??

There are some spoilers for chapters that are only out on the CN/JP/TW servers, but i’ve put those on the very last page so you can avoid them if you want.

if you spot anything i’ve gotten wrong or if something isn’t clear, lmk and i’ll try and fix it.

The only CN spoiler-y part I didn’t put on the last page is some information from chapter 27 about the beginning of the punishing virus outbreak, but i didn’t think that was too bad — though i’m putting a warning here anyway.

[not-cool-enough-to-scuba-dive]

actually I would quite like to hear your thoughts on gender philosophy in omegaverse worldbuilding? :3

hm. anon, I fear this is a far larger can of worms than you probably anticipated. I'm going to spare you the worst of it by only giving you a short version, but be careful what you wish for.

I'm also hiding it under a cut because even the short version is embarrassingly long.

I'm hardly a connoisseur of omegaverse content, nor would I consider myself anywhere near an expert. I don't want to speak for all fics as I've admittedly not read many. I did do my master's diss about legal gender recognition, so this is more about gender and philosophically sound worldbuilding than an indictment of any particular writing or story tbh.

the short answer is I find omegaverse worldbuilding really interesting, but I've never fully been able to enjoy it due to the way a/b/o identities tend to have a biological determinist slant to them imo, and tendency for a lack of real world implications of what the omegaverse does to gender and character interactions anywhere outside the bedroom. I'd love to figure out a version that's more inclusive and philosophically/ideologically consistent, both with itself and with my own views on real life gender (basically, I want to make it make more sense, have less biological determinism, and be more inclusive of the wider range of human experiences). this is a big task, and ngl I haven't achieved it and don't anticipate doing so any time soon. I have like, a concept in my head, taking apart all the key pieces and putting them together again but different, but to make it thorough enough would require more effort and time than I have because I'm like, employed 😔

I feel like someday if I ever get invited to a powerpoint night though, this could be It.

[arashi-no-saxlphone]

I like getting axl coded by people because the sad truth is I'm much closer to kinning characters like Raven or I-No and if you have associated me with Axl Low for long enough that information becomes IMMEDIATELY concerning. "Why does the guy who loves the happy man who's never done anything wrong feel much closer to characters who are both abused and doomed by the narrative?" Well you see, it all started with my birth.

[nyatbinary-81]

okay. @evil-eyedlurker lets try this again since tumblr ate my last draft.

Part 1: Setting the Stage.

Before we begin, I'd like to recommend reading the book for yourself. There's a free copy here on archive.org. I'd also like to point to my previous post for some context if anyone reading this post is new here. You may also want to watch Dual Process Theory's take, as I agree with pretty much all of their arguments.

You have the appropriate context for this? Good.

Now then.

Within the logbook, there are three known writers: Red Pen, aka Michael Afton; Faded Text, aka Charlie Emily; and Altered Text, aka CC/Cassidy Afton.

There are also, however, three identifiable names: Mike, Cassidy, and Dave. Popular fanon will tell you that "Cassidy" is Faded, as well as being the Vengeful Spirit and the second Golden Freddy spirit. It will now also tell you that CC's name is Dave, previously mstaken to be Evan.

I am here to tell you that popular fanon is, as popular fanon tends to be, wildly off the mark.

As per my last post, I dismissed Cassidy as a little girl for two reasons: firstly, that she has no narrative significance before whenever the logbook takes place, and secondly, because Faded asks too many specific questions to be a stranger. The logbook came out after Pizzeria Sim, and introducing Cassidy as such an important character this late in the story is nonsensical.

But...my theory leaves out Dave. Who is Dave?

Put a pin in that for now. We'll get there. For now, let's talk about Michael Afton.

Part 2: Why?

In my last theory post, linked above, I asked a question that I found to be forgotten: why? Why does faded ask such specific questions? Why is there so much puppet symbolism? Why would CC know the name Cassidy? Why are there so many tidbits that never get mentioned?

I have some new ones today: Why is Mike here? Why are Charlie and Cassidy in his book? Why is the name Dave important?

For simplicity's sake, we'll start with why Charlie and CC are talking. Based on the imagery of the Puppet and birthdays on pages 31 and 98, as well as "The party was for you" (103), it's most likely to set up the Happiest Day, placing this before...whenever that happens. Before Pizzeria Sim, at least.

(Fig. 1: The Puppet/Happiest Day symbolism.)

So...if that's the goal, why is Mike important? Sure, he helps spell Cassidy's name, but only the last couple letters. And of all the available grids, "Dave" is spelt in the Foxy grid. The one animatronic that is associated with Mike.

(Fig. 2: Available grids.)

To me, this implies the name Dave is important for Michael to remember. But why?

...Why would Michael need to remember anything? Surely he remembers, right? I mean, he references the Nightmares and casual bongos and exotic butters and the Bite. Surely, surely that means he remembers!

(Fig. 3: Michael's references.)

Reread all his answers again, all throughout the book, knowing this takes place after Sister Location, during the time he's hunting down his father. Tell me what's missing. (Or you can trust me to tell you, I suppose.)

Mentions of his family, right?

In fact, he's not even the one to bring up the Bite. The logbook brings it up for him; he just responds to it.

Throughout the book, Mike is unresponsive and noncommittal. His doodles exist in the corners and margins, he rarely responds to either the book or Faded's questions directly, he even crosses out his own name. The only thing he repeatedly emphasizes throughtout the book is SURVIVAL. In all caps, SURVIVAL. CERTAIN DEATH.

(Fig. 4: Michael's scribblings as per the previous paragraph.)

Interestingly, he commonly writes about leaving leaving. Such as running away, locking up the animatronics, going on vacation, or dying. This directly contrasts his established desire to find his father, which implies he hasn't gotten that motivation yet.

Michael has been scooped by the time the Logbook happens. Michael, like most spirits, forgot. Forgot less than Cassidy and perhaps the MCI, for whatever reason, but forgot nonetheless.

And Charlie is here to help him remember, the same way she's helping Cassidy remember.

Specifically, she wants him to remember the name Dave, spelled out via the coordinates of the answered questions. The first one of which is answered by Michael, long before Cassidy says "I'm scared" as a potential alternate answer.

Part Three: Fandom Really Needs to Learn to Re-examine Fundamentals.

Take that pin out of "Who's Dave" and "Why is Dave important" from earlier, because it's time to answer those questions.

Okay. So, we've established a few things.

Dave is not one of the spirits in the logbook.

Charlie is pushing for Michael to remember the name Dave.

Michael has lost his memory, and has yet to gain the motive of finding his father.

If all of this is true, "Dave" must be connected to Michael's motivation: finding his father.

But we already know his name! William Afton, as established in...in......uh.........which game was it again? Sorry, hold on, let me just check my sources...*shuffling papers*...oh! Here we go! William Afton's name was established in the novels...and...and for the entirety of The Silver Eyes, he's referred to almost exclusively by his alias, Dave. To my knowledge, his first name is never confirmed in the games.

...What if we've been wrong in accepting that his name is William Afton? What if he is Dave, and it's not just an alias?

Allow me, once more, to set the scene.

Part Four: FNaF is a story. Let's treat it as such.

The date is [REDACTED], just after Michael's scooping. His corpse gets up without him, shambling around with metal for bones and vague remnants of children's souls for a pilot.

Michael himself is stuck in a security logbook; a paltry little thing given to him by his employers, like a twisted joke. He writes and crosses out his own name, and doodles in the margins for a bit.

Charlie, ever the attentive soul, joins him, bringing the Crying Child with her. Two brothers, one memory, or something like that. She begins gauging what he remembers: Does he know who he is? How he died?

Michael doesn't respond. He doesn't need to. It's not hard for Charlie to piece together what happened, especially given his shambling corpse ranting and raving about their revenge.

So, she begins to push Michael to remember his killer. She starts with the nightmares (do you have dreams), the first thing he did. She follows up with his resemblance to his father (what do you see), but Michael goes unresponsive, possibly catching on to her game. Ever the stubborn one, that. Instead, CC responds. So she switches gears, roping CC into helping her spell out both names by directing her questions to him, until Michael finally helps spell Cassidy.

Next to the wordsearch where Cassidy remembers is a mirror; one to reflect EVAD (spelled in CC answer order) into DAVE. Two brothers, one memory, as the saying doesn't go.

Michael's corpse lies cold and empty on the ground, Ennard having escaped into a gutter. He can't move on, not yet. There's only one option left for him now.

Michael looks into the mirror.

And his eyes open purple.

.

also it would be really funny if davetrap had an alias in the games timeline and it was william/will miller THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT!

[scarletfasinera]

Had an opportunity to talk about my goal to read The Anatomy of Melancholy in 2025 with my best friend's brother & his girlfriend. She's a literature teacher, so she recognized it and seemed really impressed by the goal. She's was like "Wow! Isn't it like 1500 pages? That's a really good goal for the year, please keep me updated on your progress!" and when I got really serious and said "I'm GOING to read it entirely. It's my White Whale." she laughed & started clapping & nodding at me.

[right-there-ride-on]

Sbr is only mildly morally ambiguous and that’s okay

okay so the title is misleading ���� this is just a short examination of Johnny v Valentine (and Johnny & Valentine) with a little analysis of the confrontation.

for me valentine’s defining character trait isn’t his patriotism but that’s he’s a massive fucking liar. excellent writing for a politician. the only promise he ever kept was the one he made to lucy not to harm steven. and even then valentine is also super vindictive, so even though he didn’t kill him he made sure to torture him a little. Valentine is not at all the magnanimous man he presents himself to be and the constant discrepancy between his words and his actions proves that. when he’s trying to trick johnny into ending the rotation he hits all correct appeals but johnny knows in his gut that this man is a liar.

sometimes ppl act like sbr proposes a huge moral quandary about valentine’s intentions and whether he was the one “walking the righteous path” all along. but there’s really not. that’s Johnny’s internal battle. Since nick’s death johnny believed himself to be a curse / burden / bad person, but through the race he undergoes several trials that end in self-improvement and learning to have grace with himself. by the end of the narrative Johnny has evolved into someone who does have the strength of character and integrity necessary to judge the actions of someone else, whether he believes it or not, and regardless of whether he feels the right to. So yes, johnny was right to kill valentine. there’s no ifs or buts about it. the true brutality and cruelty of Valentine’s ideal world was very clearly portrayed in the way D4C Love Train functions. the corpse appeared to ‘choose’ Valentine by granting him Love Train, but at the same time it was also healing Johnny. if we look at the corpse through the lens of it primarily being a tool used to achieve the collector’s desires, we see that it empowered both Valentine and Johnny and indirectly or not set them on a collision course with each other. Perhaps there was a question of who was ‘righteous’ for the corpse itself, but the narrative itself tells us over and over again that it’s Johnny.

look at it this way. Johnny, who for most of his life believed he was spiritually and later physically damaged beyond hope, was empowered through the corpse and ended the narrative with a new chance at life. Valentine, who desired a world where not just America would prosper, but where he would be the head of said prospering state, and embody the power behind it, was granted the ability to achieve that world. Yet during their confrontation, the callous cruelty and negative consequences of Valentine’s vision is made apparent over and over again. First with Lucy, then with the innocents killed ‘somewhere else’, and lastly with Gyro and Johnny. Valentine’s actions always betray the truth of his intentions; once he proposed the deal, should Johnny have accepted, he intended to backstab Johnny and kill him the moment he got what he wanted. If he had truly been the ‘righteous one’, he would have kept his word and left Johnny alone once the rotation was reversed. But leaving Johnny alive would have meant he was no longer the most powerful man in the room, and that idea is something Valentine can’t stand.

Valentine is not a good person with good intentions. He claims to care about America, yet throughout the story discards his men and citizens like bugs (consider the train engineer). His actions continually demonstrate the reality: Valentine is power-hungry, petty, vindictive, ruthless, and above all else, a manipulative liar.

Valentine’s patriotism is the motivation behind his actions, but his brutality and deceptiveness defines those actions and is evident in everything he does. The implicit reason Alt!Diego failed was because he believed Valentine. By the end of the story there shouldn’t be a question on whether Valentine or Johnny was in the right. Valentine was the villain and he needed to be defeated. His ‘righteous’ world was, unequivocally, wrong.

[newportangels]

why are people asking me for a source on my bob dylan made the beatles gay post.... Does rpf not exist anymore?

[ananke-xiii]

Form and Void... and Hands and Hearts.

Intro.

Part II

Part III

I really like "Form od Void" from S11. It's one of my favorite episodes and it enrages me to no end that it was Andrew Dabb who wrote it. Sometimes a girl just wants to be a hater. But I don't have it in me :(.

Talking about H-A-T-E...

The episodes starts with this word:

H-a-t-e. It was with this left hand that old brother Cain struck the blow that laid his brother low. L-o-v-e. You see these fingers? They're arched. These fingers has veins that run straight to the soul of man. The right hand, friends -- the hand of love. Now watch, and I'll show you the story of life. These fingers, dear hearts, is always a-warrin' and a-tuggin', one against the other. Now watch 'em. Old brother left hand -- left hand hates a-fightin'. And it looks like love's a goner. But wait a minute. Wait a minute. Hot dog! Love's a-winnin'. Yes, siree. It's love that won. And old left-hand hate is down for the count.

This little monologue here is taken from "The Night of the Hunter" by Charles Laughton, his first and only movie. Laughton was bisexual and I'm telling you this because it's relevant to the usual queer stuff happening in SPN and to the point I want to make in this post.

The title of the episode, "Form and Void" , refers to the Genesis but it contains a meaningful omission. The King James version reads:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Earth is without form, and void. This changes everything because the subject of the sentence is the earth but here we're talking about "form and void" as nouns, not attributes. It's a brilliant call-back to the Genesis (therefore to the beginning of time and the beginning of SPN) and to the dichotomy of God and Amara but it's a smokescreen. The episode abounds with biblical references but there's more, at least to me. There is a secret.

If we look a little beyond Christianity the terms "form and void" are used in one of the most important sutras from Mahayana Buddhism. The Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya, "The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom", or simply called "The Heart Sutra".

I think you know where I'm going with this. The heart of the Heart Sutra is the following: "Form is emptiness (śūnyatā), emptiness is form". Sūnyatā is such a vast concept that I cannot possibly even IMAGINE to summarize it here. Just for the sake of my argument I'll say that it's often translated as emptiness, vacuity, void... without form. Very broadly (and I'll go to different kinds of Hell in different religions just talking about this stuff in relation to fucking CW Supernatural LOL) it means that ultimate reality is EMPTINESS because there is no FIXED reality, no STABLE self and EVERYTHING is connected and dependent on something else. Therefore form is emptiness and emptiness is form.

You undestand that in this light "Form and Void" is no dichotomy, thefore the episode is telling us to subvert how we view things. And it starts with that quote from "The Night of the Hunter".

Little useful background: the movie is about a fake preacher who preys on two children to get to their father's hidden treasure. He's the big wolf in disguise, a hunter wearing a preacher persona. So we need to take what he says with a grain of salt and he says a lot.

Right hand vs left hand: the preacher/hunter says that the right hand is the hand of love and the left hand is the hand of hate. This follow a well-know misconception regarding everything associated with the left as "sinister" and satanic. It's a Christian view of the world. He also says that Cain killed his brother using his left hand while the right hand has "veins that run straight to the soul of man". This man is conning people.

Notoriously, the hand that has veins that run to the heart is the left hand. This is the reason why people put their wedding rings on their left hand's...ring finger. It's an incredible old assumption that has been debunked by science but we don't care about science here. We care about symbols. And symbolically-speaking the left hand is the hand of the heart and love, not the right hand.

Now where in the hell does this idea of right and left hand? And am I crazy for seeing hints of Buddhism in a story about the Christian God? No.

The left-hand and right-hand paths are two approaches to magic and Western esotericism in general. They're called this way because people in the '800 got interested in Tantrism and translated the sanskrit terms "vāmācāra" and "dakṣiṇācāra" respectively "left-hand path" and "right-hand path". I'm not gonna go into details but I think you understood by now that the "left-hand path" was the "evil" one, the one with sex and other Very Bad Things, while the "right-hand path" was Good and Sexless and Serious and Real. In other words, the right hand represents White Magic and Controlled Sexuality while the left hand represents Black magic and Uncontrolled Sexuality. Practitioners of black magic were evil AND gay.

LOL.

Let's go back to the serial killer preacher: he says that Love wins and that it's the right hand that triumphs over the left hand. All these fingers connected to the soul that are always tugging and warring and getting entwined and hot dog! it's hot in here! But, remember folks, he's conning people. So what he says it's the opposite of what we should understand.

the preacher shouldn't be talking about this stuff in front of children. but then again, he's a predator.

Wait there's more: do you want to know if you're left-hemisphere dominant or right-hemishpere dominant? All you gotta do is to weave your fingers. If your right thumb goes over your left one then you're LEFT-dominant. If your left thumb goes over your right one you're RIGHT-dominant.

Confused much? As you know left emisphere controls controls speech, comprehension, arithmetic, and writing while right hemisphere controls creativity, spatial ability, artistic, and musical skills. It's the opposite of what we might think (because of the stupid assumption according to which left is Bad and Evil. Well, ACTUALLY left is rationality and control so the joke's on you, stupid assumption).

The dear preacher over here is right-hemisphere dominant. It may possibly mean that he's LEFT-handed and thus this image is a huge foreshadow of his "evilness" and his eventual demise. It also means that what he's saying is bullshit.

So to sum it up: in this episodes there are hunters and preachers that aren't really hunters and preachers, there are innocent children who might be seen not as innocent, left hand and right hand are subverted and they mean the opposite of what they should mean thus actually meaning what they mean, the title refers to something AND to something else and this something is very much related to hands and love and hearts...

In just one fucking scene we are told the whole episode and I H-A-T-E-that Dabb wrote it, have I mentioned it?

[getvalentined]

Thinking about finally throwing all my FF7 meta analysis and lore deep dive stuff onto a sideblog. It'd be reblogged from here, but I'd be able to organize it a little better, have a directory so people could find things more easily, and maybe it'd stop people from regurgitating things I say word-for-word for brownie points when they can just find and reblog the fucking original post(s).

[fitzrove]

Omg turns out Brigitte Hamann and Fredrick Morton beefed over Rudolf's depiction in Affaire Mayerling (das Musical)