#i am almost certain it was jame related

[othercat2]

This meme is reminding me that a male character in one of the recent Kencyr novels got himself a pair of "big naturals" due to Typical Jame Adjacent Chaos.

oh also, a stupid thing i did. mr judge big naturals

[l1ve-l4ugh-lov3craft]

Marauders Arcane AU Idea Dump Part 2

@taleofapart-timepoet I have more lol But only cos @cheekyboybeth was enabling my madness in the comments of one of our posts

Starting off strong with the rest of my episode 2 ideas:

“Nobody wins in war, Sirius.” That whole conversation is very Alphard to me so we need that I think

Idk if i feel like doing the ‘Jayce almost slip n sliding’ thing so we gotta come up with another way Lily and Panda meet

“What makes you different makes you strong” - use this bit maybe? Idk we’ll see how the rest of the ep plays out for them

Episode 3:

The Silco flashback in the beginning can tie into Riddle’s backstory??? Something something with Alphard

“You’ve got a good heart, never lose it.” - Alphard, Sirius content is WINNING

Possibly do ^^this chapter from Alphard’s POV and then have an interlude that’s Sirius’ POV

Make all that^^ the end of a chapter to leave everyone on a miserable cliffhanger after Alphard gets captured

Start with some pandalilly content the chapter after :)

Have a nice but angsty lil James and Sirius moment when they debrief about Monty dying and Alphard getting caught

Silly goofy scene of mary catching pandalily while they’re trying to break in and get lilly’s research

The whole “you’re not ready” scene needs to HURT

“Crank it” joke required

And then ofc the scene with the hex cores and powder’s freak out moment are ALSO important but we’ll probably tone it down just a little bit to fit regulus’ character a bit better (A/N: okay for this one I imagine a sort of pacing, regulus falling into a bit of an inferiority spiral thinking of all the ways he feels like he's failed Sirius up until then. More of a panic attack then a breakdown cos i feel like that's more his forte)

The entire bit from when vi and crew make it to rescue vander up until the end of the episode will possibly be its own chapter? At least a VERY sizeable chunk of the chapter

^^alternate sirius and regulus POV

We DO have to include the oogly moogly scientist bits with pandora and lily cos that is important

Use the monkey clanging or the individual bomb explosions as a sort of measurement for how fast things happened after regulus throws in the bomb (A/N: OKAY THIS??? Let me see if I can paint a picture properly. I'd love to start the scene with a "As (description of whatever happens and regulus throws in the bomb), (insert number here) things happened all at once." and then describe how the bomb rolls in and bounces. And each time it bounces, do a description of one of the aforementioned things happens. I dunno how to fully describe it, I may have to write out a snippet and make a post on that to fully describe but AGH! it is SO good in my head)

Random Ideas I've Had:

I want to focus a bit more on James and Regulus' relationship in the first few chapters before it all goes to hell so that the scene on the bridge when the two of them will fight hurts as much as it should

not plot related, but it would be LOT to have one fic for season 1 and one fic for season 2. like a sequel. cos pitfighter sirius???? are you fucking KIDDING ME?? I will die

obviously the prison Vi is in is gonna be Azkaban for this AU, so that's super cool

I would LOVE to pay homage to the horcruxes in the way that Silco has his who creepy stuff on his face (idk I don't play league so i don't know the lore

I am THRILLED to have Mary as Mel cos agh! her character arc is going to be FANTASTIC and i love that I get to let Mary commit crimes

OH MY GOSH- I just had the idea to have Barty and Evan as Clagger and Milo and it's going to be FANTASTIC having the two of them haunting the narrative (and regulus' conscience) the way milo and clagger do for jinx

uhhhhhh that's all I have? for now? I think? but I'm certain I'll have more. Thank you for coming to my ted talk :)

[chdarling]

I can count on one hand when snape has lost his cool in canon . in poa when harry saved sirius , in OOTP when sirius vs snape , when harry saw his memories . In hbp when harry called him a coward . And that's about it . While majority of time he is composed , confident and insults people with coolness and sass . The list is too long . Like he has coolly sassed Bellatrix , peter , sirius , harry , Ron , hermione , james , lockhart etc .

I love and deeply appreciate your talent but imo snape's behaviour is reversed in TLE , he is just too angry here to think coherently let alone insult or attempt at sarcasm .

I mean Remus has more sarcasm and wit than he has in canon and i have no complain there as i am a sucker for wity banter and humor , but it feels like injustice to Snape's personality to me .

I’m sorry you feel that way! I emphatically (and amicably) disagree.

I think for me it comes down to the fact that I am not trying to replicate the characters exactly as they were in the books. TLE is a prequel, and thus for all the characters — but especially Snape because he actually survives — this is a story of becoming. They’re not meant to be perfectly reflected versions of who they were in the '90s, but rather versions of themselves that could feasibly grow into the characters we see in canon.

The Snape in canon is a 35ish year old man who has survived a war and had years and years to master his emotions and become a top-notch spy who, as you say, sasses the likes of Bellatrix, not to mention lies to Voldemort's face. The Snape I’m writing in TLE is a 17-year-old boy who has done none of that yet but is raw and bitter and wrathful enough to be convinced joining a fascist hate group is a really swell idea.

To me, the moments you point out when Snape loses his cool in canon are the entire point of his characterization, not an occasional aberration, and these scenes were crucial to me when building his character. Rage is crucial to his character. It’s notable, I think, that almost all of these moments are related to the Marauders/Lily in some way. It’s the moment the mask slips and the wounded teenager comes out.

A few examples, just for fun (emphasis mine).

(This got a little long, but I was distracting myself during some severe weather that was stressing me, so I hope you’ll take this in the spirit of fun discussion, and not anything else. 🙂)

From POA, after Sirius escapes:

“THEY HELPED HIM ESCAPE, I KNOW IT!” Snape howled, pointing at Harry and Hermione. His face was twisted; spit was flying from his mouth. “Calm down, man!” Fudge barked. “You’re talking nonsense!” “YOU DON’T KNOW POTTER!” shrieked Snape. “HE DID IT, I KNOW HE DID IT—!”

“Fellow seems quite unbalanced,” said Fudge, staring after him. “I’d watch out for him if I were you, Dumbledore.” “Oh, he’s not unbalanced,” said Dumbledore quietly. “He’s just suffered a severe disappointment.”

From OOTP after Harry sees his worst memory:

“So,” said Snape, gripping Harry’s arm so tightly Harry’s hand was starting to feel numb. “So…been enjoying yourself, Potter?” “N-no…” said Harry, trying to free his arm. It was scary: Snape’s lips were shaking, his face was white, his teeth were bared. “Amusing man, your father, wasn’t he?” Said Snape, shaking Harry so hard that his glasses slipped down his nose. “I—didn’t—“ Snape threw Harry from him with all his might. Harry fell hard on to the dungeon floor.

From Half-Blood Prince, after Harry calls him a coward:

“DON’T—” screamed Snape, and his face was suddenly demented, inhuman, as though he was in as much pain as the yelping, howling dog stuck in the burning house behind them— “CALL ME COWARD!”

These are all such extreme reactions that, rare as they might be, they definitely suggest an undercurrent of deep rage and, I might add, a pattern of losing control when provoked with certain memories.

And then, of course, there are the flashbacks in which we actually DO get glimpses of young Snape:

“Tuney!” said Lily, surprise and welcome in her voice, but Snape had jumped to his feet. “Who’s spying now?” he shouted. What d’you want?”

(Interesting, I think, that his first instinct is to shout. Petunia hasn't said anything yet.)

There was a crack: A branch over Petunia’s head had fallen. Lily screamed: The branch caught Petunia on the shoulder, and she staggered backward and burst into tears. “Tuney!” But Petunia was running away. Lily rounded on Snape. “Did you make that happen?” “No.” He looked both defiant and scared. “You did!” She was backing away from him. “You did! You hurt her!” “No — no I didn’t!” But the lie did not convince Lily: After one last burning look, she ran from the little thicket, off after her sister, and Snape looked miserable and confused…

Snape’s whole face contorted and he spluttered, “Saved? Saved? You think he was playing the hero? He was saving his neck and his friends’ too! You’re not going to — I won’t let you —“ “Let me? Let me?” Lily’s bright green eyes were slits. Snape backtracked at once. “I didn’t mean — I just won’t want to see you made a fool of — He fancies you, James Potter fancies you!” The words seemed wrenched from him against his will. “And he’s not…everyone thinks…big Quidditch hero—“ Snape’s bitterness and dislike were rendering him incoherent, and Lily’s eyebrows were traveling farther and farther up her forehead.

He opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking. “I can’t pretend anymore. You’ve chosen your way, I’ve chosen mine.” “No—listen, I didn’t mean—“ “—to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?” He struggled on the verge of speech, but with a contemptuous look she turned and climbed back through the portrait hole…

This to me does not read as a composed, confident boy. This is (in my opinion) an extremely angry, troubled boy who is buffeted around by his emotions, who hasn’t yet learned to articulate them fully, let alone control them. Learning to conquer these emotions and be the cool, calm, and collected double-agent-man we see in canon is a big part of his journey, but it's certainly not something he's mastered yet at 17.

.......But, at the end of the day, this is just a fanfic and everyone has different interpretations of these characters. Which is fine and fun! TLE Snape has always been somewhat polarizing, but I'm pretty set in my interpretation of him. I'm looking forward to exploring more of his journey as he grows into book Snape. He's just not there yet. :)

[biblicallyaccurateslut]

I just read a re-post of one of my post from a non-gaylor, and I would like to say it was a really good, respectful answer that explained their point of view perfectly and, by any means, this post is an attemp to start beef or anything.

Being said that, one of the points that really standed out to me was how some fans would "force a queer identity on her" (not quoting them, just summarizing) and how twisting lyrics to hold a narrative or using certain interpretation of a song, was not healthy, in reference to the connection I made to the album midnights and Taylors queerness.

Now, I would like to ask, isnt twisting a lyric to fit a narrative how people started saying that Taylor was the "argumentative antithetical dream girl" she refers to in hits different, when is crearly (and is a question of grammar and basic language comprension) refering to the muse of the song?

Bet I could still melt your world, argumentative antithetical dream girl. Are you kidding me?? How could you posible say this makes sense if she was refering to herself???

Then, the paternity test constantly done by swifties to look for the muse of a song is nothing more than a certain interpretation of the lyric to fit the narrative. So that is not a thing exclusive to gaylors, almost every swiftie does it.

Now, that is what I like to call a double standard. I am not shaming the original autor of the post that have inspired this text, but pointing out a more societal problem. Very often, speculation and shipping and reading into things, if done in a hetero way is okay but do not dare to do it in a way that relates to queerness.

About the "forcing a queer identity on her", there is a thing, done through history called flagging. Safo was doing it in ancient Grecee, so did Oscar Wilde and more recently Elton John or James Dean. There are signals of the queer community to signal discretely to other lgbtq+ that they are one of them.

Taylor is not subtle about her flagging. She went out in a bi pride colored jacket to sing "and you can want who you want, boys and boys and girls and girls". She did sing about wearing someone like a necklace. She did spray paint her paint the bi colors to her gay pride music video. Use the lyric hair pin drop more than once. She puts lesbian flag colors as the main lighting in her world wide tour. And much much more. Is obvious, really out there for the people who want to see it to see.

Once you see that, you have no option but to hope she is queer; because if she was not, she would only be a straight girl that harmed the queer comunity by taking all the simbolisim that lgbtq+ people have built througt the ages and making it hetero to the mainstream, erasing the very little history the comunity has managed to create in the opressed world that it had have to endure.

So, even if I think that the answer to my previous post was really well written and respectful, I do not think it is a really nuance take.

PD: To the person behind the original blog that posted the answer, if you have read this and recognised yourself on it, just know this is not a personal attack and I apologize before hand if that felt like that to you.

[courfee]

navigation post & faq

ao3 my poetry insta for fanart

Marauders fanart (tumblr)

Marauders microfics (tumblr)

Marauders fanfics (ao3)

ritardando – M | Jegulus | 1/18 Regulus comforts James through panic attacks, which leads to them fake dating

Operation Walburga's Arbitrary No Kissing Ever Rule – T | Jegulus | 11/11 | wc:91k A 10 Things I Hate About You AU where James fake dates Regulus so Sirius can date Remus again

All My Theory Complete — M | Jegulus | 25/25 | wc: 166k a slow burn Hogwarts fic with a hopeful end.

Watch Me Meet My End — G | Wolfstar | 1/1 | wc: 2.3k Remus finds out about Sirius' escape from Azkaban

On Lies And Spies — M | Peter | 1/1 | wc: 2.7k On Halloween 1981 Peter does not mean to betray his best friend, but somehow everything goes wrong.

blindspot — G | Jegulus | 1/1 | wc: 3k turns out dogs, deer and wolves are red-green colourblind, which has some questionable consequences for the people who can turn into said animals

Something That Tastes Almost Divine — G | Prongsfoot | 1/1 | wc: 2.6k unrequited but very intimate Prongsfoot

If you ask nicely — T | Jegulus | 1/1 | wc: 1.2k James is great at flirting. What he is not great at, he recently had to learn, is being flirted with.

Borrow My Name — E | Jegulus | 10/10 | wc: 30k James is Regulus' new neighbour, who finds many excuses to knock on his door

let's walk the road backwards the way we came — M | Marauders | 4/4 | wc: 5.4k It shouldn’t have come to anyone’s surprise that Remus is the first of the Marauders to die.

high delight — E | Jegulus | 1/1 | wc: 4.7k james is scared of flying on planes, regulus makes for a very good distraction

Les Mis fanart (tumblr)

Les Mis fanfics (ao3)

Now Warm in Love — G | Courf/Jehan | 1/1 | wc: 1.0k Jehan has an awful day and Courfeyrac has an awful sweater

A Piece of Sun — G | Triumvirate | 1/1 | wc: 395 a character study of the triumvirate comparing them to the sun

Nature Assigns the Sun — G | Courf | 1/1 | wc: 2.2k Courfeyrac struggling with not being alright all the time and asking for help

FAQ

Can I translate your fics? you can, as long as it stays on ao3 and is marked as a translation with the ao3 function

Can I post your fics elsewhere? no.

Can I bind your fics? if you do it yourself by hand only for personal use and do not make a profit off of it, go ahead! (and also show me pls i wanna see)

Can I put your fics on Goodreads or Storygraph?  no

Can I use your art as my profile picture/lockscreen/... sure, if it's on the internet credit me properly though

Can I repost your art? don't repost if you have nothing to add to it. if it is merely a compliment or some excitement about my art, reblog/retweet/etc my post instead and add it in the comments/tags/etc. if you do have something new to add (using it as visualisation, art/detail analysis, etc) feel free to repost it as long as you give proper credit (link back to the og post & tag me). however, don't repost my art on social media platforms i am on when i haven't posted it there myself yet

what about fanarts you made for other fics? please do not use the fanart i make for certain fics to relate to other fics. those fanarts are gifts to the authors of the fics they're about and i want them to stay connected to those fics

Can I use your fics/art as training data for AIs/use AI to to expand on your fics/art? absolutely not. I do not endorse the usage of AI in any creative field whatsoever

[saintatomique]

Extended F.A.Q/Interview about 'Heroes Of Oblivion'

(The post below is related to the release of the visual novel 'Heroes Of Oblivion', which is out on itch.io now)

What is this game/What is it about?

This game is a retrofuturistic (40s-inspired) sci-fi and supernatural drama that revolves around a group of friends and touches important issues such as duty, maturity, morality, essence of what a hero is, and what is worth fighting for. I can call it a story about 'growing up', even though the characters are kids in it only for a short time. But they are and it's important. Imagine the worst possible time to grow up. The worst possible circumstance of growing up. Imagine the situation when this eternal optimism of youths that allows them to grow up is impossible. The only situation when closing yourself off to the world seems better than growing up. And you will already be halfway close to what the game is about.

What made you create it?

When I started this game, I was thinking of 'anti-horror', of turning a trope 'survival horror' on its head. Much like Undertale questioned the traditional RPG, I intended to question the traditonal horror and I hold the same disdain for typical horror as Toby Fox holds for traditional rpgs. I think disdain in general is a very powerful thing, especially against things that are perceived as 'heroic'. Tolkien hated power-hungry futurists, Miyazaki also hated them, and also hated the war. Authors seem to hate 'heroes' which aren't really heroes. I attempted to be like them by also questioning what being a hero means. My personal target is a 'James Bond' type of hero who always goes out of situations unscathed, who always has 'fun', this certain glorification of slipperiness, glorification of avoiding pain. At least those brutish cowboys and knights of the past weren't afraid of a couple of wounds and bruises. When they did wrong and acted like pigs, they paid for it - sometimes, with their lives. But modern life glorifies a different kind of hero - the one who is above any kind of consequence. This is what I am trying to dismantle.

Who do you think this story is for?

People who like to cry. I am only half joking.

I made this game to share the experiences of other people, some of them my ancestors. My own, too. This is the first time I am opening up about certain things that I personally experienced, actual conversations I had, almost word for word in certain cases. Many times, if not for all times, you will say 'That's fucked up' and you will be right. That's why I am writing about it. There are many controversial things about it. I find it a bit sad becasue I was simply writing down the conversations I had with people around me. My life is controversial, it seems. Well, someone has to do it!

One of the episodes has teens discussing sexual things, quite crassly, even jokingly describing their attraction to what is perceived as 'adults'. I am sure the community will label it unhealthy, even though that's what I am talking about - it IS unhealthy, not just unhealthy, way worse than that. But it's important to show those conversations I had with my friends exactly as they were. I am not writing an instruction manual for life. I am telling a story about terrible things I saw and since I am in my thirties and I expect my readers to be at least 20+, I will tell this story as it happened.

Who is your personal favorite character out of the game's characters?

Out of the four scientists, I'd say my favorite one is Credence, because he is very earnest underneath his very unpleasant exterior. But overall, I'd say my favorite character is still Mort.

At the end of the development recently, I realized how much I actually miss him. It was a real feeling of longing and deep gratitude. I am happy that we got to experience it together and I can honestly say that I will love him for the rest of my days.

What do you think a player will get out of your game?

A mountain of anguish and a broken heart. But it is by design. This is how it has to be if you love something sincerely.

[tleeaves]

you mentioned you're exploring neurodivergence: characters you relate to in a way that migghhhht be related to neurodivergence and why you relate to them and i'll do my thing that i do with the characters

Thank you so much for this ask, lovely <3 so, yes, I am exploring neurodivergence, specifically along the lines of ADHD and CPTSD, but if I've learned anything while learning about neurodivergence, it's that certain aspects of disorders can overlap or even be mistaken for something else. Eventually, I intend to consult a professional. In the meantime, I make do. And I do have characters I relate to, in ways that might be related to neurodivergence.

We'll mostly deal with TSC characters. So, this is sort of combined, but James Herondale and Matthew Fairchild. I don't self-identify with them the way I do more with Cordelia, but I relate to things about them that just aren't quite present in her that are important to me. It's a bit difficult to talk about all the ways in which I relate to both James and Matthew without sharing some incredibly vulnerable stuff that I generally just don't like to talk about, but I'll try and pick out the things that might be related to neurodivergence.

This is... so so so tricky, actually. I mean, how do I even pin-point traits and things? How do I do this without sounding way too random and vague and end up just talking about things that might have nothing to do with the topic at hand? Matthew's mannerisms feel like mine, theatrical, flourishing hand gestures to accompany speech, being able to switch topics quickly, feeling like my creativity is stifled, way too focused on my physical appearance though I personally do my best to hide it, my reasoning for keeping fit is half about self-defense and protecting my siblings and friends and half about looking good which always makes me think of the way Matthew would treat training, I love finding and wearing unique clothing items that may or may not cost way too much and so it's lucky I just find these treasures in thrift stores, I also have a tendency to Smile my way through social circles (there's a running joke that I can approach absolutely anyone and strike up a conversation. Anyone), I flirt with everyone because I like the thrill of it and it allows a sort of distance from vulnerability in a way I can't exactly explain, this guy has depression and I have depression, I am often the comedian of the group or at least the entertainer (my failed dates and weird social encounters make for exciting conversations), and because of that... I don't know. Matthew feels like he's almost always acting. The world is his stage. And I feel like that all the time. I don't even know who I'm performing for half the time. It gets a bit exhausting in some ways. I struggle to always be an entertainer, to be social, to respond to conversations properly and not get way too hurt over little comments people make that they probably don't realise were taken the wrong way. I am a massive overthinker and the only times I can escape that are in entirely different environments where I basically have permission to have no outside obligations and relax or when I have the rare alcoholic drink that forces my body and mind to lose tension. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), my health doesn't allow me to drink often if at all these days.

So, I get broody, and that reminds me of both Matthew and James. I can be a very deep brooder. Silent, stone-faced, almost apathetic. That reminds me more of James. I'm a passionate person with a temper that I've spent years getting under control, but it means I need a lot of outlets for all that emotion. Getting too stuck in my own head makes me restless and I have to move and push myself physically to make myself too exhausted to be so deep in my thoughts. It's interesting, to me, that I workout for defense and aesthetics, but that it's also a crutch at this point for letting out pent up energies. If I don't, I go into weird, fairly brief episodes of extra excitable and sort of reckless behaviour (more like reduced inhibition), which can be worsened at night compared to if it happens during the day. If you hadn't clued in yet: it was after I analysed James in the post I have pinned on my blog that I realised how much his night on the town in TMH reminded me of myself, which is why I couldn't think of a reason for a while of it being a symptom of anything but him being himself just as I know that's how I can act. His cause for that episode may be different to mine, but I definitely felt some similarities there. Even James' performance-like behaviour called to me, his Chesire grin, the absolute mischief--as much as I am charmed (it's James Herondale after all), I also have this feeling of "that's me! I get that!" And yet I can't even name or explain it.

Which in turn makes me think of Will Herondale. I very rarely talk about this because a) one of my friends is in love with him and I don't need her associating me with him or vice versa, b) an ex of mine has expressed an affinity with Will which makes me feel like I can't have it either since we relate to him in fairly different ways, c) everyone would just roll their eyes at me. Oh, and, you know, it's weird because he's the father of my fictional crush 😭 Anyway. There's something about Will growing up in the countryside of Wales (I come from the countryside of Victoria where I spent just over half my life so far on a farm) and caring so deeply for his sisters, being connected to his culture and missing parts of it, being loyal to Jem and, eventually, Tessa to a point it's almost self-destructive and yet feeling like he's stumbling in the dark when it comes to getting people to like him and to being a good friend to people, being a little shit in general, spinning tales (I've done this since I could even talk, to the point where I used to fabricate so many lies as a kid, simply because I could, and because so many other kids had experiences and things that I never did and I tried to lie about it to make up for it), and I just... in the weirdest way, I relate deeply to Will. I'm not even as attached to him as I am many other characters, but he's who I think of first most of the time when it comes to his rather silly behaviour, his excitability (after finding out the curse was not real), his solitary walks, going to rare bookstores and knowing a bunch of classics, having a tendency toward poetry but only for certain people and rather privately, the messiness of his room even. My best friend jokes that my room (whenever she sees it) is actually Jace Herondale's room because it's "monk-like and bare", but she doesn't see it when I have a burn out period and I'm too exhausted to even put clothes away or cups of tea, or do anything about my piles of books or pens and papers everywhere. I leave jewellery out too. It feels like a dragon's den, which is what I think of Will's room. I rarely make my bed properly. There's nothing necessarily stopping me, and in fact I feel happier and better when everything is neat and clean and organised, but I just can't bring myself to do anything for certain periods of time.

There's also Jem, but he and I understand each other on a chronic illness level, which to me has always been a separate sort of mental framework. But while he makes music to sort through his feelings, I listen to music to help me focus (I space out and my thoughts derail and I'm rather time blind and hours will pass unproductively and music (or urgency/deadlines) so far is the only thing that gets me honed in on an activity/work). That's also a little in connection to other things though where music is my crutch. I tend to dissociate from reality and it's an alarming and distressing feeling. I've never seen it done in fiction quite like how I experience it, so I tend to just write it myself (you can see bits of it with Lila in WBITHOM, such as outside The Devil Tavern going after Matthew and in the dark ballroom scene the night of the Institute dinner with the Lightwoods). I've reached out to others who experience it and even did research, and I actually cried with relief because I thought I was going crazy and losing my grip on everything, but I'm not alone and there is every chance I can end these episodes. Music helps me focus and sort of tie me to reality/myself/the present moment, so that I don't "slip", because when I do I forget myself and my surroundings and started wondering where I am and how I got there and who I am and why I'm here--it's like an existential crisis except you've forgotten literally everything and you're stunned and everything looks weird and the people are familiar yet unfamiliar and all the sounds are kind of loud but also muffled. This is often a dissociation that can occur due to trauma, though also unknown reasons and triggers, and sleep deprivation is thought to either cause or worsen it in some instances (and I have not had enough sleep in some time, let me tell you).

Edit: also, for the derealisation/depersonalisation above, I do relate to Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games who uses this technique where she mentally goes through a checklist of things that identify herself and reality, i.e. My name is [full name], I am 19, I live in Australia, I am half-Greek, I have such and such sisters and so and so brothers, I am here right now with my family/friends, we are doing [activity], I was born [birth date] etc. Recalling these facts and things helps reel everything in, but I am still left rather fragile feeling afterward.

So, there's kind of a lot going on in this noggin of mine. I don't fully understand a lot of it. Life can be scary and frustrating and downright exhausting. But I'm determined one day to finally seek some help. As I mentioned earlier, I do what I can on my own and with friends. Anyway, that's me on the nature of, well, me. Feels weird to talk about myself this way, even if it was tied with characters. Sorry for the wait, by the way, this was really tricky to try and write (and then I kept forgetting, whoops).

[a-gassy-antelope]

Miscellaneous Tag Game

Made by the one and only @ronald-speirs <3

Thank you for the tag @grumpy-liebgott ! Am I finally doing this after being tagged almost a month ago?....maybe

Favorite place in the world you’ve visited?

I haven't been many places truthfully. I loved hiking near Niagara Falls and also hiking in the Smokies near Gatlinburg. (I'm going to Alaska later this year so that will likely take the cake for me!)

Something you’re proud of yourself for?

Working 3 jobs while also caring for a terminally ill parent. Not to get too sad, but yeah, that was a time.

Favorite books?

Oof, gonna age myself with this. The Harry Potter will always hold a special place in my heart even though it has aged terribly. Because I am Furniture by Thalia Chatlas made a big impact on me as a teenager. One Flew Over The Cukoo's Nest by Ken Kasey is a favorite classic. Recently Dead Inside by Chandler Morrison kept me very entertained with pure shock value (although I just finished The Slob last night and it by far takes the cake for the most disgusting thing I've ever read)

Something that makes your heart happy when thinking about it?

When I think about the people I choose to surround myself with. I am a very open person with those I love. Once someone is in my inner circle I am a no boundary kinda person. Let's cut the small talk and bare all our trauma and then tease each other about it. Let's rot on the sofa together. It makes my heart happy to know that I have people I can be like this with.

Favorite thing about your culture?

...what culture... I could say there's a certain culture of the American Midwest that i love. Mainly the 'midwest goodbye' where you stand in the front door chatting for way too long, then in the driveway then in your car with the window rolled down. Also, ever had a midwestern dessert salad?????

When did you join the HBO War fandom? What was the first show you watched?

Well, my brother is older than me and he was very much ww2 obsessed. So watched Band of Brothers way younger than I probably should've. Probably when I was like 8? When I got into my career there was this song at work that would play and it felt so oddly nostalgic until one day I realized it sounded the intro credit music for Band of Brothers. Then it was put on Netflix and it was all down hill from there. Very different to watch again as an adult vs what I remembered from my childhood.

Have you read any of Easy Company’s books? If so, which ones were your favorite?

I just finished Dick Winters' memoir not that long ago! I think I'll read Shifty's next!

Favorite HBO War character and your favorite moment with them?

Everyone in b.o.b is my precious baby. See that generic white man? Yep, thats my child. Honestly though there are certain quotes from various characters that just scratches my brain. Buck with: "Your ass?!" Webster with: "You ignorant, servile scum! What the fuck are we doing here?" and the cadence in which he says "Don't salute the Germans!" Liebgott with "Hershey Bar!" Winters with: "What's that? A piece of paper? I dont wanna see another piece of paper" and Speirs with: "You talk to an officer you say 'sir' " (totally not because it made me feel some type of way)

Do you make content for any fandoms, if so; what sort of content?

I have made Band of Brothers stuff here on tumblr, classic text post as memes. Ao3 I've made Band of Brothers, Star Wars and My Hero Academia content!

Favorite actor/actress and your favorite film of theirs?

hm....that's hard to pick a favorite. Meryl Streep is always delightful, as is Gillian Anderson. Natalie Portman? Keira Knightly? ok, ok, maybe I should list a man...James McAvoy. Jack Nicholson. I dunno, I don't like picking favorites.

Favorite quote/s that you wish to share with others?

"I paint self portraits because I am so often alone...Because I am the person I know best." This Frido Kahlo quote really sticks with me because I feel like I can relate to being isolated and enjoying spending so much time on my own. I am my best companion and draw from my own experiences and emotions.

Random fact your mutuals/followers don’t know about you?

I am a licensed massage therapist and I work with patients with chronic pain and injuries. I love my job and my patients even though it is a very draining profession.

If you’re a writer, do you need a beta reader (say yes so I can be your beta reader 🤭)?

I am a writer! I want to say that I'm open to beta readers but I am also simultaneously afraid of others reading my work and embarrassed that people might not like it. That being said, I am working on a multi part Winnix fic rn.

Three things that make you smile?

My pets: a cat, 2 snakes, 2 leopard geckos and a pink tongue skink

Sweet gestures from my partner (or their dumbass jokes)

Writing!

Any nicknames you like?

Instead of Alex, a friend once called me Al Pal and I'm bewildered that it took me over 20 years to ever hear that.

List some people you love to see around on tumblr!

Uhm, everyone???? I love seeing people share whatever they're passionate about or find cute and funny. I love when people love things unapologetically! @grumpy-liebgott, @blueberry-ovaries @lewis-winters @easycompany123@andromeddog @hanniewinnix and honestly so many more!

What would you do during a zombie apocalypse?

I have two options. Get to my Marine Corps brother who is a borderline doomsday prepper but lives an hour and a half away or die immediately.

Favorite movie?

Again with the favorites? Some of my comfort movies include: Pride and Prejudice (2005), Mamma Mia, Hellboy 2 The Golden Army (specifically 2, not the first one) and Coraline

Do you like horror movies?

Yes! If my above mentioned books weren't an indicator. I love modern paranormal, 80s slashers and any Vincent Price movie

Tagging (no pressure!) : Also, Sorry if you've already been tagged! (does anyone else get nervous tagging people for no damn reason?)

@hanniewinnix, @pettypumpk1n @multifandomfanfic @hbowarandchill @fxxiva

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

This is a post I decided to make entirely for my own reasons and is definitely not just me doing that thing I do sometimes where I read something elsewhere on the internet and write a reply to it in a post on a different website to people who don’t have the original context. Such petty behaviour is beneath me and I would never do that. But anyway, here is how a post comparing Jon Richardson to John Robins should look.

They have a lot in common, obviously. They’ve both based their comedy personas on “I am bitter and anxious and think about things until it ruins my life and get upset when other people do things differently from me, and for related reasons I have a drinking problem”. Both of these comedic personas are… I mean, if it’s that far apart from the reality, then they’ve done a hell of a job of committing to the bit for nearly 20 years. I assume the truth in overlapping personas is why they venerate each other’s work so much, and get along so well, Jon Richardson seemed to get Robins in the divorce (his, um, first divorce – the first time he got divorced from a blond comedian with ADHD). There’s not a lot of point in pitting them against each other when they seem to go together in many ways.

However, here are some differences that immediately come to mind:

- I guess I can’t speak to this for sure as I haven’t listened to Jon Richardson’s solo radio show (aside from the couple of Robins-featuring episodes that I’ve listened to as part of my Robins-completism), but based on the radio shows I’ve heard – all of the Jon/Russell 6 Music era from 2006 to 2008 and almost all of the Elis/John XFM/Radio X era from 2014-2019 – Jon Richardson is really harsh on the radio and mellows a bit in his stand-up. While John Robins gives us a bit of a moderated and euphemized version of his darkness on the radio, and then just unleashes it all in stand-up. The latter version seems like the logical way to do it, given the nature of radio and the nature of stand-up. But I think Russell specifically brought out something in Jon that made him furious, so when he was on his own he comparatively calmed down.

- Having said that, I would argue that mostly, Jon Richardson’s stand-up is about how his outsider way of doing things is better and everyone else should do that too. While John Robins, in stand-up, will tell you his manifesto and then quickly acknowledge that trying to live this way has ruined his life and it would be better if he could be more like other people. But on the radio it’s the opposite. John Robins mostly defending his own darkness-based choices, while Jon Richardson was moaning about how the reality of living that way was actually pretty harrowing and he should stop.

- In stand-up, at least, Jon Richardson tends to keep it fairly superficial, getting deep into household things and only making tenuous ties to bigger stuff. While John Robins will do the jokes about domestic things only as a way into what Elis James has eloquently called “the cynical inclusion of emotional heft”. And that was true for several years before his Darkness of Robins show, even if he didn’t go as big on it before then. Jon Richardson is willing to imply the emotional heft a little more, rather than staring the audience down and laying it out.

- This is me speculating but it doesn’t take a lot of speculative inferring to say Jon Richardson might be more capable of adjusting his most difficult qualities in certain situations to make himself easier to work with, which would be how he got the decade-long panel show career and Robins not so much. Also, it takes no speculation at all to say Jon Richardson can usually “play along” his way through an awkward panel show situation, which John Robins demonstrably cannot. Though there are some exceptions to Richardson’s ability to do this, ie. the Jimmy Carr tax episode and that time when they made him go talk to strangers in America with Sean Lock.

- John Robins wrote a fun and friendly book with a positive message about mental health and Jon Richardson wrote the most harrowing fucking memoir I’ve ever read.

- John Robins has a pointlessly intense and earnest side that Richardson never quite reaches – not in his public persona, at least. I have never seen Jon Richardson unironically quote both Phil Kay and Anthony Burgess while describing breaking up a fight in the streets of Edinburgh.

On the other hand, I’ve never heard John Robins get jealous of a clock because someone else was checking the time instead of looking at him. Richardson certainly has his own brand of intensity.

And here are some similarities besides the very obvious (anxiety, alcoholism):

- Both have politics that are left-wing but less left-wing than I am, both are very pragmatic in their political views and seem to have more pragmatic than ideological objections to the far-left, both specifically a big fan of taxes.

- Both fairly obsessive about letting people know when they have done more work on something than other people, and generally cannot even the slightest disparity in fairness.

- Both are highly competitive, and by and large, pretty good at the thing they get to be competitive about during public performance on a long-term basis (Jon is pretty good at Countdown, John is good at quizzes and quick-thinking-based games). This comes into play in their actual competitions (Catsdown, the games they play on John and Elis’ radio show, they’ve both done Taskmaster), but it’s also a much larger part of their overall comedic persona.

This is interesting as a status thing, because it can be both. When they’re winning, it can be a way for them to claw the high status from a persona that usually isn’t that. But even then, it isn’t always. Even at the best of times, it’s very easy for their competitive nature to get turned around on them, it just takes one person (this person can be someone else in a competition, or it can be Jon/John pointing it out about themselves) to point out how pitiful it is to want to win something unimportant that badly, and it turns into a low status thing.

Of course I’ve thought of this lately because Taskmaster’s airing again, and various people have wildly different views on whether competitiveness on a comedy show is a good thing, but I’ve realized that one of the ways I diverge with other people on that is on how I view it, status-wise. I don’t like the hyper-competitive contestants because they’re cool, I like them because they’re not. Even if they actually are very good at the thing they’re competitive about, they’re still walking around caring deeply about something arbitrary and pointless. The cool people are the ones who don’t give a shit, and in many cases I dislike them for being so cool. To use the current example, fuck Steve Pemberton for being “together” enough to do a whole Taskmaster task while still thinking about how to best show off for the cameras and help them with their edit. I like John Robins and his inability to moderate his maladaptive qualities even when doing so would be professionally beneficial to him. And through that, I like the guy who is winning points-wise, but it still feels like supporting the flawed/lower status one.

This has been a post I've made for no particular reason and not as a response to anything whatsoever, but on an unrelated note, I may have made a compilation almost four years ago of John Robins and Sara Pascoe on that one car crash of a Mock the Week episode, because I wanted to show someone why I didn't like that guy, and Tumblr didn't let you embed videos in the middle of posts back then, and I hadn't yet figured out that it's easier to just share videos via Google Drive, so if I wanted to embed a video in my Tumblr post, I'd upload it to YouTube to do it from there. I did not properly think through the ways which that can cause a video you've made to break containment, and may someday be used to make a point you don't even agree with anymore, now that you've gained a view of John Robins that's broader than that one terrible Mock the Week episode. The point is, never post anything outside of Tumblr. And don't let Mock the Week be your introduction to John Robins. And if you're a comedian who gets invited on a panel show, maybe think carefully about which of your stand-up bits you want to take out of context on camera.

Oh, John Robins has better music taste. There's another big difference. That's important.

[allisonreader]

Mmm, since I just excitedly explained my current love of Star Trek Strange New Worlds to @fictionadventurer and ever so vaguely @e-louise-bates in the notes of fictionadventurer's one post, I thought that I now need to further explain my thoughts about the season now that it’s wrapped up. (All of it will be below the cut, so if you don’t want spoilers before watching, wait until then. Though I don’t really go into explaining what each episode was about.) Otherwise my thoughts on some of the episodes of season two.

I am going to start off with the fact that I don’t actually remember much of season 1. Enough of it to keep track of what happened, but not enough to give details at all. (I will also note that for some reason Star Trek horror episodes don’t really freak me out, thankfully. The Strange New Worlds ones have been more gory than anything. Which isn’t pleasant and there are some intense moments, but it doesn’t really scare me. I know that can be different for other people as we all have generally different sensitivities from each other. Though generally I am fairly sensitive to horror but it does depend on the type of horror. Like I don’t know if Lockwood and co. Is considered horror in any way or just paranormal, either way I’ve avoided that and Stranger Things because I think both of those are closer to things that actually freak me out and I don’t need to try going to sleep scared/freaked out. Anyways back on topic to Star Trek.) I know I enjoyed season 1, but not nearly as much as season 2 this year. So season 2 is what I’m focusing on.

Episode 1 of season 2, I would say wasn’t the strongest. It was okay, but I don’t think that it was anything special to rave over. There were certain parts that were better than others during it. Overall this particular episode was lower on my list. I’d rewatch it, but it wouldn’t be the first one I would chose or even recommend. I might think differently after a rewatch of it, but I’m in no rush to do so.

Episode 2 on the other hand is a different story. (I’m too lazy to look up the episode names.) This one was one of the episodes that felt like pure unadulterated Trek. The ever a classic courtroom episode. Is it preachy and hinting towards certain political views today? Of course it is. But it was well done and engaging and there were moments where you could see exactly how the case was being brought forward to get the wanted conclusion right before it was fully finished. It is an episode that I would be most willing to watch again.

Episode 3. Context before I state anything about this episode. This was one of the TWO time travel related episodes this season, that being said, I’m a sucker for a time travel storyline. If you know me at all, then you know that I have a major soft spot for almost anything time travel. (Hence Tales Of A Frozen Sailor being time travel when I got team Tolkien in the inklings challenge…) So this episode already had a leg up for me. This episode has ended up being in my top three episodes of the season. Mainly because I love the dynamic of La'an and alternate timeline Kirk. I was about ready to burn canon for these two with the chemistry they had on screen. This episode also really started to sell me on Paul Wesley for Captain James T. Kirk in a way that hadn’t been quite as convincing in season 1. And Toronto actually got to play Toronto instead of *insert big American city here*, which was a nice change for once.

Episode 4…. I don’t actually remember exactly which episode this one was. Which meant it was good, but had nothing in particular to really stand out above the crowd. Okay, scratch that, it was the episode that I was thinking that it might be, which had the crew returning to a planet that they had visited previously. It was a very Star Trek-y episode, didn’t hate it, but wasn’t my favourite. But also wasn’t something to turn my nose up at either.

Episode 5, this one had a very classic Star Trek trope told in a slightly new way. 'Oh no one of our people (Spock in this case) has been in an accident (shuttlepod) and is not himself because part of what makes him him has been removed!' (Shocked face). All is figured out after much trouble has been gone through. (Also I both love and feel sorry for T'Pring's father. He’s so clearly enjoying himself, but his wife has higher expectations and he follows her lead in that regard.

Episode 6… I had to look at a blurb about this one because I was blanking out about it. If episode 3 is what finally sold me on Paul Wesley as Kirk, this episode cemented it. Especially since it showed friendships being started between a certain set of characters that were in the OG series. Also Kirk and Uhura were really sweet together and it showed how much respect the two have for each other. So while I didn’t remember this episode at first, it really was a good one, even if it isn’t in my top three.

Episode 7, finally. This was my most anticipated episode for the season. The crossover episode and not only that but time travel beloved. This episode had surprises and references galore AND the cast was actually allowed to ad lib in the episode. So some of the moments are absolutely priceless and well worth the wait. This is one of the other ones that makes it into my top three episodes. They also pay homage to Star Trek Enterprise, mentioning Archer, Travis Mayweather, and Hoshi. Which was wonderful for them to get some acknowledgment since most other Star Trek shows had come out before that one. It was only 40 minutes long, but they packed a lot of fun into that episode.

Episode 8. This is the only episode that I truly despised. It just wasn’t a good episode and if I wrote it, I would have chosen a different way to end it. I didn’t like the way it was put together. I didn’t like how dark of an episode it was thematically and it was the least Star Trek-y of all the episodes. I think the main issue was with the characters they chose to tell this particular story with, were the wrong ones. For how the story went, I don’t think it should have been Dr. M'Benga and Nurse Chapel. If they told it a bit differently and changed the one aspect at the end, then maybe it would have worked better. As it was, I think it was the wrong “moral” (using moral loosely) to choose. To go more into a spoiler-y direction, it would have fit better into Star Trek's original theme/premise better if instead of the Klingon being killed, differences and the past could have been put aside for them to work together or at least have come to some sort of understanding instead of what happened. It just left a sour taste in my mouth and wasn’t an episode that I appreciated in any form. It could have been much better done.

Episode 9. The musical episode. The mentioned episode that got me started on this full train of thought in the first place. And also the other episode that makes it into my top three. Because this really is such a fun episode and is the perfectly corny type of camp that you expect from Star Trek and is reminiscent of certain other events that break out among the ship in other shows. The very fact that everyone on board is perfectly aware of how odd of a situation that they’re in and is working together towards finding a solution. The songs are catchy and one of the best moments has to be the surprise and shock of how the Klingons end up singing. My dad had to pause the show until I could catch my breath from laughing so hard. It was also extremely emotional at times as well and further included lore from TOS and the movies. Honestly it’s got to be among the best Star Trek episodes just in general. It’s just *chef’s kiss.*

Episode 10, the last one of the season and it ends on a cliffhanger, unfortunately. On the good side, we get Scotty for the first time properly and he sounds just right. Looks on the other hand will take getting used to as the actor doesn’t really look like James Doohan, but that will come in time, because he does fit the part and I love him. It’s the seasons horror (gore) episode. I’m still not sure what to think about what they’re doing with the Goran… only time will tell with that one.

[fumblingmusings]

is evelyn as casual about sex as arthur or have societys views on women and sexuality had an impact on her? I'd guess that even if she herself wasn't bothered on a moral level she'd still have to worry about the general publics opinion in a way that arthur never really would.

Oh lordy this is so long apologies, also this gets explicit, so minors dni please.

I 100% agree with what you say! She is absolutely not casual about sex, but not because she herself is prudish. It's not a concrete headcanon I have, but I do picture most, if not all nations, are bisexual, and many have very fluid understandings of relationships. Some are monogamous, but boy is it hard to be with a romantic partner for hundreds of years with no end. Some will hop from partner to partner with no strings attached, other do genuinely love and adore their partners, and just like with humans, these relations come to a close, and they move on. One relationship may not be more true or real than the other, it's just different. If that makes sense.

My female England doesn't have a particularly high sex drive; she's just old and maybe even somewhere on the ace spectrum, I dunno, haven't quite made my mind up. Romantic? Oh for sure! Sexual? Only if the former is involved.

Problem is, she is extremely frightened of being judged, and extremely bad at being emotionally vulnerable. Humans are not worth getting emotionally attached to because they all die eventually, and no nation wants her because well... She's England. She doesn't want casual, but that doesn't mean she resents those that do. Just...not her cup of tea. So she'll sit, being the perfect case study for some freak Victorian doctor claiming hysteria and her womb being out of balance or some such nonsense.

There's this one quote which always makes me chuckle which was written in the late 16th century. It's exact phrasing shifts and is probably incorrectly cited as much online quotes are, but essentially:

"other nations have a saying that "England is a paradise for women, a prison for servants, and a hell or purgatory for horses," for the females have great liberty and are almost like masters, whilst the poor horses are worked very hard."

England as seen by foreigners in the days of Elizabeth and James the First (this phrase of England being a paradise for women pops up a fair bit, however their definition of paradise is not... mine).

Now don't get me wrong, English women's lives were shit for most of existence. They were just... less shit, or shit in different way, than some other countries.Like, in the fic I offhandedly mention that Matthew at one point could have and would have had the legal right to throw his mother into hospital and is in partial control of her finances along with Alasdair and Rhys. Which... is a wee bit fucked. Especially in terms of - mother country exerting control and influence over colony versus son exerting financial control over unmarried mother. It's a weird combo.

I think she's very conscious of how others would view her, but she herself is not bothered by what people get up to. She's too bloody old to be a prude. We are getting to how she feels about the utter lack of sex life she's had for... a few hundred years at this point. I am conscious that in the fic she hasn't had a single thought about sex. She will be getting some. Honest. Nearly there....

The problem with wanting to be a mother is, for so much of history, it has a certain requirement to meet first, one that a nation can't exactly meet unless in very particular circumstances: she doesn't have a husband. So she is super careful in the stories she constructs to excuse the kids presence by her side, whether that be a dead husband at sea, or little bastard children that her brothers' brought back who she oh so charitably raises as her own. That comes with its own baggage however, so they don't keep that one for very long.

In the chapter involving Alfred and Matthew in New England, she's incredibly frightened of being seen as a single mother of two as there is no father, and it's partly to save herself the ostracism, as well as to protect French Catholic Matthew, that she refuses to stay in a Puritan area.

She lives in a quiet part of England, and rarely has meaningful interactions with her people in a face to face capacity, and I think this comes from a very acute fear of judgement. In all manner of things, not just her sexuality. It's one of the reasons why she is so lonely.

Matthew, Alfred, Jack, Francis, her brothers etc. will all sleep with humans. I wonder if perhaps female nations feel - for most of history - that they have to stick with other nations? At the very least, this is what England feels, as she wants permanence too, but of course she is lacking in the romantic nation on equal standing to her who actually wants to sleep with her criteria for pretty much the 17th century onwards.

Her wealth and implied social standing protect her a certain amount, and the shift from claiming that the children are her biological children to her wards/aunt as time passes and the kids get older also reflects an increasingly intolerant society. The Victorian shift to wholesome prudishness partly came about as a backlash from how loose the Georgian period had been - specifically reflected in how messy George III's family was versus Victoria and Albert's. The Victorian's were also extraordinarily kinky, but it came with such shame too.

When you go back and look at any parish baptism register post the 1530s, even for the smallest parish, baseborn and natural children are not infrequent in the slightest. Church court depositions and then later quarter sessions are riddled with court cases of dad's not paying the child support they owe to the mother of their child, as are accusations of unfulfilled promises of marriages after a couple have sex but then the bloke moves on with someone else. I suppose you can argue that the frequency of events does not make them accepted, and it's also a question of how many of these babies were the result of genuine passion and not women being exploited, but I think it's worthwhile noting that women having sex was common enough that women would and could frequently take men to ecclesiastical courts about it. At one point in time, up to a quarter of English women getting married were already pregnant and pre and early Norman conquest it wasn't unusual for couples to co-habit before marriage etc., so... they be bonking.

Sorry. That was crude.

From a purely ecclesiastical, slightly deranged viewpoint, sex is for procreation, right (I mean it's not but you'll hear this argument often)? And... I'm not mad when remembering that one canon strip where it's implied that Francis potentially impregnated some one night stands of his, right...? And I don't want to go down rabbit holes of nations as spirits and their reproductive organs but... female nations don't get pregnant and they don't give birth. So why have sex? For the pleasure? Sinful! For the emotional connection? Get married first! Etc. etc. It's a giant trap. And England knows that. So she keeps to herself as much as she can, choosing loneliness over vulnerability, and using the kids as a vehicle to experience at least get one part of that human existence. I think this is why, say around post 1960, things get a lot easier for many nations in the West.

She never gives two hoots what anyone else is up to, their business, not hers. It's only if say... I don't know, one of her kids gets caught with their pants down and it makes their lives difficult in whatever home they are staying in, then she would have some choice words about discreetness. She's just trying to make their lives as painless as possible, but it does mean she seemingly permits or buys into toxic viewpoints, rather than challenge them. Too much like hard-work, too risky.

From her point of view though, she's been around when woman were flogged for sleeping around, or the man had the right to murder the other man for sleeping with his wife, or during the Commonwealth, men and women were potentially put to death if they were caught committing adultery, or go to prison simply for having sex period! That kind of punishment is not easily forgotten, that association of sex only permissible in certain scenarios is ingrained in odd ways, even if she doesn't actually believe it to be true.

One thing I haven't touched on, and I just don't want to, is any female nation (and male too) associating sex with violence. Darker fics can tackle the subject. England has been threatened with it, by humans, maybe even to the point of actual assault, but I want to avoid nations contributing such a thing to each other.

One thing I truly don't know enough about would be to compare England's understanding of sex and sexuality versus Ireland's. I've written previously about how I like to think of a female Ireland being a bit more free when it comes to gender restrictions, as England is and was far more likely to conform to expectations of what it is to be a good woman and mother (and wife) and with that comes sexuality, however Ireland's (deserved or otherwise) reputation regarding women and children out of wedlock and the Catholic Church etc. etc. is not exactly something I can confidently talk on. I'd like to think that Ireland though is much happier to form relationships with her people, much happier to live amongst them, not above and separate like her sister, which results in having sex from time to time.

This is way too long. I'll stop now.

England is absolutely going to get the D in two chapters fear not fear not.

[ahkavia]

i don’t rate, i just listen (vol 1)

On the project:

The Lonny Breaux Collection  | Frank Ocean  | Released April 2011

This project feels like teenage ambition, like when you’re an adult trying to be an adult (for the first time). Excited and impatient. Bright and unscathed. It feels like 2 weeks before a blessed new chapter. Like right after you settle into self. Bliss comes only after that surrender. Frank’s ability to produce this many quality songs lets me know that only time and patience can take me where I wanna be. You can feel his commitment to practice throughout this project.  However short or long, you know you gotta keep going. You hear him smashing influences and technicality into his unique sound, his own creation. Though in alphabetic order, the songs feel like an expansion of the one before-not in the sense of storytelling or BPMs, but of a piece that strengthens the project in its entirety. It feels like an eagerness to express himself. 

Creatively, this collection is inspiring. As an artist, I scrap so much of my work. I sometimes fear imperfection and end up denying myself an opportunity to see my vision in full actualization. His collaborations with talents like James Fauntleroy are foundational to where r&b/Alt R&B and pop music is today. In looking at where they stand today, I understand the value of connecting with others creatively, I see that our creations are more beautiful when made together. This project displays the vulnerability of Frank’s growth as a writer and as an artist. It's playful and deep, It’s relatable but it feels like an alternate universe, like what may become. You easily recognize the cohesiveness of everyone that collaborated to create these songs. 

This project grounds me because you can hear 2011 In this- the grind before the perfect emergence of new tools for expression, with Tumblr gaining strength as a platform in 2013 with 13 million yearly users. This sound and creativity contributed to this greatly. This project feels exactly like the years leading to a refreshing creative scene. It feels like the wave of exploration and training/practicing/work in anticipation of something big. It was transformation, preparation for something I had never experienced. Those times prepared me for where I am now, especially creatively.

project moodboard (all images via pinterest/not mine)

Frank's letter to himself (2011)

On me

The past year has felt like flowing into my sense of self. I learned that you just have to move forward. There are no rules to how fast you move. I met everything I was fighting not to shed, the core of my protecting force. I learned that most of who I am exists outside of me and that a home is a place where you feel most like you. Undeniably, boldly, happily you. I rejected rest to deflect from how deep I needed to go to get over myself. As I discovered my being, the warping of my self-understanding stretched me. I was confused and wounded in so many ways. 

Spiritually, I faced truths and redefined love, and gave it up to do the healing work. I couldn’t take what didn’t truly feel like me. Some things came back and some I parted ways with. I chose vulnerability once, and I choose it often now. The pain built my agility. Perseverance mirrored my weathering. I extended patience to myself because I had no choice. My mind was-is- always emulsifying, rest was only met when immense exhaustion and almost never accompanied relaxation. With an eye over my shoulder and a blade in my hand, I was protecting emotions with logic. I failed time and time again until I was certain. There was no half-doing in this. I felt every emotion and I sat in it, I tried and tried again. I gave myself the gift of surrender. 

Community is a topic that’s been at the center of my life lately. I had to discover what was stopping me from being who I knew I was despite not feeling it then. The value of those who I experience life with is so much greater than I was allowing myself to embrace. I often felt alone. It wasn’t loneliness but a habit of maintaining distance from those around me. In many rights, it felt like I had no one to guide me- no older siblings, mentors, or sponsors. I didn’t have any close examples of a lifestyle I desired. I had to feel my way through. 

While this is true in the tangible sense, I constantly found myself in “lucky” situations where just who or what I needed was right there.  Even if I had marched forward through 80% of the work needed to meet a desire, that 20% that came from the assistance of those outside of me was immensely influential, I learned that I need people and that I have the power to nurture an organic and loving community around me. I learned to embrace those around me leaning into those that come in my life and those that leave. I found balance in being present and enjoying what was in front of me. I learned that by denying myself of that experience, I denied myself an experience to truly know myself. 

project moodboard (all images via pinterest/not mine)

Frank's letter to himself (2011)

Revisiting The Lonny Breaux Collection took me on a journey of Frank's growth, each chapter documented within his art. It reminds me that everything that is is here because of everything that was. It commemorates the last of an era, with a name change and an undeniably unique sound that would shape his legacy in music. 

Themes & tags:

Community

Young Adulthood

Creativity

Personal Transformations

Aquarius 

The 11th House 

Internet community

Openness

Personal Power

Abundance

Foundation building 

Patience

Divine Timing

Personal Development

Ahkavia.

On the series:I don’t rate, I just listen is basically: album reviews/assessments/concepts. detailing my takeaways, likes, commentary etc. may include a mood board for albums that give the feel that I embody when listening ie food, textures, smell, feelings, colors and moments. enjoy! #ahkavia

[humanpotassium]

Finally getting around to watching good omens s2, so I am going to be typing this as I watch ep 1.... I'm so sorry in advance

Spoilers obviously lol

• ANGEL CROWLEY HOLY FUCK LOOK AT HIM HES BEAUTIFUL🥺

•CROWLEY MADE SPACE?!?!? SO THATS WHY HE'S ALWAYS TRYING TO GET AZIRAPHALE TO GO TO ANOTHER PLANET WITH HIM BECAUSE HE WANTS IT TO BE ENJOYED MY HEART

• Opening is stellar as expected 👌

• aziraphale forgiving Maggie's rent do like the darling he is! Wait... does he have to pay rent/taxes? Does aziraphale know about property tax?!? I hope there is a tax evasion plot line

• Crowley is very concerned for the health of ducks and has learned since the 19th century not to feed them bread.

• OH NO POOR GABRIEL HE JUST WANTS A HUG

• "WHO TOLD YOU I WAS NAKED" (is that a garden of eden joke?)

• Maggie and Nina should 100% kiss

• " you know what it's like when you don't know anything at all, and yet you're totally certain that everything would be better if you were just near one person?" O FUck azira's reaction of fear because he thinks Gabe might know about his feelings for Crowley and is trying to catch them ☹️ and also sweet Gabe doesn't remember anything and while I don't know why he is apparently on heavens most wanted list he knows azira is the safest one to go to I am unwell 😭

• Gabe is as delighted by hot chocolate as he should be he is absolutely adorable

• Crowley trying to teach shax how to demon on earth correctly

• Shax is amazing we love shax

• WAIT AZIRA NO BEELZ IS IN THE BOX HOW DID YOU MISS THEM??

• AWW AZIRA ALMOST TOLD GABE HE LOVED HIM BACK POOR BABY

• "James. Long for Jim, short for Gabriel. " I love you, you stupid, stupid man 🥹

• Of course Crowley knows aziras voices

• 6 shots of espresso... Crowley I have never related to you more

• "How's your naked man friend?" OH NO NINA NOW CROWLEY THINKS AZIRA IS CHEATING ON HIM WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? WELL HE'S NOT NAKED ANYMORE?? AZIRA WHAT ARE YOU DOING NOW ITS WORSE!!!??

• Maggie... you sweet darling soul my new otp has crashed and burned

• jim?

•God damn Crowley is in protective mode 😂😂

• US THEY ARE A UNIT

•breakup scene??? No not again I can't do this

• azira just basically chose Gabe over him in his mind... whyyyyyyy

• Crowley trying to calm himself down and failing 🥺 he's trying to human

• oh, this is weird. I just got done watching witcher s3 and seeing Saraqael I immediately was like Fenn! I miss her 😔

• Muriel is precious I would die for them

• WHAT DID GABE DO?!???!

• Crowley is listening to Good Old-fashioned Lover Boy I'm crying

• "oh really? My bad" Crowley you are the biggest sweetest softy I love you

• THEY HAVE AN APOLOGY DANCE I WANT A COMPILATION

• Awww Gabe has friends

• oh...... fuck

Okay this is utterly amazing so far I am delighted!

[cosmicjoke]

And just when you’re certain this story can’t get any more heartbreaking than it already is...

This mother fucker Reglan James, and his manipulations, and just the amalgamation of circumstances and lies and schemes which converge to augment Lestat’s misery and loneliness in the most brutal and cruel and horrific fashion.  This book is breaking my heart in some kinda’ way man.

The thing that amazes me so much about it, I think similarly to how “The Vampire Lestat” amazed me, was how it so truthfully explains Lestat’s psychology, the thinking and the emotions behind everything he does, the experiences and trauma and suffering behind all of it.  Everything he does is so human, and so relatable, because the feelings and emotions behind all of it all so real and so true to the human condition.  He’s a vampire, but he’s so human too.

His experience with Gretchen in the mission outpost, her rejection of him, indeed her outright repulsion towards him, and how it leads to his encounter with who he thinks is David back in Miami, and what happens there, is maybe one of the most devastating things I’ve ever read.  And that isn’t hyperbole on my part, I really mean that.

The worst part of all of this, maybe, is seeing how Lestat’s grief and loneliness and despair continues to be used against him, used to manipulate him by this very same bastard Reglan James, just like it has been since the beginning.  The way he hides in David’s body, and makes Lestat think he wants to be turned into a vampire, giving Lestat that awful, longed for hope, only for it to be taken so brutally away was just the most fucked up thing ever.  In terms of speaking about violation, this was like emotional rape man.  It was maybe the worst thing that could have happened to Lestat in this moment, the most psychologically damaging thing that could have happened, coming off Gretchen’s rejection.

This part

“It was baffling,” I whispered.  “I never dreamed that Gretchen would turn me away.  You know what I thought?  It sounds so foolish now.  I thought she would find me irresistible!  I thought it couldn’t possibly be any other way.  I thought when she looked into my eyes- my eyes now, not those mortal eyes!- she’d see the true soul which she’d loved!  I never imagined that there would be revulsion, or that it could be so total- both moral and physical- and that in the very moment of understanding what we are, she would recoil completely and turn away.  I can’t understand how I could have been foolish, how I persist in my illusions!  Is it vanity?  Or am I simply mad?  You’ve never found me repellent, have you, David?  Or am I deluded on that score as well?”

And then this absolute shit proceeds to manipulate Lestat in the worst way imaginable, by feigning empathy for Lestat’s pain, by pretending to be his friend, when Lestat is more desperately alone and feeling more rejected than he’s ever felt in his life.

“He was being my friend again, as no other being on earth had ever been, really, and I would do as he wished.  “You know you are the only one,” I said suddenly, my own voice sounding ragged and tired.  “The only one who will let me be my defeated self without turning away.”

That right there, when Lestat confesses to him that he’s the only one who seems to accept him in all his foibles and failures, the only one who never turns him away or condemns him, and again, this bastard James knows exactly how to manipulate and use it against him, when he asks how, and Lestat answers

“Oh.  All the others must damn me for my temper, my impetuosity, my will!  They enjoy it.  But when I show the weakness in myself, they shut me out.”

And James replies

“We would make our heroes shallow,” he answered, the words very slow and almost sad.  “We would make them brittle.  It is they who must remind us of the true meaning of strength.”

He appeals so perfectly to Lestat’s feelings of rejection, of being a burden, of being misunderstood and unwanted.  And then he tells Lestat he wants to be turned into a vampire, and Lestat’s reaction is pure heartbreak to me, because it’s so hopeful.  He wants so badly to believe it, even as he can sense something is wrong.  But he wants so much to believe that David, this one, single person who’s ever truly understood and accepted him for who he is, wants to spend eternity with him.

“I was trembling.  How many times had I dreamed of this moment.

And yet it had come so quickly, and there were so many questions I should ask.

A sudden terrible shyness fell over me.  I couldn’t look at him.  I thought of the intimacy we would soon experience, and I couldn’t meet his gaze...

My heart was hammering with expectation.  David, David in my arms.  The blood of David passing into me.  And mine into David, and then we would stand on the edge of the sea together as dark immortal brothers.  I could scarce speak or even think.

I got up without looking at him, and I walked across the porch and down the steps.  I knew he was following me.  I was like Orpheus.  One backward glance and he’s be torn away from me.  Perhaps the glaring lights of a passing car would flash on my hair and eyes in such a way that he would suddenly be paralyzed with fear.”

Lestat wants so desperately for this to be real, and he’s so scared that it won’t be, or that it will somehow be taken away from him.  And so it makes what happens all the more, breathtakingly devastating.  There’s really nothing worse than false hope, and that’s exactly what Lestat is given here, in the moment of his greatest vulnerability, and it’s the most jacked up thing that could have happened to him.

Lestat says

“I can’t explain it,” I whispered.  “It’s happened so quickly, so suddenly, when I was sure it wouldn’t.  I’m afraid for you.  Afraid you’re making a terrible mistake.”

To then have to watch James continue to manipulate Lestat here, in his desperation and hope, it’s just crushing.  It crushed my heart to read this.

When he says this to Lestat

“Give me an image, Lestat, to hold in mind.  An image to hold against fear.”

I was confused.  I wasn’t sure I knew what he meant.

“Shall I think of you and how beautiful you are,” he said tenderly, “and that we shall be together, companions always?  Will that bring me through?”

He’s giving Lestat exactly what he’s always wished to hear, that someone WANTS to be with him for all time, knowing who and what he is, and accepting it, even calling him beautiful, calling him strong, calling him a hero.  This really is maybe the cruelest manipulation that this son of a bitch pulls on Lestat in the whole story, and that is saying a whole lot. 

Lestat goes on then

“Think of India,” I whispered.  “Think of the mangrove forest, and when you were most happy...”

I wanted to say more, I wanted to say, no, not that, but I didn’t know why!  And the hunger surged in me, and the burning loneliness mingled with it, and once again I saw Gretchen, saw the pure horror in her face.  I moved closer to him.  David, David at last... Do it!  What’s wrong with you that you fear to do it?”

Again, it’s this amalgamation of circumstances throughout this story that has put Lestat into such a desperate, vulnerable position.  His whole miserable experience in a mortal form, the moments of happiness with Gretchen, and then Louis’ and Marius’ refusal to aid him, David being the only one to help him.  And then Gretchen’s brutal rejection, it all adds up to this horrible moment.

And so when Lestat finally gives in and bites him, and realizes with the flow of blood that this isn’t David, it’s James, that his hope in this moment was false, that the realization of his hope was false, Lestat loses it in a rage and flings him against the wall, mortally wounding him.  But you realize Lestat’s reaction here, his violent reaction, is a product of that hope being so totally dashed.  To have it for that one, single moment, and to then have it so brutally taken away, was just beyond awful.  And I think making it a thousand times worse is Lestat’s reaction afterward.  How panic stricken and horrified he is, that he’s lethally attacked the body of one of his best friends.  The way he tries desperately to save the body, not knowing where David really is, you see once more how all of this has to be feeding into Lestat’s belief of himself as an irredeemable monster, as this violent, evil animal that hurts those he loves, even when he doesn’t mean to.

“Oh, David, I didn’t mean to do it,” I whispered . “Oh, Lord God, he’s going to die!”

And I swear, the way Lestat runs out into the street, into the middle of traffic, and he’s shaking uncontrollably and doesn’t know what to do, panicking and terrified, once again, it struck me how much like a child he is. This line wrecked me too

“I had to do something!  But what could I do?  Get into that hospital; work the change upon the body!  What else can save it?  And then you have James inside it?  Where is David?  Dear God, help me.  But why should he?”

I mean, Jesus, the awful self-recrimination here is almost too much to bear.

And that image of Lestat as a child is really driven home more when David finally does appear in the body of the mechanic Lestat himself had been occupying, and he leads Lestat away and has to calm him down.

And then there’s just Lestat’s horror as he realizes that David has been switched into this new body, precisely because he’d helped Lestat, because Lestat himself had refused to listen to David’s warnings about James, and watching Lestat sink further and further into despair here over how he’s once again ruined seemingly everything for someone he loves, watching it just compound his negative self-image, it’s so terrible. 

He says to David at the end of David’s tale about what happened between him and James, and apologizing to Lestat for not wanting to go to Miami to confront James for fear of losing his new, youthful form

“Stop worrying about what does not matter .  You know what matters.  It’s what’s happening to your old body right now.  It hasn’t penetrated to you, my friend.  I’ve dealt a death blow to that body!  No, I can see that you haven’t grasped it.  You think you have, but you’re still in a daze.”

These words must have struck him hard.

It broke my heart to see the pain in his eyes, to see them clouded, and see the sharp lines of distress in this new and unmarred skin...”

And then, after they agree they need to go to the hospital to see what’s become of the body, and David say he has a sense of foreboding, Lestat replies

“So do I,” I said.  But it was more than foreboding.  After all, I had seen that old man with the iron-gray hair passing into silent convulsions on the bloodstained bed.”

Lestat is so overcome with guilt here, again, because all of this horror has just reinforced this notion in his mind that he does nothing but hurt those he loves, and we see that sense of self-hate emphasized even more when they get to the hospital, and Lestat discovers that David’s body has died, how effected by it he is when he goes to tell David

“I began to tremble again all over, almost uncontrollably, and the serene quiet of his face only worsened my dread and the awful agonizing remorse

“David Talbot’d dead,” I whispered, struggling to make the words plain.  “He died half an hour ago.”

He registered no visible response whatever.  It was as if I hadn’t spoken at all.  And all I could think was, I made this decision for you!  I did it.  I brought the Body Thief into your world, though you warned me against it.  And it was I who struck down that other body!  And God knows what you will feel when you realize what’s happened.  You don’t really know.”

Maybe the worst part about Lestat’s self-recrimination here is how it contrasts so sharply with David’s own attitude.  David tells Lestat

“Oh, but I do know... It’s Faust, my beloved friend... And you weren’t Mephistopheles.  You were only Lestat, striking out in anger.  And it’s done!”

David is okay with what’s happened.  He’s more than okay.  He’s happy, overjoyed, in fact, because he has his youth back.  He didn’t want to go back into his old body.  He doesn’t hold it against Lestat, what’s happened, even as Lestat feels he’s ruined everything, as he struggles at first to accept that this is what David wanted.

And then the real killer comes, when Lestat realizes, with this new gained youth, David really, truly won’t ever accept the Dark Gift.  That he won’t ever agree to spend eternity as Lestat’s companion.

“I’d lost him forever.  He would never, never consent to come with me now.  Any remnant of a chance had been blown completely away by this miracle.  How could that not be so?  I felt it penetrate, deeply and silently.  I thought of Gretchen again, and the expression on her face.  And for one flashing moment I was in the room again with the false David, and he was looking at me with those dark beautiful eyes and saying that he wanted the Dark Gift.

A shimmer of pain passed through me, and then it grew brighter and stronger, as if my body were suffering a ghastly and all-consuming inner fire.”

We see the real damage wrought on Lestat from Reglan James’ last manipulation here.  He GAVE Lestat that moment of false belief that David had agreed to become a vampire with him, to become his true companion, and now Lestat can’t get it out of his head.  That moment of hope, that single moment of believing he’d finally gotten what he’s always, desperately longed for, a true immortal companion who wouldn’t leave him because he already knew what he was and accepted him and loved him regardless, combined with the wretched, devastating rejection of Gretchen, and the realization that now David, far removed from death, will never, ever accept being turned, has left Lestat completely bereft and alone, without hope of relief from his consuming isolation and aloneness.  He tasted that relief for one moment, and then it was snatched mercilessly away.

When they go in to look at David’s dead body, Lestat thinks

“To a vampire’s keen senses, it already gave off the fragrance of death.

But this David would not know, nor catch that scent.”

Lestat can’t escape the awful, painful reality that though David is young now, and has years left that he didn’t before, still, he’s going to die, and Lestat will be alone again when that happens. 

He says to David

“David,” I began, trying not to show the soreness.  “I couldn’t have beaten him if it hadn’t been for you.  I told you in New Orleans I would be your slave for eternity if only you helped me to get my body away from him.  And that you did.”  My voice was quavering.  I hated it.  But why not say it all now?  Why prolong the pain?  “Of course I know I’ve lost you forever, David.  I know you’ll never take the Dark Gift from me now.”

David protests, wondering to Lestat why he has to say he’s lost him, asking “Why must I die to love you?”  He tries to convince Lestat that his rebirth into a new, young body and this experience of theirs together has brought them closer together, and Lestat tells him

“No, David.  It has not.  In these last few days, we were close because we were both mortal men.  We saw the same sun and the same twilight, we felt the same pull of the earth beneath our feet.  We drank together and broke bread together.  We might have made love together, if you had only allowed such a thing.  But that’s all changed.  You have your youth, yes, and all the dizzying wonder that accompanies the miracle.  But I still see death when I look at you, David.  I see one who walks in the sun with death right at his shoulder.  I know now I cannot be your companion, and you cannot be mine.  It simply costs me too much pain.”

You can hear Lestat’s bitter disappointment then, with this realization that to be with David now would be too painful for him, for how he would be reminded again and again that he could never, truly have him.  And you can see Lestat coming close here to wanting to simply turn him, the danger of it, letting the scent of his blood fill him, the desperation of his continued loneliness nearly driving him to it here.  But then he stops himself, and this line

“It was a simple thing to shut this off.  I did it.  I shrank back into the brittle lonely quiet of an ordinary man.  I avoided his eyes.  I didn’t want to hear any more apologetic and imperfect words.”

There’s this awful struggle in Lestat, to accept this bitter reality of his continued solitary isolation.  The tragedy of it is that everything that has happened to him throughout this story is what leaves him in this state of bitter disappointment and struggle.  Everything just came together to leave him even lonelier and more desperate than before.

At the end of the first section of the book, he thinks

“Yes, blood again when there is nothing else.  When the world seems in all its beauty to be empty and heartless and I myself am utterly lost.  Give me my old friend, death, and the blood that rushes with it.  The Vampire Lestat is here, and he thirsts, and tonight of all nights, he will not be denied.

... I kept seeing again in my mind’s eye that smart little room in the Park Central, with its windows open to the sea, and the false David telling me he wanted the Dark Gift from me!  And Gretchen.  Would I ever think of those moments that I didn’t remember Gretchen, and pouring out my story of Gretchen to the man I believed to be David before we climbed those steps to that chamber, as my heart had knocked inside me, and I had thought:  At last!  At last!

Bitter, and angry, and empty, I never wanted to see the pretty hotels of South Beach again.”

Once again, we see the true damage wrought by all of this.  By Reglan’s manipulations, by the experiences Lestat has gone through, the devastation of false hope, and what it can do to someone when that hope is taken away.  Lestat is left here more lonely, hopeless, angry and hurt than he’s ever been before, it seems.  He feels the weight of his solitude more keenly than ever before, the rejection of those he loves more keenly than ever before, and is left with nothing but the prospect of being what he is and who he is, destined forever to be alone in it.

What an absolute tragedy this story is.

[grandhotelabyss]

Delillo's The Names? I'm contemplating whether to add it to my immediate-reads or my eventual-reads. I am in awe of Underworld; it might be the greatest novel of sustained readerly brilliance written in the 20th century (on a related note, which other novels do you think could contend for that title?). White Noise is one of the funniest novels I've ever read, although I coolly admire its greatness more than fully submit to its sublimity. (I read it during the first weeks after the Covid restrictions were lifted, and my near-disgust at any reminder of death (its thanatophobia felt alien; I only felt rage), and quite frankly, any characterization of "expertise" in any field, be it Hitler or pop culture, was undoubtedly a personal limitation.)

It's good. I need to reread the whole thing carefully soon—I read it years ago in college and kind of skimmed it again more recently—but its general place in DeLillo's oeuvre is earned: the book where he enters his major phase from the sometimes zany experiments of the 1970s. It raises earlier models of a certain kind of novel—the dense American meditation on "the international theme" of Hawthorne and James, the booze-soaked ex-pat American travelogue of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, the paranoid literary spy thriller of Conrad and Greene—into a more cosmic dimension with its almost Heideggerean rumination on language as ineffable ground of being in despite of all attempts at religious, economic, and political control.

People everywhere are absorbed in conversation. Seated under trees, under striped canopies in the squares, they bend together over food and drink, their voices darkly raveled in Oriental laments that flow from radios in basements and back kitchens. Conversation is life, language is the deepest being. We see the patterns repeat, the gestures drive the words. It is the sound and picture of humans communicating. It is talk as a definition of itself. Talk. Voices out of doorways and open windows, voices on the stuccoed-brick balconies, a driver taking both hands off the wheel to gesture as he speaks. Every conversation is a shared narrative, a thing that surges forward, too dense to allow space for the unspoken, the sterile. The talk is unconditional, the participants drawn in completely. This is a way of speaking that takes such pure joy in its own openness and ardor that we begin to feel these people are discussing language itself. What pleasure in the simplest greeting. It’s as though one friend says to another, “How good it is to say ‘How are you?’” The other replying, “When I answer ‘I am well and how are you,’ what I really mean is that I’m delighted to have a chance to say these familiar things—they bridge the lonely distances.”

I was hoping Lorenzten, in his awaited and then celebrated and indeed excellent DeLillo conspectus in the revived Bookforum, would explain why he thinks The Names is the greatest American novel or however he phrased it somewhere (Twitter? a podcast?—I don't remember). He doesn't quite, but I assume this paragraph implies that it has something to do with the novel's placing of America in the doomed lineage of empires redeemed only by the free and creative, i.e., novelistic, use of language (the little subtweet in the passage is that DeLillo borrowed Tap's novel from a young Atticus Lish):

There is something a little silly about the cult, novelistically. Their mode of killing, murdering people whose initials match the letters of place-names, is preposterous. But the irrationality is the point and so is the ambiguous role of language. Axton is fascinated by the Greek language and its alphabet but he never goes so far as to learn it. (Owen by contrast knows many languages living and dead.) As much as Axton travels to research it—to the Peloponnese, to Jordan, to Pakistan—he can never tell if the cult and its murders are some reawakening of ancient violence or a modern reaction to the new circumstances of American-imposed globalization. What would the difference be? Language and alphabets are the remnants of conquest, and the old names that go with the cults’ murders are remnants of dead empires. Owen and Frank are similarly transfixed, the one with his memories of plains mysticism, the other as a representative of a counterculture whose antagonism to the system was once without ambiguity. These variations on American unknowing, animated within a book whose tissue is DeLillo’s lyrical descriptions of the Greek landscape and points east, give the novel its power. A character refers to Europe as the “hardcover,” America as “the paperback version,” and India—not yet ushered into the regime of modernity, mass literacy, and the nascent world of computers and telexes, still governed by oral traditions—as “not even a book.” The Names glimpses these contrasts in simultaneous anachronism. It is to Axton and Kathryn’s son Tap that the future belongs. He spends most of his time imagining a lost American past, writing a historical novel about Owen’s prairie boyhood, full of misspellings.

On the novel as sustained prose performance, I think DeLillo's generational peers reached a similar peak around the same time he did, as in Roth's Sabbath's Theater or Morrison's Paradise. McCarthy's comparable work comes a little earlier, with Suttree. Maybe The English Patient, which owes something to DeLillo, who gave it a generous blurb. In prior generations, I think of Herzog, Nightwood, Absalom, Absalom!, Mrs. Dalloway. While this strikes me as a 20th-century ideal arising from the modernist notion of the novel as high art, it's anticipated in the 19th century in Melville, Dickens, and Conrad, who wrote, in the Preface to a text I must not, well, name,

A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.

[ecsundance]

What is Independent Cinema?

When you google the definition of Independent Cinema also known as Indie Cinema, the first definition you see reads, “an independent film, independent movie, indie film, or indie movie is a feature film or short film that is produced outside the major film studio system in addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies” (Wikipedia). This definition gives us a broad idea of what Indie Cinema is, however, aside from the fact that these films are produced outside the major film studio system, the above definition provides little information about what specifically makes an Indie film stand out from other films. Through films such as Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), and Summer of Soul (2021), and the definitions provided by the book we read “Indie: An American Film Culture” by Michael Newman, I am going to show you what it means for a film to be considered, “Indie.”

The first definition of Newman’s book provides insight into the characters of Indie Cinema, saying, “characters are emblems” (Newman 29). Using characters as emblems allows the audience to obtain a degree of awareness through differently represented situations, and people in a film. This element of Indie Cinema is prominent in Sex, Lies and Videotape by Steven Soderbergh. Ann (Andie MacDowell) transitions from being a housewife to John (Peter Gallagher), an upper-class lawyer who would cheat on Ann regularly, to being a lover to Graham (James Spader), a lower-class filmmaker who struggled with making ends meet. The overall emblem between these characters was reflecting the treatment and behaviors of social classes within the United States.

The second definition within the book involves the overall structure of a film, insighting that “form is a game” (Newman 29). Unlike many mainstream films, which tend to start with a beginning, middle, climax, and resolution, and focus on continuity editing, Indie films do not follow this pattern. An example of form being played with is in Summer of Soul by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson. When a subject of an interview would reflect on a certain event related to the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement, such as the death of Martin Luther King, the footage of the festival would be cut with archival footage relating to MLK’s death alongside the tempo of the background music. It was almost as if the cuts were being formatted similar to an instrument solo in order to immerse the audience’s experience of the film.

The third and final definition in Newman’s book may seem to be for the readers who struggle with remembering the above two definitions by claiming,“when in doubt, read as anti-Hollywood” (Newman 29). However, Newman essentially implies that Indie Film pushes the boundaries of not only characters and form, but the overall brain power it requires the audience to use in order to understand a film. When you take a film franchise like Avengers, you may notice that you are able to watch and understand these films without a significant amount of thought going into other messages behind the film. That is because these films tend to focus on the overall story rather than having certain character traits and themes connected to the film’s cinematic structure play an active role in the overall story. An example of anti-Hollywood is Stranger Than Paradise by Jim Jarmusch, a film that is said to not be categorized with any particular genre. Unlike the traditional Hollywood film form, this film does not follow a beginning, middle, climax, and resolution type form. Instead we are left with a lengthy journey that follows Willie (John Lurie), Eddie (Richard Edson), and Eva (Eszter Balint) to a beach in Florida to find fortune and paradise. However, the film cuts to black in between every scene with the audio of the upcoming shot fading in. This tactic of playing with form allows the audience to imagine what occurs during these transitions as the sequences jump days, months, even years.

After learning that characters are emblems, form is a game, and the overall theme of being anti-Hollywood, Indie Cinema brings a unique experience to mainstream audiences. Although it requires more thought to understand an Indie film, the themes often criticize current events, which make the films feel relatable.

Thank you so much for reading!

-Jackson Willhoit