#i don't know why but somehow this feels like some sort of culmination of my life's work

[recurring-polynya]

😳what if we charged orbs together at the end of the world?🙈

[schrodingers-romy]

Silver-Tongued Devil [Usagiyama Rumi x Reader]

Pairing: Usagiyama Rumi x AFAB!Reader Word count: ~3,200 [Ao3 Link]

Summary: You somehow end up as the sacrifice for an incompetent cult. The demon they summon is not at all what they nor you expected.

Warnings: Kidnapping. Cults. Reasonably graphic depictions of violence and blood. Reader is injured (not extensively) but healed. AFAB reader; genitals are referred to by fem terms but no other gendered terms are used. Graphic Smut (MDNI). Strength Kink. Cunnilingus. Weird demon tongue. idk.

Notes: 3rd fic for Strange Lovers (my little monster!character x reader series for October)! Please ignore this was a day late i had such writer's block for this and i don't know why. I'm not sure if this is good or not honestly I just want to not have to look at it anymore. Mdni banner template from @/cafekitsune

I have the absolute worst luck, you thought to yourself.

Perhaps you had broken multiple mirrors in the past. Did breaking multiple mirrors mean the seven years of bad luck was worse, or was the period of bad luck just longer?

You supposed it didn’t really matter, but how else would you end up like this: hogtied and gagged in the middle of a red painted pentagram, surrounded by what sounded to be frat boys in cult getups.

One of the little fuckers had ambushed you on your way home with a handkerchief soaked in chloroform. Next thing you knew, you were tied up in the middle of the woods, surrounded by a bunch of college kids in dark robes chanting Latin.

You had no idea why you specifically were picked. You had a feeling it was just because you were the first person they had been able to grab; you weren’t sure whether that was better or worse than being specifically chosen.

So far, they hadn’t done anything to you other than knock you out and tie you up. Unfortunately, at least one of them must have been really good with rope, because you couldn’t budge an inch. All your screaming amounted to nothing more than a few quiet, unintelligible sounds through the gag. And just because they hadn’t done anything major to hurt you yet, doesn’t mean they wouldn’t. They had no problem with kidnapping you; you doubted your purpose in their demonic ritual summoning or whatever was just sitting there looking distressed.

The chanting had been going on for what felt like hours; yet however boring it was, your anxiety kicked back up drastically when they stopped.

The cultists stopped circling, and turned to face you. One of them, presumably the leader because of his unique blood-red rope belt, stepped forward until he stood right in front of you, close enough to kick if you had the freedom to do so (which unfortunately you didn’t, no matter how much you tried).

In a loud, booming voice, he started up another chant, different from the first. And then he pulled out a wicked looking blade from the shadows of his robes.

You tried to get away; you tried to scream. You could feel your muscles straining against the ropes, but they wouldn’t shift. The gag kept your voice to a mumble even as you tasted iron in your throat from your shrieks.

It was all futile. He crouched down, holding the knife above you; the blade glinted red in the light of the fire. You squeezed your eyes shut, bracing for pain.

The stabbing you expected didn’t happen, but you were not spared from agony. He roughly cut away the fabric of your shirt around your stomach, exposing it to the night air; his canvas.  Slowly, excruciatingly, he began to carve a shape onto your skin; some sort of crescent moon, maybe; you weren’t sure, too busy screaming from the burning pain of it.

When the knife finally paused, you sobbed in relief. It still burned; you could feel the blood flowing and dripping onto the ground, both too-cool and too-warm feeling at once. But at least there were no new wounds made.

You drifted in and out of awareness, missing the cult’s final chants, but you did not miss the culmination of the ritual.

Once the final words were spoken by the robed figures, a violent bolt of lightning lit up the forest blinding white. The thunder followed immediately after, so loud it caused your ears to ring.

Your eyes took a minute to readjust to the dim light of the torches, and then you saw her.

You noticed two things about her right away: one, she was beautiful; two, she was utterly inhuman.

Her general figure was humanoid…if humans were seven feet tall. Her skin was a human shade of brown, yet her eyes were crimson red with slit pupils. Her broad, almost cocky, grin revealed shining white fangs. Her hair was pure white, hanging around her face in long braids. It was interrupted by the curling black horns emerging from her skull, and the rabbit-like white ears springing from the sides of her head.

She only wore draping gold jewelry, which seemed to drip down her body like liquid, covering her most private parts delicately. This allowed you full view of her muscles. She was built like a Greek statue: thick arms, prominent abdominal muscles, and thighs that could probably crush a man’s skull like a grape.

She radiated power. If you weren’t writhing on the ground in pain like a tortured worm, you would be cowering.

The cultists do cower a little, trembling in their robes. Finally, the one with the red belt steps forward.

“O Great Miruko, High Demon of the Moon, please accept this humble offering,” he said, gesturing to where you lay. “As per the summoning, we only request one day of obedience in exchange for the blood of the sacrificed.”

The demon tilted her head, never dropping her wide smile.

“So you losers thought you would have control of me with this ritual?”

Her voice wasn’t quite what you expected; it was human-sounding at first, if loud, but it echoed around the trees in odd ways, making it sound like thousands of whispers repeated her words. It was…unsettling.

The cultists seemed to agree. Their leader flinched visibly when the demon spoke. “Y-Yes. According to the ancient tome—” he said, pulling a beat-up leather book out of seemingly nowhere, “—we started the ritual on the right phase of the moon, we recited the proper chants, evoked the correct name, provided the sacrifice for consumption…everything is correct. As per the ritual’s rules, you are summoned to the mortal plane to do our biding for a full day, then you return to the hell from whence you came!” He was starting to sound frantic by the end of his tirade.

The demon crossed her arms across her chest, emphasizing their definition. “Well, you’re almost right…except for the most important part.” She stepped closer, and bent down dramatically at the waist to look the cult leader in the eyes. He scrambled to step backwards; this caused his hood to flip back, revealing a face that looked both scared and young.

The demon seemed amused by his fear. She smiled, cruelly, baring sharp teeth at him. “The one who gives the blood is not the sacrifice…they’re the one with control over me. Not you.”

She stood up again, stretching to her full height. “I’m not ‘contractually obligated’ to give you shit. All the power resides in the poor person you have trussed up like a ham over there.” She gestured to you, finally making eye contact. You shivered at the glowing red gaze.

“So, hon, want me to take care of these guys for you?” she asked, focus still entirely on you.

You were frozen for a second. Your brain was spinning. You still didn’t fully understand what was going on…but you would like your kidnappers gone. So you gave the smallest nod, all of the movement you could manage.

The demon smirked, returning your nod, and then she was a blur.

Your head span just trying to watch her; it seemed like only a second before all of the cultists were knocked out cold from the force of the demon’s lightning-quick kicks and punches.

Once she had taken care of them, she crouched down over you to run her hands over your bindings. Under the caress of her large hand the ropes and the gag dissolved into puffs of smoke.

You raised your tingling arms up to your mouth and coughed. Your throat still felt terrible, and coughing too deeply flexed your abdomen, causing the cuts to light up with pain again. But your limbs could finally regain blood flow.

You looked up at the demon, who was still staring at you. You had a hard time meeting her gaze; instead you looked out towards the cultists lying on the ground. “…are they dead?” you rasped.

“Naw. Just going to be unconscious for a long time. Didn’t think you would want me to kill them all. I mean. I can if you want me to though.”

“Um… no, that’s fine.” No matter how crazy this weird cult was, even if they wanted to sacrifice you, even if they had no problem kidnapping and hurting you…you wouldn’t want their deaths on your conscious. You couldn’t do that.

The demon shrugged. “Okay then.” She seemed much less intimidating and more casual now, even though she still loomed above you.

You tried to swallow, wincing when your raw throat protested the action. “So…what now?”

“Well, I am at your bidding, for a whole twenty-four hours. Then I can go back to hell…I never introduced myself, by the way. I go by many names, but you can call me Rumi.”

You stammered your own introduction.

Rumi gave you a broad grin, teeth flashing. “I’m guessing the first thing you want from me is for me to heal your wounds?”

Your voice had a hopeful tilt to it. “Can you do that? Please?”

“Aww, sweetheart, how could I say no when you ask so nicely?” she purred.

You could feel heat in your cheeks. You’re honestly surprised you still have enough blood for such a silly reaction to her words.

She chuckled, and moved so she could slip both her hands between your lower back and the ground. She lifted you up as she leaned down, until you could feel her breath on the sting of the cuts.

You weren’t sure what you expected her to do. Maybe whisper some sort of weird Latin chant and then the cuts would just disappear? But you would have never predicted what she actually did.

Rumi opened her mouth…wide. Out came a tongue between the glinting teeth.

Her tongue was long, and flexible, the end almost triangle-shaped with the way it tapered to a point. It dripped saliva onto your stomach, and you flinched.

You let out a shrill noise of surprise as Rumi uses her strange tongue to lick at your wounds.

Her spit almost seemed to leak into your cuts, causing them to close and disappear before your eyes as she lapped across them. Soon, the pain has disappeared from your abdomen, replaced by the wet, warm feeling of the demon’s tongue. She continued to lick long after the cuts were gone, removing every spot of blood from the soft skin of your stomach.

You felt flushed and tingly. You would have liked to attribute that to whatever strange demon magic was in Rumi’s spit, but you couldn’t quite lie to yourself that much. You’re ashamed to admit it, but the feeling of Rumi’s tongue on you is almost…erotic. The wetness on your abdomen was emulated by the slowly growing wetness in your underwear.

You couldn’t help but squeak in embarrassment at the realization. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it) Rumi pulled away, tongue retracting back into her mouth like a snake.

“Feel better?” she asked.

“Yes,” you said, before losing yourself to another coughing fit. Your stomach was as good as new, no remnants of the strange carved symbol remaining, but your throat was still raw.

Rumi made a disapproving noise. “Well, it seems like you’re not all fixed up, hon. Something happened to your throat, right? Let me help.” She shifted her arms under you until she was holding you in a seated position, bringing your head closer to hers.

You felt as if your face was radiating heat. She was no less beautiful up close. It was hard to have such a lovely face right by yours, especially after said lovely face was just licking your bare skin.

Rumi removed one hand from your back, to press a single calloused finger against your bottom lip. “Open up, sweetheart.”

You should have protested, but the pet name in Rumi’s soft, low voice made your head feel fuzzy. You opened your jaw.

Your mouth was soon filled with the demon’s tongue. Your eyes closed on instinct, feeling her lips press to yours in a facsimile of a kiss. You had never had a kiss like this, however; her tongue slithered down your throat, filling it and your mouth up to the brim. You would have choked on it, but the soothing feeling of her saliva healing your injured throat made you relax enough for it to slip past your gag reflex.

It almost felt like you were being throat-fucked by Rumi’s tongue; at the mere whisper of that thought, you let out a moan around the slick appendage inside you.

To your disappointment, she immediately pulled back. Once you realized what you had done, you felt like you were going to faint. You reopened your eyes, almost dreading to see Rumi’s expression.

Your breath caught when you finally saw her. She had an almost…endeared expression on her face. It would have been sweet, if not for the sultry darkness of her eyes.

“Aww, honey, you like my tongue?” Her voice was hoarse, and you shuddered, face nearly radiating heat.

She laughed at your flustered expression. “It’s okay, don’t be embarrassed. It’s cute.”

You let out a low whine, less of arousal and more out of sheer mortification.

Runi’s smile sharpened. “You know, I can do lots of other things with my tongue, if you’d like. After all, I am at your bidding.”

While the first sentence made you feel like you had been lit on fire, the second one doused your flames a little. “I don’t want you to do something because I’m making you do it…if you don’t want to do anything, you don’t have to. No matter how I feel.” You felt a little sick at the thought that you could force her to do something like that if she didn’t want to.

“You’re so sweet, honey,” Rumi said, chuckling. “But I promise I want to just as much as you do.” Her voice dropped lower at the last part, almost to a growl, and you shuddered in her arms.

“Okay,” you whispered.

-

Rumi, as her figure suggested, was ridiculously strong.

She ripped your pants and underwear off like it was tissue paper. She hoisted her arms under you, maneuvering you like a ragdoll until you were in her preferred position. Your legs were hooked over her shoulders, your hands gripping her horns in a weak attempt to stabilize yourself as she lifted you until your pussy was level with her mouth.

You could feel Rumi’s smirk against your sensitive inner thigh. You couldn’t make yourself look down, lest you have to acknowledge your position and the way your cunt was dripping.

“Sweetheart.” A quick flick of her tongue against your clit, making you gasp. “Look at me while I eat you out.”

You reluctantly made eye contact with her. “That’s it baby,” she cooed.

You watched as her tongue slipped out of her mouth once more, the thin tip reaching out to lightly caress your clit. Even though the touches were almost nonexistent, each sent a flow of heat up your spine.

Your legs squeezed rhythmically around Rumi’s head every time her tongue teased at your nub. Your arousal kept building, filling your whole body with sticky heat, yet it wasn’t enough to push you towards any type of climax.

You didn’t notice you had begun to whimper, softly, but Rumi did. She finally took pity on you and started to lap at your cunt in earnest.

The first lick went all the way from your hole to your clit, dragging the broad part of her tongue through your wetness. She let out a rumbling moan once she got a proper taste of you, and abandoned her teasing completely.

Your eyes rolled back into your head as she licked and sucked at your pussy without mercy. Rumi was too caught up in eating you out to chastise you for this. Anyway, closed eyes only made the sounds louder; the obscene slurping noises from combination of your slick and her spit, and both of your moans, yours echoing and hers muffled against you.

You let out a shriek as her skilled tongue wormed its way into your dripping hole. You were so wet from your arousal and her saliva that she had no trouble working the appendage deep inside of you, deeper than you thought possible. She pulled you closer to her face, until her lips were pressed against the soft folds of your sex, and you thought you could come right then.

But this wasn’t the height of your arousal. Not yet.

She then started to move her tongue inside of you.

It felt like Rumi was desperate to taste all of you, the way her tongue squirmed inside your pussy. Every sensitive spot was rubbed against the rough parts of her tongue, and then soothed by the slicker parts. She was basically fucking you on her face at that point, powerful arms bringing your body away from her just to pull you back and impale you on her tongue. Every time your cunt met her face again, she would grind the bridge of her nose against your clit, sending another spark of pleasure up your spine.

Your body felt almost unreal. No longer did you have control over yourself; instead, Rumi did. You were like her little doll, a pretty little thing she could pick up and play with effortlessly.

The pleasure was so intense that you struggled to simply open your eyes without slipping back into mindless bliss. You wanted to see her, though, and so you forced them open, squinted and teary as they were.

Bringing your gaze down to her, you could see her eyes were black with arousal as they peered back up at you. Her entire face was soaked, slick and dripping from your cunt’s juices. She looked utterly bebauched.

The view made you come on the spot.

If you weren’t a doll before, you were now; your entire body went numb from your orgasm. It was like a never-ending series of delicious shocks travelling through your nervous system. Rumi hadn’t halted her movements, even as you soaked her face even more with your come. Your pleasure stretched out longer than you thought possible before your nerves started to turn painful. She stopped once your whines started becoming less come-drunk and more overwhelmed.

Almost lovingly, she laid your dazed form back down onto the ground, still cradling your head. It took you a few moments before you were even aware of your surroundings again.

In that time, Rumi had moved to straddle your head, hovering above your face on her knees. One hand was stroking your cheek softly, while the other held up the delicate chains that hung from her waist, revealing her own glistening cunt to you.

“You were so good for me, baby,” she said, voice husky. “D’you wanna return the favor?”

There was no world in which you wouldn’t want more of her.

“Yes please,” you murmured, opening your mouth.

[ghoultyrant]

Anime Sakura vs Manga Sakura

I first got into Naruto the way a lot of English-language fans very clearly did: by virtue of the anime starting to run in my region. More specifically, I got into it partway through the first Toonami airing of the Wave Country Arc -which, for those who don't know (or don't remember), lead to the anime looping back to the beginning as soon as that arc concluded while localization worked on getting the following episodes localized.

I was sufficiently hooked that this wasn't really enough for me, particularly once the anime got back to the episodes I'd already seen, so I checked out fanfic, became aware the series' original form was a manga, and started reading that. This confluence of events resulted in me becoming aware of something I suspect a lot of fans never notice:

That the anime actually changes a lot of early scenes.

Some of this is actually quite appreciated. For example, in the manga Naruto's classmates don't exist in the first chapter: Sakura and Sasuke don't exist until it's time for team assignments in the second chapter, and the rest of Naruto's classmates don't exist until they show up in the Chunin Exams -this is why Naruto breaks the fourth wall and gives an intro for each of them when they show up there, even in the anime where we actually saw them all in the very first episode. The anime adding them in to the beginning is nice!

By a similar token, the manga actually skips the fight between Tenten and Temari, so jarringly I actually had to double-check and make sure I wasn't missing a chapter somehow; the anime giving us the actual fight in detail is also appreciated!

Other changes are sort of random-feeling if you're not familiar with the tendency for anime adaptations to overtake the manga they're rendering in animated form, but understandable if you are familiar with this point: for example, there's an entire episode dedicated to Naruto having a Wacky Adventure in trying to get to the Chunin Exams' final stage on time, involving silliness like running from an entire stampede, which... has no relevancy to the larger plot because it's an anime-only filler episode to stall for time, not based on anything from the manga.

And then there's how Sakura gets changed.

This is kind of weird to describe, because the anime doesn't cut anything or completely rewrite any scenes: it only ever adds bits. The problem is, the bits that are added are... problematic. Consistently, up until about her Chunin Exam fight scenes. But since it is only addition, I'm going to start from just describing Manga Sakura, then explain the changes.

In the manga, Sakura starts essentially exactly as she does in the anime; she doesn't like Naruto, she's pursuing Sasuke... the only 'difference' is that of course Ino doesn't exist until the Chunin Exams and so the whole Ino/Sakura rivalry thing doesn't come up.

However, in short order Sakura starts changing her mind about Naruto; she attempts to confess to Sasuke, it doesn't work out, and she finds the rejection a fairly unpleasant experience and then connects this pretty immediately to her own rather harsh rejections of Naruto's requests for dates and resolves to not be such a jerk to him in future.

And she does in fact stick to that for... at least everything I read. (I've yet to get fully through the Shinobi World War Arc, so I suppose it's possible she goes back on her word somewhere past there)

This is how Manga Sakura goes overall; she starts as a bit of a shallow, thoughtlessly cruel person who isn't really taking this whole 'life and death battles as a ninja' thing adequately seriously, but tends to be quick to engage in introspection, resolve to change such behaviors, and then stick out this resolution; the Sakura we see in the Chunin Exams is something of a culmination of how Sakura has been progressing this whole time.

Anime Sakura still has these moments, but... they get undercut. The date thing is the bit I still vividly remember: Anime Sakura makes her resolution to not be so cruel to Naruto-

-and Naruto immediately shows up, asks for a date, and Sakura punches him out and goes 'never mind' about her resolution.

There's a lot of moments like this with Anime Sakura: 15-45 seconds of content added to otherwise-faithful-to-the-manga scenes where said added content is 'comedy' moments that horribly undercut Sakura's character development. Taken seriously, they make her into an incredibly unpleasant person who intentionally rejects opportunities to become less unpleasant; it's little wonder that so many of the fanfics I saw in the early days really did not like Sakura.

Once the Chunin Exam starts these added bits of unpleasantness stop occurring, but after so long seeing Anime Sakura do things like make resolutions and immediately break them, I imagine lots of viewers found Sakura's Big Resolutions and Major Character Development difficult to take as intended; if I'd not read the manga, I know I would've been expecting these moments to not really stick.

The whole thing is particularly frustrating for how easy it is to overlook; if I'd not been experiencing the manga and anime near-simultaneously, I never would have realized these quick bits of character assassination were anime-only additions. And if you go look at a wiki or the like, you're not going to trivially learn this info, unlike how basically everyone knows that the Anime Filler Arcs are, in fact, the Anime Filler Arcs.

So I've long suspected lots of people are unaware that Sakura comes across very differently in the early anime vs the early manga.

[8bitsupervillain]

Higurashi When They Cry Hou Ch. 6 Tsumihoroboshi pt. 8

I understand if you decide to skip this part.

Chapter six starts with Rena dismembering the corpses of Rina and Teppei, and will culminate with her explaining her deeds and guilt to the rest of the club. We're skipping to, and most of the confession by the way. Not because I don't have screenshots, I do, plenty of them in fact, I just really don't like the entire scene.

Part of my intense dislike for this particular chapter is due to the idea that each of the main characters committed a sin with the Satoshi situation in 1982. Mion's sin is that she has the entire Sonozaki family at her disposal, and she did nothing. Rika's sin is similar, in that she has the power of the older crowd in Hinamizawa at her beck and call, did nothing. Satoko's sin is that she put Satoshi in the corner by being a shit child and exacerbating their abusive circumstances. Rena's is that she just moved to Hinamizawa, didn't know much about Satoshi and she tried to offer him sympathy and condolences for his situation. The absolute most baffling and aggravating one is Keiichi's alleged sin. He also sinned you see, because he didn't live in Hinamizawa and didn't know the first thing about Satoshi until about a month ago in game. For whatever reason, this gets everyone to agree that yes, they fucked up and are at least partially to blame for what happened to Satoshi. And that's infuriating to me because no, they're not to blame at all!

There's no guarantee that the situation would've been resolved at all had the Sonozaki family made any sort of move against Tamae Houjou. In fact it probably would've been astronomically bad for them considering we learn in chapter five: Meakashi that the police are monitoring them for just such an occurrence. The oldsters in Hinamizawa wouldn't have helped Satoshi because he's one of the bastard Houjou, and they're all regarded as enemies in the village because of his parents actions during the dam protests. Satoko was living in the abusive circumstances so what could she have done?

Rena, now that I think about it may have actually made the situation worse for Satoshi. She's mentioned a couple of times that she talked to Satoshi about the curse of Oyashiro and how he might be to blame for the entire situation "because he was going to betray Oyashiro/Hinamizawa" by leaving the village. With Keiichi I think she's just preying upon his guilt complex by trying to say its his fault for not living in the village and thus being entirely unaware of the misfortune befalling Satoshi. That's like saying you're to blame that some teenager in Thailand is having a rough time because you don't live there and don't know they exist.

One of the more ridiculous parts of this entire confession scene is the fact that everyone agrees that yes, they do and should share the blame for Satoshi killing his aunt, and for Rena killing Rina and Teppei. Because Rena was keeping her feelings and motives to herself somehow everyone else in the gaming club is culpable for the murders. In my opinion though, the most ridiculous idea is the one Keiichi puts forth that clearly Rena had examined every conceivable angle and murder was the best and only option. When we know for a fact that's not true. She had the idea that maybe she needs to kill Rina at most several hours before she did the deed. Then, through no action on her part Rina tried to kill Rena forcing Rena to fight back. You can argue the self-defense angle all you'd like but the idea that Rena went over all the angles of killing Rina is just blatantly untrue.

Regardless I feel I should move on otherwise we'll be here listening to me gripe all day.

On a more plot relevant note:

Keiichi suddenly has a memory of killing Teppei from chapter three: Tatarigoroshi. And I can't help but wonder why that is, was there always a very extremely faint notion that he somehow retains a bit of his memories from previous chapters? Or is this a new revelation that is being established for later on in the series? Does Rika, or the mysterious figure Rika apparently lives with somehow possess the ability to let Keiichi remember events from other timelines? My mind is abuzz with all sorts of theories and conjectures about this newfound power of his. "Power," no I'd say being able to remember things that happened to you in an alternate reality/timeline is probably worthy of the term.

Anyway, the gang decides to help Rena dispose of the bodies, because they're friends, and more than that a fambily.

I wonder if Keiichi is actually aware of the events that happened, that it was Teppei Houjou he killed then. Or if he's just vaguely aware that he did in fact kill someone, but he's not sure of the who or the real motive as to why. It also makes me wonder if he's now vaguely aware of the Hinamizawa Gas Disaster that killed everyone in Hinamizawa, or if it's just the murder he remembers. I've got so many more questions I want to ask about what this remembering previous timelines might imply.

Rena suddenly seems pretty exhausted by the whole day's events. You could write it off as just the energy of having the truth revealed and all the arguments that ensued having worn off. But given how she acts for the rest of the sub-chapter I think it's more paranatural in nature.

Does saying you're going to forget this major traumatic event ever, ever actually work? I know it's a fictional narrative, but I want you to think about it. There's probably some event that occurred during your life that you decide that you're going to just forget happened, it doesn't have to be a traumatic event, just one you decide to forget. Does it ever actually go away or does it just sort of sit there in your memory ready to just spring back up after it fades from the forefront of your mind after a while?

I like this TIP because it's just a little inclusion to turn up the paranoia about whether or not the bodies the gaming club just disposed of will be found. That the Hinamizawa Forestry department just happens to be planning to plant some trees right around where they dumped the bodies. That's just ironic isn't it? Of course I don't know how deep you have to plant tree saplings, but given how Mion mentions they need to dig the hole for the bodies deeper than Rena originally did it it may not be an issue?

Back at the start of the series I thought these were being written by Rika, but now I have my doubts. Are these in fact being written by Rika's mysterious companion, the one who got on her case for drinking at such a young age? I get the feeling that's probably who it is, but then I also wonder at how relevant these little poems are. These are only in the console version of the visual novels, if you played them without the mods installed these poems simply aren't there. Are these secretly influencing how I perceive the story? Would I be better off without them? Who knows. At the moment I treat them about as relevant as the Frederica Bernkastel poems at the start of each chapter. They're a fun little addition that are more poetic philosophical interpretations of the forthcoming events, but don't worry too much about them. As with the Bernkastel poems though, I'm sure when I get towards the end of the series something will happen that will completely recontextualize them.

It's Watanagashi, and this time we're experiencing it through the view point of Ooishi. It's interesting reading his thoughts about the characters, and I hope the chapter goes back to his POV before too terribly long. Rena still seems a bit unwell after the events of the previous subsection, and I like that there are a few interpretations you can make of this. The first being the supplied theory that maybe it is just a summer cold. The second, the physical and mental exhaustion of the last few days catching up to her. And the third, supernatural shenanigans.

I'm interested in his notion that she hasn't opened up to her friends. About her troubled past maybe? That's the only thing I can think of that she hasn't opened up to them about.

[oumagines]

Spiked Punch

Anonymous Asked: "For a request, how about the “spiked punch” prompt from the creepy Valentine’s list?"

Warnings: Kidnapping, drugging, jealousy, implied punishment, implied strangulation (as a punishment)

Reader Pronouns: They/Them

Rating: 🍇

Notes: Wooo! First one-shot, let's gooooo!!!

When you got invited to Miu's party, you really didn't think anything of it. I mean, you were a college student, parties are almost a twice weekly occurrence, if not more. But what you couldn't ignore was the sudden influx of people looking at you strangely. Almost as though they were scared of you. Even your normal friend group that you'd attend these parties with just didn't seem interested in even looking at you. It almost had you worried... almost.

"Hey, Y/N!" a boy you recognized from your classes, Shuichi Saihara, called. You approached the group he was with carefully, where his best friend, Kaede, seemed to be goading him into saying something. "Are you, uh, going to Miu's party tonight?"

"Of course!" you beamed, then gave him a knowing smirk. "Gotta get the uni experience somehow, right?" you joked, playfully elbowing him as Kaede motioned for him to go on.

"R-Right..." he chuckled in that adorable nervous way that many people would comment on. Personally, you didn't quite agree, but you could see how it would be endearing to some. "Well then, I-I... I was wondering if... maybe you wanted to go with me?" His face was flushed red and he had little bits of sweat culminating on his forehead, but Kaede at least looked proud.

"Oh, um..." you mumbled, Shuichi looking more anxious with that. That was a definite no, right? "Y'know what? Sure. No harm in at least trying." The bell then rang and you sighed. "Catch you later. Pick me up at eight." And you gave him your sweet wave accompanied by an equally saccharine smile, completely oblivious to the absolutely fuming face glaring at you two in the distance...

˚₊· ͟͟˚₊·

When you arrived to Miu's dorm with Shuichi trailing behind you quickly, you weren't all that surprised to see drunk people dancing and jumping about, more often than not in provocative manners, since you'd been to at least a few of these parties before. Never one hosted by the popular Miu Iruma, but parties in general, at least. Those had to count for something, right?

"Wow," said a girl nearby, easily identified as Kyoko Kirigiri, someone you think you recognized as an upperclassman, maybe a senior. "Are these parties always this crazy?" she asked Shuichi, who gave a nervous laugh and a slight nod.

"Yep, pretty much," you answered for him. "This one doesn't even look like it's on the crazier end of the scale."

"Huh." Kyoko was enamored by you. Had Shuichi really managed to pick himself up a cute little partner? Shuichi was only popular because Kaede was, so it made sense that Kyoko was curious about you. "Hey, Shuichi, why don't you go get us some punch? I want to chat with Y/N a bit." Shuichi nodded and headed off to do as Kyoko asked. He's seen this a lot in movies, where they just need a few moments of the date gone to discuss between each other. "I didn't expect Shuichi to end up with someone like you. And before you ask, that isn't an insult. I meant I really expected him and Kaede or that avocado boy to end up together."

"Uh... thanks?" you semi-asked, suddenly feeling a bit more inadequate for the occasion. Kyoko noticed this and gave you a small smile.

"Don't worry, I don't mean that in a negative way. I'm just saying this to mention that you've managed to subvert my expectations. It makes me curious as to what you possess to draw his attention..." she wondered aloud, eyes looking you up and down for something to set you apart from everyone else, until finally, she paused. "Ah, I see."

"You do?!" you squeaked, a bit worried that maybe she'd found a wardrobe malfunction that you'd have to quickly fix to avoid looking like a weirdo.

"Yes," she answered rather quickly, adding onto it, "sort of. I can see it in your mannerisms why he likes you, even if I can't find anything physical to distinguish. You've got a good soul. And perhaps that's what attracted him to your side. Either way..." Her tone shifted to become more serious as she looked you in the eyes. "Take good care of him. He's my protégé, you know. He and I are close, so if you hurt him, I'll know."

You gulped a bit as Shuichi returned, handing both you and Kyoko a cup. "H-Here," Shuichi said with a small, nervous smile. "They actually ran out, but someone was kind enough to want Y/N to have theirs." You smiled, grateful that someone was willing to give you that, despite not actually knowing most of the people here.

"And people say romance is dead," you joked, chuckling to yourself as you began drinking the punch. Oddly enough, you noticed it had an odd metallic taste to it, but you thought nothing of it, knowing Shuichi isn't the type of guy to drug anyone, and that the punch was probably just poorly made with not enough sugar. "Ugh... Worst punch I've ever had..."

"Really?" Kyoko asked with a bit of confusion in her tone, tilting her head to the side. "Mine tasted fine. Shuichi, what about you?"

"Mine, too," Shuichi confirmed. "Must've just been a bad cup," he suggested, and you took that answer. Sometimes certain cups of juices and other drinks are just not all that good, you figured. It's an odd phenomenon, but you'd experienced it before in the weirdest of ways.

But still, you couldn't ignore the way you slowly began to lose your grasp on everything around you as the night went by. Everything was a blur, your mind was getting so hazy, you were getting just so tired... It came to a head when you ended up in a pose like a girl from the year above you called Mikan, leaving you utterly humiliated. Kyoko suggested you leave, and you agreed, but when Shuichi offered to walk you, you declined, stating that your place wasn't that far away, and that him walking you back would be a waste of everyone's time. So you began making your way home... alone...

You didn't even make it past the courtyard before you collapsed, unconscious on the grass as an ominous shadow began to tower over you.

˚₊· ͟͟˚₊·

When you woke up, the first thing you noticed was just how uncomfortable you were. Your back was aching and through your grogginess, you faintly registered the grating feeling of ropes rubbing up against your wrists and ankles.

And perhaps most disturbingly of all, you were greeted by a familiar face, scowling at you.

"Finally, you're awake!" His mockingly sweet tone would, in any other circumstances, make your blood boil. "What did you think you were doing...?"

"Huh...?" you muttered groggily, turning your head to wipe off your drool on your shoulder. "What do you mean? Where am I?"

"Our place! Where else?" he asked sweetly, causing an immense wave of nausea to immediately sweep over you. You had a class or two with this boy, Kokichi Ouma, but you hadn't spoken much and you were for damn sure not close.

"What do you mean?!" you shouted, the sleepiness starting to wear off now. "You kidnapped me, you psycho!" And then the realization of what little of the night before you could remember dawned on you. "You...! You put something in my drink, didn't you?! You're the reason I humiliated myself last night!"

"Well, can you blame me? You decided to cheat on me with that wannabe emo kid!" he shouted back, sounding like your average couple's spat... which made the fact that he said you were "cheating" on him all the more unnerving. "You should know better than to cheat on someone who loves you with all his heart! But it's okay. I forgive you because you're such a cutie, my silly S/O~"

"No!" you screamed, glaring fiercely at him as tears formed in your eyes. "Let me go! We aren't together! I could never love someone so batshit insane!" And that's when something seemed to crack inside Kokichi...

"You know what, S/O? I tried to be nice, but it seems you still aren't getting it..." He headed over to the opposite side of a room, where an array of... very disturbing tools lay, given the context. He picked up a large belt tied into the shape of a noose. "Perhaps it's time I remind you of your place..."

[parrishh]

i still have lots of questions after reading greywaren right when it came out and i thought i could ask you... if youre not interested then just ignore me! i feel kinda dumb for not getting a few things

what was the sweetmetal maggie referred to? the one which was supposedly also in trc books?

why do ronan and declan look alike if ronan wasnt born the normal way? whatever created him certainly didnt care about how declan looked, right?

has ronan known that he is more than human? idk i kinda had the impression that he def didnt know about himself. he knew he was a dreamer, he obviously knew niall was is dad, so when and how did he learn about himself? thats what i completely missed somehow lol and how did adam get that too? when they were in the dream space?

what actually was the lace?

why did ronan have the nightwash? did it stop now after he knew what he was and saved the earth and all that? was it because he was too powerful and so he needed to be close to the power source aka ley line? and now he can be "free" bc he knows what he is and he chose to be human basically or more human with powers or such?

sorry i am still confused lol if you could help a dumb bitch out i would be very happy!!! some of these might be obvious but i really didnt get it. thanks so much <3

hiiii sorry for the late response. i haven't been around much. i can take a crack at these but i definitely don't know the answer to all of them LOL

no idea. i doubt she'll ever tell us

mór, niall, and the forest all created ronan together. his appearance was mór's contribution - it says she modeled him after a photo she had seen of niall as a toddler

i could be forgetting something but i don't think this is entirely clear in the book, i.e. i don't think there's any sort of inciting incident like ronan didn't know what he was and then this one specific thing happened and now he does. i think it was more of a gradual realization that came to him little by little during his time in the dream space. my understanding is that - being an ancient, all-knowing entity - he probably always had the capacity to "unlock" this knowledge but he had been pushing it down all his life because he wasn't ready to come to terms with it. his journey of self-acceptance in this trilogy culminates in him discovering who he is because he finally loves himself enough to handle the revelation. as for adam, i'm sure he understands that ronan is Something More because he's smart and because of their interactions in the dream space, but i don't think he knows exactly what that "something more" is. it probably has to be explained to him in detail off-page after the events of the book

i feel as though the lace is to hennessy as bryde is to ronan, i.e. a manifestation of all of her most negative thoughts and feelings. that's why it physically resembles the shadows from her most painful childhood memory. her suffering is so profound that this manifestation grows powerful enough to sustain itself in the dream space and affect other dreamers. i may be completely wrong but that's my understanding

nightwash doesn't only affect ronan - we know it happens to other dreamers, too, because hennessy also gets it when she doesn't dream. i think even after the events of this book, ronan would still get nightwash if he stopped pulling things out of his dreams. dreamers can't ignore what they are. he's "free" now in the sense that he accepts who he is; no more nightwash not because it doesn't exist anymore, but because he always allows himself to dream freely

[bellaklak]

girlhood & death/sexuality povs (week four)

hello!! as you will soon be able to tell, i switched it up a little this week. while i feel the concept of girlhood/motherhood/everything in between is tried and true, i feel like my interest in it is waning, especially because a lot of what i come back to is just systemic oppression (which i already knew,,, so there was no discovery for me there). i'll find a way to touch on it somehow, i just don't think i want it to be my main topic (at least for right now). below you can find the post its from the in-class exercise that i wrote about what i wanted to know. in retrospect, they all seem pretty superficial.

instead, i repeated the in-class exercise with my other topic: death/sexuality (which i have unfortunately been neglecting a little bit. some of the ideas i had here were reminiscent of ones i had written during the other session, which is promising because ideally i would like to find the tasteful cross-section between girlhood/death/sexuality/religion, but that's a lot to tackle all at once! in doing the second POV session, one question i kept asking in different wording was how can i overcome my fear of death? it's something i've struggled with for a long time and am still deconstructing with therapy. i experience a lot of anticipatory grief for my loved ones, especially my grandparents who i am pretty close to. Another question that seemed to pop up a lot was how can i navigate this topic without shame? and i know that can be attributed to the fact that my topic should actually be listed as death with relation to sex (specifically orgasm). maybe being raised very catholic contributed to some sort of sexual repression but i feel wholly uneducated in giving it some real good thought. the parallel between sex and death was not something i had ever considered until seeing the janine antoni piece that i mentioned in my first week of research, and there's something that's still so unknown about it to me that i'm not sure where to begin. in the pov session, i discovered i felt like i hadn't seen this parallel as much as i think i ought to (whether that be because i'm missing it or it's just not there) and i feel like i will have something important to express as the culmination of my research.

anyway, above you'll find the three post-its that i felt resonated most with my intentions for my research at this time. the second two i explained above, but as for the first one i think i'm leaning toward exploring that feeling of repression. like, why does my body have to be sacred? what/who can defile it? i've been told a lot as i've grown into my secondary female traits that i need to save myself for marriage, because "that show of constraint is the greatest gift i could give my husband." i think also this idea of a sacred body lends itself to body positivity, something i have also struggled with very much due to societal and familial expectations (shoutout girlhood).

i'm really pleased with how my intentions are starting to form a little bit more clearly and i'm excited to navigate the answers to the questions i had about my topic. i did some light research this week as well on the notion of la petite mort, an euphemism for orgasm which i had never heard of before deciding to look into my topic. i'd like to have explore some more sources before i consolidate and post my notes though. super pumped for next week!

[bunnyinatree]

I just finished the seventh episode of Princess Tutu, and here are my thoughts so far...

At first, I thought that Fakir must be the crow, but then I thought, "Maybe it's Rue instead? Or maybe they're somehow tag-teaming it?" Now I think that the crow is its own force in the story, but I'm not quite certain... The preview for Episode 8 has given me a lot to think about!

For a while, I really liked the idea that Fakir might be the crow, and that Drosselmeyer forced him and Mytho into an unwilling rivalry for the sake of telling a good story. So when Drosselmeyer died, Fakir and Mytho chose to leave the story together, and the only way they could escape their opposing fates was for Mytho to stop being the hero, for his princely heart to be shattered and dispersed. Maybe Fakir actually embraced this decision, because it saved Mytho from experiencing the full brunt of the trauma he's likely acquired as a story's heroic protagonist.

However, now I'm starting to think that maybe we've got a Rose Quartz and Pearl situation here. Maybe Fakir isn't the crow (Mytho's fated rival) but some sort of knight or right-hand man instead, and just like Rose asked Pearl to "shatter" Pink Diamond, Mytho asked Fakir to shatter and disperse his heart. There's still a lot that I don't know about why this would happen or what the characters' motivations for it would be, but I'm excited for the story to develop and reveal more relevant information!

Also, I hope that both Rue and Fakir's characters are given sufficient depth and backstories. I would love to see two conflicted villains who act monstrously with love as their justification, challenging the idea that having a heart means experiencing love, which is always and somehow inherently good. I don't want Mytho to be "fixed" through regaining his ability to love by the end, and I want the conflict to remain a matter of every character thinking that they're doing the right thing and treating Mytho kindly by either returning or hiding his heart.

Regardless, I like how concerned this show is with storytelling and authorship. I like how Drosselmeyer is spooky and nefarious, putting his characters through a fictional hell just because it's entertaining and makes for a good story. Still, it makes my head spin to think that everyone in the show is a fictional character, while some are fictional within the context of the story, as well.

As a viewer, I definitely side with Ahiru, Mytho, Fakir, Rue, etc. against Drosselmeyer. Everyone is fictional from my perspective, but Drosselmeyer feels the least sincere and support-worthy. Ironically, he feels like the least "real" character in the cast, even though he's the only one who can claim authorship and call himself "above" the narrative. I wonder if the story will culminate in the characters triumphing over the author or if the plot is doomed to follow Drosselmeyer's schemes, where the characters' well-being will be sacrificed for the sake of telling the most "interesting" story possible.

Obligatory Death Note reference: I like how Drosselmeyer uses the same word to describe the story of Princess Tutu as Ryuk does to describe Light's: 面()白()い. Both Drosselmeyer and Ryuk have a twisted spectatorship going on with Ahiru/Light respectively, where they remain on the sidelines even though they're responsible in a way for what's happening. It's like that one meme: [guy who started it] I'm staying out of it.

[letterstothemidnightsociety]

It's 2007 and somehow, miraculously, Supernatural survives yet another rocky (?) season of mediocre ratings to come back for a third season, or at least, half season, but that season starts out with a real bang! Like, just a real solid trio of an opener for season three. It reminds me of all the things I love about SPN and also it reminds us of all the things that frustrate the hell out of me on SPN. So where did we leave things off?

First up, there’s Dean, who sold his soul to the devil in order to bring Sam back from the dead. Sam, you’ll remember, was part of some overly complicated ponzi scheme to find the perfect vessel to open a door - yep, open a door - and lost to Aldous Hodge who just straight up murders Sam in the season finale. So Dean get’s Sammy back, but in exchange, he’s only got one year left before he permanently moves down south. Oh! And even though they got Sam back and Sam kills Aldous Hodge (RIP pal), they neglected to keep the door from opening. The door to Hell, that is, and now they’ve allowed a shiz ton of demons out to freely roam the earth. Way to go, boys, you lost again! They are two for two on these season finales guys!

OH but they DO kill the Yellow Eyed Demon, so that’s a plus, but not before he plants the most perfect seed of doubt in Dean’s mind - “How do you know what you brought back is all Sammy?” Like, ugh, UGH, ugh!!!! What a way to drive the knife in deeper! What a way to make the heart of this show slowly start to crumble! C’est Magnifique!! *chef's kissy fingers*

So with all that emotional baggage weighing us down, how do we start season 3? How else - with a threesome of course! And also some technicolor grading, it’s wild guys.

Oh boy guys, let’s talk about this opener for a hot sec. I got into it a little bit last season, but as much as I love Dean, you HAVE to admit that that boy is gross. Just like...he’s a little gross. I’m also old enough now to see exactly how many red flags he’s raising through the last 45 episodes. Like, sorry Little Me, but he is not boyfriend material. Not to mention that all this debauchery is 1,000% him distracting himself from the consequences of his own actions, but we’ll get into that later.

Meanwhile, Sam is doing something constructive and trying to figure out how to reverse the curse and save Dean’s soul. And here we have the culmination of two seasons worth of character development - faced with the imminent demise of Dean Samuel Winchester, Sam tries to step up and take care of his brother for once in his life; Dean parties like it’s 1999. There were two things I thought of during this episode - 1) isn’t this not unlike the sort of behavior you see in suicidal people who have finally decided to take their own life? Which is just, like, further held up by the fact that Dean’s big monologue at the end literally has the line “Truth is I’m tired, Sam. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.” and like...dude, you are NOT ok! Why isn't??? ANYONE??? ADDRESSING THIS????? And 2) Dean is sharing a lot of similarities with the demons in this episode.

Because MEANwhile, there’s demons! So many demons! Specifically, the Seven Deadly Sins ones, but also, spoiler alert, Ruby, who is gettin’ reeeeealll into that ketchup.

All these baddies just really taking advantage of their time topside cuz Hell is, as they so artfully put it, it’s like Hell, so they’re just livin’ it up while they still can ~almost like foreshadowing or something~?!?!?

Real talk though, it being a real long time since I’ve watched this season, it’s these kinds of details that I’m impressed with this time around. There is so much character work that goes into this show and it’s something I definitely connected with the first time around, but not on conscious level. Now I can look at it through time and experience and articulate what I’m seeing, which makes this re-watch infinitely more enjoyable.

Episode 1 of this season continues what they started in season 2 and just keeps building out that Hunter Community. Like, there really is a whole Community out there that keeps in contact and works together and makes sure everyone’s up to date on the latest hot goss, and it all makes John Winchester come off like a real creepy splinter cell lone gunman type. And that in turn makes the Winchester sons look like total, unprofessional boneheads who managed to open a portal to Hell. “UGH Great Jorb Guys, but can we blame them? They’re John’s kids,” is a conversation between hunters that I am headcannoning, but also 100% support.

Honestly, I love the idea of the Winchesters being just these real, like, b-grade, Walmart Brand Hunters that other Hunters are just SO done with. We kind of see a little bit of that with Isaac and Tamara, but by the end of the episode, the Winchesters prove that they’re...better Hunters? I hope somewhere in the next 12 seasons I get an episode that is told from another Hunter’s POV who is legitimately better/more emotionally balanced than the Winchesters and the whole episode is them just, like, cleaning up a bunch of Winchester messes like, SONuvabitch, these two ASSholes. I think we see a fair amount of episodes from the POV of people who are less qualified than the Winchesters who end up being mentored by them, but I’d be stoked for them to run into just a group of people who hate them for totally legitimate, professional vs amature reasons.

Bobby does not count because Bobby signed up to be their Dad and so he agreed to take care of their messes when he took that job.

And then we get to “The Kids Are Alright” which showcases one of my fav changes for this season - BRIGHTLY! LIT! HIGH! SATURATION!!!! And of course, by fav, I mean, Most Hilarious.

I do walk a fine line on this one truth be told. Like, season 1 was definitely going for A Look. It’s super gritty and high contrasty and stylized. Now, I got what they were going for but I wasn’t always crazy about it, mostly because the quality on the DVD’s was terrible. Quick tip for everyone: in order to get 2+ hours worth of content on a DVD, you have to compress the final edit of the program to a pretty small bitrate. When we drop videos onto DVD’s at my work (it isn’t often, thank goodness), the discs themselves only hold, like, 2GB worth of content and that is NOT A LOT when it comes to video files. The more compressed a video file is, the less detail you’re gonna get in the visuals. Watching episodes on Netflix (where everything’s probably at a higher bitrate and therefore is a better quality visual), it’s not bad, but on my DVDs, the compression is so heavy that we get SUPER hot highlights and SUPER crunchy shadows - what a lot of people would called “crushed blacks” because you’ve lost all the detail in the shadows and you’re left with a grainy, noisy, black hole on the screen. Like I lost so much detail in the pilot episode guys, I could not make out this guy’s face.

A rough approximation of my DVD quality. Still recommend it over Netflix for the Accurate Soundtrack tho.

Season 2 SPN toned that Look down a lot, like, a lot a lot. Enough that you still got the general vibe they were going for but not enough that you couldn’t make out faces anymore. But through this whole process, the CW execs kept pushing for the show to look lighter, more colorful, less film noir more...well, CW. And in season 3 it finally happened!!!

I get what those execs were going for, but also, I feel like the colorists on these first few episodes just REALLY went wild out of spite. Lookit this shot from “Magnificent Seven” right before Envy causes some rando innocent bystander to beat a girl to death for her shoes -

GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN!!!! I WONDER WHICH SIN THIS GUY IS????

Then in “The Kids Are Alright” the birthday party looks like everything is coated in day-glow neon.

The Winchester Bros look like they just got back from 3 weeks in Aruba - LOOK at the saturation levels in these skin tones! LOOK AT THEM!!

My screencap ability aside, only in SPN can a cemetery at night have brighter lighting than a diner in the middle of the afternoon.

This is definitely a thing I will be tracking the rest of the season because I have a distinct memory of a future episode where the brothers have been magically gifted completely different lives where they were never Hunters, they know nothing of Hunting, and they’re completely normal until the end when everything gets snapped back and the episode literally changes colors. V. Excited to see just how saturated this season stays through the end.

But maybe more importantly in “The Kids Are Alright” we learn that Dean does NOT, in fact, have a son. Not that he would be a good father...well...maybe? I mean, this Dean, this season 3, definitely-suicidal, completely-reckless, can’t-keep-it-together Dean, is not good Dad material. Later seasons Dean? Probably fine? Earlier seasons Dean might ALSO be fine? And if he’d found out that Ben was his legitimate kid, it could have made a WORLD of difference, who knows. I know he ultimately does become father-like to Ben and that gives me a lot of feelings. But this Dean is not in a good place to take care of anyone, including himself and really, someone ought to do something about that.

I gotta say, this is an actual bummer. I can’t remember if, in the later seasons, they do any clarifying on this or not, but I am legitimately bummed that Ben is not Dean’s kid and that as far as we know, Dean has no natural children floating around out there with surly attitudes and soft hearts. Dean’s motivation from Day 1 has always been family and despite what comments he may make in early seasons, Dean’s secret desire is to have the wife and the kids and the dog and the white picket fence. And honestly, we’re only 3 seasons in and I just want Dean to have nice things!!

And then guys, we come to “Bad Day at Black Rock,” and I just...WHAT a masterpiece. I had almost NO memory of ever watching this episode before and I don't understand why. What a glorious masterpiece this episode is. Let’s make a list -

More Hunters™, who should be really annoying but were actually kinda charming in a Marx Brothers kind of way

Gordon’s in jail, where he belongs, but also is masterminding a coup against the Winchesters which is A+ spooky stuff

Slapstick comedy that I didn’t know I was missing from my life

Bela F*cking Talbot

Guys, I think this is my fav episode so far purely because I felt, while watching it, that the last 10 years of my life were not in vain and that I had in fact grown as a human person. I remembered hating Bela Talbot. Like, I DID. NOT. LIKE. HER. To the point that I questioned if her British accent was even real. It is, her mother is from the UK and she lived there for a time, but like, honestly, the audacity of Little Me.

This time around? Oh she’s defs my new fav. Just everything about her is like, A+, Great Job, Why-Did-We-Cancel-Her??? Like, oh yeah, probably because somewhere in here they try to shoehorn a romantic side plot with Dean. I don’t actually mind rioting over shoehorned romance, but also, if they’d let this play out for a season or two and then got the two of them to bone? I’m on board. I’m 100% on board.

Maybe it’s just that she is unapologetically out for herself, maybe it’s the fact that she is definitely a match for the Winchesters in a non-murdery way, probably it is both of those things. She's smart, she’s crooked, she has impeccable taste, she’s honestly a helluva lot of fun and I am so excited to see more of her and so BUMMED that she will not make it past this season.

Despite the fact that I absolutely adore all three of these episodes, they also bring up the problem that I was starting to see in season 2 - WHO is this show about? Isn’t it supposed to be about the Brothers as a whole? But the majority of these first three lean pretty heavily on Dean’s emotional arc. Granted, it makes sense. I mean, of COURSE Dean’s demon deal is gonna be the BIG thing in a season where he is literally staring down the barrel, but knowing that there’s a side plot about Is Sam Evil?? seems like...something we should really explore more? I believe it comes up in season 4, or at least, Sam’s demon-blood powers become a bigger deal in season 4, but I would have enjoyed seeing Sam have a more active stake in this season. I can see planting some weird new ticks being planted for Alive-Again Sam that just get weirder and darker and then a mid-season finale or a run up episode to the end of the season where Dean (finally) decides he needs to stop his demon deal because he needs to stick around so he can keep Sam from going completely off the rails. As much as I love Dean 5ever, I do think the show works best when the emotional weight of the season is distributed equally is all. And to be fair to the writers this season, there could have been a bigger plan for something like that but they ran out of time - their season was cut by about a third due to the Writer’s Strike.

Still, all in all, a solid opening to the third season. I want to say that these episodes feel like Classic SPN, but then I remember that this is season three out of fifteen. These ARE Classic SPN. Mostly self contained with enough emotional drama to remind us of the overarching plot. Maybe a little heavy on the emotional drama, but Dean’s only got a year to live and the show’s only got 16 episodes to resolve that crisis, so it’s fine.

[dailyaudiobible]

03/11/2021 DAB Transcript

Numbers 15:17-16:40, Mark 15:1-47, Psalms 54:1-7, Proverbs 11:5-6

Today is the 11th day of March welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is always a great day when we get to get together like this, come around the Global Campfire, find our place, step out of whatever's going on and just let the Scriptures speak. And, so, let's let the Scriptures speak. We’re reading from the New International Version this week, picking up where we left off yesterday back into the book of numbers and just remembering what has happened. Spies have been sent into the land, the people have moved out, it's time to go into the land, but a bad report comes back. And, so, they are disqualified and now an entire generation will spend the rest of their lives in the wilderness while their children grow up and then it will be their job to go into the promised land. And, so, we’ll turn into some areas now where we feel like we’re reviewing things - additional laws, a reaffirming of laws, a rehearing of laws. This is because we have a shifting of generations that is taking place. Numbers chapter 15 verse 17 through 16 verse 40.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of Mark today, we covered the territory that includes the crucifixion of Jesus, His death, and before that brutal mistreatment and mockery. And this culminates with Jesus hanging from the cross having been crucified. So, He’s got nails affixing Him to beams where He's hanging waiting for death to come and He cries out in a loud voice, “my God my God why, why, why have you forsaken me?” And, so, let's…let's just work our way to that point by just looking back at the last days of Jesus. We…we remember Jesus, walking through Jericho and healing blind Bartimaeus while He’s on His way to Jerusalem. We…we…we know that Jesus knew what was going to happen because He kept telling His disciples what was going to happen. And, so, He heals blind Bartimaeus as He passes through Jerusalem knowing that He's 18 miles away from His death, an uphill climb to Jerusalem. And as He is on that walk, we remember some of the disciples coming around Him arguing who’s the greatest and can they have a position with Him on the left and on the right. And we see Jesus loving and caring for them but understanding that what’s about to happen is beyond them. They really do expect the Messiah to cause a revolt and overthrow the corruption and overthrow the government. So, you…I mean…how could we put ourselves in the position of the Savior in that moment, but we can think about it, at least, we can consider it, at least, we can consider what it might be like if we knew that we were going to be dying. And none of us want to think about that, but if we knew that we were going to be dying in the next couple of days and our friends or family, they come around us asking for things, we might find that to be isolating, we might find that to be tremendously lonely. Like nobody actually does understand what we’re going through. We read the story of the Last Supper the Jesus had and we certainly know that this is where the Eucharist or communion originated and comes from, this tradition that we carry on until this day. But Jesus had this last meal, and that's the thing. It was the Last Supper. It's called that because of some huge theological meaning. It's the last meal. It’s the last meal before the suffering and He's having that meal with the one who is betraying Him to death. So, you have to wonder, like what is that like? Usually we find out we’re betrayed and it causes a big battle and there’s broken relationships and all that but He’s like sitting there enduring it, even inviting His betrayer to partake…take of the cup. We could say Jesus is enduring the betrayal. And anyone…and I think everyone in the sound of my voice at least understands the concept of betrayal, but many of us have been betrayed in some sort of way in our lives. And, so, we know the isolation in that and the depression in that, the uncertainty, sort of the shift of what we thought was real being tipped upside down. Jesus is enduring all of this. This is all part of the makeup of a fully human and fully God being upon the earth. We’ve followed Jesus into the garden of Gethsemane now a couple of times in Matthew and Mark and we see Him crying out to God very, very human prayer, very human prayer, “if there's any way that we don't have to do what we’re about to do that would be great. Like, is there any way the cup can pass? If there's any way that I don't have to do what I'm being sent to do, if it…if it can go away or if there’s some other way…but not my will but yours.” And, so, we’ve seen Jesus sweating it out. Like He's in anguish in the garden of Gethsemane, anguish - a very human thing to experience. And then the time comes, and the mob shows up and the kiss of betrayal and the binding of the hands and freedom is taken. And Jesus, the Divine One made flash has lost His freedom and He's willingly going. And then we go in before the high priest and all of the accusations. And let's imagine that this is taking place at night and that it goes the deep, deep into the night until exhaustion sets in. And we know that when we’re being yelled at and we’re exhausted at the same time, the feelings, the emotions involved in that are so isolating and so confusing and so upside down. And Jesus is being falsely accused and He’s taking it. He’s not saying anything back. He's listening. He's taking everything that they’re trying to concoct against Him. They’re verbally abusing Him for hours. And some of us have experienced this in some sort of way or another. We…we get the concept if…if not like the whole thing if we don't understand exactly what it's like to be verbally abused. But for hours. But then…then they judge Him. He tells the truth about who He is and then they call Him a blasphemer and they start beating Him and blindfolding Him and tearing out His beard. We can read these things as if they don't hurt, as if He doesn't really feel them, somehow, He’s above it, somehow, He's aloof, somehow, He’s not really enduring it, somehow, it's not really what it appears to be. If they grabbed His whiskers and yanked, then it would hurt. If they spit upon Him which the Bible says that they did, it would drip off His nose, it would drip down into His beard. Like, let's not make this what it's not, let's make it what it is. This is what He's doing. This is what He's going through. And like I said, we can't really put ourselves in that position but we can imagine just briefly what the emotions might be inside of us if this is what we were enduring. And after being smacked around and beaten up then He's given over to the Romans who…who professionally beat Him until He's…He’s a bloodied pulp gasping for breath trying to endure every frayed nerve that is screaming agony. And then He tries to carry this cross and He gets some help. But in the end, the cross gets to where it's going, up on the hill of Golgotha where they strip Him, humiliate Him and nail Him to beams and hang Him to die. So, when we get to this moment where He’s like, “my God, why have you forsaken me?” Well, we can understand the path that brought Him to that moment just before His death. And I know. All my life I’ve heard the theological explanations for the “why have you forsaken me, my God, my God.” The thing is, it’s theological conjecture. It's trying to solve a problem when it's not inherently explained. So, it is what it is. We take it at the face value. We take the words at what they say that He hung from this cross and He cried out. It’s why, which is so human. I don't…I don't even…I wouldn't even know where to begin to count the times that I’ve said that to God over the course of my life and I know I'm not alone. It's sort of the question we end up at with all the time, “like why is this happening?” So, I don't think that God was confused about what was going on. I don't think Jesus was confused but I think He was feeling the things that human beings feel because He chose to descend, to condescend Himself, to reduce Himself, to become one of us, to show us in person the way that we should go and to call out the truth and model life for us in person, experiencing what we experience in all points except for without sin. So, He would experience what any human being would experience, which brings us to the big point here. We’re looking at Jesus died on the cross and this is the second time we’ve crossed this territory in our readings for this year, but if we just simply look back over the last few days of Jesus life and the things that transpired, the things that He had to deal with physically, spiritually and emotionally we would realize that we really don't have anything to hold onto when we are crying out to God that He doesn't understand what we’re going through. Probably more accurately is that we can't understand what He went through, but He certainly understands what we go through. And, so, the cross certainly means a lot of things to us, as believers in Jesus. It is pivotal, it is irreplaceable in the Christian faith and in our story, but one thing that it should tell us very clearly is that God does understand. So, my suggestion or word of advice, or whatever you want to call it is, that we just don't go there anymore. It's…it's not true. God understands all of it. He's the only one that understands all of what you've been through, all that you're going through, anything that you might go through, things that you’ve had to endure that have left scars, things that you desire that are just out of reach, brokenness that's too painful really to even think about. This is the thing about this story. This is the thing about the gospel, is that Jesus came to rescue us eternally, but also, He came to identify with us personally. And when we kind of hurl these why questions - I don't get it, You don't understand - all of this stuff that gets built up and that we say or at least feel or think, it's not true. And that only estranges us, that only puts up a wall between us and the only one who actually does get it. So, we've been in this season, a season known as Lent. We’re still in that season. It ends the Saturday before Easter, so April 2nd I believe. This is the time, a season, an actual season to meditate upon and consider these things deeply, not just quickly, not just surface, but to actually take 40 days to contemplate and sit with them and meditate upon them and open ourselves completely to God in every conceivable way, maybe even fasting so that every time we have a craving that we can consider what we’re doing to remind us of what's happening or opening ourselves fully to God so that He can rearrange us in any way that we need so that there's nothing off-limits to Him because He does understand us and we do put our hope and faith in Him and Him alone utterly. So, this is a really good time then to look at what's happening here and look at the humanity of Jesus and understand that he does understand what we’re going through and that we would be lying if we claimed that He didn't. And, so, we should never put that between us and Him ever again because He does know.

Prayer:

Jesus, we confess. We have said it more times than we can count. We have come to You with misunderstandings. We have come with estrangement. We’re angry with You that You didn't show up in the way we wanted You to, or You don't understand what we’re going through or the depths of the blackness of what we’re facing, or that You just couldn't possibly understand the depths of the human experience. And yet that's not true. You do indeed understand the depths and blackness and darkness of the human experience. We just bore witness to it with what we read in the book of Mark today. You understand. And, so, we’re sorry that we've used that, that we've hurled that. Like when we face You hanging on a cross on our behalf and then we think of the insults that we've hurled or the accusations that we've leveled at You, that You couldn't possibly understand what we're going through, O it's embarrassing, it’s humiliating. This is what we should feel, sorry. We should feel sorry. We should repent. We should turn and go the other way and never come this way again. And, so, this is our prayer, and this is our declaration. We will never accuse You of not understanding us, never again. It's not true and it only divides us. It pulls us away from each other, where it's only going to get more destructive in our lives. So, we’re clinging to You and we’re inviting You as we continue through this season of lament and repentance to show us, Holy Spirit come. What are the ways, what are the places inside of us that we’re still walling off, that we’re still withholding from You? We want to move through this season and give everything to You. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

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Whether you are using the website or the app you can be aware of the Community section. That's where the Prayer Wall is, that's where we are continually reaching toward each other either to offer prayer or to…or to request prayer in this community. So, be aware of the Community section. It’s also where you can find different links to social media channels that we participate in. So, check that out./

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if the mission that we share to bring the spoken word of God read fresh every day and offered to anyone on this planet any time of day or night, and to build community around that rhythm so that were not on this journey alone, if that is something that matters to you than thank you for your partnership profoundly and with all humility. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app you press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the little red button up at the top or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today, I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Good morning DAB family God bless you all. Guinn from Texas you had called in for a father who has one son in jail and the other homeless and you also mentioned how you had a son who is in jail and you know he had experienced an…an encounter with the Lord and is saved although you lost him late along in a motorcycle accident. First of all, I'm sorry about your loss Guinn but I'm grateful that you got to know the Lord. And for father that you called in for I am praying for him. I am praying in the name of Jesus that both your sons are going to come to know the Lord in the name of Jesus. I am believing in the name of Jesus not only are they going to come to the Lord they are also going to be a witness to the Lord in the name of Jesus. That the one who's incarcerated will be able to witness the gospel to others in the name of Jesus. And the one who is homeless will be returning home in the name of Jesus. Melissa from Alabama I am sorry for the loss of your friend your dentist doctor Kirby. I am believing and praying that his wife and kids are going to be comforted as well as you and all those who have survived him in the name of Jesus. Lynn newbie your daughter's marriage rocky marriage that is and I am praying for her in the name of Jesus I am praying for all things that are not of God in that marriage to be bound in the name of Jesus I am believing for restoration in the name of Jesus I am believing for assistance with the four children. You know, especially the ones with the special needs I am believing in the name of Jesus. Maria first time caller long listener your daughter Taylor 26 years old I am binding that in the name of Jesus I am binding everything that is attacking and restraining her away from the Lord in the name of Jesus God bless you all. Esther…

Hello this is Michael Gene Elmore from way out West. We had a couple of praise reports. And first one is about my wife Terry…Terry Elmore she’s been working the last couple years in a Christian school as a teacher's assistant for the preschool kids and it has just been wonderful. I mean it's really just blessed her life and really been a great thing for her and for the kids that she get to teach these kids about Jesus teach them how to spell their name tie their shoes and do all this basic stuff and she just absolutely loves it. And another praise report is about my daughter. My oldest daughter Jessica has told me that she's been listening to the Daily Audio Bible since the first of the year and she's got a couple kids and stuff and I think they're listening to the…I think they are listening to Zeke the kids are too. So, just really really an answer to many of my prayers and stuff. I'm also praying for all these people on here. I…I listen to all of the requests and some of 'em just really touch my heart. I mean this lady that said that her husband she overheard that her husband’s leaving her and I'm praying for her and praying for him to come to his right mind and change his mind and repent. And all the people who are sick and so forth, I pray for em’ every day and and I love you people love this family, the Daily Audio Bible. Adios.

Hi family this is Biola from Maryland I hope you're all doing well. Brian And Jill God bless you, God bless you for this powerful ministry that is a ministry to thousands around the world. Family when you do think of Daily Audio Bible and you throw your log into the campfire remember to give. This is very important for continuity. I want to pay for the young lady that called in dealing with postpartum depression. Doctor John from New York give you an excellent, excellent advice. Sister I want to direct you to 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 that tells you how to fight. Like doctor John said, every time those evil thoughts come to your head just take them captive like prisoners of war, pull them down in the name of Jesus. Hold them captive to the obedience of Christ. And right now, I come against every contrary voice that is disturbing you that is harassing you. I bind you foul spirits in the name of Jesus. Sister I want you to listen to doctor John's advice, excellent advice. And I want to pray for Lynn. I want to pray for your daughter, her situation and your son in law. Father I pray that you will arrest this young man's heart O God Lord, that You will arrest his heart for You, that You will break his heart, make it tender for You, let him come to know You. And I pray for deliverance oh God for Lynn’s daughter in this situation in the name of Jesus, that you will reconcile them, reconcile their marriage in Jesus’ name. Maria, I heard your heartbreaking prayer request. I pray for Taylor. O Father Lord I break the hold of the enemy over Taylor's life in the name of Jesus. Father Lord of heaven I pray that You would deliver this Young lady, soften her heart for You, Holy Spirit pursue her diligently. Let Andrew and his team, let them be successful in the name of Jesus. And Lastly, Julie I'm praying for you in your situation that the Lord will step in and take…

Hi, my name is Amy I'm calling from Vancouver Canada and I am so grateful for this Daily Audio Bible. Brian I discovered it back in the fall and countless days of pure joy and that the scriptures have just come alive through your voice and through…through God in…in you. Thank you very much for that. Thank you to the community for your prayers for your encouragement for one another. I have realized that there is a family out there that is worldwide and just God’s Angels everywhere is incredible. I've had the opportunity to pray for so many and I thank you for that. I thank you for moving forward your prayer concerns. Today I bring you mine. I've been diagnosed finally, praise God, after waiting for three years to have diagnosis with a pelvic prolapse. I’ll spare you the details but it's incredibly painful and there's at least a two year wait list for surgery here in Canada, at least. And…and 34…and it's really really painful. I’m off work and I want the joy of the Lord back in my step. I'm persevering, I'm continuing on. __  and…but I also pray for strength and determination too, to learn what he has for me in this season of my life so that one day I can __  and __ and encourage others as well in their own journey. Thank you so much for the prayers and the support and I…I really truly have come to love each and every one of you that I have had the opportunity to hear. Thank you so much. Wonderful…have a wonderful day. Bye bye.

Hello, DABbers this is Bianca calling from North Carolina it's actually Sunday March 7th at 9:07 PM __. I decided I would call in every 7th of the month or at least try to. So, I was just calling really to say thank you to Brian and the Hardin family. I actually started to listen to DAB Kids with my son in the morning with Ezekiel and five and a half. He get really excited when Ezekiel reads by himself. And, so, that's really awesome, those short little tidbits on the way dropping him off at school is really cool. And I’ve just been pondering a lot lately how Brian has been talking about having situations happen taking a pause and just observing for a moment before we respond. So, I just wanted to call and say that I am praying for that for myself. I definitely know that I can be quick tempered and quick to speak before I think and it’s something that I know that I've needed to work on but I haven't truly invested the time and the thought into it in order to do it because it is a skill that can be learned if it is practiced. And, so, I'm just calling in today praying for that ability to take that pause before responding and try to respond from a place that's in line with who I want to be versus who I am in that moment of frustration and inability and anger and sadness. And, so, I'm just asking for prayers for that. I'm praying for all of you as I listen through. There's so many different things going on but just know that when your prayer is voiced and played it is heard and someone is praying for you. Thank you. I love you all and I hope you all have a wonderful week.

Hey DAB family this is David from Pennsylvania first-time caller just started listening back in January. Just wanted to call in and say thank you to all those people who have been sending in prayer and encouragement. I'm praying along with you guys and the encouragement just keeps lifting me up as I listen to them. So, thanks. I actually was touched by one caller who came in and was talking about how God still does the little things. It really hit me because in the past week I've been asking God, “hey can you show me something that…that you are still doing small things?” And he showed me at least three times in the past three days, “yeah I'm still doing small stuff.” So, thanks…thanks for just bringing that up again. Well…hoping to call in again soon. Bye.

[joeinfurnari]

My Dinner with Andre

My Dinner with Andre might be one of the most difficult movies for many viewers to watch. The artsy crowd would call it minimalist while the more lowbrow among us would say it’s boring! There’s just so little to it that there is a valid case for both. The story is simply a struggling young playwright, Wally agrees to meet an acquaintance, Andre, for dinner at a nice restaurant in decaying New York city and conversation ensues. The end. But like so many things in life, My Dinner with Andre gives you so much more if you really listen closely. I recently watched it again and I forgot just how great it is and how it continues to speak to us today.

It’s so stark and unapologetic about being without plot that it’s become the subject of many pop culture parodies. I know there is a Simpson’s reference to it but I most enjoyed the episode of Community that spoofs it. You may think that this comes from a place of common dislike for the movie but it’s actually the opposite. The parodies just prove how influential and beloved it is. Why? For me, the appeal is the conversation itself. It’s been celebrated for being a complete fiction that does a great job at coming across as a documentary but that’s just appreciation on a formal level. It’s not just that they had a conversation that’s important, it’s what they talk about that matters. The content of that discussion is so important, the writers and filmmaker felt it merited being the subject of a film without any distraction. To say that Louis Malle created My Dinner with Andre for the iconoclasm alone, misses the point.

The two men seated at dinner are artists/playwrights and catch up on the long period since they last encountered each other. They’re not really friends and Wally even debates cancelling the dinner before ultimately opting to go. He’s a working writer and artist making ends meet in New York City while Andre has had a long hiatus from creative life spent on travel and self examination. Wally confirms their community speculation that Andre has money that allows his adventures. Andre at first spends dominates the conversation with anecdotes about mutual acquaintances and talks about some of the retreats and workshops he’s attended recently. Andre has dropped out of the arts and has been on a personal quest to find himself after becoming disillusioned with his life.

In the time since they last spoke Andre describes a crisis in his creative life. He left the theater and traveled to Poland where he spent time with strangers in the woods creating experimental theater. He didn’t speak or understand Polish and they didn’t understand English but the time spent together was transformative. What began for him as creative exploration in the woods forced him to act as himself and in so doing he was forced to examine his life and how he acts when he plays himself:

So, you follow the same law of improvisation…which is that you do whatever your impulse, as the character, tells you to do…but in this case, you are the character. So there's no imaginary situation to hide behind…and there's no other person to hide behind. What you're doing, in fact, is you're asking those same questions…that Stanislavsky said the actor should constantly ask himself as a character:

Who am I? Why am I here? Where do I come from, and where am I going?

But instead of applying them to a role, you apply them to yourself.

Andre tells more stories of his spiritual and creative adventures. For him, his journey to this dinner has been full of magic, mystery, serendipity and travel to exotic locations including India and even a Saharan Oasis. The restaurant is quite nice but it is still remarkably banal compared to Andre’s monstrous hallucinations and descriptions of his process of personal exploration. It culminates in a description of being buried alive in Montauk, NY. From that point on, Andre becomes surprised by his own reactions to things in his life. He even begins to look at himself and the sort of person who would spend his time the way he has. People in his life who he called friends, repulse him. Figures on television appear to be objectively horrible people. He says,

And I suddenly had this feeling I was just as creepy as they were…and that my whole life had been a sham…

…

I mean, I really feel that I'm just washed up, wiped out. I feel I've just squandered my life.

Moments later he goes on to say,

Well, you know, I may be in a very emotional state right now, Wally.…but since I've come back home I've just been finding the world we're living in…more and more upsetting.

It’s as though Andre has a new perception of the world that is in stark contrast to his former self. He’s alone in this perspective until he sees a woman working in the theater who recognizes the trouble on his face. Where everyone else he encountered commented on how great he looked, this woman somehow knew by looking at him, the emotional state he was in. Because of this woman’s recent loss of her mother, she was able to see him clearly. Andre says,

She didn't know anything about what I'd been going through. But the other people, what they saw was this tan, or this shirt…or the fact that the shirt goes well with the tan.

So they said, " Gee, you look wonderful." Now, they're living in an insane dreamworld.

They're not looking.

That seems very strange to me. Right, because they just didn'ts ee anything, somehow.…except, uh, the few little things that they wanted to see.

All of this has resonated with me very personally. I similarly feel as though my perspective on the world has shifted and it has made me incompatible with things as they are and people who aren’t looking. It’s as though my prior life was a dream, honestly. When I think of how I thought about the world and other people for most of my life, I also hate that prior self. I agree with Andre that that earlier version of myself inhabited an insane dreamworld. Andre describes it using the example of his dying mother. Although she was terminally ill and appeared only minutes away from death, the specialist was beaming at all the progress she was making. For this doctor, he had so narrowed his goals/perception to her arm that any healing on that front was cause for celebration. Insane.

I mean, we're just walking around in some kind of fog. I think we're all in a trance. We're walking around like zombies. I don't…I don't think we're even aware of ourselves or our own reaction to things.

We…We're just going around all day like unconscious machines…and meanwhile there's all of this rage and worry and uneasiness…just building up and building up inside us.

And later, Andre continues to describe this state of mind:

Isn't it amazing how often a doctor…will live up to our expectation of how a doctor should look? When you see a terrorist on television, he looks just like a terrorist. I mean, we live in a world in which fathers…or single people, or artists…are all trying to live up to someone's fantasy…of how a father, or a single person,or an artist should look and behave.

They all act as if they know exactly how they ought to conduct themselves…at every single moment…and they all seem totally self-confident.

For two men involved in theater, they are approaching the idea that who we fashion ourselves to be, is selected from clearly defined character behaviors and appearance. For an actor, it must be disturbing for there to be no leap between the actor and the character. Why is it that someone who adopts the role of artist in real life, chooses to look like what we expect? As average people in our world, we’re acting our roles as they have been defined for us by someone else. This should be alarming to everyone and not just Andre and Wally.

I mean, we just put no value at all on perceiving reality. I mean, on the contrary, this incredible emphasis that we all place now.…on our so-called careers…automatically makes perceiving reality a very low priority…because if your life is organized around trying to be successful in a career…well, it just doesn't matter what you perceive or what you experience. You can really sort of shut your mind off for years ahead, in a way. You can sort of turn on the automatic pilot.

How many of us are doing this right now? I did it for many years, always overlooking the here and now for some future reward that all of it was building towards. I also think if your focus is on a career, it’s less on the experience and wisdom needed to fully embody that role. This is why this is such a great film. It may not wow you with realistic explosions but it challenges you to question your view on your life and your world. You shouldn’t be content with the way things are. If you are, you are part of a very fortunate few and you may be overlooking much of the world to do so.

people's concentration is on their goals.…in their life they just live each moment by habit.

…

And if you're just operating by habit…then you're not really living. I mean, you know, in Sanskrit, the root of the verb " to be".…is the same as " to grow" or " to make grow. "

This is something I think about a lot. I live as a cartoonist dedicated to writing and drawing and designing and promoting and tweeting and posting and editing etc. in a driving need to produce, produce, produce. Am I really living? I don’t think so. It’s okay to admit it. This wasn’t a world of my creation but if I’m alive and active in it, I can change it. This film gave me a way to understand the things that I’ve gone through over the last few years. Without art, I wouldn’t have evidence that others have been where I stand. I feel less alone and more hopeful.

Wally talks about the need for escapism and comfort from art against the harsh reality of every day life. The choice is to create art that is comforting but for all its warmth, fails to acknowledge reality and might contribute to a collective disengaging with reality and most importantly, each other.

…we're starving because we're so cut off from contact with reality…that we're not getting any real sustenance,'cause we don't see the world. We don't see ourselves. We don't see how our actions affect other people.

This is heady stuff, for sure. All of this is to get us thinking about the nature of our lives and really see the things we’ve chosen for ourselves. To truly be free is to be able to think outside the characters and roles defined for us…even the ones we think we chose but didn’t create. Only by looking at ourselves honestly and as objectively as possible can we see how far from our own humanity we have come. Andre went through a personal crisis in which he went through a dramatization of his own death and rebirth. The fresh eyes this has given him as illuminated a very dark reality. There are no fancy distractions in this film because it is a battle cry for humanity’s future. Under the guise of a polite conversation about things most average people would discount as having no bearing on reality is actually about a fundamental reality that has changed without our conscious consent. His advise:

Get out of here.

…

the 1960s.…represented the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished…and that this is the beginning of the rest of the future, now…and that from now on there'll simply be all these robots walking around…feeling nothing, thinking nothing. And there'll be nobody left almost to remind them.…that there once was a species called a human being…with feelings and thoughts…and that history and memory are right now being erased…and soon nobody will really remember.…that life existed on the planet.

[longitud-de-onda]

okay i gotta admit i thought it would be some sort of frankie fic post movie, don't ask me why i just had the feeling 😂 BUUUUT GEEEZ i love love love your ezra au omg i'm so excited for this!!!!!!!!

oh my god you’re on the nose though for another thing i’ve been thinking of but haven’t even started letting myself think too much about, but.... picture this:

frankie. post movie. sad and doesn’t know what’s going with life. trying to make sense of things and recreate himself. trying to ditch his cocaine addiction. also the baby and the wife/gf don’t exsist because i say so. goes back home where he runs into a college friend. you and frankie had done some experimenting with each other in the past, but it was mostly just drunken shenanigans. when he left for pilot school or the army or whatever, that was kind of it. but you reconnect, and you’ve been hiking the pct over three summers. you’ve done the california part, and this summer you’re doing oregon. so you invite him to come along with you. you’ve planned to take your time, instead of taking up the usually thru-hiker challenge to do the oregon part in 2 weeks, you’re shooting for 30 days. so frankie agrees. in which you fall in love over thirty days in the oregon wilderness, culminating with the crossing of the bridge of the gods, euphoric and somehow renewed. 

coming to you sometime like four months from now or something unless i start hauling ass on my current fics 😂

[sparklycardigan]

AAAAAAAAH this was soooooooooo 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺, incredibly happy to see someone interpret a character in a similar way that I do? I've been thinking about Nate quite a bit for the past week and I feel like what you say here, about him being treated as the one that's Fine all of the time... I think he kind of grew to feel like he was indeed supposed to be Fine all of the time. And he's always been self-conscious about his wealth and painfully aware of the fact that he had opportunities some people could only dream of having (even worse when you think about how he didn't want those things wholeheartedly and now I'm thinking about how Nate must have felt after he saw Dan be so passionate about college and fighting for the mere possibility of attending it... That's when Nate actually sees something he was feeling guilty about in his head right before his eyes and suddenly, everything's more real to him... thinking about something and seeing those thoughts manifest themselves in the outside world somehow are two completely different things) and that could only increase those emotions of "I am supposed to be fine". That's why the reaction he displays during that play in 2x18 feels like a culmination of sorts. I don't know if it was supposed to be leaning on the comedy side or something else, but to me it was always about many many layers of struggle coming to surface. I think Nate's actions were a surprise to Nate himself, he was probably a bit confused as to why he reacted like that, "it's not how he usually is". (there is so much to Nate, so many aspects of who he is that get overlooked) And for Vanessa, there's this beautiful thing about Nate and her where they get to be people and people only when it's just the two of them. It's the outside factor that messes them up and speaking in a wider sense, the MIStreatment of Vanessa's character.

As for the fic, I really really think I could write that, thank you so much for encouraging me!!!!! It's so interesting to me, writing and thinking about a character I am not that similar to, Nate in this case, and seeing how that character could interact with someone I'm more similar to, Vanessa in this case. I think I will go with Nate's point of view, I can already hear the conversation in my head, thank you SO much for all of this and let me know when you read The Age of Innocence!

*And of course I don't mind you yelling, I loved every single part of this!!!!!!!

Can’t get over how Nate’s discomfort in playing Julius Beaufort might have came from him subconsciously connecting the character to his father (not forgetting the Vanessa storyline, I just think it’s interesting how Nate gets to play Beaufort who goes bankrupt just like his dad).