#i guess this would also be a good chance now that im pointing this comparison out that

[eye-cri]

His mullet looks like Sonic the Hedgehog ngl.

[princesssarcastia]

loki and the avengers and being a terrible person who’s TRYING

alright!  alright, fine, god, I can’t take it anymore.  i guess we’re going full 2012 up in this bitch, because I’m going to meta about the avengers in the MCU now, because im going insane.  i mean between this and the harry potter what-is-going-ON.jpg

i’ve been thinking about things I’m seeing on my dash about the Loki show, and what they’ve done to his character (taking away all his sharp edges because apparently you can’t be Good with them); and I’ve been thinking about the pepper potts/JARVIS mcu fic Hardwired (which is one of the greatest things I’ve ever read, even now that I hate touching the MCU.  maybe even especially now).  I’ve had lots of conversations with SainTalia about their fic in the comments, and one concept they talked about that hit me like a bolt of lightning is how in mcu fic, people liked to sort of wooby-fy Tony Stark.

Tony Stark, literal genius mechanist who made a real AI, heads a billion dollar arms company that’s been supplying bombs and guns and planes and whatever to the U.S. government since WWII.  That Tony Stark is not going to be anything other than a privileged white man who expects the world to be handed to him on a silver platter, who expects the world to revolve around him because it always has, because his wealth and genius have made it so.  He’s an asshole!  He’s nothing but dangerous and sharp edges and if he was real, most people on this site would hate his guts and rightfully so.  But because he’s a complex character with room for growth, he also loves Jarvis and Pepper and Rhodey and, even in his earliest days, has something like the seeds of a conscience even if he applies it in a very american-exceptionalist way.  Writing his as weak and scared and like he’s always been interested in doing the right thing is a disservice to his character.

To bring this back around: Where’s that one post about how villains always get the lines that are true that we don’t want to admit to, so that we can write the truth off as just a pithy monologue?  Loki has a line in the first Avengers movie:

“You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for the horrors. But they are part of you. And they will never go away.”

He and Natasha are both playing mind games with each other in this scene to be sure, but like—Loki is right, with this line. 

Everyone on the goddamn Avengers in the beginning is a fucking terrible person except for Steve Rogers.  All of them.   Tony Stark, we covered above.  He a goddamn arms dealer whose company sold to terrorists, sure, but also gave the U.S. the arms it needed to devastate Afghanistan and Iraq.  Natasha Romanov is a former assassin who’s murdered children, and innocent people, and guilty people; who used to do it against her will for the Soviet Union, and now does it of her own free will for the U.S. government (sorta).  Clint Barton, depending on your flavor of canon, either used to be a thief or used to be a mercenary for hire.  Bruce Banner engaged in dubiously ethical super soldier experiments for the U.S. government and then, like, turned it on himself when he got desperate enough to prove it could work.  Thor is LITERALLY a war criminal; he got pissy one day and decided to go murder people he thought were of an inferior race, nearly starting a war in the process.

Steve Rogers is none of these things, but this isn’t about him.

The whole point of the Avengers that I sort of appreciated is that this is not their first chance, or even their second, or even, sometimes, their third.  They didn’t have a realization that what they were doing was wrong before they’d already done it; before they’d made doing the wrong thing into nearly all of what they were.  Nothing about their stories is conveniently timed.  They all have skeletons and victims in their closets that they literally murdered. 

But when they did finally have that realization, after the fact, after Yinsen was dead by weapons Tony had designed and his company had sold, and Drakov’s daughter was murdered and Natasha had so much blood on her hands, and the frost giants were dead and Asgard on the brink of war and Thor banished with no way to do anything to change it, and the Hulk already a part of Bruce and breaking Harlem—they still started doing the right thing anyway.  Or trying, at least.  Trying to make up for the horrors.  Think of Elliot Spencer, if you’re looking for comparisons. 

And they do get rewarded for it narratively! But that’s not why they’re doing it!! They’re doing it because its worth doing of its own merits; and they’re not always very good at it, because they have no practice and are unlearning some terrible habits, but their is grace in their failures.  Not saints, but seekers.

All these terrible people who are trying to be a little less terrible on their own, only its a little difficult when you’ve spent your whole life revolving around violence and murder; They all, each and every one of them, end up on that hellicarrier in the first avengers movie not even trying to fix their mistakes, because its too late for that, but instead, trying to, i suppose, avenge the people they’d wronged by themselves.

The hope for us fans, of course, was that they would then start trying to be less terrible together.  Instead, the mcu decided that not only would they never be more than hostile coworkers, but also that the five of them needed their sharp edges filed down so they could be canned Superheroes™ that no one could object to, until they became nearly unrecognizable.  Or, in some cases, the MCU just sort of glossed over their terrible bits like they were never unforgivable in the first place.

to those of you still desperately caring about the MCU who have now, apparently, watched them do the same thing to Loki in only eight episodes, you have my sympathy.

[sneakydraws]

Well, here it is - a lengthy explanation of each card in my mdzs major arcana deck and what I meant to convey/what i would have changed in retrospect/what alternatives i considered! It’s a bit messy and my typing style is lazy but hopefully it will be an interesting read to some of you :)

And so you don’t say I didn’t warn you - jiang cheng’s section (11 justice) is absurdly long lmao

0 the fool  I elaborated on this in the post itself but yeah basically jin ling is kind of representative of all the damage and trauma caused by the past, and there’s a kind of danger there of him falling victim to the same vices as the older characters and repeating the same mistakes and perpetuating the cycle of war and misery (the cycle that we already see with how the jin sect became the new wen sect, and later with how jgy became the new wwx) and he has a lot of room to grow! He grows so much over the course of the novel, comes to realise the complexities of the past and gets a harsh life lesson in how nothing is as black and white as it seems. But ill save talking about his progress for the end, for now whats important is that he has room to grow and also a dog. I don’t really have a justification for the sun, i mostly just thought it looked sick? It made its way to the next card as well, where it makes a bit more sense, but then i realised it was a dumb motif to include 1 the magician I still very much like wwx for the role, and that illustration would have probably had him raising a corpse on his left and pointing threateningly to the sun on his right. I considered including the table as well, with some mdzs relevant items replacing the card suits. Anyway, like i said wwx got a few cards to himself already so i went with the alternative wq design, since i think she fits the card as well. Both she and wwx are highly skilled people, extremely driven once they set their mind to something. The card to me symbolises the creative mind as well as a general drive for action, which fits them both - wwx was famously a prolific inventor, and wq came up with a previously unheard of surgery, after all. This card strays pretty far from the rider-waite deck design, largely because i was still figuring out how i wanted to approach this series, but you can still see the influence. 2 the high priestess I was actually going to skip this card at first because I couldn’t think of a fitting character, but once i considered a qings character post death, it all fit pretty well. She was already a highly intuitive person in life, and in sharing her memories with wwx she is, in a way, relaying a kind of secret knowledge. Anyway she’s one of my fav characters so im glad i got a chance to include her. The coffins could be interpreted to be xxc and sl or xxc and xy 3 the empress Theres other mother figures in mdzs who got to be mothers for a longer time, but jyl definitely embodies the positive aspects of this card the best. She’s nurturing, kind, emotionally supportive, she already mothered wwx and jc quite a bit when she was young. Plus i liked that the rw card had both water and flowers, making an easy lotus connection. In retrospect the stars look kind of out of place and i should have replaced them with something more relevant... Also, i should have had her hold a lotus seed pod instead of a flower, haha 4 the emperor Like i said I considered jc for the role but hoching bullied me into admitting that nmj was better… they’re both more of an inverted emperor than an upright one but then again theres hardly any character in mdzs who would fit upright emperor so. Jgs was also considered but he’s even uglier than nmj so i couldn’t bear to draw him 5 the hierophant It was pointed out to me that lqr would have fit this card better and the truth if that statement haunts me to this day. Unfortunately I have no space in my brain for lqr so lxc got the role instead. My main reason was his role during the wen destruction of gusu lan, when he ran away with the contents of the library - this is why there’s bookshelves behind him. The keys, take, from the rider-waite deck, are meant to represent the gusu pendants that allow you to enter 6 the lovers Im sure many people would have chosen wangxian here but I uhh don’t really care abt wangxian personally? And also their love story is so convoluted that jyl and jzx seem idyllic by comparison lol. Also i didnt really have an idea for who to put in the angel’s place for wangxian… mme jin certainly did not get these two together in the end but undeniably she and mme yu did initially give them a chance to fall for each other so. Thats something i guess. Anyway the trees became their sects’ flowers and the mountain became the burial grounds - an omen of their tragic fate, basically 7 the chariot There might have been other characters who fit this card better but i couldn’t really think of another card for lwj and i thought it would be weird to not include him… anyway i don’t really care for current timeline lwj BUT i do like that he was clearly influenced by wwx to walk his own path in life based on his moral convictions rather than follow his sect’s rules blindly. The chariot is to me a card of self control, self determination and focused action, so it seemed fitting. The composition felt kind of empty without the actual chariot so i padded it out with the guqin, the cloud recess in the bg (it doesn’t look great but i tried to replicate the drama design….) and the bunnies which conveniently fit the colour scheme of the sphinxes in the rider-waite design 8 strength Like i said before, my interpretation of this card is more… morally ambiguous than the quote unquote official meaning, so i thought about manipulative or duplicitous characters more than kind characters whose strength is expressed through gentleness (though i did consider jyl briefly for the latter interpretation). As such, i considered both jgy and nhs, but ended up going with jgy largely because i couldn’t pass up the opportunity to put the nie sect’s beast as the lion. 9 the hermit My thoughts immediately went to bssr lol. It may be an overly literal interpretation but whatever, i like it just fine. And i like that i managed to echo the rider-waite silhouette in the mountain and the tree (and even in bssr herself) 10 wheel of fortune God i love the parallels between these 2… this card to me is about how you cant trust your current situation, good or bad, to last forever, and these 2 embody that perfectly imo. Wwx went from son of a well off servant and a powerful cultivator, to street rat orphan, to adopted son of sect leader jiang, to double orphan, to MIA, to terrifying but admired warrior, to terrifying and despised traitor, to dead, to, at the very end, suddenly respected and trusted again. The dishonesty and cheapness of whatever the public’s current opinion of him is is portrayed beautifully as far as im concerned. And jgy of course claws his way up to power only to instantaneously become public enemy number one, to the point that he’s probably blamed for stuff there’s no reason to believe he had a hand in. Wei wuxian’s silent astonishment at how quickly the cultivation world turns against jgy and towards him again is a delicious moment of thematic resonance.  11 justice I settled on this card for jc after he got booted from the emperor seat but i do think it fits, in a somewhat convoluted way. I turned both the sword and the scales into visual representations of the golden core transfer (can you tell im obsessed with it). According to biddy tarot, the justice card is partly about searching for the truth, and the scene where jc finds out about the transfer is of course a big deal. I was also very influenced by the reversed meaning again - which is about being reluctant or unwilling to face or accept the consequences of your actions. I feel on an intuitive level that this fits jc but I’m not sure how well i can explain it - it’s something about how he’s a little too comfortable scapegoating wwx for things that were also, if much less so, influenced by his actions, and also something about the way he keeps wwx at an arm’s length emotionally but still leans on him and accepts his support when he really needs it, and somewhat hypocritically expects wwx to put the needs of him and the jiang sect before the needs of others. And also something about the core exchange is the consequence and proof of wwx’s deep - terrifyingly deep, even - love and care for him, which is something jc doesn’t seem to let himself acknowledge. Maybe even something about how you could argue that the way all of the jiangs acted around wwx - jfm’s favouritism that left him with the feeling of a debt he needs to repay, mme yus insistence that he be a servant more than a brother to jc, prepared to give his life for jc, and jc’s own unwillingness - or inability, he was a child after all - to clearly acknowledge wwx as an equal to himself, enabling wwx’s self sacrificial and protective tendencies - that all of this was what caused wwx’s complete and unquestioning willingness to do whatever it took to protect jc, and therefore paved the way to the golden core transfer. And i don’t mean this to be scapegoating jc - especially considering how young he was when this all went down, it wouldn’t be fair to expect this level of emotional perceptiveness, awareness and maturity of him - but i think adult jc has to grapple with the fact that the chain of cause and effect was not as simple as wwx fucking everyone’s lives up to be a martyr, and that both jc and his parents had a role in that story as well. I don’t even necessarily think this is something that jc only realised in the current timeline - i think it’s something he felt on some level this whole time, and it probably led to a lot of feelings of guilt - but the suibian reveal definitely puts it in sharp focus, and i think he’s now better equipped to handle this introspection than he was as a recently orphaned, traumatised teenager, lol. ANYWAY the window with the fabric is both a nod to the rider-waite design and a reference to the destruction of lanling - i actually did some basic ass research for this, and it seems that in ancient china fabric would indeed be hanged in a window if the normally used paper was damaged. The design of the window, as well as the very idea to use it to imply the reconstruction of lanling, was taken from this great piece of jc angst by my pal moroll1! Oh yeah also the covered window kind of works as a denial of forgiveness for jc because it’s like a halo but covered up... Also I completely forgot to put a blindfold over his eyes which would be perfectttt because blind justice and the core exchange......... ok moving on 12 the hanged man I always have issues with this card because i cant find a satisfactory summary of what it’s really about. Best i can tell it symbolises a need to hit pause, surrender or let go of something… ive also seen it tied to sacrifice? So mo xuanyu doesn’t fit perfectly, but sacrifice is definitely there in a surface level reading kind of way, and the idea that you have to surrender or let go in order to achieve your goal does fit the whole deal of getting revenge but giving up your life in exchange and not being there to see it 13 death This is probably one of my favourite cards, definitely not because I have huge issues with change or anything…. I see this card as signalling the necessity of change or putting an end to something / leaving something in the past in order to start anew? At first i considered putting past wwx, mxy and current wwx here as a kind of transformation and one cycle flowing into the next... But firstly, I’d already used mxy in the very previous card, so putting him in again would feel like overkill, and secondly, the longer I thought about it the less convinced I was that this would even fit with the card’s meaning? Because coming back from the dead doesn’t like... trigger an internal transformation within wwx or anything? Anyway, fun fact: the design I ended up going with was actually originally intended for judgement! I thought I was being very clever with the whole “figure plays an instrument and the dead rise” parallel, but apparently I’d just completely forgotten that the judgement card had a completely different composition... Truly I was boo boo the fool... But yeah anyway at the end of the day I figured the design would kind of work for death as well, with Wen Ning and the theme of transformation, (since in his case coming back as a fierce corpse does actually mark a certain transformation in behaviour) and Wei Wuxian’s protection of the Wen people essentially signifying an attempt to break the cycle of oppression if that makes any sense? Like, wwx is trying to revolutionise the way the world works a bit, if you catch my drift 14 temperance  The centrist card! Again this is probably going off track from the “official” interpretation, but to me this card has a certain “don’t commit fully; do everything in moderation; don’t take either side” flavour to it that i personally find infuriating irl and that i very much assign to lxc. It’s entirely possible that I’m misinterpreting his character because i didn’t really pay him (and the 3zun in general) much mind while reading, but hell, I’m allowed to pick favourites and choose who i want to interpret deeply vs shallowly. Again, i wish id chosen lqr for hierophant because its so annoying for a character i don’t care about to get two cards…. But oh well 15 the devil My alternative idea for this was jgy as the devil and lxc plus nmj as the figures, but since all three had been featured already (multiple times, even!) i figured I’d go with xy instead, especially since he’s among my faves lol. I think the devil signifies something along the lines of unhealthy attachment, obsession or addiction, which isn’t 100% accurate in the case of xxc and a-qing, but if i stretch it a bit to cover toxic relationships in general, and especially manipulation or negative influence, i don’t think it’s half bad. My main struggle here was to choose who amongst the xxc/sl/aq trio to choose for the human figures. 16 the tower Arguably jin zixuans death and the following massacre of nightless city were the final and most direct reason for the siege of burial mounds, and the tiger seal is good shorthand for wwx’s loss of control over his powers, which led to the deaths of jzx and jyl. When reimagining major arcana i like to feature some kind of building in this card (spoilers for a possible future project but in my rose of versailles major arcana set the tower is bastille) and even if it’s not a tower, the image of wwx looming over the gathered crowd from atop a rooftop is so good i couldn’t resist 17 the star Struggled with this one - considered both jin ling and lsz for it, as symbolising a hope for the future, but that was kind of covered by the world so it wouldn’t make sense to include here as well... As usual when I struggle with interpreting a card (as opposed to understanding it but struggling with matching a character to it, like with death or moon) I went to biddy tarot and read all the details about its meaning. What i got was that this card signifies an incoming period of introspection and inner peace following a time of turmoil, as well as a general moving on into a new, better phase of one’s life or finding new meaning and purpose. The figure also suggests someone vulnerable, but possessing a keen sense of intuition as well as a good degree of practicality and common sense. Given all those, I settled for mianmian because IM LOVE HER..... I also kind of see her as a prelude to the “just one person is enough” theme present in tgcf!! And i think her decision to abandon her sect because she saw the toxicity and corruption in it is a very inspiring action - even if it didn’t make a large visible impact, i think the appearance of her and her idyllic family at the very end of the novel - paralleling and mirroring wangxian - implies that at the end of the day, it was a meaningful one 18 the moon Another card i ALWAYS fuxking struggle with - this time less because i can’t grasp its meaning and more because I can never find a character that fits it well. I usually get fixated on the “dreams and subconscious” part, but if i lean more on the “disguise, deceit, anxiety and fear” part, i eventually figured the whole yi city arc wouldn’t be a bad fit. I say the entire arc because it really does encompass all those themes if you include both the past and the present - xue yang’s disguise, his tricks with the villagers, a-qing’s lies and even xxc’s reluctance to talk about his past as well as xue yang pretending to be xxc all fit the disguise and deceit angle, and the general mystery and creepiness of the current timeline yi city work well with the anxiety and fear - the mist, the slow uncovering of the past, even a-qing being revealed to be an ally after scaring the shit out of the protags. I definitely struggled with including all the elements and characters, and even moreso with making them vaguely fit the rider-waite composition, but i think it ended up okay ish. OH and i completely forgot to draw mist swirling around them :( 19 the sun I was considering mianmian’s family for this one, but since I used her for star, I ended up with wwx and his parents instead. Once again I’m reinterpreting the card a bit - normally I think it symbolises incoming times of pure happiness and abundance, as well as a connection with the inner child, but I gave it more of a nostalgic or sentimental twist - wwx looking back at the brief glimpse of his happy childhood. 20 judgement another card that i struggle to interpret a bit... Here i actually used the tgcf tarot zine as a reference! In it judgement is summarised as “rebirth, following duty, absolution” SO i figured that nhs, mxy and wwx all together would fit pretty neatly... wwx achieving (public) absolution through clearing his own name after being reborn, and nhs sort of calling on wwx to expose jgy’s crimes... It’s a bit messy but not bad I think! 21 the world This ties very closely to my read on mdzs as a story - which is that it’s, at the end of the day, largely about cycles, and about how hard it is to break them, but how we gotta keep trying and have hope anyway. Or maybe more precisely, that the people directly involved with and influenced by the trauma of the past might not be able to get over said trauma and that the hope for healing from it will be shouldered by the new generation. Or something like that… Basically what i mean is that jc and wwx and lwj and lxc and nhs and jgy and all these people who were in the thick of the sunshot campaign and the siege are so profoundly affected by it that it genuinely feels by the end of the story like there is little hope for them to ever truly overcome that trauma and build a better future without repeating the same old mistakes - but there is a glimmer of hope in the new generation, specifically in jl and lsz. And it’s a bit paradoxical, because they have also been directly impacted by the past tragedies - lsz having his entire clan wiped out after wwx failed to protect them, jl losing both his parents to wwx’s mistakes - but despite that loss, and despite coming from arguably the two opposing sides of the past conflicts, they are both, in the end, capable of moving past that tragedy, of recognising the complicated nature of those conflicts (jl’s moment of clarity at the end is both heartbreaking and hopeful) and forging friendships between clans in the process. I honestly think that the extra where jl is struggling to assert his authority as sect leader, to treat his subjects well and to cooperate with other sects in a truly amicable way is the single hopeful ending note for the larger themes of the novel - it allows us to imagine that maybe these kids can learn from the mistakes of their elders rather than getting sucked in by resentment at those mistakes, and actually build a brighter future for the cultivation world. And sidenote, this is also why i have a soft spot for jin ling and lan sizhui as a ship... speaking of which their poses were directly referenced from the lovers card ehehe

Looking back, I’d like to add some symbol of jin ling’s trauma so that it mirrors baby wen yuan in the tree stump... maybe his father’s sword? 

[sukirichi]

— 💌 ; a love letter from @kyriaan

long post below regarding broken records. cw includes adultery, physical assault, toxic relationships, broken records spoilers, and mature content

[ from the ask ] BROKEN RECORDS ; track 005

Okay! I finally had time to actually sit down and properly read chap 5 cause ill be damned and burned if i dont pay special attention to one of my favorite series here! Rather drown or be sting by bees slowly 😒

🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙃 I for the first time don't even know where to start so allow me to be all over the place cause my emotions are also all over the place with this chapter ✌️

Ill start by y/n's dad caN GO FUCK HIMSELF? Like okay sir you might have fallen in love with our mom (ill give him the benefit of the doubt regarding his feelings) BUT SIR YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN HONEST? FROM THE BEGINNING? ALSO BRUH YOU KIDDING ME??? SIR YOU LEGIT ABANDONED YOUR OTHER DAUGHTER AND THEN YOU PROCESS TO 'LEAVE US' I- YOOOOO I WOULD BITCH SLAP HIM I SWEAR!!

Also ALSO ILL SCREAM FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK NO KID HAS EVER TO BE BLAMED FOR BEING BORN!! Y/n mom's line: 'we have to atone for our sins' its legit BULLSHIT it wad NOT y/n fault her DAD COULDNT KEEP HIS DICK INSIDE HIS PANTS NOR ITS Y/N FAULT THAT HER DAD CHEATED!!! ATONE FOR OUR SINS MY ASS!! the father is the one that has to take responsibility for all this shitty situation we do NOT nor any kid out there in this situation has to be taken accountable by this!!

And now Suna 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 bruh im just gonna cry... Everything he does just makes me heart swell i feel so cozy when i read his parts like how sweet and present he is I- bruh I never had that... Actually seeing y/n breaking up with him when shes clearly falling in love with him just breaks me cause Girl for real Suna would be there for you... I get it shes afraid and shes acting on that fear but girl... Pls he truly loves you deeply not everyone is like your dad. There are happy endings. There are good people Sunas one of them pls 🥺🥺🥺 also MY LOVE TSUMU BEING A SUPPORTIVE FRIEND EVEN THO SUNA GOT THE GIRL BRUH TSUMU I FUCKING LOVE YOU MY CHILDISH YET ADORABLY SMUG BOY 😭😭😭😭😭

Nagisas a bitch btw ✌️ so far i see no redemption not excuse in what she did so far. I get her reasons but that does NOT excuse her behavior. She has to lash out at her cunt of a dad not at a innocent woman who was also a victim all along. Nor even her half sister. I get her mentality behind this but doesnt excuse her behavior at all- its basically the same as being a victim from a bully and playing bully after aswell.

Overall YOU MADE ME CRY AGAIN SUKI! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS BUT ALSO UGH MY HEART SUKI!

[ from suki ] 

BROKEN RECORDS IS UR FAVE SERIES??? babe pls you’re gonna me cry !! nah nah fr his dishonesty caused all this mess. YEAHA SAKLAA tbh I love mama lucy but her words of ‘atoning for their sins’ or her mindset of ‘we don’t deserve to be happy when we’ve hurt others’ really messed up YN. she was only 21 and vulnerable with all the shambles happening in her family + the sudden assault from nagisa, that when her mother said those words, she struggled to let go of it. to her, it became like a final verdict that dictated how she lived her life.

SUNA URGHHH PLEASE GIVE SUNA A CHANCE HE HAS PURE AND GOOD INTENTIONS BUT I CANT BLAME HER EITHER AHSJAKA. and the comparison of nagisa being a bully’s victim only to become the next bully is true. nagisa should lash out at their shitty excuse of a father. ALSO AAAAHH THE NEXT CHAPTER (007) IS WORSE AHSJKAAL

[ from the ask ] BROKEN RECORDS ; track 005

I know shins attractive I mean mans perfect?? Does he even have any flaw?? And the way he cried when he got his jersey MYGOD FHDHFHFJSKS but I still look at him and im like.... Hmmmm nah i wouldnt date him its just not my... Do i dare say type? Cause i dont think i have a type ghfhfisofbd but like I just 🧍‍♀️

I love him i just dont love him i guess

The makeout scene tho ill give you that 🥵🥵🥵 made me bark (i would still walk out next day like was a good fuck kita byeeee🚉🏃‍♀️💨)

... More drama regarding mari... And you said this will have like 10 chapters... And from 8 on will be angsty.... 🙂 *traumatized noises*

[ from suki ] 

YUUHHH KITA IS PERFECT HERE AHSJKAA IDK MAYBE ITS MY SIMPING FOR NAOYA CONVERTED TO KITA ALREADY BEING PERFECT AS HE ALREADY IS AND I AMPED IT UP BCOS THE SIMP MODE IS ACTIVATED AHSKAA. the make out scene !! pls sir i’m on my knees spare some love in ur heart AAAAAAHHHHHH. also. i assure you. businessman! kita got game. he’s gonna make you walk funny if you give him the chance HSJKA

yeah i just finished writing the outline for track7 right now and the drama is HSJKAA it gave me a headache sobs 

[ from the ask ] BROKEN RECORDS ; track 006

I want to give you my usual thoughts on the new chapter and at the same ahm...

I just saw myself on Suna... Deeply....and it kinda slapped me harder than i was expecting...there were too many things from him giving himself to mari/treating her like he wants to be treated... To deleting his best friend from social media thanks to his girlfriend... And it really hurt me ahah..

I would vent but.. Yeah

But yes this chapter i saw myself in suna and i had to take quite the long breaks cause it was getting to me 😅😅😅 also if anything i learned from my experiences is that MARI SCREAMS RED FLAGS and even Osamu can see that pls

I would honestly end Mari there, i wouldnt even bother to just retort i would walk my way into to the damn apartment and fucking take Suna for myself cause Mari does not deserve him. Shes manipulative, and in a way abusive.. Not allowing him to keep contact with his best friend his a total redflag and o know its because Suna had feelings for y/n and vice versa but Suna never gave het a reason to distrust him.

The moment he said he was best friends with y/n and was single she immediately clinged himself to him and for what? To then dump him like he was trash...

He gave himself to her, he proved he was there for her he even took her back this boy deserves the fucking world and its not Mari...

I kinda want to say it's not y/n at this point either cause the way she broke his heart was kinda the same Mari did.. Y/n disregarded his feelings and just broke it up.. Mari disregarded his feelings abd broke it up... But y/n stated from the very beginning that she would eventually break up Mari just shrugged and didn't care so i can in a way forgive y/n i cant forgive mari

Besides y/n was supportive from the beginning while Mari was obsessive and controlling.

Another really insanely well written chapter as usual (albeit this one making me ball my eyes off harder because yeah) but yes~ eagerly waiting for the next one~

Take your time tho 😌🙌

Mari can go fuck off 💗💓💞💕❣️❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🤎🖤🤍💯💝💖💋💅

Suna x y/n pls

Y/n deserves to have a healthy love life with someone she loves (hence why npt Kita) and loves her back

And Suna deserve the fucking world and be treated right

[ from suki ] 

NAHHHH cuz when you said suna was treating mari the way he wanted YN to treat her... that’s right. on point. they’re all so complicated sobs. MARI IS A WALKING RED FLAG THAT OSAMU CAN SMELL FROM A MILE AWAY. ALSO yes mari is manipulative and borderline possessive when it came to suna. like yeah, let’s be real, she could tell a long time ago that suna was in love with YN and it made her insecure / jealous, but the whole time, YN kept her distance. she was supportive over their relationship from afar as to make mari comfortable. suna also did everything he could to make sure she was well cared for. for three years, he was focused on her and only her. he gave love a second chance despite being brokenhearted. suna never mari a chance to doubt because he, too, was sure he could be happy with her.

until mari left him.

and now suna is back with YN because they will always have each other. but honestly,,,if we think about it, if mari never broke up with suna or at least gave him the chance to explain himself - if mari didn’t do the exact thing YN did to suna years ago - he honestly would’ve been really happy with mari. they were going well. like yeah mari has always been toxic by pushing suna’s boundaries and asking him to unfollow his own best friend on social media, but he did it anyway. because he trusted their relationship. he wanted the best for them. 

also yeah, the parallels between mari and YN were intentional !! 

HEHEHEHE THE KITA X YN SHIP everyone loves them im so happy about that bcos kita is so amazing in my eyes. PREACH FOR THAT THO !! SUNA DESERVES THE BEST. SUNA DESERVES TO BE TREATED RIGHT. HE DESERVES THE WORLD AND SO MUCH MORE

thank you for taking the time to send me this, kya, it means a lot to me and it motivates me to work harder on the future chapters !! <33

[iacon-stargazer]

THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE: MUN & MUSE

fill out & repost ♥ this meme definitely favors canons more, but i hope oc’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. multimuses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

tagged by: stolen from @oneshallfall like.... months ago. im a slow gremlin hjksd. it's been in my drafts and i finally decided to finish the last few sections while working on clearing them out

tagging: steal it

MY MUSE IS.   canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless

is your character popular in the fandom?  YES / NO.

is your character considered hot™ in the fandom?  Well.../ NO / IDK. (i know optimus is but i don’t really... know about orion? i have seen a handful of fanartists who turn him into a very sexualized moe baby but i’m not sure about the fandom at large)

is your character considered strong in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK.

are they underrated?  YES / NO. (lmao there’s like no fan content with him unless it’s with megatronus) 

were they relevant to the main story?  YES / NO.

were they relevant to the main character?  YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG.

are they widely known in their world?  YES / NO. (not yet.... lol)

how’s their reputation?  GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL.

HOW STRICTLY DO YOU FOLLOW CANON?

This... this is a trick question in this goddamn mess of a continuity. That said, I try my absolute best to make my portrayal coherent with the TFP show... even if said show contradicts itself at times. I take inspiration from the earlier parts (the thirteen primes section) of the Covenant of Primus for his origin backstory, but ignore the rest of the Covenant since it makes absolutely no sense with his characterization in... literally anything else. I’ve peeked at Exodus and it utterly sucks, but I’ve picked up bits and pieces of concepts that originated there just from spending time in the fandom. Aside from that... I spend a ton of time thinking about how to weave everything together in a way that both makes sense and makes for a character development arc.

SELL YOUR MUSE! (aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals.)

Orion is genuinely kind, thoughtful, and introspective, very loving of the world around him.

He’s also a more complex character than is initially obvious - despite mostly being good sweet pure baby nerd he’s still flawed, with many of those flaws being his strengths put into the wrong situation. His strong morals can lead to dogmatism, and he’s only slightly less likely to deliver lectures than Optimus. His determination to be kind and help everyone can come off as unintentionally patronizing at times; he has a very “well-intentioned semi-privileged middle class” perspective that he’s not always self-aware of. However, he’s also willing to look at himself critically and learn/adapt. 

Essentially, he has many of the same traits as Optimus... just more or less apparent and/or developed. He's less confident than he eventually becomes through his future experience with leadership, wanting to change the world for the better but sometimes struggling to ground his plans in reality—something that continues to apply, but with reduced intensity and frequency over time. Idealistic cinnamon roll will eventually develop some realism, though never really quite enough. His selflessness remains a strength for now, but we know that eventually it will dip into martyristic tendencies.

NOW THE OPPOSITE! (list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?)

He could be potentially ‘boring’ in some senses. he’s the polite, considerate ‘next door’ type, who has for most of his life has just lived as a very average middle caste nobody. He’s more laid-back than he eventually becomes as optimus, but where others might get into trouble and shenanigans he’s most likely to just express concern. And since I try to keep him at least mostly ic, even with non-serious posts, this can derail ‘fun’ stuff and I fear dissuade some interaction.

While I try my best to give him realistic flaws that work with his character, he could still be seen as a little too good. very kind, understanding, forgiving, patient, considerate... almost endlessly so. A lot of my “he’s so good and pure” interpretation comes from using his having been the thirteenth prime as backstory, where he was pretty much the epitome of that, but some might not like the “he was a literal deity in a past life” idea for its “super special chosen one protagonist” elements.

His responsiveness to his environment can also be a downside. He’s not the type to start things; he just reacts and responds, standing his ground and finding himself when things get crazy around him. without megatronus, he may have eventually attempted political campaigning, but it wouldn’t have gotten very far. He needs to have more intense characters or events around him for major plots to really go places. Without those nothing would ever happen besides slice of life fluff, because he’s content with that kind of life.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO RP YOUR MUSE?  

Honestly I just wanted to write op/ratch fhsjkdjsdh. But I also wanted to be able to interact with a variety of muses and so I chose Orion over Optimus because he’s not so emotionally closed off, which I figured would give more flexibility beyond the handful of characters op would reasonably have close personal and/or plot-important relationships with. Also, I can relate to him on a thought-process level which lets me get into his head easily, which additionally made him an appealing choice for my first real rp muse.

WHAT KEEPS YOUR INSPIRATION GOING?  

I just love him so much, especially with the layers of his character I've built up around him. I don't always have inspiration to write or rp, but I think about him a lot. When I do find motivation to write, it's generally out of wanting to continue to work on developing him and just having a chance to express his characterization.

SOME MORE PERSONAL QUESTIONS FOR THE MUN.

do you think you give your character justice?  YES / NO.

do you frequently write headcanons?  YES / NO.

do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO.  (i should do it more...)

do you think a lot about your muse during the day? YES / NO.

are you confident in your portrayal?   YES / NO. (at least most days fhsdhfskj)

are you confident in your writing?  YES / NO. (it waxes and wanes. I know I'm a good writer but I could still be better...)

are you a sensitive person?  YES / NO.

DO YOU ACCEPT CRITICISM WELL ABOUT YOUR PORTRAYAL?

I’ll be honest; I’ve never gotten criticism. I haven’t been here very long in comparison to some and I’ve never been that popular, so I figure I’m pretty easy to just ignore. I guess how I would feel about it would depend on what it was and how it was delivered, though I like to think I would be reasonable regardless

DO YOU LIKE QUESTIONS, WHICH HELP YOU EXPLORE YOUR CHARACTER?  

yes? yes absolutely?

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES TO A HEADCANON OF YOURS, DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY?  

I would be curious to hear their reasoning, but I think enough about how everything fits together that chances are I would agree to disagree

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES WITH YOUR PORTRAYAL, HOW WOULD YOU TAKE IT?

Depends on if their disagreement makes sense. Maybe I’ll give back my own reasoning for why I characterize the way I do. Maybe I’ll just agree to disagree, if their view is just totally different from mine. If they have valid points I’ll probably overthink it and spiral into self doubt. In all cases I’ll spill my thoughts to friends on discord.

IF SOMEONE REALLY HATES YOUR CHARACTER, HOW DO YOU TAKE IT?

......Orion in general or? ... fhsjkdhf...... Well if it was mine specifically that might hurt lol. But at the same time.... I doubt i’d agree with their takes either so... fair enough.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH PEOPLE POINTING OUT YOUR GRAMMATICAL ERRORS?  

Sure. I’m good at grammar so if something glaring is there it’s probably a typo I missed and I’ll be grateful for the chance to edit it out before more people see it lol

DO YOU THINK YOU ARE EASY GOING AS A MUN?  

Yeah. I’m pretty quiet most of the time because I just don’t have energy to talk to a lot of people, and I never want to get caught in drama. I honestly wouldn’t know what to do in a situation like that. I tend to avoid conflict, I’m quick to apologize, and polite with anyone I don’t know very well.

[megalony]

You’re in trouble

This is a dad! Murderer! Ben Hardy imagine, I hope you will all like it, feedback is always appreciated.

Taglist: @lunaticspoem​ @butlegendsneverdie​ @langdonzvoid​ @jennyggggrrr​ @rogmeddows @radiob-l-a-hblah​ @rogertaylorsbitontheside @chlobo6​ @rogertaylors-lipgloss​ @sj-thefan​ @omgitsearly​ @luckytrashgooprebel​ @scarsout​ @deaky-with-a-c​ @killer-queen-ofrhye @bluutac​ @vousmemanqueez​ @jonesyaddiction​ @ambi-and-sunflowers @milanosaurus @httpfandxms​ @saint-hardy​ @7-seas-of-fat-bottomed-girls​ @mrsalwayswritex​ @rogerina-owns-me​ @peterquillzsblog​ @im-an-adult-ish​ @crazylittlethingg​

Murderer! Ben masterlist

Summary: While (Y/n) goes to work Ben looks after their four kids, but when one of them messes about, he gets punished.

Enjoy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Ben, let him go." (Y/n) couldn't count the number of times she had said that over the years or how many different ways she had said it or the range of emotions she had felt whilst saying it. This time was almost the same as any other and there was only tiredness in her voice rather than fear or anger or terror.

When her eyes locked with her brash husband, his eyes were just as tired and fed up as her own but the way his lips were moulded into a thin line and the way his jaw locked showed he was not very happy.

"You tease him again I'll smack you."

(Y/n) couldn't help but roll her eyes at how easily that threat rolled off his tongue despite how mild it was in comparison to some of the other, rather vulgar things that could pass through his lips. She watched the way Ben dug his fingers just a little tighter into their eldest son's neck before releasing him and giving him a shove forward. It always amazed (Y/n) why Ben was so taken on having kids when his methods with them were far from normal and very unlike his own upbringing.

Ben enforced the same rules at home as he did when he was at work, if the kids stepped out of the lines Ben drew he would scare them back into place. Sometimes he was lenient and understanding, other times he made sure his threats were enough to stop them from messing about and he followed through with any threat he made. He was hands on in all departments and it surprised (Y/n) how attached the kids were to him despite his rather harsh exterior.

"He doesn't mean it." (Y/n) sighed when Owen hurried over to her and wrapped his arms around her even though both parents knew he wasn't afraid, he was just feeling sorry for himself.

"I do. If he starts saying shit to Briar again it'll be my hand round his head." Ben's tone was just the tiniest bit calmer but his eyes locked with his son when Owen dared to look over at him, his arms still wrapped tightly around (Y/n). Whenever Owen did something wrong or messed around he would go to (Y/n) and try to stay clear of Ben. He wasn't a bad kid and he didn't usually do much wrong, he had been enforced his whole life by Ben to follow the rules. But sometimes he did mess around ot tease his brothers and Ben didn't like it.

(Y/n) ran her fingers through Owen's hair for a few moments before he headed out of the kitchen, making sure to hurry past Ben and advert his eyes down to the floor.

"Why do we have four kids if you still act like the controlling boss with them?" (Y/n) looked down at the seven month old in her arms who was in a very peaceful state, almost asleep as she drooled on (Y/n)'s shirt. Kids were something (Y/n) always knew she wanted and she could tell Ben liked it when she was pregnant but he amazed her with how he was around the kids. He was always on edge and in charge and barely showed much of a soft side with them despite how much he loved them.

"I am the boss. Come on, you know they're all better behaved than half the kids at that new school. They listen to me and if they fear me they won't piss about. Doesn't mean I don't love them just cause I don't mind putting them in line."

Ben's hands instantly reached out for the little girl in (Y/n)'s arms and she made no quarrel when he gently eased their youngest daughter into his arms and laid her in the crook of his elbow.

He did have a point, there were some parents who thought that being assertive or abrasive like Ben wouldn't help curb children's behaviour but would scare and mentally scar them. (Y/n) had to admit that Ben's methods worked, he swore in front of the kids a lot, he wasn't afraid to tell them off or give them the odd slap or shove if necessary. He put the fear of God into them when they did something really bad but if they were good or sweet he acknowledged it and he did show them love.

They all were much better behaved than some of the kids Ben and (Y/n) had seen when they enrolled the kids into their new school here since they had just moved out here.

"I have to get ready for work, will you be okay with them?"

(Y/n) folded her arms over her chest as she leaned her back against the kitchen counter behind her. There was always something that caught her eye when Ben held any of the kids. It was how he walked around with them resting in the crook of his elbow when they were babies that made her knees go weak. He looked so casual and determined like he didn't even notice the baby resting in his arm and with Lottie resting happily in his arm like she was, she was almost engulfed by his frame.

Ben didn't give (Y/n) the chance to remind him about Lottie's bottle, he was already moving over until he was stood beside (Y/n) to grab the bottle behind her.

Ben was good with the kids, he was more than good and more than capable with them and (Y/n) knew this, but it never stopped her from asking just to make sure he was alright with them. Sometimes Ben could lose his temper and not realise if he scared the kids just a bit too much or he could be oblivious to them trying to get his attention or get him to say something nice about a game they were playing or a picture they had done for him. He sometimes missed the little things like that and it made (Y/n) worry.

"Go to work, we'll be fine."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A rather bored expression came over Ben's face as a feeling of restlessness slowly swarmed through his veins. Whenever he was at work his mind was always occupied, he always had something to do. He was running around the club fixing things, he was out late doing things he knew he shouldn't be doing, he had paperwork to do in the club and he went to the gym every day. Sometimes he was desperate to be at home with his family but there were times at home where he didn't know what to do with himself.

Ben liked having something to do, sitting around watching tv was not occupying his overactive mind. But he couldn't really move or do very much right now with Briar laying on his chest pinning him down.

The blond was stretched out on the sofa with his feet on the foot rest, his left elbow resting on the arm of the sofa and his hand stuck up in the air, twirling an unlit cigarette between his fingers like he was doing a magic trick. His other hand was resting on Briar's back like he was making sure to keep his boy in place. Briar was laying face down on Ben's chest and stomach, one of his hands lightly gripping the long silver chain hanging around Ben's neck as he was peacefully sleeping since it was near his bedtime.

Ben didn't have it in him to get up, he was rather comfy like this and he didn't want to bother disturbing Briar trying to get him upstairs to bed. With both Owen and Lilah upstairs, Ben had decided to keep Briar and Lottie downstairs with him to make sure both younger kids could get some sleep. Lottie was laid in the play crib beneath the bay window a few feet from Ben happily sleeping and he could hear Owen's tv playing upstairs. He guessed Lilah was also watching tv in her room where he left her.

Ben took to rubbing his hand up and down Briar's back, soothing his youngest son and making sure he wasn't about to wake up. For the last two hours Briar had been watching tv down here with Ben, then he took to laying on Ben's bare stomach and tracing the different tattoos Ben had and asking what they all meant. Ben loved all his kids but as much as Owen wanted to be like him, Lilah was a daddy's girl and Lottie was a few months old, Briar seemed to be the most attached to Ben. The four year old didn't talk very much, he seemed to seclude himself away from others a lot but whenever Ben was home, Briar could be found by his side.

Turning his head to the left, Ben tiredly looked over at the tv that was playing some random horror movie he wasn't interested in anymore. The volume was turned down low as not to disturb the two kids in the room with him and so there was some kind of background noise to distract Ben. He set the unused cigarette down on the side table, not bothered about twirling it between his fingers anymore.

His eyes momentarily looked up at the ceiling when he could hear footsteps rushing about over the creaking floorboards but he paid no mind to it, knowing either Lilah or Owen would just be messing around up there.

It took five minutes of flicking through the channels before Ben found something he could abide by watching for another half an hour until he knew it would be time to put Briar in bed and get the other two to settle down ready to go to sleep. Ben never minded the nightly routines, Owen was the one who made a fuss of not wanting to go to sleep, Briar was very easy to settle and Lilah went straight to sleep if one of her parents were with her for a bit. Even Lottie settled very easily if Ben walked up and down the room with her for a few minutes. None of the kids were particularly hard to handle.

Just as Ben found himself becoming engrossed in the movie that was already halfway finished, he snapped his head back to look up at the ceiling when Lilah's very high-pitched scream resonated through the floor.

Lilah never screamed like that.

Trying not to move too quickly and disturb Briar, Ben sat up with one hand over Briar's legs and the other resting to the back of his head before he stood up and turned around. He gently removed Briar's hand from his chain before he laid him out on the sofa on his back, watching the younger boy stretch his arms out before curling his legs up to his stomach as Ben pulled a blanket over him.

He didn't bother looking over at Lottie who wasn't even whimpering at the sudden disturbance, he simply hurried out of the room, being mindful to close the living room door behind him to try and keep the two sleeping children asleep and undisturbed.

Ben's feet pounded against the stairs creating an ungodly echo that usually frightened the kids whenever they were messing around or doing something they shouldn't be. It was a warning to stop whatever they were doing, if indeed they were doing something wrong at all. Ben got halfway up the stairs before Lilah's scream rattled through his ears, followed by her very loud wails and almost incoherent, bubbling pleas for Ben.

Confusion flowed through Ben when he got to the top of the stairs and he could now hear some kind of low banging sound.

What the Hell were they both doing?

Ben headed down the hall, following the sound of Lilah's screams that became more clear the closer he got but Ben was still confused when he could hear her voice coming from Owen's room. The bedroom door was slightly open so Ben pushed it open all the way and stormed inside, stopping in the middle of the room to try and work out the situation.

"What have you done now?"

The moment he entered the room Owen spun round on his heels to face him so quickly he almost toppled over and all the colour drained from his face which was now panic-stricken.

Ben didn't get the chance to ask his eldest what he was doing before he heard Lilah sobbing. It took Ben two seconds to look around before he narrowed his eyes on the cupboard next to the window that Owen was stood in front of. The cupboard was built into the wall and it wasn't very big, Ben could barely fit inside it both height and width wise but it was a good place to put all of Owen's toys and games and it had a door built in too.

"Did you lock your sister in there?!" Ben's voice was an octave deeper than normal and his eyes were blazing with a fire that rendered Owen speechless, barely holding the ability to nod his head in response.

Owen stumbled back a few paces when Ben roughly pushed him away from the door before he turned to face the door that was smaller than his own frame.  When Ben looked down, he realised Owen had put the small block of wood under the door that they used to prop open the doors when the house was sweltering in the summer heat. Ben kicked the wood away with his foot before he swung the door open, his heart almost stopping in his chest when he realised Owen had shut Lilah in there with the light off since the switch was on the wall on the outside of the cupboard.

Lilah momentarily stopped screaming when the orange light basked over her skin and sent her eyes reeling but when she saw Ben's frame towering over her, another sob left her lips. She was sat on the floor curled up as close as she could to the door she had been hitting to try and get out and now Ben could see why. Lilah was never comfortable in the dark, she had to sleep with a night light but clowns scared her almost more than the fear of the unknown darkness. And there was Owen's old clown toy sitting on the second shelf in the cupboard that she must have noticed.

Ben turned ninety degrees to be facing Owen who gasped in shock when Ben's hand swatted out and caught the top of his ear and the side of his head in a short but very sharp slap.

"Daddy..." All she had to do was hold her arms out in front of her and it was enough to make Ben crouch down in front of her and scoop her up from the floor. Her arms wound around his neck until she was almost suffocating him and her legs were very tight around Ben's upper waist but he didn't care in the slightest.

"Alright baby, I've got you." Ben smoothed his fingers through Lilah's hair, trying to calm her down but she was trembling like a leaf against him and her chest was quaking from how badly she was breathing and sobbing.

He tried quietly shushing her, bouncing her up and down in his arms like she was a baby as he pressed kisses to the side of her head to try and soothe her as best he could. When he felt her ever so slightly calming down against him, Ben turned to look at Owen who was already in tears without Ben needing to say anything at all. The nine year old almost squeaked when Ben grabbed him by the chin, tilting his head up so he could look at his boy properly.

"You're in trouble now, boy."

Ben roughly let go of Owen's chin before he walked out of the room, he had to calm Lilah down before he even thought about punishing Owen for this. It was one thing to lock her in the dark like that, but doing that when he knew there was a clown toy in there was even worse for her and it certainly wasn't fair.

"Poor baby, come on calm down. Your mum will be home in about ten minutes, you can stay in here with us for a bit." Ben sat down on his and (Y/n)'s bed and carefully settled Lilah down on his lap, keeping his arms tightly wrapped around her as he jittered his knee up and down.

Reaching over the bed, he pulled back the covers before moving Lilah, encouraging her to burrow under the sheets before he turned on the tv and handed her the remote. It was near enough time for her to get into her pyjamas and settle down for bed, Ben could keep her in here and lay with her until she fell asleep and put her in her own room later.

"I'm gonna go sort Owen out, you stay here and I'll come right back." Ben kissed her temple longingly before he got up from the bed and headed out the room, making sure to keep the light turned on so she could calm down.

Much to Ben's surprise and slight amusement, Owen was stood exactly where Ben had left him like his feet were glued to the floor out of panic. He almost cowered away when Ben slowly approached him and when Ben reached out and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck he darted his eyes to look at the floor. Owen always wanted to be like Ben but when it came to getting in trouble he was never as tough as he wanted to be. Ben would put him in his place and scare him with just a few words and an angry tone and it was annoying as it was upsetting.

"Did you think that was funny?" Owen repeatedly shook his head no but it wasn't a satisfying answer for Ben. "What the fuck did you do that for then? You locked her in there with that clown then decided to turn the light off on her and she was screaming! Not only did you petrify her, you could of woken Briar and Lottie. Why did you do it?!" Ben lightly shook Owen until he seemed to shrink in on himself and give Ben an answer he deemed was acceptable.

"It was just a j-joke."

"Oh, a joke. I'll shove you in there with the lights off and we'll see if I start laughing then, shall we?" Ben leaned his head down to be level with his eldest child who was almost shaking. His head was violently turning side to side in a plea not to be shoved into the cupboard. Owen was okay with the dark but he was claustrophobic and could only stand being in the cupboard for a few seconds to get some toys or games out.

"Dad... I'm sorry-"

"Sorry doesn't work with me, do I look like your mother? Telling your sister your sorry doesn't really help when you've already frightened her half to death."

It didn't matter which child told Ben they were sorry for something or how many times they told him, if the ordeal hadn't been accidental and they meant to do it, Ben wouldn't take sorry as an answer. It meant very little to him, it was like him beating someone to a pulp and then thinking against it and saying sorry. He was trying to get the kids to own up to anything they did and make up for it, sorry wasn't something Ben was teaching them.

"Daddy please-" Owen cut himself off, curling his arms to his chest and closing his eyes as tight as possible when Ben's hand tightened around the back of his neck before he pushed him to walk. Ben pushed the eldest into the cupboard before shutting the door, leaving the light on because he knew the dark wouldn't affect Owen like it did Lilah. Seeing the small space would probably be worse for the eldest child.

Ben folded his arms over his chest, leaning his right side against the wall next to the cupboard as he silently counted in his head. He wouldn't leave Owen in there for longer than a minute, this was only to teach him a lesson and prevent him from even thinking about doing this to Lilah again.

"Hey baby... what are you doing?" (Y/n) smiled tiredly as she leaned her head around the door into Owen's room. There was clear confusion in her smile as she wondered where Owen was and why Ben was stood like he was near the window when the curtains were closed.

(Y/n) could see the symbol Ben had tattooed on the base of his neck which always sent shivers down his spine whenever she traced her finger lightly over the design she was fascinated with. She could see the other symbol on the right side of his back that went down from his shoulder blade down to his hip which always reminded (Y/n) of a snake. And when he turned around she was faced with the names of their children on his arms, upper chest and lower stomach along with her name on the inside of his right wrist.

Ben knew the tattoos his whole family were mostly fascinated with were the ones on his knuckles. He didn't quite know why, but those ones were always the ones that got stared at, kissed and traced the most.

When he turned to face her, Ben watched the smile slip from (Y/n)'s lips and her arms unfold from her chest the moment Owen's quiet pleas hit her ears and she realised why her husband was standing next to the cupboard.

"Ben what the fuck?!" (Y/n) hurried into the room but Ben stood in front of the door when she went to open it. "You know he's claustrophobic, why the Hell have you shut him in there?!" (Y/n) slapped her hand against Ben's chest out of frustration but the most she did was catch one of her rings on the chain hanging around his neck.

"To teach the little sod a lesson. He shut Lilah in there in the dark with that shitting clown toy, she was screaming for me because he wouldn't let her out. She's now crying in our room."

A sigh passed through Ben's lips when (Y/n) bit down on her lip before nudging him to move out of the way, he had to let Owen out now. The moment (Y/n) opened the door Owen bolted over to her, caging his arms around her waist as he tried to stop the small cries leaving his lips. His fearful eyes dared to glance over at Ben but he looked unmoved and uninterested, leaning his upper back against the all as his arms were still crossed over his chest.

The moment Owen dared to pull away from (Y/n), he nearly cowered back when Ben rested a heavy hand on his shoulder.

"Go get ready for bed." It sounded more of a command than anything else but Owen gladly obliged, bolting out of the room to go to the bathroom.

"Ben, did you really have to do that to him?" (Y/n) sighed through her words as she pointed to the cupboard. It was like an unspoken rule in the house that if any punishments were dolled out to the kids, that was Ben's area. He put the kids straight and gave them punishments and then they almost always ran to (Y/n) for comfort and to see if she would change Ben's mind which never happened. Ben could be hard on the kids at times but his way worked.

"He did it to Lilah, he gets it right back."

She couldn't help but roll her eyes at that remark before Ben leaned forward and slipped his arms around her waist, pulling her against him. Just as Ben's hands squeezed (Y/n)'s hips and he kissed her, a small, tender voice interrupted them.

"Daddy."

(Y/n) tried not to smile when Ben groaned against her lips, taking her lower lip between his teeth for a few seconds before he pulled away and turned his head to look at the door. Briar was stood there looking drowsy to the point of falling asleep standing up, he was clinging to the door frame with his eyes half closed from tiredness. The four year old had the bottoms of his onesie rolled up one one leg to his knee from wriggling around and his straight blond hair was sticking up from static.

"Come here little man, time for bed." Ben reluctantly pulled away from (Y/n) to go over to Briar. The moment he effortlessly picked him up and cuddled him to his chest Briar was almost asleep.

Ben couldn't wait to go to bed.

[hydemind]

Your thoughts on Isaac, William, Frankie an Jack 🎤?

OHHHHHH CROW I COULD GO ON ABOUT THEM FOR HOURS.

this post is SUPER FUCKING LONG so for the first time in my life im using a read more link.

I'm gonna start out with Will, who, a little fun fact, isn't actually named William! His full name is Willis Grossman. His parents thought it'd be funny. Will doesn't know his full name.

Here are some other fun facts about me and @functionentropy 's Will (along with other characters below) (he is also the one who has been making this entire creepypasta interp with me! Go check out their art or else /lh):

Will was born in the late 1800s early 1900s!

His parents were a lot like a Bonnie and Clyde duo, and they cared and loved for Will very, very much.

Will always looked up to Isaac! He wanted to be exactly like his grandpa when he grew up. Isaac was also a wonderful grandfather as well.

Will, on his 13th birthday, got Isaac's mask as a gift. When he got it, Isaac said to him: "keep it safe. It's a family heirloom.", Will uses that excuse as to why he still wears it to this day.

Speaking of Isaac, he's the underrealm equivalent to a tumblr sexyman. Everyone thinks he's hot shit, but that also goes for a lot of serial killers residing in the underrealm. Will unfortunately had to see his grandfather on magazine covers talking about the underrealm's HOTTEST NEW KILLER. He hates it.

Will ran away from home after Isaac died at around the age of 20 to 21, and considering he was a legal adult, his parents couldn't do much. They're still looking for him. (How, you may ask? Well, a little thing about the underrealm is that it stunts growth. You're essentially unable to die of old age down there. Think shitty immortality. His parents are looking for him, and they know he's in the underrealm- so that's how they are still around!)

Will had the worst time in the underrealm for the first few years he was down there. He wasn't immediately enrolled in the institution and he had a hard time holding down a job. Eventually he met Frankie! They live(d) in an apartment together. The first time Frankie met Will he thought he was Isaac and told his landlord and him HELL NO. Frankie does not like Isaac. Cue [will's offended gasp] and him saying he's his GRANDSON, and WHY IS HE ACTING LIKE ISAAC SUCKED? Cue Frankie making fun of him for being a grandpa's boy.

Frankie and Will had a bumpy relationship for a while. Will wasn't always a good person. Not really bad, just a fucking dumbass.

Speaking of Frankie...

Here's stuff about Frankie!

Frankie's origin story is essentially the same in this interp. Except for the fact that Frankie very much HAD A PAST. (which. If u wanna know more........I would love to talk about it......but this is about CURRENT Frankie so if u wanna know more bro just pop up in my dms or send another ask im feeling wild tonight)

After Amy passed (which was NOT due in part to the operator in this universe. The operator just found her like that) he was found by Bell (prince beelzebub, ruler of the underrealm at that point). You should know Frankie wasn't always an adjusted and normal fuckin person. He was like a rabid dog for a good while there.

While Frankie was unhinged he fucking death rolled Daisy the first time they met. (Daisy is an oc! I'm willing to talk more about him if you want the deets. He's interesting :]) because of this Daisy is the only one allowed to openly make fun of Frankie. (Playfully, of course.)

Daisy and Bell both basically helped Frankie adjust to society.

Frankie is autistic! So is Will. And Isaac. All. Everyone. Everyone has autism. (Shhhh. i'm projecting.)

Frankie can see souls! He's a very good judge of character because of it. However Frankie doesn't know what he's seeing is people's souls.

Frankie goes specifically after bad people. He'll take jobs from bad people, but he'll kill them, too. He says "he's sending them back to where they belong".

Frankie was the first to really show Will killing isn't just something you do. It's more than that. Will had never really processed death and murder of his fellow man like that before. He has a hard time even processing people as people sometimes, outside those of whom he cares for. This is because of Isaac. Isaac taught Will that people are bad- all of them. And that killing them is preventing them from hurting others, even if they haven't yet.

Frankie is a good guy and honestly a softie deep down. He worries and cares for all those who are close to him, even if he doesn't act like it sometimes.

Frankie says Toby "kidnapped him" and "made him diseased". 1. Frankie can very much leave the household at any time and 2. Frankie is referring to the operator sickness. Speaking of that-

Frankie was dragged through the operator's own personal hell! (Aka the realm they reside in more often than not, aka the place that Tim gets tossed around in near the end of marble hornets.) Reason being was because he threatened Toby's life. The operator is very protective of Toby.

Speaking of that, someone else was around when Toby met Frankie...

ONTO LAUGHING JACK!

ohhh man. Oh man. Oh baby. This clown is FULL of illness. Alright. So let's start off simple:

Lj was of course, made for Isaac. That's still a consistency. What isn't is that lj was around Isaac for a lot longer than in the original story. They developed a very close bond over the years they knew eachother, but, all good things must come to an end.

Lj returned to his box when Isaac left for boarding school. However, unlike the original story....Isaac didn't really come back to open the box. In fact, the most Isaac did was...well, I'll wait to spill that for Isaac's part later.

However! Eventually the house got passed off to another family. Years, and it mean YEARS later someone found lj's box in the attic! They were an unfortunate casualty.

After this, lj went and hunted Isaac down. Cue gore filled murder scene.

Things to note: LJ feels HORRIBLE about what he did to Isaac. He regrets it everyday. He wishes he had never done that to him.

But, time skip a bit.. we're further in the future now. LJ has his carnival set up and hidden away in an empty spot in the forest. He eventually comes across a wandering spirit because of this. This wanderer just so happens to be Sally!

LJ takes her in and swears to protect her with his life. In a way, you could say he sees her as a chance of redemption.

Sally was a wandering spirit, meaning she never really was stuck to one spot in particular- also meaning she wasn't very strong. Because of this, LJ gave her some of his own angelic essence. This boosted Sally and essentially made her a poltergeist!

(Note: Sally doesn't know how she died. Also, none of the things in her og story happened to her in this one. Fuck mishimishi. All my homies hate mishimishi.)

A little while after this they actually meet Toby and Jeffery! But this is getting long and to explain THAT entire debacle would make it even longer. but again I fully invite you to send more asks or just straight up dm me if you wanna know!

Now, last, but certainly not least..

ISAAC GROSSMAN.

OH MAN. Isaac is a DOOZY. Just like LJ, this baby is chocked FULL of illnesses! *slaps the top of his head like the roof of a car* but also, fair warning here: im gonna be talking about some heavy stuff. Abuse, physical and mental, gore, just. Death in general. Cannibalism, and EXTREME MENTAL ILLNESS *loud airhorn* so if any of that stuff gets to you steer clear of this part!

Anyways, let's start out simple!

Isaac was born in victorian England.

Isaac's mother was terrible towards him. I'm talking mental and physical abuse. She was a horrible, horrible woman.

Isaac's father...he wasn't a good person either, but he didn't beat Isaac. Nor did he really mentally abuse him either. He just...let it happen. He didn't even hurt his mother like he did in the original story. Isaac's mother was just plain bad for no good reason.

Isaac was sort of. Born having mental illness. They didn't just develop for him due to the abuse he experienced, though they certainly DID make it worse. There were other mental issues he has now that developed due to the abuse, however.

LJ was quite literally a godsend for Isaac. Metaphorically and not Metaphorically. LJ made Isaac happy, gave him comfort, and was basically like the mom he never had.

that's why it was so hard on Isaac when he had to leave lj behind. For a while he even had hallucinations of lj while in boarding school (which only furthered his future belief that lj was a hallucination brought on by the need to cope).

Isaac's first technical "murder" you could say was at boarding school. He pushed a shitty teacher down the stairs when there was no one around and they died. It wasn't even premeditated- more like it just sort of..happened.

Eventually Isaac graduated. When he did, he promptly returned home and killed his parents, as you do. /s

Isaac killed his mom in a rather violent fashion in comparison to his father- he whiplashed her so hard she fucking died.

Not long after this Isaac started his..well. I guess you could call it career.

Basically you know what happens after that. human skin chair, yadda yadda yadda, underrealm's sexiest killer, you know the drill.

Isaac did more than the human skin chair though! In fact, he uh. He. He did a lot. He did. SO much. But that was because Isaac believed in not wasting any part of the body. Which means Isaac not only made human skin chairs, but he was an avid cannibal, as well. (Fun fact, this very much extended to Will's father, mother, and Will as well. Will didn't know they were eating human for a long time. He had to realize that on his own.)

Eventually, Isaac punched his ticket because of LJ. But..I'd be a liar to say he really died.

No, our wonderful boy Isaac didn't die. He became a ghoul. Which, by the way, only further fucked with Isaac mentally! He's so ill. Some other things happened which I won't say here because they're spoilers for the fanfic I'm working on (Oh yeah the hyperfixation is that bad, but if you wanna know, again, I fully invite you to ask), but basically Isaac eventually gets taxidermied by, drumroll please..TOBY!!!! yeah. Toby does taxidermy as a job. He invited a new type of it for taxidermying Isaac. It was to repay daisy for something he did for the group.

But to say, again, that THAT was Isaac's end, would be another lie! No no no. Isaac was alive during the entire process! The good news is that he's never looked better after he escaped daisy's house when it got exploded by Frankie. Which..that's uh..another story for another day. This post is already insanely long and I am NOT putting it in the main tags.

So yeah! Im absolutely crazy for these dudes and I love all of them. By the way if you couldn't guess before Frankie and Will very much get together and are so so gay. Another little thing: Isaac is gay too, he had a past relationship with a man by the name of Dr. Locklear! Locklear is French German and his accent shows it. They were very close but fell out because of Locklear being involved with the institution and...a certain foundation.

I'll leave it to you to ponder on that one.

[autumn-foxfire]

Bro im so tired of twitter

So the latest thing ive been seeing a lot of are things like 'jujutsu kaisen is just a copy of naruto' or 'do you likw jjk or bnha?' A whole lot of compering and arguing and belitteling one show to lift up the other

Here are my hot takes

1. Nothing exists in a vacuum, everything has been inspiered by something and Gege has been very open about his inspirations (which dont even include that much naruto)

2. You can, stay with me now, like more than one show

Like im so tired of ppl compering shit and tearing one show down because they like the other. Like i like both jjk n bnha. I like jjk more cuz its more suited to my tastes. But also i think bnha has been really good recently n has some of the horis strongest writing to date and im very excited to see what comes next. Just because i like one show over the other doesnt mean i suddenly hate the other or think its badly written. I can appriciate both their merits. N the comparisons with naruto are really annoying cuz like 🙄 who cares. Naruto is one of the big three, a lot of mangaka who work now read it as kids OF COURSE they'll be inspiered by it just like they'll be inspiered by bleach n one piece. News flash just because one show did something first doesnt mean its automatically better than any other show that does it. Saying 'jjk is good but it would be nothing without naruto' means NOTHING. Jjk has its own themes and character n ideas and sometimes there will be similarities with other media cuz of fucking course there will be, humans all have similar ideas, no one is 100% original, its the way different authors spin n retell those ideas that actually matter. Shonen jump is basically a brand of its own they are gonna push conent similar to content shonen jump readers like. The fun part is watching all the different authors taking pieces of those formulas n fitting them together in new and interesting ways.

Sorry for the rant im just really tired of 'the war between jjk n bnha fans' or 'jjk can never be as good as naruto' or whichever it is today. Idk i guess ppl are bitter that jjk became so massivly popular so fast but??? Who cares???? If you dont vibe with it just dont watch it and leave the fans alone??? I didnt like that akudama drive was so popular last season but i didnt go to its fans n rant about how their show isnt good as this other show, just let ppl enjoy things??? Nobody is forcing you to say jjk is the best thing ever, nobody is forcing you to watch it. Just go enjoy the show you do like??? N if u like jjk u can also like bnha n others???? You can like more thsn one thing??? Idk im just fuckin tired of dumbass bullshit like this n ppl making drama for no reason at all

Like imagine if this was how i talked about my fav shows 🙄 re creators is better then beastars because its female characters are more prominent and beastars is better then talentless nana because it has better world building, but talentless nana explores trauma n abuse better then re creators n re creators has way more to say about nature of story telling then beastars

WOW ITS ALMOST LIKE ALL SHOWS HAVE STRONG N WEAK POINTS N THEIR OWN THEMES AND STORIES TO TELL FUNNY THAT

If people don’t think Gege isn’t inspiring Hori too, then they really need to look at the character design for the sixth holder of OFA who looks like a re-coloured version of Inumaki <.< It’s a two way street when it comes to inspiration because surprise, surprise, both JJK and BNHA are two of the most popular manga and will also inspire writers :p

There has also been a lot of comparisons between characters in Naruto and JJK recently too, a popular one being Sakura and Nobara, and I can’t help but roll my eyes at most of those comparisons. Especially when Nobara’s story isn’t even finished yet compared to Sakura’s which is complete (unless you include Boruto but no one like Boruto). It’s such a moot thing to do. At least give Nobara a chance to develope before you declare her to being treated as bad as Sakura was T-T

I don’t know why people always feel so threatened when the see a new manga get popular, maybe because they don’t like to see the flaws in their favourite work become that bit more apparent because another writer did it better (and lets be honest here, Gege is much better at writing female characters so far and Hori’s females have always been a point of discussion because of how he writes them, it’s not like JJK is showing us something we haven’t already noticed).

As you said, there will be parts in Hori’s story that will be better then Gege’s and vice versa, but that doesn’t mean the whole of their works are bad and we should feel bad for liking them.

You know, I love to compare my favourite mangas personally. When I started watching BSD I noticed how many of the characters reminded me of DRRR ones and I wonder if it’s because Kafka was inspired by Narita. Being inspired isn’t a bad thing (as long as you don’t completely copy someone elses work) but you’d think it’s the worst sin in fandom with the way some talk about it.

[loveamongthesailors]

Well, Pathologic 2, you’re One years old! It’s as good a moment as any to reflect upon and shatter the time-lines you’ve drawn out for us. OR; Reading His-Story Against the Grain

i saw this post about pathologics incongruous timeline stuff the other day and i ended up Getting Into It.. this piece draws on stuff from patho classic but its focused on patho 2, especially on a comparison ov the Diurnal and Nocturnal “endings,” and contains spoilers for both games, probably, i guess, on varying levels ov abstraction and explicitness. i/m going to attempt to stand on a street corner and point towards Pathologic’s overall construction/presentation ov “time” as the Now-time, Exploded time, Messianic Time.

from dear daniil dankovsky, on Angels; “An angel is a nightmare. Their purpose is to instill primal, oppressive horror. I think if angels existed, they’d resemble a divine pillar of light---from the heavens to the earth. Devoid of anything remotely human.” We commend this Puppet for his drama but would like to take a slightly different approach. Even awful dreams are good dreams, if you’re doing it right.

 IX

         “A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.“            

         on the content ov patho and in a real Life context, im also going to be discussing genocide ov Indigenous people, colonial Violence, police brutality, and anti-Black violence in this piece. i’ll also be contextualizing some views on History through the writing ov Walter Benjamin, a German born Jew living in the early 20th century, and friend ov Bertolt Brecht, who you may be familiar with if yr into patho. In 1940, shortly after writing On the Concept of History (referenced here),while fleeing persecution for neutral grounds, he was trapped in catalonia by a franco government cancellation ov travel vistas and,under threat ov repatriation to nazis by the spanish police, commited suicide on the night ov september 26. His theses were passed on by surviving members ov his group who were granted “safe” passage after his suicide, being later taken under the care ov Hannah Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno. His Grave reads -in German and in Catalan, reproduced here in english-

"There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism"

(from section 7 ov On the Concept of History)

    i will also be using sections from baedan, which has been dear to me over the years, on Benjamin’s Concepts. some songs will be dispersed throughout (featuring Laurie Anderson, Owen Pallett, and some good ol tmg), with relevant links beneath. you’ve heard that old Brecht aphorism about dark times, singing, whatever? i’m nearly sick to death ov it. these stories, in addition, will be based on a few things i know Myself. follow the threads as you see fit <3

Because History is Stories...That we half-remember... And most of them never even get written down. And so when they say things like "We're gonna do this by the book," You have to ask "What book?," Because it would make a big difference if it was Dostoyevsky or just, You know... Ivanhoe.

xxx

“Read what was never written,” runs a line in Hofmannsthal. The reader one should think of here is the true historian. ~ Walter Benjamin, omitted notes to the theses on history  

//// //// //// ////

Isidor Burakh: All I wanted was for you to understand, not to follow any particular fate.

...

Isidor Burakh: The Town needs to move forward, but it doesn’t insist. Facing the Future is the the way of Love. Facing the Past is the way of Love. But the two are incompatible, and it broke my heart. //// //// //// ////

      so,,, depending on who you ask within Pathologics narrative, the history ov the Town-on-Gorkhon stretches back to Time Immemorial, constitutes a few hundred years ov settlement, or only goes back about as far as You have been playing the game. You’ll hear conflicting narratives around just about everything in this Town. Simon Kain, hundred something years old, mystic, spiritual founder ov a several hundred year old settlement. an executed general’s vengeful daughter, Artemy and Rubins foggy backstories ov military service, what military?, what war? Who sent in the Military and Inquisition, how can We get at the Powers that Be? looking outside ov the narrative and towards history for these sorts ov questions will give us All and None ov the answers. 

       The Termitary (internment/interment/intermediate/immediate/intermittent)  looms over the Home ov Isidor Burakh, Menkhu and sole Medical Practitioner ov the town(excepting disciples. consider the spread ov knowledge, what different Knowledges are at hand and how they perpetuate...we can see how Isidor himself looms from his grave Quite well!), colleague ov radical intellectuals from the Capital and serving with Simon in tandem with the Mistresses to hold the Town together by force. Everything is Happening at Once.

        Look at What/Who is Moving this Story Forward. Different ruling families will give you again, different Numbers, different Stories. One can’t trust the Numbers, we say! and One can hardly trust the Stories either, mind you. This engenders an approach based on following Patterns, exploring Roots, pulling back the curtain to ascertain the shape ov things, reading the lines so to speak. one Bull or Several bulls? silly question. again, we’re trying to looking beyond the Numbers. consider Time as a Multiplicity. consider Rhythmic and Linear time, Time Stratified, Unending Time, Plague Time and Empty Time, Lived Time and Time un-Lived, if one pleases!

XVII                                                    

           “Historicism rightly culminates in universal history. Materialistic historiography differs from it as to method more clearly than from any other kind. Universal history has no theoretical armature. Its method is additive; it musters a mass of data to fill the homogoneous, empty time. Materialistic historiography, on the other hand, is based on a constructive principle. Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well. Where thinking suddenly stops in a configuration pregnant with tensions, it gives that configuration a shock, by which it crystallizes into a monad. A historical materialist approaches a historical subject only where he encounters it as a monad. In this structure he recognizes the sign of a Messianic cessation of happening, or, put differently, a revolutionary chance in the fight for the oppressed past. He takes cognizance of it in order to blast a specific era out of the homogenous course of history—blasting a specific life out of the era or a specific work out of the lifework. As a result of this method the lifework is preserved in this work and at the same time canceled*; in the lifework, the era; and in the era, the entire course of history. The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed.”                                                   

*The Hegelian term aufheben in its threefold meaning: to preserve, to elevate, to cancel.

          Everything is happening at once, already, and, for the purposes ov Our story, A plague is on. (why is there a plague on?  in this Specific Case, read: Specimen, there is a plague on because infection serves as a very useful allegorical device. haha. see also dominant theories ov infectivity in russian imperial medicine, policy, and social science) Crisis as Inflammation. Violence and Control intensified along multiple vectors. Mobs, Witch Burnings, The Quarantine, districts carved up and kept under surveillance, the Town Police, Arsonists, government or Otherwise, the Military, the Inquisition, Hangings in the square, tallies ov the Dead in the Termitary... Was any ov this new? did it Crystallize from thin air? here’s an aphorism: There’s Nothing New Under the Sun. what can we find beyond the Sun’s reaches? what has the Sun given us, and what has Earth? shall we keep them apart? whose bodies are restricted in their movement over the earth, and how severely are they restricted? who is targeted? who enforces the control? is this what Crisis looks like? when did the Crisis start?

VI                       

           “To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’ (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history at a moment of danger. The danger effects both the content of the tradition and its receivers. The same threat hangs over both: that of becoming a tool of the ruling classes. In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.”

//// //// //// //// 

But do not be scared Surely some disaster will descend and equalize us A crisis Will unify the godless and the fearless and the righteous

...

In a certain slant of light the feeling will hit me Like a man against the waves and a violent wind Waking up in a bloody morning With the warmth of his forgiveness around me The shared dream left me shaking The memory is threatening to capsize every ship upon the sea

xxx //// //// //// ////

      Pathologic, having mapped out these lines, and being a concatenation ov narrative fiction that could not have existed without the precondition ov colonial expansion and the Extermination and Assimilation ov Indigenous populations and Life ways, can be can be unwound through a conventional historical approach by investigating various moments, epidemics, and movements in The Steppe (and all Land and Living Beings subsumed by Russia’s internal colonization) and looking for similarities, sources, influences, reflections, distortions... You’ll never find quite an exact parallel to the events ov pathologic, and you will find that the Trick that the devisers have given you in fact resides in laying out what can be gleaned from the Tangled view.

“…they make the work a process of learning or experimentation, but also something total every time, where the whole of chance is affirmed in each case, renewable every time,”

         — Gilles Deleuze, Difference&Repetition

//// //// //// ////

“For Benjamin, the conclusion of the movement of history through time is not some inevitable utopia—capitalist, communist, or otherwise. Rather than viewing the progression of civilization as an accumulation of gains and reforms toward freedom and justice, history can be seen as the continuous defeat of the exploited by their oppressors; the intensifying alienation of beings and their re-construction into capital. History not only serves to justify today’s rulers, but also to encode our memory with a narrative that reads historical events as a necessary chain of events along the path toward some future revolution or techno-utopia. He describes this as “a view of history that puts its faith in the infinite extent of time and thus concerns itself only with the speed, or lack of it, with which people and epochs advance along the path of progress.”

//// //// //// ////

     In your Twelve Days in the town as a Healer, what did you see? piles ov wreckage, debris, bodies stacked under streetlamps flickering in the night? a town spreading across a steppe? a Utopia growing through the Earth? do you think you saved any lives, and was any-body's life yours to save in the first place? a Plague moving through living organisms? a Plague moving through non-living organisms? did you observe any Organisms, living or otherwise, over the course ov the play? do you have Mirrors in your house? have you seen a still, clear, body ov water recently? what are the waterways where you live called, and have they been called anything else in the Past or Present? did you become the Haruspex, and following what paths does becoming-haruspex entail? are you winning, son?

When the hunger turns in on itself, it begins to devour its host Who do you turn to for help? Who do you love the most? When the word comes down the wire that they're looking To make an example of you Skin and bones around a campfire beneath the stars No good end in view I dance with the ones that brought me I dance with the ones that brought me here

xxx

         did you observe a Fever? can you feel a Fever? can you Imagine a great crack ov lightning striking across the Steppe, illuminating in raw detail the beauty and horror ov all that you have experienced? how would it smell afterwards? can you smell the Twyre on the air? is Twyre even a real thing? what may influence your imaginary ov its scent? Feel small, dirty hands reaching out for beetles, marbles, raisins, souls within nuts and names without people. Living on pemmican, Living on military rations. razors, fish-hooks, scalpels and syringes passing through the hands ov children as well. noticing the flows present in everything, spots where they are arrested, and the intensities they assume. we could run through the Game and Count up the Number ov Clocks present, and we could also look at how many hours we have Clocked in our Playtime, and the date ov this Play’s Production. did the Kains succeed in their mission to Produce Time? was this the Kain’s mission Alone? how is your mental Clock? We got the Body Count at the end of the day, and commentary too. cant beat that courtesy, *hem hem* but again, looking beyond the Numbers. how many Bulls did you see? when is a question also a trap? 

XVIII                                                  

       “‘In relation to the history of organic life on earth,’ writes a modern biologist, ‘the paltry fifty millennia of homo sapiens constitute something like two seconds at the close of a twenty-four-hour day. On this scale, the history of civilized mankind would fill one-fifth of the last second of the last hour.’ The present, which, as a model of Messianic time, comprises the entire history of mankind in an enormous abridgment, coincides exactly with the stature which the history of mankind has in the universe.”

what are the Consequences ov inserting Living Beings into a Linear Framework? where did Architecture come from? how was this Story constructed? What do you remember about the Town? 

We can take the Diurnal “ending” as a fairly straightforward allegorical Byway for the Forces ov Progress. Boundaries are set, You are not the Town, the Town is your Soul-and-a-half.( wikihow to not be a cartesian dualist, consider also Spinoza if laying bare the path ov immanence was ov interest to you) What lays beneath the Sunlight? what still lays beneath the Earth? What time is it? things are weirdly cozy, in some ways. mimesis, echoes, ghosts. Are their voices still heard? grace tallies up the bodies. are You ready to Leave Artemy here? is this a comfortable future for you to imagine? how are you with uncertainty? Does the costume itch? do you ache at the seams, or are your joints sore from all the strings pulling at them? got arthritis? i’ve used stinging nettle. can a Story devour a human being? why would something with that power stop at One?  

What Do You Think Will Happen Now?

One can also make the Choice to step into the Darkness. One with many names has returned to the Earth,(”One” ov many False Deaths and Smart Tricks too. love ya girl <3)... taya as mistress-ov-bulls, grace as mistress-ov-dead, changeling as mistress-ov-absolutley-whatever. Mistresses, Mist, Tresses, Bulls, Brides, Worms, Plague...the Theme/s to note here is/are Multiplicity. Is there a difference between imagining the future and the past? Where are you? Where did You come from? the Nocturnal ending already asks enough questions to make me quite happy. sitting next to the Girls now, looking out at the New Sky. same as the old sky, Full ov Magic. if we take Death ov the Author into account, we could say that the Polyhedron belongs to the Dead in more ways than one. We can see your house from here! i wouldn’t say we’ve even gotten to the Prophet yet. When did our Hero leave us? did We have any use for Heroism? the Steppe is in the Stone Yard now. The World is returning to Life. what does it mean for me?

how many angels can dance on the head ov a pin?

how many worm brides can dance in the cathedral?

   ....“The way in which the dead are present is as the “caress” of a “breath of… air,” as an “echo,” or as a sister who one no longer recognizes. In other words, the past is present and everywhere, touching us every moment and “in the voices we hear,” but only suggestively, in and in spite of our own inability to recognize it. But the possibility for redemption, the weak messianic power, lies in the chance that we might.

In the intimate, ever-present opportunity he describes there is a tremendous deal at stake. For, he writes in the fourth thesis, the “refined and spiritual things” that live in the class struggle “as confidence, courage, humor, cunning, and fortitude, and have effects that reach far back into the past… constantly call into question every victory, past and present, of the rulers.”

Later, turning to the historians he criticizes as tools of the ruling classes, Benjamin makes it clear in his seventh thesis that their resurrection of the past is an entirely different kind. The nature of the sadness—rooted in an indolence of heart—that Flaubert described feeling in his historical study of Carthage is clearer, Benjamin says, when we remember that the historian’s empathy is always with the victor, and thus with the present rulers. It is the kind of sadness, then, that gathers to the loyal servant or minion in knowing that it is being used for its ruler’s purposes”

         “Figured another way, the task of interruption requires us to locate the clocktower that we could fire upon to stop the day. Homogenous time no longer flows through the monolithic machines in the city centers. Now, a range of technological advancements have diffused and integrated the machinery of time into our very thoughts and rhythms. Everywhere we go, we are surrounded by and permeated with devices which serve to manage the regime of time. Where once a singular apparatus mediated our relationship to time, its dictatorship is now imposed by an innumerable array. A desire for interruption must now reckon with the countless apparatuses that segment our memory and integrate our very being into capitalist time. But rather than waste time lashing out against all these clocks one after another, let us cut through to what underlies them.

           History’s servants promise us a shining future. Whether by means of technological innovation, hard work and sacrifice, or the Revolution, we are assured of a heaven-on-earth of light and crystal. But all of these glimmering apparatuses can only serve to adorn the monumental pile of wreckage in which we live. All around us, the carnage and corpses of our ancestors form the architecture of our daily existence. Not only the walls and freeways and shopping centers, but the smart phones, pornography, surveillance and entertainment systems—all monuments to the same enemy that has never ceased to be victorious. Capital, Leviathan, civilization, society: so many names for the process which turns life into an assemblage of death, which would integrate us as machines into a grander machinery. Futurity is the logic that drives this regime of subjection and assimilation, but is also the science which desecrates our memory of those who also struggled; the treachery which turns their struggles into so many more ideological cadavers. Where living beings once struggled to be free from futurity’s domination of their lives, we are told that they dutifully sacrificed themselves for society’s future. We too are called upon to procreate and raise up children who might one day live better lives than we. But just as we were born into the halls of the dead, so too would our children be the stillborn janitors of these halls, breathing circuits embedded in a massive cybernetic cadaver. Ghosts call out to us: they ask that we tear apart the sutures of this Frankenstein’s monster which they’ve come to constitute. They call on us to cremate their remains and bury the ashes, to end the reign of the dead over the living.”

//// //// //// ////

"I am not afraid," ze said "Of the non-believer within me Nor delight at the pain of my enemies Nor tears for any friends I have lost" ...

I’ll never have any children I’d bear them and eat them, my children

I’m gonna change my body In the light and the shadow of suspicion I am no longer afraid The truth doesn’t terrify us, terrify us My salvation is found in discipline, in discipline

xxxx

//// //// //// ////

“It is apparent from the foregoing that all accumulation is cruel; all renunciation of the present for the sake of the future is cruel.”

— Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share, Volume III

//// //// //// ////

“The Haruspex is blood and organs... ...The Haruspex’s overarching idea is the interconnectedness of everything and restoring the connections... ...The Haruspex hears (rhythms)... ...The Haruspex: water + forward vector. „ — [from the game’s design documents]

“ The Haruspex, a butcher, a killer, one could even say a murderous psychopath, gets the warmest character arc. It’s about love. „ — [from the game’s design documents] 

//// //// //// ////

Infinity Mirrored Room—All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins -

Yayoi Kusama, 2016

//// //// //// ////

       A long “personal” anecdote: there’s music on the air and i hear a familiar buzzing. it isn’t twyre growing, nor it is the hum ov flies. we Keep bees here, to get honey.  I should try to remember to bring some to my wife tomorrow, though making the journey on its own is a bit daunting these days. 1 hive, 2 hives, the bees build and swarm and our Keeper rearranges the frames, adds in new boxes, tries to give them enough space that they'll stay within our domain. I think about the complex roles being fulfilled within the hive, and how any egg can grow into a so called “Queen” if need be. These Hives haven’t always held the same populations, sometimes a swarm will depart and won’t be Recovered. Look around the neighborhood, find the buzzing tree, you may be able to get them back yet but... have you tried getting a swarm ov bees into a box before? good luck finding the queen! (hoping i don’t have to do this but a bit excited by the prospect at the same time.)

        Our honey bees didn't originate from this region, i see them in the “yard” alongside native bees (one tries to plant for Everybody) but obviously, Our Hives are here so i’ll always see more ov the honeybees as long as they’re occupying them. Native bees to our Bioregion are leading very different lifestyles. Different threats, dynamics, and places in the ecosystem as well. Bumblebees are the most Beloved. Native Bees here- vital pollinators, ground and stem burrowers, more solitary souls than most, but are any ov us really alone? what are their favorite flowers?

          I think about Bees a lot now. I’m standing here thinking about Bees, and where I’m standing is in between the entrance ov the Hive and their favorite Ceanothus (see also soap brush, red root, buckbrush, see medicinal uses...). Very precious grounds to these Bees, not somewhere where I’m welcome. I Haven’t always known as much about bees. I get stung right inbetween my pinky and index fingers, on the palm ov my hand. yeowch! Bad luck, but i could still use a shovel the next day. This was an anecdote about Paying Attention to Your Surroundings.

       The Ceanothus isn’t flowering anymore, and hasn't been for a few “weeks” (i think?) The Bees have other concerns now. In fact, it was heavily damaged in a snow storm a couple years back, and half ov its branches collapsed under the weight ov the ice. Its a bit ov a twisted thing now, what remains still flowers but what remains is not so much. At some point in the future upon yr reading ov this, it will have been cut down and possibly dug out ov the earth. I wouldn't be surprised if a few more, smaller, iterations made their way to this space in remembrance/ tribute. The branches lost in it’s first wounding are still stacked up nearby, all sorts ov creatures love that stuff. Dead trees in the back that Birds still frequent stay for the birds. We never get that many plums because we’re not smart or quick enough, or as willing to take one great bite ov a fruit and let the rest fall to the soil. I didn’t really get stung by a Bee in a situation exactly like what i described up there, it’s drawing on a few different times that sort ov thing happened. I hope you’ll forgive me for my obscurantist tendencies.

       Looking past the Hives and onto the Streets, I am a White Settler(family fled the reach ov the Soviet Union to integrate into America, family fled family to a different part ov land under the Reaches ov said “America”,cave fled family but stuck with the Land, recurring patterns, what would my views be if i had grown up in Czechoslovakia? geography, chronology, trick questions) living in a segment ov Town that, until 1968, was a legally a Sundown Town, see Racial Restrictive Covenants. I still don’t see than many Black ppl around my neighborhood. I do see grocery store parking lots swarming with cop cars, more cops than i can Count, at least two k9 units, all to pursue One Black Body through the rainy night, My own Body lets me move through the world without these Forces being brought upon me in this intensity, lets me Watch.

          Certain alignments ov directions ov Struggle have brought me into the position ov the Other at the end ov the cudgel, a body in a crowd under the looming eye and long barrel ov the sniper, the surveillance camera. Visibility is a Trap. Any ability i have to Get Off The Hook is based not on Luck or Fate, but due to the way the color ov my skin is reflected in the eyes ov Those in Power. what can i do from inside This Skin, and what can i do with the veil ov a mask obliterating my “selfhood”? How are we to heal? If you didnt read this into my Musical choices already- im a bit ov a flaming/smoldering queer. sitting in the planned parenthood lobby, one among many, gripped by recollections ov the devastating history ov HIV/AIDS and a cluster ov other Crises, memories ov beloved souls lost to policies and hegemony ov extermination and neglect. blood in vials, piss in jars. how does the time spent waiting for results feel?(how long? weeks months?)

           I have more free condoms on hand than i’ll ever get through. A veritable theoretical eternity ov Safer Sex. There are Reasons why Queer Institutions give access to free condoms. But i’ve gotten them from some delightful Quakers as well. on another squeamish, libidinal subject, administering self injections isnt so daunting when you’ve seen it done a Million times before. It’s like watching somebody sneeze, or pinching yourself. HRT as potions, mechanical intrusion to will a slow transformation. getting into the fat is easy, some other avenues less so. “This requires the Gentle Hand of a Surgeon, step aside!” i know a lot about what Doctors Don’t Know. (veins and arteries as streets- easy. nerves as streets - you hear this a bit less. streets as eyes, the opening ov your mouth with a railroad track running down it, eyes as streets, whose streets? fuck streets! tear up the concrete)

          The aforementioned streets are closed to Traffic due to the Quarantine, and i hear folks and families from the neighborhood walking/hoverboarding/skateboarding/biking down the street,(mostly the new work from home yuppie class and their spawn respectively, but there's some real ones around here too. all ages. have yet to live anywhere that people don't ask me for cigarettes) chattering away, masks or no masks. If i take a long walk down past the cemetery, I’ll find myself passing by a Native American Youth Home, created to provide support for a population that is currently disproportionately represented in this Town’s already Massive Homeless population. (their covid19 resources and donation info) Even with the Plague on, New Condos are built and Old Condos stay empty. Who do the bones in the soil beneath my feet belong to? When did all ov this Start, and how Long will it go on? why does the Map look the way it does? I would rather listen carefully than dig. This Story is not the only Story, nor should any be.

      do i remember how the damp asphalt smells Here after Lightning Strikes? do i remember the feeling ov my body thrown to the concrete and the chaos and disorientation ov Crowds mobbing over me, slick with rain and sweat? who saw, and how many hands reached out to lift me up, who saved who? is that my blood trickling down the sidewalk? Flashbangs and Flashes ov Lightning, take yr pick. you can get similar experiential learning in the moshpit. this is an anecdote about Paying Attention to Your Surroundings.

i’ll try to bring us nearer to the point with baedan’s conclusion, a reflection on the First thesis from On the Concept of History. I will leave it up to You to investigate the original text if you are so Inclined.

//// //// //// ////

           “For every pretty theory that presents itself, study it only in the way that a cat studies its prey: for the enjoyment of the hunt, to be sure, but also so as to seize upon whatever unique revolutionary chance may appear as in a flash of lightning. So that when that narrow gate opens, you pounce without a moment’s hesitation. In the meantime, by all means, enjoy the diversion of the theory’s lines and moves, but if you are to avoid becoming its tool you must ever have in mind to shatter the system of mirrors and confront the dwarf that has been pulling the strings all along. Faced with this ugly little creature behind all the lines of play you’ve enjoyed and suffered, able at last to read the lines of its face and the dark of its eyes, as time stands still and the entirety of the past falls to you, you will have to make a deeply ethical decision that nothing in all the games before could prepare you for. The only decision that truly matters.”

//// //// //// ////

Artemy Burakh: Any Choice is Right as long as it’s Willed.

//// //// /// ////

Hansel and Gretel are alive and well And they're living in Berlin She is a cocktail waitress He had a part in a Fassbinder film And they sit around at night now Drinking schnapps and gin And she says: Hansel, you're really bringing me down And he says: Gretel, you can really be a bitch He says: I've wasted my life on our stupid legend When my one and only love Was the wicked witch

She said: what is history? And he said: history is an angel being blown backwards into the future He said: history is a pile of debris And the angel wants to go back and fix things To repair the things that have been broken But there is a storm blowing from paradise And the storm keeps blowing the angel backwards into the future And this storm, this storm is called progress

xxx

TLDR; pathologics shitty timeline is cool because it fosters a metagame where the imperative is to make history explode in real life.

specific thanx to: every1 included above, my local subversive lit dealers, Whoever gave the talk last ABF about Queer Wanderings in the anti-nazi Underworld, have not stopped carrying those stories with me since. thanks to the Dear Listener, thanks 2 my wife for pragmatic and personal encouragements <3

a personal acknowledgement to the lives and legacies ov the dxʷdəwʔabš (Duwamish) people, past and present, First People ov the Land i currently Occupy, alongside the entire City ov so-called “Seattle.”

[watchmegetobsessed]

Enchanted - Adam Sackler (pt. 2)

hi guys! this is a repost because something went wrong with the original one and it couldn’t be opened for some reason. let me know if it doesn’t work again! im also posting this story on AO3 so if anything happens next time you can always find it there! click here to see my profile

series summary: You are casted as Giselle in the Broadway adaptation of Enchanted with Adam as Robert.

word count: ~4k

Part 1

masterlist

Chapter title: Limo

“Let’s see one more time from the second verse,” Cynthia, your vocal coach instructs sitting back behind the piano, eyes fixed on the sheets before her fingers start working on the keys, bringing the song alive again.

Taking a deep breath your chest buffs and a moment later you are singing the lines you’ve been practicing for hours now. Your vocal chords feel tired, but you keep pushing and the notes come out almost perfectly.

“Amazing! Don’t forget to make the end of the second line a little more airy and sweet,” Cynthia reminds you when you finish and grabbing a pen you circle the word to remind yourself next time.

“Thank you, will do,” you smile as you start packing your stuff.

It’s been just two days since the table reading, so far you’ve had two rehearsals with Cynthia and two meetings with the animation crew that will be making the beginning of the story into animation, just like in the movie and it’s going to be projected to four different screens on the stage, giving a shorter version of the original one before anyone sets feet on stage in real life. You are beyond excited and thrilled to see the outcome of all these little pieces, but that’s gonna take a little longer.

As you say your goodbye to Cynthia you walk out of the room and head up to the office since Petra asked you to drop by for some more signing. One arm deep in your bag, you’re looking for your phone when you turn the corner in the hallway and you bump right into someone.

“Whoa there, Giselle. Watch out, this is the real world.”

Two large hands are on your arms as Adam’s low chuckle rings in your ear.

“Oh, sorry. I’m a little tired,” you shyly smile taking a step back and as your eyes find his gaze the picture of him spanking that girl in the short film appears in front of you, making your cheeks red as a tomato.

“It’s exhausting being a princess, right?” he jokes with a charming smile, brushing his hair out of his forehead as he shifts his weight from one leg to the other. “Where you headed?”

“I just, um… I need to sign a few papers in the office.”

“You done for the day?” “Yeah, I just had a rehearsal with my vocal couch,” you nod tugging your hair behind your ears, his intense look making your nerves tremble inside you. This man is really just something else and figuring out seems like the hardest task you’ve had to face so far.

“Sounds great, wanna grab something to eat? I feel like we should get to know each other better. Dance practices start tomorrow, I would hate to feel awkward when we are trying to look madly in love.”

He has a valid point, though you’re not sure if being alone with him is a good idea, but you just don’t want to appear rude, so you don’t have any choice than to accept the invitation. Adam walks you to the office and waits for you while you sign the paperwork, chatting up with a young assistant outside and when you return you have no doubt she has fallen for him under those three minutes you’ve spent inside.

“Alright, see you around Susan,” he salutes seeing you walk out.

“Bye Adam!” she giggles returning to her work and you can’t help but glare at her a little longer, watching her absentminded smile linger on her lips from the conversation with him.

“What?” Adam asks when the two of you are in the elevator and most likely your look on him gives away you are deep in your thoughts about him.

“Nothing,” you shake your head forcing your eyes away from his tall frame.

“Come on, I can tell you have something to say,” he chuckles tilting his head to the side.

“I don’t,” you insist. No way you are telling him what’s been on your mind.

“So you are the kind of person who just pushes everything deep down into herself and then at one point you’ll just explode?”

“I’m not pushing anything down, I just like to keep some stuff private,” you narrow your eyes at him. “Do you share everything you think about with the people around you?”

“Actually, I do,” he states as the elevator door opens and you walk out side-by-side. “I’m an honest person and I have always had a hard time filtering what leaves my mouth.”

“So you just blurt everything out?” you ask with an amused chuckle.

“Basically,” he nods holding the door open for you as the two of you step out into the chilly late afternoon of the city.

“That’s can’t be too beneficial sometimes.”

“Have I offended people with my words? Definitely, but at least you don’t have to worry about what I think about because you actually know,” he scoffs and you shake your head at him chuckling.

He suggests a pasta place near and you let him lead the way while the two of you keep up a rather light, nice conversation. When you finally sit at the table with your delicious looking carbonara spaghetti right in front of you, that’s when you realize how hungry you’ve really been feeling.

“So, I’m not really big on dancing,” he starts, eyes fixed on his plate as he twirls his fork around, getting the pasta around it before sticking it into his mouth. “I apologize for all the times I’ll crush your feet in advance.”

“How did you get the part if you can’t dance?” you chuckle.

“Do you think Patrick Dempsey was a great dancer in the movie?” he asks and you see his point. “Anyway, I’m just that charming, I guess,” he shrugs jokingly.

“Yeah. I’ll be doing the real work anyway.”

“All the singing, dancing and everything, it really is on your shoulders.”

You just silently nod, suddenly realizing the truth behind those words. The excitement and amusement have pushed everything aside in the past week, but the thought of being a leading role in a Broadway show has been weighing on you secretly, building up your anxiety in the back of your mind about how much is really on your performance.

“Did I say something?” Adam asks, the fork stopping in his hand before he places it back onto his plate, looking at you searching for an answer.

“No, you didn’t.”

“Then why do you look like you just saw a pedophile for the first time?”

“That’s an odd comparison,” you huff at his words.

“But it’s the truth. So what’s gotten you all pale suddenly?”

“I guess it’s just the weight of this whole thing,” you shrug, trying to make it look like a smaller deal than it really is for you.

“It really is a big thing,” he nods in agreement and you’re glad he doesn’t try to convince you it’s just all in your head. “When my previous show opened on Broadway, my then girlfriend just dropped at me that she is moving to Iowa and I couldn’t focus through the night, I felt like I fucked the whole thing up.”

The mentioning of his ex-girlfriend has you wondering who he is talking about. Is this the girl from the film or the one he made the movie with? Is this Jessa girl still his girlfriend anyway? You didn’t find that out and it would be weird to just ask him about it, right?

“Sounds like the worst thing to say to someone who is about to go on stage.”

“Yeah, she didn’t really understand the concept of timing, I guess.” Adam shakes his head at the thought as he continues eating and your curiosity is growing bigger with each passing moment. You just can’t let it slip without a word, you need to ask him about the film. He put it out himself for the whole world to see, he can’t be that ashamed of it, right?

“So… Is this the girl from your film?”

His eyes flicker up to you and you immediately feel your cheeks heating up under his gaze. At first you regret opening your mouth, his straight face frightens you, but then you see that tiny smile playing on his lips and you figure he is more amused than mad.

“So you did your search on me.”

“My friend did,” you shrug and this is the truth, it was Lora who went digging, but he doesn’t have to know it was your idea.

“I bet you have questions.” Leaning back in his seat he drops his hands to his lap.

“Quite a few,” you nod, not wanting to lie now. This is your chance to have a better look at what kind of man he really is.

“Shoot them.”

“Is it true? The plot really happened?”

“Indeed,” he nods without the slightest sign of shame on his face. “I dated Hannah, kind of on and off for a while, then we broke up, and I formed a surprising bond with her best friend, Jessa that eventually turned into a relationship.”

“Don’t you think it was fucked up to date your ex’s best friend?”

You still haven’t been able to wrap your head around the betrayal that it must have been for the first girl, to see her ex with someone she probably trusted and loved.

“I’m not denying that we could have dealt with the situation in a smarter and nicer way, it would have been better if we just came clear at the beginning and be honest with Hannah, but I do not regret being with Jessa.”

“Has she moved on?” you ask and you quickly add: “Hannah, I mean.”

“She lives upstate now and has a baby. As far as I know she and Jessa made up, so… Yeah.”

“So you and Jessa are not together anymore?” You find yourself asking, and the amount of curiosity in yourself surprises you. You definitely shouldn’t care about this as much as you do.

“No,” he shakes his head. “It was never gonna last, we were destroying each other.”

You’re dying to know more, wanting to find out what he really means by that, but you feel like you can’t cross this line just yet, so you have to put up with whatever you got.

“You watched the whole thing?” His eyes flicker up to you, now he is the curious one.

“No, just a little bit of it,” you say, feeling the blush return to your cheeks as the spanking scene immediately starts in your mind again. Adam stares at you for a bit, trying to figure out how much you really saw and you guess your face gives you away way more than you’d want it.

“You think I’m weird,” he states and not questions.

“I was just… surprised,” you admit chuckling. “I wasn’t expecting to see you spank someone on the screen.”

“So you are that… vanilla type of person, huh?”

“I’m sorry?” you grimace.

“Spanking is not that kinky, you wouldn’t believe what kind of fucked up shit people actually do. But if you are horrified of spanking you really are that prude type of person.”

“I’m not prude,” you defend yourself, the hurt in yourself surprising you. Why do you care what he thinks about you?

“Oh really?” He raises his eyebrows at you, obviously enjoying where the conversation is heading. “What’s the most extreme place where you’ve had sex?”

Now you really think your head looks like a tomato and you regret getting into this conversation. You should have known he would go into details.

“I’m not talking about this with you.” Shaking your head you reach for your drink and wish you could drown yourself in the icy water.

“Why? It’s not that big of a deal, you already know something juicy about me,” he chuckles, clearly enjoying making you feel uncomfortable.

“No, but I don’t think it’s appropriate.”

“You’ve seen me spanking someone, I’m sure you can’t get the picture out of your head. Give me something I can think about so we can be equal.”

“That’s literally the worst reasoning I’ve ever heard,” you shake your head laughing.

“Come on! If you tell me, it will help bringing us closer and we can work together better.”

“I doubt that would be the situation,” you give him a look placing your glass back to the table, but he is just smirking at you cheekily.

“I won’t tell anyone, alright? And besides, I’m asking for just one thing. If you watch my whole film, you’ll have a lot more on me, so you’ll be winning.”

“I don’t know if it should be considered winning and I’m not planning on watching the rest of your film, so…”

“Y/N, stop being a pussy!” he groans rolling his eyes at you. “Just spill it!”

He is really not giving up and you blame yourself for getting yourself into this in the first place. You should have just kept your mouth shut.

He leans forward and pouts his lip at you, begging with his eyes and you know you’re screwed. You have no choice but tell him.

“In a limo,” you simply say and you watch his eyes go wide.

“W-With like other people in there, or…”

“No, it was just me and the guy and the partition was up, but I think the driver knew exactly what was happening,” you shake your head chuckling at the memory.

“When did this happen?”

“I was… twenty. So like five years ago. I was dating this rich guy who took me to a posh party and I drank a little too much from the fancy champagne so I didn’t care to wait until we got back to my place.”

You don’t feel that nasty like you were expecting to, it’s like sharing a dirty little secret without getting judged, because Adam looks more thrilled than disgusted by this little detail he just learned about you.

“Was it any good?”

“I mean, we were kinda drunk and it’s not as comfortable as you’d think it would be in a limo, because the height is not enough in there, but it wasn’t bad for sure,” you admit chuckling.

“Mhm, alright, now I’ll think of you every time I see a limo somewhere,” he nods and you kick him under the table making him laugh.

“Shut up. Don’t you ever bring this up, alright?” you warn him holding up a finger in front of him. Raising his hands he shows he got the hint, though you are not perfectly sure he won’t ever mention it.

You hate to say but he was right when he said it would bring you and him closer. After sharing such an intimate thing you don’t feel that anxious just being around him. You’d think talking about your most extreme sex experience and his kink of spanking someone would birth some very awkward tension between the two of you, but it’s not like that at all. You still think he is quite weird in some kind of way, but then… who isn’t? You’re pretty sure he has something against you as well, this is just how it is.

 ***

 The thing with Adam and his role is that he basically falls out of all the dancing and singing, leaving the hardest tasks to you and Clyde while he is usually just… there. In the park scene you’ll have a whole ballet with about thirty dancers with a continuously changing set around you, dancing for about three minutes straight while all Adam has to do is just… follow you around.

But he still attends rehearsals because Matt says Adam needs to know where he stands in the whole at all times. This is why you are at a huge mirrored room with ten dancers, you and Matt, relentlessly working on the choreography for part of the park scene while Adam just basically lingers around the room, occasionally standing in his spot.

“Get a great hold on her hip and just let her momentum help you raise her,” Matt instructs to the young dancer guy whose name you’ve been trying to remember for an hour, but it just doesn’t come to you. You stand facing each other as he nods and grabs on your hips firmly while you put your hands to his shoulders.

“Five, six, seven, eight!” Matt counts and you leap away from the ground, jumping up, but he misses the beat and doesn’t hold you in time, making you fall back to your feet and failing the move, again. “It’s not that hard, Jordan!” Matt snaps, clearly annoyed that you’ve been trying to nail this move for about ten minutes now. At least now you have his name.

He nervously lets go of you, rubbing his face with his hands, you bet he is trying his best, but he is just too nervous to do it.

Looking around Matt seemingly tries to find a substitute, but the small group of dancers at the rehearsal is not too promising, given the fact that most of them are women. You cross your arms on your chest, swinging your hips to the sides absentmindedly as you wait patiently. Matt’s dark and tired eyes land on Adam, who is sitting in the corner, reading a book and he makes an immediate decision.

“Adam, would you join us, please?”

His head shoots up and nodding he puts the book down striding over to you in the middle of the room.

“We need to improvise and I’m sure you’ll have no problem lifting her up,” Matt explains and walking around he instructs his hands to your hips.

You gulp hard at the warmth of his touch, having him so close is suddenly making you more self-conscious at the way you stand and look. Matt tells him how the move should go and Adam seems to be deep in his focus as he nods at the instructions.

“Y/N, try to jump a little higher, Adam is taller so you’ll need more power.”

“Okay,” you nod placing your hands to his broad shoulders.

“Alright, five, six, seven, eight!”

Bending your knee you push yourself away from the ground, your eyes meeting Adam’s gaze the moment your feet rise into the air and unlike with Jordan, you actually stay in the air.

His grip on your hips tighten, fingers digging into you and you suck on your breath holding part of your weight on your arms leant onto his shoulders. Just as Matt told him, he twirls you around, the skirt you’ve been wearing for rehearsals to make you get used to your future dresses flows after your frame until he finishes the whole circle and gently puts you down to the floor again, hands still on your waist and you don’t let go of him either.

“Okay, this looked amazing, so we are keeping it with you,” Matt cheers clapping his hands together, making both of you turn to him.

“What?” you ask a little confused.

“Yeah, I think it would look great.”

“Isn’t the scene about him being totally skeptical about the whole singing and dancing?”

“Yeah, but there is conflict in him, the music takes him a little bit so I think it would actually be amazing if he was the one doing the lifting.”

You see his logic and you have to admit it looks good, so you don’t question his decision. Matt puts the music on and the dancers take their spot around you as you start the previously learned choreography. You see Adam following his way around while everyone else is dancing around him, keeping up his skeptical act before it’s finally time for the lift again.

Your hands go to his shoulders and this time the whole move is faster, it’s just about a heartbeat long, but your eyes meet again and you let out a gasp knowing the music is tuning out the sound of it. You wouldn’t bet your life on it, but for a split second it feels like he squeezes your hips while holding up, and when he lets go of you his hand brushes against your butt or so it feels.

Your body reacts regardless of what your brain is telling yourself. It feels good to be touched by him and whenever his fingers dig into your flesh you think about what it would feel like if you weren’t dressed. And then, you make the mistake of thinking about the film again, the way his arms flexed with each movement before his palm collided with the girl’s ass.

You miss a step, but luckily, it’s not that big of a deal, Matt just tells you to focus next time and you shortly nod before he orders a five minute break. Wanting to escape the closeness of Adam you launch for your bag in the back of the room and grab your water feeling like you need to clear yourself out somehow.

“You clearly can’t contain your thoughts.”

His voice makes you jump and turning around your eyes meet his satisfied grin that you want to wipe off of him so bad.

“It would be easier if you weren’t touching my ass.”

“I wasn’t!” he protests, but the cheeky smile on his face gives him away and that you felt it right. He really was touching your ass. “If it makes you feel better, I thought that your rich ex-boyfriend had the same view of you in the limo while you rode him that I have when I lift you up.”

“Fucking Hell, Adam!” you gasp smacking his arm as he just laughs, enjoying that he can make you feel uncomfortable so easily.

“Come on! I’m just joking, okay? Let loose, you are so tensed.”

“If you kept your promise I wouldn’t be so tensed,” you mumble under your breath turning away from him, but he moves to get in your sight once again, leaning against the wall.

“Alright, I’m sorry. But I didn’t tell anyone, I swear.”

“Better keep that way.”

“Have you watched the rest of the film?”

“No, Adam. I told you I don’t want to,” you sigh, but it’s not really the truth. You do have curiosity about the rest, you just don’t know if you’d be able to handle it.

“Okay, alright. Sorry for bugging you. Though I’m curious what you’d say about the whole thing, like cinematically.”

“I’ll let you know when I choose to watch it and have an opinion,” you force a smile to yourself before walking away or more like escaping from the conversation.

Rehearsal ends an hour later and you have to do the lift three more times, having Adam stare into your soul every time you are above him, but you don’t think about the film anymore. Instead, it’s all about what he is thinking about. The thought of being on top of him in the back of a limo poisons your mind and no matter how hard you are trying to let go of it, you fail every time because there is that tiny smile playing on his lips and it’s making you lose your shit immediately.

You manage to leave without running into him once the rehearsal is over. It’s a huge wave of relief once you finally arrive home and you also feel like you could collapse right into bed from being so tired. After a relaxing shower you climb to bed and take your computer just checking up on your usual things. Right until you find yourself in your browser’s history, the cursor lingering above the link to Adam’s film.

“I’m losing my mind,” you whisper to yourself opening it and the film starts on your screen once again.

-

general/forever taglist for Adam Driver

i do separate taglists for different people, but not for different works of mine! if you ask to be on my Adam taglist, you’ll be tagged in all of my Adam fics!

@superdriver​ @siren-queen03​ @holacherrycola90​ @spencer-is-amazing​ @unusual-kindred-spirits @hailthemightywoecloud @holy-kylo-stars​ @kowalskibro-adamdriverblog​ @hurricanesunset​ @writerandee​ @luxury-0pps​ @prncess91​ @malefoygal @zaahidahhh @filternotincluded @fire-in-her-veinz @emily-strange @ktellmeastory​ @grouchosgirl​ @tapismyforte​ @unusual-driver-paterson​ @beeblisss​ @septicvic97​

if you’d like to be taken off or added to the list, please let me know!

[cass-burger]

Wow stardew really did dunk on cyberpunk didn’t it? I know it’s not exactly the perfect comparison they’re very different games trying to do very different things but I’m totally fine with just having games like stardew (not in terms of gameplay but in terms of scope I guess is the right word). Funny how a game made with love and with no pretentiousness to revolutionize or be the “game with best X” is not only playable on every platform it also has a huge following for a few years now and is still getting updates that are crazy good (and free the updates that is) mean while mister “we’re going to revolutionize gaming with the best and most in-depth character creator ever” got kicked out of the PlayStation store

maybe I just follow all the right people but it really feels to me this year that the games that have actually left a cultural impact on people or that have managed to stay in the conversation space (where others, the typically “big name” titles, have died down a bit after release or don’t even really get talked about at all) are the games that you can clearly see were made with love and cos it’s what people wanted to make and what they truly believed would be just actually fun to play. if i think of the games that came out this year that are still popular and talked about right now i would say among us, fall guys, hades, animal crossing (although that did die down a bit but I feel like that’s got a lot to do with the villager dialogue trees unfortunately being extremely shallow), phasmophobia popped up a bit there towards the end of the year. outside of animal crossing none of these are what you would consider ‘big name’ titles. closest I can think of is fall guys just cos they have the backing of revolver which is a decent sized game company by its own name but even then it didn’t get much airtime at all until it was released and became massively popular. the one thing that all these games have in common at least in my eyes is that they were made with so much love by the creators and it really shines through.

now I’m sure the triple a titles that made shittons of money and won big at the game awards and sold consoles and all that, im sure they were also made with love. i don’t want to say the devs on those games weren’t putting their love into it and weren’t passionate about what they were making cos I can guarantee they were. what I am saying however is that the love being poured into it never got a chance to shine through. now there’s a bunch of reasons for that *cough*CAPITALISM*cough* and I think that the way triple a games are made is actually very restrictive to what the game can achieve. the art style is almost exclusively ~realistic~ to the point that how close to uncanny valley or lifelike or w/e you can get, the better. the hours and exhaustion and lack of good leadership almost always lead to things being overlooked in development resulting in a load of bugs and glitches and general problems with the game, the most well demonstrated example so far being cp77.

now back to the non-big-name, cass’s-personal-decision-of-what-the-most-loved-games-of-2020-were list of games, I’m not gonna say none of those problems were there (well maybe the art style one. none of these games are “realistic” looking lol), I’m saying that even if they were there, the leadership and teamwork and vision and whatever else was good enough that the games we got were fun to play, fun to look at, able to continue to be popular despite having much less “content” than other names, and the ‘made with love’ thing I keep talking about really really shone through.

now to actually get back on topic for this ask, I know stardew valley didn’t come out this year, and it’s definitely taken a bit of a backseat since a few years ago when it was the most popular indie game, but it ticks all of the same boxes as the other games on this list, AND it was made by one man!! Like!! Albeit I’m pretty sure he now has a small team helping him but STILL! basically this very long tangent deviating away from what you were asking is just to say that stardew valley and any other game like it where it doesn’t matter how many people worked on it or how graphically or performance-heavily impressive it is, will always beat out any triple a game as to how much people care about it and want to play and keep playing it well after release. it’s because it’s made with love and the creator/s are able to share that love with people playing it and it makes the people playing it love it all that much more. i honestly can’t say I’m surprised that sv did better than cp77 this year because like of course it did. it was always going to. the content coming out of a capitalistic machine cranking out triple a titles will never be able to live up to the passion project of some dude who doesn’t have a proper desk and just wants to make a cute pixel art game where you farm and romance cute people. it just isn’t possible under capitalism and the way that triple a games are made.

[thelastpilot]

What if Ninos such a good character BECAUSE he has such little focus? Less screen time means less of a chance of poor writing decisions ruining his character, like how Adrien kinda turned into a "nice guy" when he started out as a pretty decent character.

well i mean that is one way to look at it but ultimately the show is the word you know. the problem with ML in particular is that the show came out very slowly and vaguely, meaning they didnt provide a lot right away even with the episodes they released. so the fans were left to extrapolate things. with essentially a workshop of thousands of people we came to conclusions on certain characters we really liked ahead of what the show could establish, so suddenly they were up against these comparisons they might not have been had the show released quicker or with more development per episode. so like i had two years to build ‘Nino’, my version of him at least, and i kinda sold a lot of people on that interpretation as well. so everytime something about him comes out or he gets any screen time theres an opportunity for it to go a totally different direction and thats not wrong, cause i was making assumptions anyways? 

my point is that while i would personally be disappointed with Nino turning out a certain way thats just because i spent so long on him, doesnt mean that mine is ‘right’ and the canon is ‘wrong’, the canon is whats real i just have the freedom to not be a fan of it. 

thats why i stopped caring, cause i realized i was eventually so out of tune with the direction of the show that i was hoping for certain characters to not show up at all because I wasn’t vibing with what ended up unfolding. and if i dont want to see my favorite characters at all and wasn’t very interested in anything else then… what was i doing? lol, like why was i bothering. so thats why i just view fandom on its own now, i just have my headcanons of the characters and thats fine with me. i mostly just like the friends i have and occasionally still posting with nino, but also just going with my other fandoms and chillin’ there. 

so i guess if thats the way we end up feeling as viewers then its just time to move on, i cant spend time rooting against someone elses story, im just gonna leave them to telling it and go do something else. its a shame cause i like nino, but i only ever really liked my version of him anyways so what have i lost lol. 

[tangerinegod]

Hello! I am sorry to bother you but I am a senior getting ready for college this year. I am in the US and I wanted to major in the same thing you did, do you have any possible tips for me? I still haven't even looked for colleges that would be best for animation majors so I figured if you were up to giving out any tips/saying any basic ideas if you wanted to/if you had the time to then maybe I'll have a better idea! I apologise for if I sound weird! I'm tried to word it correctly but I can't 😿

hi!! i’m totally down to share my experiences! someone else also had some questions so i’m going to put them all together in this post haha, hopefully this helps! it’ll get pretty long so apologies ahead of time but art school is a lot to think about so i wanna be as helpful as i can around it, its a lot of time and money. I’m gonna put it all under a read more cus it is really really long!

i wanna start off with the fact that I had the privilege of attending school in a financially stable environment, my parents were/are really supportive so w merit scholarship i only came out with around 20-30k in debt and i also had housing support my entire time in school. they were ok with me focusing on academics so i didn’t hold a retail job unless i was out of school like summer/winter break. Ofc though i regularly take commissions/do merch/cons to try and pay for all bills that arent rent cus i did want to be financially independent where it was possible. I also did try and work during the semester but everytime i did my body would deff start to breakdown from the fact that i didnt wanna compromise schoolwork with jobs.. so just read ahead know this experience is from a student who was able to attend focusing only on school work for most of the time!

the biggest thing is knowing art school is not required to become a professional in either freelancing or industry! there are a huuuge amount of online tools and classes these days that provide the exact same education and for cheaper too. i think it depends on what experience you prefer/can handle/want but it’s definitely possible to make art/animation art your living without higher education. the thing that college will for sure give you though is the ability to meet deadlines, work even when you dont want to, and connections with peers+teachers. i think the connections part is invaluable because you’re basically coming out with a network of people you already know and who know you! 

also its good to know if you want to attend/can handle art school! it’s a lot of time and energy and students get burned out really fast. the best piece of advice i got before going was ‘if you draw every single day, even if its for only like 5-10 minutes or a doodle for a whole year you should be fine’ consistency is super key because you’re attending school to draw, and you’ll have to create work for stuff you aren’t excited for at some point or another. burnout is extremely real and the only reason i didn’t experience it was probably because i got super into drawing naruto fanart again inbetween sophomore and junior year! it helped give me something to draw seperated from school which is the only thing i was drawing for since i had entered rip. a heads up id also consider myself a workaholic so i fit in ok with the ‘art school’ environment but it is suuper unhealthy. if you are fantastic at managing your schedule then it’s definitely possible to take care of yourself! freshman year i got 8 hours a sleep a night and only pulled all nighters for some second semester finals at the end. sophomore year + up though i ended up prioritizing hw over sleep and like for sure, definitely shortened my life span. there’s another q down below where i’ll go more into detail but ya, be careful w ur work balance!

another tip especially for animation is knowing for a fact what type of animation you’re looking to go into, and what the school is offering. I didn’t think i’d get into art school at the time so i only applied to two places + decided if i didnt get into either id attend community to get credits out of the way while building portfolio. honestly? i did not do a lot of research LOL but like i did end up having the chance to tour and stuff! just know that each school will have a very different curriculum. The main differences are schools that prioritize 3D (cg animation, cg modeling, ect) and 2D/traditional (hand drawn, ‘oldschool’, digital or traditional based) this is a huge difference so make sure you do research for it! in most cases a 2D/traditional program will also offer 3D since it’s at the forefront of the industry animation wise rn. My school taught 2D but like hand drawn on physical paper 2D, frame by frame. while it was a good experience it’s super outdated because digital tools make it way faster + easier! i’d recommend looking for a program that is digital 2D over traditional 2D. 

if after your senior year covid is still affecting campuses in the US to keep them shut down i’d recommend attending a community college to get credits and then transferring into school. one of the negatives is paying money for gened classes when ur not there for them; if you can get them out of the way sooner and cheaper there is absolutely no negative + you could graduate earlier or use the extra time for better work or to work a job! 

these are all the general tips i think i’d give on like a broad basis of attending or not to think about? let me know if u have more q’s! someone asked q’s im answering below that go more into personal experiences + work culture so heres those:

- how many hours a week do u spend studying, in class, otherwise making art? like how much of ur life does it consume?

I was basically working on art.... 24/7! since i wasnt working a job at the same time i crammed as many credits as possible into my schedule so on avg i did 18 credit semesters (around 6 classes) art classes go for 6 hours and non art go for 3, so i’d spent around 30-35 hours in class a week! hw wise it varied on the class but combined it would be around 35-50 hours a week... im guessing? on average studio classes would have 8-10 hours of hw, maybe 5 for a light week, and gened classes 5 hours w them all combined. or this was probably how things were before junior year? junior+senior year i had thesis + everything else ontop.. i’d spend around 30-40 hours on thesis a week with other classes ontop of that bc my film was super long cus im a dummy! 

- is it hard going to art school n realising that altho u were probably quite talented… so is everyone else? Like. all of a sudden. ur not special and everyone seems as good as u, you know? More generally, how do u deal with comparison?

kinda?? i think instead of the idea of like you vs others it feels more of like a competition at first to be the best. this varies hugely on school culture though; my animation year was really friendly with each other and get along extremely well, so my answer to this is v different than some others who attended different schools. i think that the idea of ‘comparison’ only lasts a portion of the first year because at some point you realize that it’s not a who’s better as much as its a ‘these are my coworkers’ type thing? like healthy competition 100% because we’re all working to improve but i think most of us learned pretty early on that viewing each other as peers going into the same workforce helped a lot. also at some point everyone develops their own style/starts to develop their artistic preferences so there isn’t a way to compare whos 'better’ anymore? i dont think there ever is tbh because style is appealing based off of an individuals preferences. If anything realizing everyone else is also amazing makes you wanna work harder ig? or thats how i felt! it’s inspiring to be surrounded by so many people who create such amazing work. 

- is there a lot of workaholic culture? all nighter culture?

100000% there can be a workaholic and all nighter culture. i know people who avoided it and thats honestly fantastic because i fall super easily into that pit. sometimes i’ll pull all nighters on a personal project just because i really want to finish it... i am definitely considered a workaholic all the way through and its not healthy rip... i’d estimate at the worst i was pulling 2-3 all nighters a week and only 4-5 hours of sleep on the nights i didn’t? that was only for one year tho, after that i was like yeah ok this is really bad for my health in the long run LOL so i tried to cut it down to one all nighter a week and around 5-6 hours of sleep the rest of the week! by senior year my decision to cram in full semesters paid off and i was able to consistently get around 7 hours of sleep a night + no all nighters minus finals since my schedule was lighter despite thesis 😭 while there is that culture i don’t think people view it as like a badge of honor or something to be proud of anymore which is good, we mostly view it as a flaw of the art school system and something that needs to be fixed!!

- are you glad u did it? how did u know it was what u wanted?

i am glad i did it! i’m definitely in a limbo right now of if it was worth both my time, money, and my parents money rip but i think with what i got out of it i definitely wouldn’t be as far skill wise or knowledge wise when it comes to the art industry. i would say it was only worth it for be because i had so much support going in though so i was able to focus so much on improving. if i had only been able to put in part of the effort and not make full use of the resources provided i would honestly have a different answer.. 

i knew it was what i wanted when i realized i really couldn’t see myself pursuing a different profession happily! despite all the bumps and stuff im fully in love with drawing still and feel honored that it’s a field that can provide a living. my second profession choice was to go into culinary school? and third option i think going was into music cus i was also a band kid hehe.  

- how do u cope with ur hobby becoming ur job? how do u deal with art going from something u do for fun to something u do on command constantly?

i think seperating work art from personal art is important! in my case im doubling naruto into being personal work so i have something to fall back onto that isn’t work related. its been a hyperfixation for 12+ years? so drawing it at this point is just like personal art imo. some people have hobbies outside of art and only draw for their job! i think after attending classes for so long the idea of hobby turning into job feels extremely natural? also i enjoy doing it so thats a huge plus! 

sorry this is SO long but i hope i answered your guys’ questions! if you have more just lmk!

[blookmallow]

i finally rewatched Us watching for details... I also took a bunch of screenshots, I’ve mentioned before I live in santa cruz and grew up going to this boardwalk so im obsessed with this movie, I’m going to go try to take some better comparison shots sometime (here’s a few I took before) (and here’s a Tethered mannequin that was outside of the frightwalk for a while. i havent been inside for ages so I don’t know if they moved him inside or if he’s just gone now) (i HOPE they did something with the theme considering the frightwalk is literally a horror attraction beneath the boardwalk. i dont really want to go in there by myself though lmao. not a fan of animatronics jumping out and screaming at me) 

this is a lot, i have many things to say 

-----------------

- the opening news segment is 11 at 11 

- you can faintly see adelaide/red’s reflection in the tv screen, with a toy rabbit (her shirt also has twin lines on it in multiple places but that could be looking too far lmao) 

- in the “Hands Across America” segment (aside from the obvious red figures linked together in the logo) : “from the golden gate bridge to the twin towers” another possible 11/twinning, and it starts in california, which is where the tethered revolution begins 

- on “from sea to shining sea” the exact same coastline image is just flipped 

(there’s also another 11 on the side of the TV here) 

- “This summer, 6 million people will tether themselves together” 

- brief mirroring in the boardwalk ad, not just two girls running on the beach but also two girls with upside down reflections in the ground, 

- fairly obvious one, but “find yourself” (as a sidenote there’s nothing in that spot irl, the roller coaster and the swings are real but there was never a ‘vision quest’ or a ‘merlin forest’ as far as I know and there’s no door or anything there either, the interior shots must’ve been done separately somewhere else) (nothing’s left here from the movie now either, I have no idea when they filmed it because I never saw anything or heard anything about it) 

- adelaide/red whistles “the itsy bitsy spider” when the lights go out in the vision quest - “down came the rain and washed the spider out,” it’s raining outside when her tethered comes up (and she is dragged down). she also drops her red apple on the ground before she enters 

- zora’s rabbit shirt 

- everyone else is eating fast food of some kind, except adelaide, who is eating red strawberries 

as well as being a visual cue, its possible she has an aversion to meat if she was forced to eat raw rabbit as a child

- young adelaide arranging animals in the sand (it seems like some of the tethered tend to mirror their counterpart’s movements, so it’s possible she’s mirroring red, though it’s probably not that likely she’d be planning this early/the dance hasnt happened yet so its probably just foreshadowing) 

- young adelaide very pointedly watches “her” mother crying, saying “I just want my little girl back” - she will never have her little girl back again, though she doesn’t know it (I’m not sure if adelaide still remembers what she’s done at this point either) 

its also mentioned that ‘grandma’ has passed away as of the present time, likely adelaide’s mother (i dont remember if its stated outright but since the house belonged to the grandma, and it’s in santa cruz, that would line up) so. the tethered mother, if she’s still alive, would not kill red’s real mother in the uprising. dont know about the father, or if red knows/cares about this, but. thats there. that also means the original mother will never know what happened with her daughter (likely the father won’t either, it’s not clear if he’s still alive but there’s no mention of him being around/he’s not at the house so it seems likely he passed already too) 

- adelaide, her reflection, and a (not so) itsy bitsy spider 

theres even two spiders, one a toy, one real 

- jason crawls out of a cabinet at zora’s feet and scares her while she’s looking in a mirror (which is also a very pluto-like movement) 

- adelaide finds the toy rabbit in a box; assuming the intro was chronological, we saw “her” with it in the tv screen reflection before she went to the boardwalk, so this was red’s rabbit first (she probably does not remember this, though) (red also later finds this and cuts off the head, not sure why though)

- adelaide “sees” her child self in the room with her (in her memory) learning her dance alongside her reflection

 but the reflection is the one she “sees” looking directly at her 

(she’s also interrupted by hearing her son, above her, screaming because he’s trapped, but that might not be intentional) (though when red comes down here later, she is also interrupted by her son getting stuck in the closet too)

- she’s also wearing a choker necklace with a matching gold bracelet, maybe an allusion to. the choking and the handcuffs, again i might be looking into it too much, but. the white clothes which steadily become red with blood seems very intentional so i wouldnt be surprised if the jewelry was planned specifically too 

- its really hard to see and its a split second throwaway comment but kitty goes “oh isnt that beautiful” showing her the magazine and i thhiiiink thats a white girl in a native american headdress :’  ) probably doesnt have. much deeper meaning other than ‘clueless white friends’ but 

- guy buried in sand comes bursting to the surface again and scares his friends (also eyyooooo you can see the wharf in the background im down there all the time) (sorry this is still wild to me. i grew up here ive been to that beach like 9 million times)

- i didnt catch it and was waiting for it to be shown again and it wasnt and i dont want to go back for it but anyway jason has a drawing of a bunch of people holding hands in a line like the hands across america thing in his room, theres a lot of drawings around and we see his drawing of the first untethered, so he probably drew that as well

- jason has a hard time communicating, but he seems to use drawing as a way to express himself. he doesn’t tell his mother about the encounter with the old man (and only shrugs when he’s asked about it) but he does draw it. adelaide found self expression through dance when she was a child before she was able to talk, so he probably got those traits from her. her voice also goes low and hollow on the line “I just didn’t know if you were lost, or... taken” 

- her voice also gets very strange when she’s talking about her memory of the encounter in the vision quest. low, shaky, harsh. its fascinating hearing how much alike the voices are (obviously they’re both the same actress/if the tethered are clones it makes sense that they’d have identical vocal chords but like. red’s got a fucked up voice. hearing echos of that in adelaide is wild and i didnt notice it at all before) 

- its not clear whether adelaide actually remembers what she did, or even realizes she was the copy - is she trying to protect her family from what she believes was the girl who almost took her, or trying to stop her from getting her revenge? she describes the event to gabe as if she was the one who was attacked but escaped, and im not sure if she’s lying or has convinced herself that’s the truth

something’s going on with jason and pluto too but I don’t quite know what it is. when we first see jason he’s wearing a Jaws shirt, kind of a similar vibe to the thriller shirt, and when the tethered arrive he’s wearing a white tuxedo t shirt, white matching his mother’s white outfit. the others all go off to kill their doubles but pluto holds jason’s hand, sits with him quietly, watches his magic trick, he’s told to go “play” which. obviously has a violent undertone to it but he doesn’t actually try to kill him. i dont even remember seeing him with the scissors. why are jason and pluto different. why does pluto get stuck mirroring jason’s movements even to the point of his death but the others dont. why didn’t adelaide mirror red

i guess its possible its because pluto is the youngest in the family so maybe he hasn’t broken out of his connection yet? they didnt really ever explain how they learned to do that 

and as for the connection with adelaide it. could just be that jason takes after his mom more and zora takes after her dad more but that seems too simple. i mean theres the theory going around that jason was actually switched with his clone too at some point and its got some good points (jason forgetting the magic trick, getting stuck in the closet again, etc) but theres a whole line of logic to debunk that too so its just. What’s Going On Here  

cal 11 

i took the first pic to get a comparison shot at the same place later irl but then noticed the ambulance they come across is the same one (#2) they saw earlier 

pretty obvious but the real rabbit comes out through the picture of an identical rabbit (there’s also probably a “rabbit hole” allusion here) 

i noticed this before too but now i have a screenshot of it, im the rabbit in the background just chilling on the floor during the climax here

- im sure i must have seen this before but i forgot about it. the 11:11 guy’s tethered didn’t have a sign so he just.......carved it into his head

- it never healed, either, he did it badly enough to scar

- red says “I couldn’t stop thinking about you, how you could have taken me with you” - she doesn’t mean adelaide ran off and left her there. adelaide made the choice to trap her in the underground. its possible red might have even been thinking how she would have let adelaide come with her if given the chance, which. i mean, i dont know how her parents would have reacted to suddenly having identical twins out of nowhere, but like. knowing there’s a chance red might have accepted her. and all this could have been different 

this is definitely a movie that’s not really intended to be fully explained, there’s a lot of questions that aren’t really supposed to be answered, but nonetheless one of my biggest concerns is where do the clothes come from underground. red tells us they were all abandoned down there generations ago so nobody’s supervising or providing anything. how do they end up with copies of the clothing their counterparts are wearing. and here adelaide has a messed up faded old shirt that either looks similar to red’s shirt or is the same shirt just badly damaged, she switches it with red’s before she goes out for good so that explains how she gets the new shirt, but where did this one come from. why is it different if the other clothes aren’t

and of course there’s the whole question of “where did they all get these red jumpsuits from” but again. questions that aren’t really the point, i guess

[ariyadaivaris]

im giving this very minimal editing. this is a very long post because i thought about gold standard last night and had an out of body experience. it is not very good because i wrote it and also it was like 4 in the morning and i was unwell. i don’t know why its worded the way it is it sounds like i was trying to sound professional and thoughtful or something and i dont know why the fuck i tried that how embarrassing cringe and fail blogger. i am posting it anyway because this is what i do is embarrass myself online. thank you <3 

  Tony after being betrayed said he was hurt, but he knew what teaming with That Guy offered, what the benefits were, and why someone would do it. This is the thing: WHY did the betrayal happen? It happened because Tony stood up to That One. Tony stood up to Enzo specifically because Ariya failed, and when Enzo chewed him out for it Tony stepped in. This was both righteous and kind, and it made everything harder.

  Ariya participated in the betrayal because of this. BECAUSE Tony was kind to him! Because Tony saying the way Ariya was being treated was wrong, and if Ariya believes that, then he is suddenly in a LOT of danger at the champion's hands. Ariya has feuded with a few people already. He has been humiliated for no reason. He has been beaten down by someone who wanted it more. Ariya isn't in a great place to think he can leave and make it. Ariya made a deal with the devil, he's safe as a goon, he cannot fight what happens to him now. Tony and Drew have each other, if it breaks bad, and they're both friends with Ariya he guesses, but not in the same way. He has nowhere to go and no way to fight.

  Tony, however, DOES fight. Tony challenges Ariya's idea that he has to suck it up and deal with it. If it's all three of them against him, then maybe they could get out. Ariya gets his idea about the shape of the world, the place everyone has in it, challenged. And he rejects it! He can't accept it! Tony is fighting to protect HIM! And he denies it!

  And the thing is, this is something Tony understands. Tony confronts Drew instead of Ariya, because--well because dubya weighs their importance differently because of the racism but because Drew hasn't bought in the way Ariya has. If anyone is OVER enough to challenge Enzo at this time? It is Mister FUCKING PowerPoint babey!!!!!!!! Drew gets onboarded and accepts because it might make him more popular, more able to gain traction for his bullshit no fun allowed ideas! Ariya is backed into a corner of his own design, and its not good and it doesn't make him betraying Tony FINE, but Tony understands what happened. Why Ariya did that. In a way, he understands Drew, too, of course. The influence is too appealing, he knows that. But Drew /chose/ to join in when he was given a chance to help Tony. 

  Maybe Drew needed to regain confidence too, maybe he needed to get back on his stupid little feet, it's been awhile since I've seen that storyline play out and I dont remember all the details. But I think the other thing is...Tony and Drew were literally closer at the time. Ariya was still their friend, OBVIOUSLY, even if the canon was noncommittal about saying it, but Tony and Drew were like. I mean. YOU know. You were there. Drew turning on Tony, after all that they'd done together, held so much weight behind it. Tony doesn't demand an explanation from Ariya. But he NEEDS to know Drew is sorry. He needs things to be okay between them. But they're not, and they never are again.

  This is...another thing. Drew doubles down on this to the point it turns him into something else entirely. Tony demands an apology from him, and he /refuses/. He offers some small, pathetic I'm Sorrys during the match, as long as he's getting hurt, as long as Tony has the upper hand, but when push comes to shove, he breaks in the other direction. He's not sorry. He didn't do anything wrong. Tony held him back, if you really think about it actually, because why would Drew have ever done anything wrong? Really, this is Tony's fault if you think about it (it was not Tony's fault)

  Ariya isn't given a chance to apologize in the same way. Tony and Drew clash during the tournament. Ariya gets knocked out in round one, gets injured soon after (which breaks up a potential feud with Mustafa as well and every fucking day it makes me want to scream, I would do anything on this earth for them to feud, please God take me back) and spends most of 2018 out of action. There's just no time, and even if there was, its questionable if dubya would even care about the opportunity. The next time they meet, it's when Tony's the champion and Ariya has finally decided hes better off alone anyway.

  Tony is different. He's the champion, and he's a face, at that. He's earned the title by seeking vengeance against someone who wronged him, and he found it. He's lost in a lot of ways, but he's trying to be confident, and he is trying to become the kind of person who can represent the championship. Not just as someone who got it on the way to a kind of small interpersonal victory, but as a Real Champion. The kind 205 (usually) fosters. The kind that didnt ruin his life.

  Tony is also the same. He's Ariya's friend. In the middle of a sea of changes, Ariya is familiar. They can pick up where they left off, if Ariya wants. If Ariya just...if he just changes alignments for Tony. If he accepts that Tony wants him. 

  Ariya is different. Alone after abandoning Kenta during a failed attempt at vengeance against a mutual enemy. Akira, who Kenta discarded after a few too many losses. Akira, who beat Ariya in pursuit of the title, a loss that Ariya never really came back from. Ariya loses to Akira again, even playing support for someone else. And he lashes out. And he works on his own, because he doesn't trust anyone to help him.

  Ariya's also the same. He lashes out, and he doesn't trust anyone to help him. Ariya carries his career around on his back. He carries, in reflection of someone else's experience, a chip on his shoulder. It weighs him down. When Tony offers him understanding, he does what he has always done, and he rejects it. Tony faces Drew, the ghost of their shared past, and Ariya is there to remind him exactly why he exists as he does now. "I didn't hurt you, but I could have. I just wanted you to know." Tony cannot trust Drew anymore. He shouldn't trust Ariya, Ariya warns him.

  Ariya doesn't say sorry, because he can't, because he's too busy sabotaging his last remaining friendship for Tony's own good, for his own good, for him to convince himself he never cared in the first place, but he regrets it. He cuts Tony off because it's easier than apologizing because this motherfucker will NEVER admit to having problems, he will drink water with a lemon slice and that will fix everything, thank you, but he does this to warn Tony off before Ariya can hurt him again. Ariya lashes out. It's what he does. Its better this way, where Tony can't get hurt.

  (Ariya, who doesn't put himself in harm's way for anyone, who has Evasion as his middle name, who sneaks around conflicts every chance he gets, flattering and tricking and taking opportunities because he doesn't trust his own skills to get him wins, Ariya thinks he's protecting Tony. But maybe he's still protecting himself. Ariya saw Tony and Drew, saw them again, saw how they have something that he doesn't. Ariya can't trust anyone the way they trusted each other. Ariya will never, ever be to Tony what Drew was. The sooner Ariya prevents even the chance for that comparison to exist, the sooner they can forget it ever happened, the sooner he can stop thinking about it like Tony could want to be his friend all the same. Like Tony could be thinking he's just not a threat the way Drew is. Like Tony could know everything about Ariya and forgive him anyway, like Ariya could ever do right by that forgiveness. Like Ariya could /ever/ earn anything.)

  It took a long time for them to get where they are even now! Tony and Ariya danced around the idea of teaming with each other for a long time, talking around it and avoiding each other and not thinking about it. Now that they are, we can actually see HOW their relationship has evolved since then. Ariya and Tony have remained a team, and Ariya has begun to risk things for people. He was doing it a bit before, with someone who definitely didn't deserve it, but Ariya is now trying to actively protect Tony in matches, after matches, when he's hurt. Ariya hasn't asked for Tony's help or really accepted it on a level deeper than Win Match yet (and honestly Ariya probably realistically needs more help than anyone can give him, help that has to come from himself), but he's offering his own. And when Ariya realizes he's not winning on his own, when he had his little Moment at the beginning of the year where he got ready to sabotage and run because he can't start depending on people and especially not on Tony, the LAST person who needs to be looking after Ariya again, when that happened, Tony took a step back and let Ariya work on his own. When Ariya does what he needs to to feel In Control, which is usually a little murder but I like him so it's okay, Tony leaves him to do it on his own or plays support for him instead. 

  Its like... there is a healing in the rift between them in the specific way it needed to heal, y'know? It's not perfect and there's always a chance the writers get bored again and do some bullshit, but like...tony and Ariya specifically have like. One of the most interesting relationships in wrestling right now. It's like. God. I could just die thinking about it. I care them

[plainvanillapotato]

the 100 diaries S2 E2

quarantine diaries: may 27 2020

season 2 episode 2: “Inclement weather”

i know y’all said that kane and bellamy arent canonical father and son but i could really see it in this episode. these writers are planted this plot point but then they drop it?? im really curious as to why they did this.

those guns really didn’t level the playing fields bc lets be honest the grounders can fuck it up guns or no guns. and fuck you kane trying to blame and guilt bellamy. not in my household. these kids had no chance of surviving if it werent for mama clarke and pap bellamy. lets also recall the fact that you were part of the council that sent these kids down here in the first place with not actual hope that they would survive.

“this should be fun”-murphy **are they really setting up murphy as the sarcastic/relatable character??? i cant. 

kane really spewing out laws but if you havent noticed y’all arent on the ark no more 

they are pushing this maya and jasper ship. soo loong jasper x octavia ship.

why did they give clarke a key card? did these people not know that learn from last time? ooooo that person dont look so good? ‘Chernobyl’ the writers said. 

new intro. this art is something else. and im not be sarcastic here. i genuinely like this intro. but i do hope it changes for each of the new seasons just to make things more interesting.

raven be in pain but still be a baddie with impeccably perfect eyebrows. seriously tho? are they gonna perform surgery with no anesthesia? like raven this is no minor procedure.

oooooooo what is this grounder with this weird as haircut and mike tysons face tattoo 

this place has breakfast buffets? ok i see the validity behind jasper not wanting to leave 

why was the baby in the drawer tho. jaha gets a second chance to be a father. giving him a new purpose and reason to live??? 

just shut up finn. and ooo raven this gonna hurt. i cant believe abby actually agreed to performing this operations especially in these conditions. literally abby is operating while her patient is lucid and screaaaaming her ass off.

stop it murphy. i dont care. murphy you will never be on the same level as prettyboy bellamy

big yikes. the grounders be sending messages

i cant believe that these people are actually obliging clarke its not she has actual authority and agency to do anything.

where did that baby get that chess piece.??? 

yes it can be that crazy. is jaha really going to use a missile to travel back to earth? ummm im no scientist by any means i dont even have my b.s. degree yet but im pretty sure that this is not a stable idea. but im willing suspend logic if y’all are

the guys name is nyko. more like geico. “He can save in 15 minutes or less” i couldnt help myself. would have been better if his name was washington. you know because of lincoln.

what type of payback is this octavia?! im never doing you a favor cause you’d really do some stupid shit. is octavia really that strong tho cuz that guy is huge in comparison. and she referred to lincoln as a “something” girl he is not an object. he is not to be objectified. he is a human being. **im being ironic here but dont @ me

seriously this trope of only having one healer is getting old. and nyko looks old so are they telling me that nyko doesnt even have an apprentice? ok sure.

hey raven. one leg is better than none. count your blessings. look at this guy. he has one leg too but hes still out here thriving

but it would be awesome if they gave raven a robotic leg. like that would take her badassness to a WHOLE NEW LEVEL

“my personal favorite not getting speared by grounders” of course they had jasper say this line.

so the helmet cracked yet none of it when in his eyes. why am i even asking? i already said i would suspend all logic.

when that baby disappear...i was like really so no glass in the eye yet the baby somehow managed to get out. the baby aint jack jack...but the baby is wells **tears** im glad they brought wells back. even if it was for this brief moment. but jaha really be crazy

that finn head shake tho at 31:21 that was my reaction to murphy saying what about me. no bellamy. dont take murphy. fuck but this just shows how much better bellamy is than murphy. when bellamy says let bygones be bygones. he means it unlike murphy who is the embodiment of a snake

wait jasper is sitting at a piano. are they hinting that he can play it??? damn these kids be talented

ow clarke just oww clarke. she dont even scream that loud.

again youre telling me nyko couldnt over power octavia. the guy is twice her size. i may be a feminist and say girl power but im also a realist. this girl cant be that strong. but i guess having solar radiation blood gives these spacers inhuman strength now because might as well. that or if youre a healer even if you all buff and muscular its just for looks and you cant actually fight. 

wow reapers. these two never get a break. they just wanna bone but the universe is just out to get them.

you know i think the purpose of this episode is to show that octavia is just as crazy for lincoln as he is for her. cuz up to this point it did kinda seem like a one side relationship considering the amount of effort that lincoln put in, in comparison to octavia. so moral of the story is that they both be crazy so they be perfect together

they really like jaha cuz this plot armor is crazy. his missile plan actually worked?? and what are the chances that he land in the desert?

millers father? yes. 

i really don’t like these tie dye yellow patient outfits

woah hold up. people handing upside down. blood. moaning. people in cages. writes said “human trafficking? we got you cover” never would i ever expected to see the topic of human trafficking touched on in this show. this is a CW show right???! but here we are.

anya!!! my queen has returned!! but in the worst possible way.