#i know i use the word contrast a lot but thats the point

[runerapier]

With FS 2 finally out I wanted to share some of my thoughts, I think it would be fun to talk about the possible mental state Angeal is in around this time in his life and subsequently how it reflects Sephiroth, as well as the meaning behind Angeal's dream sequence.

Since a lot of the details of Angeal’s backstory are hidden in external material, I’m going to use it as a point of reference. Crisis Core has a lot of content they were not able to include at the time of it’s release, so it will be fun to see if they follow up on these things they wrote about but couldn’t include in game.

We already see from the get go that Angeal is serving as a contrast to Sephiroth’s outlook, demeanor, and manners. Angeal’s energy and passion he has for teamwork, his comrades, and genuine care he has for doing his job all directly contrast Sephiroth’s whatever attitude. Even small acts of chivalry are made to highlight this, showing Angeal going the extra mile to help Alissa across the bridge vs Sephiroth’s refusal to engage with anyone socially. Sephiroth was brought up to function independently, made to be a one man army, no use for friends, families, or allies. Especially with the recent loss of friends, he is going to be distant.

This is extremely important for contrast with Angeal, who has likely recently left home and is missing his family, not to mention he is someone he deeply values his connection to others. There is no set age for when Angeal left home, but it is likely within the last 2~ years. His sword in game is listed as type 90, this is comparable to Zack’s sword in CC which is type 99, the type number likely reflects the year the sword was created or the year of when that model was created. Assuming that it's updated every year, leans towards the fact they've been in SOLDIER since at least that year. Meaning Angeal likely left home at 14~, which is closer to around the age Zack and Cloud left home for SOLDIER anyways.

Angeal is someone very sentimental, he is very defensive of his home and his family. CC showed us he was quite nostalgic about Banora on several occasions. This is another contrast to Sephiroth, who doesn't have a hometown or a family. According to the CC ultimania, Genesis was one of the motivators for Angeal to leave and find a better way of living. The new chapter confirmed Angeal left home because he wanted to help pull his family out of poverty. In CC, Angeal's father was said to fall sick from overwork to pay off debt from the buster sword; however, the ultimania mentions an important detail: his father has always been weak and sickly. It’s partly due to his father being chronically ill/disabled that they aren’t able to make a lot of money. The buster sword isn’t the sole cause of his death but rather an extension of working in a system that likely exploits disabled people. Genesis might have been the push Angeal needed to leave far away from home rather than staying and trying to take care of his sick father.

Which gets us to Angeal’s dream, there is debate on how much of it is real because Sephiroth’s wasn’t real. In my personal opinion, the dream being real is a very important contrast to Sephiroth. We know that whatever Alissa is, she is preying on the desires of them. Especially in the case of her being Jenova, who uses memories of her victims to her advantage. Angeal doesn’t need to make up a scenario of his family loving him or being proud of him, because it’s already a reality, Sephiroth doesn’t have this luxury. Angeal's father pushed himself to the brink just so he could support his son in his endeavor, there is no doubt his family loved and supported him. So, what is Angeal's actual desire then? In CC it is never really specified when Angeal's father died, but in Gillian’s profile in the ultimania, it mentions his father died shortly after Angeal left for SOLDIER, even the dream is hinting towards something bad happening on the horizon. Angeal's dad is probably already dead and it is mirroring Sephiroth wanting to see his mother. Possibly reinforced by the fact he is already refusing to use the buster, while it's not confirmed if he didn’t use it all because of his cheapness, I think his father's death added significant value to the sword, making it irreplaceable. They are two kids who just want to be with their parents again, one's desire being entirely fictional and the other's being in the past. It is another contrast between them with their dreams: Sephiroth's being all he lacks, and Angeal's is all he had, but left behind. Both unattainable but in a different sense.

This dream is likely some of the last stability Angeal had before leaving home, along with possibly being one of the last times he saw his father alive which is probably why he is yearning for it. I think if the dream itself symbolized only wanting stability Angeal wouldn’t mention leaving for SOLDIER, I don’t think he wanted to leave home to provide for his family if given the choice. Instead "Jenova" is preying on something that is tangible. However, there is still a possibility it is exaggerated a bit with Angeal having the money for donations and plenty of food. I don't think this is true either, the dream implies Angeal was already working at this age to support his family, so it’s not entirely out of the question he uses what little he has to give back or that he helped with saving for Gillian's birthday party. In contrast nothing in Sephiroth's dream was real besides the fact he lives in the Shinra building, we know Angeal has loving parents, we know he is a hard worker, we know he left for soldier, and we know he loves his village and his family, more was real than just the setting. Also, I think there's a point that this is a special occasion, they could've opted to save up for her birthday. It really didn’t feel too wild to me that one day in particular they had extra food, especially considering they live in a farm village. When and the exact reason why Angeal stole when he was younger is honestly not clarified at all. He could have been afraid of asking for extra food, it could have been during droughts, or even when his father was too sick to work. It is very common for poor families in remote villages to grow their own crops, we even see people in Gongaga growing their own supply, so these things are not really out of the question. I think if any of these details were fake Angeal would be confused or surprised by having these things like how Sephiroth did to make it clear to us as the viewer, but that didn’t happen. The dream closes with remarking his desire to provide for his family so they live happy and healthy… and we know that didn’t happen, which is the point. I think it's also worth mentioning there are some small discrepancies in the localization. He isn't just giving out expensive equipment to multiple people individually, instead, it's a donation that is meant to be shared by everyone. Angeal is building community with farmers who might also be struggling, and I feel like this is an important detail that's missing.

(small disclaimer: I'm not fluent, I only know basics, but I did my best to break down the sentences to make sure these were accurate)

I think it’s clear Angeal isn’t yearning to be rich (or someone else that’s not even relevant in the current narrative… especially when their focus currently is to compare and contrast him with Sephiroth). If Angeal wanted to be rich or famous why isn't he chatting up the PR guy to hope it gets him more attention to the point of promotion? Instead Angeal cares about doing his job and making sure it’s done right, he even gets angry at Bachman and tells him his priority is the rescue mission. Angeal cares deeply about protecting and caring for the people around him, especially those important to him. The dream is only reinforcing this. They even made his gameplay reflect his narrative by being the one to provoke and tank damage for his team, which shows how he views his role as a leader. I want to preface this with there being nothing wrong if the dream ends up being exaggerated, I think regardless it is a good insight on Angeal's character. He loves his family and friends, he wants to support them and make them happy. It shows how they were a positive influence on his life and how they affected his motivations. I think narratively speaking though, Angeal having something that is at very least somewhat more real is another important contrast with Sephiroth, especially when a point of contention between them is how they grew up in different worlds. I think the turmoil of Angeal’s father being most likely dead is going to carry a lot of weight for this story and is meant to parallel Sephiroth's desires for wanting family, it possibly being how they find common ground. While Angeal did grow up in a loving household, he is going through a lot right now with his father's passing. The focus on the Buster sword is incredibly important since it is going to represent why Angeal fights. To protect and to care for what he couldn’t back home, for what his father wanted for him. A dream of a better future and to not lose sight of his morals.

In my personal opinion, it makes a lot of sense that Genesis might not be joining for this section of the story. It's shining a light on some of two most iconic swords in gaming history, and how Angeal’s outlook related to his struggles is going to shape Sephiroth. Angeal’s character and his trauma shape the foundation of the Buster sword and future wielders, and it shaping the Masamune too will be an extension of that. He is the heart of SOLDIER, and I am excited to see this story continue to reinforce that.

[nameification]

Anaxa(goras) drip marketing !!! lets disect !

(click images for higher clarity !!) (the first is the original splash image, the second is the version with my notes on it, the third is the caption that came with the image, and the last is a moodboard i made before his drip marketing that mainly contains my observations, some of his references, and some minor theories)

no leaks will be discussed, and i'd prefer it if none will be mentioned :) i'll start by talking about some of my own observations and then adding some observations i like that i've seen online

to get this out of the way: yes he does share a similar pose to alhaitham's splash art. it may be intentional, it may be unintentional, but the similarity to alhaitham's pose is not important to me rn. i'll discuss his pose later

full breakdown under the read more (trust me it was necessary)

caption: imma just say i love how much of an Asshat he is. i know for a fact it's gonna annoy a Lot of people but ive played these games before. ive seen these archetypes before. im gonna love him either way

one of the seven sages, the founder of one of the schools actually, and which is oh so coincidentally called nousporist. named seemingly after nous, which is not only a concept the real life anaxagoras talked plenty about, but also the name of one of the aeons.

we've known abt anaxa's connections to the nousporist school for a while (see image above) but we still don't really know what they do, yknow? each school of the grove has their own Thing but we dont really know what the nousporist (and nodist ig but theyre not that important rn) specialty is. (Although in bringing up the nodist school i find it interesting that we don't really know about both the oldest and youngest school of thought in the grove). i personally theorize that nousporist study things like the foundation of the universe, since the concept of nous was used to explain how chaotic matter was "ordered" into the proper universe (vast oversimplification but my point stands)

his rules might be respect things. as in he will respect you on some metric if you respect his rules (or if you are "lower" than him/not that close to him you must respect them?). essentially boundaries that are worded in a way that makes people wanna punt him in the face. maybe he just isn't comfortable with people he does not know too well calling him any shortened form of his name. and no one likes being interrupted while they speak lets be real. "silence is golden, remember that." referring to the person he is speaking to, yes, but he himself must believe it applies to him as well to some extent

"Demised scholar"...mildly upsetting considering the Implications. could be a metaphorical demise in the way his ideas have him "dead" to some people but honestly im pretty sure it has to do with the time loop/simulation theory thats very popular with ampho theorizing. theres speculation that he may know abt the "truth of amphoreus" and maybe the title of demised scholar makes me believe that this is to be his fate in a way ? this one is pure speculation

even the caption is ridiculing him. damn. also. "In a world full of lies, I am the only truth" sounds pretentious as hell but there ought to be some merit of truth to it. will get back to this later when i talk about the stuff others have observed

ALSO the question marks after the divine authority are odd and kinda sus. even if it signified that a character didn't have their coreflame, mydei didn't have any in his drip marketing, so chances are it can't be that.

anaxa himself: there isn't much rn that I personally observed with anaxa other than the fact that red gemstones feature a lot in his design and seem to play some significance to him in general. visually this makes sense (red is a good contrasting color for the blue-green color scheme he has going on) but lore-wise it probably means something. my two cents is that the red gems are related to nous in some way but those are my very Wild ramblings. also the pattern on his arm (the one hidden by his glove) looks the same as the pattern on the background. i saw someone say that it's the chrysos heir pattern but im not sure. also the blue flame coming out from his eye is very odd. i still hold onto those odin connections. will revisit later

midground: the splash art features six of the little green sprite ghost things. they may be a reference to the sages of the other schools of the grove because yknow theres six other schools and the head of each school is called a sage so we've got the whole gang in one splash but the explanation could be entirely different from what i suggest

the roots covering the bookshelves...im gonna be honest i didn't think there were book books in amphoreus before this just cause i didn't remember seeing any. i think the roots covering the bookshelves is a small peak at what the grove might look like in evernight state?

the background: THE GLASS IS CRACKED. his shadow is reflected onto the glass and there is a very prominent crack at the face of his shadow, specifically his eye. combine that with the odd flame that comes out of his eye, and im thinking there is absolutely a connection between that and the reason why and how he lost his eye. glass, mirrors, reflective surfaces, those are typically associated with the remembrance, so there again the glass cracking I feel connects to simulation theory

The translation of the secret message on his splash art is "The seeds you've sown are already sprouting" maybe any plans hes laid are already being set into motion. thats the most obvious way to interpret this imo

okay: again about the pose. this then moves on to other people's observations. on reddit it was pointed out that his pose has similarities with the most common design for The Fool tarot card. Anaxa was described as "The Foolish" in the golden epic trailer and the Fool tarot card is about new beginnings and is the first stage in the fool's journey

on twitter it was pointed out how anaxa's name graphic resembles nous. personally i think his connections to nous in general are Incredibly suspect bc. yknow. everything. gonna have to wait for the trailer ig until then

and also in general (not related to the splash art atp just me rambling) anaxa already has some natural vs artificial/mechanical themes if we add nous and cerces into the equation. the two deities of knowledge seem to manifest it/obtain it through different means (cerces' nature theming vs nous' mechanical nature) and anaxa seems to partake in both of those methods (stretch, but in the golden epic trailer there are diagrams of i think a cone and a sphere behind anaxa and those could be interpreted as either mathematics or blueprints. also anaxa uses a gun. in any fantasy setting a gun is the least nature-y weapon one could have). i think in general there's something interesting about the two contrasting themes of intelligence but if i tried elaborating on them further rn i...no.)

this is it for the most part esp since this is just his splash art. i might do this again when the trailer and livestream drops in...a bit :p

[emberunderscore]

guys im going crazy with the edits over here (im sure this has been done with this song before but idc i wanted to)

also guys im going to include the rambling in the actual edit post this time because i actually cannot contain myself . (i went on and on for this one i had a lot of thoughts )

OK BIG ONE COOL ONE WHEN IT SAYS "I'm a worthless human being" there is an overlay during the word "worthless" of the prison scene and the word worthless is layed over sherbert's forehead, think of it like the word worthless and failure going hand in hand because icarus doesn't belive they are worth anything if they are not useful and they cannot be useful if theyre a failure which they wholeheartedly believe they are THATS IT THATS MY FAVORITE PART OF THIS EDIT (not really but shshshshs)

ok back to being in order

"I had left you" and "I forgave you" being right next to each other is SO PERFECT because that part is referencing the cave obviously and immediately after centross dies icarus is like 'get the fuck away from me why did you do that, holy shit you were gonna kill me' and then he tells them he can bring centross back and they immediately forgive him (and its not rlly great editing wise cause obviously theres not much contrast between the clips but the sacrifices we make are very small)

"I forgot you" this line is kinda hard to understand how ive coded it cause centross is on the screen so it kinda makes it seems like im saying they forgot centross but NO! they forgot about fable, they were so focused on bringing centross back that they completely lost sight of fable and his actions and how that hurt everyone around them

then the "said you loved me" I LOVE PUTTING VOICELINES IN EDITS CHAT. I LOVE IT SO MUCH AHHHH. i love when the words and they go together and theyre similar and i go crazy . im knawing at the bars of my enclosure

(i was going to put a voicline of fable's 'you will not survive' from cathedral of war in this part, but only chose not too cause it made the audio too chaotic but its still the clip from when he said that so just KNOW) i really love the "said you'd kill me" part. it just looks really cool to me, please appreciate my work thank you goodnight <3

THE WHOLE NEXT PART. THE BEAT DROP IF YOU WILL.

the text is all shaky, the way ive always imagined this part of the song in my brain is like full mental breakdown, hands pulling at hair hitting at your head . theres something inside of you and you want it OUT and you will hurt yourself to makes that happen . so thats kind of the vibe i wanted to portray, however . im not that skilled and capcut only has so many free text effects so . we make do. i also couldn't put that effect on all the text because for it to look right i couldn't use an 'in' animation for the text so having all of it just appear looked kind of weird so i had to comprimise a little

also the font is called "honest" which . if you know me i love putting subliminal messaging in my font usage when i can which i managed to do a couple times in this edit actually. the font is very jagged which fits for the idea of someone who's reaching their breaking point and all the rotation and bold and italics are all just thrown around there. making em all look interesting . for *flavour*

the other font that's got a cool title and this one i actually only picked because of the title and that's "innocent" its used in a lot of frames like "you possessed me", "you controlled me" and "or he'll hurt me" all times, the word 'me' uses the innocent font, because with the song it sounds like icarus is trying to remove any of the blame from themself, it was fable's fault because he manipulated me i didn't do anything wrong. so they see themself as 'innocent' which is also why that text is yellow cause its about icarus. i wouldn't have used that font if not for the title icl. but it also makes the times when that font isn't used all the more interesting, this can be seen most notably in "said you'd kill me", and both of the times in the "he's still speaking, speaking for me" parts , and i will let you cook on that cause not everything needs to be explained in great detail as much as id like to do that

most of the fonts at this one were just me throwing shit at a wall and seeing what fit the vibe ill be so fr, i knew i wanted a lot of variation cause its a chaotic sounding song and the colours also have very little thought when it comes to the difference between white/yellow/red for the most part . green is for fable and purple is just whatever the fuck i felt like .

final thing i'm going to say when it goes "i'm a [worthless human being" there is no text on that part and i just want it to be known on the record that it wasn't an accident and it was an aethetic choice and i can't come up with a bullshit important reason for why there's no text on the screen for that SINGLE PART and honestly it just looked so shit with text there but it also looks so out of place with it being the only part but im sure many of you didn't even notice there wasnt text there before i pointed it out so . i can also point out all the slightly off timings for you if you wanna see my creation through my critical self-loathing eyes /silly

[jadehaven]

A summary of the thoughts as I slowly realized that #Elrondriel would indeed become a thing in the show:

(for context, ROP was my first introduction to LOTR, so this was my perspective as a viewer with no concept of the lore)

Season 1:

Who is this guy? Is he her friend? More? Oh she touched his face, maybe it’s like, unrequited? Am confused.

Is this how elves flirt? What’s the history here? Oh well, she’s leaving anyway.

*Enter Halbrand* HOT DIGGITY DAWG now THATS what I call a love interest 😏😏😏

*Eating up all the enemies to lovers tropes and swooning over Halbrand*

*Elrond and Galadriel scenes* Me: Nah get this nice guy OUTTA HERE where is HOT HALBRAND? (future me is aghast that I would overlook the literal loml Elrond, Gal and I are the same ig)

Halbrand: *Is Sauron* Me: What!?? Nooo! No no no no no this can’t be happening oh noooo

*Elrond saves Galadriel*

Me: Wait

*Forehead touch, tears, deep breaths*

Me: Waaaiiittt

*Gasps* Omg. Of course, he loves her!! They’re going to fall in love! It’s perfect contrast to the enemies to lovers story— a *slow burn, best friends, it’s always been you* kind of love? Right? RIGHT!? That makes so much sense! I’m 1000% calling it for Season 2.

*Sometime between season 1 and season 2, discovers the heartbreaking truth* LOL what?? She’s his WHAT??! 😭😭😭

*Still holding out hope, clutching my suspicions like they’re my grandmas pearls*

Season 2:

Holy sheet he’s mad. Ofc he’s mad. But he’s her best friend :c?? Pls don’t make me sad like this, you’re supposed to love each other!

“You were my friend!!” Mhm yknow they tend to use this word a lot

That’s… that’s a lot of hand holding there…

omg she put her hand on his CHEST OMGSJHDHFBF

“It was entirely of your choosing, the lost king blah blah” Ok but this is literally him saying he knows her type?

Hollldd up, I see what’s happening. Tension. There’s negative tension. I’ll bet if they stick to the trope, there’ll be a *moment* between them at the end that breaks the tension. There has to be.

*Galadriel gets caught by the Barrow-Wights* Wait for it babe, Elronds going to rescue her oh— yep, there he is. Saving her again. Because he’s the love interest.

“Promise you will put defeating Sauron over saving my life” Pfft hahaha miss Galady, our boy has it bad, there’s no way he’ll stay true to that promise. (For real though this sentence just showed us what the most important thing in the world is to him, it’s her y’all)

*Galadriel gets captured and brought out to the battle field* Ooooh yup. Look at his FACE when he sees her, the slow mo and everything wow. That’s his whole life right there. He can’t sacrifice her, he can’t do it.

Dang he’s gonna do it???

“Let me bid her farewell” Omg please kiss her goodbye haha but no they wouldn—

0/////o!!???

O/////O!!!!!!!

I CALLED IT I FKING CALLED IT ARE YOU KIDDING ME I AM SCREAMING

THIS IS THE MOMENT THAT BROKE THE TENSION.

Everyone online: iT wASNt RoManTIC

😐

Sigh. Of course it “wasn’t romantic”. THATS THE WHOLE POINT. That’s how this whole “forced to kiss” trope works. They don’t have feelings for each other yet, that they’re aware of anyway. It’s supposed to be an awakening. This is only the beginning.

*Continues to get gaslit by everyone and their mother including the actors and writers themselves*

Ok ok fine. Maybe I’m delusional about the whole thing. But every scene so far has been classic romantic arc set up. If they have a scene next episode where Elrond saves Galadriel again and maybe like, puts the ring on her finger all proposal style, then I’ll know. That would seal it for me.

*Episode 8*

*Speechless*

LITERALLY SPEECHLESS.

That’s it yall. If you didn’t pick up on that, then I’ll see you next season for all the slow burn tropes. I can see them already. LFG. #Elrondriel for life.

[woah-uhuh-uhuh-uhuh]

Christine Canigula was socially ostracized & developed a complex to protect herself: an essay

(suddenly i NEED to infodump about Christine actually so here)

Something I only noticed on rewatch: the way Christine will say something silly and then just kind of gingerly wait to see if Jeremy reacts well to it before continuing, almost like she's asking permission?? (e.g. the gap after the first stanza of "Play Rehearsal"). And it's only after he riffs off her bowling alley bit that she feels comfortable talking about her personal feelings with him (right before "Guy that I'd Kinda be Into"). The same happens with their "weird noise" exchange immediately before "It's pretty killer to sit and chat with you." I know theater relies on being succinct, and that 'bonding over shared quirks' and 'feelings talk' are both just crucial parts of relationship development... but I don't think it's a coincidence that it always goes in that order!

It's like Jeremy has to pass these *trials of weirdness* before she feels safe opening up to him and it drives me BONKERS so I wrote a whole 1000 word thing about it under the cut and this got too massive and I'm sorry. Also some autistic Jeremy meta at the end if that sweetens the pot hehehe

Table of contents:

Why she was ostracized

How she was ostracized

How that might inform her pattern of relationship development with Jeremy and Jake

How gender caused Jeremy's experiences to differ from hers, and how that affects their current relationships with "popularity" and peer acceptance.

1. Why she was ostracized

I am just so certain that Christine has been bullied or at least majorly outcast for a lot of her life. She's very obviously neurodivergent and because of that she can have these obnoxiously deep and repetitive interests, she can't judge if a piece of information will be genuinely interesting to someone, and she doesn't take social cues very well.

She frequently interrupts people when they're talking (an ADHD symptom btw), even when they're literally talking to her about the thing she wants to hear!

(C: "Do you find that? Because I totally find that!" J: "Uh, yeah, I-" C: "-And no matter how hard I try....")

(J: "I know the last thing I deserve is another shot, but-" C:"Jeremy, just... say what's on your mind.") (girl I'm sorry but that's what he was doing..... I have a whole other thoughtpiece on how this particularly fucks with Jeremy while they're dating but thats another thing...)

She doesn't seem confident in her interpretations of people's emotions and she'll ask/talk about them point blank (both theirs and her own) in a way a lot of people would find rude

("Uh, you seem really nervous...") ("Popular people are fucked up! *mutual laughter* …I mean, you're one of them!") ("I am flattered, this is new / still I'm not sure what I should do" <- as a response to getting asked out, that's pretty bold! Plus the entire part where she laughs at Jake's "rich boy routine") (also compare and contrast to Jeremy's "I don't know what I'm supposed to say right now." idk. are your allistic stage dorks in the room with us right now motherfuckers)

I'd go on about her hyperfixations/special interests too but I think Play Rehearsal pretty much sums it up lol

2. How she was ostracized

All this to say that I am CERTAIN she spent a lot of her schooling having "nice girls" patiently let her sit with them at lunch for weeks at a time until they finally get sick of her rambling and faux pas. Only when they leave does Christine realize that they didn't actually care about anything she said... And this happens over and over and over. (I know this seems hella specific but I swear it's an actual phenomenon... at least I'm pretty sure? sdjflksjf)

But anyway, it's clear that by the time they're juniors, Christine has kind of (and I do only mean kind of) figured out what behaviour other people respond poorly to. And from evidence I stated in the intro, I think she's become really careful about which people she lets herself get attached to. She doesn't want this to ever happen again - which means if she's going to hang out with someone, she has to know that they actually care about her, that they know she will sometimes be obnoxious or blunt, and they'll still be okay with that forever.

3. Applying this to her canon relationships

You can extend this to Jake, someone who sees her in her element in drama rehearsal (the thing everyone finds annoying about her because she won't shut up about it) and STILL likes her. I think it's a totally valid reading that her bluntness with him later ("Upgrade") is just because she misreads him / doesn't quite get the social standard that she should be white lying instead. But I think you could also read her as testing the waters. If she's really going to commit to dating this guy, she's gotta know he's okay with her being herself. And the fact that this guy (and I think it's significant that he is a boy, for reasons I'll explain in the end note) genuinely seems to like her is a whole new level of peer validation ("I am flattered, this is new") -- so of course she's gonna fall at least a little! It doesn't hurt that he's "tired of being the person that everyone thinks that I am..." just like her!

Her history with being pity-liked makes Chloe's "advice," that Jake's just toying with her and is going to move on soon, even scarier, because that's genuinely happened to her (on a platonic level) so many times before.

Jeremy is also a good candidate from the beginning because he's weird he's a weirdo he doesn't fit in and he doesn't wanna fit in you ever see him without this stupid cardigan on? that's weird! And she keeps warming up to him not only because they're getting to know each other but because he gets progressively more willing to not only tolerate (as Jake does) but *participate* in her weirdness!

First, she does something weird and he tolerates it ("Play Rehearsal"); the next time she's weird, he participates! (bowling ball before GTIKBI). Then finally finally finally he initiates the weirdness and lets her join in! ("weird noises" exchange before GTIKBI reprise).

And notably, it is THIS moment that canonically signifies that they've hit the apex of their canon relationship development. If there was an achievement called "Befriend Christine," it would have popped up right then and there!!!

IN CONCLUSION: YOUR HONOR I LOVE THEM T_T

4: Christine vs. Jeremy: Gender differences & how that ultimately impacts their social goals

I also think all of this would have happened to Jeremy too if he'd been a girl. But because, generally, young boys feel less social obligation than girls to take pity on the autistic kid (and because boys tend to be more quickly recognized as autistic) he just ends up completely alone for most of his school life (Michael nonwithstanding - and yeah there's an important distinction between your childhood friend putting up with you and knowing that, woah, I guess literally nobody else ever will).

Meanwhile, Christine has had people "put up" with her, and she's SICK OF IT!

That's part of why their complexes are so different, because Christine is trying to check everyone she meets to make sure they'll be okay with her weirdness before she gets attached, Jeremy is trying to eliminate his weirdness altogether because he's never even experienced his peers listening out of *pity* so how the hell can he expect someone to ever listen to him out of *interest?*

Jeremy has never had someone pretend to like him before, so he completely lacks Christine's fear of befriending someone who secretly hates you. He doesn't realize how bad it'll hurt him if he destroys his real self for popularity, if he befriends people who would have bullied his real self. He doesn't know what disingenuous friendship feels like, so like a very young Christine he's still actively trying to get there because he thinks it's the only kind of validation he'll ever get.

Do you see what im saying? Do you see it???? AUAUGUGUUGGH

THANK YOU FOR READING!!! If you have thoughts or even rebuttals please share i am so desperate to discuss the blorbos

[a-court-of-moonlight-and-ire]

OKAY im back with this

We're on chapter 54 and because its so infamous as the big turning point of feysands relationship (I think she accepts the mating point in this one?) as well as the source for a lot of stinky rhysand-apologia, I wanted to do something a little bit special. And Ive decided that I will be reading this chapter in both german and english and do a bit of a direct prose comparison, because Ive read a little bit of this book in english (that little summer court arc, real moonlight-and-ireheads will remember) and I just felt like it was infinitely more unpleasant to read compared to rest of this book and also the previous one which I read in german. I suspect that the translation essentially acts as an additional round of editing which smooths out some of the most glaring flaws, because usually when youre translating something and its kinda wonky you have this impulse to adjust it as much as you can to make it sound better. This is something I can attest to as someone who likes to translate shit in my free time, I often have to beat that impulse down, especially with my most recent big translation project which is a very long fanfic that starts out pretty bad and wonky but gets a lot better later where I want to preserver that sense of the author improving, but I imagine that someone who translates commercial books professionally would not want to preserve any of the badness or the wonkyness, so.

Ive had to think about how exactly Im gonna do this for a while because its not like I can comfortably read both versions of this chapter simultaneously, and Ive eventually settled on, Im just gonna read and liveblog the german one as usual and then Im gonna read the english one and note down some thoughts that I have about it at the very end

Anyway, I would like to end this with a little shoutout to Alexandra Ernst who has made a lot of choices I enjoy regarding things like the fantasy terms and pronoun-usuage, and now lets get into it

Rhysand being all pathetic with his flushed cheeks, messed up hair, half-frozen in the cold is honestly so good, I would love this guy so much if Feyre just kept mistreating him and if he just kept being this submissive little guy but alas. he was written by a straight woman. A boring straight woman no less, can you imagine if acotar was written by a fujoshi?

Feyre is saying that Rhysand would 100% fly back into the cold if she just said the word (again, her domming him would go hard), but Im pretty sure he literally came to this little cottage that was supposed to be her safeplace to rest from the whole mates-revelation for no good reason and without her giving any hint to Mor that she wanted to see him (and me skimming the last paragraph of the last chapter seems to confirm this) so. idk. Its trying to tell me that Rhysand is soooooooo respectful but I simply cannot believe it

I think I always say this whenever the term 'mate' is used but I am so unbelievably glad that my gal Alexandra translates it as 'Gefährte/Gefährtin', because the thing that I find so viscerally unpleasant about it is that it makes me think of animals, especially when you combine it with the way SJM uses the words 'male' and 'female' instead of 'man' and 'woman', like Ive literally never heard anyone use that term outside of when theyre talking about animals fucking and thats not romantic or in any way pleasant to me. I mean, I guess its technically short for 'soulmate' in this series but i KNOW sjm doesnt actually use that word!! not consistantly atleast!! By contrast, Gefährte is very much a term you use for a human, for a person, and although it can be used to refer to animals (usually dogs in my experience) it doesnt immediately call to mind emotionless hormone-fueled animal fucking. The most literal way I think I can translate it is as 'companion' which i find very nice, but obviously theres also terms like Seelengefährte (soulmate) and Lebensgefährte (life-partner) that it can be a shortform for. I also vastly prefer the way Gefährte rolls off the tongue; mate is such a harsh word with that obnoxious a and harsh t-sound, I feel like it would take me out of it to encounter it in a gentle sex scene, whereas Gefährte/Gefährtin starts out with a smooth Ge-, then we get that soft and long fäh which ends in t-sound that gives it a nice bite and a certain weight, and both the -e and -in round it out very well

yknow, having to write down both the male an female version talking about the german translation of mate made me think, god sjm would love the german language because of how ridgidly gendered it is lmao

goddddddd feyres reasons for not painting rhysands eyes on the wall are KILLING ME with how stupid they are

Okay, so Mor literally refused to tell Rhysand where Feyre was (because again, she promised her that she would be given space at this time) but Rhys found out and immediately flew over to her even though, again, Im fairly certain that Feyre has not made an indication that she wanted to see him. but yeah sure, he respects her boundaries and would totally leave without arguing if she wanted him to

Rhysand is telling her about getting captured by Amarantha's forces and tortured by them 'massacreing' his wings, but like. couldnt he have just pulled him into that pocket dimension that he normally keeps his wings in? Now that I think about it, hes talking about how faebane can take away "even his" powers (lmao), how come his wings didnt just retract on their own? Maybe its a thing where taking away his powers with faebane just locks him into whatever form hes currently in, so if hes wingless he cant summon them and if hes winged he cant put them back, but idk.

"[...] they were too stupid; they didn't recognize that I was Illyrian. They only needed to threaten cutting my wings off and I would have told them everything. But fortunately they didn't." Im pretty sure Ive talked about this during the chapter where Rhysand got kidnapped by the hybern-soldiers, but I find it insane that these guys dont even seem to think about cutting this guys wings off, because for me personally, if I was some manner of fantasy soldier and I had captured a guy with wings that the first thing I would think of. And these soldiers were under the command of one of the most sadistic bitches in the land? tch. they should be taking lessons from ME

are you telling me that Rhysand had been planning to personally kill Amarantha since he was somewhere between the ages of 17 and 38. and he couldnt do it. the most powerful highlordling to have ever highlorded in the history of prythian with nearly 500 years of preptime. and he couldnt do it. and then when feyre showed up the best plan he had was 'i'll make her give me drunk lapdances to hopefully make her boyfriend angry enough so that HE kills her'. Honestly, if it turned out that Rhysand was just an evil liar who was manipulating Feyre the whole time that would make him look better in my eyes than if hes telling the truth here, because if hes telling the truth that implies that hes the stupidest man in the world

Im definitely not the first person to point this out, but its hilarious how Rhysand is like "we freed our slaves long before the treaty was made because we couldnt trust them, their lives were so short and they reproduced so quickly that we couldnt possibly control* all of their minds" and thats supposed to be taken as like, a sign of him being progressive or whatever. Like first of all, that wasnt even his call to make, that wouldve been his father or another ancestor, and second of all, okay, so you wouldve kept your slaves if only you couldve enslaved them even more thoroughly? (*the german version literally does use the word enslave here btw, I wonder if the english one uses it as well)

Rhysand is like "I wanted to kill Amarantha SO BAD I was willing to risk a war over it, so I pretended to want to be her ally and then I went to the party she threw to celebrate the peace and then when she was drunk I was gonna get into her mind and make her confess all of her lies and her crimes and THEN turn her brain into liquid" and its like DUDE, why are you wasting so much fucking time?! Literally just go up to her, first chance you get, snap your fingers, you dont even have to touch her, dissolve her into a fine mist and badabing badaboom, thats your revenge on her taken, but nooooOoOOOooooOOooO it just HAD to be this big public thing, so she was able to curse all of Prythian for 50 years just because this one petty bitch wanted his revenge kill to be extra extra

Rhysand tying Velaris' protection spell to the rest of the inner circle is so fucked up because like, I dont remember Amarantha mentioning there being any precautions in place to prevent others from just killing her, like if she died the curse would just go on forever but if she lived they had this very slim window of time and opportunity to maybe break it or something, but to my knowledge thats not the case so like. surely one of the super powerful members of his inner circle couldve come in and killed her any just broken the curse immediately but he actively prevented them from doing that. I literally cannot believe that there a people who blame Tamlin for getting Prythian cursed, and to be fair, Im not saying that its Rhysands fault either because Amarantha was just an insane woman, but I would argue that he had ample opportunity to prevent all of this and he actively did not, which is what we in the biz call not very good

The fact that its clarfied that he used his last little kernel of power to satisfy Amarantha when she was assaulting him is so funny to me. like, yeah this the endgame love interest, the sexiest guy on the planet whos the best sexhaver in existence. can he seduce a woman and give her a good orgasm? absolutely not, he needs his mind control powers for that

He forgot what his friends looked like after not seeing them for ten years? Yikes, thats not good for a guy who could theorethically live for thousands of years

Is it ever explained why he had visions of Feyre before they met? I assume its some kind of mate-thing given that future-seeing isnt really part of his usual powerset, but even then Im like, was she already his mate when she was still human? Because as I understand it, mating bonds are kindof a fae-only thing, like Nesta and Elains literally only snapped when they got turned, unless all of this was predeterminded by the mother or the cauldron of whomever, which has bonkers implications for free will in this universe but what else is new

Theres something awfully ironic about Rhysand finding comfort in visions of some of the worst years of Feyres life

Okay, I have to admit, I do enjoy this recontextualisation of Rhysand's 'There you are, Ive been looking everywhere for you, thanks for finding her'-lines from the Calanmai scene in the first book. Do I think it was planned like this? Not a a chance, but it does work

"I decided that I could never see you again. I could never speak to you again, no, not even think about you." smashcut to a couple months later and hes pulling her onto his lap halfnaked

Rhysands lines about him having convince himself that the Cauldron isnt cruel makes me wonder about his relationship to religion, but I know thats never gonna get explored

My question is, if he wanted to scare Tamlin during that one scene where he made him bow, why did he take control of Feyre? Why was he like "yeah, the best way to fuck with my enemy is to make the woman he loves suffer, even though I also love her" that was not necessary my guy

So he took Clares pain away while she was tortured but he also told her when to scream so Amarantha wouldnt notice, and I seriously wonder why she did that because if I was in her place, I would be like "okay, Im dying anyway, might as well rat out the bastard that got me into this mess" because he mustve surely explained himself to her right? Granted, I guess if he only said that he could take away her pain but couldnt help her in any other way without telling her the exact reason why she was even kidnapped, then I understand why would just do what he told her without question in that moment

Its funny how Rhysand feels so torn up about Clare when I do not remember Feyre even mentioning her (although granted its been an eternity since I started with this)

god im gonna die laughing reading about Rhysand being like "and thats when I decided that I would fight dirty and use every advantage I possibly had in order to help you" again, him being an evil liar would be the best look for him in this situation

at this point i could just keep repeating "but you didnt have to do that thoughhhhhhh". you didnt have to force Feyre to dance for you, it did literally nothing for her and if wanted to throw off Amaramtha's suspicions while also taking some revenge on Tamlin and riling him up, you couldve just gone up to Amarantha and been like "hey, dyou mind if I keep her as a sexslave while shes not doing her trials?" while Tamlin was in earshot and when she agreed you couldve literally just let her rest and recover in bed which wouldve helped her WAY more. And if you wanted to erase her memories of this horrible time, you couldve just used your mind-erasing powers for that, no drugs required

Hes angry that Tamlin used the one free moment he had Feyre to touch her up instead of freeing her???? my brother in christ youve been torturing her for weeks. Also, many people have already pointed out that Feyre was the one who initiated that encounter in the first book but whatever, even if you went along with the retcons I cannot fathom how Tamlin would come out of this looking worse than Rhysand to anyone. Like, does this make him sound bad? Yeah, absolutely. Worse than Rhysand? Have you lost your mind

yknow that post thats like "some of you will look at a male character and go 'woah he has soooooooo much trauma' and the trauma is watching women die"? thats what Im thinking about when I read this joker recount how upset Feyre dying him

Ive seen a lot of people theorize about Rhysand deliberately faking mating bonds, usually the nessian one but I think Ive seen theories about the feysand bond as well, but this description of him pulling on this thread between him and Feyre and putting all of his power and all of his magic into it so that she wouldnt die when Amarantha broke her neck makes me think "what if in this moment hes just unconsciously created this matingbond-esque connection between them out of sheer desperation and he has an actual mate out there somewhere, and after living happily with Feyre for a while they suddenly come into his life and turn everything upside down. ohhhhh if any of you wanna write that fanfic please send it to me

oh god, i just had the most fucked up idea. Okay so, imagine the thing I just described with Rhysand accidentally creating this fake mating bond, but then it turns out that his divinely ordained soulmate was always going to be Feyres child (maybe thats why he had visions of her idk) and who the father of that child was didnt matter at all, so when they have Nyx it turns out hes his actual mate. god i dont know why that idea is so funny to me. get a load of this guy. matingbonded too close to the sun

I feel like Rhysand keeps being like "i had to keep myself under control and do these things because if I had done this thing that I actually wanted to do you wouldve surely hated me forever" when these things that he actually did are more than enough reason to hate him forever as well, and yet here Feyre is, not hating him

yknow, maybe Rhysand is a good person because he keeps being like "I wanted to kill Tamlin so badly, he was my worst enemy now that Amarantha was finally dead" and I just keep being like, dude, if I had the power to dissolve people without even touching them I would do it constantly, my impulsive ass could not be trusted with the ability to kill without consequences

The way Rhysand handled the whole mating bond thing is so fucking stupid because its like, just telling her about the mating bond is not gonna automatically force her to accept it, you couldve just told her about it and explained what it entailed and if she asked you something like "wait, if we're soulmates does that mean you love me or Im supposed to love you or we're destined to fall in love one day?" you couldve just lied and been like "no haha im not in love with you, the mating bond is basically just this psychic bond that some fae have with each other, it works similarly to our bargain-bond but it happens naturally without anyones input, its considered super sacred among fae but we dont really know why it happens, and it doesnt actually affect your emotions". Like, I want to be very clear here, I dont fundamentally have a problem with Rhysand telling her these benevolent lies to preserve her agency and emotional well-being, my problem is that hes so bad at this that his lies cease to be benevolent

Okay, we did get some of Feyres physical reactions and thoughts during Rhysand's big monologue, but didnt feel like there was really any buildup to her accepting the mating bond like that. Idk, maybe it wouldve hit harder if there wasnt a year between me reading the previous chapter and me reading this one and I could remember their relationship development more clearly but somehow I doubt it

Also, maybe its just the joyless bitter aromantic in me but I find those lines about 'love' not being a sufficient word to describe their feelings for each other so corny. i think thats a perfectly good word to describe you guyses stupid feelings for each other, actually

OKAY thats it, now lets get into some translation thoughts:

I find it interesting that instances of the word 'mate' get translated as both just 'Gefährte' and 'Seelengefährte', specifically theres this bit in the english version, "Mate. [line break] My—mate." which is "My mate. [line break] My... soulmate." in german. I like that a lot more than the english version because it does a better job clarifying the specialness of this term and what it even means. Because like, I dont know or remember how Rhysand (or the Suriel?) explained the mates-stuff to Feyre and whether or not they used to term 'soulmates', but if they didnt, I would honestly find it very hard to believe that Feyre would really understand it right away because the term 'mate' is just so vague and unintuitive. And like, so is the term 'Gefährte', if anything its even more vague because it has a broader definition, hence why I appreciate this little clarifying touch. As for the specialness of the term, SJM usually just relies capitalizing the first letter of normal words to communicate that they are Meaningful (although she doesnt do it for mate in this chapter which is interesting) but in german every noun is capitalized, so that trick doesnt really work and the translator either has to do stuff like this or rely on italics a bit more. Also I think the german lines flow much better from the previous sentence, SJM's writing style is very choppy in comparison

Its kinda funny how Alexandra Ernst just kinda got rid of a lot of the special punctuation-stuff. Like in the third sentence of the chapter where Feyre is describing how pathetic Rhys looks, shes like "and he honestly looked freezing as he stood there" but the german version doesnt have those italics, and further down the page theres this paragraph where shes like "This beautiful, strong, selfless male etc etc" that has three ellipses, none of which are included in the german version. Its like shes telling Sarah "girl, this is melodramatic to the point of farce, you gotta tone it down" and shes RIGHT

Speaking of the "and he honestly looked freezing"-line, in german that line is "und er sah halb erfroren aus" ["and he looked half-frozen"] and I think its SO much better its crazy. Firstly, I think the 'honestly' in the original line is inappropriately modern and casual which clashes with the otherwise very dramatic tone of this scene so removing does wonders for making it fit better with the rest of the paragraph. Secondly, the term 'erfroren' has a very strong connotation to being dead, to the point that it would probably be most accurate to translate it as 'frozen to death', but the reason I didnt do that is that, while the connotation is strong, its also very subtle when you read it in this sentence. It communicates a certain severity without feeling like its doing too much; this is what I would consider to be effective melodrama, where the original sentence just feels like a clumsy attempt at making Rhysand seem so sympathetic to the audience (the 'honestly' contributes to that as well)

In the next paragraph where Feyres talking about how he would leave her alone and fly into the night if she told him, the night is described as crisp in the english version while its described as cold in the german version. The word 'crisp' is too kind of a word to describe the low evening mountain temperatures in this scene which is supposed to carry a certain severity to it

The line "I could have sworn I felt a pulse of knee-wobbling relief through the bond." is "I could have sworn I felt a tremor through our connection, something like an abyssal relief." in german. I dont think I need to explain why the german one is better here, using 'knee-wobbling' as an adjective so fucking goofy

"gobbling down the bright colors" to refer to Rhysand really taking in all the stuff Feyre painted is also goofy as fuck, in the german version its "he practically drank the strong colors" which is much easier to take seriously, even though it did conjure up an image of Rhysand drinking paint from a full bucket as I read it

That line where Rhysand is talking about how someones gonna draw a mustache under the eye of one of the other inner circle members is already bad enough, but then he phrases it like "whoever pisses them off that day" and it just completely takes me out of this moment. Like, I do understand that this is supposed to be comic relief but this is just too much, in the german version he says "whoever gets on their nerves" and its fits much better. It also makes Rhysand seem a bit more mature which makes me personally like him just a little bit more. And like, Im not fundamentally opposed to cursing, Ive youve read literally anything of mine then you know that, but it just feels off to have this ruler of a nation express himself in the same way that a wannabe-edgy teenager would

After Rhysand asks Feyre why she hasnt painted his eyes onto the wall, she gets this internal line: "No more games, no more banter." In german its "No tricks. No evasions." which I just think are much more interesting words to use here. I will say, I dont like the choice to have a period seperating them instead of a comma, it comes across as choppy. Also, while the lack of the word 'more' is kind of awkward when translated into english, it works well enough in german imo

When Feyre explains that she was afraid she would just stare at them all day she has the line, "And it seemed like a pathetic way to spend my time." In german that line is "And that would have been a real waste of time." I dont like Feyre being so self-depricating, it feels out-of-character, although I realize now that that might just be because Alexandra Ernst decided erase or downplay previous lines where she was self-depricating. The german line also reads more like a joke, although Im not sure if thats the intent of the original one considering she just resolved to be sincere with him

Idk, just compare this exchange in english, '"You're—better?" [line break] "Healed completely. Quickly, considering the bloodbane. Thanks to you."' to the german version, '"Are you healed again?" [line break] "Completely. And quicker than expected, considering the bloodshadow*. Thanks to you." ' Its quite subtle, and I know it doesnt sound the best when I translate it directly from german, but Feyre and Rhysand actually sound like theyre adult having a kind of stiff conversation (which is what they are) instead of sounding like monosyllabic awkward teenagers

*'bloodbane' was translated as 'Blutschatten' which literally means bloodshadow, which is highly appealing to my inner egdy teen, although I do mourn the loss of the alliteration

In the original Feyre has this line where she just kinda trails off, "But whatever it was, the act of offering him food..." whereas in the german version its actually a complete thought: "For whatever reason the act of offering to put something to eat in front of him was so extraordinary." Now, I also like to have my characters trail off, even in their internal monologue, and the way SJM does it is perfectly fine here, but I just prefer Feyre being more articulate and even flippant, I think thats stronger characterisation. Dare I say, its more feminist characterisation

Rhysand says "It's an... important moment." in english but in german he says "It... it has a great significance." with a little stutter, which I find much more endearing

Him talking about how the fae were beasts long ago just kills me when its in english and using the terms male and female casually (he uses man and woman in german) like My Brother In The Mother, if youre not beasts anymore why are you using those words to describe your sapient selves?

Also can I just say that his explanation of this tradition sounds SO much better and more natural in german? Like, "That comes from the time when we still weren't who we are today, but... more like animals. But it's still important. At least the first time." vs "It goes back to whatever beasts we were a long, long time ago. But it still matters. The first time matters." Translation-clunkiness notwithstanding, the first one sounds more like a guy just speaking off-the-cuff, explaining this cultural (and maybe biological?) thing that he never really had to explain before to someone from a completely diffrent world, where the second one sounds like he already had this whole spiel prepared and was just waiting for an opportunity to say it

I would like to note that when Rhysand starts talking about Amarantha's guys trying to break him (less than three pages into the chapter in my physical german copy), we get our first set of em-dashes of the chapter in the german version. In the english version those are em-dashes Nr 7 and 8.

Ive talked about the fact that I find it interesting that the Illyrian forces (and the batboys) are referred to as 'Wwarriors' and never as soldiers before, and I find it even more interesting that they are referred to as soldiers (Soldaten) in the german version, even though we do have a word that has the same connotations as warrior (and which is even formed the same way, with the first syllable literally just being/meaning 'war') which is Krieger

This is something that Ive noticed a looooooong while ago, but I dont think Ive ever talked about it so I might as well do it now; Alexandra Ernst has chosen to translate 'Illyrian' as 'Illyrianer'. Now, unlike -an or -ian in english, -aner is not a vers common ending for these kind of descriptive nationality-words in german, pretty much the only I could think of with that ending at first was 'Indianer', although i did eventually remember Amerikaner as well. 'Indianer' is a german term for native americans, its functionally the same as 'indian' in the sense that its pretty outdated and most progressives try to encourage people not to use it (which doesnt work great bc we obviously dont have a lot native american-advocacy stuff here, and we have this whole history of appropriating native american culture and stuff like red-face is still very normalised unfortunately), although it is distinct from the word we have for people from India (which is Inder). So whenever I read the word 'Illyrianer' I always have to think of indigenous people because it has the same ending as a common word them and it also starts with an I, and I find that very interesting but in a discomforting way (mostly because SJM writes the illyrians in a really racist way)

Okay, I accidentally pressed a wrong button while writing this and deleted like 6 very detailed bulletpoints and I dont wanna figure out a way rewrite them so youre just gonna get a highly condensed version of everything I thought was really important

Rhysand consistantly uses phrasing which makes him seem extremely selfish in his desire for revenge for Amarantha and the way he went about it in the original, which is significantly toned down in the german translation (although his actions are obviously unaltered so its not like the german version makes him seem that much better)

There was a part in the german version where Rhysand essentially implied that he made peace with his life and wanted to do some kind of kamikaze-murder-suicide-thing with Amarantha and then wait for his friends in the afterlife while he was captured by her during the War, when what he said in the original was that he wanted to kill Amarantha, come out of the other side of all of this and then reunite with his friends, I think Alexandra Ernst just misunderstood this a lot

Feyre consistantly comes across as more articulate in the german version because she doesnt internally trail off and actually has completed thoughts

The german version consistantly describes things with a lot more specificity which I enjoy

This doesnt have anything to do with the prose, I just noticed this on re-read, its so fucked up that Rhysand was like "I know that Amarantha is up to no good and that this party shes throwing is probably gonna be dangerous and also Im gonna kill her really brutally, so I dont want my friends to be here but yeah sure, I'll take the entire CoN with me, who cares if those guys get injured or traumatized lmao"

I wanted to compare this line from the original, "His eyes lifted to mine. Haunted, bleak." to this one from the german version, "His gaze was tormented and bleak.", not because I necessarily think one is better than the other, but because I feel that they demonstrate the difference in writing approaches between the versions really well. The original is dramatic, it feels like its trying to be as hard-hitting as humanly possible all on its own, whereas the translation is more matter-of-fact and relying on the context of the story (as well as the formatting) to deliver its impact. And I think this is a good way of summing up the fundamental diffrences between these two versions and explaining why they make for different reading experiences; the translation has the lines build upon oneanother and prioritizes coherence leading to a smoother reading experience, while the original prioritizes individual lines having a strong impact and being dramatic which makes it feel choppy

I also want to note that the german version makes Feyre seem more attentive (atleast to me) by simply having her describe the look in his eyes as though shes been watching for stuff like that, while the english version makes it seem like she only noticed because Rhysand was actively seeking eyecontact with her

This is another english line that includes a curse word and that I dont like because it makes Rhysand sound really immature: "I knew it wasn't about fucking me so much as it was about gtting revenge at my father's ghost." In german that line is, "It wasn't so much about the sex, but about taking revenge on my father's ghost." Another thing that I like about it is that the removal of the 'I knew' at the start makes him seem a bit more confident (which is a little ironic)

I also want to note that Rhysand uses the word 'revenge' when talking about Amarantha assaulting her, but uses the word 'vengence' earlier when talking about Amarantha killing half the CoN to avenge Tamlin's father. Im pretty sure the difference between vengence and revenge is that vengence has more rightous and just connotations while revenge is typically ascribed a more negative meaning, but this is something that I was really unsure of for a long time because theres only word for both of these concepts in german (Rache), so theres linguistically no distinction between avenging someone in a 'just' way and avenging someone in a 'bad' way. I mean, if you wanted to put more emphasis on the justice of the act you could more-or-less just use Gerechtigkeit (which is literally 'justice') as a synonym, but that doesnt have the same sublety. This doesnt have very much to do with anything here, this is just a language-difference that I find really intersting, stuff like this is why I love translating so much

Also, again this doesnt have anything to do with the prose really, but what kinda relationship did Tamlin's dad and Amarantha have? has anyone written a fanfic about that

Here's a line from Rhysand that bothers me because it gives off major misogynistic creep vibes: "But for fifty years—whenever I was inside her, I'd think about killing her. She had no idea. None. Because I was so good at my job that she thought I enjoyed it, too." Heres the german version which manages to be less bad (and less hilariously self-congratulatory) with a few minimal changes: "But for fifty years, every time I was with her, I thought about how I could kill her. She, however, thought I was enjoying it as much as she was, that's how well I played my role." Also I have never seen a more superfluous em-dash in my life. Also also, I think its funny that the english version uses the word 'job' here, it feels unfitting especially compared to 'role'. like what, was he clocking in for his eight hour shift at the sexual assault factory every day?

Again, this isnt prose-related, but why is it that Rhysand started having visions of Feyre three years ago? Did anything special happen when she was 17? I feel like it wouldve made way more sense for him to start having visions of her when she was born, but I guess that wouldve been a little too creepy for SJM. But its like, yeah, large supernatural agegaps are creepy, but thats like half their appeal, I never really get it when people are like "i think its fine for that 40-500 year old guy to date that 20 year old, but only as long as they didnt know the 20 year old when theyre were still a child" because like, the agegap is still there and it is what it is, all youre doing is just refusing to fully acknowledge the reality of it, but whatever. Also, I just realized that Rhysand was stuck UTM getting traumatized every day for more than twice as long as Feyre is alive, god help her

Theres a couple of paragraphs of Rhysand just telling Feyre about the visions about how he sought her out on Calanmai, and Im not gonna nitpick those too much. Instead Im gonna tell you that there are 5 em-dashes in this section in the english version and none in the german one

Heres a line that I actually prefer in the english version: "We were so close to the deadline for the curse that she was paranoid—restless." The german version just uses less interesting words here imo "The fourty-nine years were nearly over and she was terribly afraid that he would still manage a miracle."

When he's talking about finding Feyre while being harassed by some guys he just calls those guys 'shit-guys' (Scheißkerle) in german, but in english he specifies that they were 'piece-of-shit picts' and something about that is just so funny to me. I think its because its one of many subtle changes that seem to have been in an attempt to make Rhysand as palatable as possible within the constraints of the existing writing, so I have this mental image of Alexandra Ernst going through this book like "god, hes selfish, annoying as fuck and now hes lowkey racist too, i gotta smooth this shit out as much as possible"

This part is exactly the same in both versions, I just wanted to say that him calling Feyre 'a reward for all that he endured' rubs me the wrong way

Again, not a prose-thing, but Rhysand being like "Don't think that being out there on Calanmai didnt cost me" is so annoying knowing the context because he literally successfully lied to Amarantha so she didnt think she had a reason to punish him, so all that it cost him were the lives and minds of these random picts, except hes glad that they got tortured and died because they were planning on raping his mate, so it cost him fuck all basically

Heres an extremely slight change that I find interesting: in english the line is "Amarantha sent me that day after the Summer Solstice because I'd been so successful on Calanmai." and its functionally identical in german except that theres a '...' between 'so' and 'successful' which makes him seem a bit more remorseful, even though the narrative does obviously still clarify that he doesnt really have to be because those guys he got killed sucked

In the german version Rhysand says "In the home of my worst enemy. After Amarantha, of course." which I think sounds better and more natural than him calling Tamlin his 'second-most enemy'.

The original line is "I made Tamlin beg—as Amarantha had made me beg, to show him how powerless he was to save you." but in the german version its "I brought Tamlin to his knees, just as Amaramtha had made me beg for the lives of m men, to show him that he did not have the power to save you." which is less pathetic and transparently manipulative, although it is a pretty clunky sentence overall

Theres a whole small section after that where Rhysand explains why he asked for Feyres name and how he had to vomit immediately afterwards which is just straightup missing from the german version, like it hasnt been reworded or anything theres just not a trace of any of it, which was honestly a pretty good call because this is just yet another point where Rhysand being malicious would be preferable to him actually being this fucking stupid

We get another two lines that are very similar to the ones I used as an example to talk about the differences between the versions. Heres the english one: "Two tears slid down his cheeks, swift and cold." And heres the german one: "Two tears ran down his cheeks." I really wonder if these are just personal choices from Alexandra Ernst or if there are like, greater cultural differences motivating stuff like that

Ohhhhh I somehow missed that line where he says he thinks he got those visions of Feyre from the cauldron to tell him that she would be the one to save, but like, is that actually confirmed or is that just hearsay? And again, why would they come three years before Feyre got to Prythian, he shouldve either had visions of her since she was born or they shouldve started one year before she got to Prythian or something

Heres the line where Rhysand badmouths Tamlin for making out Feyre that one time in english: "I was jealous of him, and pissed off that he'd used that one shot of being unnoticed not to get you out, but to be with you..." And here it is in german: "I was jealous of him, and angry, because he didn't use that one moment to free you, but to feel you up..." First of all, I obviously like that hes not cursing, second of all, (idk if you can tell from the way I translated it) but I like that the way he phrases that makes freeing Feyre and feeling Feyre up seem like theyre some kind of divine dichotomy, its very funny, and third of all, I like how petty and accusatory this is. I feel like so far Alexandra Ernst has mostly removed his personality from the text, which Im generally in favor of because his personality sucks ass, but it is nice to have some personality injected back in, so to speak

After that Rhysand describes how he felt when Amarantha started torturing Feyre but before she snapped her neck and we get this in the original, "I couldn't stop thinking it over and over as you screamed, as I tried to kill her: you were my mate, my mate, my mate." which turned into this, "When I lunged at her, I only had this one thought: that you were my mate. My mate. My soulmate." I think thats a good way to transform that repetition into something a little less redundant (and a little less goofy too), and I like the line leading up to it in german as well because it has much more weight for being less over-the-top. Thats really the lesson of this whole section, less is more

Over on the next page Rhysand talks about their final meeting at the end of ACOTAR from his perspective, and he says this in the original, "And for once, you looked at me like... like I was worth something." but in german he says, "And for once you looked at me like there was... something good in me." which I think is way more fitting for his character because he has that whole mask-thing going on and hes supposed to really struggle with the morality of his actions, so i think his mate seeing some good in him would be way more meaningful than her thinking hes 'worth' something. Its not like hes struggling with his self-esteem in that way, yknow?

OKAY thats it. If you need some kind of lesson to come away with here, let it be this: translators are locked the fuck in, and Alexandra Ernst in particular is incredibly skilled for being able to transform prose that is so awkward and uncomfortable to read into something that flows quite well

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this because I spent most of the day writing this (I managed that without procrastinating somehow) and now Im gonna reward myself with beyblade burst ^^

[acourtofwhatthefuck]

Hi, i just saw your post. Tiktok is banned in my country and I am very curious about that video now. So I was wondering if you could summarize or just explain it, if thats not too much to ask.

Hi, darling. Of course, I’ve transcribed it for you 🫶🏻 👇🏻

“After literal years of avoiding reading ACOTAR because of all the bad things I'd heard about it, I decided I would give it a go if for no other reason than to at least know what everybody else is talking about.

What surprised me upon reading it though was how much the books actually appear to reference Israel and Palestine. Maybe this shouldn't be surprising because it turns out that the author Sarah J Maas is indeed a Zionist.

She hails from the Jewish community in New York and has spoken previously about how much happiness she felt whenattending a birthright trip to Israel, as well as the pride she feels at her family's ties to the IDF. Her grandmother still volunteers at an army base while she's in her 80s.

I didn't know about this until I was halfway through the series and at that point I decided to finish it just to be able to see if her politics manifest in the novels, and unsurprisingly they do, especially in books two and three which have the most Israeli Zionist politics.

But before we get into the Zionism that's evident in the series, let's just take a step back and note some of the Jewish influences in the novel.

There are lots of references to the Torah, and the novel also uses Hebrew words, but the most overt Jewish references come in the forms of the characters Miriam and Amren.

Miriam is a legendary figure who is half human, half fae, and was born when humans were enslaved in the Black Lands. She was given as a gift to Prince Drakon, who she escapes, but later falls in love with when he allies with humans.

The two lead her people across a desert to a sea, which Prince Drakon splits in half to lead them to safety before it crashes down upon their enemies. And this lore is obviously an adaptation of the story of Moses and the enslaved Israelites.

Amren’s situation also references Moses. She's a primordial being, godlike in her powers, and there's a scene where the people of Velaris leave lamb's blood outside their doors while she prowls the streets at night, as a sign of respect for her.

If this sounds familiar, it's because Amren represents the Angel of Death, who God sent down to kill firstborn sons in Egypt in the Passover story. Believers were told to mark lamb’s blood above their doors so that the Angel of Death would pass by without taking from them. Obviously, these references are not problematic, and in fact I kind of love it when Abrahamic religions are woven into fantasy worlds, especially when they are subversive and center women.

But where this all becomes a problem is when the Zionist elements come through, which is very clear with the city of Velaris and its underground counterpart, the Hewn city. When you introduce them and contrast them, they are very clearly representative of Israel and Palestine.

In the books, Velaris is a secret city described as a safe haven for the marginalized, particularly queer folk and women. It's considered more advanced than the surrounding cities, especially when it comes to art, and its depiction to me is very reminiscent of Israel's claims that it's the only democracy in the Middle East.

Velaris is contrasted heavily with the Hewn City, also part of the Night Court, which is portrayed as conservative, misogynistic, and homophobic.

Mor, beloved best friend to Feyre, was princess of the city; however, when she had premarital sex, she was brutalized by her family and nearly honour-killed until Rhysand stepped in and saved her.

The Hewn city is considered primitive, and its people live under a mountain. Occupants are not allowed to leave; they do not enjoy the same freedoms as those in Velaris. Apparently, because they were all brutish and backwards, and they just don't deserve them. Never mind that Mor is from the city, and it's proof that the entire population must not share these values. We as readers are expected to believe everybody in the city is homophobic, a woman abuser, and they all deserve to be trapped in what you could call an open-air prison. When Mor is the exception because she is feminist and queer.

As war looms, Rhysand is forced to request the Hewn city’s military assistance. The condition, their leader, who is Mor’s father, requests in exchange, is access to Valaris.

Mor’s father says his people want the freedom of movement that those in Valaris enjoy, which is immediately shot down and then framed by the book as a dangerous thing to grant. And like…not acceptable.

Feyre believes Mor’s father doesn't even want freedom and he's only asking for it to spite her, and for some reason this makes trapping his entire city under the Mountain okay?

This was when I realized how evil the politics of the book actually are. It does not at all question the fairness of generalising the Hewn City’s population as backwards, and it finds the thought of giving the people the same rights as those in Velaris laughable. The craziest part is that Rhysand, our hero, meets the Hewn City's demands by way of introducing what I think is a blockade. It allows them access to Velaris in limited numbers through strict checkpoints and then tells all the shopkeepers in Velaris not to serve visitors from the Hewn City, essentially creating an apartheid state to maintain these people’s status as second-class citizens.

I'm truly baffled at how Sarah J. Maas wrote about this and didn't see anything wrong with it.

Rhysand’s Inner Circle spouts similar rhetoric that Zionists use against Palestinians, and it's pretty clear that Velaris, a city of art and a safe haven for queer people, represents Israel, and the Hewn City a, blockaded territory full of a population that sees women as cattle and hates gay people, represents Palestine

This reductive positioning of Israel as kind of the West and liberatory, and then Palestine as backwards, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic is not new, and it's something we're seeing a lot right now, especially post October 7.

So I think if you are thinking about reading ACOTAR and you've been on the fence because of all the bad things you've heard about it maybe reconsider, maybe reconsider reading it, because we could also talk all day about the feminist issues and the bodily autonomy issues in it but now it’s racist, too.”

[sophaeros]

golden trunks theory but i've forgotten how to do literary analysis:

so i think much like a lot of tbhc golden trunks is about a juxtaposition between intimacy/desire and the facade u have to put up as a public figure

like the opening verse/chorus are so starkly plain in the mental image they describe. it's just a simple portrait of an intimate night falling asleep together, and theres a very secretive tone created by the words "whispered" "admit". so from the get go we know immediately that it's about "true love" → romantic connotations, and this true love is associated w the night ie secrecy

this is a stark contrast to the second verse and bridge but esp the bridge where he plainly says "in the daytime". usually the day and light are associated w truth and revealing things but here he uses the daytime to talk about "a fresh new pack of lies", in contrast to the nighttime's "true love". the fact that the bridge is about being a celebrity and contending with lying for the sake of public relations is made very clear w how he says "bendable figures" → public figures who just bend/conform to the narrative crafted by pr managers, and most obviously w the use of the word "publicise". in an interview w la times hes asked if he enjoys being a pop star (w all the pressure and attention that entails) and he says "i have very little basis for comparison. the band has been going on for a larger fraction of my lifetime than it hasn’t." so as a very private person even leaving conspiracy theories about sexuality aside hes obv familiar w trying to keep the details of his relationships out of the spotlight. + this idea of the nighttime being the time for truth has been used before in diwk so it's a consistent theme

lots of people say the song about politics bc of the second verse cuz they say it's about (eugh) donald trump but i feel like thats a very surface reading. it's very out of place to me for him to have this randomass political commentary in a love song that he never brings up ever again which is why i dont think it's actually political commentary (or well, not Just, the pitchfork interview shows that is Is aware of politics obv it's just not the Point) it's just another angle to illustrate the idea of a public facing facade. he states in an interview that he thought of the wwf, which has given us the very interesting concept of kayfabe: the fact or convention of presenting staged performances as genuine or authentic. the public persona, like a wrestler w a dramatic theme song, is larger than life, rehearsed, beloved and famous, and also very much fake. 

this next part i said entirely as a joke making shit up while talking to my mutuals but then i was like wait maybe i was cooking. we're getting into more speculative rpf territory here but essentially i thought it was very interesting how he specifies that this is "the closest thing to a love song on this record", and also that the character it's centred around is one that he "made". many of his past love songs everyone knows are about his real actual love interests (eg shes thunderstorms was about alexa. alexa was a tv presenter) and now here's this song that is about simple, straightforward admittance of desire towards someone that doesnt exist. summed up in my og message to my mutuals, "hes singing to the amalgamation of his lovers an imaginary ideal to whom he can be simple and honest with in a way he can't quite bring himself to be in real life". i honestly feel like this gels well with the ultracheese's last two lines; a vague admission of guilt, of complicated feelings, vs capitulating to honesty and tiring of lying for the sake of pr ("i'm sure you've heard about enough"). + i find it interesting that golden trunks is that only tbhc song that has never been performed live

++ this idea of duplicity and lying has come up a lot in his discography but in tbhc specifically the bside anyways has the line "what a place for both the opposite sides / of my double life to finally collide"

and finally. the absolute funniest part of golden trunks.

Let me set the scene: sometime between Axl Rose getting braids (2002) and People Just Do Nothing jumping the shark (right now), those brothers in melodic yarns Turner and Kane, plus “another human being” – let’s call her “The Girl”, shall we, to save her poor mother’s heart condition? – are intertwined among the postcoital flotsam of an upmarket hotel room. “Hey, I’m glad you came,” Turner is alleged to have said, forever on the right side of etiquette and politeness in such matters. While Kane, in his sludgy Scouser lilt acknowledged, “Ah, thanks, man.” At which point Turner sat bolt upright in his sparkly gold briefs (unconfirmed) to stress who, in fact, his grateful aside was aimed at: “Not you, you wally. Her!”

sauces: - quotes curated by genius - la times - gq magazine / tumblr post

[cugzarui]

rewatching ben 10 cuz i feel like it

i have watched kuro's reviews and he keeps being frustrated that ben has to relearn the same lessons (like not needing the omnitrix to be a hero) but looking at the first two episodes i think there might be a reason ben is like this

he seems to have some inherent desire to be a hero and help people, but doesn't seem to actually have what it takes to do it. forgetting for a moment that his idea of "being a hero" is essentially "beat up bad guys" and "rescue people from physically dangerous situations", he just doesn't even have the physical ability to do those things. then the omnitrix shows up and suddenly he can do those things, and you can see he thinks of it as his chance to help people, to be a hero. and he's a ten year old kid. this was undeniably a formative memory for him. so i think it makes sense that even if he learns that he can be a hero without the omnitrix, it does make sense that he'd at least need reminding of it.

now circling back to his entire conception of heroism: his idea of being a hero seems entirely focused on the awesomeness of overcoming physical adversity and beating up bad guys - a typical belief for a young boy in the early 2000s - but in this case i think his obsession with it may also have to do with his grandpa.

when max picks up ben, he mentions how he thought it would be nice to have gwen join them this summer. this summer. implying they do this vacation regularly. ben also mentions he's been looking forward to this all summer so it looks like he and max are pretty tight; and in hindsight (knowing max is used to be a superhero in his own right) it would make sense he instilled in ben some idealism for heros. but he probably didnt need to try too hard considering ben is, once again, a young boy in the early 2000s - a condition which probably explains why bens idea of heros is a bit warped at this stage. i doubt max taught ben that physical might is the way of the hero but i do think thats what ben wouldve taken away since its simple and cool.

this idealising of heros would be a constant throughout bens childhood and another core part of his personality, so it makes sense he would need to be regularly reminded that heros arnt just about overcoming physical hazards and beating up bad guys and being awsome, even if its a lesson he's already learned in the past.

i havent analyzed the other characters as much as i did ben but heres a quick rundown:

vilgax: fully crafted to be an archetypal evil overlord. watching this now he almost seems comical. he exists to be setup and namedrop and be intimidating, and thats basically the only reason hes in the show at this point. (he does of course become important later)

max: i kinda get the feeling max is a little selfish. he didnt ask ben if he's ok with gwen joining them (he couldve at least said something ahead of time). he keeps making dishes he likes but that the kids think are gross. his saving grace is he is experienced and wise enough to not push his luck or do anything totally stupid. my image of him changed less than my image of vilgax and i still like him a lot but my image of him did drop a little. on the other hand he feels more human and his taste in food would be very trendy on tiktok

gwen: she feels more like an archetype at this point and its honestly hard for me to analyze her. shes obviously The Responsible One and is the straight man to bens goofy shenanigans, but shes not above some goofing around herself, which is a nice touch. i like how as much as she bickers with ben they still have each others backs, and how she still listens to max and respects him but doesnt...idolize him? thats not the right word...to contrast bens relationship with max which ontop of respect includes some idolization i think. but what i like the most about her is how she beats up robots and mutant monsters.

animo: hes so much more of a person. hes become a gimmick in the later series and essentially just exists in a vacuum. why is he mutating animals? cuz hes doctor animo. he doesnt need a reason. but in classic he HAS a reason. he has a backstory and a good one. hes a legitimate threat instead of a goofball. i like him being a goofball too but i missed this animo.

as for the aesthetic of the show

i really like watching early 2000s shows because the culture in them is marginally but noticeably different from what we have now. its in bens ashy voice. its in the character designs. its in the entire alien theme of the show. the theme song seems to be a variant of creepy alien music but made to be awsome and inspirational instead of scary. i dont know much about music but i think this show has a lot of punk influence as well if im not mistaken.

animos monsters are also interesting in their design. i feel like they may be inspired by old designs of demons? dont know enough to say anything about that.

bens aliens though definitely feel like they were designed more with the idea of "alternate versions of ben" than the idea of aliens.

one complaint is that have is that vilgaxes drones are apparently do shoddy you can wreck them with a shovel??? i know gwen is the one who was wielding that shovel but still. the shovel shouldve realistically broken before the robot.

edit: note: remember that stick ben tried to use to pry off the omnitrix and the stick broke while lodged under the omnitrix? i wonder if theres still a small piece of it left under there for the entire original show and if it ever itches

edit2: they say 'busted' a lot in this show. phineas and ferb is also pretty 'busting' centric. just interesting how the words we use to communicate seem to have changed in just a couple decades

[kings-highway]

Sneaking into the advice corner: how do you write non-serious but also non-crack conversations? How do you balance the mundane friendship-building levity bits with the need for purpose and capturing the themes or progression you need without jumping directly into the heavy stuff?

Thank you!

so so so sorry it took me so long to answer this one! just busy and wanted to make sure I could give it the attention it deserves

now, obviously, the master key to this kind of question is just to understand people very very very well, because all questions of dialogue sort of eventually become questions of psyche, but thats a lot of work so Im gonna run through some things I use to address a few of the points mentioned above: non-serious but non-crack; balance between levity and seriousness; and how to avoid jumping into the hard stuff.

1. Non-Serious but Non-Crack

this answer might not gel with everyone but the truth is... just write the crack conversations. based on some comments ive seen on my own stories recently, fandom has turned the word "crack" into anything that isnt intended to be emotionally enlightening or significant. you might be looking at perfectly normal conversations as crack conversations. Or, you might be VASTLY overestimating the average intelligence of the conversations between friends. People are WEIRD. As long as you play it straight and dont make a joke out of your own writing, you can pass off pretty much anything as non-crack if its meant to be characters goofing around and being silly. How the fuck else do you think I pulled off daichi straight up biting a pencil in half in TETRIA or the Peace Sign in In The Woods? Crack content played straight is just regular funny.

2. Balance

im gonna say one piece real quick and then go more in depth.

**Your funny ha-ha jokes have to come before your serious Oh-Nos**

If you finish a serious conversation with a stupid joke, you've ruined the serious conversation. If you finish a joke by having the characters somber up, you've heightened the intensity with the contrast of humour. You know that scene in Mulan where they transition from "A Girl Worth Fighting For" into gazing into a razed village? Imagine how fucking annoying the scene would be if they found that village, and then when marching off to continue on their way broke into that song exactly as it was performed? Terrible. [TBH this mostly applies to scenes that flow into each other, not so much if they are separated by chapters, scene breaks or time skips.]

A much more challenging piece of advice is to try and have a good mental map of how all your characters feel about certain topics/emotions. for example, if you want your character to be avoidant of feelings, theres no reason to make them bad at avoiding feelings, you can use genuinely funny jokes to break up serious conversations and distract the reader (and other characters) exactly as the avoidant character intends to. This just requires some awareness of your scene and will carry more of a weight on the other characters who may realize (or come to realize) what that character is doing. etc, etc. For all types. This sort of transitions into the last one...

3. When to Get Serious (And How to Make It Natural)

now you've probably heard the classic writing advice "people will say everything except what they want to say" and I have a LOT of issues with that for various reasons, but its a good benchmark for understanding the timing on these things. Saying what you Want can be almost impossible. If youve ever had to break bad news to someone - and I mean really bad news, "someone passed away" bad news - youll know how paralyzing doing so can be. You end up doing everything BUT saying that. You pick up a glass sitting on the table and make a joke about how, from the corner of your eye, you thought there was a spider in it. This isnt true, youre making it up you need to tell them something important. You both laugh about how gross that would be. you need to tell them. You think it'll kill you if you say the words out loud but you need to say something so you joke about what would have happened if youd poured yourself some water and there was a spider inside. This is supposed to be a conversation about their father passing away. And now youre talking about drinking spiders. Everyone is laughing. (crack conversation amirite?)

Look, I have severe anxiety about expressing my wants and this bullshit happens to everyone. Do you know how many days I spent telling my roommate about the plotlines of haikyuu before finally suggesting we should watch it together? SO MANY. Because I was just terrified of rejection. This works for everything. People HATE feeling bad. People hate feeling bad so much they'll do the weirdest shit to avoid it. And honestly that's when you get your best humour.

Of course, similarly, since people hate that feeling, they're often likely to COPE by making quips. Typically, if two characters are fighting each other, I find it better for them to be 100% serious. BUT if two characters are communicating while fighting a 3rd thing, theyre WAY more likely to start making little one liners. Obviously if its the climax of your story, hold off, but the very classic "WATCH OUT!" "NO I WAS JUST PLANNING ON GETTING PUNCHED THANKS FOR THAT." (screamed across a field mid fight) kinda never goes out of style. you just dont want people making jokes WITH the things theyre fighting (in my opinion) - this whole concept can be combined with point 2, where these jokes can be inserted in a climactic conlict only BEFORE the emotional beat hits.

But when it comes to timing, it can be hard. Here are a few quick things to keep in mind:

1. If there is external pressure (man coming to kill you RIGHT NOW) that anxiety disappears. These are the scenes you want to break into 100% seriousness right away.

2. If there is tension to break or potential conflict between characters (are YOU the Killer??) characters will avoid this like the plague. Beat around the bush. Possibly for as many scenes as it takes to turn it into a #1

3. If there is bad news or a message to deliver (Your Mom was Killed by the KILLER.) you can hesitate and beat around the bush but it probably should be passed along in that scene.

4. do NOT try and break the tension with humour AFTER the intensity. Sincerity is a good thing, and allowing your intense scenes to be intense and to be heavy and serious even if theyre not funny is really important.

and finally, of course... all advice to be taken with a grain of salt. If you write a scene that breaks all of this advice, and you love it, and its exactly what you want... then that scene is perfectly written. Do what makes you happy.

thanks again!

[heyheydidjaknow]

Maybe it's just fuelled by bias, but I never interpreted L as a virgin or completely inept when it comes to physical affection. i mean i agree with the idea that he's not the most experienced, but idk i always held the notion that he would view sex, arousal, etc as [within the context of not having a partner] just an bodily inconvenience that could be ignored until it couldn't, or even just a way of stress relief that he'd either take care of himself, or resort to a one night stand (under a different alias, in an impersonal setting and most likely never contact them again).

i think in terms of physically affection he'd understand it phonetically - for lack of a better word; like when children are learning to talk, and instead of understanding the right pronunciation and meaning of words, they just know what it sounds like and know roughly how to use the word. L understands what affection looks like, he knows usually when it's expected and how to mimic and adapt to his partner's wants, etc. but he doesn't understand fully (either from his childhood, or his analytical nature) that physical affection is just a common thing that happens for the sake of it, and instead thinks it happens because x and happens in the context of y. if that makes any sense what so ever.

idk. this isn't a slight against you btw, i like the way you write him and i think you're the best person to dump interpretations of him if thats ok.

I agree with aspects of this but I’m still going to argue because it’s fun to do that. Obviously this is a perfectly valid way of interpreting the text but what’s the point of sharing opposing viewpoints if not to discuss and contrast them?

I’m going to mark his whole thing with Misa as one of my biggest points for L being somewhat into sex. We see him enjoying her hypersexual ads, he responds to her kiss on the cheek like someone who understands and is somewhat comfortable with physical contact and when he’s confronted about the obvious ickiness that is his restraining Misa he does seem genuinely off-put when Misa calls him a perv, which means he at the very least seems to understand how it could be construed that way. I agree with your point to an extent that in practical terms all things sexual would become something like a chore but I think that would just be the way that a lot of things would get if your mind is singularly focused on a task for extended periods. He just does not have a lot of time to take time to enjoy that sort of thing the same way he does not have time to enjoy eating a proper meal without working.

I agree with the general physical affection thing to an extent— that he would be naturally inclined to make it a bit more clinical and follow more linear reasoning— but I don’t imagine that a person whose job it is to watch and understand people would not also put together that physical affection is just a social need that people typically have. To not be able to understand that much— that touching someone can and is a mean in it of itself— seems like a huge oversight on his part if that is the case. And, again, he does respond positively to physical affection, so I don’t think he’s necessarily unfamiliar with it; even going beyond the cheek kiss, he has no issue holding hands with Light and Misa in their circle thing, and doesn’t react negatively or as if he’s startled when Aizawa grabs his shoulder during the whole Sakura TV incident. This leads me to believe that he has enough practical experience with being physically touched to not be weirded out by it or not know how to respond to it, which is why I’ve always hinted at the idea that his childhood did have a lot of normal person on person interaction in it to explain this discrepancy.

[red-elric]

back at it again w classpect deepdives!!! i only did one of these before forgetting about it completely but i have some THOUGHTS ABOUT VOID LETS GO WOO!!!

so for starters: i used to never really subscribe to void and light being an inverse pair, key word USED TO. idr why exactly; part of it was i hadnt fully thought out what the other pairs would have to be, part of it was wanting doom to be lights inverse through similar logic that ppl apply to seers and mages being inverses. which, ironically, is also smth i dont consider to be true anymore BUT I DIGRESS. i now think of void and light as true inverses for a couple reasons. most obviously being the light vs dark thing that gets played up in the comic proper, esp w the lalondes. but theres entire dimensions of the two aspects that also have to fit, right? right.

lets look at light for a second. (i promise this is a void post.) the light players we have, rose vriska and aranea, all have classes that take light in its more..... nonliteral sense. its not about LITERAL LIGHT like an heir or a knight or a maid would use, its about LUCK and FATE and...... whatever the fuck is going on w araneas abilities. not really sure how her shit works but i think a large part of it is just..... aranea was able to justify how her power would work, so it does. and i think thats a big part of light as an aspect too; the NARRATIVE. all three light players are biiiig big players who assign importance to the roles they play and make sure everything they do is significant. and its about IMPROBABILITY too; its about the unlikely outcomes that are very lucky for the player that fit the narratives flow and, as such, become the only fated outcome for the hero. for light players, everything is a PERFORMANCE.

so, conversely, we look at void! roxy, equius, horuss..... lets ignore horuss tho bc we just dont know enough about him. (tho isnt that smth in itself, a void player fading into obscurity.... whatever.) theres defo some metaphorical interpretations of void going on in hs proper, but we cant ignore the more literal stuff either!! or.... i guess we can; void comes up a lot as a way to HIDE THINGS. equius's blood is used to block out text in rose's journal, hiding information from seers, both literal and those who do it more as a hobby (callie). roxy causes the cherub's viewports to blackout, and she is able to help callie's ghost hide in the void. equius and darkleer both are able to create dark spots in doc scratch's omniscience, notably hiding the cue ball from him (specifically FOR some light aligned folks!). following along w literal interpretations, theres two more things that jump out at me: one, the repeated references to void as 'nothingness' and two, the fact that the void symbol clearly references the space symbol, as the spaces in between space's spiral. space is pretty generally agreed on as the aspect of stuff, like all matter and distance and concepts in the three traditional dimensions and whatnot; by contrast, void would have to refer to the SPACE IN BETWEEN. kind of confusing terminology but like, on a universal scale, if 'space' refers to planets and stars and people and asteroids and whatnot, 'void' would be like..... the vacuum. the vast majority of the universe where all that 'space' stuff ISNT. coming back to the first point, the NOTHINGNESS. space has strong ties to life, too, or like.... natural evolution? reproduction? the whole frog thing. and in any universe, sustained life is extremely rare, improbable, lucky....... and here we are coming back to light again! now were getting somewhere! which leaves void as a reference to the PROBABLE, and the MUNDANE, because if you pick a random point in the universe to look at theres a 99% chance youre coming up with NOTHING. void :3

bringing this back to more abstract stuff! tho tbh thats kinda hard bc i think void is just..... generally more predisposed to the literal than light is, which would make sense; light wants to tell a good story, void just shows things as they are. but when you have a class like a rogue, that steals the void from shit, you start to turn things on their head a bit. stealing the void moves the balance a bit more towards light, in a way, so you have roxy able to do kind of what aranea and vriska do, in that they come up w a narrative of what they SHOULD be able to do and through that have the ability to do it. notably, roxy didnt come up w the idea herself, and was told she could do it; her natural voidy things were much more literal interpretations of the aspect. but i digress. a rogue of void can steal the nothingness from an idea and make it a real object. if we think of that in more light friendly terms, we have the rogue considering a concept...... an object that is VERY PROBABLY not real, or not here in the present moment or universe or whatever. the odds are astronomically low that roxy would have a matriorb in the alpha timeline, right? it doesnt make sense, that would be fantastical and improbable and would be something out of a narrative; thats a light thing. and thats exactly why roxy can make it happen; she takes that concept of her just HAVING the matriorb, and she removes the improbability from it, the mundane details of how it could possibly exist, and in turn, very luckily is able to create a real matriorb to give to kanaya. and the luck here is critical! kanaya comments many times on how impossible it seems to ensure the return of her race. and the rogue of void thing DOESNT work when condy demands it of her, as if its a given that roxy can do it; instead, it only works when shes under no pressure, but trying to be heroic for someone else, with callie aka the MUSE OF SPACE, a super powerful class that inspires others wrt space stuff, including life in a universal sense..... yeah, w that many narrative signals theres no way light wasnt going to show up w void being rogued away.

anyway. what does this all mean? not too much, just.... some things to consider when classpecting a void player :3 a void player blends into the background, doesnt feel like a hero or a main character, and has little to no association w fate or luck (even bad luck! bad luck is a doom thing, its also improbable. void is more neutral luck, the v probable concept of just being normal). they likely seem like a fairly cookie cutter member of whatever society theyre in (yes, even equius. most of the trolls were not standard trolls; he was the one to give us insight on actual troll culture and norms). theyre down to earth, in a sense, and may feel as though they cant let their true feelings show for the sake of more 'narratively important' characters. little to no association with life or nature, probably more scientifically inclined (tech, not bio). stuff like that

[pyrosomatic-metamorphosis]

i love colours have i ever mentioned how much i love colours. becausee i do. theres SO mang fucking ways to use tbem. to manipulate them. there’s ways to make pieces FULL of colour look flat and full because you chose colours that fuckin- cancelled each other out. did you know that green cancels out red and thats why theyve got those green little makeup sticks its awesome. Your perception of colour is affected hy the colours around it now tell me thT isnt the coolest shit in the world

one od the things i love doing with colours is thinking about like- the Vibes isnt quite the right word for it but i like thinking about what i want to stand out or what i want to remain sorta. flat. and standing out does Not mean the focal point to me sometimes it just means “what someone would talk about if asked abput this thing.” like the bogboyhalo piece?? i normally dont make things that has so many similar muted tones. but because it DOES have v similar tones it comes out v peaceful

values do SO much for the intensity of a piece like my guxning gosh. it really stands out that it isnt just colour contrast that matters in some of the jaiden ones ive done

like here ^ you got a mix of warm and cool colours. id say cool reds and warm blues/purples?? because of the way its muted and rhey interact w each other.i dont know. but its like a sliding scale along the colour wheel there of colours which are usually Not similar at all given cohesion /softness by muting and matching (and making sure that the colours that Arent muted are used minimally and at least match)

but then also youve got shit where theres a lot if similar colours but Intensity. there’s not a lot of colours here! mostly blue! but the selective contrast of the values makes it Stand Out more, PLUS the red does something fuckin- wild here. its almost like faux bouncing light? it helps attach the subject (blue) to the environment (dark reddish purple). its not a very intense value so the light blue still gets to be the Intense thing against the dark blue of the rest of him, but it still adds a little somrthing.

Fucking. its so wild too how as you play with art and look at art and experiment it becomes so instinctive. there’s a lot of factors that go into why i use x or y or z brightness or hue or size and its Always Changing because every environment demands something different !! you can tell so many different stories with the same things paired up differently its so so awesome

[ooglywooglies]

alright i am caught up on severance

my husband said he had a mutual who was really pissed off about the ending that it was a terrible rug pull and anyone who likes it is content with jangling keys and listen, i feel a little uneasy with the way mark just kind of left gemma hanging, she doesnt exactly feel SAFE to me where he left her but i feel like the writing it meant to imply that she IS safe where she is. innie mark did the job that he was tasked to do which he has no emotional connection to, and then he decided to fight for the cause that is important to him. i want to see mark and gemma happy obviously but outie mark is not the only aspect of the story, im really coming around to what theyre trying to do with the whole "the innies and outies are the same people afterall" thing that outie mark is on and that helly has been spending the series coming to terms with but outie mark is still incredibly patronizing to innie mark and doesnt REALLY get how he feels. like i think mark/helly is doomed, i think both of them know that it aint about who is winning the love triangle though its about finishing lumons story thats bigger than mark and gemma

i was saying this to my husband i love the detail that like no one could really tell when helena was pretending to be helly except irving, and i think the real reason that is is bc irving has kind of a messy severance boundary compared to everyone else, plus he investigates and has history using kier worship as his religion i feel like if anyone was gonna notice itd be irving and the REASON that is, is bc helena is not really that different from helly. i think helena, pretending to be helly, was expressing herself more genuinely than she has pretty much in her entire life. i also said at one point i think helly was generally more rebellious than everyone else because she comes from a different background, her personality is molded a little differently from working class people and she has a lower tolerance for being treated poorly, esp when you contrast that with dylan who really really appreciates his job at lumon bc on the outside hes always struggled.

but anyway ive been thinking this for awhile now and husband pointed it out when milchick brought in the marching band he said "did they make milchick a minstrel?" because theres no way thed have cobel or drummond dancing around for these people and i was thinking, i really like what theyre doing with him irt his race, how the demean him for using "big words" despite the fact that everyone else at lumon uses big words, the blackface paintings obviously, the way hes humiliated constantly and i was like this is all really cool and im really happy to see it in a show like this even if its subtle but i wish the show had something for its black female characters in the same way.

ive been watching a couple of like trope talk sorts of videos recently whoever i was watching called it a "not the one" trope, where the black girlfriend always holds an impermanent role until the "real" love interest comes along, or theres the black woman activist whos angry and aggressive bc shes fighting for a cause and biting back so to speak and these character always serve their purpose and disappear never to receive real depth or development or thought

but i do think its interesting that seth sort of tries to relate to natalie, the closest person he can find who might understand what hes feeling and shes yknow very light skinned and blonde and blue/green eyed and its not that she doesnt necessarily get it its just that shes not possible for him to connect with on that front

i like this show and where its going a lot but those aspects of it sort of bother me

i think my husband sort of wants to be annoyed that burt and irving never get to kiss and that it feels like something the writing is trying to avoid but it feels somewhat reminiscent of censorship or selfcensorship for the purpose of like a subtextual narrative or emotion rather than because they dont actually go there. and tbh i joked that "in a way its actually more gay that they dont kiss" and he said "yeah isnt it gayer to yearn" because really like, i feel like the story marries a lot of aspects of the old world and the new world like it feels silly to have a gay romance in modern times where the characters feel like they CANT be together, bc its modern times, they can, the world has moved a lot. but its supposed to FEEL like were being held back like in the old times so i weirdly sort of appreciate it for that? idk its weird, its hard to explain. i was thinking about how its kind of interesting that irving and cobel both have transatlantic accents despite its not being a natural feature of their actors (i mean i think, as far as i know i could be wrong), it has to do with vibe of setting they sort of want it to feel old timey in some ways. partly having to do with old money/old traditions. the economic sickness of kier spreads to its people through the form of the religion of kier, meant to evoke company worship ie disney and whatever.

[dreamteamecho]

1/30 dreams

i think a lot of people wanted to change, and a lot of people didnt. alot of things happened, connected by loose threads covered by sand. an mcyt called me out on my brainrot, hoping i didnt actually act this way. sometimes i did, but i was 5050 and could turn mature on a switch. i also had graffiti (not that, victorian?) stylish writing. i went to a new school, mom attempted to talk shit about classmates, idk if i took the bait or not. a show about different sentient animals & some students who get better. they were in a room with a large tree with a hollow near the bottom for the kids to sleep in. the animals also lived there. and a bunch of other smaller things to contrast, like a person with a shit family who isnt the best person. at some point i attempt to talk on the mcyt while on a boat, all thoughts of me forgotten, maybe this was an au. it went surprisingly ok. i had to tell a guy what my mom really meant when all she was doing was slurring her words heavily. she wanted to make a lobster grilled cheese. a bunch of programmers in a im forum. one guy is creating a flight game, highly unique, very retro looking. needed some extra help with level design. in said forum you could adopt pets but their name kept changing since you couldnt keep them unless you paid up. same went for your username (your world name where you store your guys was ok) you also had different emotes you could use, some of it custom. the banana moth was a couple of these emotes. i think there was a grid system that kept the emotes more passable, rither in posting or in creating. There was some mind control mind bending in this too.

2/1 (typos are bad in this one. ill fix later... mostly)

a shapeshifter, the thief has gone around wreck car crashes into people. otnly the marked can figure oit what truly happened. they get a strong reaction where thief ran over another snd  bring in that location makes them hear faintly about what may have happened. dreams also reveal what happen and they only ecidt after you find clues, it doubles as a nightmare. sometimes the thief appears and speaks with or without clue. sent out on my own i go tonthe market agter gettijg bad dream. i meet someone who i got along eith, only for them to ask very suddenly if j haf anything to deal with the kitsune. yeah i do. i help her sjopping she explains that she keeps getting gifts for tjieg only for him not to open, she wants to scatter them out of the box and letting thief know jts location so he van steal it. i ""help"" choose a couple of thingms, shes planning maming baloln and bouquet for him. before i saw her i was textijg my mom, who i stopped responding to once i started talking. then, near the sane spot i found the first crash, she finds anothef. i swear she has supernatural humsn hearing, she kept saying that me desling ektb tbr tape 2as too lojd even thkugh it was extremely quiet. i vibed for a bit whilr dhe did what she had to. i think we also deleted some outfkts that couldve led to the thief but onr of them was improperly linked? i think there was more and there was definitely more that the dtart but i can barely open eyed mann nn. also i picked up a statue of the thief as a seal and thats how she know i was one of the thiefs marked

2/20

dog person kids years were colorful. teenage years were grey. depressed years were with black ends of hair, naturalistic, skuls 4 eyes. recovering looked like dark clothes but a white body, skulls still for eyes.reminded me of emo/goth

a static dog that turned into an edible snowman had appeared in my backpack. i allowed another person to take her since i didnt havve the money to feed another guest. bad idea. at least for their snowman form. btw in dog form they looked like okami.

im not sure about this 1 but basicall some people were at war, minecraft houses and a (medival) village were the battlefield, my character died to making a wall made of wine blocks but getting stuck in it. then my character was a person that was highly powerful, but couldnt use most her weapons, mostly bc she didnt care for it, and ended up getting into a duel with the 2nd powerful villan. she sneak attacked the villian in a dark house with a lance, and a poll appeared about who should win. i tried looking up what a greatmace was but it was very unhelpful, just shiba/husky dogs. also some point it changed into an ad about killing bad genetic dogs? and then a tank trying to blow one up and immediately regretting it?

earlier i also had to make up names of doctors and then their appearances. same place we had to learn how to take cover from bullets.  i ended up drawing a homestuck troll with blood spurting out of their neck, realised it wasnt class appropriate and had to ask for a new blank paper. there were also elementarh kids there for some reason? i guess to inspire them to become doctors. im so tired.

2/28 had a dream where umbreon was in severe pain and was begging for help.

3/6 we were in a different house, a bad storm came and went, apparently it was the reason demon couldnt come here. so many places were leaking. (i wonder if he arrived. probably not.)

joel was streaming a vlog and was like using his face n stuff???? he was shopping with a friend and there was more but i cant remember. weird as hell man.

[3337777]

im doing the right thing letting him go. the stars told me to; they said my husband would pursue me relentlessly, would never reject me. if he does reject me, he isn't my husband, he is someone else's.

still, this man here sounds just like the man the stars projected for me. long distance, 'fated' meeting. i checked over and over and compared and contrasted my chart to others, this is genuinely what is written by God for me, a man like that. so i can't have a scarcity mindset thinking he's the only one there is just because he was.

maybe he was my lesson that men like that do exist. so to just hold on and keep faith.

when he got here he was a nothing. barely tried to know me. instead little things about me were nipped at, like when i wanted mac&cheese at a restaurant, like how 'impressionable' i am when really A. thats a literally divine quality and B. i was actually respecting and taking in his opinions on things, in the moment accepting that he had good reason for his opinions and choosing to mull over them later - which i have done, and which have strengthened my resolve in certain things and opened my eyes on other things. i feel like all people do that and i should've just been able to eat mac&cheese without him wincing about it because he doesn't himself like it. & then he would just disappear into the bathroom or on the fromt porch for hours. and i bore it so patiently with such a beautiful smile. not once did i nip at him - not until the one thing i said that horrible day, the day after my birthday, "i feel like you got what you wanted out of me." because he fancies himself righteous this seemed to sting him. "don't think that lowly of me," he said. "that doesn't even make sense." things that make no sense to men make too much sense to women.

my husband would never nip at me like this. if anyone tried to change a thing about me or criticize me for stupid little things like that i bet he'd defend me. if i wanted macaroni & cheese at a restaurant he'd make sure there was enough for leftovers.

i know it wasn't that i was ugly or some bullshit like that because i'm quite frankly objectively gorgeous, and in theory with my specific attributes im perfect for a pious man like him, that's all why he flew all the way over here. but he had his own walls up, he had his own issues. he didn't want to subject me to them and i do respect that.

i would respect it even more if he would stop breadcrumbing. at this point i can safely say he's not just talking to me out of feeling obligated because of the stupid promise i asked him to make, he didn't swear to God or anything and he's gone several days without a word a few different times at this point. his 'words' are just...fucking instagram reels. like "look, i'm still thinking about you. but not enough to want to actually talk to you." he sent me a picture of himself right out of the shower, but he drew little fake pants on his 'awrah.' i sent him back my 'awrah' fully covered - a black blob instead of a person. i wish he'd remember me that way instead of the humiliating display of unrequited love i had performed just for him, instead of how 'pretty' i am when i cry. now he's still sending reels. some of them are about the proper way to raise a child. of course im interested in such things but it leaves open the implication that he thinks of me when he sees happy children. he sent me songs until he stopped. the last one was 'give me a smile' by sibylle baier, and i sent back 'forgett.' everything i do is to draw a line between us as i step further and further away.

i'd let him back in if he showed committment, and proved himself, and it would take a lot of proving. a lifetime. maybe he isn't capable, and i won't wait around. im done putting myself through that ever again. i was way too beautiful to have ever done that and i am ashamed at the way i have allowed myself to be treated.

i deserve Big Love.