#i probably should reread it

[eri-pl]

OK, so this is from the post-Silm version, I think but a lot of Tolkien's thoughts on the interesting stuff (mostly about Morgoth)

Some highlights:

I didn't read the first part in detail, I've had enough with the later parts (yes, I read it out of order)

ósanwe is not clear mind-reading! It's much, much less. This solves so many problems! I love this idea and will accept it (this was the pleasant part and now it ends)

yes, gold is a particularly evil element

Hiding of Valinor was a bad idea, but not really. Huh. Professor, I think you're trying to have two things at once again but ok… So it is a bad idea as written in the Silm, but this is the fault of the narrative frame, and also Manwë is much wiser than the book makes him look. Huuuh. There is a limit to how much authorial intent I can take. I am not buying it, I am sorry, I just can't wrap my mind to it. I love the guy, but I can't agree that he made no mistakes, and it's just Pengolodh or whatever. Doesn't work for me. Sorry.

I am sad. Yes, I know, I know. I know. And I am sad anyway. Call me dumb. I don't care. I am frigging sad.

Yes this is the part I am ignoring (well ok one central part of it and basically the whole background he is putting into it, the datails are optional to ignore)

This makes me sad. It makes no sense. (Not very sad, just… idk. I get it, just… idk. I guess I prefer my extremely weird hc. Also, again, if Tolkien's writing style and characterisation was more coherent, maybe. Idk. Idk. )

Oh, and also Void is not outer space, it's out of spacetime, but was Morgoth really thrown there, or is it just Pengolodh saying things? Tolkien won't tell us.

(And yes, that's the version where Námo actually executed him, I'm glad it was Námo, not sure why. He can handle difficult stuff?)

Anyway, enjoy!

[miniimerry]

My litmus test for deciding if I respect or value a person’s One Piece opinions is looking at the way they discuss Usopp tbh. You can tell a lot about someone based on how they talk about Usopp specifically.

If a person insists that Usopp is useless (whether it’s because he’s not as strong as Zoro or Luffy or Sanji or because he “doesn’t have a real job” on the crew) it tells me that they don’t pay attention to what Usopp does contribute, nor do they pay attention to what the story itself deems useful. Usopp may not be a massive, hulking powerhouse with ultra-powerful haki, but he does have utility in the crew. (And even if he didn’t, he would still belong because they wanted him.)

If a person insists that Usopp is just a crybaby or a coward and that he sucks because of this, it tells me that you don’t pay attention to what he’s doing while he’s running or crying. He might cry or shake or run, but he always comes back. He always stands up and fights in the end. He feels scared and then he does it anyway. It’s easy to forget, but Usopp is just a human in a world of monsters. For him to stand up and fight takes a lot of courage.

If a person insists that Usopp is not strong, it tells me they miss what the story itself tells us about what strength is and what it means to be strong. He has a skill that most do not. He is able to shoot with a degree of accuracy that is borderline inhuman. Whether he can kick through a boulder is irrelevant. Sanji can’t snipe from hundreds of feet away.

If you can’t look at Usopp and see where he fits in the story, I am truly uninterested in anything else you have to say about this story.

[applestorms]

L can be such a possessive character at times. he always strikes me as the type of person who is deeply aware of everything that he owns, both in a more literal sense and metaphorically-- like, he knows what money he has and how to use it, what resources are readily available to him and what he has to be sneakier to utilize, the habits and tendencies and emotional states of individuals and world governments both. the DN musical really puts an emphasis on the more computer-y aspects of how his brain functions, which isn't as obvious in the manga/anime but i think still works well as a way to follow his thinking. it's kinda what near does too: everything is a factor to them, every tiny detail a new opening to optimize for the best results, every person and location and object a part of a puzzle waiting to be solved. and as a part of that, L is deeply aware of every and any little thing he may or may not have control over, and exactly to what degree.

his habit of stealing titles as depicted in the LABB murders novel is such a good example of this. ryuzaki, eraldo coil, deneuve. he eats people alive and then takes their names for himself like some kind of fucked up fae or trickster god, creating new masks and personas to hide behind from the remains of the people he's devoured. i have to wonder if he would've used the title of KIRA for himself had he won-- i can hardly imagine what kind of power such a title could hold if held in his hands. of course, he could've just used the defeat of KIRA as a way to build up the L title even further, offering up the body of a dead god like perseus showing off the head of medusa. but L is so emotionally attached to the kira case, i struggle to see him allowing it to fade from existence so thoroughly as near does, even if it is only kept close on a private level...

this is part of why i think it genuinely makes a lot of sense that L's ultimate win state would include capturing light to some degree. even if the memory of KIRA somehow manages to fully disappear from the public consciousness, there is no fucking way L is letting light yagami out of his grasp. honestly, the moment that L truly loses this game is not when he starts investigating misa while still under rem's watch, not when light gets back his memories, not even when he dies, but the moment when he allows light to be freed from the handcuffs. the moment when he allows the other members of the task force to turn off the cameras and keep him from watching light and misa talk in the lobby. the moment when he gives up, lets light yagami go outside of L's personal sphere of control, is the moment when L starts the clock ticking down to the end of his own life.

this is one of the key ways in which i see light as a true equal and parallel to L, as after L's death he, intentionally or no, continues the same tradition and takes L's title for himself, twisting the two sides together into the L-KIRA amalgamation. only, the L title functions a little bit differently than every other persona or title that we see in the series-- because L's true name is L. that's all that he is. on a literal, legal, and emotional level, i don't think that L is anything more than L. he is the world's greatest detective, he's an incredible, weirdo super genius, but he does not afford himself much more than that, barely allows himself personhood or humanity outside of his work. light was the one to ultimately defeat L because he did not just put a stain on his character (as BB attempted), did not just kill him, but stole his very identity and took it for himself.

one of the biggest contradictions of L's character that i think you must accept should you attempt to portray him accurately is that he is both deeply detached from humanity while also having all of his work and effort and life be focused around saving it. it's one of the ways in which he is an exact opposite to light-- where light relies on humanity for external validation, to be Seen, while also looking down on it as dumb and immoral and spineless, L is so separated from it that he barely exists as a person, all the while dedicating almost every action he takes to helping it. remember: for all the emotional turmoil that wammy's house and the legacy of L may put on the kids living there, ultimately it's entire existence is nothing more than L's logical solution to his potential demise. if he dies, the world goes down with him, all of the cases that are yet to happen and he is yet to solve being left in the air. he has the foresight to set up a fail safe, but not to consider the emotional implications of what being that fail safe might feel like, how high the price of your own humanity is if you are not already alienated from it, the inability to have your own name on your gravestone-- though perhaps some of the blame also falls on watari's shoulders in this case, philanthropic old bastard that he is.

imo, playing his game really got it right in presenting L and light as one and the same, synonyms on either side of the mirror. in every action they take they are both so selfishly selfless, playing the game for themselves and their own pleasure but plastering the needs and will of humanity on top of it. L isn't invested in saving humanity for the sake of humanity-- he just likes the thrill of having the stakes raised so high. hard to shit on ryuk for wanting entertainment when the humans he finds are just the same as him.

[swimming-karyss]

birb babygirl from the vivre card

[nutmegdoggy]

Your name is KARKAT HASUNE. Despite your ORNERY and GRUMPY nature, you happen to be a BELOVED IDOL PERFORMER with a penchant for UPBEAT JAPANESE MUSIC. (Not that you even know what "Japanese" means.) Your strife specibus is SPRING ONIONKIND, not LEEKKIND as so many people tend to assume for some fucking reason. You tend to CUSS A LOT and people describe your speech as LOUD BUT SOMEHOW MELODIC.

What will you do?

((lineart and closeup under the cut))

maybe he got hit with a miku miku BEAM!!!!!!

[noodles-and-tea]

omg i was just scrolling through your old art on insta and i came across your atsv and itsv art and i was so happy bc that’s my current hyper fixation. a lot of people say me and my bf look like miles and gwen so i (obviously) sent him all your art. I LOVE YOU AND YOUR ART 🫶🏼🫶🏼

OH THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!

[metanarrates]

hmm. there's something fascinating to me actually about how returnees are typically portrayed as arrogant in orv. I won't even say that's an inaccurate view of isekai protagonist characters, given my (limited) experience reading isekais, but orv does quite a lot of work in showing how tragically disposable certain types of stories are, and how upsetting that can be. it also does a lot to show power fantasies as being sympathetic things for people to experience. making returnees almost exclusively low-tier assholes means that orv misses out on what I think could be an interesting opportunity to portray a certain emotional experience. what if you think your story is the most important in the world, and the things you suffered were all justified in the end, only to discover that you have only ever been considered cheap entertainment and are ultimately disposable?

but there's an angle in orv's portrayal of Successful Returnees that makes it click well for me. the reason that jang hayoung is a failed returnee, and that this gang of low-tier assholes are successful, is because the successful ones have bought into the idea that everyone else's story is disposable, and can therefore be mere props in their paths to power, while jhy has not. her wall of impossible communication can block her from success in the system (initially) because it is what enables her to connect to others. once she learns how to leverage those connections she does of course start to transcend the system and become powerful, but initially, of course she can't Be an ideal returnee. because she does actually view other people as people and not as props. she doesn't even view herself as A Protagonist.

so, then. the ideal Protagonists who view their stories as uniquely special... it does make a good amount of sense for them to be immediately subjected to how little the system cares for them or their stories lol. become a prop in someone else's story posthaste! become an obstacle!

[mikalilys]

Jinx saying to Vi “it had to be you” in that one scene is so Sirius and Regulus in crimson rivers when Regulus tries to get Sirius to kill him

[wonderarium]

this blurb from the author of a separate peace about how it totally isnt gay is so funny

like yeah man if they had been aware of it theyd probably be blowing each other in the broom closet or something but theyre not so its just this mountain of really intense feelings of simultaneous admiration and jealousy and possibly wanting to hurt something that you love because you dont know how else to process your feelings and conflating those feelings of wanting to be someone and wanting to be with someone. yeah thats just what its like to be gay teen who doesnt know theyre gay yet thats gay teen angst baby

[vero-niche]

nightow when i catch you nightow.............

[good-to-drive]

Abuse, Silence, And Why Kevin Can Fuck Himself

I recently finished watching Kevin Can Fuck Himself on Netflix, and, aside from being the most brutally honest portrayal of domestic abuse I have ever seen, I discovered a beautifully written examination of narrative as power and silence as abuse and how this manifests in our larger culture. 

Without going into too much detail, the show is filmed in two distinct styles that are interleaved throughout each episode to tell a cohesive story. Allison and Kevin’s relationship as seen by the rest of the world is told through a multi-cam, laugh-track sitcom that depicts a very typical “goofy husband, shrewish wife” mainstream comedy. Allison’s life through her own eyes is told through a single-cam drama/thriller about Allison planning to murder Kevin to escape his abuse. 

It’s an absolute masterclass in screenwriting, but more than that, every episode explores the difference between truth, fact, and reality, and how none of these things are quite as much or as little as story. But while the process of transforming the chaotic and plotless reality of life into a story is as involuntary and essential as breathing, misogyny and the degradation of women is just as ubiquitous in our society, and a story that exists at the expense of another person’s lived reality is a refutation of their humanity. 

It's also just a great show for anyone who likes to engage with history (or reality TV or true crime or “real life stories” in general), because while we have to tell ourselves stories about her own lives, we have to tell ourselves stories about other people as well. Eternal silence is narrative death, and the perpetual silence of an unspoken narrative is often the last death we can visit on someone whose story we’d rather ignore. 

I also pulled up some books – Lolita and Disgrace – that dealt with similar themes, but from the perspective of the abuser. And what strikes me the most is that, across three beautifully written stories about narrative and silence within a culture that normalizes abuse, Allison, who began her story within a state of narrative death, was the only point-of-view character who had any chance of surviving. 

One of the main themes of Kevin is that a compelling story is often a story that reinforces what we already believe or like to believe, and while the story may be factual and true it often also exists at the expense of someone's lived reality. The exact same series of events can be a silly joke or a harrowing tale of abuse depending on the lens through which we view it, but historically we've only been willing to see the multicam, laugh track, sitcom perspective on unbalanced relationships.

The alchemical process of turning a series of disjoint facts and experiences into a narrative creates something new and compelling, and erases much of what previously existed. In this way, it’s entirely irreversible. We spin our experiences into a very thin thread, a story we can tell ourselves that elicits something within us, something we need in order to live with the complex, uncertain, and unsatisfying reality of life. In think in many ways the thing we elicit in ourselves is truth. But truth is both more and less than fact, often more a reflection of our own beliefs and desires than the events of our lives. And in telling that truth we may never stray from the facts, but we almost by definition cannot give voice to another person’s reality.

There's a scene in season 2 of Kevin when Allison is hit by a door – a la the classic excuse – because of Kevin’s carelessness. And while he absolutely did not hit her, the way it's written is such an incredible allegory for how Kevin has curated their story and curated their friends' and family’s perceptions of their story such that even if she tells everyone the exact, unvarnished truth of what's happening to her and begs for help, they will only be capable of seeing the laugh-track, sitcom, “Kevin is a harmless goofball and his wife is a total shrew” perspective on the events of their lives. 

As so often happens with abuse, their friends and family saw Allison being hurt because of Kevin. But the alchemy of creating a narrative around Kevin and Allison is irreversible, and the series of events they witness can only be spun together to a joke, an accident, a silly, childish mistake. Allison’s reality, Allison’s pain and fear, is completely elided. Like a lost sound in the middle of a sentence, her experience goes silent, and their larger understanding of her relationship never has to change. And you feel so acutely how Allison lives her entire life in that silence. 

Storytelling is human, it’s essential, there’s no other way to engage with our own lives. And it’s not lying. It’s never lying to tell the truth. But it doesn’t reflect every reality, either, because another person’s reality can’t be reflected within our own narrative, because that’s what it means to be another person. To spin two different threads.

And because narrative is the essential process by which we understand our reality, denying someone their own narrative, or denying that this narrative be heard, is inherently abusive. To allow someone a voice is to give them humanity, and to suppress it is to strip that humanity away. 

Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee, follows the story of a professor, David, who rapes a student and then fails to protect his daughter, Lucy, from being raped by intruders in their home. He destroys his daughter’s life  – not through failing to protect her, but through twisting her rape into a story about why the rape of his student wasn’t wrong. The main theme of the book is generally considered to be exploitation, but Coetzee doesn’t deal with the exploitation of the rape. That’s too direct, too immediate, too easy for the reader to understand as misogynistic and wrong. Rather, Coetzee delves into “the innocuous-seeming use of another person to fill one's gentler emotional needs” (Ruden).

The rape is how we understand David as a fundamentally exploitative person, a person who denies others their humanity by converting them into a vessel for his own desires, who erases their voice in order to speak through them and give himself the things he needs. And that’s how we recognize that the way he absorbs and claims the stories of his daughter and his student is another kind of violation of their humanity. Another way of turning women into vessels for men’s pain and fear and need. 

What’s fascinating is that David's student finds her voice – files a complaint against him – and is eventually able to continue with her life. The woman he raped is less damaged by him than his own daughter, because she was the woman he couldn’t permanently silence. 

In Lolita, another brilliant novel about abuse, dehumanization, and storytelling, Humbert turns to the reader at the end and says, “Imagine us, reader, for we don’t really exist if you don’t.” 

It’s not that Humbert knew he was fictional, but that he knew everyone was fictional. Believed the entire world only truly existed in his own mind, because anything beyond that was irrelevant to his needs. He coped with the collapse of his ability to dehumanize Dolores (who he called Lolita) by demanding that his voice be resurrected. Demanding immortality. Demanding his narrative exist in another person’s world, and thereby be given the existence and humanity that Allison and Dolores and Lucy and David’s student were denied. 

Pushing his needs, finally, onto the reader, because we are the only person he has left, and a person like him can only exist through the use of another. In that way, Humbert was powerless. In that way, Kevin and David were powerless, too.

In Disgrace, David’s dream is to write an opera, and at the end of the book he realizes he’ll never finish his magnum opus. He’ll never be able to terminate the process of converting himself, his world, into a story. But he does learn to decenter himself in that narrative. And it’s when he loses all fear of death, and any conception of the self, that he gains the ability to give dogs – who he generally equates to women – a voice within his opera, his life’s work. 

It’s in death that we discover our true unimportance as human beings, that we learn to let go of vanity and our conception of the self entirely. And David had degraded women so thoroughly in order to justify how he used them to meet his own emotional needs that it was only in losing all value for his own life that he could gain the ability to see them as equal voices. To actually put those voices into his own life story. It's at the cost of himself that he allows other people to truly exist, in the death of the self that he finally allows the world to exist outside of himself. It’s almost a positive character arc. Almost.

When Kevin finally loses the ability to abuse Allison, he, like many abusers, loses all desire to live. His world was built on a structure of superiority and inferiority, on beings and vessels, on the inherent value of men and the inherent meaninglessness of women’s lives. The system on which he based his entire reality has been destroyed by Allison’s declaration of the self. And, if he was a being because she was a vessel, then in losing the ability to treat her as a vessel, to fully and completely dehumanize her, he has lost his own humanity. 

It may be perfectly summed up here: “Become major. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise, what is life for?” (Coetzee).

If you’re not to be a main character, if there indeed is no split between major and minor characters, between people and the paper dolls that populate their story, between living beings and the vessels into which they pour their need – what is life for?

Nothing. At least, not for people whose narrative must exist at the expense of another. 

And that’s why I say that only a narrator like Allison could survive this kind of story. Despite beginning her story trapped in eternal silence, her reality fully elided no matter how immediate and obvious it became, Allison was the only point-of-view character of any of these three stories who didn’t establish her power through the degradation of another. Who didn’t conceptualize the world via being and vessels. Whose narrative didn’t exist, by necessity, at the expense of another person’s humanity. Whose thread could exist in a larger tapestry without destroying her sense of self.

Don’t get me wrong, she’s not generally a likable character. She’s misogynistic, cruel, selfish, jealous, desperate, afraid, and in pain. Like anyone in an abusive relationship, she’s not at her best, and she’s often pushed to do things that are ugly and disturbing because she’s simply been pushed too far. 

But, for me, the power in her character is in how her last scene never felt like a final scene. Her story didn’t have to be killed, her conception of the self didn’t have to be killed, in order to reveal the brutal reality of stories twisting and intertwining without any inherently superior truth or narrative among them. Allison’s story was one of declaring herself. And that’s why it didn’t feel like it ended at the end. Instead, this felt like a beginning.

[dedshomas]

my beloveds....

[daddyplasmius]

reread edited what currently exists of my DP Wolfwalkers AU fic. here are all my favourite lines in no particular order & lacking context

[zoetropist]

welcome back to “i must’ve read hand jumper with my eyes closed bc how did i not notice this”

todays subject

jaeil and jungwoo have matching piercings 😭 or at least i figure they’re matching? unless delinquents frequently get their ears pierced lol…

also it’s cute how they’re black and white aww yin and yang :D the doomed scrunklys of all time…

[themandylion]

surprise self-rec time! pick 3 of your favorite things you’ve written and share them here, then put this in the inbox (anonymously or not) of your fellow writers to spread the positivity and help celebrate already written fics 🖤

This is lovely. Thank you for thinking of me!

The Conspiracies of Princes - JayTim. Jason just wants to get his cargo to Kandor, he doesn't have time to deal with this kid he found hiding in the wall of his ship. A SPACE/royalty AU with a lot of marriage, for some reason. This is the first JayTim fic I wrote and I'm still really proud of the worldbuilding, plotting, and pacing!

Rituals of Sacrifice - Jason&Tim (please make sure to read the tags!!). All Tim's friends are dead. That's okay—he is too. A super-fun boy detective story where Tim gets to team up with Robin to solve his own murder! Lately I've been writing a lot for the final installment of the series spun off of this fic and it keeps reminding me how much fun it was to write.

Pathfinding - JayTim. When Tim is ten, he gets saddled with a life-debt after a dragon saves him from certain death. Almost 20 years later, the dragon turns up on his doorstep with a proposition: Be his plus-one to a family reunion and he'll forgive the debt. Eeeey, it's a fake dating AU with a magical twist, what's not to love? Everyone loves a fake dating AU, which is definitely all this is. Definitely.

[the---hermit]

2025 reading goals

My reading goal for next year is no reading goals! Jokes aside, I have a couple of things I would like to keep in mind, but my main goal for the year is really to avoid goals and challenges at all costs. I don't want to set a number of books goal, I don't want to do tbr challenges, or other types of challenges. I want track my reading as best as I can, but I want to see what a reading year with no external pressures looks like. I kind of what to see what I'll do as a reader naturally. I have never been particularly strict with my reading goals, but they are of course in the back of my mind, so I am really curious to see how the reading is going to be when I have no rules at all. I might do a quartely update on how my reading year is going? But no promises, because I might forget.

There are a couple of things I want to keep in mind anyway. Firstly my habit of trying to read the books I buy right away. I don't see this as a reading challenge personally, it's more of a thing I keep in mind to be more mindful when I am buying books. What this really is is just consider as well as I can how I spend my money in books. At this point it's such a well established habit I don't really have to think about it anymore.

What I really want to focus on instead of goals is to track my reading. I normally do that quite accurately with my storygraph, but I would also like to get back into using my reading journal more. The main things I want to track is which of my unread books I end up reading during the year, and which books I buy during the year and if I read them or not. I already kind of do this, but this year I didn't touch my reading journal for several months, and I'd like to be more consistent. As I have mentioned in my physical tbr post I will be writing a list of my unread books at the beginning of year, and then I will cross out things as I read them, if I do. Same with the books I buy, I will be listing them on a page on my journal and cross them off once I read them. I will approach neither as a challenge, it will only be me logging data in my journal.

Last thing I'd like to do is to start posting again book reviews like I did. It's one of the habits I lost this year, and I kind of miss it. I might not post a review for every single book, but I'd like to bring back the occasional book review/ end of reading rant.