#i think oops might be a fitting term here

[maryse127]

Me: yeah I'll install Final Fantasy XIV on my old PS4 just to see if it works. It's free so why not :)

Also me: *plays game for like 6 hours. Is now level 19 from side quests despite the next main story mission being level 5*

[meamiki]

5% of a color headcanon.... two versions since b&w emphasizes the dagger more i think but i still like the warm tones ASFSADA

i am not biased towards rainbow daggers whatsoever i promise (lie)

((also friend is streaming now and im there too!! bit more info linked here, its rated mature tho))

[pumpking64]

Oh so it hasn’t really changed since the first definition? There aren’t species which are categorised as dinosaurs today yet are more distantly related to Megalosaurus or Iguanodon than those are to each other?

And also, do you know of a scientific distinction between dinosaurs and sauria? This has always confused me from a German standpoint, where the terms “Dinosaurier“ and “Saurier“ don’t include the same taxons (as far as I’m aware). Are dinosaurs then a scientific taxon within the non-scientific group of sauria?

I have a question - and I completely understand if you don't want to answer - but if birds are "full dinosaurs" then what the heck even is a dinosaur? (I would appreciate if you could explain like I'm a particularly stupid 5 year old)

You're good! I don't mind answering!

Organism = Living Thing

Prehistoric Life = life that existed before agriculture; a good summary term for "life of the past"

Evolutionary Relationships = what things are related to what other things

We define groups of organisms based on their evolutionary relationships. In school you probably learned that we define different groups of organisms based on their traits, but that was the old way of doing things. That was a system that we made before we really knew about prehistoric life, and it doesn't describe extinct organisms particularly well.

So, scientists have switched to just using relationships, which are determined based on what the most likely evolutionary pathways are (usually by putting everything we know about the organisms in question into a computer and having it generate the most likely family tree).

The first two dinosaurs (in the traditional sense) that were discovered were Megalosaurus and Iguanodon. So, we defined the group, Dinosaur, based on those first two animals.

How do we do that? Well, we say that those two animals form the two branches of the Dinosaur family tree. Which means the first dinosaur is the last ancestor those two animals had in common - ie, the point at which they were still in the same evolutionary line. After that point they diverged into two different lines, but they shared that common ancestor.

So, dinosaurs are defined as:

The Most Recent Common Ancestor of Megalosaurus and Iguanodon, and all of that ancestor's descendants.

Phrased differently: the first dinosaur was the last ancestor Megalosaurus and Iguanodon shared, and everything that can trace their lineage back to that ancestor is a dinosaur.

So, Dinosaurs are a particular family group. That group includes lots of things, all of which descended from that last ancestor. And among those descendants? Birds!

Hope that helps

[loveselenade]

Madoka 3.0

So, I was wrong about Tomoe Mami…

The last time I wrote about Madoka Magica (many months ago,oops), I had watched 1.5 episodes and kept reading Mami in a sinister light. Ever since, I’ve watched the whole first three episodes and one whole minute of the fourth before deciding I do want to write down my impressions, after all (I’ll try to do an episode every two or so weeks after this write up, since I find them pretty taxing to craft and post lol). With that out of the way…

Rewatch observations.

There was a lot I didn’t write about last time; it’s such a packed premiere in terms of craft, I’d have never finished if I wrote everything I wanted to note. Even now, I’m compiling only a few new observations from my re-watch of episode one.

So, the first thing is the background design. In terms of architecture and adornment, especially when it comes to the school, it really brings to mind postmodernist spaces. This shot legitimately reminds me to art museums I’ve been to in terms of the open the space with the sculpture of a withering plant encased in a strange cage placed front and center, like in an exhibition, and the open, well-lit rooms with framed pictures on the wall:

[Image description: a wide room filled with students dilly-dallying. It has wide, white panels in the walls, a framed picture by the right edge and a sculptured of a whitering plant encased in a strange cage placed front and center.]

I wonder if Madoka Magica would make for a good excuse to read on post-modern art lol

Funnily enough, the clear panels to their classrooms make their framework stand out, making them look like cages as well:

[Image id: Madoka and Homura, with the latter taking the lead, walking away from the classrooms, placed at the center of the image. They’re framed by classroom walls on both edges of the frame as well as in the background, you can see students peeking outside through the clear panels.]

They also allow for quite the peanut gallery. If one chooses to fully immerse in a gay reading, the exposed feeling as the two of them walk away from the rest of the student body can be quite resonant.

Also, what’s with the cages? I guess I’ll find out eventually.

That aside, and this observation is courtesy of my sister, the background design can also give off a feeling like that of a backroom due the openness and uniformity of the spaces. There can be a sense of infinity and liminality to them, even (think of the corridors Madoka and Homura traverse while walking to the infirmary, for example). This sense of being on the threshold of realization haunts Madoka’s waking up sequences, but it also feels fitting for Homura’s own state of being—her warning to Madoka highlights her preference for stasis, as she tells Madoka that if she were to seek change, she’d lose it all. Now, obviously, this is because Madoka seems doomed to die regardless how many times Homura loops, but it’s also worth bringing up that adolescence is often thought up as an intermediate space between childhood and adulthood, mired with great, uncontrollable change. One could say that the time loop narrative serves to heighten Homura’s teenage anxieties, and it stands in direct contraposition to Madoka’s budding hunger to grow and embrace change. I might be getting ahead of myself here, but Madoka’s wish to change also seems to clash with all the illusory motion present in the first few minutes of this episode—meaning that there’s something inherent to the processual dynamics of being a magical girl that might offer an illusion of advancement but it’s fundamentally at odds with it.

[Image id: A screenshot of Madoka standing in the blue hallway where Homura issues her warning. She’s placed slightly to the right of the center line, and she watches Homura leave, who is placed on top of the point of fugue at the center of the image. The subtitles read: “Stay as you are, and as you always shall be.”]

See? The window panels are very evenly spaced and the repetition allows for a sense of infinity. Since Homura is placed over the point of fugue, there isn’t an end in sight for this corridor. The faded colors and details at the back are to create a sense of depth through atmospheric perspective, but for all you know this corridor is endless.

[Image id: A close up to cherry tomatoes still in their stems, attached to the plant. Mr Kaname holds some scissorts to cut one off the plant.]

There’s also quite a bit of focus on these cherry tomatoes as we take a peek at Madoka's idyllic home life in episode one. I don’t really know what to make of this lol Are we in the Big O?

The second thing from episode one I want to highlight is Sayaka’s feelings towards Homura. In my first watch, I was very amused by her playing protector to Madoka to really notice, but Sayaka reacts quite jealous of Homura, doesn't she?

[Screenshot showing Hitomi and Sayaka sitting on the same side of the tabe with trays with their lunches before them. Hitomi, sat to the left observes Sayaka, sat to right margin. Sayaka is infuriated, with her hands up in a disgruntled gesture. Her dialogue reads “Just how big of an impression does she have to make on people?”]

She complains about Homura so much during episode two, it’s hilarious.

She paints it in a jokey manner, but she seems quite frustrated at Homura’s perceived perfection in looks, academics and athletics. Now, I say this because I watched that whole first minute of episode four, (however, it was also teased in the rose-tinted nostalgia for Kamijō’s playing in episode three), but she does legitimately seem to have a complex about her own average-ness compared to prodigies such as Kamijō and Homura. You know, her whole hero shtick does remind me quite a bit to Tenjō Utena’s own princely act, and given that one had a component to building up one’s own ego, I’m genuinely wondering if Sayaka is trying to soothe and elevate herself to compensate for her own sense of inferiority. When I watched episode three, I wanted Mami and Homura to duke it out, but they didn’t, preferring to stall with words. I’m now placing my hopes on you, Sayaka, as your animosity for Homura grows from your protective feelings for Madoka, your anger at her dismissive attitude towards Mami’s death and your gnawing jealousy! I’m rooting for you!

Childish aspirations.

[Image id: High-angle view of Madoka, Sayaka and Mami sitting at a restaurant’s table. Madoka and Sayaka are sitting together in the couch, while Mami sits to the right in the solitary chair, opposite to Madoka. Sayaka is holding a bat and sitting more in the middle. Both Sayaka and Mami are laughing at Madoka, who’s is staring in disbelief.]

I can’t forgive them for laughing at Madoka’s drawings…

Since I never wrote my thoughts on the second half of episode two, it seems fitting to resume the analysis now—given that I wrote most of the interesting interpretations for the first half that I could up in the 1.5 write-up already. Last time, I remarked off-handily that Misses Kaname’s wishes concerned practical preoccupations about her work life, both due her life experience as well as her clearer priorities and ambitions in life, which contrasted her to her daughter’s teenage aimlessness. This still holds true, especially in terms of maturity. Where Misses Kaname is pragmatic and cunning, Madoka and Sayaka are naïve and idealistic. This is highlighted through the items they chose to bring out when meeting Mami at the restaurant. Sayaka is excited for adventure, bringing up a bat to defend herself. It might appear a tad more practical than Madoka’s approach, but Sayaka is remarkably childish about the whole thing. During Mami’s explanation, she’s confused at the idea of Homura targeting Kyubey to avoid more competition because she views magical girls as “the good guys” who fight as a unified front against the evil of witches. She’s concerned about the panache of heroism, disappointed that tracking the witch amounts to just walking around a lot following the glow of the soul gem. However, by the end of the episode, she’s impressed again, happy to see Mami is both strong (won against the witch) and kind (adept at comforting the victim-the-week). She has a very idealist view of how a hero should look and behave. This, combined with the guilt she feels over Kamijō’s disabling accident that ended his career as musician (was she somehow involved in the incident?), it’s starting to make me believe she has quite the black-and-white view on things…

(On this note, Madoka knows of Kamijō and Sayaka’s visits to him, but she doesn’t seem to visit him herself. She refers to him by his last name, whereas Sayaka calls him by his first name. That’s intriguing.)

While Madoka appears more childish, she’s actually much more reflective, humble and grounded. Her main approach is imagination, as seen by her drawings of magical girl costumes. She’s carefully considering different angles to broach the situation, from the self-indulgent construction of her ideal image to serious contemplations to what being a magical girl entails. When confronted with the fact Mami had to let go of the witch to tend to them as her underclasswomen, Madoka quietly sits with the discomfort and apologizes for getting in the way—whereas Sayaka is still going on about heroes. While in the witch’s labyrinth, Mami asks them if they’re scared. Sayaka tries to look cool, but Madoka is able to sit with her honest feelings of both fear of the witch and admiration for Mami. One could argue that this openness— both to consider different angles and perspectives, and to admit her own feelings, whether privately or publicly— makes Madoka’s exploratory approach to discovering her goals, capabilities and values a lot more mature… However, her idealism and naivety are undeniable, and she and Sayaka will run face-first against the harsh reality of things by the end of episode three.

Mami the role model.

For now, the one thing standing in between their idealism and the seedy reality of the world is Tomoe Mami (which is why she had to die). As their upperclasswoman, she takes it upon herself to show them the ropes and to protect them. Her magic touch transforms Sayaka’s bat from plain object to magical weapon. Her seasoned intuition makes the right calls over when to stop and where to proceed. Her flourishes with her guns and acrobatics wow Madoka. As their peer, she presents an aspirational embodiment to their growing up towards adult competency: the attainment of mastery over one’s body and skills, wisdom and righteousness.  However, the underbelly to the process of becoming an adult starts to show: she loses her right to innocence, talking about keeping track of yellow press and her patrols of major highways and entertainment districts where chaos abounds, as well as isolated areas that are perfect for suicides (one of which they almost witness, but, once again, Mami acts as stopgap heroine preventing the full witnessing of). To grow up is to lose something.

[Screenshot from Revolutionary Girl Utena’s episode 18. It shows Akio’s profile facing right, with a meditative expression on his face. His dialogue reads: “With each passing year, a star loses some of its brilliance.”]

But let’s not forget why their journey is as it is: Kyubey’s request for them to be magical girls. What does it say that the life he’s pushing them into echoes Akio’s worldview? I also find worrying this line finds a clear parallel to their soul gems losing clarity. Really fishy.

If we are to go by Mami’s death, then that something lost is idealism. Her death marks a departure from the rose-tinted view of the adventure-filled life of a magical girl to one marked by grim consequences. Homura reinforces this by saying “Engrave this moment in your memories, this is what it means to be a magical girl.” In Homura’s view, the processual search of destabilizing change towards adulthood is irremediably traumatic. Mami’s demise certainly complicates the linear view of growing up as a gradual, progressive process towards adulthood[1]. The child might not merely be shielded from the horrors of the world and be filled with the appropriate knowledge and guidance to become a full-fledged member of society.[2] Furthermore, as shown in episode three, Mami’s own self already contained contradictions to these ideal conceptualizations of the child and the process of growing up as actualization of the self and reproduction of the communal future. What answers and further inquiries this questioning of adolescence yields in Madoka Magica is what I set myself to discover. For now, our heroines are first faced with the darkness of the world.

The environments reflect this increased sordidness. The darkness of the cityscape becomes deep, nearly swallowing our heroines. The aggressive reds to the sunset forebode danger. The nearly interminable bridge from which our heroines emerge presents a long way to safety, framed by withered tree branches.

[Image ID: Pictured of a really ominous red bridge that casts deep shadows towards the left. It’s placed so that it its center goes over the point of fugue, where the distant figures of the trio are placed. In the background, the dark city line looms against the twilight sky.]

The underexposed framing flattens perspective and casts them as mere shadows that could get lost in the regular, geometric darkness of the city.

[Image ID: Screenshot to the trio crossing a bridge headed to the left. Their bodies and the bridge appear shadowed with only their black silhouettes showing. The lamp posts are spaced evenly and cables that hold the bridge form rhomboids that also appear evenly. The sky is colored in an aggressive dusk and the faint city line in a purple shows in the background.]

The wide-angle look at the metallic interior of the building, framed by broken crystals, is intimidating and uninviting.  In short, it’s as though they’ve stepped into another, darker, parallel dimension to their world.

[Image ID: High, wide angle shot framed through curved broken glass of the interior of the abandoned complex where Gertrude manifested. There’s a shining metallic corridor and some stairs going down.]

The whole city is in flux once the twilight sets, transforming it from the luminous, safe gardens of Madoka's home and the school to a place where danger lurks in the shadows. Dusk itself has historically been constructed as a liminal time, a time where it's not quite day and not quite night, a time encoded with the thinning of boundaries between the worldly realm and the supernatural one (After all, ōmagatoki is the time when yōkai wake up and are able to move freely between worlds.) The confrontation with witches heightens the liminality of adolescence, where they move from childhood innocence and ignorance towards facing the more unsavory realities of the world. Their perception of their familiar, safe hometown is altered.

Yet, amidst all this bleakness, Mami still stands tall as a beacon of righteousness.

[1]  Balanzategui, J. The uncanny child in Transnational Cinema: Ghosts of Futurity at the turn of the Twenty-First Century. Amsterdam University Press, 2018. P14.

[2] Balanzategui, 2018, 10

Competition, Cooperation and Social Conventions.

Mami fits the well-mannered, soft-spoken and helpful upperclasswoman archetype to a tee. As such, she’s adept at navigating social situations gracefully and reading between lines, as well as prioritizing unity and avoiding unnecessary strife. This creates a stark contrast between her and the extremely off-putting Homura, who could be said to embody the anti-social, rival loner. We’re introduced to their tense dynamics when Mami gets in between Homura’s hunt of Kyubey in episode one. I can’t really parse if Homura ignored the subtext behind Mami’s polite dismissal on purpose, but it’s a recurring theme in their interactions:

Mami: The witch got away. If you want to hunt it down, you’ll need to chase after it quickly. I’ll give you this one. Homura: I’m here on business. Mami: You don’t seem to understand me. I’m saying I’ll let you go. Would it not be better for both of us to avoid any unnecessary trouble? (Homura reluctantly leaves after a few moments of tense, silent staring.)

Since Homura either ignored or failed to catch the true meaning behind her polite words, to read in between lines and act accordingly to avoid unnecessary strife, Mami had to explain her point directly. Depictions of and commentary on these types of social conventions— the molding of one’s behavior to be directed according to heteronomy rather than autonomy, the avoidance of conflicts and confrontation, and the indirect expression to avoid hurting others— and how failure to conform to them can bring in ostracism abounds in Japanese media (for an extremely well-liked example, think on Mob Psycho 100’s episode three, where the whole cultish group-think is what sets Shigeo off and reminds him of his painful experiences being mocked of for being unable to pick up the mood of the room).

I previously speculated that Homura might be cultivating an intentional distance between her and Madoka, but her interactions with Mami also show that Homura can’t help this distance at times. While she purposefully rejects Mami’s show of good will through the passing of the grief seed in episode two and curtly questions Mami’s intentions in the third, she appears thoroughly unprepared for the tensions escalating in Charlotte’s Labyrinth. Almost as if she hadn’t foreseen that the tensions boiling over could lead to her becoming immobilized. She’s unable to navigate the situation to successfully offer to take out the witch, and nearly jeopardizes her own mission to protect Madoka. Put in very simplistic terms, you can’t act together with other people if you don’t adhere to social conventions in some shape or form. Homura wants to favor acting alone (she wants to shoulder everything herself?) and is single-minded in her desire to protect Madoka, not caring if she’s misunderstood. I suspect this rejection of cooperation might be bringing in some of her failures.

[Image ID: Overhead, fish-eye frame of the girls at the abandoned complex where Gertrude manifested.There’s wide, tall window panels on the left edge, where Madoka, Sayaka are postioned towards the bottom edge of the screen. Over the picture’s diagonal, across from there, is placed the lone figure of Homura standing before a dark corridor. Mami’s dialogue reads: “Or do you dislike sharing with others?”]

Sayaka, Madoka and Mami are portrayed as a cohesive group, visually separated from Homura by the shadows of the pillars and the physical distance between them being amplified by the fish-eye perspective. Mami outright questions if Homura is selfish, read: unable to consider others’ feelings and adhere to a group.

As the newbies role model, it goes without saying that Mami is able to “consider others’ feelings” and “read in between lines”, as these are qualities that are enforced as desirable, especially for girls and women… In order to serve as an appropriate guide for Madoka and Sayaka, Mami must maintain social propriety. Interestingly, this ends up also distancing her from her juniors; it’s not a total departure like with Homura, but it does parallel them as lonely figures.

[Image ID: Screenshot of the shadowed figures of Mami, Sayaka and Madoka crossing a stone bridge towards the left. On the edges of the screen, the city lamps are lined and insinuating the point of fugue. The blurry, dark building line can be observed in the background. Mami walks ahead of Sayaka and Madoka, who trail behind.]

The distance that never seems to close. If Mami is to appropriately act as their senpai, she must walk ahead of them. We know, of course, this causes incredibly pain. Observe how obscuring their figures in darkness makes the negative space between them stand out.

A witch’s domain.

Now, we’ve finally arrived to the reason why I wanted to do these write-ups to begin with: I thought challenging myself to interpret the witches’ Labyrinths could be quite fun, and then I stumbled upon the fact Madoka Magica is quite the rich show with lots to discuss about it. But I digress. I quite like the aesthetic of the Labyrinths, they have a collage look to them that could remind you of the collages of the early XX century, as explored by Picasso, Juan Gris and other vanguardists. You could even call them surrealist in the way they utilize mundane objects in a profoundly disorienting way, elevating them from their prosaicness into symbols of the witchly subconscious.

[Image ID: Picture of Juan Gris’collage made with cut-and-pasted wallpaper, newspaper, transparent paper, white laid paper, gouache, oil and wax crayon on canvas. It depicts a table with filled to the brim with coffee-drinking accessories. A fortuitous newspaper fragment provides the ready-made signature “GRIS” while the letters “OURN”, excerpted from the masthead of Le Journal, form a homophonic on “Juan”.]

Collage by Juan Gris: Título «Le petit déjeuner».

Once again wondering if I should read more about (vanguardist) art for the sake of this show.

Speaking in crude, overly simplistic terms, the vanguardists’ formal artistic exploration was a departure from the European academicist tradition. While the Impressionist movement already exposed a rift between Academy and Artist, it still sought to portray realistic, figurative impressions of the world. Post-impressionist artists such as Cezanne and Van Gogh pushed the treatment of color to exaggeration for the sake of a heightened subjectivity. Cubist art sought to challenge representational conventions through use of simultaneous perspectives that showed the static object in all of its different angles at the same time. One of the most famous surrealist paintings of all time, René Magritte’s The son of man, exemplifies his career-long questioning of the assumptions of representational art—what you see in the canvas is not the object but a symbolic representation of the object, and the symbol of the object does not represent the object but all the subconscious meaning imbued to it by the viewer. The painting exploits the quality of visible and hidden, and the search for what is hidden. 

It is, then, fitting that the Labyrinths seem to borrow vanguardist aesthetics, as they defy perceptions of reality— to begin with, they are crafted in entirely different stylistic conventions. The character designs and backgrounds outside of the Labyrinths favor bright, cool, uniform color with thin line-work, creating well defined and recognizable forms; the human characters are portrayed with slightly doll-like shapes while still favoring “realistic” proportions, and the backgrounds are represented in geometric perspective. While stylized, it’s a world that clearly echoes our own. The witches’ realm seem to discard all of this, operating on their own logic. There’s no sense of uniformity to its elements: some will appear as heavily-textured, flat magazine cutouts while others will appear as highly uncanny cgi objects. Most of its denizens hardly appear anthropomorphic, and when they do in some of the witches, they appear in cartoony proportions reminiscent to Fleisher era cartoons rather than 2010’s anime stylizations (at least in the case of Charlotte). Their bodies are either deceitful or incomprehensible. This seeming incongruence makes our heroines themselves appear alien against the uneven patchwork of this world. The witches’ realm seems to question their way of being just by its own aesthetics alone.

[Image id: Screenshot of Getrude’s Labyrinth. In the background, there’s backward stairs to the left edge, tilted columns of varying width with framed moustache pictures, an unreadable sign, and an upside down elevator going down to the right margin. The trio is on the middle ground towards the left. Sayaka is swinging her bat in the middle, Mami is holding guard of the left edge and Madoka is standing between them cradling Kyubey in her arms. The foreground is insinuated through the shadow silhouette of some tilted beams.]

Common sense is eschewed, and you get tilted walls and columns, upside down stairs, out-of-place elevators.

[Image Id: Screenshot of Mami and Madoka traversing a black space with no clear horizon line, in which the first half of it is like black mist transitioning to a really bright, white equally misty middle. The foreground is indicated by a layer of cgi medication bottles haphazardly floating, and so is the background behind them with more bottles looking smaller and blurrier.]

They’re places that seem to simultaneously exist as flat, two dimensional spaces and as tridimensional ones. They’re places that embody contradiction, and encoded in their corpus are distinctively feminine motifs (think of the rose garden, the cake and tea parties, the home décor, the high heels, etc) made alien through their unreal representation and co-existence with masculine motifs (such as the fake ‘staches and industrial/handiwork symbols). The national and the foreign coexist as part of a whole. They’re places that “don’t respect borders, positions, rules. They’re the in-between, the ambiguous, the composite[3]”. They’re geography made the monstrous-feminine.

[Image id: overheard shot an intersection in the middle with the girls turning right, there’s tall, rusty-copper-like buildings seemingly made out of metallic plates with doors randomly thrown in all over their body. To the foreground, on the wall insinuated the bottom edge, there’s vines or perhaps security wire.]

The alienating, featureless cityscape and the overtly adorned rose garden. The public sphere and the domestic realm exist without clear delimitations.

[Image id: The trio running towards the left over a metallic corridor with vines rose vines coming out of the ground and going towards the edges. In the background, there’s a collage-like semicircle that looks like a rose wallpaper wall crowned by some stairs, the wall is on top of a green patch with rose bed in the middle. In front of the rose bed, there’s a door adorned with curtains and the like.]

“The female body in the Japanese pop cultural imagination is routinely constructed as a site that is volatile, uncontainable, penetrable and penetrating, incorporating, excessively desirous, and unrelenting generative, demonstrating Creed’s[4] contention that the monstrous-feminine ‘signifies the primal uncanny, in that through her body everything that ‘ought to have remained secret and hidden… has come to light.’ Those things that patriarchal culture seeks to keep hidden involve man’s relationship to the animal world, the world of nature, woman, life, birth, decay, and death”:[5]

Far from aligning myself with the common detraction that Madoka Magica is bad because it’s perverted (like its main writer is), I think it’s interesting to note that witches do carry insinuations around female sexuality in the vampiric implications to the mark in the neck the witch’s kiss leaves behind. That it was left on a working woman insinuates anxieties around female homosexuality (the mobilization of sexual difference through the Monstrous-Feminine is also a common trope). I don’t really have enough to go by to form an interpretation, but it’ll be interesting to see how these element unfold.

Also, speaking of the world of nature, Gertrude body’s is not only not anthropomorphic (it could be argued she’s some sort of bush connected to a stomach?), but also features animalistic traits in the butterfly wings and her behavior.

[Image id: Screenshot to Getrude sitting in the middle of the frame, surrounded by roses on top of a green patch. Around her there’s several miscellaneous objects, like black bollards topped with sphere sporting black ‘staches, a framed butterfly, ladders, black plants, a fish placard, several other butterfly motifs, etc. Behind here, theres several curved layers creating a textured wall. They look like a metallic fence, fragment of wallpapers, concrete walls and other type of buildings.]

“The abject confronts us, on the one hand, with those fragile states where man strays on the territories of animal. Thus, by way of abjection, primitive societies have marked out a precise area of their culture in order to remove it from the threatening world of animals or animalism, which were imagined as representatives of sex and murder.”[6]

The fact that our resident, well-mannered senpai Mami, as an agent upholding social convention and model of femininity, is the one to defeat Gertrude, an animalistic, vermin-like presence in the rose garden, a space that could be constructed as the domestic realm, feels charged. I generally view the Labyrinths as spaces meant to challenge their perceptions of reality, in a much more extreme, destabilizing and disconcerting version of Madoka’s careful contemplation of differing viewpoints. The tensions brought to the surface in each Labyrinth then are dependent on who interacts in them, and as such, my view on Gertrude defeated by Mami is that of reflecting Mami’s certainty in the values she upholds. Even when her juniors catch her off guard, her home is impeccable and she has dessert and tea to offer them. Her maintenance of the home and social conventions aren’t threatened.

At least not in at this point of time, but her dialogue in Charlotte’s Labyrinth reveals a possible destabilizing contradiction. She tells to Madoka that being a magical girl is not desirable because “(Madoka) won’t have time to fall in love.” Their role as magical girls might then paint them as proto working-women, in conflict with their supposed belonging to the domestic sphere as “wives and mothers”. It might not be inappropriate to suggest that the blurring of public and private spaces in the witches’ realms might be articulating anxieties around working women.

A final note, more miscellaneous note on the nature of the witches and their Labyrinths comes in the form of the visuals for the defeated familiar in episode three. The vestiges left by it bring to mind pollen or perhaps viruses, and together with the vampiric implications of the mark of witch’s kiss, it might seem to paint witches as something contagious. I wonder if we’ll get into social contagion territory eventually.

[Image id: screenshot of brightly, multicolor, amorphous particles floating around against a black background with the faint outline of a grid at the very background. Some of the particles look like the popular image of viruses.]

[3] R. Dumas, The monstrous-Feminine in Contemporary Japanese Popular Culture, East Asian Popular Culture series, Palgrave McMillan,2018, P2

[4] Barbara Creed published in 1994 her essay The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. Her work is often cited in Dumas’ opening essay Open Wounds: Situating the Monstrous-Feminine in Cotemporary Japan to her book The Monstrous-Feminine in Contemporary Japanese Popular Culture. The quotes here included are from Creed’s 2005 book Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny.

[5] Dumas, 2018, 17

[6] Julia Kristeva, Leon S. Roudiez, Powers of Horror, an essay on Abjection, Columbia University Press, 1982, 12-13

Mami the girl.

Last time, I discussed the fact Mami wanted to appear as their put-together, helpful upperclasswoman, as a more adult guide to their wet-behind-the-ears candidness. Her fight against the witch’s familiar in episode three confirmed my suspicions. She does an explicit effort to appear cool, to answer their questions so that they can carefully weigh their decision— even when it touches on her open wounds— and to advise Sayaka against helping others just to feed on her own ego. She goes above and beyond to be a proper senpai to them.

[Image id: Close up to Mami’s face. She’s smiling and winking while tilting her head slightly. The lighter from her finishing gun is visible and going off. She’s in her magical girl outfit.]

Episode three, however, also shows the crack behind the façade, starting by Mami’s troubled past. If being “a child is demarcated by characteristics such as innocence, naivety (…) and vulnerability”[7], then Mami is forced to be more adult-like following the accident and her subsequent metamorphosis into a magical girl. Mami’s seeming maturity is, then, abruptly forced upon her rather than gradually grown into. Her vulnerability (she’s literally mortally wounded and also all alone with the loss of her family and lack of any other external support network) in the moment to make the contract puts her in the spot and forces her to accept Kyubey’s offer. As a result, she’s denied the luxuries afforded to Madoka and Sayaka. She’s denied to show any of her weaknesses and pain to others. To grow up is to lose something. The loneliness she exhibits as their role model is not solely stemming from her position as their upperclasswoman but her quality as a magical girl itself.

Further fractures into the image she wishes to project to the world are brought to light through her confrontation with Homura. Her politeness, supposed mark of her preference for unity and peaceful negotiation, is more markedly shown as a tool to express her aggression through thinly-veiled threats and nasty condescension. The visuals play with this obliqueness of hers. When Homura is upfront about accusing her of leading Sayaka and Madoka into danger and her desire to prevent Madoka from forming any contract, her face is shown in a mid-light value, while Mami’s face is markedly shadowed in her taunting retort.

[Image ID: Bust of Homura with the night sky on the background and some lamps lighting from behind. She’s dimly lit (with very readable shapes). She has a serious expression on her face. Her dialogue reads: “She is the one person I absolutely cannot allow to make the contract.”]

[High-angle shot of Mami’s bust. She’s looking up,smiling defiantly and cast in dim shadows. Behind her, only the grey stone of the plaza ground is visible. Her dialogue reads: “That’s the way a bullied child thinks.”]

Conversely, when Mami is clear about her warnings to Homura, she’s showered in light, while Homura’s reticence to be clear about her intentions has cast her in hard shadows.

[Image id: Extreme close up to Homura’s face, which is about 75% cast stark shadows with sharp lighting on the right side of her face, the right side of her nose and her left cheekbone. Her expression is harsh.]

[Image id: High-angle shot of Mami standing upright and smiling while standing in a dark plaza. She’s well-lit by the lamps around her. Her dialogue reds: “Then take care to ensure that our paths never cross again.”]

Mami shows discomfort at Homura’s accusations, but shields herself in the justification that since Madoka and Sayaka have been chosen, they’re not innocent bystanders anymore, and thus involved in this whole business.

A common thread within the show seems to be the embodying of contradictions and ambiguity, of identities in flux. Homura is both a hostile, antagonistic party and someone who sincerely wishes to shield them from tragedy. Mami is both protecting them and luring them into danger. Sayaka is both more pragmatic than Madoka and more immaturely simplistic. Madoka is both idealistically naïve and sagaciously capable of contemplating and contending with uncomfortable, conflicting feelings and viewpoints. The instable, disorienting nature of the Labyrinths would seem to heighten these tensions and paradoxes to the point of collapse.

Charlotte’s Labyrinth exploits the disparate, showing a composite of medical motifs combined with the (feminine) domestic realm: bottles of pills (filled with candy), piercing objects ranging from the sewing needles and scissors (of a sewing kit) and the syringes of the clinical setting (it pains me to write this, but you could make a point to call these penetrating needles phallic). The hospital as a workplace and a public facility juxtaposed to the sewing kit and the desserts motifs (that slowly morph into being vaguely birthday themed through the cake with candles and the tea party) showing the private. The mature bleakness from medical setting vs the childish happiness and flippancy from the party. The visible and the hidden.

It is within this space that Mami finally admits to her “adult” self-assuredness and competency being a façade through a fit of oversharing. It is not a considered reckoning of her own weaknesses as much as an impulsive, resentful reaction to Madoka’s idealism. Her vulnerable confession—its climax is literally a promise of forming a new coupled partnership with Madoka’s unending support. You could say: a promise of true love and acceptance outside the social system— is accompanied by a bevy of pills raining down in the background. The contradictory strikes again: even though pills are meant to heal, their cascading number evokes suicide. Even though it’s a moment that should’ve resolved some of her internal tensions and healed some of her pain, it instead spells her death. Mami launches to her hunt of the witch in a euphoric state, clinging at the first offer of happiness she gets; much like the recklessness she warns her juniors against when it comes to their contract with Kyubey. All of her talks of post-hunt celebrations seem to mirror the childishness of Charlotte’s realm. She jumps into action recklessly without assessing the situation, in contrast to Homura’s measured, methodic approach later on. Perhaps one could read her defeat here as her failure to acknowledge and reconcile with the fact her roles as a magical girl and senpai aren’t mutually exclusive with her own childishness, her ideals aren’t without hypocrisy and harm, and so on.

[Image Id: Close up to Mami’s outstretched hand in front of her middle, with her palm up. In the center of her hand, a ring glows, and around it petals emerge in the form of a daisy.]

In Hanakotoba, daisies symbolize hope and peace.

Her death reveals further fissures to the idea of “growing up (as) wedded to ideals of collective progress, as the child’s journey towards both adulthood and futurity (…) through continual progress”. [8] This failure to eventual realization brings in questioning Mami’s experience as a magical girl— one in which Mami does a service to society at large, but at the cost of finding herself unsupported and isolated by the very need to produce these communal results. Her death epitomizes the harm this contradiction creates, the impossibility for the child to live a future when her growing up is always functionally at service of others (Also Madoka’s flaw?)

[7] Balanzategui,2018, 10.

[8] Balanzategui,2018, 14.

Miscellaneous.

My friend asked me my thoughts about the first opening (I’m expecting a new one on the fourth chapter) and first two endings. So here’s that.

Ending 1 (See you tomorrow by Aoi Yuuki): I find this one really amusing because 1) It’s sung by Madoka’s seiyuu, and 2) she sounds like a baby. It sounds really cutesy overall, so the whiplash with the lyrics is very pmmm-like lol Lyrics about loneliness and feeling alienated in your hometown and never seeing someone again. Which could mean nothing.

Opening song (Connect by ClariS): Now, this one does communicate the melancholic vibe through the sound and singing, and despite the cute, cheerful adventure vignettes, it does have some pensive Madoka scenes. I like it, the lyrics reflecting that yearning for “a start”, and the promise of perseverance. Feels very Madoka.

Ending 2 (Magia by Kalafina): This one is pretty cool, I like Madoka’s silhouette walking past the static figures of her friends and leaving them behind towards an unending darkness, where she breaks into a run. The final image having her in fetal position as an eye open combined with the heavy drumming and the bells tolling create such a feeling of impending doom, it’s so great. I’m a little amused the lyrics talk about world-destroying love and a thirst for power, it’s cool.

Afterword.

Firstly, a thanks to my friend, you know who you are, who read the endless updates to this document as I kept working on it. I don’t think I’d have finished it without the encouragement.

Secondly, I ended up excising a few points from this write-up, namely observations on the intro scenes with Sayaka and Kamijō, on the framing between Sayaka and Madoka right before they venture into Charlotte’s Labyrinth and on Madoka’s talk with her father and her construction as an ideal. Mostly because I got tired of working on this, but also because it has gotten quite long and I couldn’t quite fit them with the themes of the present sections. I’ll probably include them in the write-up for episode four.

[agirlandherquill]

through the puddles of ink

since it's a new academic year, a new chapter of my life and i thought, since i've been on tumblr for around eight months now that it's about time i properly introduced myself - this would shock the person i was when i first started this blog, but as it's grown so have i, and i think university has indefinitely helped my confidence - so, without further ado, here goes i'll start this properly by explaining the title of this post - through the puddle of ink

ink is important because obviously it is the basis of literature, the foundation of stories and fitting to my blog name, you dip the quill in the ink to write, to forge an adventure that tests the imagination and takes a reader to wonderful places and puddles because let's face it, ink is messy, ink is chaotic, just like me, my characters, and my writing and because through the looking glass is a very iconic title i also watched that movie in the cinema years ago, i took inspiration, and here we are now - this post is a reflection of me, the beautiful nightmares and writing gremlins that co-exist within my brain and a way for me to get to better know my mutuals, anyone and everybody on writeblr!

here comes the scary part - only for me, and my semi-awkward self - introducing myself, i've never been very good at this stuff so bear with me - and have mercy on my nervous soul,

for the longest time i've loved the sort of self-imposed anonymity of this blog, and don't get me wrong i still do adore my blog name but I thought it was about time I properly introduced myself, so, let me just shuffle some papers in the library of my mind, find the right phrasing for this and... (cue angry hitting of the keyboard) hello! my name is Erin and i'm a writer, a lover of chaos, and a semi-functioning tempest somehow existing within society - i love and ramble about lots of different things - books, shows, songs, you name it, i can waffle and sometimes i can waffle well (that is how i am now going to describe my writing, because it feels like it fits so well)

phew, i got that out, that tiny paragraph was a lot of effort (and i've beaten writers block more often than i can count)

this little post might not seem like much, but to me it's a lot, and i'm happy to have made it this far, and i'm so looking forward to continuing to grow alongside this blog and writeblr (i love you all, no seriously)

and now onto some very much needed rambling about my works, because there's a lot the lovely folk of writeblr are yet to know (and it will come, in time, but here's what i can say for now)

Ruin's Reprisal - we all know the tale of this, my oldest, most functioning (cough, using that term loosely) work - well, where to start? well, i'm on the final stage of proofreading, and once that's all done i'm hoping (let's be honest, dreaming,) to have the final draft complete and out in the great wide world come christmas/new year (that is a courageous goal, even for me, but who knows, maybe i can pull it off, just maybe)

A Deal Of Daggers - it's almost time for nanowrimo, which marks two years since the idea for this first came to me, and i cannot wait to spend autumn working on it (not that i am participating in nano properly this year, what with student-life obligations, but i'm going to write what i can) and i've been steadily chipping away with a few chapters already

those are my two main works, and probably the only works i've been focusing on over the last couple of months - and i've fallen completely and wholeheartedly in love with them all over again, as i do, every single time i open the files on scrivener

as far as my tired but over-eager to write brain can think this should be it for everything i wanted to include in this post until the next post (which won't be long, i can guarantee it),

~ Erin, A Girl and Her Quill, or whatever this hellscape would like to call me :)

~ ~ ~

now for the tag list! (i forgot to add it when i posted, oops!)

(p.s if you'd like to be included/notified too, interact with this post :))

@humbly-a-doppelganger @imawholeassmood @frostedlemonwriter @yrndrgn @abditorywriting

@riveriafalll @lead-to-code @casualsuitturtle @floweryprosegarden @joeys-piano

@catwingsathena @godsmostfuckedupgoblin @nothoughtsjustmhaandotherthings @anaisbebe

@drchenquill @leahnardo-da-veggie @tiredpapergirl @pastelpinkhobbies

[whyisthereacentaur]

Modern Monsters 2: The Kelpie

Me less than 24hr ago: “Don’t expect too many of these to be illustrated.”

Me this morning: spending far too much time on drawing the statue of Wellington in Glasgow for another illustration

Oops.

On to part 2!

The water horse (Each-Uisce in Irish Gaeilge, Each-Uisge in Scottish Gaelic) and the kelpie are often used interchangeably, but do have some differences.

While I’ve used the term Kelpie prominently here, that’s mainly because I think more people might recognise or at least remember how to spell that term. The creature in the poem is inspired by the more vicious Each-Uisge.

Both creatures are shapeshifters with an affinity for water, who like to take the shape of horses and so entice humans to trust them and climb up on their backs. This doesn’t tend to end well for the humans.

Skip the more detailed paragraph below if you’re squeamish…

The Each-Uisge in particular was said to allow humans to mount, only for the unlucky people to find that they had immediately begun to meld to the creature’s back. They would be dragged into the nearby river, where the creatures could tear into them at their leisure and throw their entrails towards the shore. In some stories several people (usually children) would try to ride the “horse” together, with the slowest only managing to get a hand on the beast before it ran off, taking his friends and his hand to the deep with it.

So.

How would this change to fit into the modern world?

Honestly… it’s intelligent, but it’s far more animalistic in lots of ways than some of the other monsters I’m looking at. I think the instinct to hunt and eat in its traditional way would never leave, and that while it would want to have plentiful food nearby, and therefore probably move to an urban centre on the river, I don’t think it would want any humans to know it was living among them.

It relies on attracting people to it then springing a trap, a bit like a carnivorous plant - it doesn’t tend to chase them down, although it does need to be able to carry them off underwater quickly once they’re stuck.

The horse disguise is a bit outdated, though, and the creature quickly learned that people would be much more likely to call in the authorities immediately upon finding a straying horse in town these days, rather than risk getting too close to a half-ton block of muscle and hard bits that could be spooked by a plastic bag blowing past.

Luckily, the lore doesn’t limit the Each-Uisge to only horse shapes, and it’s not hard to find a free space in the e-bike parking ranks.

If you’re ever walking past the river at low tide and spot a bike in the water, just be happy that it’s resting comfortably and probably won’t need to eat again for a while.

See you tomorrow!

Modern Monsters series - more & links to follow

Modern Monsters 1: Dullahan

Modern Monsters 2: Kelpie (here)

Modern Monsters 3: Kuchisake-onna

Modern Monsters 4: Cuca

Modern Monsters 5: Vampire

Modern Monsters 6: Dr Frankenstein

Modern Monsters 7: Frankenstein’s Monster

Modern Monsters bonus: Frankenstein, Monster

[delladuck]

OH MY GOD YES. every path for della that you wrote is so interesting oh my gosh😭😭 LIKE:

“people assume that there was some taboo situation and she was sent away when in actuality she died and scrooge blames himself for it but the situation is a secret”

are you kidding?? Need to sit down and think about this on repeat for a million years please and thanks.

did i mention how much i love this au? well, i do!!

im gonna say something totally insane but unless youve read the book it wont track that way

[helslastangel]

Blaming my personality on my parents' personal planets

A TRULY random "observation," if you will.

(Not to be taken seriously. If you must be serious, slither off my post before you trip and fall into a sense of humor 🙃)

As a Virgo sun, I (allegedly) aspire to be methodical, organized, and focused.

However, in practice, I am none of those things. People usually think otherwise. Why?

Well.

I'm good at making an art out of imitating life - my parents' normal lives to be exact. Lol.

My default setting is to dance around topics or agree with opposing sides of any conversation until no one knows what I am actually saying or if I am even trying to say anything at all. Libra mercury tings.

Unless, of course, I'm emotionally charged. In which case, may God have mercy on your soul because my dear Cancer Mars won't.

That being said...

My parents' planetary influence on my day to day communication is in the same house that my sun sits in, and that's...well, revealing.

I like to think our guardians help to shape our alternate selves, if nothing else.

Mom

Sun conjunct my Mercury

Sun square my Mars & Ascendant

Mars in my 3H, conjunct my Sun, trine Moon & Lilith

Saturn conjunct my Lilith, trine my Sun & Moon

Lilith in my 3H & opposite my Saturn

My ISFJ mother is one of the most organized and methodical people I know. She actually uses a planner (multiple planners, actually) from January straight to December. You can ask her for a detail from 20 years ago, and she'll go off into another room and come back blowing the dust off some old notebook. Somehow, she's got the answer in there, timestamped and dated.

Meanwhile, my ADHD-riddled ENTP ass could open a refurbished stationary shop with all the unused notebooks and planners I've collected over the years. However, having been infused for 9 months inside and 18 years beside the world's most organized woman, I CAN and often do what my mother does, though only for short periods of time. Long enough to be a means to my own ends, but too short to truly shape my character in any lasting way: e.g., making a good impression in an interview, getting through probation at a new job, attempting to fool professors, and so on.

I-

Dad

Mercury in my 3H & opposite my Saturn

Mars in my 8H, trine my Mercury, & square my Lilith

Saturn in my 12H & square my Saturn

My ENTJ dad is like an anthropomorphic university textbook. Everything he says is laid out in a coherent, well-ordered line. No shortage of words, but all of them are somehow necessary and useful. He can not only think of things to say on the spot in any situation, but he easily makes it sound like he gave it a thousand years of thought before speaking. Always gets to the point (or circles back to it quite quickly).

Mhm, here too, I can imitate my dad's ability to make perfect logical sense. By feigning concise, effective speech for just as long as necessary to swing things in my favor, I also scratch that Virgo sun itch to fit an ideal.

But, really, the only part I embody effortlessly is never being short on words. Everything else is subject to terms and conditions. Me? Get to the point? Naturally? Nyet.

I try to self-edit in real time whenever on the phone or face-to-face with someone who might question my sanity should I default to my Libra mercury + Cancer mars special combo. The one that tries to be amicable and inclusive while tiptoeing over everyone's toes, only to hesitate and end up tripping and falling and landing on all of them.

90% of anything I write has to be picked apart like a roach at a hen party and barely resemble whatever I originally wrote before seeing the light of day. Otherwise, it will read the way I talk - in concentric circles. 🙃 🔁

oop.

Lost my train of thought and found something more interesting to do.

To be continued.

Maybe.

↤ go back to the masterlist

[katasstrophy]

What are your favorite pet names for your fave blorbos??? Mine are beebee for Bachira and YoiCHU! *insert cheek kiss* for Isagi~

d’aaawwww nonnie you got me giggling over this how cute<33 i may have gone overboard like always lol but here are some of my takes !! (these low key just. turned into headcanons oop i hope that’s okay!)

SHIDOU RYUSEI — HELLCAT

this is my personal favorite because it just fits him so fucking well and i know it in my soul of souls that he’d adore it. like yes he is your feral hellcat<3 your demon spawn<3 but you’re crazy enough to love that about him, to turn it into an endearing pet name, even. bastard would probably purr and meow just to lay it on real thick pls i can never be normal about this man.

ITOSHI RIN — RINNIE

calling the ever stoic, foul-mouthed younger itoshi smth as sickeningly sweet as rinnie is the best thing since sliced bread actually idc if i’m basic! it’s true! ofc he’d absolutely abhor it at first, snapping at you to “fucking stop calling him that” which just spurs you on more tbh lol he’s furious with you. he thinks he abhors the nickname, then one day you drop the cutsy act to return to his given name and he’s just left standing there like🧍baffled and pissed out of his mind bc where’s his mf rinnie huh?? i want to eat him so bad.

MIKAGE REO — HANDSOME

i feel like reo – party due to his lavish upbringing but mostly because he is just the ultimate lover boy – would definitely gravitate towards more ‘classier’ terms of endearment. call him handsome, or go all in by calling to him as my love and his chest is instantly puffing up like some bird about to perform the sickest mating dance ever lol he’d be so smug about it. definitely, 100% the type of guy that still gets weak in the knees when you call him husband – doesn’t matter if you’ve been married three months or 5 years he eats that shit up!

SANZU HARUCHIYO — CANDYMAN

okay so because i’m a little shit i can’t ignore the juxtaposition of the big bad criminal being committed to the pink aesthetic (don’t get me wrong i’m obsessed with it), so in my head i could get away with calling sanzu annoying crap like barbie doll or cupcake – or probably his most tolerated one out of the bunch, candyman (because of the, ya know, murderous implications lmfao). all in a very sarcastic vain ofc! i feel like calling him by his given name, or just simply haru, would def be all the more special then <3 (… BUT bc he’s sick in the head he’d probably love it even more if you romanticized his psychotic tendencies – call him stuff like my lovely little killer and he’s a goner he is clinically insane like.)

HANEMIYA KAZUTORA — MY (EVERYTHING)

let me just clarify that this man is not picky! whatsoever! he’s so starved for love he’d literally eat any term of endearment straight out of your mouth if he could. everything is one the table: baby, honey, sweetheart, darling, love – you name it, tora likes it, he wants you to keep calling him sweet names until he’s drowned in it. but what gets him really over the moon is if you just insert a small little ‘my’ in front of it. yeah, he loves being called baby, but my baby? he’s on his knees for you goodbye he loves the subtle ownership of it. (not to get n/sfw but uh… call him your sweet boy when you’re overstimming him and his pupils might just turn heart-shaped he’s ruined.)

KAKUCHO — YOUR LAST NAME

i only recently found out that “hitto” is actually a fanon made last name for kaku darling and i’d like to report that i’m still devastated over it so :( when you two get married – because he will marry you, if he’s in love like that’s it he’s locking you down for life – you ask him if he’d like to take your last name and yeah he cries a little he’s so touched pls :( so when people refer to him as L/n-san or mr. L/n he’s still not over it he has to remind himself that they are, in fact, talking to him. the effect triples when it’s you that calls him as such he’s so proud to wear your name brb gonna bawl my eyes out.

[bonny-kookoo]

I'm not sure if requests/drabbles are open or not, but I've been reading your bts x hybrid reader writings and I am in love!! So just wanted to drop in a request about a dog hybrid reader x jungkook (or poly ot7) during in the soop S2 where the reader is jealous that Jungkook is spending more time with Bam...

Your writings are really amazing and I'm loving the Alien Jungkook your writing!! Have a great day <33

I did a somewhat ot7 one, but its focusing on Jungkook Taehyung and Yoongi hehe. Got way more angst-y than I thought it would. Oops.

---

"Why are you sitting here all by yourself?" Yoongi wonders, sitting down next to you on the ground, next to the boxing bag and ping-pong table. "Did something happen?" He asks carefully, and you just shrug.

"Do you.." You mumble, pulling your knees closer to yourself as you watch Jungkook run around with Bam trying to catch the small ball he's hitting with the bat. "Yoongi.. what am I?" You wonder quietly, and he looks at you for a moment before he reaches out to tuck some hair vehind your ear.

"Very pretty." He answers to lighten the mood, but you shake your head. "I understand your question, sweetheart. There's just no simple answer to it." He explains, and you nod. "You've been like this for quite some time now. Does it have something to do with the new puppy Jungkook has?" He carefully asks, and you shrug, though your face nods after some seconds.

"I feel so terrible." You finally break, muffled into the fabric of your sweatpants. "I feel so bad because Bam is so cute and - and it's not his fault, but I just feel so horrible whenever I see him play with Kook because, I want to do that too but I can't because I'm like this-" you angrily motion at your body before continuing to rant. "- and that makes everything I want to do weird because a human shouldn't act like I would if I could." You hiccup, Yoongis hand gently running up and down your back as you spill your feelings. "A human shouldn't want toys to chew on. A human doesn't chase things. A human doesn't sleep on the floor wherever they feel like it. A human doesn't-"

"But you're no human, are you?" Yoongi interrupts. "You're a hybrid. You've got different needs and wants." He reminds you.

"I'm an animal stuck in a human body!" You argue, ears practically pinned down in frustration. "I'm neither this nor that. I can understand why he wanted something.. proper." You say the last part more quietly.

"Do you think he doesn't want you anymore?" The rapper wonders.

"He.. Bam needs training. And attention, and he deserves it too." You say. "I don't think I fit in between him and Jungkook anymore. There's just no space." You say.

Yoongi sighs. When Jungkook had told him he was getting a dog, he had feared something like this could happen - after all, as an Idol, they only have so much time to spare. He'd been worried and had spoken to the maknae about those worries, but the singer had reassured him that he wouldn't neglect you in any way, and that you would understand.

In a way, Yoongi believes that due to the fact that you're surprisingly independent for a dog hybrid, Jungkook had simply forgotten that you're not human.

"What if you stay with Taehyung for a while, then?" He suggests. He doesn't want to do this- but it might be the only and best option in terms of waking the singer up- by showing him that another person with a dog can provide equal attention and care. "You know he loves when you sleep over, so why not spend some time with him?" He asks, and you look up.

"Do you.. think he'd like that?" You wonder quietly, and he smiles, waving at someone. "But I'm not like-

"I think he'd love that. See? Hey, Taehyung-ah." He exclaims, just as the singer's face falls at the sight of your tears, immediately squatting down to look at you more properly.

"What happened? Did you get hurt?" He asks, but you shake your head before wiping your cheeks with your sleeve- all while Yoongi explains what's happening.

"Taehyung-ah, can you look after her for a while?" He asks. "It seems like Jungkook can't really look after two pretty puppies, after all." You want to object, but at the same time, you spot Jungkook happily chasing after his dog - his full-blooded proper dog - without having ever noticed you watching him at all.

"Of course. Do you wanna go wash those tears off?" He asks, and you nod, taking his hand to follow along as he walks into the house again, your sadness all forgotten by the time he helps you apply some flowery-smelling face wash in the bathroom.

All while Jungkook doesn't even notice you're not in sight any longer.

[purplekoop]

Koop's 2024 Year of Art in Review

This year's been a strange one to be certain, going a whole year without a PC that can run the full suite of modern games and streaming I built a habit of using in 2023, but looking back it was a shockingly productive one in terms of art. Guess that's what not having OW on PC sucking away my attention span. I didn't get something made every month, but had a pretty substantial output anyways, so I wanted to recap the months I did have something.

January:

January got some notable additions to the War Bots cast with the polar opposites Nekross and Harmony, as well as some Kirby humanizations! Honestly a lot to revisit here, these WB characters need some polish and I've never been content with this as "my" Susie. Might give her another pass and try and also humanize the Mage Sisters, that's well overdue at this point.

February:

So this month brought Dredge, the most recent addition to my lineup of Splatoon OCs. Not much to say other than every day I haven't drawn these goofy splesbians weighs heavy on my soul.

March:

March brought the last Bot to get art this year, since Lyonn's only art is years old. Honestly pretty happy with Otto's art, cheaping out on some details aside I think this nails his unique look. at least until that Minion-lookin-ass-poser came around...

April:

Was busy with work, travel, device repairs, and Endless Ocean Blue World this month, so no art. Oops.

May:

Yeah this was all I made this month. Can't complain, this was fun to draw and got decent notes by my standards. I might come back to these two, this art is relatively on-model but I keep seeing people have too much fun being more creative with Queen and Tasque Manager's designs, especially with bigger poofier hair for the latter. Eh, I'll think of something when I have the time.

June:

The smell of artistic combat on the horizon... and also humanized Queen Sectonia is here for some reason. This was when I updated Mugie and Shadow Boxer too, the tip of the iceberg for DWS this year, though at the time it was just for the sake of Art Fight. And the peak of getting ready for the month was Grand Machino, one of my favorite original guys getting his best design yet. Of course, this month's output would look shallow compared to...

July:

Art Fight month is always a doozy, and after an underwhelming run last year and one final reference update in my DnD OC Zecanna, I'm much prouder of my output this year. Maybe not in terms of quantity, but I put out some high-effort individual pieces and really tried to push to go bigger and better... as demonstrated by the two attacks I chose to highlight here. I'm happy to report that the bottom art of my partner's DnD bad guy is proudly displayed in her bathroom in a custom frame, which is probably one of my highest honors.

August:

Not much out of my post Art Fight stupor and birthday month, but I did get a proper art for my current DnD character Lightspring. These always feel like special pieces, considering my DnD characters have a guaranteed fanbase of at least the 6 other people in the campaign.

September:

This was the only thing to come out of September and it was very clearly both an effort to get out of a slump in art and also an omen of things to come. The more big mario princesses I draw in a year the better that year thusly is.

October:

Darkworld-oween folks!! The only way for my output to rival any given July was for another month-long art endeavor, this one dedicated to my original seasonally-fitting fighting game project Darkworld Showdown. Extremely proud of how much I got done, and how well I managed to update a cast in desperate need of it. Obviously given how I got like 20 designs done, I only showcased some of my favorites from the earlier end of the month here.

November:

An oddly productive month for being right after a major month-long art project and on a month where I went out of town for about a week. These are only a couple of the big (in. a few senses.) pieces I got done, starting with a marginally late Halloween piece and ending with one of a couple Mario-themed pieces. er... Maria, as I later decided is the context these pieces take place in. I also dabbled in some Pokemon anthro characters to get in some more body type practice and sate the insatiable need for further avenues of yuri.

December:

Rounding out the year, December was extremely busy with work and holiday prep, so I only had time for a couple gift pieces to friends, one of which was a personal art for my partner, but this one here is of one of my friend's player characters in an upcoming superhero-themed TTRPG game I plan to run next year. We did a secret santa event in my one friend group, and I knew I had to go the extra mile with my friend's delightfully insane robot design who certainly deserves it. Certainly not a shabby way to end the year, I'd say.

I'm not sure what all 2025 holds in terms of what I hope to accomplish art-wise. For a basic and realistic goal I'd love to finish the War Bots cast with art for its final four characters, and perhaps take this October to do the same for Darkworld Showdown. I may also talk about my other major dream game project, City of Desos, though considering how far out any serious work on that is I'm not in a hurry. With my new PC I could even start on actually developing a game... maybe not a full-on platform fighter or team shooter to start, but it'd be nice to start working on those skills properly. The new PC also means streaming is back on the table, and while my setup isn't perfect for it I think I can figure out something. I do also have a whole dang TTRPG system to develop now, so. That might keep me busy. Either way, I'm looking forward to spending plenty of time with friends this year after a lot of plans got bottlenecked by not having a PC that could do half the stuff I wanted. But honestly, as much as anything I wanna have fun with art this year, something I'd say I did pretty good on in 2024. I chased a lot of ideas without any grander ambition besides it sounding fun, and it was refreshing. Maybe I'd like to set up commissions and hope to find an audience for the nonsense I got up to in November, or just have a side space to focus on that indulgent sort of thing more. That might mean spanning out to more social platforms, been putting off making a bluesky account for long enough maybe... maybe. I dunno, got a whole year ahead of me, and plenty more after that.

To anyone reading this far, thanks for indulging me. That goes even further for anyone who's been following for however much longer, or just checking a few posts. Sorry December's been quiet, hopefully I'm not too wrapped up in PC games and the rest of my holiday-gotten backlog to remember to do some art this year, maybe even enough to not need to skip any months next year. I still gotta do that New Donk City poll winner piece... the WIP of the first part is somewhere around here...

But all that said, here's to a bright 2025, let's make it as great as it can be! Happy New Year!!!!

[excelsior9173]

Sleep Oil?

Ok so Sleep Prayer Oil (yes from sleep token)??

-olive oil for the vibes, I usually use grape seed as a carrier, but the vibes of olive oil are what I’m feeling for this.

-Pachouli (sleep aid, and also VERY sensual)

-Mugwort (for astral/dream work)

-Lemon Balm (love, dreamwork, healing)

-Lavender (sleep aid, but intense dreams)

-rosemary (creativity)

-peppermint essential oil (money/prosperity)

-Grapefruit essential oil (mental clarity)

Ok, so here is my list, copy pasted from my notes app so that is why the formatting and wording is all weird lol, of all the herbs and oils I’d include in a sleep prayer oil, and all my reasonings.

But I freaking. Listen, I don’t believe sleep is a real god, but when I was like ‘what would I put in this’ my mind kept going back to rosemary, and I was like ‘why tho?’ And the first thing that popped up when I searched for herbs for creativity was rosemary and I just said ‘ok. Sleep wants that in there’.

I cant make this rn, cause… I am not uhhh ‘practicing’ (my practice is gathering knowledge until I can move out), but I want to 🤣. I wonder if I could get by with substituting lemon oil for lemon balm, cause I have access to essential oils, but not herbs and putting them jars lol. I could honestly say this was a blend for seizures and I wouldn’t even be completely lying….. I’d actually just have to buy the patchouli and mugwort 🤣🤣🤣…. I’m so tempted. I’ll let you know if I do it or not😂 or maybe I just leave out the mugwort and patchouli for right now? I feel like the others have everything covered, but the first two where more like the pa-pow of the oil, idk if this makes since? Like those are the main two and if I was making this for real, I would do only a little bit of the other ingredients, and a lot of the main two, but if I’m not including them I’d do more of the others…. Fuck it I’m gonna end up making this, oops. (But probably with grape seed oil, since this is an essential oil blend… I’ll be back with more notes I’m so sorry).

Edit: this just keeps getting longer longer sorry; went to gather the oils, realized we do indeed have patchouli! But not rosemary… thinking of substituting oregano for rosemary…. And maybe clary sage for mugwort?? Hmmm. Lots of thoughts. Same associations for both things as the list above… ok I have to be done now I’ll come back and tell you if it smells good in a different ask lmao.

Sorry for info dumping to you about a silly little oil, but I was having fun with it.

What would go in your version of it, if you don’t mind me asking👀 I know you said you where doing your own research on it, and I’m curious🥰.

i have sat on this for waaaayyyyy toooo long but university was absolutely kicking my ass for the last… month and a half? idk i was going through it for a hot minute 😅

but! finally getting to tuck into some research now that i’m done school for the term and have a quiet day at work. (this is gonna get hella long cuz i’m having a lot of fun researching and i’m gonna use this as a sounding board a bit as i read)

so! first thing i’m learning is that intention is a huge part of this (i knew the intention part already, part and parcel with working with tarot!)

i think given that sleep is introduced to us as some sort of deity, i would probably make a ritual anointing oil.

the carrier oil itself is another question. i think since sleep feels like a deity not easy to commune with (the intensity and allegory in the music makes me think that, if we were worshipping a true god, conversing with sleep takes a toll on the devotee). with this in mind i think grapeseed oil might make a decent base. it is a good choice for anything used to anoint the body (which i feel would be part of this ritual oils use, if we must dream to encounter sleep then anointing the body makes the most sense to me!) and it is ruled by the moon and water element- making it very fitting for sleep token! grapeseed oil is also useful for blends that intend to boost/strengthen mental abilities (it also helps with fertility magic and given the lyrical content at times- seems somewhat fitting) another useful aspect for a ritual for sleep. i do like the vibes of olive oil as well, and it’s a very versatile ingredient but i don’t think i’d like feeling it on my skin so grapeseed it is! (also my local magick shop has grapeseed oil so easy for me to obtain lol)

now the fun part- the essential oils!

(i’m realizing as i write this that i need to purchase a grimoire so i can start recording my research and recipes…)

so this part has taken me a lot longer to fiddle with, not only finding the right associations but also smells i enjoy, but i think I’ve got it!

- sandalwood (its grounding, promotes inner peace, aphrodisiac) [i went back and forth here between sandalwood and cedar, same associations but i prefer the scent of sandalwood]

- lavender (promotes sleep, reduces stress, pretty straightforward lol)

- patchouli (grounding, sharpens your wit, good for prayer work) [loooove the smell too, i’d do anything to naturally smell like patchouli lol, hippy association be damned]

- mugwort (astral projection, lucid/prophetic dreams, meditation)

- lemon balm (love, healing, astral projection, it also amplifies the effects of other herbs)

- clary sage (vivid dreams, divination)

i keep going back and forth on whether or not to add clove, it’s another aphrodisiac and also good for treating insomnia so i think it would fit? but i’m not 100% sure on it yet lol. my familiarity with essential oils and herbs is very minimal

but yeah! now to get the oils and mix. not sure exactly how the mix will come about, will need some trial and error with it i think! again, sorry this took me so long but here we are! finally i did it!

[rriavian]

Part 2 of this post from an ask from @altair214. So. Battle tactics! I must also add a disclaimer that I’ve never read the art of war, but it fits and so I’m gonna quote it. Also this got very long, as always, and I have to admit I feel a little arrogant for writing meta about my own fic. But! Hopefully will be an interesting read <3 

I've realised that I mainly use differing combinations of three specific tactics when I write. So in terms of the accidental alignment of my writing to Dream’s comic brand of subtle manipulation we have the following:

Manipulate what your enemy views as orthodox and unorthodox behaviours. By feigning orthodox behaviour, you set your opponent up for attack through unorthodox action. Eg. Appear weak when you are strong.

I’m a fan of subversion. I like unconventional ways of approaching things. I’ve always been fascinated by how a comparatively smaller action can have a lot more weight than a larger one depending on how it’s framed.

Like one TV show might have a dozen or so sex scenes that make you yawn, but another has one person holding another’s hand and you just about die because it’s so powerful.

One of the reasons why I love Dream is because he's a character that is so often the opposite of what is expected. He’ll let someone’s assumptions of him act against them, play into them to a certain extent. It’s applicable to what vulnerability means to him too. Weirdly it’s more accurate to say that when Dream seems vulnerable it’s someone else that is actually in trouble. Prime example is him meeting with Lucifer in hell, Dream is not at all bothered by the disrespect of the exchange because he’s secure enough in himself not to be, and he’s more than willing to take advantage of the view to achieve victory.

I saw something recently about how Dream could have chosen to make himself taller in this fight, but doing so would have been akin to a kitten puffing their fur to seem more threatening.

Lucifer would have loved it.

Dream didn't need to do it here, but I think he would have if he'd gone into hell at full power and wanted to seem weak...again, that subversion I love mixed with the unorthodox/orthodox actions. The example you used of the question asked by Odin and Dream’s response is such a perfect illustration of this. Dream is not going to let someone else cheat so easily by telling them what he is.

Or giving them a hint at how they should see him.

It’s not something reserved for enemies either. He has a moment with Lucienne where she’s upset and hurt by what she sees as her work being dismissed, and it could be argued Dream leans into what contrition is expected to look like. It’s the most overt display of ‘oops’ we’ve ever really seen in Dream, his solemn mannerisms put aside for the moment. Not because he’s lying, not that he isn’t regretful that he hurt her, but because he is willing to use her view of behaviour to ensure his response translates properly. He uses that perception to make his feelings visible, to put them in the context that is most accessible to her.

You could say he does similar with Johanna when she mentions Burgess, though I don’t think he alters his behaviour here, just lets her respond to it. Then when Hob accuses him of loneliness Dream does absolutely nothing to hide how nope he is about that. And while it might seem like it breaks my theory on vulnerability because of how extreme a reaction it was, what Hob said was actually an equally extreme insult.

And Dream’s reaction to it resulted in Hob running after him, displaying his own desperate vulnerability, panicked at losing the only constant in his immortal life. Perhaps at having the gift itself revoked.

And he's lured to it because the power in that interaction very much remains with Dream.

While Hob clearly spends time ruminating over that meeting, Dream is very interestingly nonchalant the one time we see him reminded of it, in the scene when Death asks if he’s going to see Hob. There's more to say on this but I will skip to the end of my thought. I bet that if Dream hadn’t been caught by Burgess he’d have turned up to their meeting 100 years later and gotten an apology. Or skipped that meeting just to prove his point.

To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.

Your analysis of Dream making a deal with Loki aligns with this. It seems to me that Dream used this idea in a very unorthodox way to get what he wanted, knowing Loki as he did, and predicting that he’d kidnap Daniel as a way to force Dream to waste his debt. Loki thinks he’s been given the tool to defeat Dream, thinks he’s the one acting in a way that’s unorthodox, but he’s completely misunderstood what victory even is for Dream. He doesn’t actually know what Dream wants. As Odin highlights, it’s unclear whether Dream is victim or manipulator, and this inability for anyone to really know what they are fighting and what his motives are makes Dream so difficult to attack.

In reverse Dream is astounding good at getting the measure of people and using their in character actions for his own ends without even manipulating their behaviour.

In canon he knows Rose will draw the arcana together, knows her search for her brother will lead him where he needs to go. And he's secure enough in his assessment of the threat she poses to let things continue. So in Baiting the Trap Dream uses everything he knows the Corinthian is to assure his victory, achieves it just by letting the Corinthian do his own unhinged thing. As you said, Dream knew right from the start that he was going to win.

The only way the Corinthian could have won is if he stopped being himself.

That’s how Dream fights his enemies – he tailors your defeat to be a road you will always walk. He finds your fatal flaw, your hamartia, and he makes defeat inevitable. Dream gets you to choose it. Again, bringing this back to my point about Orpheus, Dream seems to ultimately arrange this very same thing for himself. He uses his own fatal flaw, his own unavoidable prophesy, and engineers both his defeat and his rebirth.

The most effective trap is always the one you don’t see coming until it’s far too late. The one you only see at all because the victor has allowed you to know you’ve lost. But it’s also one you willingly walk into, even fight to walk into.

A large group striking a small group is not held in high esteem, but a small group striking a larger force is.

There are canon examples of this—such as Dream’s way of dealing with Rose, and his missing creations—but I’m going to focus on BTT so this doesn’t get too long. This point really explains why I’ve always presented the Corinthian’s desire to provoke an extreme reaction as a way to get Dream to show weakness. It’s also why Sweetening the Deal had to be what it is.

It’s essentially point 3 in sex form.

It isn’t strength to throw all your power around when you don’t need to. There’s no achievement, no satisfaction, to be found in defeating a far weaker opponent. It’s why Dream is so expectant of victory, why he takes it as just a matter of course, takes pleasure from it for sure but doesn’t act like it was difficult. He plays fair enough to still brag a little though, handicaps himself enough that it's satisfying, because Dream and the Corinthian are both approaching their relationship with exactly the right assessment of their enemy.

They use exactly the right tactic to match what they are up against.

In the show the Corinthian doesn’t engage at all until he has too. In my series he's finally is forced to engage, goaded to it, thinks he’s facing destruction anyway, and his method of brute force/going all in against Dream is exactly what he’s supposed to do to fight something so powerful. Dream’s relatively measured response—his tendency for non-engagement, his avoidance of a fight—is exactly what you’re supposed to do when fighting something weaker. The Corinthian is so incensed by it because Dream’s tactics prove inequality, prove what he’s being assessed as, and he’s trying to goad him into fighting/engaging with him as an equal.

Trying to find a weapon that will make Dream treat him as such.

The series spun out from a canon divergent idea of what would happen if Dream decided to engage in the way of ‘I will give you exactly what you want and you’ll still lose’. And that's so frustrating to the Corinthian because on the surface it looks like surrender. But it’s an enemy that surrenders at full strength—lays down all arms and smirks at you across the field—undermining the strength of the assault by rendering it meaningless, revoking the right to really test it for real because they won’t let you try and beat them. Won’t let you prove that you can.

So Dream, in a lot of ways, actually flips the dynamic by presenting what he fights back with as the weaker force and taking the 'prestige' out of the Corinthian's victories. It’s why the Corinthian likes to stage/arrange a bit of a fight. Imagine a struggle. And it’s why Dream likes to get him to ask for what he wants (ask when the Corinthian wants to just take) and is very strategic with when and how he indulges him in the staged/arranged fight.

Previously I mentioned vulnerability and this adds another layer to that. When you fight against something so much weaker than yourself with full force it looks like fear. It looks like vulnerability. Perhaps incompetence. Inefficiency. It’s insecure. It’s what you do when you’re not sure you can win, unwilling to risk a test of more even footing, overwhelming with numbers rather than skill. You punish a threat that way.

It lets an enemy know they’ve made you flinch.

(Though I must also add that if you wanted an enemy to think you were scared coming at them full force would be a good way to do it.)

Dream is very obviously goading the Corinthian into positions where it's easy to make this mistake while effortlessly holding back from doing it himself. He is always tempting him to leap at the chance for guaranteed victory—in the first fic, then in the binding etc—luring him with a display of vulnerability in the throne room. Getting him to try and strike when Dream seemed emotionally unstable. But also very powerful, luring with the prestige of what it would be for a smaller force to overtake his larger one, revealing just what a prize there is on offer.

The Corinthian has been learning the balance throughout the whole series. He is still going all in but not being stupid about it, not pulling his punches but definitely not wanting to give the impression of a lack of skill. Assessing what Dream is setting the board with and what level of strength is required from his own responses. I could have written the Corinthian doing the most nasty fucked up sexual stuff to Dream—he definitely indulges but for all my work is explicit I remember being like ‘is this too vanilla for them?’—but for me it would have overplayed the Corinthian’s hand. Overplayed determination and intellect into desperation. I didn’t want to take the power out of what I was writing.

Guess I’m using these battle tactics on my readers too haha because I definitely manipulate the view of unorthodox/orthodox behaviours. I will layer them in different ways, weight an encounter differently depending on how I'd like it to feel. As I said earlier…I’m a fan of subversion. And I will usually write something in exactly the opposite way of what’s expected.

The binding circle was the culmination of the first ‘arc’ of the series and it’s essentially a combination of all three of these different tactics. An unorthodox action, strength shown as weakness, Dream seemingly handing the Corinthian the means to beat him, allowing him the chance to attack him from a position of strength.

It evened the field yes. But it's also an example of when Dream presents himself as a 'weaker' force.

It made the Corinthian the larger army in a position to strike at a smaller one. The Corinthian realised that and didn’t attack with overwhelming force. He very much indulged but he was still strategic. He could have done some very nasty things to Dream in that binding circle (believe me I had a lot of imaginative ideas). It’s all about balance and flow for me, where my gut tells me the equilibrium needs to be. And there’s loads of character quirks on both sides that balance that.

(Especially since these little 'battles' are essentially a love language as much as a power struggle)

So the series is shifting the Corinthian to a more measured approach. Fun little skirmishes. Enjoying the game of it…the stages of the battle. In a way, Dream is very much teaching the Corinthian to play by the same principles I use to write, to play chess with him properly—testing his ability to do it—to come at him from an unorthodox position, to use his weakness (Dream allowed him the Binding Circle, then gave him further examples in CtK). To perhaps not be so stressed at not being engaged with (though this is shifting in the next arc because the Corinthian has definitely earned it), Dream not using full force for a reason. The battles able to have some equality because of that adjustment. 

Anyway. That’s how I write power (and that leads into how I write explicit fic too because, yeah, I feel like you might start to notice some battle tactics influencing all of my prose).

It’s why as much as Corintheus could call for some delightfully dark stuff, I will probably never write that unless the scenario is exactly right. (I have planned/considered what some of those scenarios might be). For me it can tip things too far. It’s the question of is this actually showing power or is it just disproportionate brutality? Is it a hammer instead of a scalpel? Also I agree with you about explicit fic—for all I’ve written so many of them! this is my first, and only, series of explicit works—and Dreamling was also one of the first ships I read for, though I am quite particular about it.

(It's also really really lovely to see someone share my love of Dream! So if ever you want someone to ramble excitedly with I am always ready to talk about how much I adore him!)

[oraclekleo]

Hello kleo!! Hope you are having a good day!

I saw your BHS game open so I decided to give it a shot. I'm on the switch side leaning sub. But really depends on my moods n emotions...Let's say I could get a little sadistic n rough(with consent ofc).

Seo Joon- blind fold: idk something about his energy.

Wi Ha joon- def Handcuffs. I think he'd look cute cuffed up lol. Or me with him lol. Both the above men i don't mind switching.

But this man right here....Chang Wook? I'm def domming tf out of this man... So Spanking it is!

Aquarius Sun, Scorpio Moon, Cancer Rising!

Strictly 18+ Content ahead. Minors do not engage!

Spread: BHS TarotDeck(s): Tarot of Sexual Magic, Tarot of Casanova, Erotic Fantasy Tarot

Park Seo Joon Blindfolded by You - 3 of Pentacles, II The High Priestess (Erotic Fantasy Tarot)

Both the cards speak of sharing and opening up. When you blindfold Seo Joon, he’s likely to experience a feeling of liberation. Being temporarily blind gives him the opportunity to rely on his other senses, opening the gateway to a more sensual side of himself. Being blindfolded makes him finally see what’s behind the veil of a very professional and civilised man and he can finally give in to his more primitive and lustful self by sharing his more daring fantasies with you. When he can’t see your facial expressions he might become more courageous about telling you what it is he wants in bed (or any other place you find fit). Seo Joon is likely to truly enjoy being blindfolded, even more than he would expect as it’s actually not making him a vulnerable victim of your love, it allows him to better tune in with you and cooperate more naturally with you when he’s not distracted by the thoughts on how it looks. 

Wi Ha Joon Handcuffed by You - 7 of Cups, 6 of Wands (Tarot of Sexual Magic)

Ha Joon is not likely to be the one suggesting handcuffing but once you come up with the idea, he might become curious and agree on it with you, while giving some terms which need to be followed. Once you have your guy nicely tied up and wrapped like a birthday present, Ha Joon is quick to forget any terms and conditions he ever mentioned and give in to the play. The feeling of being at mercy to you and whatever you decide to do with / to him might become pretty intoxicating for someone who’s used to leady and being on the top. It’s a completely new sensation and as such it’s exciting and joyful for Ha Joon. You might want to include a lot of touching and skinship while he’s shackled like a prisoner of your love. Don’t be afraid to experiment with a variety of textures and different levels of pressure - light touch or tickle with a feather, harder grab, biting his nipples… Ha Joon is no porcelain doll, he can endure quite a lot as long as there’s pleasure in it. He might become pretty vocal, both encouraging and praising you and just moaning, hissing, growling, panting and screaming your name.

Ji Chang Wook Spanked by You - 3 of Cups, 9 of Swords (Tarot of Casanova)

Chang Wook is certainly not the one pitching the idea of being spanked but you might instinctively sense the right time to suggest this to him. Especially if he’s troubled and worried in his head or anxious at the time, taking his thoughts away from the matter can help him relax. And you can be sure as hell that he won’t think about anything else but spanking once you start. While it might start kinda serious and cautious for both of you, it’s likely to turn into a merry play pretty quickly. This practice is likely to somewhat elevate any kind of burden off of his chest and allow him to just enjoy the new sensations and possibilities. You might want to include some kind of game as well, making spanking either punishment or reward (or both, whipping with a flogger is punishment, spanking with your hand is a reward because sometimes your hand might slip and ‘accidentally’ grab and stroke a different body part, oops 😂). Spanking Chang Wook might also encourage him to share any worry with you as in that position he’s simply going to do anything you tell him to do. In the end, spanking is both a relief and joy for Chang Wook.

Thank you so much for requesting the reading!

I'm always grateful for any feedback.

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[lovey-dovey-dulcie]

Official-ish introduction!

Waaah hellooooo. This is @dulciedeleche's selfship blog! This blog may or may not be more active than my main lol we'll see

I don't have a lot of things to say so I shall list off my f/os. Iiiii don't really have a way to use emojis and I can't really think of any unique tag names so these f/o tags aren't gonna be too fancy oops

Also unless stated otherwise, I am 100% okay with sharing them! If you aren't, though, feel free to block. I won't hold it against you ^^ /gen

Also once again proshit/comshit DNI

f/os under the cut

Main f/os:

P.izze.lle (S.uga.ry S.pire)

My. darling. wife. And my bi awakening lol. She's my newest f/o but currently at the top bc I'm fixated on her the most and I'm incredibly head over heels. She's gone through a lot, which makes sense considering her source material isn't finished yet, but I still love her all the same and I can't wait for her game to be finished! I will be so normal (I will not be normal)

O.cta.vo (C.aden.ce of H.yru.le)

Bard hubby bard hubby. A fucking moron but he's my fucking moron. What makes him so much better is that he shares his VA with an M.L.P character. I honestly love this smug purple bitch so much

A.sto.r (Ag.e of C.alami.ty)

I hate this man. I'm kissing him on his stupid pasty-ass lips. I'm throwing him in a ditch. I love him. It's WEIRDDDD he has quite the lack of a developed character arc and he is far from someone who fits my cutesy aesthetic/tastes or whatever but I just. think he's hot, alright? Have you HEARD his voice?? Duuuuude. I also think it's funny to selfship with him bc of goth bf and girly girl gf. We ARE personifications of a Hot Topic next to Claire's

Sub f/os (is that the right term to use for f/os I don't think about as much?? Eh whatever):

P.epp.ino (P.izz.a T.owe.r)

Yep, I'm part of the crowd that saw him upon release and wanted his hand in marriage. I too wish to love, cherish and comfort this man. I also have a unique sona for him named Cece. I'll probably show her off at some point soon lol

V.ikto.r (A.rcan.e)

A friend of mine got me into this show a couple years back. I haven't actually. watched it yet, ahaha, but this guy is her favorite character and he's mine now too. He's a cutie, what can I say?

Crushes:

Mr. O.rang.e (P.izz.a T.owe.r) (rightmost image)

I'm not sure how or why I have the hots for him, but something about him is very adorable to me and he is MERELY just a concept character

The N.ois.e (P.izz.a T.owe.r)

Yeah not NEARLY to the extent of everyone else here, partly bc he already has his canon gf, but. he's smoochable to me okay. And also just a silly guy. I love his campaign. I might just have a thing for the gremlins tbh ajfhgajfhghjfskaf

BONUS: Queerplatonic partner:

R.ose.tte (S.uga.ry S.pire)

P.izz.y has two hands. We're both in a qpr with her and we love her :>

Friends and family:

P.unc.hy (A.nim.al C.rossi.ng) (son)

D.obie (A.nim.al C.rossi.ng) (grandpa)

C.aden.ce (C.ryp.t of the N.ecro.Danc.er) (friend/sister figure)

P.inki.e P.ie (M.L.P) (best friend)

F.lutte.rsh.y (M.L.P) (best friend)

S.tarl.ight G.limm.er (M.L.P) (best friend)

And so there you have it :P

[fateandloveentwined]

amendments on the title of 长喑 cháng yīn // long darkness

omg oops! @/ llonkrebboj

I've been most unabashedly been reading-writing-translating the title of the song wrong all this time, it is 长喑 and not 长暗 (note the radicals). So what does 喑 mean?

You would know this word if you've ever heard of the term 喑哑, meaning someone's voice which has gone hoarse and raspy, or seen the character from Li Bai's prose 拟恨赋 (nǐ hèn fù) an imitation of the prose of grievances by Jiang Yan:

若乃项王虎斗，白日争辉；拔山力尽，盖世心违。闻楚歌之四合，知汉卒之重围。帐中剑舞，泣挫雄威；骓兮不逝，喑呜何归。

(The grievance) is as Xiang Yu in the heat of the insurgence, his radiance comparable with the resplendence of the sun. Over time, however, his strength to uproot mountains comes to an end, and the zest to become unrivalled above all on the earth, too, eventually, dims to be betrayed. He hears the songs of his homeland, chu, converging onto him from all sides like haunting chants. He knows he is to be buried in the camp tightly besieged by the han army. In the tent, his besotted consort Yu starts a sword dance before him; he feels the former glory and splendour amid the broken weeping. His best horse of past battles could gallop no more; in the deadened sobs of the camp, where could he return to?

So this excerpt is not wholly relevant, but YJ quoted it and I liked it enough I might as well put it here. That said what exactly does 喑 mean?

meaning of 喑 yīn

YJ explained it as a loud ringing war cry here, definitely apt, yet to me even more of it is about the long period of thirteen years where XJY and the voices of many were stifled. 喑 yin means to silence, and even more so, to be silenced, the kind of silence that after a loud period of shouting your voice becomes hoarse and you can no longer speak, and the type of muteness in which there is nothing you can say, you are silenced by the circumstances of life.

tone of yīn

And even more fitting is the tone of the character 喑 yīn — if you have heard of the chinese tones, yīn is of the first tone and is pronounced in a level manner. In píngzѐ (a more formal way of categorising the tones) it would be 阴平 yīnpíng. That would be like an outstretched, never-fading silence: previously when translated to 暗 (àn) darkness, the character is like the radiance cut short and put to a halt in the fourth tone 去声 qùshēng. And now, with finally the correct character, 喑 (yīn) would be an overstretching silence of over thirteen years — the silence of a royal prince, reputation and honour denigrated and besmirched, aspirations torn to shreds like fleeting dreams of the lost childhood. It is the hoarseness after a long breakdown where your throat could utter no sound any longer, the silence after the loud battle cry and the raising voice of insurgence quickly curbed, the people that were victorious in defending their kingdom yet now nowhere to be found. A wailing whimper of thirteen long years, drained of the energy to wail, and stifled of hope.

the forbearance of chinese values

喑 also speaks of forbearance, a chinese confucianist concept 隐忍 yǐnrěn meaning forbearance and endurance. The hero endures silently without display and prevails to build a better world. (Cue unhealthy emotional damage and imposter perfectionist breakdowns, but genuinely that's the way chinese society has been built and celebrated in the past two millennia shrugs. It also ties in neatly with the word 敛 liǎn, to hold back and conceal; there's way too much in these two words to talk about to put in a post.) But back to the topic in hand, XJY's silence talks of his forbearance, the long decade he is willing to keep silent his thoughts until the opportunity comes for him to spread his wings and soar like the dragon in the sky as the song depicts in the verse "潜龙在渊敛锋芒 风雷动引龙翔" (submerged dragon hides his splendour and soars one day with the force of the winds and thunders and etc.).

This has gone on for way too long. I think I need a new post for this or no one would ever scroll to the bottom.

As for whether or not I am going to amend the title long darkness?

It's a pretty terrible title that makes little english sense, but it would be weird to change it now.

In a sense, silence ≅ darkness, the silence of being stifled is as though the never-ending unabating darkness in which Xiao Jingyan walked alone for twelve years. It's not like "long silence" or "stiflement (not a word)" or "endurance" would make a better or worse title than what it is now, is it.

long darkness — cháng yīn 长喑 translation

cháng yīn 长喑 // long darkness

a fan-made song on Xiao Jingyan. I have always been a Mei Changsu over XJY person, but this song from his pov really worked for me and let me see the weightedness of XJY's crown, so I wanted to share it with more.

song link in comment below. (bilibili . com / video / av10441457/)

长剑出鞘冷锋芒 十三载意难忘

缓歌曼舞九重宫 朔风黄沙麾旗扬

手足血脉埋青冢 挚友良弓唯锈藏

岂能折腰屈膝没忠良

the long sword unsheathes from the scabbard, its cool blade revealed. thirteen years, and hard it is to forget.

leisured, soothing melodies with graceful dances at the ninefold palace; north wind and yellow sand with the billowing ensign in the desert. *[1]

brothers-in-arms and brothers in blood in tombs buried, graves long covered in grass; dear friends and cherished bow stored away, now left only to rust —

how is one to bend and kneel, and bury the names of the honourable and the good?

挑灯不眠千军帐 逐千里护家邦

玉壶冰心铁骨铮 扬眉冷看覆风浪

当时少年且横枪 凝尽碧血守四方

守国土河山定国安邦

light a lamp through the unrested nights at the commander’s tent; repel foes a thousand miles, and shield the kingdom.

nobility and aspirations stayed true to, bones of steel resounding. head high, brows lifted, he coolly looks to the tempestuous, overturning storms. *[2]

the youth of the past still danced their spears: blood of the honourable, thoroughly consecrated, defends the four corners of their homeland,

guarding rivers and hills to secure peace of the kingdom’s earth.

(念白：我不要求你能理解，什么是军人铁血，什么是战场狼烟，但有些人，不能伤害，有些事，不能利用。如果连那些血战沙场的将士都不懂得尊重，我萧景琰绝不与你为伍，清楚了吗？)

V/O — I do not expect you to understand a soldier’s honour or the smoke signals on the battlefield. But there are some people you cannot hurt, some things you cannot manipulate. If you cannot even respect the soldiers dying at the battlefront, I, Xiao Jingyan, will never work with you. Do you understand?

铁马金戈谈笑并辔封疆 几回魂梦

凤阙深深夜雨潇潇数闻铃

鸿儒谈笑对面不知相逢 唯知君臣纲

音容早已远谁知苍凉

armoured horses and metal spears, riding in parallel in friendly chatters at the borderlands — how many times has the soul dreamt thus?

depths of the palace, whistling of the nightly rain, a few stray rings of the bells. *[3]

an erudite scholar, now sat opposite in small smiles converse, yet know not to reunite. what leaves is the etiquette of lords and lieges. *[4]

voice and countenance long since distanced — who is to know the desolation and vicissitudes concealed?

谈笑自若朝堂对气轩昂 霁月风光

风云激荡历艰辛终执牙璋

漫漫更鼓朱笔落夜未央 提笔写兴亡

四顾怅惘余音且绕梁

composed in dialogue and pleasantries, assured and imposing at court. he is noble and virtuous as the bright moon and warm breeze.

wading through the unpredictable winds and turmoils, zhang sceptre of jade at last in hand.

drums signifying the night hours sound, red comments from the emperor’s brush move through the boundless night yet to end. a lift of the brush, and prosperities and declines are writ. *[5]

pensive and lost he looks to four sides. remnants of past sounds remain, resonating through the beams of the palace.

(verse 2)

潜龙在渊敛锋芒 风雷动引龙翔

风云际会参参商 瞰天下世道无常

掌中龙渊凛如霜 立丹陛守盛世长

祭酒未凉叹谁人共觞

like a submerged dragon in the abyss, he enshrouds his splendour. wind and thunder call his wings to flight. *[6]

in the winds and clouds, he engages in the tumult of the Shen and Shang constellations. from above he looks down at the fickleness of the world.

in his hands, the abyss of the dragon is cold as frost; he stands at the red stairway before the imperial palace, and overlooks an everlasting prosperity.

the wine offering to the dead is yet to cool — I sigh, who is to drink with me?

袖手天下为帝王 垂衣且驭八荒

气宇舒金殿垂拱 揽尽山河只手倾

长歌挽弓射天狼 潜龙一朝御风翔

乾坤日月昭天下清朗

hands folded in sleeves, he gazes at the kingdom before him. as emperor he rules from his attire and directs even the most distant lands. *[7]

with poised air he commands the court, hands held together; the entirety of the kingdom shifts with a tilt of his hand. *[7]

sing high and long; draw your bow to the invading Sirius. the submerged dragon one morn rises to ride the winds. *[8]

heaven and earth, and sun and moon clears, and the world before brightens.

铁马金戈谈笑并辔封疆 几回魂梦

凤阙深深夜雨潇潇数闻铃

鸿儒谈笑对面不知相逢 唯知君臣纲

音容已故徒一身沧桑

armoured horses and metal spears, riding in parallel in friendly chatters at the borderlands — how many times has the soul dreamt thus?

depths of the palace, whistling of the nightly rain, a few stray rings of the bells. *[3]

an erudite scholar, now sat opposite in small smiles converse, yet know not to reunite. what leaves is the etiquette of lords and lieges. *[4]

voice and countenance already bygone, all but a body of desolation remains.

谈笑自若朝堂对气轩昂 霁月风光

风云激荡历艰辛终执牙璋

漫漫更鼓朱笔落夜未央 提笔写兴亡

从此立龙城孤守八方

composed in dialogue and pleasantries, assured and imposing at court. he is noble and virtuous as the bright moon and warm breeze.

having waded through the unpredictable winds and turmoils, zhang sceptre of jade at last in hand.

drums signifying the night hours sound, red comments from the emperor’s brush move through the boundless night yet to end. a lift of the brush, and prosperities and declines are writ. *[5]

from forth he establishes himself in the imperial city of dragons. alone, he awatches the eight corners of his realm. *[9]

Extra notes

for those keen on classical chinese and literature allusions

I’ve cited some allusions and references I was reminded of as I listened to the song. These are subjective, my knowledge of classical texts is very limited, take everything with a grain of salt and please do comment if you’d like to supplement any information.

[1] 缓歌曼舞九重宫 朔风黄沙麾旗扬 — 《长恨歌》 白居易 The Song of Everlasting Regret, by Bai Juyi

缓歌曼舞: from “缓歌慢舞凝丝竹”. This is at the start of the romance tale, where the palace is in carefree bliss and prosperity.

slow and graceful songs / slow dances / slowly the music of the strings and the bamboo reverberate in step with the dances.

朔风黄沙麾旗扬: might be a stretch; I was reminded of “黄埃散漫风萧索”. This is from the same poem as above, we are one fourth in here, and it talks of a war.

yellow dust, scattered, drifts through the air. the bleak wind howls.

[2] 玉壶冰心铁骨铮 — 《芙蓉楼送辛渐》 王昌龄 Bidding Xin Jian farewell at Furong Tower by Wang Changling

玉壶冰心: from “洛阳亲友如相问，一片冰心在玉壶”

if the relatives and friends from Luoyang ask, tell them that my noble intentions are unchanged; a heart of ice in the vase of jade.

[3] 凤阙深深夜雨潇潇数闻铃 — 《长恨歌》 白居易 The Song of Everlasting Regret, by Bai Juyi

夜雨潇潇数闻铃: again could be a stretch; I was reminded of “夜雨闻铃肠断声” from the same poem as [1]. (don’t ask me why, this entire song is infused with this piece it feels). This talks of the same romance tale, in which the emperor mourns the death of his beloved.

in the nightly rain, the sound of the bells could be heard. it sounds as sorrowful and agonising as the breaking of intestines.

[4] 鸿儒谈笑对面不知相逢 唯知君臣纲 — 《陋室铭》 刘禹锡 An Inscription of the Humble Abode by Liu Yuxi; 《江城子》 苏轼 Jiang Cheng Zi, by Su Shi

鸿儒谈笑: from "谈笑有鸿儒，往来无白丁" credits to @fwoopersongs because my brain happily omitted it!

well-learnt scholars congregate in joyous talk, traversing there is no uncouth and unread.

不知相逢: there are many poems on this topic, one of the most notable ones would be “纵使相逢应不识，尘满面，鬓如霜。”

even if we met (Su Shi and his deceased wife), you should not be able to recognise me. dust covers my face, and the hair of my temples is white as frost.

[5] 漫漫更鼓朱笔落夜未央 — 《长恨歌》 白居易 The Song of Everlasting Regret, by Bai Juyi (added in edit)

漫漫更鼓: Okay, "迟迟钟鼓初长夜" immediately came to mind when I saw this phrase, but I went like here's too many footnotes already and thought it was too much of a stretch to put in (there's only one word in common!). Then I looked into the original poem, in which the timely bi-hour rings of the drum felt lengthened because of the emperor's agony over losing his loved one -- and so I went like, okay, this is relevant, I actually need to add this in.

the drums reporting the hour of the night come late, and it is early in the long night.

漫漫 meaning endless, without an end in sight. This echoes the sentiments of the emperor in Bai Juyi's poem in feeling that the night is everlasting and without end.

[6] 潜龙在渊敛锋芒 — 《易经》 Yi Jing, the Book of Changes

潜龙: There’s an awful lot of “submerged dragon” metaphors in this stanza. Technically it's a figurative "talents hidden dragon" rather than literally, under the waters. This is from Yi Jing essentially, a super old book on divination that does have some wisdom of old sayings in it. The submerged dragon talks of how the dragon, currently veiled, is a powerful being simply not revealed to worldly eyes yet, and is waiting for opportunity to strike (more like, soar, in this context). These lyrics parallel Xiao Jingyan with the allusion to talk about how he stayed silent for thirteen years before his time of brilliance.

[7] 袖手天下为帝王 垂衣且驭八荒 / 气宇舒金殿垂拱 揽尽山河只手倾 — Taoism concept

Okie this is super complicated and involves a Taoism context, some history from the beginning emperors of the Han dynasty, and a very enthusiastic Emperor Taizong of Tang; I don’t really know how to go about this.

袖手, 垂衣驭八荒, 垂拱, these all lead to the same concept, and the middle chunk in particular is from a poem written by Emperor Taizong of Tang. Theory suggested by Laozi and Zhuangzi of Taoism, overall it talks of inaction, which is action the emperors at the start of the Han dynasty employed. They demanded less of their citizens and let the economy recover naturally (agriculture and such), and since these policies worked, the starting few Han emperors were regarded highly with this kind of purposeful and benevolent “inaction”.

In short, this song here uses these descriptions to talk of Jingyan as a competent and masterful leader.

[8] 长歌挽弓射天狼 — 《江城子·密州出猎》 苏轼 Hunting outside Mizhou (yet another Jiang Cheng Zi), by Su Shi

挽弓射天狼: from “会挽雕弓如满月，西北望，射天狼。”

I shall draw my carved bow like the full-moon, point towards the northwest, and shoot in the direction of the intruders.

天狼 means Sirius star. In chinese astronomy/astrology it was somewhat related to evilness, hence the use of Sirius to denote intruders.

[9] 从此立龙城孤守八方

I just added this this is not a reference it just really reminds me of this fanfiction oneshot 此生一诺 (this life, a pledge)! It talks about XJY at the end of everything, he draws a circle about the ground and entraps himself with the promise he made to see the world a better place under his reign (from the chinese idiom 画地为牢). I recced the oneshot here if you wish to check it out.

arghhh the entire course of me writing the tl was me going oh goodness why is there yet another footnote but I’m glad to be done for now.

Like, goodness. There is not one “he” or “him” reference in the lyrics. I would love to do the same, but you can see me getting more and more resigned towards the end of the translation.

I am sooo inclined to passive voice and invert subjects for every sentence when it comes to translations, I realise, and I apologise for the almost-signature abundance of semicolons and em dashes in the translation (I blame it on the difference in punctuation nuances. — I subconsciously use semicolons for semi-parallel sentence structures, so you can spot out imperfect couplets that way.) Massive respect to all those who translate, because easy is it to hatch out a crude translation in five minutes, it is not treading about the delicate balance between literal and metaphorical, and in all honesty I feel that it is just way easier for me to write literal once, then go off the rails and do super-figurative for the other.

There are far more annotations and word definitions I’d like to add (I could literally do a classical text/poetry meta for every word lmao), but evidently, time constraints, and truthfully it would take forever to complete, so on a “ask me and I’ll try to elaborate” basis again.

The V/O — I’d love to make it more archaic, but the dialogue from the drama in this part was so modern apologies I’m sort of disappointed with the translation over here.

Re: song title. Yes, it sounds a little weird, excuse that.

I considered other translations for the song title, but none of them really gave the impression I really wanted. Words like “eternal” and “everlasting” were too permanent, I wanted to express the idea of the darkness being lengthened, yet with Jingyan’s reign it would come to an end, hence my hesitance. “Continual” is one I fiddled with: it did not give the same curt, direct feeling as “long” however, so in the end I just ended up with the simplest title.