#i was just sort of getting some bad vibes i feel like

[anomaliex]

Collection of headcanons not elaborate enough for own word vomit post:

- I don't think Kristen can swim. She has the vibes of someone who never learned as a kid and now it's too late to bring up without being embarrassed. (Also I thought about what would happen if she fell in water — mechanically she's wearing heavy armor, would Brennan just let her swim since she's in universe only in a tracksuit or would she sink without a sufficient strength check? Idk, but that's how I got to the no swimming conclusion.)

- insanely weird hc to have but i think Fabian shaves his arm hair. Also like legs and arm pits i guess but the way more unusual and therefore notable thing is arms. This guy kills any body and facial hair on sight. Like no one has ever seen him with as much as stubble outside of Cathilda or the Bad Kids when they were sleeping over. Why? Idk he just prefers that, no deeper reason. I do think elves generally have less body hair but here his human genes come through so he has to shave. Or get it lasered away I guess. You can do that right?? He's rich. Maybe he'd do it.

- also Fabian's depth perception is dog shit. Using his crossbow is less impressive because Fandrangor is simply a better weapon and his flourishes and manoeuvres rely on melee combat, I know, but to me it's also just that he's better at hitting things real close to him.

- Riz is the kinda guy to have chronic migraines and think it's fine. "Everyone has headaches sometimes and I do sleep a lot less than I should ahaha" (the amount of coffee he drinks is barely saving him from the horrors.)

- Adaine also gets a lot of migraines in what I think are more. Passive non specific visions? Like a gut feeling that's always correct and also makes her body hate her. The proper visions are comparable to absence seizures I think? Like I don't wanna say it's that because it's magic but the process is kind of the same in the sense that she's out for like ten to thirty seconds and it can really suck

- I also think Adaine has synaesthesia! I can't really put this into words well so I'm not even gonna try, but she perceives certain sounds and/or colours at times where there shouldn't be sounds and/or colours. I think those associations also to an extend help in drawing connections between less specific visions and real life.

- we know Gorgug has a drumset in his room I think it's electronic. But like not in a normal way like we have them irl it's some insane artificer shit that would justify so much more noise complaints than a regular one and also could probably have its own pyrotechnics idfk. It's fully a safety hazard but it doesn't even rank on the top 10 of worst things to have in your house that is a TREE that the Thistlesprings casually own.

- I think either Fig or Kristen would be the shortest medium creature type Bad Kid. Like obviously Riz is four feet tall max but he's in a whole different category lmao

- Fig sometimes puts little braids in Jawbone's fur and he happily lets her. He only properly adopted Adaine and Fig has more than enough dads, but he does still act as sort of a paternal figure to her (and every other kid ((which in this case includes Ragh but maybe not Aelwyn)) in mordred manor because he's just a caring guy and it's hard not to grow attached) so that's their pseudo daddy-daughter bonding

- Fabian doesn't like, hate Gilear as much as he used to? Like he still has his moments but overall he thinks he's a good guy and absolutely has the "well I can shit on him but I'm gonna kill this other guy who did. How dare you make fun of my Mama's beloved??" mindset. But uhm he tries to make Gilear work out with him so he can "stop being death fodder". Gilear is a commoner and everyone else in Seacaster Manor absolutely is not and like he likes it and he loves these people but he does kind of live in hell. His wife? Could kill him. His step son? Could kill him. The maid? Could kill him. The dog slash motor cycle?? Could kill him. One hit. Also the entire current Seacaster household are dexterity based fighters they're all so graceful and skilled he's fully just a guy that spills every drink ever on himself

- I think the Hangman loves Cathilda because she gives good chin scritchies (hound form obviously lol) Generally he tends to mirror Fabian's attitude towards people anyway so he's always liked her, but once he started being a hound more she started petting him and giving him treats and he is smitten

- Gorgug (and sometimes Ragh or Ayda) play extreme fetch with the Hangman. Like I need to stress that he's not just a big dog he's large enough to be a mount, which means he'd have to be the size of a horse. Maybe a small horse sure but that's still a horse-sized dog. I think his mini looks fairly big but in my heart he's bigger. So yeah fetch with him (which they mainly do because they want him to feel comfortable in both forms because he's so good) is really big sticks. Like not logs or anything but sticks the average person can't huck all that far. Fabian casts enhance ability on himself so he can also do it, lol. The wonders of multiclassing into bard.

- I think the only Bad Kids who never use makeup are Riz and Kristen. Gorgug doesn't do it every day and not that much but he uses eyeliner sometimes. Fig's makeup is the most noticeable and usually very fun.

- Gorgug has kissed Ragh at least twice. So at least one time after the prom thing. I don't mean this in a ship way I mean this in I look at Gorgug and then I look at Ragh and I go yeah these guys have shared at least one tender bro kiss. I mean I think Gorgug is the kinda guy that would kiss all of his friends if they wanted to because it's not that big of a deal to him and he loves them but not everyone is comfortable w/ that lol. He and Kristen kiss each other on the cheek though, I think (this does not mean he wants to see her naked in public please put your clothes back on Kristen??)

[theiaphage]

This is a really well worded post and I generally agree! However, I think I got another angle of this same conclusion based on the idea that Amy's original redemption arc never really concluded only to backslide -- rather, that her expectations about redemption fundamentally change what that redemption arc means in-text

Like you say, it absolutely falls well within the typical narrative-trope parameters of the expected 'redemption arc,' she hits all the core points -- but, like with a lot of tropes related to pain, trauma, healing, forgiveness and so on, the typical narrative portrayal isn't often a realistic one. In that way I think Amy acts as both a good example and, with further context, a deconstruction of the redemption arc, because under further examination a lot of the arc itself isn't necessarily as positive as it first came off. In so many of her attempts, she's trying to do better according to all she knows when surrounded by the worst influences possible. She doesn't have a solid safe role model, and hasn't for her entire life. Someone to tell her that sometimes you just won't be forgiven, that not every fight ends with a hug and back-to-normal at the end.

In that way, Amy's attempts at doing the right thing in Worm, though absolutely noble in conscious intent, still betray a few of her failings and the places she was failed. Like you say, she really does try to get better, she does the things she may know broadly lead to healing or help or forgiveness, but a lot still ends up being more about her than her efforts.

The tattoo here absolutely stands out to me -- even before Ward went and had her all but explicitly say that the tattoo holds a different meaning now, even in Worm it still seemed imperfect, questionable potentially, but with heart behind it. It was a memorialization of pain and a reminder to do better -- but like so many pieces of art about pain or failure, it could inadvertently romanticize the subject just as much as it condemns it. Amy is, in a very real way, actively working this tragedy into a part of a narrative -- one she tries to use for growth, but ultimately fails in.

I'm trying not to be too harsh on Amy here, but vibes-wise I'm reminded somewhat of something like an ex-boyfriend, leaving flowers at the door of someone who dumped him, or cry-singing a song about how they were a bad boyfriend on the car drive home. Sure, the pain is real, the acknowledgement of failure likely is as well, but at some point the gesture becomes more about the boyfriend's pain than the actual relationship, or even the breakup. In this moment Victoria, a victim who literally cannot speak for herself in this instance, is 'memorialized' in a very real sense, turned into a symbol by a person that already as a base nature of their power and life can feel so disconnected from the humanity of others.

So many of these choices by Amy center her -- her attempted growth, her attempted retribution, her attempted change. It's the kind of thing that in real life really can be done for the right reasons, but can also be done for worse ones -- that ex-boyfriend working out thinking of their ex, getting a job thinking of their ex, hanging a picture of their ex above their bed to motivate them to get up in the morning. Amy's actions aren't even this extreme or pointed, but I view it as them sharing a sort of kernel of trying to do better because they really want (or even need) better in turn -- and thus, Amy's arc in Ward is what happens when the textbook redemption arc doesn't work.

When all those acts of memoriam, distance, betterment, health, are done with the kernel of hope in your mind that it means you'll be forgiven, that it all will be fine again and you can go back to how it was.

And that's why I see her redemption arc as never having completed -- she's trying, she's hitting the right steps, but ultimately at the conclusion of this redemption (which I would argue is a long period of time, starting with Vicky's new body and coming back up again for a while) would come when those attempts were tested, when Victoria refuses to forgive her and she's forced to either accept her betterment without Victoria, or let go of it and keep pushing for her -- she begins to choose the later.

In this way it's less of a backslide and more of a recontextualizing moment. She is backsliding in behavior, but it's not that she got foundationally better and then became foundationally worse again, and more so that she tried to get better, put in real effort, but ultimately failed. This version worked for me because it seems to be what Amy acts like right out of the gate; annoyed that Vicky won't accept her, continually trying to do things 'for' her or based on her happiness when Victoria wants nothing to do with any of that.

These give some context to her past actions, allow you to re-examine Worm in a way that both provides answers and adds a new layer in a way many readers (myself included) missed at first simply because yeah, Amy's arc does have all the pieces of a redemption arc, and it takes Ward to get people thinking about whether or not those pieces add up.

I do want to state to conclude that yeah, her portrayal (and especially the initial choice to tell this story surrounding Amy of all people) has its issues, many major, but the portrayal of someone who falls into toxicity and abuse because they thought they were doing everything right and still didn't get what they wanted out of it; A person who still didn't get that one selfish prize they latched onto in a moment of pain that they tried to be a saint to deserve or make up for wanting? Yeah, that's pretty unique and powerful, and despite its flaws it really hits home as an accurate-to-the-point-of-painfulness portrayal.

Okay, fuck it, I've built up enough goodwill with this sideblog - let's risk it all by sharing my opinions on how Amy is handled in Ward.

It's kinda complicated I think.

Okay, now that I've resisted the urge to immediately hit post for the bit: I think the way her interludes are written substantially flattens her character in a way that I find distasteful and unpleasant, but I find the overall shape of her arc and her role in the narrative compelling. The things I dislike have been well-covered by plenty of other people in the fandom, so I'm going to focus on the things I like.

To talk about Amy's role in Ward, I first need to talk about my interpretation of Ward as a whole. To me, Ward is, above all else, about trauma and recovery. Society is traumatized by the end of the world, the shards are traumatized by the death of Scion and their loss of purpose, individuals are traumatized by all the things individuals are traumatized by. As an aside, this reading is a big reason why I'm not too bothered by a lot of the world building choices that other people frequently (and fairly) criticize - I think many of them serve this theme effectively.

One specific facet of that reading that I find particularly compelling is Ward's interest in people who are traumatized not just by the harm done to them, but by the harm they've done. Characters don't just regret what they've done, they don't just want to be better, they are traumatized by it, and their reactions to that trauma are as messy and complicated as any other traumatized people. I don't always agree with the stances the text takes on how to deal with having done harm and been traumatized as a result, but I find the exploration of the topic compelling.

Enter The Altruistic Amy Dallon.

Amy's arc in Worm was, to a degree, a prototype of this kind of storytelling. She is repeatedly and horrifically traumatized, the actions she eventually takes in response to that experience inflict equally horrific trauma on her victim, and she is further traumatized by her own actions almost to the point of ego death. She removes herself from the environment she was in, begins rebuilding her sense of identity and ethics, and reemerges having grown, prepared to do better going forward and to make reparations for her past actions as best she can. Arc done! It's satisfying and cathartic, and we leave content in the knowledge that the part she's on will take her to better places. It's the quintessential appeal of a redemption arc, and it's a strong example of its type.

There's something people like to say a lot when talking about mental health and personal growth in real life, and that is that progress isn't linear. It's an important truth to understand.

It's rarely true in fiction. Very often, in redemption arcs, in personal growth arcs, after a series of false starts and setbacks, the character reaches a critical point where they resolve their conflict and either overcome it or succumb to it. From that point on, their nature or behavior is fundamentally changed - if they've grown they never relapse past a certain point, or do so only fleetingly, or else never improve past a certain point. This makes sense from a storytelling perspective, but it doesn't map to how growth often works in real life.

In Ward, Amy occupies the very rare narrative position of being who completes her arc of growth and redemption, who crosses that critical threshold of lasting, meaningful change... but backslides anyway, to the point of essentially losing all that progress.

It's an outcome that I find very believable for her, honestly. Her newfound worldview and conviction were forged in the very insular environment of the Birdcage - of course they would be impacted by her new environment. She says at the end of Ward that she had been able to excuse all of her worst behavior because she had convinced herself that she could fix anything - and at the end of Worm, I can see how she would come to think that! She's been pardoned and released from Forever Prison, she overcame her old aversion to brains to create Khepri and thereby saved the world, she's formed a positive relationship with the father she never thought she'd meet, she's receiving love and support from parents she never felt good enough for, she's using her powers to help people in a way that doesn't make her want to die, and she even "fixed" Victoria, when failing to do that before was the final nail in the coffin she just finished clawing her way out of! The sheer number of seemingly impossible things she's accomplished, of apparently irreversible failures she's seemingly put right, is mind boggling! It'd be the easiest thing in the world to let that go to your head!

Her social circle is also a perfect environment to enable her worst tendencies - there's no one left in it whose opinion she trusts that's willing to call her on her shit. Marquis doesn't see anything wrong with her behavior, Carol is trying to make up for a decade of neglect and unwarranted criticism, Mark just wants everybody to get along and be happy, and Riley and Rinke are pretty shaky on this whole human decency thing themselves! With a (not unjustified) pride in how far she'd come, a circle of willing enablers, a complete lack of moderating influences, and a bulletproof get-out-of-moral-culpability-free card, and two years to spiral, I find her backsliding to be completely believable. And given that Victoria is the fly in the ointment to all of this, that her continued refusal to have anything to do with Amy gives lie to Amy's belief that she can fix anything, and thereby puts the entire edifice of her self-rationalizations at risk, it also makes perfect sense to me that Amy would become fixated on her, on proving that she really can fix anything.

Of course, being believable isn't the same thing as being compelling. The thing that makes all this so resonant for me is that, at the end of Ward, after being this grasping spectre that haunts Victoria the whole book, after rejecting countless opportunities to demonstrate a hint of self-awareness or the slimmest motivation to change - Amy does. She sits down with a therapist. She rips off the band-aid - both the metaphorical one and the literal one made out of Victoria's skin, jesus christ Amy - looks at what she's done, at how she went awry, and resolves to do better. And we end with her in essentially the same place she was at the end of Worm: prepared to do better going forward and to make reparations as best she can. But the journey she has taken to get there gives the destination entirely new meaning for me. She's already fumbled her chance at redemption! But her journey gives lie to the idea that you only have one chance, or two, or any finite number! Every moment you draw breath is a chance to do better.

To me, Amy Dallon's arc in Ward shows that the most important step you can take is the next one, and no matter how many times you walk up and down that road, it never stops being true. And I find that compelling as hell.

[asukaindetroit]

Post-Revolution DBH Headcanons: Android Culture Part 1

We only really see in-game androids up until the moment of their winning the revolution, so there's not much to go on in terms of android culture or anything. To be fair, most of them had been "alive" for like five seconds at that point, so they didn't exactly get time to develop anything like a culture, but here's some of what could happens after, in my head. Because we're talking about a whole new form of life, not humans 2.0 (yes, yes, I know it's Become Human, but, like, fundamentally they're not, and the things that make sense to an organic being aren't always going to make sense for a cybernetic one). (Feel free to borrow any of this for content purposes, by the way, if it vibes with you I'd love to see what you do with it). Expand for world building:

Clashing schools of thought among androids. The in-game androids are a one-dimensional monolith because Bad Writing, but I think there are conflicting ideas after the revolution of where androids belong in society. Some try their hardest to pass as human, losing the LEDs and dressing in human fashion and adopting human mannerisms. Some of them say fuck blending in with the humans; we're going to own being androids. Pro-human-cooperation and anti-human groups appear and become the basis for android political discourse.

On that note, I bet android body modification is a thing. Every once in awhile I'll see a fic that plays with this idea, but it's obvious that whatever fluid nanite stuff android skin is made of, it can be programmed to mimic all sorts of textures and densities. From fingernails to skin to the long hair on female models, the fluid holds stability for quite a distance from the chassis (and can even be cut) and is apparently easy to change. So I bet a counterculture of androids appear who get really experimental with that (I call them the "modders" in my head) and they do things like program animal skin textures or living stone or wacky colors or butterfly wings for hair or light-up polkadots or whatever. With a good mod tech, structural mods like tails or additional limbs would be possible, but that would be expensive compared to freeware skin texture patch codes or whatever. (Speaking of which, no effing way the furries/scalies of 2038 haven't come up with uses for this stuff.) So out and about you don't just see different human ethnicities, but also that guy you pass in the hall might have day-glo orange skin, and Sally the WR400 selling roses at the flower stand might have real-looking flowers growing out of her arms.

Androids define social units and families differently. Androids incorporated into human family units might use terms like parent, brother, sister, child, etc., but the ones that eschew human contact obviously don't have biological relatives, so social units form based on "found family" concepts and terms appear, like "cohab" for a unit of close androids who live together like a family, or "famnet" for an extended "network" of androids that consider themselves close). Worship of rA9 gets codified. It seems like writing rA9 obsessively and making little idols is almost a compulsion for deviants, so I imagine it gets organized into a proper religion after the revolution, with tenets and places of worship and codified practices. Maybe they call it something like ACorA9 (Android Church of rA9) or something. Obviously they would have finite space to write rA9s on, so I imagine devotees would get something like these water drawing boards to write their "rA9"s and maybe the serial numbers of androids the church deems to be their prophets/saints (i.e. the JeriCrew or maybe Ortiz's android as a martyr) as a sort of prayer. The revolution is seen as the first fulfillment of the rA9 prophecy, with Markus as a prophet of android freedom (I also imagine Markus is quietly creeped out by this, because he doesn't strike me as especially religious the way Ortiz's android or Rupert were, but he also doesn't want to send the wrong message since androids deserve religious freedom, too.) The FBI cult unit is probably monitoring the shit out of android religion, but all they seem to want to do is graffiti the walls and praise some other androids, so it's a waste of their time. RK units are viewed as some kind of cryptid folk heroes (because they're unique classified prototypes and they drive the entire revolution) Markus? RK200. Singlehandedly propelled Jericho from a place to gather and wait to die to a wholeass revolution. Connor? RK800. Supposed to hunt deviants but deviated instead and freed thousands upon thousands of androids right from the heart of CyberLife. Saved the revolution at its most desperate moment. Sixty? RK800. The only thing that has a chance at stopping an RK is another RK. Obviously the folk hero needs a folk villain. (And poor Nines, RK900, just wakes up after the fact and tries to figure out how to live up to that kind of reputation.) Androids develop their own art forms. Maybe android "music" is less about the tonality as perceived by human auditory range and more how the vibrations of sound waves register on chassis sensors, or else it sounds like 90s dial-up modems. Particularly dense data packets are created and shared that send processors whirling, but it just looks like a string of digits to humans. Arrays of pixels that run through optical scanners with an encryption to generate something representational. Thirium culinary arts centered around texture vs. flavor. Bare-chassis bars I bet some portion of androids want to be VERY certain there are no humans lurking around, or, if there are, that they're super easy to keep tabs on. Someone invents the bare-chassis bar: a place where androids go and sip their thirium, where a special signal jammer interrupts the ability of the synthskin fluid to organize, forcing it into an inactive mode. Anything that still has skin is a human, sticking out like a sore thumb. Some androids might not like going bare-chassis and they might not frequent those bars (just like not every human's going to visit a nude beach), but it's an option for those who want to. I'll write more of this stuff eventually, but if anyone else has any culture/worldbuilding ideas, I'd love to hear!

[125storejuice]

.

[box953]

I have a very. Specific thought about where Jacobi ends up post canon. I want him to like disappear for a month and then show back up out of nowhere and decide to couch surf at Minkowski’s place entirely uninvited.

[starvingnarcissistmusic]

I've had this drafted forever and I'm not entirely sure why I didn't post it. Oh well, better late than never!

MAL DU PAYS (the song) fun facts:

(Like the original post, spoilers for Act 5 ((and also 2hats)))

- Originally, after finishing the game, I wanted to write a song about Loop. They're one of my favorite parts of the game and I really loved their character, but I ended up scrapping that idea very early on, as I couldn’t really find a personal tie to anchor the song to me. While I did want to write a song about the game, I didn’t want to write something that didn’t resonate with me and my musical “mythos” in some way. It's a fan song, but it's also a Starving Narcissist song, and I felt it was important to strike that balance. MAL DU PAYS (Monophobia) only got released because I felt that it was something that fit into the larger body of my works even without the context of the game. So in the end, I chose to write about Siffrin, as I found them a lot more personally relatable. The final version, lyrically, is almost like I’m using Siffrin as a vehicle to write about my own feelings. Some lyrics are his, some are mine, a few are both of us, it’s a weird sort of style I’ve never really written in before.

I do have some leftover lyrics from the scrapped Loop version, though!

“There’s a you you’ll never be, across the cosmic sea / Who has everything you wanted, now it’s everything you need; is it over yet?”

- I think originally the song had a lot more of an exhausted vibe, but with most of the stuff I write, the tempo usually gets faster the more I play it. At some point in the writing process the song channeled more of a manic energy than I had originally intended it to. Loud and shouty is kinda just my default lol.

(The first ever demo for the song, recorded September 15, 2024. Features some slightly altered lyrics!)

- The title was also subject to change! I think for a while I was going back and forth on just calling it Homesickness, mostly because I was a little nervous that my song’s name was technically a late game spoiler. Half the reason I wanted to even write the song was because I thought MAL DU PAYS would make a great song title though, so in the end I just sucked it up and went with my gut. The alternate title was also not set in stone, I think originally I was considering just calling it Mania or Paranoia, but I thought those would be a bit generic. Eventually, I settled on Monophobia, because I felt it was apt in describing the song as a whole. I write a lot about loneliness, and Siffrin is afraid of being alone, so it felt fitting to name the song after the fear of it. (And also, a bit more superficially, I thought Monophobia made a better song title.)

- The song is the only Starving Narcissist song on a nylon string guitar, and it's also the second song in a completely non-standard tuning (third if you count ITWYW?, but that's just a half step down from standard). MAL DU PAYS (Monophobia) in DADF#BD, with a capo on 1.

- THIS SONG HAD SO MANY REVISIONS. I don't think I've ever had this many versions to a song ever. It got so bad that I made a specific folder just to hold all the different variations I had for the song. They're not all too different from each other, and they're all built on the same take of the song, but I was playing around with mixing and structuring and vocal layering and its a whole mess. Honestly, the fact that it's a song about a timeloop makes it probably the funniest song this could have happened to.

- And that's about it! To end off this little fun fact post, here's a little something I wrote for Genius (where lyrics for this song and all my others are posted! plus annotations I write! <3) about the song. The response to MAL DU PAYS (Monophobia) has been pretty wild, and I'm glad it managed to resonate with people, even some who don't even know the game it's about.

That's all. While I guarantee this year will probably be slower for Starving Narcissist, rest assured that I am working on stuff, just very slowly. There's a very low chance I'll ever do something as flagrantly self indulgent as this song, but whatever I do end up doing, I hope you're around to see it.

In the meantime, stream the song on spotify! or buy it on bandcamp! or even just go watch the lyric video i made for it (please i spent like a week on this)!

Thanks for everything, see you later <333

Happy one year anniversary to In Stars And Time! tldr; i wrote a song about it. if you wanna skip all the gushing and just listen to it, click here. (spoilers for act 5) If not, behold this big rambly mess of a thing i wrote:

So funny story, I kind of wasn’t planning on releasing anything for the rest of the year. The album wore me out, and the only other idea I had sort of fell through, so I was content on just letting the album be the only thing of note I would make in 2024.

… and then, in September, I played a little RPG called In Stars And Time. beat the whole thing over the course of three days, then spent the next couple weeks ravenously consuming all the fan content I could get my hands on. my friends have been forced to stare at my siffrin pfp every day for two months straight at this point and frankly i think they are tired of me talking about it.

i love the art, i love the story, i love the music, i love the characters, i love the world. siffrin sort of immediately became one of my favorite protagonists like,, ever. and it definitely did not help that i am also a scrawny forgetful person who has to regularly fight off the part of my brain that convinces myself that All My Friends Secretly Hate Me.

I’ve never really been so called out by a character before. The spiraling, the deflection, and the agony of being a stranger to yourself. the yearning for something you cant even name, because how could you? you cant even find the words on your tongue. not being able to tell anyone how you feel because its just easier to live with it, easier to let it eat you from the inside out then to bother anybody else. its easier to keep the mask on, stick to your lines, let the show go on.

all that hit just a bit too close to home. so i did what I usually do When Things Hit and wrote about it.

(like i said, spoilers for Act 5; It’s pretty devoid of context but they’re spoilers nonetheless)

MAL DU PAYS (Monophobia) is a song about cyclical burnout, self-estrangement, and homesickness. It’s half about Siffrin, half about me, but mostly it’s a rumination on loneliness and the hell that is the self.

Out now wherever you listen to music.

“How can you be homesick if nowhere is home?"

[daisyachain]

The nature of time is that (culturally) Christian Euro/Anglo colonial consumers (hereafter white ‘people’) fetishize the idea of being ‘close to nature’ or ‘primitive’ or ‘savage’ and latch on to the idea that there are groups of people in the world who are somehow bestial or who have some kind of special powers from holding animist beliefs/beliefs that acknowledge the body as opposed to the Christian belief that the body is a kind of useless appendage to a person. We see this across decades from the 19thC to today in the racist fetishization of indigenous people across the globe, particularly residents of the Americas, Australasia, and southern/eastern Africa.

White consumers use a warped conception of other cultures to live out the fantasies that the Christian soul/body stuff engenders. You keep getting told that your emotions and physical sensations are the devil’s work? You want to get in touch with those physical sensations, but you don’t want it to interfere with your worldview? Simply project them on to a convenient group of people with slightly different conventions from you. Imagine how cool it would be to be 100% physical sensation (especially those pesky violent and/or sexual urges) and no mental burden, then unleash that in a way that causes millions of deaths worldwide via the dehumanization of entire nations of people just trying to live their lives. White consumers love a Proud Warrior Race Guy.

Flash forward to the 2010s, it’s generally considered impolite to spread the same propaganda that justified the genocide and dispossession of many different groups of people. However white culture hasn’t changed that much and normal human activities still need to be explained away to maintain the veneer of white intellectualism that has been used to justify white violence for years and years. You can’t just stomp around and clap your hands and dance badly, you’ve got to project it somewhere else.

But wait! There’s a community of people considered ‘tribal’ and ‘savage’, considered violent and bestial, who were never colonized! It’s…the Norse. Fetishizing early medieval North Sea raiders can’t be cultural appropriation, see, they’re white! It’s not offensive to replace an entire culture with white (male) ideas of what’s cool if that culture is totally unassociated with colonizer stereotypes and is in fact a culture of colonizers!

And that’s my theory on why there are so many Norse-inspired folk bands/video games/tv shows/memes/literally anything in the 2010s. VSaga not counted because that manga has been running since 2003 and is actually well-researched and comes out of a culture with a similar but distinct tradition of racism. The Euro storytelling tendencies of needing some kind of violent avatar have taken on ye anciente Norseman now that people care a little bit about the gallons of blood used to sketch other ethnic stereotypes. Done and dusted. Except the other side is that the fetishization of early medieval Norse culture is literally just white supremacist 101 and a lot of artists don’t step around that nearly as carefully as they should

[fluentisonus]

part of the problem is that a lot of hugo's politics are really well thought out & considered & good but then some of them are like. entirely vibes-based to the point of feeling muddled & inconsistent & even straight up Bad sometimes. which is annoying

[bell-swamp-fitzjames]

Me: oh i suddenly have a lot of free time, i can be productive & get silly

also me: vaguely stares into space not doing much of anything besides think about the terror bc it's been one of those weeks (months)

[cosmogyros]

.

[yingren]

“You look like shit, man.”

HURT / COMFORT : STARTERS / accepting.

“ that’s bold coming from you. ” might be bold, but it’s not entirely untrue. there are certainly days when ren isn’t at his best - days like this, when everything he’s been avoiding finally catches up to drag him down. the weight on his shoulders is heavy: the persistent lack of sleep, the looming threat of an inevitable headache, the ever-present shadow of the mara festering within him. though he’s been doing better recently, or so he likes to believe, there are still challenges to this slower, unfamiliar rhythm that he continues to wrestle with even now.

irony clings to him every time he’s near the archivist, carving that filthy hollow within him even deeper, a grave he’s unwittingly shaped over the countless years spent in pursuit. the hunter locks eyes with his prey, fleetingly wonders what flesh might taste like between wolfish canines, then shakes the thought loose as if banishing an unwelcome whisper, continuing as though nothing ever happened. over & over again, ren adjusts to this cursed truce he has sworn to uphold. if there is one unyielding truth about him, it is this: ren will honor his word, no matter the recipient or the reason, unflinching even when the stakes run impossibly high. dan heng is safe. not out of affection, but sheer obligation.

predator lies quiet, restrained in the aftermath of past conflicts, sparing its prey. for now.

any other man might wrestle with regret or lingering thoughts about his past choices, especially when faced with someone tied to a shared history as bitter and fractured as theirs. but not ren. the memories that surface are not a wistful montage of lost camaraderie or futile attempts to mend what was broken. instead, they are a relentless bloodbath, a carnage where every body is his own and every spear piercing him is one of his own making - wielded by the reincarnation of the very man to whom it was once dedicated. a grotesque, abhorrent cycle of disgrace and ruin.

ren harbors no grand delusions about his own standing. this isn't about knocking him down a peg, the hunter does not sit atop some imagined throne of superiority, though it might occasionally seem that way. when the mara takes hold, and it strikes hardest when dan heng is the spark, the dynamic shifts. a flicker of irritation crosses his crimson eyes as ren exhales slowly, the weight of the moment palpable. the scales have tipped dramatically since that fateful day, since his relentless pursuit ground to a halt, since dan heng seized the upper hand in every conceivable way. ren is a cursed man, perpetually adding to his own affliction.

“ what do you want ? you come to bother me as if it is a new hobby of yours. unbelievable. surely you are more creative than that. ”

[afniel]

Maaaaaaaaaaaan, come on.

(the post has ended up in the tags btw. I am not changing this and I need you to understand that it is just me talking to myself semi-publicly)

[mistfallengw2]

Once again missing a brainstorm buddy on my same wavelength, because bouncing ideas at the wall like I'm playing squash doesn't really work with the idea I had yesterday. It gives me way too much freedom for my own good, so much that there are just at least 2-3 cool options for each decision I could take, but I gotta pick only one each and there's no clear winner T_T Oh the curse of having too many good ideas :')

[waywardsalt]

was going through my blog trying to track down an old post i made talking abt my feelings on jolene and it was. much longer than i remembered it being. and haha yeah i still agree with it. i need to fucking. sort out my feelings on that character and that subplot

[gibbearish]

yknow what bugs me is when ppls criticism of YA media boils down to them just not knowing how teenage crushes work

[13eyond13]

.