#i’ve been ruminating

[porters-fangs]

thinking about treasure hours

thinking about treasure collapsing on the kitchen floor after porter left, clutching their knees and gasping for breath, chest heaving with dry sobs

thinking about treasure convinced that they’d just thrown away the one good thing they’d ever been able to call their own because they care too much, they care too deeply

thinking about treasure picking at their nails until their fingers are bleeding, watching with a numb detachment, feeling porter’s teeth in their neck, porter’s blood on their tongue after they bit down too hard on his lip

thinking about treasure being silent for days, too scared to open their mouth because they’re cursed to ruin things with every word that spills out, even when they just want to help

thinking about treasure wondering whether he’ll ever come back or if he’ll just disappear like everyone else did when they got sick of their anxieties, their insecurities, their need to fix everything around them in hopes it might heal them too

thinking about treasure rehearsing what they might say if he came knocking again, a thousand different apologies running rampant in their mind and not enough strength to utter a single word

thinking about treasure, certain that they’re the reason he’ll never trust again, never open up to anyone the way that he almost did with them

thinking about treasure wishing him the best, sure that they’ll never see him again but praying he’ll find the happiness he deserves, even if it won’t be with them

thinking about treasure

[shorthaltsjester]

have been thinking about the recent interview about the mighty nein animated series where it was mentioned that the series as a whole would be more of a departure and that vox machina s3 is a similar change versus the more canon retelling they started with in s1 and i’ve seen some negative reactions to it but honestly i’m Psyched to hear that is a change they’ve committed to in their writing and storytelling for the animated series because like. we have the campaigns. and for me the moments in the animation that have fallen the most flat or haven’t felt as fulfilling is when the show has tried to capture the Same Thing as the campaign without having the hundreds of hours of context that supported the moment in the campaign that made it Significant. and it is much much more exciting for me to have a changed story that is changed because it is now. a episodic television show and not a recording of actors playing dnd. like . yes actually Please change the storylines to be storylines and not the whims of game players. yes actually please make a good story in the medium it’s being told in.

[dutchs-paisley-vest]

Been thinking about Hosea a lot as I write this analysis on Dutch and Micah.

Maybe I’ll eventually whip something up about him, but for now I’m left with thoughts about knowing that not only is Hosea just as guilty as Dutch when it comes to how their boys were brought up (and continued to be treated through adulthood and ultimately up to their deaths), but also the way the two irreparably damaged John and Arthur’s entire lives beyond even their own comprehension. FURTHERMORE, they set forth a viscous cycle of familial violence and neglect that maintained momentum into the next generation. (See: John and Jack.)

The way Hosea’s action, but more importantly his inaction had in part led to… well, [gestures vaguely to RDR1 + RDR2].

Hosea might have been gentler than Dutch on the surface, but he saw it all, and at times both implicitly and explicitly encouraged it through the meticulous timing of his decisions to remain a “silent watcher.”

Yes, refusal to mitigate the violence makes him complicit, but the matter of the fact is… Hosea can’t even feign partial innocence as a third-party bystander because of how calculated he is in nature.

Additionally, there is no “third party.” Dutch and Hosea are a single unit. They occupy the same space even as two separate individuals in John and Arthur’s lives.

The deliberate nature of Hosea’s inaction puts him in the same position as the “perpetrator” because he isn’t just a watcher, he corroborates directly with Dutch and agrees with what he is doing on principle. He reenforces it in perhaps more subtle ways, but that doesn’t make him any less responsible for the outcome.

The only difference between the two is that while they’re dealing different cards, they are playing the exact same game.

[charmac]

I think getting railed by Mac would give Dennis a new perspective that doesn’t change who he is and is consistent with his characterisation... Just a thought tho.

[cable-salamdr]

Okay my thoughts on the whole Lloyd and tomorrow’s tea thing is that I do also think it is not as relevant anymore now that it’s been so long (just as with people STILL trying to debate over Lloyd’s “physical vs mental age” (he’s just. an adult. period.))

However, I do believe that it can still be something that can be explored well in the context of Lloyd having had a destiny put upon him so young, and while he did have times of “down time” there was still so much serious training involved from the moment he was announced as the gn, that it can almost be called a removal of his childhood. Not intentional by any party involved!! but still. The tomorrow’s tea incident is basically just a Smack In Your Face “metaphor that isnt a metaphor” of exactly that

I’m sure Lloyd isn’t as pressed about this. but that could just be because for basically all the time he was a kid, he wanted to be exactly not that. So basically he ended up getting what he wanted. Still. I can imagine him harboring a few complicated feelings about it, especially when it comes to other people’s childhoods compared to his own. He DOES kinda have more important things to worry about right now, though…

[gracemarkss]

i really do think we lose out on a lot by cutting ethan from the pilot. so much of what we learn about scully in subsequent episodes and seasons - her relationships with her father, with jack, with daniel; her experiences in never again and how she describes her relationship to authority; the themes of normalcy and expectation, desire and fear, what you should want vs what you actually want, letting yourself want; about having a life and drawing lines and getting out of the car…once you learn about jack, ethan makes so much sense.

how much time passed between her time at the academy and dating jack and her assignment to the x files? months, a year at most maybe? with the revelations in lazarus, you start to wonder, what made her go from a superior decades older than her who’s intensity is his downfall to a regular run of the mill guy in her peer group? when she talks about other fathers in never again, taken with everything she’s said about wanting “a life”, it becomes a bit more clear - this was a course correction. it’s all the more clearly drawn in all things, another taboo relationship with a man she could never bring home. is it “normal” to date your teacher, have emotional affairs with married professors twice your age? is that what good catholic girls do? can you bring these men to sunday dinner with your parents’ pastor? so ethan is a conscious choice. an experiment in normalcy. an attempt at the clean cut boyfriend that you can bring home to dad, with an eye on the house in the suburbs, the picket fence, the 2.5 kids. she doesn’t not want it. she wants to want it. it’s what girls from her background are expected to do. missy certainly isn’t going to. so it’s up to her. and she’s already rebelled so much already, with her career choices. she can do this. she can want this. she can be a good daughter. she can make this work.

but then there’s the assignment. then there’s mulder. then there’s passion and intensity adventure and a fierce dedication to the truth, to helping people, to a dogged pursuit of justice (whatever form that might take). there’s the adrenaline rush over lost time beside empty graves in the rain. there’s this strange man you just met being so careful with your vulnerability, and handing his to you in kind. how can a weekend out of town with ethan compare to this? what’s the house and the fence and the sunday dinners compared to this?

so ethan is is out. the experiment in normalcy has failed. but the fear lingers. there are still expectations to meet. there are still parts of her that wants it. she could get it if she really tried. it’s something that she comes back to over and over again, fear vs desire, the contradictions in all the things she wants and needs, the heavy weight of expectation, both from others and her own. and i think it’s all communicated that much more clearly and powerfully when ethan’s presence is maintained in the pilot.

[fruitlicense]

before Arcane S2 I always wondered why Vi and Powder went with Vander so easily after their parents died and why Powder ran to Silco for comfort after the warehouse fire.

Vander and Silco knew Felicia and Connol. hell, Vander named Vi! in all likelihood, Vander and Silco were like uncles to Vi and Powder in their early childhood, because they were close friends with their parents and worked the same profession. it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the four adults staggered their shifts in the mines to make sure someone was there to watch the girls at any given time. also, I don’t think Vander and Silco had their falling-out until soon before or during the rebellion that killed Felicia and Connol. in fact, I would hazard a guess that the reason Vander is wandering around post-battle pummeling the remaining Enforcers and looking for the dead is because he missed a good chunk of the fight while he was down in the river trying to strangle Silco.

the key piece of information here is that Vander and Silco were still friends and probably still in Vi and Powder’s lives right up until it all went wrong. when Vander took Vi and Powder in, he wasn’t adopting two kids he’d found randomly out of some sense of guilt or pity - those were his best friends’ kids. they approached him as a safe person even after seeing him beat some random guy because they knew him. when Powder saw Silco after Vander’s death and launched herself at him for a hug, she didn’t do that because he was the closest nearby person. she remembered him, even after however many years spent with Vander instead of her parents. his hesitation before he hugged her back was likely due to the time that had passed and his tension with Vander, not a lack of recognition.

TLDR: Vi and Powder don’t approach Vander and Silco as father figures because they’re the closest people at the times they need support, but because Vander and Silco were their parents’ best friends and they knew them already from childhood.

[osteoglosssidae]

The story of the awakening of Aulë’s children, dwarves, is definitely a favorite from the Silmarillion.

[takeariskao3]

if someone figures out how to handle mild rejection can they let me in on that secret?

[beneath-the-willow-tree]

I think a lot of people dont realize book armand was enslaved because they arent aware white western europeans did enslave and forcefully stripped white eastern europeans out of their culture in the past a lot. I specifically see marius' behaviour and prejudice towards amadeos eastern background not talked about much. Still, this doesnt justify not realizing amadeo was legally bought and owned as a sex life. And this still happens today. People are trafficked. Imo his enslavement will be put front and center in the show. With Armand being south asian there is no way marius&armand will be treated as a father&son dynamic. Armand can see him as a father but first and foremost its going to be presented and seen as a slave owner& his slave

I agree that this is probably part of it.

I think when many people hear the word “slave” they think of something more akin to the transatlantic slave trade, not Roman pederasty, which is the model for Marius and Amadeo’s relationship and sort of what I was alluding to in my original post. Marius doesn’t treat Amadeo the way we might think of slaveowners treating their slaves in a more modern context — aside from whipping him as a punishment — but Amadeo’s status as a slave and a foreigner (specifically from a region Marius deems “savage” in comparison to Italy) is what emboldens Marius to sexually exploit and groom him, because Marius comes from a society in which an adult man could legally have sexual relations with a younger boy only if the boy was a prostitute or slave — and often a non-Roman, but not necessarily non-European, one. (Disclaimer: I am not an expert on pederasty in Ancient Rome, so if anyone more knowledgeable would like to correct or add to anything I’ve said here, please do.) Considering Marius derives most of his personal philosophy from Ancient Roman ideals in a somewhat legalistic manner, I simply do not think he would have sex with Amadeo were Amadeo not a slave — though I am open to other takes on that.

In my — potentially unpopular — opinion, the abusive/incestuous parent/child dynamic is not the most useful analytical framework to apply to Marius and Amadeo’s relationship, because while Marius views Amadeo as a son, and Amadeo views Marius as a father figure, these roles ultimately are pretense (Amadeo is still a slave from a legal standpoint, and even centuries later, as Armand, he continues to refer to Marius as his master) and treating them as legitimate obfuscates the nature of the structures that enable abuse in their relationship. This is not to say that the nuclear family as a social model does not enable abuse, of course — just that it’s not the only social model that enables abuse, and trying to map familial roles onto other types of abusive relationships can be misrepresentative. The maker/fledgling bond does lend itself to a familial reading more than Marius and Amadeo’s vampire/human relationship does, but it gets a bit more complicated than human familial relationships, so that’s a topic for another day, perhaps.

I completely agree re: the show emphasizing Armand’s enslavement — especially if they end up adapting any of TVA, since no one in Renaissance Venice is going to look at a South Asian boy and assume he’s a rich Italian man’s son. I also think it’s going to make Marius’s racism a lot more obvious and uncomfortable, which is great, because it is uncomfortable! Even if you ship them, it’s hard to overlook that Marius denigrates Armand’s cultural upbringing. But like you said, many people don’t talk about it much in the context of the books because they’re not as aware of bigotry against Eastern Europeans as they might be of other forms of bigotry. And while Armand’s backstory doesn’t directly mirror the way sex slavery operates today, you are totally correct that it still happens — and it is often still Eastern Europeans who are trafficked in Western Europe.

[mareusu-remaking]

watching minority magas gleefully celebrate the deportation of innocents to inevitable death camps under the thinly veiled guise of “they were bad anyways.” you know that you’re next right? all the hispanics that are deported are definitely part of ms-13, all the middle eastern activists deported are definitely part of hamas, right? so what happens when it’s your turn? when YOURE ms-13 or hamas affiliated? and what happens when asian people are deported because they’re spies for north korea or china? what happens when black people are deported because of their gang affiliations? when gay and trans people are deported for grooming kids? when disabled people are deported for being a danger to others? you point your fingers and laugh until your hands are forced behind your back, your head is shaved, and you’re forced on that exact same plane as the rest of them. i hope you get to see the rest of your conservative friends cheer as they cart you away because of course you were the enemy all along, all the people who are sent away are! right?

[heyclickadee]

Deleted that post where I sort of went off reiterating how much a want to see an Omega and Tech hug in canon. I haven’t changed my mind and there are multiple reasons why I was so ticked, but I could have been a lot nicer about making my point and I need to be better about just not letting things strangers say on the internet bother me.

[roseofcards90]

I think I’ve been having ocd flare ups lately 😭 it’s so bad

[ali3nboyfriend]

on the one hand it is fully expected that even when i’m laid out not able to do much the world keeps moving on around me and i cannot reasonably ask it to stop for my sake. on the other hand god damn do i wish i didn’t have to spend so much of my time recovering from fatigue so i could just move in step w everyone around me and stop feeling like i’m being left behind.

[mars-ipan]

don’t trust your brain after 7pm (winter mode) don’t trust your brain after 7pm (winter mode) don’t trust your brain after 7pm (winter mode)

[liebgirl]

ok going home <3 yay <3