#idk my thoughts on this are all disjointed and i'm probably not really asking but just shouting into the void

[wernerherzogs]

the thing is. i can't even fully make fun of bucktommies for their tommy takes given what continues to be done to my man eddie diaz. like at least tommy's a canvas blank enough that even batshit insane headcanons with zero basis in show's canon are like. eyeroll worthy to me at most. because that man does not matter longterm at all. but with eddie it's like some of you can't envision gayness if it doesn't fit a Recognizable Media Stereotype. so he's been repressed his whole life and hasn't lived a single genuine experience ever yet and everything he does is a performance and he doesn't know how to be A Man because he's secretly an elder sister. despite nothing in canon even remotely indicating that as he's been perfectly normal about being a man who's a single parent all this time. he literally only worries about the emotional side of him not meeting the societal/parental standards of Being A Man Who's A Single Father. his ptsd is a not mental or canon enough a canon mental illness you guys are now forcing an entire dsm-5 on him. he secretly longs to be a weho fag who wears cashmere sweaters and has a purse dog or a cat and he's only overcompensating with his truck because god forbid his fashion sense or current hobbies were genuine. meeting kim was a psychotic break instead of a network procedural character dealing with seeing a dead copy of his late wife in a genuinely the most normal way possible under the circumstances. like why are you twisting this guy into shapes he's not because otherwise you just can't buy him being queer/gay like... do you only know bi sluts and formerly repressed broadway gays in real life with no in between? is that it. because buck is another fascinating part of this. his characterization seems fairly consistent no matter where on the top-bottom spectrum people put him. is it because bisexuality has a smaller amount of stereotypes associated with it so you don't feel the need of implying he's been performing everything his entire life like what's going on. and being a Bi Slut has actually canon room to exist here, so it's naturally never been an issue. but he can be a late bloomer bi and yet no one accuses him of only overcompensating with his truck or being a passenger princess despite tommy driving him around and he can be your dom top while still regularly displaying an affinity for things stereotypically viewed as female-coded (as cooking/baking, even for his girlfriend taylor, or cooing after newborn babies like a fic-worthy omega in heat). those specific things either get ignored or dialed up to eleven in fic but he's still ol' good fun buck who aches and wants to be loved and has his abandonment issues and sex issues and so on and so forth but remains fairly recognizable and mostly true to canon every time in the eyes of bajillion different writers. why is he immune while eddie isn't why are you respectful of canon when it comes to buck but eddie's suddenly in a hbo show and not a network procedural when transported into the fic realm can someone explain this.

[rogerbarel]

I'm extremely emotional all the time about how Roger and Alfons are such easy, excellent foils for each other that only become more thematically intertwined the more you learn about them.

long post, unedited so it's probably disjointed and my observations may be totally banal OR pretentious and reaching idk, spoilers for both their routes (and a brief mention of late into Liam’s and Elbert’s) and possibly some events

They're a pair of insufferable, teasing, hedonistic, hard-drinking men with... questionable consent practices. That's how I'm gonna word that for the sake of not getting derailed. Anyway. They both couch their care for others in self-serving language (although that's not exclusive to them--Jude and Harry do it, too) and overall present themselves as selfish people. They're opposed in taste--beer vs whiskey, dogs vs cat, "refined" vs "rough" (although neither term encompasses them so well). They piss each other off but can't seem to totally detach from each other.

The contrast is immediate but gets emphasized even further in how they value their lives and whether or not they believe they can change their fates.

Alfons is resigned to tragedy and values nothing (or at least tries not to). He is ephemeral and meaningless, only temporarily holding whatever value others see in him, which really says more about them than him. It doesn't feel quite right to say that Alfons's life should neither add nor detract anything from this world--more, it's like any impact that Alfons makes needs to be easily attributable to someone else. Or maybe not? He's so quick to tell the robin to place responsibility for all their encounters on him... And a person you'll eventually forget makes a perfect scapegoat because the grudge and the pain can die with him.

Perhaps as a mirror, he aims to show you the happiest parts of yourself while letting your woes vanish in the mirror with him. And things get wonky when he finds himself with desires, wanting to reach out and mark you rather than finding amusement in just reflecting you.

(I'd like to see him paired in an event with Will and Ellis. Someone who pushes you to be the fullest "you" and someone who places your happiness above all else [or at least attempts to], who all fight with how their own desires conflict with what they otherwise want for you, and how that causes them Emotional Problems. But I'm not a Will or Ellis expert so don't ask me to elaborate on that. Hell, I'm not even an Alfons expert. I'm not an expert on anything! I make Harrison Greyglogabgalab memes and draw Roger’s giant tits!!)

Then there's Roger on his quest to best fate. He can't stop, he can't die. He has to value his life because he's the one doing all this important work! His life is what keeps it going! Nothing is hopeless--it's bleak, but never hopeless--unless he gives up. He is not going out of his way to please, he is here to get what he wants. It might align with what you want, and maybe making you happy is what'll make him happy in this moment, but he can't lose sight of his own priorities. He pisses Al off so much partly because he’s so stubbornly dedicated to finding a way to preserve Al’s personhood/history when Al has long decided to live his days as if he will ultimately be unpersoned. It doesn’t matter what Alfons says, Roger has decided that this is happening anyway. (Although tbf, if he did find a way to eliminate curses, he probably wouldn’t force Al to take it. So he’s not entirely disrespecting his agency. Neither man is 100% consistent in being other-oriented or self-oriented, which I like, because humans are the same way. And I like my characters especially selfish and messy.)

Where Alfons has to learn to figure out a life that centers him-as-person and not him-as-mirror, Roger has to decide where love/another person fits into a life and self that he thought he had very definitively shaped around himself and his pursuits. (That being said, I don't think he was particularly averse to the idea of it changing since he egged the robin on so much in her quest to prove to him that love is real. He also admits in one of his epilogues that he suppressed a desire for companionship. Iirc, it was because he felt he needed to be strong on his own, but it's been a while, so I could totally be wrong on that one.)

I think it's very cool that the hedonist's life is built around everybody else (I would not call this agape or selfless love, or even pathological people pleasing... just an absence of an idea of what to do with himself) while the doctor is always thinking about his own priorities. A little irony!

I also want to chew a little bit eventually on how they both come onto the robin at the end of other routes and how other characters receive that. Elbert specifies lategame (can’t remember which of his endings) that he doesn’t think Alfons would steal the robin away from him because Alfons is typically someone who gives others what they want, not takes what he wants. Whereas he wants her to stay several steps away from Roger at all times. He knows that Roger won’t fuck with his bodily autonomy like past doctors, but he does NAWT trust him with his girl. Idk if I’d say Roger has the least regard for other members of Crown’s wants vs his own, but he at least presents himself as Mr. Steal Yo Girl in at least Liam and Alfons’s endings (I think both blind love epilogues). I’m still deciding how sincere he was either of those times or if he had some ulterior motive. It’s not that I don’t think he could be a total dick, I’m just not totally convinced he’d fuck over Liam or Alfons that brazenly when he seems to care about them in his own “I will never say it” way. And he must have known that Liam was in earshot, that he’d hear Roger hitting on the robin and her rejecting him without hesitation/reaffirming her love for Liam… Still sitting on the stuff with Alfons because it’s possible he thinks that Alfons is too flawed to be her lover, but… idk, he’s been searching for a way to break the boy’s curse for twenty goddamn years, it feels forced for him to talk about Al so callously. Idk! I could be delusional! But it’s fishy to meeee!1

But yeah. Especially with their shared history, it's hard not to view them as a pair. They’re also a lot of fun together; they had me rooooolling in Harry’s aphrodisiac event. Try to distance yourselves from each other all you want, you are on the same! Bullshit!

I've also noticed that a couple people, myself included, seem to have really strong opposing reactions to the two of them (although Alfons has really grown on me), and I'm always curious what the reason for it is because imo they're two sides of the same coin, two peas in a sleazy pod.

Idk what to make of this, I just wanted to ramble about how the parallels between the two run deeper than surface level and how exciting I find that. I love them. Thanks for reading. Please feel free to add to any of this or refute anything I’ve said, I’m really just thinking out loud. Gotta use the ol’ brain every once in a while to make sure it still runs.

[twocubes]

Hey I asked you this a while a while ago on anon but hey we're mutuals I can ask you on non anon I think. So uh. So I've been working on this longterm-ish project of, uh, trying to understand what mathematical induction Really Is. And in the course of this I've started reading about the theory of sketches, because I think I need sketches to answer this question. And you know about sketches I think, I think you've used sketches for your project...

What is your project again?

But anyway, so. I'm on hiatus from my project cause I got brain damage. Uh.

Oh right the other thing that seems important for my deal is institutions, have you heard of institutional model theory?

So I guess my question is:

what is your project again? with topos theory(?)?

did you use sketches?

did you use any institutional model theory?

Uh. Well. Tha'ts my questions sorry this ask is disjointed as fuck.

sorry, i kept going to answer this ask and then getting distracted with like, looking into various math things i like (currently: codensity monads, synthetic differential geometry (well i was trying to read about C^∞ algebras), and how-do-you-define-(lax/pseudo)-transfors-between-weak-n-categories-anyways)

so, i haven't worked on my project in a while because ive been just having life problems full time instead. but i'm doing a little better now, so i've been doing math again, so i might get back on it.

my project is: i want to generalize the notion of topos so you can write classifying "toposes" for theories written in more general types of logics. stuff like linear logic or maybe stuff with like richer 2-structure. idk. there's a theorem in the depths of the Elephant (the big book on topos theory) that i thought might lead the way, but in order to do that i have to read and understand a majority of that book. this is kind of a way to force myself to like. Learn A Big Important Thing Fully. because of course this idea might just not work out. its research.

I ran into sketches when i was teaching myself category theory out of the Handbook of Categorical Algebra; they're presented there as like, a broad approach to model theory from a categorial perspective? You learn about them in the context of the equivalence between categories of models of sketches and accessible categories. Sketches are sort of tangential to topos-algebra stuff, although i think they're like. So, given a fairly general type of algebraic theory, there is a classifying topos for that theory; conversely every grothendieck topos is a classifying topos for some theory. probably a sketch is a good way to express that. idk it's in volume D of the elephant and i was going through it sequentially.

ive never heard of institutional model theory at all?

[seafearing]

ahh watched small things like these, spoilers, long rambles and such under

i really loved it; a small indie, understated and with a lot of tension to it. pretty much what i expected from an irish indie after having read the book as well. loved the childhood flashbacks, the child actor looked so alike older bill. it was really excellent casting, especially on a film like this with the allusions to how alike he looks to ned both as a child and older. i'll probably have to rewatch some point to take in all the details since i was watching pretty tired with my eye hurting lmao, but i still enjoyed it a lot. i loved the family dynamics and how they were shown with so little along with bill and eileen's relationship. it felt very lifelike, like a coat worn a thousand times. looved eileen walsh in this.

and the end where bill took back to the coal shed with the bag of fancy new shoes in his hand, implied that it's paid by the Mother since she paid for their christmas as manipulation to shut him up, it's the details like that that i really enjoyed, that bag in his hand is understated but says a lot

what i wasn't the hugest fan of was emily watson tbh, i didn't think her accent work the best, though she brought in a great presence. i read a review which implied that it's a bit of a cop out to have the part of the villain be played by a british actor and the inherent distancing to what irish people did in irish society in that. i can't say from the pov of the irish obviously, but her voice stuck out to me as less natural in the sea of irish voices in the film and took me out a bit. surprised she was longlisted for a bafta for this role

i loved cillian's acting in this but also i had the sense from reading the book that bill is more subterfuged, his thoughts not as visible on his face, but more underwater, under several layers of suppression. and i know cillian can do that, so ig it's a difference in interpretation. i am a book fan first after all. the stuttered, slow speech was at times a bit slower than felt natural in some way, idk, or maybe i'm just responding to how unnerved the film made me. since it did pack a punch as well though and it did make me tear up and remind me of the kind of quiet men from my childhood. i'll have to rewatch and see if i think differently

some things could have been more understated for me as well, like the mirroring of bill's mother sarah and the sarah in the coal shed. we already found out early on that bill's mother was called sarah and the scene where we find out the name of the girl in the coal shed was impactful for drawing the comparison, so i thought having the shot of the name on the grave wasn't needed. just stuff like that i'd prefer to be left more subtle because they pack more of a punch like that or give the viewer something more to discover on a second viewing

but i also appreciate that not everyone will notice details like that, and im not saying that im the absolute sharpest tool in the shed, but just judging by some reviews, some people didn't understand what i thought very straightforward and clear narratives in the film

like one reviewer said they didn't understand why the film just dropped the storyline with bill's oldest daughter and what happened to her and called the film disjointed for that. the scenes with bill's oldest daughter belied his fears from his pov; we don't know if something might have happened to her or would happen to her, and we're not supposed to know as the tension of him fearing for his daughters is a part of the film

i loved that the movie so clearly didn't portray him as a hero. he was processing being born out of wedlock and the death of his mother along with the absence of his father, a disjointed childhood that makes him dissociate through the film, and not saying that the compassion he felt for sarah redmond wasn't true, and yes, she's the only one who directly asks for him to help her, but the film clearly presents another layer as to why she is the only one in the convent that he hones in on. she mirrors his mother, they even have the same name. he thinks, if his mother wasn't helped, where would i be. (and what a thought that is looking through the lense of 2025 and the discoveries of the hundreds of buried babies and children in Tuam's convent's septic tanks etc) like there's altruism and compassion, following a sense of what's right and personal morality, but also a kind of self-centeredness to that, and i thought it mirrors how men are being told to relate to women: what if it was your mother, your daughter, your wife, because "what if this woman was a human being" isn't accessible enough. and that's really what i enjoy about the movie as well, because i took it as commentary on that, mirrored from 1980s to this day. and kind of sad how this is so important even today to see a man not be able to take a woman being abused in society, even if it's then through the literal lense of: what if this was your mother and in your breakdown this is your mother

i thought it ended perfectly as well in that silence as bill brings sarah out. you just know it won't end well for her and after the film mainly focusing on his breakdown, finally at the end we are faced with reality, and that's when the story ends. pretty perfect.

did have my stomach kind of drop at that uncharasteristic silence in the lively house full of girls being the end. and then the text of the movie being dedicated to so many women's suffering in the convents. fade to black indeed.

[musecraft]

alright ! i've had a full 24+ hours to Process — which may have involved a bottle of prosecco ( i don't drink btw ) & going through a few waves of tears — & i'm here ready to talk about the finale. of.md spoilers below the cut, obviously !

some things i actually did like ( a short list ) :

the plot on paper. the beats of a good story were there but it was so rushed through & poorly executed that it just felt messy, unearned, slapped together.

ed thinking stede is dead & disassociating so hard he goes on a rampage & murders several of the soldiers in very sexy ways, ie: bayonet flip. also ed coming out of the ocean like aphrodite, ready to murder in his black leather. slay.

jim & archie kissing Like That before going to battle. also jim throwing knives from in the trees. very hot, powerful trans energy there, i really enjoyed it.

unfortunately everyone on the crew looked very sexy in stolen navy uniforms.

spanish "you best believe everyone in this household is poison trained" jackie.

zheng existing ( i would like to formally request a whole show about her )

stede yelling 'for love !' when attacking the british. romantic stede my beloved.

most of izzy's main dialogue — especially telling ricky that what really matters about piracy is belonging to something in a world that has told you that you are worth nothing. & yes, even most of of his conversation with ed. izzy telling him it's ok to just be ed ? killed me. & blackbeard was both of us ? don't even. i did want him to apologize to ed properly & am still glad that he did but be careful what you ask your god for am i right.

the final panning shot of the crew on the revenge. beautiful shot despite it all.

issues i had ( a longer list ) :

the editing ? why so many harsh cuts ? the way it was spliced together only contributed to the chaotic & disjointed feeling. & of course, the pacing. i think these two issues are connected & probably not the fault of the writers themselves. the show clearly really needed all 10 episodes to do what it really wanted to do, & this finale is just begging for that lost hour of screentime.

it wasn't even a good fuckery lol.

i wish lucius & pete's wedding had been... idk, just more. something more akin to calypso's birthday, a proper celebration for them. i also wish they would have given an indication they're still poly. "i now pronounce you mateys" was good tho.

ed apologizing & saying i love you & stede not doing either one in return. stede not being sappy in his irl fantasy ? impossible, im really confused by that choice.

0 resolution for stede's entire arc ? 0 indication of self reflection on his part ? & thus no resolution for the primary conflict of the show's central relationship ? they didn't even talk about their future, it just cut to them standing there & stede saying "so i guess we're innkeepers now" as if that's all he would have had to say about that ? i know that this show handwaves away a lot of things, like travel times & the realities of sailing, but i thought the story was literally about this relationship, & we don't get to see them decide on what their future together will look like. it's framed as stede just kinda going along with ed's latest whim ( since you know, they've always worked out soooo well for him in the past ) even though it's the exact opposite of what he's been moving towards personally lately, all without even saying a word about it ? i'm not even saying that i don't like this ending, but it just again felt so unearned.

very little actual resolution for ed's arc. his whole deal this season was about deciding who he wants to be, but he flip flops every time something doesn't go his way & the episode gave us no reason to think that would be different now with their inn. also he just killed a bunch of soldiers after having serious trauma surrounding the act of killing throughout the entire series, but i guess we're just supposed to believe that's ok, he's totally fine, he's an innkeeper now ! (will say more on this topic in the final section.)

poly things not being handled well or outright forgotten about. like olu / jim / archie / zheng has all the potential in the world for a beautiful poly love story & we barely got to see them interact together at all. & to think i was all :eyes: when izzy was dubbed the unicorn because i actually thought for a few episodes there that they might be doing the same thing for polyamory in s2 that they had done for queerness in s1, showing the audience that it's ok to see ourselves in stories & not just on the fringes, we're not stupid or freaks reading into something that isn't there. but turns out, it wasn't there, & i was the freak & the clown all along. live & learn.

the elephant in the room ( rip izzy you beautiful freak ) :

here's the thing. obviously i was never going to be happy that they killed my most favoritest old man. the fact that he's dead just when he found something real to live for is literally heartbreaking to me. but i could have swallowed it as a natural & important part of the narrative if one small thing was done differently: izzy could have had an actual sacrifice. & not for ed, but for the crew. after his speech about living for the crew, him choosing to act in a way that compromised his safety but earned their freedom would have felt like a completion of his arc. but instead it was a stray bullet to the left side which he earned in stede's so-called suicide mission ( don't even get me started on that line given where izzy started this season ), an injury which the show has told us previously is 100% survivable.

in the crew sacrifice scenario izzy could have acted as the symbol of piracy itself, a way of life that is dying. he is, after all, The Pirate (aside from blackbeard himself) on the show. & he has a history of letting shit slide that kinda doesn't align with the way of life they're trying to build on the revenge, not just in s1 but also in the scene with lucius in s2 ("& you? are you happy with all this?" "well, this is a pirate ship, & i'm a pirate so... yeah, i'm good with it.") ricky says they are at "the end of piracy" & izzy is the last REAL pirate (including ed because at this point as he is moving away from that life). & as izzy himself says in s1, "the only retirement we get is death." izzy also shows pretty intense self-preservation, & most of his shitty actions in s1 are motivated by often misplaced survival instincts, ("i'm not dying. not for you & not for that ponce,") so having him go against this longstanding character trait to protect the crew would have felt earned after his dramatic growth. it could have worked. it still would have hurt, but it could have worked.

instead, the way it is actually framed, the narrative actively robs izzy of this symbolism & instead makes his death entirely about ed & ed's relationship to piracy. having him die in a random incident & then having his death scene be followed up by ed finally "officially" (for the third time) giving up piracy honestly flattens everything i find interesting about them as characters & their dynamic to each other.

ed & izzy have very clearly been in clearly a mutually toxic codependent relationship (platonic or otherwise) for decades, but the framing of izzy's death being the only thing that can free ed from piracy (& blackbeard) turns izzy from a complex character of his own into a 2-dimensional plot device. & if izzy truly couldn't exist without blackbeard, then it would make sense — but we've just seen that he can, actually ! that he is a person outside of that relationship, despite what he himself thought for most of his life ! that they can both exist outside of them, & there is a very real possibility that neither of them actually need blackbeard anymore. so instead his death feels cruel to me. & because we know this is the show where injuries simply don't matter unless we need them to, we know that this was a conscious choice, that the writers genuinely felt he had to die for the story (ed's story) to continue.

& you know, that's fair on some level. he's the lead after all. but i also think this framing is actually kind of reductive to ed's character ! i don't write ed, but part of what makes him so compelling to me is that he is... kinda a "bad person," but he wants to be better. he's extremely complex. he has trauma & big feelings & he doesn't always act on them in the right way. & he feels guilt & remorse — he knows he has done wrong in the past & wants to be better, even if he doesn't always know how. & izzy has admittedly been an obstacle to him reaching that end in the past, but to frame it as if ed's actions were because of izzy, & actually izzy was making ed be blackbeard & manipulating him into doing bad things that he didn't really want to do, then i guess now that izzy is dead ed is free to skip off into the sunset happily ever after with his man ! the bad influence in his life finally gone, so he is all healed ! never mind that his most recent return to piracy & killing spree as blackbeard had literally nothing to do with izzy & everything to do with thinking he'd lost stede again. never mind that ed's trauma has its roots in things that happened to him before izzy (his father) & things that also happened to izzy (hornigold). nope, izzy was the real shackle all along. he has to die so ed can be free, & he only ever existed solely to develop ed's pain. that's what this narrative feels like. & i just... don't like the taste of it on any level. izzy says himself that blackbeard was both of them. so why does izzy have to die while ed gets to move on, given they both have shown the capacity to do so ?

the bit that i think i like least about how it's executed is izzy saying "i want to go," especially considering how he & ed are both shown to be actively suicidal in the opening of the season, & he has since started to regain his self confidence from that lowest point. & maybe that line could be read as him just trying to soothe ed in the moment, but idk, it rubbed me the wrong way for him to say he still wanted to die when in fact he had just found something he actually wanted to live for.

so ! i think that's all i have to say about that ! if you've made it this far, thanks for reading ! i'll be working today on writing up a basic canon divergence for both stede & izzy, since i don't like how either of them ended the season out. sorry, but stede's simply not ready to give up pirating just yet, even for ed. & in my head, izzy is fine because he was shot on the left side & "science" tells us there's nothing important in that half of the body anyway. : )

[eatingfireflies]

I'm gonna talk about my fics but also some experiences in various fandoms that no one needs to know about but which I will share anyway

I think this is the best fic I've written so far. It's not my usual voice so I had to work harder, but also it's one of those things were I feel I packed as much info as I can into short sentences and I really like it.

This is my fave bit in all of 'Anthropic principle':

He thought of his first mission with Aventurine. The unnecessarily extreme display had been a compromise: Aventurine hadn't asked for Ratio's trust, but at least a willingness to believe his irrational luck.

And still, his left hand had been trembling behind his back.

Mediocre, thought Ratio.

The memory of it was etched in his brain, like the first time he'd looked at the vastness of the sky from a high powered telescope.

But getting there was messy and kind of disjointed. Tbf a lot of it was disjointed because I wrote the fic in a span of 6 months or so and my voice kept changing and some of the sections were written before 2.1 so my interpretation of Ratio and Aventurine wasn't fully formed yet. (It's still not fully formed lol)

The reason why there are so many little drabbles that are just linked instead of being a part of the main story is because I don't know where to put them in the timeline. My excuse, in case you're my uni teacher who really hates unnecessary gimmicks and weird formatting in stories, is that those linked bits happened off-hours (they're not at work). But mostly it's because I don't know. I don't understand HSR and the timeline is a mystery to me, so a lot of the fic is just thrown there without committing to anything.

Anyway it's a long-winded way to say: I can choose a fave bit in 'Anthropic principle' and it can stand on its own. 'King of Delusion' is different because I think all of the sentences there matter. Sorry, 'Anthropic principle'.

Also I love receiving comments and try to reply to all of them. But I replied to no one in KoD, not even the person I wrote the fic for (I did reply to her in our DMs, don't worry) because I kept putting it off until it was too late to reply.

I was so done with FE3H official at that point. When Three Hopes dropped and official kept ignoring m!Byleth in all the marketing (he wasn't even in the cover)... All the f!Byleth alts in FEH with barely any m!Byleth in sight... Tbf 3Hopes story wasn't that good so whatever. But at the time I was so done and I needed a break. The fact I managed to write KoD during that time and that I like the fic even after a full year is a pleasant surprise.

I planned on having links to little drabbles in KoD for the flashbacks. But it required a lot of plotting and also it's too dark for a fic/art exchange so I scrapped the idea. I used it for Ap instead.

The original idea for Ap is to write a bunch of bad endings and then use a link scrambler to 'gacha' the endings. Meaning you might have to click 5+ more links before you actually get the true end. In the end I decided to remove the gacha element because it sounds potentially clever in theory but is probably frustrating in actual practise 😂 It still requires you to open about 12 new tabs while reading the fic tho.

Idk if I'll ever write a ratiorine fic again because I don't have any ideas and honestly the official supply makes me happy. But we'll see.

[georgekirrin]

I am seeking your headcanons for Jim from OFMD! I feel like you have Good Takes on them

Okay I am sitting here eating my silly little bowl of pasta and smiling like a goofball about my silly little blorbo so let's go!

Uhh I guess first of all the way they say "yeah... I guess. I dunno" while looking more uncomfortable than they do over the rest of the series when asked if they're a woman is so relatable so like. clearly they have a history of being told they're a girl and being asked was so unusual they defaulted to what they'd been told was the "correct" answer and then actually had to think about it

So yeah I think they probably expressed confusion or even outright distress as a child, maybe comparing themself to their brother? And asking what the difference was? Idk, but they got told over and over "this is the way things are, shut up and accept it

And I think that ties in with their relationship to Nana, being told that they have to dedicate their whole life to the concept of revenge and not given opportunity to form their own opinion, it's very much the same situation, and whichever happened first, or as they happened concurrently, kind of cemented the idea in their head that they just have to shut up and take what they're handed

(I'm no longer smiling and my pasta is finished 😭 lets carry on)

So ya Olu is clearly very good for them, not just because he's a wonderful sweetheart, but because he wants to hear their opinions and talk things through (as a crew!) and he might weigh in but ultimately he's supportive of what they choose

Okay getting more lighthearted, Jim is so clearly That Bitch, they're such a dramatic little fucker I love them. Did they have to spend their whole time on The Revenge in disguise? No! They could have just had a disguise in the Republic of Pirates and chilled on the ship but as I said. They're That Bitch. Future fuckeries Jim is gonna be so involved and they're gonna upstage Stede and it'll be glorious

And I think to some extent they're going to bring that 110% dedication and energy to their relationship with Olu, he's A Thing They Have Decided To Care About, and while it may not be obvious to anyone else, they're gonna be so flirty and in love and every time they elbow him in the side or smth he'll be blushing because he knows it's a declaration of love

(I have plenty of n/s/f/w headcanons but I won't derail your ask Emmett)

Ahem, moving on, as much as I love the Jim Izzy friendship, I think that he has begrudging respect for their knife skills but they find him baffling and therefore unsettling, because if they can't be sure what the angry shrimp of a man will do next, how can they be safe?

With regards to sailing, I think they'd be really good at scrambling around in the rigging. I love heights and also Jim so I'm gonna project that onto them. Okay next topic.

Lucius and Jim I have some thoughts about, but the one I'll say is that I think they overheard Lucius' "wouldn't it be crazy if I was suddenly like, into jim" and that contributed to their gender musings in some way because they liked that the gay dude found them hot despite having just found out their whole situation and oop actually maybe there's something to explore here?

And it's time to jump to another train of thought (I'm so sorry this is so disjointed I'm literally just throwing thoughts at the screen in the order they appear in my head) Jim is the proud owner of one of the few brain cells on The Revenge but, and this is key, they can put it down whenever they want. They give it to Oluwande for safekeeping and he has to chase them across the ship to make them stop competing with the ship's cat to see who can catch more mice or whatever daft situation they've got into

This is very long and I have no idea if any of these are good takes, I simply have many thoughts about Jim Jim okay thank you goodbye

[astronomical-bagel]

I'm really interested about the angst you see in ATHD, because I'm sure I've missed out on a lot of it because it wasn't obvious sjsbsjsk - 🕊

Oh hey dove!! And thanks for asking about it! I have like a lot of disjointed thoughts on it so I’ll just kinda write down my thoughts as I rewatch it again!

• So, when Patton tells Roman to be nice (2:20), Roman IMMEDIATELY apologizes and rectified his mistake—despite no knowing what he did was wrong in the first place. This moment actually kills me because you can just ~hear~ the uncertainty and insecurity in his voice, and when he stutters when trying to apologize?? Good shit.

Also you seen those posts talking about how Roman literally apologizes for everything now, and how no one really appreciates how much he’s trying and still sees him as really mean and egotistical?? This moment shows that perfectly, from Roman rushing to fix his mistake so they won’t be mad at him, Patton calling Roman mean in the first place (I’m still having trouble seeing what he did wrong lmao), to Virgil making faces at Roman after he apologizes. It just stands out to me, idk.

• at 5:00, Roman says, ““he just needs something to look forward to.” And hhhh you can Tell that he’s thinking about the callback. Thomas may be watching this to distract himself from the party but Roman is distracting himself from the fact that he voluntarily flushed his dreams down the metaphorical ice toilet 

 •not quite angst but Roman’s “Oh.” Face at 6:30 when he realized he misinterpreted what Virgil said.

•the “Hans evil plotting face” part at 7:30 always kinda confused me, although it could just be because my personal interpretation of the movie. Like,,, I personally think that, at first, Hans didn’t have any evil plans. Like—he didn’t even know who Anna was at first. I just find it interesting that Roman ““the romantic”  Sanders didn’t really think that Hans’s smile wasn’t genuine. Is it bc of his black and white mentality of am I reading too into it?

•I’ve already mentioned the “the first person to give her attention was taking advantage of her” part (around 8:15) part in another post, so I won’t go into that rn

•okay this isn’t Roman angst BUT CAN I POINT OUT THAT PATTON “REPRESSION” SANDERS WAS THE ONE TO SING “DONT LET THEM IN DONT LET THEM SEE” BECAUSE THAT IS AN AMAZING DETAIL

•Roman’s ““bridge speech” at 9:20 kinda seems like it could apply to him, somehow? Like,,,if the “storm” was missing the callback? It it seems important. Also the, ““lie low in our kingdom of isolation” part  I can’t believe that Thomas predicted quarantine , like...hmmmm ....it just sticks out to me for some reason

•10:12 ““if only there was someone out there who loves you” *blinks rapidly* 

^^Okay, despite that being as funny as shit, I can’t??? Interpret expressions??? very well?? But like, this seems like another one of Roman’s ““cry for help”s that everyone ignores for some reason?? Hmmm.

•10:35, ive already made a post about Roman idealizing and (I think) romanticizing sacrifice (just another thing to ad to the list of Roman’s self-destructive thinking), so I won’t go over it here 

•13:44 when Logan says “both of which take place elsewhere”, the camera goes to Roman for a sec?? He looks like that line kinda,,, meant something to him?? In the negative way?? Like I said, I’m shit at interpreting expressions, but that part really stuck out to me for some reason.  fixer upper: throw a little love their way and you’ll bring out their best!!

Me, crying: Please give Roman love I’m begging you

Roman glaring at Janus hits different after pof 

 • Hey you know how I said that Roman was idealizing and romanticizing Olaf’s (almost) sacrifice??? Well, in Roman’s fanfiction, Olaf ACTUALLY dies :))

OKAY now that I’ve got the actual episode out of the way, can I just talk about Roman’s onsie for a sec??? I was looking up different types of horns (for my ef!roman), and then I started wondering,,, why did roman choose the Beast?? I heard it was because Thomas was doing a play like that at the time, but I’m not sure if that’s true or not.  In Dark Side of Disney, even Roman doesn’t really like beauty and the beast. Virgil calls the movie  out abt Stockholm syndrome, but Roman defends it saying, “It’s about a love that transcends outward appearances”, but im thinking....in Roman’s situation, what if it’s inner appearances, instead?

I mean, we’ve all seen he’s starved for love and complements, to feel like he’s wanted and worthy— heck, in this episode alone there are like three instances where this showed, and this is only like twenty minutes long— so like,,, I feel like his onsie would reflect that? He doesn’t think berry highly of himself, either. He feels guilty about the smallest things and he probably feels like hes shit rn. It’d make sense for him to project onto the “unlovable, horrible beast” that was cursed for being too mean and self-centered.

Anyways, that’s all I got, and it’s like five twenty five and the birds are starting to chirp, so I’ll go the bed now. Thanks for asking about the Roman angst tho! It was really fun to write all my thoughts and theories down!

[grungepoetica]

okay so i've given my brain a full day to process what i saw. first thoughts (w/some spoilers but i'll try to limit them as much as possible):

thematically, this movie is FANTASTIC. it's a very nuanced look at the idea of spectacles and how we as a species and as an audience think we can control spectacles & entertainment, to the point where we can often push things past the breaking point

the Bible quote in the beginning sets this up immediately; it's all about taking gross things and making them entertainment

the Gordy incident is a giant metaphor for how media & entertainment tries to control things that it really can't, and Jupe's commodification of his own trauma from it takes that tragedy and turns it into entertainment after the fact

also, all three types of non-human animals in the film (horses, Gordy, and the Viewers/Jean Jacket) are connected to the idea of being unable to look at themselves or be watched - Jupe says that Gordy went off when someone mentioned the jungle, Lucky freaked out when someone on set held up a mirror, and the Viewers/Jean Jacket snapped because too many people had their eyes on it

Emerald and OJ were born into a behind-the-scenes Hollywood industry, but Emerald wants to be famous and in front of the camera & neglects the horse ranch because of it

the name of the black jockey in the old film getting lost to time (except by his descendants) because the spectacle of film was the thing that got remembered

the whole plot of, you know, EMERALD & OJ LITERALLY TRYING TO TAKE A PICTURE OF THE VIEWERS even as it's trying to kill them

also, Jordan Peele said that he wanted this movie to be a summer blockbuster, which I think is a nod to the idea of spectacles and people being entertained en masse, because Jordan is like that

I also know that a lot of people were disappointed by Nope because it wasn't what they expected. Put another way, it wasn't the spectacle they created in their own heads. And if you ask me, that reinforces everything the movie was trying to say. (not to mention that the movie is literally called Nope, almost as if it's saying "nope; whatever you're thinking, this ain't it."

Plot-wise, I think Nope was more disjointed than both Get Out and Us - with those two, I had a much clearer idea of what the movie wanted me to take away from it as I left the theater - but it's still really good. I noticed the parallels to Jaws right away, which is a nice thematic nod to the original summer blockbuster, a movie that invented an entire genre of Hollywood spectacles

The disjointedness of the plot made it a bit harder to understand everything I was seeing on screen. Respect to Peele for changing things up with a nonlinear framework though!

I enjoyed Nope's soundtrack too, but again, it pales in comparison to Get Out and Us, both of which have VERY distinctive and recognizable scores

I'm a bit skeptical of how effective the movie's message about spectacles really is, given that the movie has already been commodified a bunch. themed drinks at AMC and a Jupiter's Claim area at Universal Studios already? idk y'all it doesn't sit right with me

so yeah, that's what I can think of off the top of my head. really good film. probably a 7.5/10 compared to his first two films being in the 8-8.5/10 range? Peele had his work cut out for him trying to follow up on both Get Out AND Us, but I think he did fine here. if anything, commenting on spectacle while also making Nope an enjoyable spectacle is why it feels flatter than the first two, imo.

just saw Nope and I'm still trying to process it. definitely the most mind-bending Jordan Peele film so far