#im open to thoughts

[hyacinthusmemorial]

TW: Mentions of SA

In my works, and other places, people have been asking me my opinion on Achilles attacking Troilus. I would just preface I’m not an expert on the Trojan War. I was sick the week we did the Iliad in high school and they made me perform as Odysseus when we read the Odyssey and i had no clue what was happening, but I am in the process of reading it now.

I think if you are studying these events from the perspective of the god Apollo, then Achilles kind of loses his Brad Pitt appeal that the movie Troy (which I have never seen) gives him. So if Achilles is your guy, stop reading. I’m thought dumping.

There is something wicked and powerful about Achilles k*lling and r*ping Apollo’s own son on his own altar in his own temple. Because that is the implication of the iconography and artwork.

Achilles drags Troilus by his hair to the altar of his father and the story doesn’t say if Achilles r*pes him, but it is implied. For one it talks about Achilles being overcome with lust for Troilus, who is the image of Apollo in human form. A beautiful golden haired, youth.

Not only is Troilus the son of Hecuba, he’s Apollo’s image. Sources say he is the most beautiful of the Trojans and Greeks. But he has been designated a fate where he represents the city of Troy. Hence the name Troilus. If he reaches adulthood, the city survives. If he dies as a youth, the city will fall.

Athena leads Achilles to Troilus to ensure his death and thus Troy’s fall. She does not account for HOW Achilles kills Troilus.

He sees Troilus on his horse, and he is overcome with lust. I think he probably offers Troilus some sort of deal, come sleep with me and I will let you and your sister go, but Troilus refuses and runs away and hides in his father’s temple. He is a little kid running to his father for help. But, Achilles breaks in, finds Troilus, and enraged kills him either on or near the altar of Apollo.

Troilus is the image of Apollo. He is his son. He is a prince of Troy. I think this is a tipping point for everything—the point of no return.

This seals Troy’s fate, but I think the reason for that are because of Troilus’s death. I think before this point there is the possibility there will be peace. I think Big Bro Hector would have sent Helen back, I think peace would have been sued for and Troy would stand. But Fate has to be accomplished. This is the point where Troy no longer gives a damn—their prince has been m*rdered and r*ped on the altar of their chief god. Priam is upset because he loved Troilus as his own son, and he calls Achilles a child-slaughterer after that. Hecuba is besides herself, and Hector wants to kill Achilles. I think this is the point where they decide that, yes, they are going to die fighting this war, but they have a GOOD REASON to. It’s not about Paris and Helen and Aphrodite and a dumb apple. It’s about a boy being murdered.

But Apollo, Apollo is now vengeance. He is acting as an arm of fate. He’s already peeved at Achilles, who had killed another son Tenes. (A different story about Achilles r*ping someone)

I said this to one of my commenters—an altar is a god’s dinner table. Apollo’s hands are tied by something—either Fate or Thetis or his Father, and he cannot stop Achilles who is savagely attacking his own son on his own table. He has to watch, has to sit there and taste his own son’s blood in his mouth, watch him brutally die.

Achilles’s fate is sealed. Apollo is going to kill Achilles. It’s just nine years later.

In the art, Thetis, Athena, Apollo and Hermes are in the background of this event. Athena and Thetis as support of Achilles, but it makes me curious what Hermes is doing there. Is he holding Apollo back? Has Thetis begged Zeus for Achilles life? Athena regretfully watching as she accomplishes her plan only to realize WHY it worked?

I think in this way you can fashion the Trojan War as a direct conflict between Apollo and Achilles. Everything else is going on around it, but at the heart of it, is Apollo and Achilles. Apollo waiting for his father and the fates to give him the go ahead because Achilles will die, and Apollo is going to take away everything from him in the process. Briseis, Patroclus, and then he’s going to take his life.

Achilles is the villain in Apollo’s story. He’s invulnerable, he’s circumventing fate, he r*pes anything under his power, he disrespects the gods. He is a lesson in what men do when no one can stop them, and the most powerful thing is that the Father wins. He finds and kills his son’s murderer even after all the roadblocks in his way.

Troy is a revenge story, and if I ever get to writing it in my series, it’s going to be written like a revenge story.

[mochasucculent]

Was looking at refs and since Viktor has two different leg braces I was wondering, do we think he wears them simultaneously?? The refs don't perfectly line up perspective-wise so it's hard to tell but parts of the one he wears during the Hexcore scenes look like they could maybe line up with the brace that he wears over his clothes, but also some parts really don't and look like they'd be super uncomfy. Also HOW does he take these on and off. Experts weigh in

[datcravat]

It seems there's a new lawyer in town!!!

[lilybug-02]

Pain is a great motivator…

Part 26 || First || Previous || Next

—Full Series—

Meanwhile Toriel:

(Loud noises don't wake her up usually.)

Artist note: I’m so proud of this :))) I know it’s a lot of dialogue and reading, but dialogue is grueling work for me. I’m glad with the art and for the amount of pages I made in such a relatively short time span -w- page 5 was super fun to work on. A lot of blood, sweat, and hours here... :) The backgrounds were a big bore tbh, but I finished them! Yippie!

[ascendingconures]

just gonna post this bc i could never come up with a spirally background i liked & i dont want this to die in my saves folder

[heartorbit]

find another role, carry on the show

[bunnieswithknives]

Love impulsively doing whatever this is.

[You are at the beginning] [Next]

[puppppppppy]

my attempt at making a fursona

[suntails]

WIPs

[charmac]

I wrote about Charlie and Dennis' paralleled childhood sexual abuse, and how their opposing trauma responses keep them from seeing themselves while they stay stuck in their own cycles of abuse.

// The content under the read more is an in-depth script analysis highlighting and discussing childhood sexual abuse and trauma response. Please read with caution or scroll past this post if these topics are known to affect and/or trigger you. //

Because Sunny walks an extremely fine line between sensitive, if not traumatic, character work and dark comedy, I've found that, in reading the scripts, the trauma being written is always much more blatant. You have to work a little harder to pick up on the underlying intent when watching the episodes (though the more and more we learn about the characters, the more the intent becomes clear), but the scripted versions of these scenes are solid evidence that the clear intent of these storylines is to reveal that these characters have extremely repressed childhood trauma, in-turn explaining to the audience why they have such fucked-up ideas of (and relationships with) love and sex. To put it more blatantly: the purpose of giving and revealing the childhood trauma these characters have is purposeful (if not needed), explaining why they are the predators that they are, and allows us to at least understand where their often psychopathic actions and rationales come from.

The fact that Charlie and Dennis were both sexually abused as children is all but obvious to the audience (and every other member of the Gang), but the extent to which these plots are intended to act as character work as opposed cheap-shot rape jokes is often lost on the casual viewer. In my opinion, the disconnect is not for lack of clear intention in the writing, but by the nature of the show being what it is.

It’s very clearly still there, easy enough to catch if you’re standing more than ankle-deep in the waters, but because Sunny is a dark comedy, it’s unfortunately easy to uncomfortably laugh past a rape joke if you don’t care to look deeper than the surface. Taking a look at the scripts helps paint a clearer picture, making it easier to point out, walk through and explore the CSA lore developed for both Charlie and Dennis, how they parallel and oppose each other, and how this trauma relates to their own predatory behaviours. 

An obvious starting point is Charlie Got Molested, which is, on the surface, an episode in which we learn that Charlie wasn't molested. What is changed from the script to the episode is this first line from Charlie, right at the very end of the episode, on his family’s response to his alleged molestation:

(Charlie's aired line is instead "Now everybody thinks that I've been molested. So, in a way, my life is ruined.")

Whether written with a specific intent at the time or not, this episode sets the stage (literally, lol) for a later building 'reveal' that (1) Charlie was molested as a child, and (2) his Uncle Jack is very much a pedophile, not just a perv (which is hinted at in the actual episode, both in dialogue and visuals), because the next time the show features a plot with Charlie and molestation (Sweet Dee's Dating notwithstanding, though important to mention, as it’s further evidence of the idea that there was clearly a thread being woven early on), it’s via the form of a play.

Charlie wrote The Nightman Cometh as a play about love, which was turned into a 'legible' play by Artemis, in which the Gang all "misinterpreted" his original intent and believed it to be about a child being raped. Charlie gets mad, because he doesn't see it, doesn't believe it, and instead believes everyone is destroying his artistic vision by refusing to let this idea go.

The script for The Nightman Cometh (which, I’d like to point out, RCG chose to make publicly available to everyone) has an alternate ending to the rehearsal of the bed scene between The Boy and The Nightman:

(The aired version shows Charlie more-comedically angry at Mac and Dennis by raising his level of frustration, physically with his hands. The mention of the Nightman taking The Boy face-to-face is never addressed in the aired episode, yet it does take place that way in the actual play scene following the rehearsal featuring doggy-style humping.)

What's heavily implied in the episode (and basically explicitly stated in the script), is that the Gang are not misinterpreting Charlie's art; the play is quite literally built around the idea that a child is attempting to communicate his rape, and Dennis is telling him that’s what it is. Charlie can't accept that, because this is a play about his life, he believes he’s created a play about love, and he is the boy and he was not raped so it can't be rape.

(And, following this, the audience can put the two and two together: Charlie’s clearly repressed CSA and the fact that his Uncle is a pedophile. In every.single.physical.interaction Charlie and Uncle Jack have, in every appearance he makes following Season 4, the fact that Uncle Jack is the Nightman is clear.)

Rolling back a little, it’s interesting that Dennis is the one to be audibly confused by (and frustrated with) the fact that Charlie can't understand his play is a rape play, because it's so very obvious to Dennis. Yet, 7 years later, he's in Charlie's exact shoes.

Because in Dee Makes a Smut Film, Dennis' plot almost directly parallels Charlie’s from The Nightman Cometh:

Dennis wrote his Erotic Memoirs as a tale of his sexual conquests, the first of his encounters turned into a 'film' by Dee, in which Dee "misinterpreted" what happened between Dennis and the Librarian as him being raped as a teen. Dennis gets mad, because he doesn't see how it could possibly be rape, doesn't believe a guy can be raped, and instead believes Dee and Grieco are destroying his artistic vision by refusing to let the idea go.

(In the aired episode, Dennis does not avoid using the word rape, and instead insists you cannot rape a guy, and that he was willing.)

Just like Charlie, Dennis refuses to accept that the people who are acting out his writing at face-value are telling him straight up that it looks like, and most-likey is, rape. Dennis can't accept that, because this is a film about his life, it's about his first sexual conquest, and he is the boy and he was not raped so it can't be rape.

This goes one-step further when Dee airs the 'film' for the rest of the Gang:

(The aired version of the video does not show anything from filming, and only shows a slideshow of photos from when Dennis was a teen, overlay text claiming he was raped, and a photo of Klinsky repeating 'hoser' over and over.)

Dennis goes on a spiel and reiterates that he was not raped. The rest of the Gang are not convinced.

And at this point, Charlie and Dennis probably should relate to each other, or at the very least intentionally give each other a pass/miss whenever the topic of childhood sexual abuse emerges, but instead they continue to have no issue believing and pointing out that the other was raped while continuing to deny their own trauma. 

In PTSDee, this paralleled-refusal is made clear. Very clear. In the script, it's even clearer:

(In the aired scene, Dennis' line is clearly cut after he mentions Charlie's mom, and it picks up with Charlie's line at "the father thing")

They see it so clearly in each other, but don't see themselves mirrored—and there's no doubt that's intentional. Because while they were both sexually abused as children, their current relationships with love and sex (as portrayed from basically episode one) are opposing, and the circumstances of their individual rape and immediate repression are extremely illustrative as to why they behave the way they do:

Charlie's trauma response is typical of pre-pubescent, forced rape. Not mature enough to even recognise what happened to him (as Uncle Jack's abuse was likely his first exposure to sexual acts), he regresses and represses, subsequently developing a repulsion toward sex into his adult life (in Season 5, Mac and Charlie Write a Movie, there's a deleted scene that makes it evident that he's disgusted by and avoidant of sex decades later), and, clearly by the depictions in The Nightman Cometh play and the lyrics of Nightman in Sweet Dee’s Dating, believing that the harassment he faced was love. 

For the run of the show, Charlie’s interest in love and sex is almost exclusively highlighted by his relentless pursuit of the Waitress. In so far as the idea that every member of the Gang is a sexual predator, Charlie is depicted as a sexual harasser, unable to recognize that disinterest, avoidance, the word "no," and stalking that leads to legal action to restrain him from the person he's pursuing is inappropriate and predatory.

While his CSA results in a repulsion toward sex (in most instances), Charlie clearly associates the concept of love with the early harassment he faced, brought on him in his own home by a "loved one," he truly believes that his own relentless pursuit will end up buying him love. Charlie is stuck in an abstinent cycle (at least, until Dennis’ Double Life) of his own abuse.

Dennis' trauma response is typical of coercive rape and grooming. He was old enough to believe that sex is something that should be seen as cool, and therefore obsesses and brags about his experience(s), resulting in his hypersexuality. In Season 5, The D.E.N.N.I.S. System, it's firmly established that Dennis' pursuit of women is something outside of genuine attraction; in fact, it's almost devoid of it. Clearly by the plot of PTSDee, he sees a woman’s sexuality as a weapon he needs to fight against. 

For the run of the show, Dennis' interest in sex is deeply entwined with the fact that he gets off on having power over his "sexual conquests". In so far as the idea that every member of the Gang is a sexual predator, Dennis is depicted as a date rapist, having an aversion to recognising (if not an inability to understand) consent, he pursues sex exclusively for his own physical pleasure, with little care for the other party, getting off on the knowledge that he’s orchestrated the situation he’s in.

While his CSA results in an obsession with sex, Dennis clearly does not associate the concept of love with the act, truly believing that sex is used to overpower someone, most enjoyable when obtained via coercion, exactly as his virginity was taken from him. Dennis is stuck in a loveless cycle of his own abuse.

Charlie and Dennis meet after their own traumas; their clearly disordered relationships with love and sex is how they've always known the other to be. When there are hints of the other's abuse, they're able to easy recognise what it is, for they sense the paralleled familiarity of their own CSA—yet their polar opposite trauma responses result in an inability to reflect:

To Dennis, Charlie was clearly raped, and Charlie fears sex and Dennis loves sex, so he can't have been raped; To Charlie, Dennis was clearly raped, and Dennis doesn't pursue love and Charlie loves the Waitress, so he can't have been raped.

Their reflections being mirrored causes them to harp on the other's trauma and keeps them from being able to truly recognise their own abuse. Call the other out and deny what’s shot back, stuff it down and continue spiralling in their own cycle of abuse.

[chamoemileclown]

going to start making all my faves who aren’t in wild life into snails

[boxesblr]

replaying the clip of Cleo saying "etho doesn't take himself seriously at all, but he takes other people seriously. That's part of his charm" over and over again in my head. It's so clarifying to me

[singerorpheus]

Hadestown - West End - 26/05/2024 Dónal Finn (Orpheus), Melanie La Barrie (Hermes), Lauren Azania (Worker), Tiago Dhondt Bamberger (Worker), Lucinda Buckley (Worker Swing), Waylon Jacobs (Worker), Christopher Short (Worker) Do not share outside of Tumblr. This is the very song that sent me 16 hours to London. Dónal plays Orpheus so hurt and angry here, it is genuinely as life changing as I thought it would be in real life, it's all you could ask for in an Orpheus. Also, we get changed lines after 'So I ask you...', instead of 'If it's true what they say, I'll be on my way. Tell me what to do!' , we get 'Brother, look around today. Is this how the world will stay? There must be another way!' which i think is very fitting for his Orpheus and also means we get Orpheus saying 'brother' in IIT again!! Melanie carries this production for the entire 2 and a half hours powerfully and I loved all the workers I watched that day, they were all so great. Feel free to yap at me about literally anything Hadestown West End related <3.

[devxoid]

regarding dr ratio's team join voiceline with aventurine

idk where it originated from but i've been seeing this notion that the ENG voiceline is horribly mistranslated and ratio is much more caring and friendly in the original CN. THIS IS LITERALLY NOT TRUE HE IS JUST AS BITCHY IN BOTH LANGUAGES

as a native chinese speaker i actually really love hsr's localisation and i would like to clarify the misconception + explain the cultural nuance/context behind this particular voiceline

i think this tweet might've been the original source for this misconception? op's translation of the CN line is very literal and completely lacking in cultural nuance. while the sentence 管好你自己 does literally translate to "take care of yourself", it lacks the automatic positive connotation that this sentence has in ENG. CN is a high context language -- aka the meaning of a sentence can be totally different based on context clues like tone, body language, etc.

ratio's tone in this line is not the tone of someone who is concerned for a friend. it's standoffish. when said in this kind of tone, the meaning of 管好你自己 is closer to "mind your own business", making the ENG "keep to yourself" a more accurate localisation.

in addition, the word 管 has connotations of controlling/managing something -- directly translating this to "take care of yourself" means it's missing a lot of important nuance.

granted, the second half of the line is a bit unnecessarily aggressive in ENG. the CN is more like "I have no need for your concern", and explicitly saying that he believes aven's concern to be "false" in ENG is definitely a lot ruder than the original line.

However. in my opinion it's not Too far off base. the way he emphasises the second half of that voiceline in CN carries an implication that he actually disdains aven's concern; we can extrapolate from context clues that he feels this way because aven's concern is just an act. tldr; eng line explicitly saying "false display" does make it ruder than CN but it didn't just come from nowhere -- the implication is already there in CN

this is not to say that ratio doesn't care about aven or see him as a friend. imo the reason ratio is so standoffish in this line is because any display of concern from aven here has the clear intention of teasing ratio. they both know ratio can take care of himself perfectly well. this is just how their dynamic works -- aven makes silly playful comments and ratio deflects them by acting cold.

in conclusion: ENG voiceline is not a mistranslation. hsr localisation is definitely not perfect but in this particular case i feel they've done a fairly good job of conveying the original meaning. thank you for coming to my ted talk

[vaguely-concerned]

the question is who taught lucanis to knit. was it something he already knew how to do or is he picking it up over the course of the game as part of his 'if I manage to cram enough hobbies in there I won't have to sleep again ever. easy' experiment. did he learn it out of a book (as a sometime knitter, a horrifying thought but I wouldn't put it past him). as hilarious as I find the mental image of caterina with knitting needles I do not believe in it, did he pick it up from someone in the household staff growing up the same way he did cooking. is the sweater he wears with his introductory armour his own work (very funny if so it's just so. incredibly neutral toned and sensible.) I understand why he never does it on screen because animating knitting is the devil's own work and bioware were right to dodge right past it no one should wish themselves that kind of pain, but do you think off-screen he's using it the same way davrin does whittling during team meetings and book club nights (for real the grandmas were so right for this: knitting during social group situations is a neurodivergent life hack like you wouldn't believe if doodling isn't your thing/isn't doing it for you). it's that or sharpening his knives and some people seem to get a bit nervous about that so he mostly sticks to the knit one purl one of it all. does he make things for the team. for romanced rook perhaps. boring but useful things like socks and scarves, to be clear. I think mr. 'I made you a cake (cautiously marital intent)' would not mean to impress just make sure your feet weren't cold jogging around the heights of athim killing darkspawn. knitting more socks for harding so she won't get cold walking around everywhere in her fereldan *checks notes written on palm* clogs. some of taash' outfits... you think rook and lucanis are letting them walk around the anderfels like that without at least a token sensible scarf on even tho adaari are built different in terms of body temperature. I say no not in my lighthouse they would team up and mother hen them to shathann levels before they'd let that happen. (the scarf has dragons on it taash thinks it's kind of cool actually.) a bobble hat for manfred not because he really needs it but because he wanted to feel included. assan indignantly tries to steal it and fly away with it so he gets his own scarf to promote peace between the lighthouse little guys and it works. help.

[julijbee]

girlbossing too close to the sun.