#in depth

[theamazingdigitalraceway]

Hellooo! A while back, I made an ask thanking you for changing my opinion on showtime! At the time, I almost didn't send it cause I was being paranoid.

But now thanks to caffeine, I feel no fear!

So tell me, what made you prefer showtime as your otp other than.. Idk, buttonblossom or.. Jax x Ragatha (don't remember the ship name. Bunnydoll?)

Well, it all comes down to Caine himself. He's my favorite character in the show. It all started when I was just looking for Caine art back when I first entered the fandom, I couldn't get enough of him.

At the time, the only Caine ship that really stuck out to me was Showtime, so I latched onto it in a pseudo-self-insert kind of way, but by the time I started writing fanfiction, I had familiarized myself with Pomni as a character and I thought.....this could work.

I'm a sucker for AI-falls-in-love or becomes more human because of someone who cares enough. Think Detroit Become Human. (Loved that game) After episode 2, when Pomni shows her full capacity for empathy to an AI such as Gummigoo, that really sent my synapses firing about "What if she did that with Caine?"

So I wrote my first Showtime oneshot, "Creative Liberty" and haven't looked back. Technically I wrote the first few chapters of Raceway first, but that was when I was still familiarizing myself with the characters. I consider Creative Liberty my first real showtime fic.

While Showtime is most certainly my favorite, it's not my only ship. I'm a "multi-shipper" So my brain can easily move around the characters and pair them up in a lot of different ways that I still enjoy. That's why on my main blog I tell people "all ships are welcome." Even the crack ones lol.

Because like Goosworx herself said, "Ship whoever you want, just stop attacking each other!" We're here to have fun! Thank you for your question. This might have been a bit more in depth than you were expecting, but I wanted to answer honestly.

PS- Jax x Ragatha is Bunnydoll and is my second favorite overall ship :3

PSS- The only ship that I'm like eeh on is RoyalCourt (PomnixKinger) especially after episode 3. I ship them in a father-daughter way, It's hard for me to picture them in a romantic sense.

[archtroop]

Visegrad24 presents an in-depth series covering the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. This comprehensive series features on-the-ground interviews, bringing firsthand insights from a diverse range of voices, including politicians, professors, journalists, experts and influencers.

Our guest today: Yoseph Haddad is an Arab-Israeli journalist and CEO of the 'Together – Vouch for Each Other' association that works to connect the Arab-Israeli society to the broader Israeli society.

00:00​ - Introduction

02:17​ - Being a Christian in Israel

03:43​ - Being a Christian in Gaza

07:48​ - Jewish-Arab relations

12:22​ - Co-existance?

14:21​ - Israeli Arabs and West Bank Arabs

18:49​ - Apartheid in Israel?

24:36​ - Migrants in the West

26:20​ - Foreign interference

27:40​ - Clueless Western activists

[doktorfreud]

That Devastating Shard of Light

(IWTV S2 E8)

Just by setting your eyes on the gorgeous photography, the meaningfulness of this scene strikes you even before a word is uttered: Louis and Armand are separated by a shard of light. 

The room is obliquely cut in half, that slice of illuminated floor is quite literally lava. And that’s not just a turn of phrase: they are separated by a line that cannot be crossed, a line drawn by the sun itself – their mortal enemy, which drives home the notion of just how much their relationship is irreversibly fractured. You can’t patch up that shard of light, no matter how hard you try (more on this in my next post) – especially if it uncovers and echoes the deed which caused the rift in the first place: flooding your lover’s daughter with a windowful of sunlight, leading to her annihilation. As Armand’s treacherous act put an end to Claudia’s life, so did it put an end to his (genuine) relationship with Louis.  

The dust particles dancing in the beam of light hail back to the moment Claudia dissolved into ashes on a theatre stage, hobbled, alone, deprived of her father Louis’ presence, clutching in her arms the only person, Madeleine, who had always put her before everyone and everything else. And Louis is aware of this, and will have to live with this knowledge and the ensuing feelings of guilt for the rest of his immortal days.  

That shard of light takes on an almost physical, solid nature, piercing through Louis’ heart, turning the hopes, dreams and future of two women who had finally found each other to dust, tearing Armand and Louis’ relationship to shreds.

---

Next time, I will go into the infamous “beigest pillow” scene from s2e5, and look at how both light and Claudia’s memory play a crucial part in the ruthless escalation between Loumand. 

Thanks for reading! 

[lovepinkshiftforever]

nothing (in my head) - the deep dive podcast

premiering 9.26.24 on patreon

[yolowritter]

In Defense of Chloe Bourgeois Part 1: Who is Chloe?

Well...shit, here we go again! Hello there everyone, welcome back to the source of my endless exasperation! Before any of you pick a side to the argument, I want to make it perfectly clear that this isn't a post about whether or not Chloe should have had a redemption arc. This is not my point, and any argument for either side have been repeated so many times by now that I can recite most by memory. So, let's begin by establishing why exactly I'm even writing this post!

Chloe Bourgeois is one of my favorite characters in Miraculous Ladybug. The...the fanon version, obviously. Canon can go keel over in an alleyway, it already has more holes in it than the average swiss cheese. I've been a part of this fandom for a good few years now, and at the time of watching Miracle Queen was understandably upset at the...direction, that her character was taken. It left a sour taste in my mouth because I honestly didn't see it coming, but I'll get more into that later. Point is, I was once a defender of Chloe's redemption arc. I am not stating if I am or not still one of those at present, because that's not what the point is. Regardless of what side of the fence you're on, we can all agree that her character was horribly mismanaged in the latter half of this show. Erratic, extreme and oftentimes illogical choices that sound stupider than Lila's average gaslighting scheme, and a character who previously had an arc going for her now being defined only by the sheer inconsistency that writhes every moment she's on-screen. I'll be honest, I no longer particularly care if Chloe "should" have been redeemed or not, because either avenue could have allowed for some brilliant (or at the very least pretty decent) storytelling.

This defense strives not to strip anyone of their arguments, nor to challenge anyone's headcanons, or make a point about what the "correct" way to handle Chloe's character should have been. Again, I lost interest in the debate a long time ago. I'm simply here to examine who Chloe is as a person, what drives her, what her life experiences have been like, and where all this could logically lead from both a writing and human perspective. I care about Chloe as a person, and about a character who if nothing else, at least acts consistently, in a way where the audience can watch them and understand why they're acting like this. I'll be trying to give context to some of her actions and fill in as many plot holes as I can, as well as giving a glimpse as to how a possible Redemption or Corruption Arc could have gone. So without any further ado, let's dive right in!

Firstly, let's start by laying out some common ground. After the Gabriel Agreste post, I think it's necessary to establish some clear lines as to what exactly we're talking about here. So before anything else, let's look at what we learn about Chloe in Season 1, yeah? Without going episode-by-episode, we generally don't get a good impression of her. Chloe is clearly spoiled by her father, used to always getting her way, and has no problem pressuring others into making that happen. She treats her classmates more like annoyances if not outright minions (Sabrina and on occasion Kim), has little consideration for other people's feelings, and likes appearing superior to everyone else. A pretty bad start, all things considered. She bosses Sabrina around, and we're explicitly told that Chloe often bribes her with her second-hand stuff, or whatever she wants to get rid of. Sabrina clearly doesn't know how to stand up for herself, and Chloe seems perfectly willing to take advantage of her doormat status. She also has the roots for a sweet sweet superiority complex firmly planted, considering how she rejects and humiliates Kim when he tries to confess his love to her. I'll be damned if I ever understand such bad taste, considering how Chloe is generally disliked by the rest of the class, but the point stands. She could have just told him no, even rudely if need be, and left it at that. Instead, she actively chose to humiliate the poor guy. Something similar happened with Nathaniel, whose feelings about Marinette she made public to everyone else for what seems to be entertainment value.

All in all, Season 1 Chloe has all the stereotypical makings of a popular girl from a 2010s American high school movie, including the narcissism, bullying, strong-arming school staff into not punishing these behaviors, inflated ego, and the complimentary minion! Except...Chloe isn't popular. With anyone, actually. Most of the class dislikes and barely puts up with her on a good day. They don't laugh along or jeer at whomever she's giving trouble to. Instead we have several instances where people actively try to either push the teachers into doing something or remove her from a situation where Chloe is causing problems. Think about the filming scenes in Horrificator for example. Chloe is acting like her usual self again, and refuses to allow Marinette to be the lead actress because she'll get to kiss Adrien. A tragedy, I know! Therefore, there's a whole plot to get her out of the room long enough for the scene to happen. People actively consider her at the very least a pain in the rear, and probably someone they just don't even want to talk to.

Obviously this isn't an excuse for anything she does. My point here is that from the perspective of the narrative, even while acting the part of a "Queen B", Chloe reaps none of the benefits, and in fact only serves to make people dislike her more with every episode that passes by. Even Adrien, who I'll circle back to in a second, her childhood friend who has a good opinion of her when he first comes to school, eventually stops trying to defend Chloe's behavior. There are, I think, a lot of reasons as to why she acts this way. Precisely none of them are an excuse or a "get out of jail" free card. Chloe still chooses to behave the way she does, regardless of the motivations.

About Adrien, we know that he and Chloe have known each other for a long while now. She was quite possibly his singular friend during his otherwise relatively isolating childhood, and she's very clearly attached to him. Chloe constantly clings to Adrien and drapes herself over him, and while he seems to find it annoying, there's still never a sense of disgust like with Lila in later Seasons. She's being suffocating, but there is never a connotation of romance here. Still, Chloe does everything she can to keep Adrien close to her, and (in Origins) "teach him how things are" in school. She's the one who got him signed up as a student in the first place, mind you, so she very clearly wants him to be around her. And while Chloe does brag about him being a famous model, she could just...do that without ever actually bringing Adrien out of the house? Clearly that's not the reason why she went through all the trouble to actually get him in the class, because bragging about it would probably go worse if she did it in front of him, or in an environment where Adrien could easily hear about and react to it. Chloe is very possessive of her "best friend" (and only friend, discounting Sabrina), and constantly belittles Marinette for trying to get close to him. Mind you, she doesn't find out about her feelings for Adrien until Season 3 I think. We never see Nino get bullied for befriending him, so what gives?

I'll talk about reasoning later down the line. For now, let's move onto Season 2. Amidst the beginnings of Ladybug handing out Miraculous jewels like candy to her best pals, seriously Season 4 overdid it, Chloe also exists. And during Despair Bear, Adrien finally puts his foot down about her behavior. He tells her that he can't be friends with someone who acts like a bully, and Chloe is genuinely hurt by this, to the point where she does her best to put on a good show and convince Adrien that is capable of not being an ass. Which is actually the case, believe it or not. She holds back the snides, does her best to make casual conversation with the people she considers to be inferior to her (I'll get to that, don't worry), and makes a real effort to keep at it for the sake of their friendship. The reason why she blows up here is made very obvious by the episode itself. Chloe is in unfamiliar territory and clearly reining herself in a lot, which Despair Bear pokes fun of in several back-to-back scenes. She doesn't want to do this, clearly has mutual dislike for the people she's forced to put up with every day and has made up her mind about a long time ago, for the sake of the one person she considers a genuine friend. And mind you, Chloe never uses Adrien for something. She brags about his job in Origins, and preens about their friendship often, but she never takes advantage of him like she does Sabrina. I will get to their toxic friendship in a minute, don't worry, but Chloe chooses not to try doing this with him. Adrien is...oblivious, to put it nicely, and she could easily try and play around that to serve her own goals, but she doesn't. Keep this in mind.

Anyway, she blows up because Armand (also c'mon, if you wanted to make the joke that Chloe doesn't know her butler's name, Jean "insert today's last name" was more than enough, Thomas) keeps lugging her teddy bear and playing pretend with her in a room full of people. I'm sorry, but that may be the most relatable Chloe moment in the whole show. Are you kidding me??? Of course she'd be embarrassed by this! I mean sure, her reaction to the situation is wrong, she shouldn't have screamed at him or threatened the man's job, but Chloe has serious anger management issues. That is obvious, because she acts like this every single day! Why would Armand do this??? She's already way out of her comfort zone by even hosting the party in the first place, surely there's easier ways of reminding Chloe not to be a bitch? Just tap her on the shoulder and say "miss, remember Adrien?" because that's the whole reason this is happening! The teddy bear is completely unecessary! Especially the voice acting! It made me laugh so hard when I first watched that episode but can you blame Chloe for being pissed? Again, she reacted poorly because her self control is comparable to Plagg's when there's camambert in his field of vision! So yeah, it's wrong to scream people's ears off like that, but she was also upset. And she's fourteen mind you!

Anyway, my actual point about Season 2 is that we get to see Chloe's character development. Thank Nooroo, finally a proper arc in this damn show! And we also get to see her family life. Side note, Andre Bourgeois is a spineless coward who I'll be bashing momentarily. But Chloe's mother is horrible! Audrey Bourgeois is blatantly neglectful, if not abusive to her daughter! She treats Chloe the same way Chloe treats everyone else! As disposable, expendable things that don't "deserve" her attention because they're not good enough. Like, if this doesn't give a six year old some hefty trauma along with an inferiority complex, what will??? And the situation becomes even worse as Chloe becomes incresingly desperate during Style Queen, trying again and again to please Audrey by copying her behavior (which she's been doing this whole time) even more intensly, and acting like the entitled, self-absorbed narcissist that her mother is! And this is where we see exactly why Chloe does what she does! Again, none of this excuses her actions, but it does help us understand the behavior. Audrey constantly puts Chloe down and belittles her the same way she does to Marinette...only to later pick the kid that Chloe is jealous of (I will explain this in a second!) to come with her to New York, where Audrey had presumably yeeted herself off to years ago and never bothered to come visit! We already know that she pressured her husband into giving up his love for film to stay with her, maybe even during her pregnancy or after Chloe's birth. Only to promptly vanish and leave him (a person who never grew a spine or managed to stand up to what is undoubtebly a toxic relationship) with her miniature copy. It's obvious that Chloe's barely ever seen Audrey, but she idolizes the woman because that's her mother! Heck, Adrien idolizes Emilie even if she was arguably not a great person (see here) and Chloe is always kicked to the curb for just doing the same!

Audrey is a horrible person and an even worse role model, but when you're five years old and she disappears from your life, is it any wonder that there's a steaming hot pile of mommy issues here? If Chloe has been told by Audrey from the moment she was old enough to understand words that she isn't "exceptional" enough to "deserve" her time, then isn't it obvious why Andre tries and fails to make up for this by always coddling his daughter and giving in to her every whim? He's trying to please her and give Chloe a sense of self-importance that Audrey made near-impossible to develop, and also makes up for his own absence by basically bribing his own child! Not that Andre is innocent in this! If anything, he's even more at fault than Audrey! Because while she flew off into the sunset to fire her twenty-seventh unpaid intern of the week, he was still in Paris with Chloe! Who grew up with him, mind you! And sure, he got elected into office and had a busy job as a single parent! You know what else he did? Crime! Almost everything he does in this damn show is completely illegal! Bribery, blackmail, undue termination of Roger's position as a police officer, who Andre doesn't even have juristiction over mind you (because Paris had the National Police until like 2021-ish if I recall correctly), he's just a corrupt, scummy politian whose ideas (see Megaleech) are harmful to the people he's supposed to be serving and outright motivated by greed! And also, we are explicitly told that he taught Chloe to do these same things! Andre Bourgeois is a total idiot who's probably been committing tax evasion for all we know, and Audrey is a self-absorbed diva who bullies her own child constantly, when she even bothers to go see her! Which is never, unless she needs to be in Paris for some other event related to her job!

Thomas, what the heck do you mean Chloe is evil? Lila is an accomplice to a domestic terrorist, and a psychopath against whom the only protection is the show's PG rating! If Lila could, she'd burn Marinette's house down for shits and giggles my good man! Audrey is everything I just mentioned, Andrey is a corrupt, spineless politician, Tomoe physically abuses her daughter with fucking katanas on the daily, Gabriel Agreste is that domestic terrorist who almost fired every nuclear warhear in the USA by the way! Because that was stupid of the NYC special to do! But he still did it! Plus the genocide in Shanghai! Accident or not, Hawkmoth is still responsible! And later on he also put his son in a room! A rubber room! Thankfully there weren't any rats, as if he needs another OSHA violation! Are you people insane when you say "I don't know why Chloe acts like this"? Have you lost your marbles??? Do you want me to have an aneurysm? Of course a child is going to act the way Chloe does if this is the shit she's been dealing with since Day 0 of her life! Does that make it okay? Absolutely not! But does it mean that she deserved what happened to her canonically? Also no! I'll talk about how the corruption arc could have worked at the end, because they tried and failed to do that, so let's circle back to the "jealous of Marinette" thing from a minute ago, kay?

Note: We're doing this in part 2 because this is closing in on 3k words already. The whole rant is done, no you don't want to know how long it is, I'm just splitting it because nobody will ever read 7.5k words worth of anything on Tumblr dot com.

< next post >

[play-my-game]

[greatandholypangolin]

Wee Free Men - An Unprofessional Diagnosis Of The Characters

alright, this is likely going to be a long post and likely going to be an unfinished post, but I’m a firm believer that Terry Pratchett was neurodivergent and has projected his neurodivergency onto every character in discworld, so I’m going to be making headcanon diagnosises for every character, starting with Wee Free Men because I’ve been reading Tiffany Aching and fuck chronological order.

Note- I’m only doing the neurodivergent traits from THIS BOOK because I’m not combing through the whole mini series, I’m may be stupid but I’m not an idiot.

Tiffany Aching

starting off strong with our main character. I believe she’s definitely autistic and I’m going to just list autistic traits she shows with quotes to support them.

Not knowing what was socially acceptable, the unspoken rules. ‘she’d read the dictionary all the way through. No one told her you weren’t supposed to’ ‘I buried her cat […] someone had to’

word association that based on sensations ‘sussurus […] Tiffany liked the taste of the word. It made her think of mysterious people in long cloaks whispering important secrets behind a door’

not having the “correct” emotional reactions to things ‘I ought to be scared, but I’m just angry’

Being ignored or left out of things ‘People tended to leave Tiffany alone’

taking things literally (~measuring a soup plate after being told Jenny had eyes as big as soup plates~), ‘a girl was as beautiful as the day is long. Well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light’

Lacking a proper understanding of danger ‘she used her brother as bait’

being very blunt in her speech ‘are you a witch?’

noticing things that others don’t, being observant (~do I really need examples? It happens so often~)

questioning things generally accepted because they didn’t make sense to her ‘The wicked old witch. And Tiffany had thought: where’s the evidence?’

I’ve come to the horrible realisation that I’ve gotten 9 autistic traits from only 2 chapters of this 14 chapter book, and only one character too. This may be a much larger task than I initially thought.

[everythingseasoning]

M’s Anime Analysis Masterlist*

includes: Haikyu!!, A Lull in The Sea, My Hero Academia, Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen, more to come!

diary entries and other insights: FOUND HERE*

Character Analysis’

Suguru Geto In Depth (Jujutsu Kaisen)

Megumi Fushiguro Brief (Jujutsu Kaisen)

Duo/Dynamic Analysis’

Satosugu brief analysis (Jujutsu Kaisen)

[enha-stars]

y’all ain’t ready for this sunghoon fic i’m cooking up 😂😂😂

[ven10]

hello :D! i'm curious that with the quagmires being your favorite characters, do you have headcanons for them, pre and/or post canon?

Hiya! :) I have SO MANY hcs about them so thanks for asking!!!! :D

Pre-canon relationship dynamic:

Quigley was closer to Isadora than to Duncan before the fire although he still was really close to Duncan too. I mainly think this bc in ‘The Slippery Slope’ Quigley mentioned Isadora on her own a few times, even quoting a couplet she wrote, whereas he only mentioned Duncan when talking about both of his siblings.

In order of most to least mischievous growing up I feel like it’d go Quigley, then Isadora and lastly Duncan.

Games/How the triplets would play when they were young:

Duncan: Would grab any random object of *aproximately* the right size (could be one of his mother’s shoes or it could be a spatula) and pretend it was a microphone. He’d follow people around “reporting” (more so narrating,really) what they were doing. This would REALLY annoy Isadora bc the worst thing when having writer’s block would be to have someone right beside you describing how you “stare blankly at a page in anguish. No inspiration detected for at least another treacherous week”.

Quigley: Strikes me as the kind of guy to climb trees, regardless of age tbh. He just has the vibe.

He would build forts at EVERY opportunity. Duncan once challenged him to build one in every room of the mansion and he almost did, with the exception of his parents’ office which was always locked.

He’d also draw loads. His drawing of a cave in TSS was described as an “elegant rendering” so I imagine he started doing art young. He’d get too passionate with a box of crayons and end up snapping most of them though. For his sixth birthday he’s gifted one of those pencils with multiple colours in the led and somehow angles it so that all the purple is used up first.

Isadora: She’d write plays for her+her siblings to perform for their parents+their parents’ friends that had surprisingly dark plot lines, especially for a 7 year old. Oh, and all the lines would rhyme, of course. She’d get annoyed when people read the script and asked if it was all one long song rather that the masterpiece of poetry she intended it to be perceived as.

Quigley would really enjoy acting in her plays+pour his heart and soul into the performance. Duncan would get really excited about it and do great when practicing with just the three of them but when it came to the actual performance he’d get shy+back out meaning Quigley or Isadora have to fill in for his role.

🎃 Halloween:

For Halloween one year, Isadora thought it’d be an amazing idea to dress up as Evelyn the conjoined twin bc she loved the song ‘Evelyn Evelyn’ based on her but Quigley found their story too depressing and Duncan didn’t like that it meant one of the triplets would get left out. Quigley suggests ‘Alvin and the chipmunks’ as a group costume earning instant “no”s from his siblings. They end up dressing in individual costumes based off historical figures (A poet, an investigative journalist and an explorer) but create their own story involving time-travel that connects the 3 characters.

Isadora loves Halloween as she is a goth(headcannon) so it really goes with her vibe. Quigley takes information about monsters/spooky creatures like vampires or werewolves and uses it to decide on which part of the world would be best for them to inhabit. Duncan then uses Quigley’s theories to research newspaper articles from the area, searching for any sign of the creatures.

Style/Fashion sense 🌟🧥

Duncan 📰:

Comfy green jumpers/sweaters or sweater-vests, white short-sleeved dress shirts and dress trousers/pants. (Pre-canon)

Comfy green polo-neck jumpers and (usually brown) corduroy pants/trousers and either dark green or white high top shoes. (Post-canon) Occasionally wears neatly applied eyeliner. The slight change in style is bc Duncan doesn’t want to wear clothes that feel so similar to a school uniform after spending so much time with those as his only clothes at Prufrock. He’ll occasionally wear hoodies but not if he’s to be seen in public.

Owns a few T-shirts with Dorothy Parker quotes which he cherishes and wears daily, even if they can’t be seen under the jumper/sweater. One quote he’d have is: “The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue”

Isadora+Quigley once bought him a quirky reporter’s hat with a feather in it as a joke but Duncan ended up adoring it; convincing himself it gave him an extra boost of inspiration when writing articles. 🪶

Has a Polaroid camera looped round his neck 📸

Quigley 🗺:

Initially, he struck me as a rucksack guy but I was reading over TSS yesterday and discovered he canonically uses a totebag, “I was putting an atlas in a totebag I found”-Quigley Quagmire (‘The Slippery Slope’ Chapter 8, page 148) so technically that’s a canon not a headcanon but oh well 🙃

Wears clothes more so for practicality than for style, although if he has a choice he’ll get things in dark purple.

He’d wear cargo pants bc of all the pockets; this would inspire Isadora to write a poem titled ‘Two and a half’ about a scientist who was trying to clone someone twice but messed up, resulting in one of the copies (Quigley) having no legs.

He would also wear a jacket with tonnes of pockets bc it’s practical for the explorer’s life he leads plus it looks cool. Although, it looks a little less cool when he stitches on a hood with fabric that doesn’t even match.

He drew maps on a couple of T-shirts and wears those, unfortunately he has to redraw them every time they get washed.

Wears exclusively boots bc of their grip+durability, one boot would have purple laces and the boot on the other foot would have black laces bc the original lace got stuck in a thorn bush so he stole borrowed one of Isadora’s.

As for accessories; a compass on string looped round his neck, clips shoved in at random to keep hair from falling in his face as he climbs, a hat/beanie with pins on it

Also: Frayed fingerless gloves!!! I saw this in one of Quill’s art pieces of Quigley and like the idea immensely ( @lemonysnicket ) :))

Always has the most RANDOM items in his pockets; will reach in looking for a packet of gum and come out with binoculars.

Isadora 📜:

Goth.Goth.Emo.Goth.

Wears almost exclusively black: Black boots or high top converse (with doodles on the white toe bit in sharpie),

Wore black nail polish pre-canon. At Prufrock she improvises using black markers+pens on her nails. She once tried the same trick for mimicking eyeliner…it did not turn out well and Duncan brings it up at the WORST times.

Wears winged black eyeliner, smudged under the eyes.

Likes long swishy skirts (midi skirts). They’re sometimes a bit impractical but if she’s just spending the day writing poetry it’s fine. Otherwise she likes cuffed shorts with leggings underneath.

Violet once bought fishnet gloves bc she liked how they looked but gave them to Isa after they kept getting caught in her inventions. Isadora loves them even more bc they’re from Violet.

Has a really cool leather jacket but doesn’t wear it much bc she secretly worries that she isn’t cool enough for the jacket.

Has a T-shirt with all of Sappho’s poems printed out really small and arranged into a picture of Sappho herself. Quigley owns a similar one but his contains the bee-movie script.

Cooking abilities ranked🍳:

1: Quigley 🗺- he’s the best bc he had to cook for himself while “dead”. Granted, he did just eat canned peaches, toasted marshmallows, almonds and carrots but he had to find his own food anyway so that’s a start.

2: Isadora 📜- Her meals at Prufrock were cooked for her but it’s possible she had to cook for Duncan and herself at previous guardians. This task would fall on her as Duncan used to be afraid of stoves for a while after the fire

‘ “For a long time,” Duncan admitted, “I was afraid of any kind of fire. I didn’t even like to look at stoves.”’ -The Austere Academy, Chapter 3, page 47.

3: Duncan 📰- For the reason above and also bc he seems like the kind of guy who would mess up simple dishes by trying to apply extra information, “I read in a news article once about a famous chef who’d put mozzarella in porridge for extra flavour, let’s try that!” (Made-up quote)

Choice of stationary 🖊

Isadora: Fountain pen ✒️ bc it makes her poetry look fancy

Duncan: Biro bc it doesn’t smudge easily and he needs to writes down a lot of info quickly for his journalism 🖊

Quigley: Coloured biros bc they make maps easily decipherable+they don’t smudge easily which is useful for accuracy

In a modern AU Quigley has a 6 hour screen time average and it is ENTIRELY Google maps. Duncan listens to podcasts. Isadora’s Pinterest is made up completely of quotes.

Books/Literature 📚:

Apart from atlases, Quigley reads fantasy books with maps. He would adore books in the Grishaverse bc of this, especially obsessing over the canal system of Ketterdam which can be seen in detail in a map in ‘Crooked Kingdom’ by Leigh Bardugo. 📚 🧙‍♀️ However, with the Grisha triology (Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm + Ruin and Rising) he would be disappointed by how little the cartographer/ex-cartographer protagonist mentions maps.

Duncan would enjoy the ‘A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder’ series due to the strategic, organised layout alongside Pip-the protagonist- ‘s note-taking skills. As Duncan aspires to be an investigative journalist he’d be enthralled by the investigations that are central in these books. He would annotate the books as he reads them; filling them with his own theories as well as highlighting important information.

The poem ‘Long Distance II’ by Tony Harrison doesn’t consist of rhyming couplets but I think Isadora would find its portrayal of grief powerful regardless of whether it’s in her preferred poetic format. Especially as it’s about the loss of family members.

Quigley would create his own fantasy map using tea-stained paper with rice spilled on it, drawing around the rice to get the outline of a country. He’d be really strategic about the details he draws though; having mountains before rivers so the water runs off of them etc. 🗺

Favourite Colours 🎨:

Isadora: Pitch black 🖤

Duncan: Dark green 💚

Quigley: Dark purple💜

(Bc of their notebooks 📓)

Thanks for the ask!! :) <3

I wasn’t sure what to include so I wrote quite a bit, this was me restraining myself tho. I think about the Quagmire triplets a LOT :). This is only the tip of the iceberg ;)! :) I also have kind of detailed hcs about injuries the triplets would have after the eagle fight if u want to hear about that.

Please send more asks if you like! You can be as specific as you like, especially if it’s about the Quagmires! :D

[yuno-karei]

Should I do a similar thing to my bloodline ability explanations... but for familiars

[stillunusual]

In Depth - an unofficial Pet Shop Boys fan podcast

Pet Shop Boys fans Graham and Chris chat about everything PSB - albums, sleeves, singles, remixes, tours, outfits and more….

[epellucid]

via

[jcs-study]

JCS my way

(@nemoverne is partially responsible for this post, but truthfully I'd been meaning to get to it anyway. Still, thanks for being the kick in the ass that I needed to do it!)

Background

It goes without saying that JCS is one of my favorite musicals of all time, or else this blog wouldn't exist. Naturally, I've been brainstorming how to stage this thing since the first grade, and everybody who knows me knows that.

Indeed, I've had so many visions of how to do so over the years that, without my ever openly expressing any of my notions, I've seen many of them echoed by established directors, which gives me a certain amount of confidence that I'm on the right track.

While versions of these notes have previously appeared on my old Tumblr side blog (@gdelgidirector), on my main (non-Tumblr) blog Ars Pro Concreta, and on various forums, subreddits, and other places of discussion devoted to JCS, they have yet to appear on this blog, where I otherwise center all of my thinking about the show. Thanks to a recent ask, that changes this evening.

Links

Click here to access my latest proposal for staging JCS.

Additionally, while this is not a 1:1 reflection of the Musical Arrangements section of my notes (an earlier version of which from my main Tumblr handle was previously reblogged by nemoverne), I assembled a "JCS mix tape" of sorts with the help of a friend that I hear in my head when I picture what I describe in these pages. If you want to hear what I hear when I envision JCS, you can click here to listen to that.

[moreespressoformydepresso]

Call me controversial, but I don’t think people like Kaminari and dislike or hate Mineta because of their respective looks. Although I acknowledge it’s probably a factor, I personally don’t think it’s the main reason. I might be wrong, but I think I at least have some ground to stand on because I’m a person who, when getting into a new piece of media, picks their favorites by which character they think is the prettiest until they figure out personalities and change or keep favorites based on their actual character/arc/story/etc.

Now, Kaminari is definitely attractive, and there are definitely people who give him a pass for the more… questionable things he’s done (yes, as a Kami fan I too would rather forget the whole cheerleader outfits thing), I think it would be a bit shortsighted to say that that’s the only reason. Personally, I’m of the belief that a lot of people would have still preferred Kaminari over Mineta even if Mineta was a hunk and Kaminari was ugly.

Again, looks do matter somewhat, but given the popularity of characters like Usopp from One Piece I feel safe in saying that it’s not the deciding factor for a lot of anime fans. Now, to finally get to what I believe is the main reason for why Kaminari is so loved and Mineta isn’t: personality. Or, more specifically, the depth of their personality. I’ll try my best to contrast the two of them and explain why I believe this, because I’m passionate about analysis and you can’t stop me. Feel free to correct or add to anything I write in the comment section, I’d love to hear your thoughts! So, first things first, what exactly are their core personalities?

When I think of Kaminari, I think of someone who’s friendly and outgoing, an energetic goofball with a good heart who’s generally someone you want to be around. Sometimes he’s a bit reckless and he can be a bit dumb, sometimes he’s petty, but in the end you can all laugh about it. Yes, like a lot of teenage boys, he likes girls. And sometimes, in that appreciation of women, he goes a tad too far but it’s nothing too extreme.

When I think of Mineta, however, I mostly think about his over-the-top obsession with girls. His motivation to become a hero is literally to get girls to like him. The second thing I think of is his cowardice and how annoying I find it when he starts crying in tough situations. I understand it, but I’m not the one trying to become a hero. Also, Mineta criticizes others for being perverts in situations that end up being misunderstandings while he himself does some objectively fucked up shit in the name of horny. Despite this, he’s shown to have courage and aptitude when it matters most, and given his scores he seems to be pretty smart.

The main difference between the two, I think, is how they are most commonly seen in the manga and show. There are plenty of instances where we see Kaminari’s good personality traits, whereas most of Mineta’s screen-time is devoted to an extended pervert-joke. Sure, he has redeeming qualities, but even on the rare occasions these are shown there’s usually some pervertedness involved in one way or another. And ultimately, I think that’s the biggest reason people prefer Kaminari. Not only does Mineta go a lot further in being pervy that Kaminari, his redeeming qualities are also not only barely shown but also always accompanied by his perverse nature. And that’s why I think people like Kaminari and not Mineta.

This concludes my newest bit of word-vomit, this time on why I believe two characters who some see as similar are regarded so differently and evoke such different reactions from people, thank you for coming to my Ted-Talk