#is salvation of a sort

[lord-squiggletits]

What do you think is Tarn's favorite part of being ordered to do something? That he's worth something/seen as valuable or the idea of the reward at the end? Or something else entirely?

Probably closer to your first theory: my first instinct is that Tarn seems to derive a lot of his self-worth and purpose in life from an attachment to others/an ideology (see: his whole thing with Megatron), although I honestly doubt he was like that before Megatron fucked him up with brainwashing. Being ordered to do something = being needed, and being needed = having value and a reason for living.

It also seems to me that, even as Damus, Tarn has a bit of a rash/emotional/passionate streak: very much the type to fix an ideology/set of instructions upon himself, then charge forward with a sense of purpose. If we look at Damus getting irritated at Orion for "just sitting around and waiting for the Senate soldiers to show up," it seems this guy really wanted to ACT and DO, perhaps to the point of slight recklessness/thoughtlessness. As if he equated active "doing" with productivity and "having a plan" and taking initiative, but thought of waiting as a form of weakness/giving up/not being prepared. (Ties in rather neatly with his tendency for organization maybe... weird how he's simultaneously reckless with his individual actions but also needs a sense of Order And Hierarchy to feel fulfilled on a general life level.)

So I think Tarn also gets enjoyment from following orders bc eh... I'm genuinely not trying to make this a petplay thing 🤣but I'd say that maybe he gets a sense of comfort/security from being able to just charge forward and act, no need to worry about morality or questioning his own motives. Just outsource his thinking to someone else beloved, trusting, and all-wise (Megatron) so he can experience the pure bliss of fanaticism and utter self-righteousness/confidence in his own actions. He even admits to Deathsaurus that he let himself conflate Megatron with the Decepticon ideology when instead Decepticonism is based on a dream, an idea.

So on that note, it also seems to me that Tarn might like following orders specifically bc he feels a personal connection to Megatron? Megatron groomed him as a protege/his most dedicated and fanatical follower. Their conversation on Necroworld shows that Tarn quite obviously thinks the world of Megatron and wants to see him as that figure of legendary competence/willpower. I don't think Tarn just wants to have The Right Ideology so that he can Feel Good About Being A Good Person (TM); it seems like Tarn specifically wants* to have a personal connection, some sense of approval or specialness, a bond with some authority figure who not only assures that he can trust them, but that they also trust him utterly. I think it says a lot that Tarn was even able to fall in love (figuratively) with Megatron more than he was with Decepticon ideology itself. It points to the fact that what he's really missing is interpersonal connections. Er, as much as an incredibly toxic and manipulative parasocial relationship is an interpersonal connection, but I never said that it was a good connection.

*In light of recent panels of Damus I reviewed from a Tarn/Damus post I reblogged last night, Damus seemed to actually be quite comfortable challenging/questioning Orion to his face and wanting to know what their plan is and why. I think it says a lot that Damus' relationship with Orion was one between a leader and a soldier, yes, but it was also informal and non-hierarchical enough that Damus felt completely free to question Orion. When you contrast this with Tarn talking to Megatron ~4 million years later, he's suddenly switched to an attitude of absolutely worshipping Megatron and believing he has utterly absurd/impossible levels of ability, vision, confidence, willpower, etc. Seems to me like part of Megatron's brainwashing of Damus was specifically centered on wrapping his heart around his little finger for the purpose of cultivating that blind obedience. Given Megatron's thoughts at the end of his Spotlight issue (he refers to his soldiers basically as blind idiots who can be whipped into a furor with the right propaganda lines), this is a pretty common emotional manipulation tactic he used in general. It just seems like Megatron concentrated this manipulation by singling out Damus and making him feel special, that he saw himself in Damus, and that he truly cared about him and wanted him as a student. You know, an emotional connection.

Honestly, this is kinda dark tho, bc now I'm kind of sad and thinking that Tarn doesn't naturally have this level of codependence/slave-like devotion to a person and it was actually just something Megatron shaped him into as a leash of sorts... Damn, I can be horny about people sublimating their trauma/emotional issues through kink, but not in a guilt-free "haha he's a dog" way. 😔 JK I'll still call Tarn a dog (affectionate) bc it's just so true.

[stagefoureddiediaz]

The thing with Hen calling Chim Buck and Eddie the three judases is actually really interesting. Because Judas did what Jesus/ god wanted him to do. His betrayal was necessary - in Christian theology it is his betrayal that brought the salvation of humanity.

So Hen referring to the boys in this way is a moment of double meaning - yes it is a reference to her feeling betrayed, but it’s also a way of foreshadowing that they’ll have her back - that they are also her salvation and I think that’s really lovely

[coffinmotif]

the puppet and the oldest dream

[hidden-1n-the-sand]

And if the beast doesn’t kill you, then I’m sure the grief and the guilt will.

kate jacobs - comfort food | xx | Frank Bidart - Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 | Alexander Anderson from Hellsing Ultimate | xx |

[gold-tinted]

I'm gonna say it, the matthew/cordelia/james love triangle was the WORST in all of tsc. literally every other love triangle was handled better I truly hated reading about that.

[set-wingedwarrior]

I know it happens often to see writers during a long fic to complain at some point about the first chapters because they got better in the meantime and they look bad to them now.

But this is the first time where I saw this happened when the writing actually got worse

[yuseirra]

I've been three minutes in P5X, but do you think this game has to do with P2? The characters oddly resemble the characters from there with the protagonist sharing some resemblance to tatsuya, the homeroom teacher looks a bit like maya but it could be just me. I never played P2 but my brother did, and according to what I've heard, there are (spoilers but) two different worlds. Maybe this game has to do with that "alternate world" and everything that happens in P5X is an alternate reality.. but perhaps those two worlds that got cut off from each other could be merging and that's why there are problems that are arising or something? That was just a thought that crossed my mind and I'm sure there would already be theories from who know this series better

[raayllum]

perpetually obsessed with the way you cannot pry rayla out of what has led callum into aaravos’ clutches. callum being obsessed with the mirror in the first place? is largely because he was looking for a distraction from the pain of losing her aaravos being able to possess him at all? is because callum did dark magic to save her. and even if you subscribe for some reason, framing wise, that he didn’t do it solely for her and instead for the dragon, he only believed in that cause because she convinced him to (“someone has to take a stand when no one else will” “you’re right”). the 4x04 intro implies that the key is directly connected to aaravos’ interest in callum in the first place? callum only has the cube because rayla grabbed it for him even when everything went to hell in a hand basket. callum only asked for the cube because he recognized the symbols from rayla’s drawing, and only pursued magic because she called him a mage even when he dismissed himself as nothing. he only did a spell because she pushed at him to do it: “is this a guessing game? just do it” like they are insane

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

Thinking about Jon, Jaime, and Theon all journeying to the underworld and being surrounded by death/dead people. I’ve always believed that the important connector here is Jon (because I believe he functions as a sort of God of the Dead figure - though that’s a story for another day), but like…it’s so interesting that all of them have this experience, and that Theon’s and Jaime’s dreams are connected mostly to Jon (and I guess to each other if you buy into weirwood.net). It’s hard not to read into the religious symbolism here because GRRM is no C.S Lewis so it’s hard to tell what Christian parallels are intended by the author. But like…one messiah, two “criminals”, all go through “death”? But who will reach salvation and who won’t? 🤔

[peniswizard69]

A sequence of events

Jacksfilms tries to guess movies by their Letterboxd reviews Youtube video

References Zootopia shrew Godfather scene

Remember that Judy met the shrew in a neighborhood marked "little rodentia" despite shrews not being rodents

Search what order shrews are actually in

It's Eulipotyphla. What else is in it? Moles, hedgehogs, solenodons (already knew solenodons). Moonrats?

One genus of moonrats is Hylomys, that's from Greek for tree top mouse, which is neat. What are some of the specific names?

Macarong from Vietnamase for vampire. Now I need to know about Vietnamese vampires.

The English Wikipedia page for vampire has Ma cà rồng listed as its Vietnamese counterpart

Etymology of Ma cà rồng deeply unclear; ma is demon, but cà rồng is confidently listed as different things in different Wiki sources: Vietnamese Wikipedia connects it to Indonesian for mountain, English Wiktionary connects it to a Tai Dam word not translated directly but showing its cognates all mean cage or prison, and Vietnamese Wiktionary connects it to Khasi for rib. None of those things connect and I've learned of two ethnicities.

Afflict Google Translate upon the Vietnamese page on vampires, dreading any possible inaccuracies

A quote from some book says: vampires act like humans during the day, being a servant and doing normal things, but at night they stick their two big toes into their nostrils and fly off to be a demon and drink women's blood as they give birth. Then they come home, put their feet in a bucket of water, take their feet out of their nose, and turn human again. The human doesn't remember what they were doing that night

What was that about the toes?

That's the phrase Google Translate spat out, "two big toes into their nostrils", which is to me both insane and visceral. This cannot be right

By a repetitive process of deleting parts of the sentence and seeing how it affects the meaning, identify the role of each word and run through Wiktionary to verify translation; it checks the fuck out.

Xo hai ngón chân cái vào lô mui would be "insert two finger leg big in hole nose" if xo had a little sideways semi circle on the o, lô had a tilde on the ô, and mui has a tilde on the u. My phone's keyboard has limitations

Fuck it keep reading. Boring stuff about European vampires that I already knew, oh goody more Vietnamese specifics! This guy says vampires have red foreheads and a lot of white in their eyes!

Wrestle Google Translate and Wiktionary in order to attempt to decipger what "a lot of white in their eyes" means. The literal translation appears to be eye much core white. The word for core can also be heart? What is it doing there? Dead end

Says it goes to its grandmother's house? More wrestling. Mistranslation of "midwife", back to women giving birth

South East Asian folklore is deeply concerned with pregnancy. I've learned this. I've learned this in my research

Says their nostrils are extra big to fit the toes. Also says they grab their ears in their hands when they fly off?

Wrestling ole Goog Transl and Wicker Shenary again. Tay xách tai - hand pull ear. Xách tai is actually an example sentence for xách, in the meaning of pull up (derogatory)! So yeah

It is roughly 1:30 AM.

Start writing this post

It is 1:52 AM.

None of this has anything to do with mountains prisons or ribs btw. Or shrews or Jacksfilms for that matter

I woke up at 8 today

I'm so hungry

[shredsandpatches]

probably shouldn't be reading about Doctor Faustus and religious trauma at 1 am but here's some good quotes: the top one is from top from Mark James Richard Scott, "'That’s hard': Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and the Trauma of Reprobation" (Early Theatre 23.2, 9-20) and the bottom one is from David Bevington's intro to the play in the Norton Anthology of Renaissance Drama.

[noxtivagus]

hmmm. oh my god my mind is a mess i rlly can't write what i want to rn but i will just Dump

[sexysilverstrider]

ok while this ending is still bittersweet its a bit more hopeful than sciens and mathis'

[creepyclothdoll]

The Devil's Wheel

The Devil’s Wheel

“If you say yes,” said the Devil, “a single man, somewhere in the world, will be killed on the spot. But three million dollars is nothing to sneeze at, missus.”

“What’s the catch?” You squint at him suspiciously over the red-and-black striped carnival booth. You’re smarter than he thinks you are– a devil deal always has a catch, and you’re determined to catch him before he catches you. 

“Well, the catch is that you’ll know you did it. And I’ll know, too. And the big man upstairs’ll know, I ‘spose. But what’s the chariot of salvation without a little sin to grease the wheels? You can repent from your mansion balcony, looking out at your waterfront views, sipping a bellini in your eighties. But hey, it’s up to you– take my deal or leave it.”

The Devil lights a cigar without a match, taking an inhale, and blowing out a cloud of deep, sweet-smelling tobacco laced faintly with something that reminds you of rotten eggs. If he does have horns, they’re hidden under his lemon yellow carnival barker hat. He wears a clean pinstripe suit and a red bowtie. No cloven hooves, no big pointy fork, but you know he’s the Devil without having to be told. Though he did introduce himself.

He’s been perfectly polite. 

You know you need the money. He knows it too, or he wouldn’t have brought you here, to this strange dark room, whisking you away from your new house in the suburbs as fast as a wish. Now you’re in some sort of warehouse, where all the windows seem to be blacked out– or, maybe, they simply look out into pitch darkness, though it is the middle of the day. A single white spotlight shines down on the two of you. 

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” you say. “I bet the man is someone I know, right? My husband?”

“Could be,” the Devil says with a pointed grin. “That’s for the wheel to decide.”

He steps back and raises his black-gloved hand as the tarp flies off of the large veiled object behind him. The light of the carnival wheel nearly blinds you. Blinking lights line the sides. Jingling music blares over speakers you can’t see. The flickering sign above it reads:

THE DEVIL’S WHEEL

“Step right up and claim your fortune,” the Devil barks. “Spin the wheel and pay the price! Or leave now, and a man keeps his life.”

You examine the wheel. 

The gambling addict

The doting boyfriend

The escaped convict

The dog dad

The secretive sadist

“These are all the possible men I can kill?” You ask, thumbing the side of the wheel. It rolls smoothly in your hand. Then you quickly stop, realizing that this might constitute a spin under the Devil’s rules. He flashes a smile at you, watching you halt its motion. 

“Addicts, convicts, murderers– plenty of terrible options for you to land on, missus!”

“Serial wife murderer?”

“Now who would miss a fellow like that? I can guarantee that the whole world would be better off without him in it, and that’s a fact.”

The hard worker

The compulsive liar

The animal torturer

The widower

The desperate businessman

The failed musician

The beloved son

“My husband is on here too,” you say. 

“Your husband Dave, yes. The wheel has to be fair, otherwise there’s simply no stakes.”

“I know what’s gonna happen,” you say, crossing your arms. “This wheel is rigged. I’m gonna spin it around, and it’ll go through all the killers and stuff, and then it’s gonna land on my husband no matter what.”

“Why, I would never disgrace the wheel that way,” the Devil says, wounded. “I swear on my own mother’s grave– may she never escape it. In fact, take one free spin, just to test it out! This one’s on me, no death, no dollars.”

You cautiously reach up to the top of the wheel and feel its heaviness in your hand. The weight of hundreds of lives. But also, millions of dollars. You pull the wheel down and let it go.

Clackity-clackity-clackity-clackity

Round and round it goes. 

The college graduate

The hockey fan

The Eagle Scout

The cold older brother

The charming younger brother

The two-faced middle child

The perfectionist

The slob 

Your husband Dave

Clackity-clackity-clackity.

Finally, the wheel lands on a name. A title, really.

The photographer

“Hmm, tough, missus, but that’s the way of the wheel. But hey, look! Your husband is allllll the way over here,” he points with his cane to the very bottom of the wheel, all the way on the other side from where the arrow landed. “As you can see, it’s not rigged. The wheel truly is random.”

“So… there really isn’t another catch?” You ask. 

“Isn’t it enough for you to end a man’s life? You need a steeper price? If you’re really such a glutton for punishment, I’ll gladly re-negotiate the terms.”

“No, no… wait.” You examine the wheel, glancing between it and the Devil.

You really could use that three million dollars. Newly married, new house, you and your husband’s combined debt– those student loans really follow you around. He’s quite a bit older than you, and even he hasn’t paid them off yet, to the point where the whole time you were dating you watched him stress out about money. You had to have a small, budget wedding, and a small, budget honeymoon. Three million dollars could be big for the two of you. You could re-do your honeymoon and go somewhere nice, like Hawaii, instead of just taking two weeks in Atlantic City. You deserve it. 

Even so, do you really want to kill an innocent photographer? Or an innocent seasonal allergy sufferer? Or an innocent blogger? Just because you don’t know or love these people doesn’t mean that someone doesn’t. 

The cancer survivor

The bereaved

The applicant

Some of these were so vague. They could be anyone, honestly. Your neighbors, your father, your friends…

The newlywed

The ex-gifted kid

The uncle

The Badgers fan

“My husband is a Badgers fan,” you say.

“How lovely,” the Devil says. 

Then it hits you.

Of course.

The weightlifter.

The careful driver.

The manager.

The claustrophobe.

Your husband Dave lifts weights at the gym twice a month. You wouldn’t call him a pro, but he does it. He also drives like he’s got a bowl of hot soup in his lap all the time, because he’s afraid of being pulled over. He just got promoted to management at his company, and he takes the stairs to his seventh-story office because he hates how small and cramped the elevator is.

“I get your game,” you announce. “You thought you could get me, but I figured you out, jackass!” “Oh really? What is my game, pray tell?” The Devil responds, leaning against his cane.

“All these different titles– they’re all just different ways to describe the same guy. My husband isn’t one notch on the wheel, he’s every notch. No matter what I land on, Dave dies. I’m wise to your tricks!” 

The Devil cackles. 

“You’re a clever one, that’s for sure. I thought you’d never figure it out.”

“Thanks but no thanks, man,” you say with a triumphant smirk. “I’m no rube. No deal. Take me back home.”

“As you wish, missus,” the Devil says. He snaps his fingers, and you’re gone, back to your brand-new house with your new husband. “Don’t say I never tried to help anyone.”

[ouclematis]

i hated meakashi hen because it hit close to home.

[bimyself06]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but since Elena is Katherine's and therefore Nadia's descendant doesn't that make her a traveler? Meaning that now that she's human and the traveler's curse is broken she can use magic and that means that so can her daughter, Stefanie?

There's also the fact that both the Salvatores are somehow related to Silas, who was a powerful witch, and yet none of his descendants have magic? I feel like it would make sense for the child of the last doppelganger who is also descendent from travelers and the former vampire who has consumed the cure to have magic.