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tinylongwing · 4 months ago

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Vide Noir's dual narrative structure

All right, here it is, me making good on at least one of my meta threats. Lord Huron's album Vide Noir can be interpreted as an album with two parallel, contrasting narratives - that of the lead protagonist Buck Vernon, as well as that of Johnnie Redmayne.

Disclaimer: this is an interpretation I think is pretty sound and well-reasoned, but I make no claim to any of this being proven canon information.

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For those unfamiliar or who need a reminder, the primary narrative is this: the year is 1967, and we start near the end of Buck's journey, as he awakens from being black-brained (Lost in Time and Space). Having just suffered an overdose on the drug vide noir, his memories are slow to return to him, but return they do - his fiancee, Leigh/Lee Green (from here on Leigh but both spellings have been used), left him without a word one night, and he decided to follow, heading west to Los Angeles from their home town of Detroit, Michigan. He's been struggling to find her, checking every bar in the city in case she was booked to sing at one as her move was the result of her chasing her dream of becoming a singer. He doesn't remember a lot about himself, really, after that overdose, but he remembers her, and his love for her makes him desperate to find her.

We're then taken back to the night he left to find her (Never Ever) and his journey is mostly linear from there - he meets a fortune teller, Lady Moonbeam, who tells him that pursuing Leigh will end in his ruin, but he refuses to accept her advice and pushes on (Ancient Names I & II). He laments that he's been some kind of fuckup, that maybe he chased Leigh away through his own behavior, but that he still loves her and begs for her to return (Wait By the River). At some point around here he also learns of the drug vide noir and contemplates using it himself for clues.

(Note that unlike in the movie, in the album, nothing suggests that Buck suffered from a murder attempt by Z'Oiseau's henchmen but that instead he may have overdosed himself in an attempt to find Lee. However, there's plenty of reason to suspect that the film is the canon interpretation here anyway and the henchmen kidnapping Buck just doesn't make for a song I guess.)

One way or another, he winds up black-brained, where some deep existential truths of the universe are revealed to him (Secret of Life - namely that everyone and everything dies in the end, and that a human life is brief, fleeting, and ultimately meaningless within the context of the universe as a whole). He somehow reawakens rather than dying (Back from the Edge) and, again, understands that nothing he does will ever matter, has never mattered*, but that *even though* he's suffered greatly already on this quest, he's still committed to trying to find Leigh, pitting himself against that careless universe (The Balancer's Eye).

So he keeps searching (When the Night is Over) until he finds a clue, or a helping hand of some sort, that leads him on the right path to his beloved Leigh (Moonbeam). We get one more reminder of the forces at work here - vide noir is some awful stuff, it nearly killed him, Leigh herself is hooked on it now, it shows you terrible truths and nightmares beyond human comprehension (Vide Noir) - and when all is said and done, as Buck thinks he's about to "rescue" Leigh from her fate and bring her back to his fantasy of a perfect happy life together, she rejects him. He came all this way through time and space, and she doesn't love him at all in the end (Emerald Star).

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I consider this the primary narrative here because it makes use of all the songs on the album, it has a clear start and ending and a mostly linear structure, and the album basically serves as a soundtrack to Buck's fool's errand. The film agrees - every scene is centered around his journey, after all. But we have context from Lord Huron's other albums, as well as the lyrics and musical stylings of multiple songs on Vide Noir, that show us that Buck isn't necessarily the only narrator on this album. Strange Trails, of course, came out three years prior, and features songs by multiple fictional bands performing songs which serve as narration for a diverse cast of characters. Unlike on Strange Trails, where each track has a writer or band specifically named and assigned to it as well as a character narrative, Vide Noir does not give us such conclusive information, but we can still put clues together to understand at least some of who the in-universe performers might be on Vide Noir.

Most likely, multiple of these songs are by the Buck Vernon Band - this is pretty obvious. Buck's semi-autobiographical music is all over Strange Trails, usually referencing a girl he loves, sometimes referencing that the girl left him, often giving her different names, all starting with L (Fool For Love's "Lily", and "Louisa").

But the other band that we can easily identify as performers on Vide Noir are the Phantom Riders. For those who need an introduction, this is the band composed of four members of the World Enders gang, with Dale Redmayne at the helm as lead writer. They were seen previously on Strange Trails as well, with banger surf/rockabilly hits like Hurricane, Until the Night Turns, and The World Ender. As a storytelling tool, they are primarily brought in to tell us about the man-turned-undead horror entity known as The World Ender himself, and then otherwise mostly we get their songs about Dale's brother Johnnie Redmayne, who is introduced to us in Strange Trails as a fun-loving and presumably fairly young guy, a thrillseeker and hedonist, who lives for the moment as if the world could end any day. The Buck Vernon Band jumps in between some of these songs with an interjection to tell us that wait, Johnnie is dead, or was, but he got back up. In Dead Man's Hand, Buck speculates that Johnnie could have been murdered or may have killed himself, accidentally or intentionally, upon first seeing him. It's in Vide Noir that we actually learn more about the circumstances of Johnnie's death.

Before we get to that, let's first identify which Vide Noir songs are by the Phantom Riders. This isn't all that hard to do. Any song that references The World Ender is presumably theirs - that gives us Secret of Life right away ("I sit alone in the dark, and I try to remember the words you spoke when you summoned the Ender"). This is reinforced in the Alive From Whispering Pines webseries, episode 423 - Secret of Life, when played, shows a skeleton prop the band has jokingly referred to as Cobb Avery on their social media posts in the past, and after the song ends in this episode, the tune continues in a slowed and distorted fashion through a clip of a WBUB movie version of Dead Man's Hand showing Johnnie rising from the pavement when Buck is about to bury him.

Ancient Names Parts I and II are presumably written by the same band as a two-part song. In the Vide Noir film, the Phantom Riders are performing Part II in the underground club. Additionally, in Alive From Whispering Pines episode 426, after Tubbs Tarbell is done reminiscing about the band and their nihilism, Ancient Names Part II is the next song covered - and often in this series, the structure of the segments between songs are intentional and related to either the song they precede or the song they follow, so it's likely that the placement of the Phantom Riders' appearance followed by a track they're associated with is meant to help confirm them as the performers. In addition, Ancient Names Part I references a fortune teller, and we know from the film that the fortune teller in question, Lady Moonbeam, is associated with the World Enders and knows the Redmaynes.

The last track on Vide Noir that is most likely theirs is the title track, Vide Noir. We have two points of evidence for this - one lyrical ("Many evils have I enjoyed, prowling the night raising hell with the boys" which feels like a pretty direct reference to the World Enders' nighttime violence) and one musical - the main melody of Vide Noir is identical to that of Ancient Names (and Fortune Teller's Theme, actually). In Strange Trails, using the same melody for multiple songs was an easy way to tie Frankie Lou's songs together, and here we can see that it ties two Phantom Riders tracks together directly, indicating that not only are they both by the same band, but that Vide Noir is a followup to Ancient Names part I, in which our fortune teller did warn us things would go very, very wrong.

(And besides all of that, the Phantom Riders tracks on Vide Noir all tend to be similar in musical style - psychedelia-flavored garage rock with a heavy bass line, in contrast to other songs on the album.)

With those songs identified, we should also be aware of just how much Lord Huron seem to love their dual narratives. In Strange Trails, we have a really concrete example of this with The Night We Met. This song was in-universe written by Frankie Lou, presumably about her doomed relationship with Z'Oiseau and how much she wishes she had never met him to begin with (as she echoes in her dialogue in the Vide Noir film when speaking to Buck in her dressing room). However, the music video for this song shows not Frankie and Z'Oiseau, but instead Buck, driving west, while reflecting on his own failure to keep Leigh, wishing he could go back in time and fix things, and meanwhile kind of hallucinating her as he goes. In the album Long Lost, we get another dual narrative in I Lied, which is performed by Donny and Midge but is also sung by Leigh in Vide Noir, foreshadowing her breakup with and lack of love for Buck. There are certainly other dual narratives in both of those albums to be found as well - so what we should keep in mind here is that often, songs can be written and performed by a character or band in order to narrate for themselves or someone close to them, but that just as in our real-world movie soundtracks or our favorite character playlists on spotify, those songs can be applied to other characters in different (but somewhat similar) situations than the ones they were written for.

So! We have four Phantom Riders tracks on Vide Noir, all of which were presumably not written originally in-universe about Buck Vernon, because why would they be, Buck and the World Enders only briefly cross paths and at the very least we know that Ancient Names Part II was written well before he ever met them. Instead, it makes the most sense if like the bulk of the Phantom Riders songs, these tracks serve Johnnie's narration instead.

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If that's the case, what does that give us? Winding around and through Buck's journey is this second storyline. Johnnie Redmayne, having used and enjoyed vide noir himself abundantly ("I had a vision tonight that the world was ending" as one probable example), decides it's time to get his hands on bulk quantities so as to get the Enders in on controlling the flow of the drug in LA rather than letting Z'Oiseau maintain a monopoly, thereby also increasing revenue for the members of the gang.

It's Moonbeam who warns him to knock it off first. We know, thanks to the film, that he'd spoken to her at some point about his plans to investigate the source of the drug at Tobey's arcade and try to get his hands on some to sell. Whatever his exact plan was, in Ancient Names Part 1, Moonbeam warns him that pursuing this is going to get him killed. Vide noir isn't just a drug, it's something extremely dangerous, tied to dangerous people, and he needs to get away from "her" (and note that frequently throughout music history, drugs have been personified as a "her" or an unnamed lover, whether for poetic reasons or to evade censorship that might come from talking directly about drug use - and Cursed, off Strange Trails, is one more in-universe example, where "her" refers both to Leigh Green and to drug use, specifically vide noir).

Immediately afterward, Ancient Names Part 2, in addition to serving as a very classic sort of World Enders nihilism anthem, can easily be interpreted as Johnnie saying "fuck that, I do what I want, you only live one life anyway and even if it kills me, I want to make my mark before I go out." Death is something hypothetical - sure, it'll get him some day, it gets everyone, and maybe Moonbeam is even right, but he isn't going to let her warning stop him.

On Strange Trails, Buck and Johnnie cross paths at Dead Man's Hand. On this album they only cross thematically, and the pivotal moment of intersection might be Secret of Life. This song may be the point at which Buck learns some forbidden secrets revealed by taking vide noir as discussed above, but its lyrics speak a lot more specifically to Johnnie's experience, implying some connection between him, vide noir, and the World Ender.

It may be that as we see with Buck in the film, perhaps Johnnie too has suffered the effects of being black-brained prior to taking it due to the time and space-bending effects of the drug (notice, for example, in Strange Trails we get Johnnie's story in a scrambled chronological order) and here he's confronted with the harsh truths of what those past visions of his possible future mean for him: he has been set on a path that is no longer avoidable due to his eventual future overdose. So perhaps it's at this point that he acknowledges that he is going to die sooner rather than later and that his life and death will not have meant anything to the greater cosmos, but this information, which was new to Buck, is not something Johnnie fears. Johnnie is hardly new to this point of view. He's seen past echoes of the knowledge imparted by vide noir throughout his life, both in his future visions of the end of the world (again see Until The Night Turns) and in the knowledge passed on through other World Enders, including their own motto ("The fair, the brave, the good must die", or in Secret of Life here, "The darkness comes for all of us").

(As an aside, there's still a lot to unravel with Secret of Life that I haven't touched on here. It's a fascinating song with some really mysterious lyrics. I've speculated at length in the LH discord about some additional interpretations this song could yield but won't veer off topic here.)

And yet despite what looks like a very certain and dire end, Johnnie maintains hope that perhaps he, too, will live past this. Because if Cobb Avery did, why can't he? This is part of the gang's core mythos - their founder is a dead man. He clawed his way back out of the grave for revenge, they thought it was just so fucking cool that he was unkillable that they had to join him, and together they dismantled the Winthrop Corporation, one murder at a time. When the police finally caught up to him, they lynched him - but the noose did nothing, for he was already dead, and now in the form of a skeleton, he called the gang to his side (see Strange Trails: The World Ender comic book). In the ensuing chaos, he flees, the gang heads west and relocates to east Los Angeles, and in the time contemporary with the events of Vide Noir, he is still present among them but this appears to be unknown to the public (Daily Trails prop, by Kim Berens, used in both Vide Noir and Alive From Whispering Pines where it was modified to Ten years later).

Whether The World Ender is readily visible to and known by most members of the gang at this point is unknown, but we know that those who were black-brained can see him (in the film, Buck sees him approaching, bumps into him, plunges into a hallucination of his own future, and when he comes too, the Ender is gone). Given the Secret of Life lyrics, it's reasonable to guess that Johnnie at least can see the World Ender just fine and one way or another, in speaking with him and in conjunction with consuming vide noir, has learned enough secret knowledge to make some kind of choice - and this is what later enables him, too, to drag his way back to the world of the living.

Fate catches up to Johnnie and as we learn in the film, his death was at the hands of Z'Oiseau's henchmen for trying to gain access to dealing in vide noir. Like Buck, he is black-brained - forced to swallow enough of the drug to kill him. And so the track Vide Noir opens with the Fortune Teller's Theme previously heard in Ancient Names Part 1, and that tune is woven through the track - Moonbeam's "I warned you, I told you so" to both of these fools who disregarded her advice. Although, again, the lyrics are clearly meant primarily to narrate for Johnnie - "Many evils have I enjoyed, prowling the night raising hell with the boys, getting high on a pure black void" sounds a lot more like what Johnnie gets up to than Buck. We are given a glimpse of his last words and final thoughts as life slips away and his consciousness is sent straight to the final edge of the cosmos.

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So ultimately, this is what we're left with:

Vide Noir is an album that tells the story of Buck Vernon, whose fiancee has left him. His journey culminates in a near-brush with death, in finding Leigh, and in learning that she does not love him and that he's nothing, his life is worth nothing more than dust and that none of it mattered or will ever matter, that once he eventually dies he will vanish and be forgotten in time.

Vide Noir also tells the story of Johnnie Redmayne, who for once tries to do something that isn't just for his own hedonistic pleasure but that might actually help bring in money to support his friends and family, but he's too headstrong and impulsive to listen to the warnings he's given, and is killed in the attempt.

One lives who probably shouldn't have and comes out at rock bottom and now has to work out how to move on from here, and one dies a nihilist who should presumably just accept the inevitability of death, but has the knowledge and absolute stubborn determination to enable his eventual return, following in the footsteps of Cobb Avery.

And what happens to both of them afterward? Well, we don't know. Hopefully some day (SOON?? BEN PLEASE) we'll get the opportunity to find out!

#lord huron #vide noir #strange trails #buck vernon #johnnie redmayne #you guys I just blasted a lot of this onto the page over the course of two nights and have only re-read it a couple times fyi #this is stuff I've been ruminating on for well over a year now and wanted to put down in writing for sharing and input #again let me be clear that this is my personal interpretation and while I think it's well-supported it is not exactly confirmed canon lmao #so don't treat it like gospel #I'm gonna go eat food now and nurse this headache

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thetarotwitch111 · 6 months ago

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What’s their biggest secret? - pick a pile

Spotify reading: taylor’s version

Here’s to show you my spotify readings, is like tarot but using music! I interpret the lyrics of the songs that start playing, connecting them to your life.

✨help me keep bringing you free readings with some TIPS.

Thank you in advance.

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

T.S 1:

Don’t Blame Me + August

They’re caught up in a love they probably shouldn’t be. It’s one of those intense I can’t get enough feelings, even though they know deep down it’s not going anywhere. They might play it cool on the outside, but inside? They’re totally obsessed. Like, they know it’s bad for them, but it feels too good to walk away from.

And then there’s the fact that this whole thing is probably long over, but they just can’t let it go. It’s very August, where they’re holding onto a moment that was never meant to last. Maybe it was a fling, maybe it was a situationship that burned out fast, but here they are, still thinking about it, still waiting for something to happen that just won’t.

They’re stuck in the past, replaying it all in their head. They act like they’re fine, but they’re secretly waiting for this connection to come back around, even though they know it’s a long shot.

Let me know if it resonates!

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

T.S. 2:

Lover + Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me

Your person is dreaming of a perfect relationship. They’re imagining a future with this person, but they’re not being fully real. They’re hiding parts of themselves because they’re scared that if they show who they really are, it’s going to mess everything up.

On the outside, it’s all Lover vibes, like they want the romance, the closeness, all that. But on the inside, they’ve got some stuff they’re keeping hidden. They think if their person saw the messy, complicated sides of them, they’d leave. So they’re playing it safe, showing only the “””best”””version of themselves, but it’s draining them.

They want deep love, but they don’t believe they can have it if they let someone see all their flaws. It’s like they’re living in this balance between being loved and being scared they’ll ruin it.

Let me know if it resonates!

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

T.S. 3:

Anti-Hero + Cardigan

They’re really hard on themselves and they’re constantly overthinking everything, feeling like they’re not good enough, or like they’re always screwing things up. It’s Anti-Hero all the way. they might joke about it or act like they’re fine, but deep down they’re their own worst critic. Every little mistake feels huge to them, even if no one else notices.

They’re also carrying around a lot of nostalgia. Cardigan is their whole mood because they miss feeling truly loved and seen. They’re comparing what they have now to what they had before, whether that’s a relationship, a friendship, whatever. There’s this past connection that made them feel safe, and now they don’t feel like they measure up, like they’re not anyone’s favorite anymore.

They’re stuck between their own insecurities and the memories of a time when they felt better about themselves. They want to feel that love again, but they can’t scape the feeling that they’re not enough.

Let me know if it resonates!

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

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philaet0s · 9 months ago

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So I decided to start posting my social media AU here, in parts, and without the few bits that happen off social media that will be on the ao3 version <3

As an introduction, here’s a little bit of context:

Baz is an world-famous singer. At the beginning of the story, he’s about to go on tour for his 5th album

He and Simon are in a relationship but it’s not public. Simon asks Baz if he can make a twitter account where he claims to be Baz’s boyfriend because he thinks it’d be fun to see how people react

Baz’s albums, because I’ve thought about them a lot —except for the first one— lol:

Ergo, - 2019

→ he just wanted to be pretentious with a latin word honestly + the word “ergo” has this intrinsic meaning of consequence. for something to have a consequence, there *has* to be a something, but there’s nothing that comes before the album. it’s his first. it’s a sort of oxymoron with just one word, something contradictory at its core, Baz likes that

I don’t really know what Baz’s first album is like. the themes would probably be rather dark, but I don’t have a clear idea of what the album would represent like i do for the others. and yet i know there’s an album before those others. something that started it all

Flowers in the Water - 2020

→ a reference to Ophelia from Hamlet, who drowned surrounded by flowers. in this album baz explores his feelings after his break up. he was the one to leave his boyfriend who he was in a pretty toxic relationship with though he still had love for him. so he never had much agency during the relationship (as Ophelia doesn’t have agency during most of the play and her life) and the one time he acted on his own, he ‘ruined his life’ -the feeling of despair after a break up, when you think you’ll never find love like that again, even if it was bad (as Ophelia did when she killed herself). Cliché image of the break up as a sort of death, but you can be cliché when you’re heartbroken

baz’s ex used to buy him flowers, so there was this vase in their flat that for a long time always had flowers in it. after a while, towards the end of the relationship, baz noticed that it had been a moment since there had been flowers in the vase, and that was one of the things that made it hit that his bf didn’t care about him anymore

BUT the ‘vase’ is replaced by ‘water’ in the title of the album – a nice metonymy – to better fit the Ophelia reference.

Portrait of the Artist as a Madman - Feb. 2021

obvious reference to james joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Baz reread the book during lockdown so he had that title in mind. he used Madman instead of Young Man because we all went a little crazy during lockdown so that was his state of mind when he wrote the album

his most reflexive album, in which he writes very personal things about who he was and is, but also his persona as a singer and the way the music industry impacts him and his life

The Prophecy - Sept. 2021

baz really wanted to use the word prophecy in a title. it’s his favourite word in the english language. it’s a very meaningful word, prophecies were a huge deal for ancient civilisations, prophets are important figures in the abrahamic religions + he likes the idea of a prophecy, something being foretold, an inevitable end, no matter what one does. it’s very tragic, he likes that

this album is about his new relationship with simon, a romantic piece about how when they met, he felt like their story had already been written and all they had to do was play it out, he felt this inevitability that he associates with prophecies. simon is the love that was foretold for him

Metamorphoses - 2022

in reference to Ovid’s metamorphoses. Baz reuses some of the stories in the Metamorphoses while also applying them to his life, creating songs that are a blend of mythology and personal. (his fans love trying to guess what is merely his interpretation of Ovid’s stories and what is personal elements he added to the songs). the songs are ordered in a way that shows how baz was transformed throughout his life to become the version of himself he is at the time of writing the album. a sort of memoir told through a dozen songs

Paroxysm - 2023

paroxysm: a sudden sharp attack (of pain, rage, laughter, etc)

the meaning of the word is why baz chose it as a title. he thought it fit the album, which he wrote very differently from his previous ones –in bursts. his creativity was renewed after Metamorphoses, which was a project that felt to him more like writing a book than songs, and it expressed itself differently. in this album, the topics he writes about are all different, with nothing to give a coherent theme to the album… which is the theme in itself. all the songs are little paroxysms

#snowbaz #simon snow #baz pitch #co/ws/awtwb #fanfiction #social media au

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m1ssunderstanding · 1 year ago

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I think your tags on the post about Paul's song Suicide got cut off. I was invested, and want to hear the rest of your thoughts :) Maybe you could put it all in a separate post if you don't want to add it as a reblog?

hey, thanks for this ask! It's always nice to have someone that wants to know my thoughts. I'd love to know yours on the subject too!

Okay super long text post under the cut

On “Suicide” 1956 and 1970

My interpretation of the meaning of Paul’s early song “Suicide” and its purpose on his debut solo album

The verse Paul had written in 1956 goes,

“If when she tries to run away

And he calls her back, she comes.

If there’s a next time, he’s okay

Cause she’s under both his thumbs.

She'll limp along to his side

Singing a song of ruin. I’d

Bet he says nothin’ doin’

I, I’d call it suicide.”

The song’s protagonist can’t leave an abusive relationship. The abuser knows it doesn’t matter what they do, the protagonist will always come back. Even when they’re limping, even when they vocalize their knowledge that this relationship is damaging, they’ll always come back, and the abuser is nonchalant. In the end,the singer likens the protagonist’s return to the relationship to suicide.

Just as the woman in the song is under her husband’s thumb, around the time this was written, Paul was very much under his father’s thumb. This was not due to any lack of self-direction or courage on his part. Jim was physically abusive (like the husband in the song) an addict, extremely controlling, and emotionally both unavailable and volatile. Still, in the same way that the woman in the song always goes back to her husband, Paul loved his father. It’s likely that Paul’s unusual degree of deference to his father was a combination of self-preservation and a genuine desire to help and please his father. Jim was also honest and well-liked, a lot of fun, intelligent, talented, a buyer of wonderful presents, and a supporter of Paul as a musician, and Paul felt great admiration and gratitude to Jim. And yet, Paul is not only the protagonist of “Suicide.” He’s also the singer. And the singer knows this relationship is destructive – bad enough to be likened to deadly.

So, “Suicide” is about Paul’s relationship with his father.

Enter John Lennon. Based on John’s perfect knowledge of “I lost my little girl” a full dozen years after being first shown it, I’m inclined to believe John was fully acquainted with the song “Suicide” and though I think pigs would fly before Paul would discuss its meaning with John, it’s not unlikely that he had his guesses.

It is also my tentative belief (based on the wording of the quote in which John talks about Paul and Jim and the issues with control and violence, the fact that John hit a lot of people, but never Paul, and the documented fact that John Lennon is intensely perceptive when it comes to Paul McCartney) that John knew Jim hit Paul. John hated Jim for all the same reasons Paul obeyed him. He hated that Jim was abusive, and he hated that Paul loved him. But. And here’s where I might be stepping on some toes. John and Jim share some important similarities.

Positives first. Both men are praised for being honest to a fault (Jim owning up to gambling debts and John being open and brash in interviews). Both are well-liked by almost everyone who knew them (People go on and on about what a gentleman Jim was, what a stand-up guy. People always think they’re John’s best friend after spending three hours with him) Both recognize Paul’s talent and give him the support he needs to pursue it (John obviously to a much higher degree) Both are described as being the life of the party and the center of attention.

Now negatives. Both men are highly susceptible to addiction. Both men pressured Paul about his lifestyle. Both are known to have been violent toward people they loved (although John was never violent toward Paul. This is important, and will be revisited). Both men had difficulty controlling their emotions or expressing them in a healthy way.

John eventually won his battle with Jim, as he states very proudly that Paul chose him in the end. He stood up to his father, as John claims he constantly begged him to do, and cast his lot with John, their partnership and their music. And, obviously, it was the right decision. Not only because it resulted in the greatest musical collaboration of all time, but because with John, Paul exchanged violence for softness. John was capable of a shocking level of care and tenderness, and for many years that was absolutely lavished on Paul. And I think they were both privately proud of that fact.

Jump to late 1969 / early 1970. John’s actions during the divorce (forcing Allen Klein – another violent and controlling man – on Paul, manipulating – self-admitedly – George and Ringo into turning against Paul, threatening – accidentally or on purpose – to treat Paul the way he’d treated Cynthia in their divorce, etc.) were hurtful enough to Paul that he was, in fact, suicidal (barely finding the strength not to suffocate himself in his pillow, taking way too much of everything, half-hoping he’ll overdose) and when he is finally pulling himself up again, he’s ignoring all John’s attempts to get him to come back (songs, interviews, letters, post-cards).

He puts out his debut solo album, the content of which makes John angry, though to an outsider, there doesn’t seem to be much there in the way of messaging.

Here’s what we get of “Suicide” a the end of “Glasses”, right before “Junk”

“ . . . song of ruin, I’d

Bet he says nothin’ doin’

I’d”

The part Paul chose to include was the abuser’s shrugging lack of surprise that the protagonist has returned, yet again, despite their knowledge that they’re walking back into abuse. I believe Paul’s message to John here is this: You were the one who taught me that there is a certain level of treatment I should expect from people who say they love me. Now that you’re the one who’s hurt me, you have to deal with what you’ve created. I’m not just going to come back to you with my tail between my legs and act like nothing happened. You taught me better than that. I’m really leaving. We’re really over.

#thanks for the ask!#that was thoughtful of you #Sorry I'm too lazy to find sources for all this #But I'm supposed to be studying for the LSAT right now plus I'm a new mom so #They're out there I swear I'm not making any of this shit up except for my theories #Seriously thanks though #this was fun #Paul McCartney #John Lennon #The Beatles #Mclennon #Jim McCartney

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wearepaladin · 2 years ago

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Well, if you'd like to restate your positions, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the Oaths (particularly Vengeance, Devotion and Ancients, as they seem to be the most iconic) and to hear your position on them?

Oath of Devotion: The more traditional oath among the core three, and my favorite, if I'm being honest, for among other things, it provides the most clarity on how the oathkeeper is supposed to act.

Honesty: Don’t lie or cheat. Let your word be your promise.

Courage: Never fear to act, though caution is wise.

Compassion: Aid others, protect the weak, and punish those who threaten them. Show mercy to your foes, but temper it with wisdom.

Honor: Treat others with fairness, and let your honorable deeds be an example to them. Do as much good as possible while causing the least amount of harm.

Duty: Be responsible for your actions and their consequences, protect those entrusted to your care, and obey those who have just authority over you.

Every tenet begins with a virtue, a clear ideal to aspire to, followed by clarity on how best to fulfill that tenet. While this Oath would thrive in the Altruistic Collectivism that typically embodies the Lawful Good Alignment, it is by no means not capable of providing guidance and purpose to a person who lives outside such systems. It is my favorite oath because it's not overly ambiguous, has solid and clarified ideals and how to achieve them with the freedom to interpret them to their best fulfillment.

Oath of the Ancients: While the most popular according to polls I've taken in the past, and while I don't dislike it, it is my least favorite among the core three. It's an Oath that encourages goodness and benevolence to an admirable degree, but I sometimes feel it is too nebulous in its directives.

Kindle the Light. Through your acts of mercy, kindness, and forgiveness, kindle the light of hope in the world, beating back despair.

Shelter the Light. Where there is good, beauty, love, and laughter in the world, stand against the wickedness that would swallow it. Where life flourishes, stand against the forces that would render it barren.

Preserve Your Own Light. Delight in song and laughter, in beauty and art. If you allow the light to die in your own heart, you can't preserve it in the world.

Be the Light. Be a glorious beacon for all who live in despair. Let the light of your joy and courage shine forth in all your deeds.

It encourages a philosophy of altruistic consequentialism, a benevolence that focuses more on the final result than how best to achieve it. If it it stands against anything, unnecessary destruction and despair are illustrated as the closest it will acknowledge as Darkness in a tenet system that wants to encourage Light in all its forms. It is a moral oath that wants to find the goodness in everyone, foster it, strengthen it, but hesitates to name its enemy. Perhaps this is a statement that goodness can be fostered anywhere, and that is admirable.

Oath of Vengeance: The most martial of the core oaths, and one that embraces ruthlessness as a virtue. Out of all the Oaths, its perhaps the most focused in its belief and means of achieving it, to the point that the unwary can trap themselves.

Fight the Greater Evil. Faced with a choice of fighting my sworn foes or combating a lesser evil, I choose the greater evil.

No Mercy for the Wicked. Ordinary foes might win my mercy, but my sworn enemies do not.

By Any Means Necessary. My qualms can't get in the way of exterminating my foes.

Restitution. If my foes wreak ruin on the world, it is because I failed to stop them. I must help those harmed by their misdeeds.

In a way, its the opposite of the Ancients Oath in that it focuses more on the Enemies of the Oathkeeper than how to best live a virtuous or benevolent life. The only virtue it name sis restitution which it underlies as the final world: Where Evil Harms, you shall Restore. For many avengers, this can be overlooked or seen as less important than the Hunt, but allows the Avenger a means of reminding themselves that destruction of evil is meant to lead to good prospering. Destruction is not the end goal. Unlike the other 2, this is purely a warriors oath and can be ended by action, fulfilling the Oath, either allowing the person to move on or focus purely on the restitution tenet.

All three have a place and can be coterminous.

#oath #oath of devotion #oath of the ancients #oath of vengeance #paladin philosophy

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slaaverin · 8 months ago

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hi so just wanted to share smthing idk if you have been following the blue moon tarot blog/website for long but i got into in 2021, ruined my peace of mind, bc the relationship of jm with himself and esp with jk seemed so toxic, so i just stopped reading or idk believing it on some level too. bc i remember once reading that jm literally saw jk as a replacement of his own brother in the start and so people shipping them is sooo wierd. then he always sort of uses and takes (energy?) from jk rather than giving anything back. like jk is progressing but jm is always for some reason going down or afraid all the time when i read any of his readings done by her (again not coming at her she always seemed to be a great positive eprson when ever i read her blogs, just from what i got of jm from her readings thats all nothing more) and idk it just made me a bit frustrated too bc he is so wrapped up in his fears, that any hope for progress for him seems hopeless honestly with how every fruther reading, jm somehow always seemed to drag himself down, get caught up in his feelings, esp drag jk down to his troubles after having a toxic relationship - like i remember one years ago in one of the reading it was said how jm sort of doesnt let jk grow up in his eyes and jk pretends he hasnt grown up too to have the relationship or so that jm doenst lose his balance that he had at that time, basically self sacrificing honestly and made it seem all the more toxic and not at all healthy. (so i sort of agree with anon that says it all seems sad rather than good, bc one thing i noticed is over teh years jm has a lot of potential to be great and amazing but he is so caught up in himself/fears/all the wierd stuff that he doesnt let himself be, like everything points to be negative with him and his future all the time.

i mean on the surface it seemed he is totally at peace from the clips in teh past two years esp with his music (which was honestly decent though the whole album never clicked with me, but again its his album his songs so i appreciate all of them regardless) like he is working on himself his vocals his music and his growth but tbh it never seems enough as per his tarot readings or the fact that he always is in that confusing dark place (bluemoon blog once stated its like jm is in this dark chaos place where he goes back to his tendencies and doesnt want to seem to get out of it ages ago tho, like its being back and forth, and jk honestly is in a good place at the top of the hill, who for some reason keeps coming back to help)- again toxic as fuck. and also said how they are planning to help eo out, i wld like to believe he more at peace with himself but idk it always seems tumultuous and toxic.

Sry I know this got so long but idk I had this in my head for so long during my early army days when I saw tarot reading, and somehow your blog is the only one where i have even seen anything reagrding tarot readinsg that were done, so just wanted to see if mayeb you have any thoughts about it. and again, blue moon website, whoever she is, is really cool and amazing; none of this was in any way meant to be hurtful or mean or anything, really, just what I got or interpreted from your readings and conclusions, really nothing else. Thank you!

Hello!

Thank you for reaching out anon and sharing your thoughts.

I have been following bluemoonpunch's readings since 2019, a while I don't have every single details in mind still, I can only offer my own interpretation.

Jimin has a damn difficult place in the soul body (heart chakra) and while they separated energetically he had a hard time with it. He was always the one to take care of the others, and while figuring out who he was and what's his new place/direction was, I think he needed some support, that's also why JK showed up in his reading (a little place where they met).

According to the readings, Jimin had a cycle where he would retreat, and JK left him alone during that time only being there for him if he needed. In a way he had ups and downs, like everybody. We could see that Jimin in the past would easily doubt himself, that we know.

But to me anon in these readings nothing ever told me jikook's relationship is toxic at all. It's only a deep and complex and ever evolving relationship like any other. Of course it cannot be all rainbows and unicorns.

Jimin literally saw Jungkook grow, he watched him in real time become a man. If they are indeed romantically involved then his view of Jungkook must have evolved over time. We all know Jimin had a crush on Jungkook from the very start. But at that time Jimin saw him still like someone he had to take care of (like the rest of the group) because Jungkook was so young and not yet mature. But with time Jungkook grew within himself and became who he is today, someone who does take care of Jimin when he needs it too. I think that is normal and a sign of healthy relationship, that they can BOTH rely on each other now.

Of course I feel between the two Jimin is the one more careful, and maybe the one more "down to earth" about all the things that could go wrong. But nothing in this screams toxic, he is only pragmatic because he cares about Jungkook and what could potentially happen to him.

Jungkook is more carefree and open. This man is time and time again reinforcing his love and full devotion to Jimin.

Maybe like the readings say Jimin still has fears but honestly who could blame him?

They are in an impossible, potentially very dangerous situation! With his role of caretaker of course he feels most responsible and worried.

The things you saw that sounded toxic to you, to me is normal in any part of any relationship. People are never perfect, they have flaws, a particular way of their psyche to function, feelings to deal with. What we could see from them since 2013 never came accross as toxic to me, quite the contrary. Of course I don't doubt behind the scenes it's not always perfect, people fight sometimes, people have doubts, fears, sadness, insecurities, but it doesn't mean their relationship isn't healthy. It just means they are humans.

They've been together for a long time, it's normal for the relationship and perspectives to evolve.

Personally the last reading confirmed everything I ever thought about them.

The fact that their potential is to be like a perfect balance of feminine and masculine, like some kind of cosmic couple, it makes so much sense. They always have balanced each other. When they are together they just fit perfectly, they are in sync, they just click.

I will even offer my interpetation of their relationship expanding on the readings, I think jikook are supposed to embody the energy of a cosmic couple as blue said, because I personally feel that is part of their mission.

What they have is a perfect example of what unconditional love means. It is the perfect balance. In a way what they have is not even about them at all! Their relationship is more a display of a concept of unconditional love, some kind of roadmap to show to people and to tell them "see, it's possible, a love like this exist, people with that much light exist, see this example, get inspired by it, grow your light and your love and you may be able to experience it someday".

Images and sounds, basically anything is a frequency. When we watch jikook's relationship, we can feel the frequency of their love, we literally receive unconditional love from them. It opens up our own heart, raising our own frequency. So it's part of their mission of raising the consciousness of the planet, having this relationship. I feel it's part of a way bigger plan.

People will either embrace it or reject it completely. Usually people with a too low frequency will reject it because they cannot stand too much light.

People who receive too much light will have to process their low frequency energy so everything has to come up from the surface which is a pretty painful process so they might choose to not take at all. Which is why so many people reject jikook's bond, because if they accepted the frequency is would make them feel very uncomfortable stuff first and it's not a match to them (It is not always a conscious choice).

People with low frequency rather stay in a state of "illusion" because low frequency is literally nothing but illusion by nature.

I went on a tangent here but what I mean to say is that jikook's relationship has never been more exciting that today (after so many years! Who would have thought they would commit to each other again with military?) So I cannot wait to see how it all evolves from now on, what this potential future as a cosmic couple will look like (can it be even better than now? I can't imagine).

Ease your mind anon, jikook are in a good place. There is nothing to worry about. Let's all enjoy the travel show 💜

Thanks you again for sharing your thoughts I know mine are all over the place because I am not used to answer asks yet so I'm sorry about that! If nothing bluemoonpunch's readings always reassured me more than anything else, especially the last one!

Take care 🥰

#jikook #kookmin #tarot reading #spiritual talk #ask #jimin #jungkook

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dr-tonytonychopper · 1 year ago

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BATFAMILY AS FOLKLORE SONGS

i’m honestly shocked i’ve haven’t done this one. this one is a little different tbh, usually i just do characters and maybe lyrics but this time i did actually did explanations and i was watching the long pond sessions so i could get accurate notes on each song. DISCLAIMER there’s a lot of run on sentences and i hope it all makes sense, peace and love-ssb✌️🫶

the 1: steph and tim, i see this as being from both of their povs. i think a relationship between them wouldn’t work long term it would’ve been fun if you would’ve been the one

cardigan: dick/babs, i know that all writers have their own opinions on who is the “other woman” but timeline wise it’s kori so i see this as being from babs pov bc she goes back to him no matter what

the last great american dynasty: The Wayne’s, i feel that after Bruce adopts his kids and starts collecting others he starts kinda shifting what the wayne’s are where as when he grew up it was about image, poise and galas he starts to change and all he cares abt is if his kids are comfortable i had a marvelous time ruining everything

exile: jason and bruce, even though this song is like two lovers fighting i think it can be interpreted as jason being upset after tim becomes robin and it took you five whole minutes to pack us up and leave me with it and i can see bruce’s pov of being fed up with giving jason the chance to do the right thing but him not doing it like you’d get your knuckles bloody for me second, third and hundredth chances balancing on breaking bridges, i couldn’t turn things around you never turned things around

my tears ricochet: damian and talia, “it’s a song about greed. it’s a song about how somebody could be your best friend and your companion and your most trusted person in your life and then they could go and become your worst enemy who knows how to hurt you because they were once your most trusted person.” Taylor Swift long pond sessions you had to kill me but it killed you just the same this whole song and specifically this part and the quote reminds me of when talia made and had a clone of damian kill him i didn’t have it in me to go with grace and you’re the hero flying around saving face you hear my stolen lullabies

mirrorball: Stephanie, i’ve never been a natural all i do is try i know everyone is like this is dicks songs it’s not he’s the natural however i feel stephanie is put on this pedestal for being independent but she’s not and i feel like she morphs herself into a different version of herself depending on who she’s with “we have mirror balls in the middle of a dance floor because they reflect light they are broken a million times and that’s what makes them so shiny. we have people like that in society. they hang there and everytime they break it entertains us” Taylor Swift long pond sessions

seven: damian and jon, it’s a song abt besties idk 🤷🏻‍♀️ past down like folk songs the love lasts so long

august: kori/dick, IM SORRY DICKORI/ KORI STANS! to me when writers write this love triangle they write babs as the one, she’s smart and sensible and someone to settle down with while kori is written as a fling and something that is just someone who’s there in the moment and that’s what august is about it’s about this girl who was seen by this guy as a fling while she is truly falling for him and from everybody’s pov she’s this bad girl and temptress while all she wants is to love and to be loved

this is me trying: tim, they told me all my cages were mental so i got wasted like all my potential, tim is often now written as this happy go lucky character and i think that in red robin he’s fighting some real demons but in the newer runs he’s fighting to make it through the day or insecurities about his position in the family or as a superhero or even as bernard’s boyfriend and i feel like it’s just so real like no other character is going to compare to me when it comes to that and when it comes to his position in everyday life he is the definition as wasted potential he is crazy smart and charismatic but he just hates school and hates studying i was so ahead the curve that the curve became a sphere

illicit affairs: bruce/ talia, bruce and talias relationship is not healthy but i do believe that they both or at least bruce loved the other person and i feel like it shouldn’t even be described as an relationship because it seems like a means to an end

invisible string: the entire batfamily, definition of right place at the right time

mad woman: cass, in the comics and fics cass is often written to be a crazy, feral woman and i think that it’s a narrative constantly written about women and i feel like men are written as traumatized while women are not written or perceived with that tone they are written as vindictive or crazy

epiphany: babs and jim gordon, epiphany is written paralleling WWII to the pandemic and i think the perfect parallel in comic book history is babs and commissioner gordon fighting the same fight but taking different paths or routes and aaron dessner describes the song as comparing taylor’s family history and hero’s of today and i feel like that’s the perfect way to describe it

betty: babs/dick/kori, i already described my thoughts twice but i feel like dick would maybe take more accountability

peace: bruce/selina, imma be honest i don’t know if it’s canon that bruce doesn’t do relationships bc of batman but it’s fitting and i feel like it’s probably that even in relationships with other heroes is a conversation to be had bruce truly can’t give selina peace, he cannot promise stability or a promise of staying alive or not being over tabloids as he’s the richest man alive all these people think loves for show but i would die for you in secret

hoax: duke, duke is the one character that i can’t really get a read on but as the newest member of the batfamily i feel like there’s still this feeling in him that’s like i have this new family and i love them but at the end of the day i want my parents my parents that raised me at the end of the day he’s a boy who wants his parents. i also feel like he’s still trusting of people and he reaps what he sowed everytime

the lakes: tim/bernard: tim always has an exit plan and it’s always escaping by himself to be by himself and i feel like it’s the same no matter who he’s with but when he met and started dating bernard he finally found someone to escape with and exit the hero world for im setting off, but not without my muse

batfam (taylor’s version) is coming so lmk what albums you guys want next🤭🤭

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liketwoswansinbalance · 1 year ago

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Man's Fallibility & Immortality

I found a practically perfect song, by my interpretation, to add to my Rise to Fall playlist. (I haven't cleaned up/updated the playlist fully, so I'm not posting the whole thing yet, but I think this particular song warrants its own post.)

First, listen to the song: Nothing's New - Rio Romeo

Then, what follows below is something of a tragedy-analysis, abstract, meta-thing/omniscient prose narration experiment. I don't know what it is—an outpouring of thoughts. It may strike a similar chord as my narration at the end of Simony and its epilogue.

(Simony was a prediction fic I wrote before the publication of Fall. An extremely erroneous one though. I still think it could work, but oh, how wrong I was.

The direction Soman took the plot in, just, it was unpredictable, even if I did enjoy the book. I still like Rise better than Fall though, of the duology. If Rise had just ended at the point of: Vulcan is dead, Rafal tortures his students, and the brothers gradually learn to trust each other again, that would've been nice and comforting, honestly. But no, substitutes, substitutes, substitutes! On both sides. Drives me insane. Ack! But, I have four, short fics planned that have alternate endings to Rise and to Fall, to make up for it. Well, one of them is so far a little longer, three chapters long.)

If anyone wants me to analyze the actual lyrics more closely, I'm willing to do that too!

⸻

The tales.

They are all the same.

Good winning, Evil winning.

What difference does it make after centuries, really?

Everything probably feels numb and empty after a certain point.

Like nothing matters anymore.

Undiluted apathy after that certain point.

When? I've lost track.

When losses and victories all ring hollow, and all sound the same.

The End.

That's all It wrote.

The sum of lives distilled down to ink and illustrations.

Nothing beyond that. No life, no spark.

What more is there? When nothing will ever satisfy the restless souls, not even an Ending all to themselves.

Just pages that will yellow with time even if the stories themselves are timeless because nothing changes.

Nothing ever changes.

There's no evolution.

Every tale is the same.

It becomes nothing after nothing, not victory after victory, when you're ageless like we are.

And how, if that's how it is?

Why bother?

Why bother at all?

It's a cycle that continues, with or without the brothers.

Ceaseless.

So, why should it matter?

It's the same with or without them.

Their position was always ceremonial.

After a while, anyone becomes tiring. Anyone.

And one person just isn't enough, when you have no one else.

No one else to shield you.

It gets old. The love just... fades, and wears out.

Perhaps, human love can only span for so long, and that's why humans are mortal.

Made mortal, and no one should traverse beyond that.

It always leads to hubris, and then, a fall.

An unnatural fear of death trained into them, when limits were never set, when power was never checked, when they expected to have all the time in the world.

Nothing is built to last. At least, not by the Storian.

It does whatever it pleases.

You can't extend a life past its time.

It will always end in ruin. Isn't that the lesson the storybooks teach?

A cautionary tale.

Again and again, the cycle continues.

Every failed holy-grail of immortality, every spilled cup drawn from the fountain of youth, every cursed head of lettuce, every white snake, every chalice of sleeping draught that led to execution after execution, every baptism that succumbed to primordial wickedness, every impoverished fisherman's hovel?

Why not a tale about two brothers?

One where two are felled.

To caution against mortal greed that even immortality can't peel away.

To caution against always wanting more until you're left with nothing.

Nothing at all.

Just like how you can't truly resurrect anyone as who they once were, you can't revive the soul that a person once was.

And you can't play at being God because it defies the rules of nature.

And all that we know about transience and permanence and how ephemeral everything else is.

Everything but Man, who vies to leave a legacy wherever he goes, at any price, even at the cost of his soul, not life.

⸻

Now, I do wonder if I made anyone emotional? I certainly tried this time around, to be a provocateur like Soman is. Tell me what you think, if you want.

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soyouareandrewdobson · 1 year ago

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Level 1: Let's-a-go easy with some illuminated Mario!

What I want to explore at least partly over the course of Nintendo-vember is the fact, that Dobson was biased with a capital b when it came to videogames and Nintendo. To be more specific, Dobson not only hated people who played anything but Nintendo, acting like PS3 users are the scum of the earth (which we can see examples of a lot near the end of the month), but he was also very opinionated what counts as “the true and honest” depictions of his favorite Nintendo characters.

Again, something more explored down the line soon, but to give at least one example for how even the slightest “deviation” from Dobson’s own interpretation can result in him getting pissed, only for things to backfire on him in some sense (partly a cosmic one) let me turn back time a bit to the November of 2017.

Almost 6 years ago, it was announced that Illumination, the studio behind the Despicable Me movies and some really shitty Dr. Seuss based works, would head the animation work on Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros movie. And people were pissed.

Many of them believing that the studio would ruin their favorite videogame character and produce something that was of great disservice to him. And that was something people claimed, before even the voice cast was announced and everyone had a mental breakdown over Chris Pratt voicing Mario.

youtube

For your sanity though, don't click on the vidoe of that fat slob from Boston who is more of a disservice to animation than Live Action Disney is currently

Now to be fair, I am myself aware of the quality of Illumination up until the Mario movie came out. The Despicable Me and Minions movies, plus Secret Life of Pets, having been the most successful endeavors of the company, while also creating some rather annoying, though in my opinion funny cartoon slapstick characters. But honestly, I never thought that Illumination doing the Mario movie, could possibly be the worst thing to ever happen. At the very least, even if the company had fucked up royally with Dr. Seuss related content, they actually have some understanding of cartoon slapstick in their work and can in my opinion create some very colorful movies. And let us be real here, Super Mario has never been the most “adult” or deep franchise on the planet. So as long as Nintendo would keep them on the leash (which they did in the end) I doubted the movie would be utter shit. I at least did not expect it to be the Teen Titans Go of Nintendo, dumb like Boss Baby or unfocused and insulting like Wonder Park.

And lo and behold, the movie came out and minor things aside (like using Take on me as a pop song in the background at one moment) it captured the essence of Mario, was very colorful and a smash hit. To the point it was up until Barbie came along still the most successful movie of 2023 and is the third highest crossing animated movie of all time. With the place actually being the second, if the Lion King remake from 2019 wouldn’t be technically considered animated. Heck, you could actually call it the most succesful animated movie of all time currently, if you also decide to look at the list in such a way, that "sequels"/continuations ofalready established IPs don't count.

What I am trying to say is, in hindsight, many people should have just simply tried to be calm and see where things were heading.Give Illumination the benefit of the doubt. Particularly if they decided to first think about what was likely going to happen and analyze the pro and cons of Illumination doing the movie.

But fuck using your brain when your name is Andrew Dobson.

Dobson took genuine offense to the idea of Illumination doing the movie and as such made a “mock art” of what Mario would likely look in their art style.

There was just a tinsy winsy problem with it. The artwork in itself….

Turned out to be better looking, than most things Dobson did at the time.

No, seriously. Considering the lack of a decent art output at the time aside of shitting on nerds via SYAC strips, this, for what is obviously meant to take the piss out on Illumination’s art style reserved for the Minions, actually looks rather decent. Sure, Mario looks like a tic tac, but for a “quick” sketch, it looks nice. Mario looks -unlike Dobbear in 95% of the strips- actually happy by the way he smiles as well as very cartoonish. And considering that the blood and soul of Mario is kinda in the cartoonish nature of the game series -as evident by how ridiculously Mario Wonder is currently- Dobson in my opinion captured here the soul of Mario better than he did in other pics he did way back in the earlier 2000s.

Though to be fair, these pics look decent enough and at least Dobson was experimenting with different styles back then. Perhaps his cartoonish style would have worked best with Nintendo, if he refined it just right.

Which you know, kinda defeats the “purpose” of the picture if you ask me. I mean, it is obvious Dobson just did it to vent and piss on the fact that a company he considered “inferior” to other animation studios, would bring his favorite videogame character on the big screen for the first time since that Bob Hoskins movie. But if he wanted to mock the idea, he failed. Simply because in his sketch he doesn’t really “highlight” why Illumination being behind Mario would be bad. Not helped by the fact Dobson lacked giving more context why in his opinion that was a bad idea. And the few posts he did, painted him just as hating Charles Martinet and believing Charles would be the main voice of the characters in the movie

An as stated earlier, in hindsight, any “criticism” or fear Dobson might have had, proved in my opinion invalid in the end. The movie was not only a success, but it also paid tribute to his “precious” Mario is from Brooklyn background.

Frankly, the only thing I can see in the pic I would criticize is that Dobson a) gave Mario four fingers despite the fact he should know by now he has five (though that may be a cartoony jab at the Minions. Though even that jab is half assed, cause if he wanted to emulate their design, he should have given Mario three instead of four digits) and b) Mario being likely completely bald under that cap. The later just doesn’t fit entirely. Which, considering the Minions are mostly bald, may have been the intention by Dobson, to create an uncanny effect. Unfortunately, the rest of the artwork balances it out mostly, so on average the sketch ends up being visually more pleasing than anything.

Honestly though, the picture’s existence does highlight one thing more than anything: That Dobson would rather create something out of spite and hatred, rather than a genuine sense of enjoyment. That and if Ilumination being announced as a company to animate the movie, I wonder how he reacted in light of the casting or other Mario related news. Like can you imagine how livid he must have been when Mario+Rabbids by Ubisoft was announced and became popular?

#adobsonartwork #super mario #minions #illumination #fanboy retardation #so...you are a cartoonist #soyouareandrewdobson #adobsonsartwork #adobsoncomic #andrew dobson #Youtube

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paintedmered · 11 months ago

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lyrical analysis of fortnight (ft. post malone) by taylor swift

disclaimers

my analysis will consider the album epilogue, in which taylor explains that her relationship with matty was 'not a love affair!' but a form of 'self-harm' stemming from a 'manic phase' as her relationship with joe disintegrated and then completely fell apart· it will take into account taylor saying matty 'love-bombed' her while feasting on 'low-hanging fruit'.

idc what matty stans think. i'm analysing taylor's perspective, not yours.

if you disagree with my interpretation, you don't need to attack me.

analysis!

based on taylor's amazon music commentary and my own interpretation of the song, fortnight seems to be a hypothetical future where she stays with joe and they get married, but he's not the person she's meant to be with. it picks up where hits different leaves off ('is it you or have they come to take me away?' / 'i was supposed to be sent away, but they forgot to come and get me') – after the break described in hits different, joe returned to her (it was his key in the door, after all) and they gave the relationship another try... but they shouldn't have. she needed out of it for the sake of her mental health. no one intervened, and she now wishes they had. saying they simply 'forgot' to come get her shows how she feels like she slipped through the cracks... (this also calls back to 'my friends found friends who care' from dear reader. she's been checked out with them, so they've been checked out with her.) a similar sentiment is given by 'i was a functioning alcoholic 'til nobody noticed my new aesthetic'. no one noticed how much she was struggling. now she feels more unwell than ever.

the relationship has progressed to the point that they're husband and wife, but their problems haven't been solved... he's cold towards her. he's cheating on her. (this represents the emotional cheating or weird almost-cheating that's implied elsewhere on the album to have actually happened ('he was with her in dreams' / 'fell victim to interloper's glances' / 'i founded the club she's heard great things about' / 'go home to their husbands, smug 'cause they know they can trust him') but also how she feels like his physical cheating is therefore inevitable in this hypothetical future.)

she wants another guy (matty), but he's also married to someone else now. she recalls/fantasises about a fortnight she spent with this guy (likely representing 2014, though whether it was literally or figuratively a fortnight is unclear – the point is that it was a short time). all her days are mondays (widely considered the worst day of the week) in an endless february (one of the coldest, most depressing months of the year) – her existence is merely something to endure. she 'loves' both men, but it's ruining her life. (one is unfaithful and keeps her trapped ('locks and ceilings' on fresh out the slammer), while the other makes her dream of destroying her life as she knows it...) she hates her cheating husband. she hates the other guy's perfectly nice wife. she feels insane and wants to kill someone.

taking the album epilogue into account, my reading of this is: fortnight was the fear – what she saw as the situation taken to its logical end if she didn't leave joe. matty whispered 'what if?' in her ear a lot when things were bad with joe, selling her the 'get-love-quick scheme' referred to in the epilogue – 'what if it's meant to be us? i've always wanted you. i've grown up. i'm ready to give you all the things you want that he won't give you!' ...and in her desperation, she thought, 'what if he's right? what if joe isn't my destined love? what if i stay with him just hoping things will be good again but they never are? what if i'm not meant to marry him anyway? what if i regret not taking a chance on this other guy, and he was meant to be the one all along?' (this is despite the fact that they were only ever involved very briefly in the past, possibly betraying that this 'love' is superficial. she's an unreliable narrator from the beginning of this record, and reality consistently slips through. she touched him for only a fortnight... still, she touched him. some important subtext here is that means she doesn't have to start all over with someone brand new...)

ultimately, she HAS to find out 'what if?'. so at the end of the song, she runs away to florida, buys the car this guy wants and lets him touch her again. there's a LOT of symbolism here: the car she thinks she's bought is actually the rental car he crashes in loml – it's not really hers, just something she uses for a short period of time. the setting of florida leads to the song florida, which contains the same/similar symbolism in the form of the 'timeshare down in destin'. the car is also a getaway car. it will only start up when she lets him touch her again because she's realised the only way to leave her relationship with joe and find out 'what if?' with matty is to actually just DO IT – to go be with him instead of just thinking about being with him (see also: guilty as sin?).

...the rest of the album is her realising she wishes she'd just left it alone ('it was unnecessary, should've let it stay buried' from loml). (this is also why the ivy/wcs mashup happened on tour, imo – he planted roots in her dreamland... but now that she knows, she wishes he'd left her wondering!)

- END -

analysis of other tracks coming soon?

#taylor swift #the tortured poets department #fortnight #fortnight ft. post malone #taylor swift meta #taylor swift lyrical analysis #my posts #text

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wavesoutbeingtossed · 4 months ago

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Hi! do you have an analysis of cowboy like me and how you interpreted it?. After ttpd many people tried to connect a certain muse to that song and it's one of my faves and i don't want to be it ruined so i would love to read your thoughts!

Hi anon, firstly I want to say: IMO, stop reading into what other people are saying and just enjoy the music. (Which includes whatever I have to say, I'm just a person like anyone else lol.) What makes Taylor's music resonate with people are the emotions behind them, and they're valid to her and to listeners no matter what inspired them. People never worry about the muses behind any other artists' songs and enjoy them for their own sake, so why should Taylor's music be any different? Trying to moralize the music because of its inspiration is going to be a really unsatisfying experience, so may as well just keep enjoying the music you enjoy! Art enhances your life so much that way. Don't let social media ruin it for you!

So that being said, to me it's obviously about her time with Joe. It's a fountain pen retelling of songs like "Delicate" and "Cruel Summer" and "Glitch". It's a metaphor for a situationship that unexpectedly turned into the real deal and (at the time) everlasting love. I haven't done any analysis of it (mostly because it's pretty straightforward to me lol) but I did find this post though it's not likely what you're looking for.

#Pouring out my heart to a stranger but I didn't pour the whiskey #Anonymous #*written in invisible ink* the muse i'm assuming you're talking about isn't the muse behind any song before ttpd imo #so take from that what you will #also like... I loathe john mayer and have since i first heard 'your body is a wonderland' when I was a teen #and especially so since becoming a taylor fan and reading jessica simpson's book #but i fucking love 'i can see you' and scream sing it every chance i get #even though the ~inspiration~ behind it is problematic as fuck #(horny teen vs. predatory grooming)#the song is a fucking bop and taylor took the emotion of the experience at the time and made a ton of art from it she is proud of #if you try to moralize art you're going to find a lot of things you enjoy that you won't be able to anymore because #life is messy and also people draw inspiration from all kinds of things #and social media has ruined the way we experience and enjoy and talk about art #so stop going on twitter reddit tiktok etc for feedback and just think about what the music means to you #and what you draw from it :)

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jacky-rubou · 1 year ago

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here's the psychoanalysis of Never Turn Back by Crush 40 and how it relates to Ford that I have briefly mentioned I was gonna write. hope you guys like it!

Going to put this under a cut as it got decently long.

First of all, before the actual lyrics, I would like to mention that the piano intro feels very 'Ford thinking about his childhood with Stan and all the heartache that ensued-esque'

anyway, on to the actual lyrics, minus the whoa-yeahs and other not-really-lyrics. also, I have the first and second verse analyses written out before the chorus' analysis as I feel it would be anticlimactic to end on a verse and not the chorus. Also I have only used the unique phrases in the song, as I don't care to repeat myself every time a lyric repeats, which is a lot for this particular song.

1st Verse

It's been a long, rough road

And I'm finally here

Ford's time in the portal could most definitely be considered a 'long, rough road' that he finally made it to the end of when he was saved. This or he's singing this right before entering the Nightmare Realm to fight Bill. Whichever one could work, though the second one to me feels more in-character because he wanted to be fighting Bill, but not to be saved. Though I guess you could also say the first interpretation could be a post-canon Ford.

I move an inch forward

Feels like a year

Ford felt like his progress in thirty years of work on finding a way to defeat Bill was at a snail's pace in the moment, plus his sense of time being distorted due to no point of reference for what time it is in every dimension he's been in. Everything's a drag when your actual progress is minimal in the face of your trials.

Everything I feel seems so unreal

Is it true?

Ford's sense of reality was slipping, his dreams with Bill bleeding into the real world to the point where he doesn't know what is real and what isn't. Not helped by the unreal feeling of the dimensions he travels.

I take one step forward

And two steps back

Progress for Ford is hard to come by in the portal as mentioned before, Bill's possessions ruining any progress on his research into an ultimate weapon until the plate was installed. Also could be how Ford feels about his back and forth with Bill and his own mistakes undermining his progress.

Got a hundred thousand pounds

Sitting on my back

There is a ton of pressure on Ford to perform well, to fix his mistakes alone, that he feels overburdened by the weight of it all. But he will carry the weight alone all the same.

Up, down, all around

Don't know quite what to do

To get through

Ford didn't know how he could possibly destroy Bill and survive at the same time before the portal opened. Or, while he knows a lot about Bill, that he has relatively few ways he knows to defeat him.

2nd Verse

I guess I'm moving all right and I'm on my way

Facing every moment day by day

Ford when he was getting closer to making his weapon and defeating Bill, he was feeling confident that he could and would do it.

Take a chance, slip on by, got no time to answer why

Head straight, head straight

Ford took plenty of risks, or chances, in his goals with fighting Bill. He 'got no time to answer why' when Dipper asked him about his relationship with Bill. And we know how straight minded Ford is with his goals.

What will I become if I don't look back

What will happen if Ford refuses to back down from what he knows he should do? or if he doesn't look back at his past?

(Honestly though, this one's stumping me, but I swear it makes sense in my head)

Give myself a reason for this and that

Ford must have a reason to be doing everything he does, justifying it in his head as the right thing to do, what he must do.

I can learn, no U-turns, I will stay right here where I'm at, where I'm at

He won't let himself go backwards, with his progress with Bill or otherwise. He must push forward, or at the very least stay where he's at. He will learn from his mistakes.

Pre-Chorus

Well I'm on my way

On my way

Ford is very persistent and headstrong in his goals, simply using what Bill is planning to do as a motivator to say he's 'on his way' to defeat him.

Chorus

Here I am, here I am

Made it to the end of you

Ford has survived what many others could not have, and now, here in the Fearamid, he's finally seeing the end of Bill. Could potentially also be applied to his mindset right before the portal opened, that he'd had Bill in his scope and he was about to kill him, but the Fearamid business feels a bit more true to what I'm talking about.

You never had a chance while I'm around

Bill was way out of his league when it came to Ford, underestimating him until the very end. If Ford hadn't been around, Stan could not have pulled off the trick quite so well. Could also be Ford right when he was about to shoot him like the previous line but this fits better in my mind.

Well, now I'll never turn back, I'll never turn back

I'll never turn that way

No matter how life tries to face me

I'll turn the other way

Ford is a very determined individual. He will not turn away from his goals if he can help it. No matter what Bill or life in general throws at him, he will not let them stop him in his tracks.

Now and then, now and then

My head starts to spin, starts to spin

But I'll never turn back again

Remembering how Ford's eye began to bleed because of Bill's possessions with this one. The after effects of Bill's influence won't make him give up no matter what.

From this moment on, moment on

I am moving on, moving on

And I'll never turn back

Post-Canon, Ford is moving on past his trauma with Bill and his grudges with Stan. He won't let his past control him like it used to. Ford will look forward to a peaceful ending, one that he deserves.

thank you for reading. If any of you have suggestions for alternate readings for Ford with this song, lemme know as some lines gave me trouble.

#gravity falls #ford pines #stanford pines #grunkle ford #bill cipher #stan pines #< mentioned little but it still counts #psychoanalysis #song #character analysis #inspired when i saw an amv for him with this song #i say it was just for him but the amv title said it was for both stans even though it only really focused on ford most of the time lol #in any case #this is a ford song and here is my proof

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peachsukii · 9 months ago

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REI‼️‼️‼️ ur tags ‼️‼️‼️

Dying to know what normal/not necessarily explicitly sexual song you’ve ruined for sakura forever? 👀🎤

nyehehehehe

Me: Sorry Saku, you caught me right as I was finishing. Did you need something? Sakura: Finishing what? Me: Myself! I couldn't see you today and I miss you. Sakura: ...what? What do you mean? Me: Oh, don't be like that. Here, I made a playlist that helps. <3 Me: "Rei shared the 'stupid love' Playlist with you~!"

The playlist confuses the hell out of him, considering a lot of it isn't full of sexually-forward lyrics, and he's combing through it like a detective to make sense of each song. He's even got a little notebook to jot down lyrics that jump out to him to figure out why it "helps."

He's a few songs in when he gets to Untouched by The Veronicas, and suddenly he's blushing like a madman. The song isn't explicit by any means and can be interpreted in different ways, but his mind went blank hearing:

I feel so untouched and I want you so much That I just can't resist you It's not enough to say that I miss you I feel so untouched right now, need you so much somehow I can't forget you Goin' crazy from the moment I met you

Thinking of...him?! There's no way. He can't fathom the possibility of someone feeling that strongly about him. Sakura was used to being lonesome, the idea that I found him attractive was a foreign experience itself, let alone touching myself to the thought of him. That's when it fades into Toxic by Britney Spears, and I think this one is self explanatory, but he's never heard this song before?! Not only is the beat attractive to him, but the way it's sung mixed with the thought of watching me writhe away on my bed to it makes him wanna faint.

Intoxicate me now, with your lovin' now I think I'm ready now, I think I'm ready now

Sakura takes a break to take care of himself at this point before returning to the playlist. There's only two songs left and he can't contain himself any longer, assuming the last two wouldn't be the "finale," per se. When he's done, he throws himself back on the bed and hits play, lost in the afterglow of his own orgasm as I'm With You by Avril Lavigne plays (specifically the cover with Yungblud). He didn't expect a ballad of sorts, but finds himself intently listening to the lyrics.

It's a damn cold night Trying to figure out this life Won't you take me by the hand? Take me somewhere new I don't know who you are But I... I'm with you I'm with you

He's lost again. This song sounds...sad? But also cathartic. Was that the point?

And then he gets to the end of the playlist, the Wicked Games cover by Stone Sour.

What a wicked game to play To make me feel this way What a wicked thing to do To make me dream of you

Suddenly, he's overwhelmed, a flood of unknown emotion taking over his body. That's when it hits him - it's a story, the playlist is a story of how he makes me feel as a whole, not just sexually. Before he can change his own mind, Sakura's on his feet and booking it to my apartment. He knocks abrasively on the door and his eyes light up when I answer.

"That's the nicest thing anyone's ever done f'me."

And the next time we're out at a party, 'Untouched' comes on and he BOLTS out of the room lmfao, so I tell whoever's in charge of music to queue up my playlist to torture him. He can barely keep it together for the slow songs, too, even though they're love songs, he's hanging by a thread. 😊

#☆ — crystal ball #☆ — sakurei #i know this turned sappy #i can't help it haha #this feels so cinematic in my head #emotionally charged music just makes me feel things #it's like a warm blanket #especially when you're emotional in the afterglow of it all #thank you for asking <333

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fincalinde · 2 years ago

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lwj, for the meme?

Not the Lan bro I was expecting but here goes!

a song that reminds me of them

This doesn't remind me of him because I wouldn't want to ruin it for myself, but I can imagine a sad montage of interregnum LWJ set to I Am Stretched On Your Grave. Anyway, my proper answer is Frostrósir by Eivør. It's in Faroese, which I do not speak, but I pinched something from here:

Each sigh from a lonely soul Every word that was formed without sound Now seems like a frostbitten affair Dressed in the guise of lifeless flowers

what they smell like

We have an answer to this in canon and it's sandalwood, so I don't have much to add.

an otp

I mean, it is the central point of the novel. But even aside from that, LWJ is consistently only ever interested in WWX. I'm not saying he shouldn't be interpreted as gay, but I am saying that even if he is gay it's secondary to his actual sexual identity which is Weiyingsexual. I'm not treading any new ground here.

Personally I don't find Wangxian interesting, but I at least believe they love each other and are compatible in the sense that they are both selfish in slightly different ways that mesh well for their own private universe. Not so great for others in their orbit, but part of that is authorial fiat so I try to be fair about what I hold against them.

I don't think CQL successfully executed the changes it made to Wangxian in having them click and partner up from the beginning, but I do think it was necessary to at least attempt to rebalance the relationship. In MDZS, WWX genuinely does not reciprocate LWJ's feelings in his first life beyond a very deeply buried and not particularly inevitable spark. His first life is really centred on his relationships with JC and JYL and they are the tragic 'romance' (in the traditional sense). LWJ only gets upgraded during the second life. Kind of awkward to do your sweeping romance if it isn't a romance in the 35+ episodes of flashbacks, so I don't blame them for trying. And I do like the Colin Firth vibes WYB brought to his LWJ.

a notp

Aside from not finding the idea of LWJ with anyone else convincing, let me take the opportunity to pettily sideswipe at Chengxian and shoving LWJ in to make it what? Wangchengxian? Is that what it's called? Either way, nooooooo thank you. You can't get much more fraternal than WWX and JC's idiot bickering, and even if they weren't such classic stupid boys together, JC and LWJ loathe one another with the kind of loathing that does not give way to a rendition of I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face. (Incidentally, in the original stage version Eliza walks out on Higgins never to return, and it is awesome.)

favorite platonic/familial relationships

Obviously it's his relationship with LXC (and by extension LQR?). Just absolutely fascinating. Their rapport is very sweet, as is LXC's protectiveness and gentle trolling. LWJ is not a particularly good didi, but LXC both doesn't notice and doesn't mind.

Actually, someone once made a meme for me in relation to this, let me dust it off and drag it out:

More seriously, though he was also raised with harsh discipline, in comparative terms LWJ is the spoilt baby of the family. As is often the result when we encounter morally rigid characters in MDZS, he is also in many respects hypocritical. Clearly I have a lot of negative things to say about him as a brother to LXC, but I'm not interested in demonising him and what's really interesting about it is that by and large this uneven dynamic works for the Twin Jades. Right up until it doesn't.

When LXC really needs LWJ to come through for him, he just doesn't. I'm not even talking about LWJ's behaviour leading up to and during the Temple, which is objectionable in the sense that he refuses to give JGY the benefit of the doubt that LXC extends to WWX. No, I'm talking about the fact that he bods off for literal months after LXC has just been through the worst experience of his life and lost his closest friend and partner. And I don't want to hear it about LXC being the elder and having a responsibility to take care of LWJ. LWJ owes consideration to his big brother and clan leader, even if that consideration might take a different form.

Here's a thought experiment. After WWX's first death, when LWJ has been whipped 33 times by the discipline whip and dragged himself to rescue LSZ and branded himself in drunken grief, can you imagine LXC bodding off for three months without a word to have picnics with JGY? It's inconceivable isn't it.

I didn't intend for this section to become a hit piece on LWJ and he obviously does love his brother, but in terms of actions it is somewhat of a one way street. The fact that LXC has no other expectations doesn't protect LWJ from my croc-hatted judgement face.

a headcanon that is popular in the fandom but that i disagree with

Righteous LWJ. Oh, please. In MDZS, righteousness goes hand in hand with hypocrisy, and though I doubt MXTX the human being intended LWJ to be read as thoroughly selfish, the (translation of) the text she wrote is a depiction of a profoundly selfish man. And that's not a bad thing, because his selfishness coupled with the occasions when he is genuinely altruistic makes him more interesting than if he really were a moralising ice cube with a ribbon tied around it.

the position they sleep in

Official Lan Position, and postcanon I probably don't want to know.

a crossover au i’d love to see them in

I'm going to be lazy and suggest X-Men AU again just because his secondary power would definitely be organic diamond form like Emma Frost. I don't think he'd also be a telepath, but the idea of that is funny because he could read WWX's mind and know for certain that WWX isn't (currently) into him. But as a serious answer, organic diamond form as a secondary power and then primary power the same as Alison Blaire. I see no reason why his mutant name wouldn't be Dazzler too.

my favorite outfit they’ve ever worn

I think he only has like one outfit. I'm sorry, I'm not cool enough to be able to distinguish between different varieties of plain white robes. In CQL I prefer first life LWJ because they put that massive ornament on second life LWJ's head to make him look older and taller but actually they created an unfortunate perspective effect where he just looks even shorter.

#ask #crashorpie #roquen meta #me when i'm discussing lwj: CRITICAL DIDI FAILURE #me when i'm writing fic from lxc's perspective: precious tragic didi i would die for him

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