#it still makes no fucking sense

[niniane17]

Since it's the time of the year that I can't help but remember how, in only forty minutes, D&D managed to destroy a multi million franchise that had been on top of the world for a decade, I want to share something that I only recently found out about the infamous episode titled The Bells. Predictably, it's insanely stupid. I realize this is probably old news for everyone, but I can never miss a chance to make fun of those assholes.

So, by now The Bells episode has been dissed to hell and back, and I have watched and read countless mocking of the godawful script. One thing that stuck with me, though, was the idea that the events were inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's poem also titled The Bells, which I hadn't read.

Now, at the time there were still a lot of people trying to make sense of the show by using any possible fancy-sounding reference they could find, so I didn't think much of it. It did, however, have the unfortunate effect of causing me an aversion towards that poem, which was a shame, since I normally love Poe.

Some time ago I finally managed to get around reading it, and it turns out the D&D apologists were right - only not in the way they thought. I strongly advice to read the whole poem because it's beautiful, but the most relevant stanza is the final one, and it's very evident why:

(highlight mine)

And the people—ah, the people—

       They that dwell up in the steeple,

                 All alone,

        And who tolling, tolling, tolling,

          In that muffled monotone,

         Feel a glory in so rolling

          On the human heart a stone—

 They are neither man nor woman—

     They are neither brute nor human—

              They are Ghouls:

        And their king it is who tolls;

        And he rolls, rolls, rolls,

                    Rolls

             A pæan from the bells!

          And his merry bosom swells

             With the pæan of the bells!

          And he dances, and he yells;

          Keeping time, time, time,

          In a sort of Runic rhyme,

             To the pæan of the bells—

 I have no doubt now that those idiots were inspired by this, especially considering that there's no Night King in the books. What I can't really wrap my head around is how in the fucking world they thought that the above line could apply to Daenerys. This isn't even about thematic relevance, which we know they hate, it's just plot description. If asked "who do you think these lines apply to in Game of Thrones?", nobody, not even the most stident of Dany haters or the most passive of watchers, would answer "Daenerys" in good faith. Even Evil Dany is quite different from the above description. Were D&D really that dumb? My answer is yes, but not in the way I thought at first.

To me, this is further proof the original script WAS very different, until they decided to temper with it for some reason. Whatever scene there was with this poem in mind, it wasn't about Daenerys. But in their arrogance they thought they could just switch things up and everything would work just as well, including the "high literature" reference. This is how they see stories, apparently: just a series of cool images and scenes and fuck everything else, they are for book reports or something. The result is embarassing shit like the above, which really seems like a parody. It's also the definitive proof that it was never, ever about the books not being finished. That was a problem, but not an unsolvable one: after all, they had the original writer right there. It's about D&D not understanding how a story works and not giving a fuck about anything but shallow spectacle.

What a fucking waste.

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[rassebers]

Yeah yeaaah yeah yeah

[bacchuschucklefuck]

doing chibi is a good design exercise bc it forces u to think on shapes n essential details, essentially thumbnailing ur designs. its also a terrible design exercise bc it ends up looking cute no matter what

[athina-blaine]

It's interesting how Laios struggles to remember Kabru's name right away, yet is able to recall the feeling of his grip well enough to immediately understand that something isn't right (Kabru being cuffed)

[spirk-trek]

she is to me what leia's gold bikini was to straight boys

[bogdreamz]

korvo lost and farting 0 stars for you my boy

[iceagebaby]

I cant't remember where exacly it was, but I remember this quote from house md, more of a joke, but also with some character lore, described here

edit it's a joke from family guy im a moron

[aardvaark]

the leverage team would have had a games night… once. everyone cheated so much and in such increasingly extreme ways that all mentions of monopoly are banned in their headquarters (this makes talking about marks who monopolize the market very confusing)

[cc-kote]

Nine people I'd like to get to know better

WOOPS I did not have time to do this for the past like, week but I've been wanting to bc I love silly little memes like this. Tytyty @ithillia for the tag :3

Last song: All Our Bruised Bodies And The Whole Heart Shrinks by La Dispute (It makes me think about Fives and it hurts so fucking much) 

Favorite colour: GREEN!! and also blue 

Last movie/TV Show: TCW of course, I had a Bad Autism Time™️ and my gf put on the fucking Umbara Arc to calm me down. It worked like a charm what the fuck is wrong w me lmfaooo. 

Sweet/Spicy/Savory: All of the above but spice hurts me. I do it anyway tho, mama raised a little bitch but she didn't raise a quitter lmfaoo. 

Relationship status: So fuckin down bad for my girlfriend hhh 

Last thing you googled: fuckjgn AO3 LMAOOO 

Current obsession: clonesclonesclonesclones forever. I haven't had a special interest/hyperfixation this deep since I was like 12-14 so like this is one of the most important things in my life tbh. Specifically like thinking about how their culture would work, and their solidarity, internal conflicts, shared trauma and how that would relate to those things. Their ideas about personal and cultural identity and how that would vary individually. Things like how their upbringing must have felt, how that affected them and who they became later in life, the things they're taught vs what they truly come to believe once they're out on the field, the psychological effects of O66 on the clones who survived and the devastating impact it must have had- Bro stop me or I'll keep going forever like. I'm in deep and tbh? I wouldn't change it for the world. 

NPT: LMFAO bold of this title to assume that I know 9 people on this site, or am brave enough to tag ppl I haven't talked to often fhsjdmksmf SO if you see this consider yourself tagged. Yes, You. idc if we've never talked It's probably bc I'm too baby, so (unless u don't feel like it) do it 👀 also @mamuzzy and @whatislifewithoutangst if y'all haven't already and wanna do this here u go! 

[inniave]

keep seeing shit about the new ts album & mental illness and i am so so tired. please be nice to actually "crazy" people if ur gonna use us for the aesthetic. i'm not schizophrenic cause it's cute. don't joke about asylums if u haven't had those experiences (and even some of y'all who have been treat it like a vacation & to the rest of us it's prison. i mean literally. prison. incarceration. that's not new shit. and yeah, i'm that "actually crazy" person screaming in the ward. ur not any better than me.)

idk i keep posting and deleting about this cause i can't get my thoughts out properly i just. i'm tired. there was already a worsening problem of "socially acceptable" mental illness pushing out the rest of us (as it's always been) and now there's the top artist in the united states calling herself crazy, saying you should be scared of her, she was raised in an asylum, etc. and it's like.... that's my lived experience. medical doctors refuse to treat me because they're scared of my psychiatric disorders. i've had the cops called on me for episodes. i spent a decade rotting in the mental health system & institutions and i only got out after years of planning how to get away. and so much more i cant even put into words.

and now not only are y'all using folk like me & our experiences for the aesthetic. you're not even a decent human being to those of us who have actually lived through this shit. idk man. really rubs me the wrong way.

[inkskinned]

one of the things that i think we should pay attention to, socially, about the disney v. desantis thing is that it is really highlighting the importance of remembering nuance.

in a purely neutral sense, if you engage in something problematic, that does not mean you are necessarily agreeing with what makes it problematic. and i am worried that we have become... so afraid of any form of nuance.

disney isn't my friend, they're a corporate monopoly that bastardized copyright laws for their own benefit, ruin the environment, and abuse their workers (... and many other things). this isn't a hypothetical for me - i grew up in florida. i also worked for the actual Walt Disney World; like, in the parks. i am keenly aware of the ways they hurt people, because they hurt me. i fully believe that part of the reason florida is so conservative is because it's been an "open secret" for years now that disney lobbies the government to keep minimum wage down, and i know they worked hard to keep the parks unmasked and open during the worst parts of Covid. they purposefully keep their employees in poverty. they are in part responsible for the way the floridian government works.

desantis is still, by a margin that is frankly daunting, way worse. the alternative here isn't just "republicans win", it's actual fascism.

in a case like this, where the alternative is to allow actual fascism into united states legislation - where, if desantis wins, there are huge and legal ramifications - it's tempting to minimize the harm disney is also doing, because... well, it's not fascism. but disney isn't the good guy, either, which means republicans are having a field day asking activists oh, so you think their treatment of their employees is okay?

we have been trained there is a right answer. you're right! you're in the good group, and you're winning at having an opinion.

except i have the Internet Prophecy that in 2-3 months, even left-wing people will be ripping apart activists for having "taken disney's side". aren't i an anti-capitalist? aren't i pro-union? aren't i one of the good ones? removed from context and nuance (that in this particular situation i am forced to side with disney, until an other option reveals itself), my act of being like "i hope they have goofy rip his throat out onstage, shaking his lifeless body like a dog toy" - how quickly does that seem like i actually do support disney?

and what about you! at home, reading this. are you experiencing the Thought Crime of... actually liking some of the things disney has made? your memories of days at the parks, or of good movies, or of your favorite show growing up. maybe you are also evil, if you ever enjoyed anything, ever, at all.

to some degree, the binary idealization/vilification of individual motive and meaning already exists in the desantis case. i have seen people saying not to go to the disney pride events because they're cash grabs (they are). i've seen people saying you have to go because they're a way to protest. there isn't a lot of internet understanding of nuance. instead it's just "good show of support" or "evil bootlicking."

this binary understanding is how you can become radicalized. when we fear nuance and disorder, we're allowing ourselves the safety of assuming that the world must exist in binary - good or bad, problematic or "not" problematic. and unfortunately, bigots want you to see the world in this binary ideal. they want you to get mad at me because "disney is taking a risk for our community but you won't sing their praises" and they want me to get mad at you for not respecting the legit personal trauma that disney forced me through.

in a grander scheme outside of disney: what happens is a horrific splintering within activist groups. we bicker with each other about minimal-harm minimal-impact ideologies, like which depiction of bisexuality is the most-true. we gratuitously analyze the personal lives of activists for any sign they might be "problematic". we get spooked because someone was in a dog collar at pride. we wring our hands about setting an empty shopping mall on fire. we tell each other what words we may identify ourselves by. we get fuckin steven universe disk horse when in reality it is a waste of our collective time.

the bigots want you to spend all your time focusing on how pristine and pretty you and your interests are. they want us at each other's throats instead of hand in hand. they want to say see? nothing is ever fucking good enough for these people.

and they want their followers to think in binary as well - a binary that's much easier to follow. see, in our spaces, we attack each other over "proper" behavior. but in bigoted groups? they attack outwards. they have someone they hate, and it is us. they hate you, specifically, and you are why they have problems - not the other people in their group. and that's a part of how they fucking keep winning.

some of the things that are beloved to you have a backbone in something terrible. the music industry is a wasteland. the publishing industry is a bastion of white supremacy. video games run off of unpaid labor and abuse.

the point of activism was always to bring to light that abuse and try to stop it from happening, not to condemn those who engage in the content that comes from those industries. "there is no ethical consumption under late capitalism" also applies to media. your childhood (and maybe current!) love of the little mermaid isn't something you should now flinch from, worried you'll be a "disney adult". wanting the music industry to change for the better does not require that you reject all popular music until that change occurs. you can acknowledge the harm something might cause - and celebrate the love that it has brought into your life.

we must detach an acknowledgment of nuance from a sense of shame and disgust. we must. punishing individual people for their harmless passions is not doing good work. encouraging more thoughtful, empathetic consumption does not mean people should feel ashamed of their basic human capacities and desires. it should never have even been about the individual when the corporation is so obviously the actual evil. this sense that we must live in shame and dread of our personal nuances - it just makes people bitter and hopeless. do you have any idea how scared i am to post this? to just acknowledge the idea of nuance? that i might like something nuanced, and engage in it joyfully? and, at the same time, that i'm brutally aware of the harm that they're doing?

"so what do i do?" ... well, often there isn't a right answer. i mean in this case, i hope mickey chops off ron's head and then does a little giggle. but truth be told, often our opinions on nuanced subjects will differ. you might be able to engage in things that i can't because the nuance doesn't sit right with me. i might think taylor swift is a great performer and a lot of fun, and you might be like "raquel, the jet fuel emissions". we are both correct; neither of us have any actual sway in this. and i think it's important to remember that - the actual scope of individual responsibility. like, i also love going to the parks. Thunder Mountain is so fun. you (just a person) are not responsible for the harm that Disney (the billion dollar corporation) caused me. i don't know. i think it's possible to both enjoy your memories and interrogate the current state of their employment policies.

there is no right way to interrogate or engage with nuance - i just hope you embrace it readily.

[macksartblock]

could you do some gothcleats? pretty please

anyone else haunted by snowballs at school dances? no? just me okay

[al-luviec]

sensei morro ref (is it really an au if it's part of your personal canon)

[coddda]

Light's relationship with his father is such a heartbreaking multi-faceted tragedy to me I hate it so so so much.

Soichiro loves his son so much, and while he's certainly not a perfect father I know that he cares deeply about Light. He wants to prove Light's innocence so badly but he can't let go of the underlying doubt that he might really be Kira and it gnaws at him. He does not know that from the very beginning he was being used by Light, whether it was to obtain information about the investigation, or to get to L, or to strengthen the foundations of his own lie that he wasn't Kira, this entire time he was simply another resource. He'll hang onto this doubt for years, even after L is dead, even if he doesn't express it in the latter half of the series, until he himself is on his deathbed, with what he believes to be undeniable proof that Light isn't Kira. (It's a lie, of course.) He dies happy, but it's on the foundations of blissful ignorance. His own son brought him here, brought him to the point where he had to sacrifice half of his own remaining life span, to his own death march, and was still trying to use him even now to kill someone else, but he doesn't know that. Soichiro said that what was evil was the power to kill others, and that whoever used it was cursed. Light was that cursed man, of course, and he tried to bring that curse onto Soichiro too by making him kill in his last moments. Soichiro was happy regardless, because he didn't know. He'll never know. (In the manga/anime at least. More on that later).

Light loves his father but it's not enough to turn him away from the terrible decisions he's made, if anything it only fuels them. His idea of "justice" is a twisted model of what he parroted from Soichiro, and he uses his father as another pawn (and a powerful one at that) in his plans. If he can prove that Kira is justice then perhaps his father will no longer call Kira, and therefore Light, evil, so he just needs to ensure that Kira becomes justice, right? It's Light's own actions that land his own father in the hospital for a stress-induced heart attack and yet he says only a few minutes later that he's the happiest he's ever been in his entire life. Even after Soichiro denounces Kira by calling him evil, even after he calls the Death Note's power evil, even after he unknowingly tells Light that he is cursed. When Soichiro dies Light is too deep in his own plans to actually properly process the fact that his own father is dying past what it means for his goals, but at the same time he still cares enough that after the fact he'll genuinely cry, only to brush it all away later. (Personally, I don't have a single doubt in my mind that Light's crying in that scene was genuine and I Will die on this hill). Soichiro had unknowingly denounced Light one last time just before his death, openly relieved that he "wasn't Kira after all", which also reveals that he has had doubts about Light this entire time, even after L died. By the time he's caught at the Yellow Box Warehouse Light will have denounced his father too, seeing him as someone who was made to be a fool, someone who was naive, even, too earnest for his own good. He won't realize that part of this description of his father might have applied to Light himself, back when this all started. Light takes after his father so much in so many ways already, so why not in this way too?

Ough. And honestly the other adaptations never miss out on this tragedy either, and I love them for that. (spoilers for the musical and 2006 live action movies I guess?)

In the musical we see Soichiro express his doubts and conflicts about who to believe, Light or L, if the son he raised really is a murderer, if everything he knows about him is just a lie. Like, there's an entire song about this, and you can tell how torn he is about it all, how badly he wants Light to be innocent but about how he also needs to face the truth no matter what it is, but at the end of it all he doesn't even get the answers he wants. At the end of the musical the only thing he finds is two corpses, Light's and L's, with no answers. No last words, no closure, only dead ends and a dead son and a grieving daughter. It's so awful I hate it here.

And the live action movie is fucking Insane. Like, wow. Okay. (Spoiler for the ending of Death Note The Last Name I guess) In the 2006 movies/novels Light writes Soichiro's name in the Death Note himself, and it's such an inconcievable move that it leaves even Misa shocked; Light tries to make Soichiro give him the Death Note for the last part of his plans, seeing his death as a "necessary sacrifice" (insert tangent essay about why I think 2006 live action movie Light is actually the most "coldhearted" Light Yagami, despite how infamous anime Light is). It doesn't work, and Soichiro does end up finding out that Light is Kira this time, and they have a confrontation, but he doesn't even sound truly hateful towards Light for it. He Never seems to outright hate Light for it, even after Light calls the whole confrontation a waste of time and instead tries to continue killing with the piece of the notebook in his watch, even after he tries to get Ryuk to kill everyone. When Ryuk inevitably writes Light's name and he collapses, Soichiro still reaches out for him and holds onto him as he's dying. Light literally dies in Soichiro's arms, still looking for the validation that he was right, that this wasn't all for nothing, that he was doing the good thing, trying to make Soichiro understand that he was trying to enact justice based on what he learned from him in the first place. Soichiro not only learns but sees for himself what his son has become, and Light dies in his arms leaving no closure for either of them. Soichiro will announce Light's death in L Change the WorLd on the news without saying his name, saying instead that it is only Kira who is dead, even though he and Light are one in the same. Sachiko and Sayu will never get to know the full truth about what happened to Light, instead Soichiro will lie and instead tell them: "Light was killed by Kira."

And then holy Shit the jdrama. If I write about it here this post is gonna literally double in length and also I don't really wanna spoil it but. Man. Man. If you watched it you know. Holy Shit dude I Cried.

It's the fact that, canonically, Soichiro will die oblivious to what Light has done, but even in the instances where he does find out, it doesn't make it any better, and it doesn't make him love Light any less, it just gives him more to grieve.

It's the fact that there isn't a single universe where Light doesn't use his father for his own gain, whether to gain information, or to try and control him with the Death Note, or make him write in the Death Note himself, and not a single time will he realize just how far he's strayed from Soichiro's ideals, and not a single time will he not forsake him for it by the end of the story.

It's the fact that, despite everything, Light will always refers to Soichiro as "dad/my dad" (informal) rather than "father/my father", even after he has been "denounced" (and this is true in every language that Death Note has been translated in, as far as I could find. Man, isn't that so cool! :) <- Through tears).

Anyways that's what I've been thinking of how's your guys' days going

[selunesfavouriteprincess]

the fact that, if you’re doing a Shadowheart origin playthrough, it’s Emmeline who says “you can’t cast a shadow without some light” was so interesting to me, and it really got me thinking more about her.

because Shar said Emmeline’s mind didn’t hold up as well as Arnell’s. and sure, she’s getting older now, and the trauma she went through has affected her, there’s no doubting that. but Emmeline was the one who recognised Shadowheart wasn’t controlled by Shar anymore, almost immediately after seeing her daughter again. Arnell says he feels he would’ve broken if not for Emmeline’s faith that Shadowheart would return to them again one day, that she never stopped calling her ‘daughter’ no matter what the Sharrans made her do to them. she’s the one who realises that Shadowheart is uncomfortable being called Jen, and tells Arnell that their little girl is grown up, she’s Shadowheart now, and every part of her makes up who she is. Shar calls Emmeline’s humanity fragile and weak, but she didn’t break, not after all this time. Shadowheart wants her family? Emmeline will fight to the end to give her what she wants.

Emmeline is where Shadowheart gets her determination and strength from.