#it wouldn't have been THAT interesting

[hannahssimblr]

Michelle has been crying for a week.

Seemingly non-stop.

Tuesday evening, which was once about trigonometry and calculus, is when I currently find myself sitting awkwardly on Jen’s bed, alone, while she consoles her sobbing friend in the room next door for half an hour, and my iPod is out of battery.

“He’s here?” Michelle cries at one point, and Jen replies something gentle, muffled through the plasterboard wall. Probably a justification for my presence in her house, which is clearly not welcome even though I’m not actually forcing her to endure me when I’m in an entirely separate room. 

Jen comes back a few minutes later looking frazzled, bags under her eyes as if she has been the one kept up at night with a broken heart, wailing over the skinny emo boy who cheated on her with an even skinnier emo girl. This house has been like a battlefield for days, with even Rahim and Debra retreating to the relative safety of the conservatory in case their rampaging daughter decides to come into the kitchen for a snack and shriek at either of them for not replacing the Nutella she’s been living off or starts hurling around accusations that her white sliced bread has been purloined.

“You alright?” 

“Yeah, she’s just being Michelle. Extra Michelle. Michelle XL.”

“Didn’t sound like she was too happy about me being here.”

“Yeah well,” Jen steps forward and collapses sideways onto the bed, “She can get over it, I want you here.”

“I’m flattered,” I gently fix her fringe, “I’m just not really certain what I did wrong. I thought I did the exact right thing, actually.”

“Yeah but I told you before, there’s normal logic and then there’s Michelle Logic. That’s why I wanted you to be the one to tell her, she was bound to shoot the messenger.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s fair enough, I live with her. Can you imagine if it was me who broke the news?”

“...Do you think the end is in sight?”

“For this level of devastation? I dunno. She’s never been heartbroken before. First cut is the deepest, right?”

I shrug, “For me it wasn’t so bad.”

“Okay well, you haven’t been in love properly.”

“Okay…”

“Sorry but you can’t be an authority on this. Michelle properly loved Evan. He was her everything.”

“He was a fucking knob.”

“Yeah, clearly, but she didn’t know that, and she still loved him. Loves him.”

“He doesn’t deserve to be cried over like this.”

“Tell that to her. Or actually, don’t tell that to her. Don’t tell her anything. Stay a mile away from her until further notice.”

I sigh, “You can't keep us away from each other forever, like, eventually she’s going to emerge from her hovel of despair and find me sitting on the couch, or talking to her dad in the kitchen, it’s not like I’m going to be able to completely vanish from sight forever and ever. I also live five minutes down the road…” I shake her as she turns away to flip through a music magazine,  “and we go to the same school…”

“Yeah, I know, but all this stuff is girl stuff. You’re not supposed to be allowed to see it. You’re only here because you have special Tuesday night privileges.”

I scoff. “I’ve seen girls crying before.”

“Yeah, because of you.”

I toss myself down on the covers and wiggle my way into her eye line, “one day some horrible little bastard might break my sister’s heart, and on that day, when she’s crying and wailing over him, she won’t have anybody to talk to about it but me, and I’ll just turn to her and say ‘hey, sorry Ivy, this is girl shit! Can’t help you!’ Is this the future you want?”

Jen lifts the magazine and whaps me in the face with a full page spread of Amy Winehouse. “You’re so thick.”

I clutch my nose, “Ow! Fuck sake. I think you’re being stupid thinking like that, as if I’m not surrounded by girls at all times. You’re the one who always bangs on and on about feminism, but you’re the one creating a divide between the sexes, can’t you see that? You think I don’t care about girl stuff, like I can’t be around Michelle when she’s heartbroken? I do care.”

“The only girl stuff you care about is tits and fannies.”

“You’re foul.”

She giggles and goes back to her magazine at the same moment Michelle begins to blast a Paramore CD in the room next door. It’s so loud that it vibrates the walls. 

Debra’s screaming only adds to the chaos. “Michelle, my god, turn it down.” She pleads to no avail, and then I hear her thundering up the stairs and pounding on her daughter's door. “Not again! We’re trying to watch the news!”

“Well, there they go again,” Jen comments without lifting her eyes from her article. “You sure you want to walk right into her lair?”

Beginning // Prev // Next

[umblrspectrum]

3 years of this godforsaken show

[the-mpreg-guy]

the hill that i will die on is that cas would have never said he loved dean if he had to deal with the consequences of it afterwards, meanwhile dean (who was SUPPOSED to tell cas he loved him in the original crypt scene script) would have eventually worked up to saying it without external pressure

[bixels]

As cameras becomes more normalized (Sarah Bernhardt encouraging it, grifters on the rise, young artists using it), I wanna express how I will never turn to it because it fundamentally bores me to my core. There is no reason for me to want to use cameras because I will never want to give up my autonomy in creating art. I never want to become reliant on an inhuman object for expression, least of all if that object is created and controlled by manufacturing companies. I paint not because I want a painting but because I love the process of painting. So even in a future where everyone’s accepted it, I’m never gonna sway on this.

if i have to explain to you that using a camera to take a picture is not the same as using generative ai to generate an image then you are a fucking moron.

[kirkwallguy]

cullen's crush on f amell/surana drives me insane. is he the first templar to have taken interest in you? have you been dealing with this your entire life? how long has this been going on? how long did it take you to notice the extra pair of eyes on you in the hallway? does he know you or does he just think you're pretty? did he mean it when he said he'd kill you? do you believe him? do you find yourself alone in corridors with him often? is it a coincidence? is he one of the good ones? is he stronger than you? whose side will the knight commander take if you have to defend yourself? is it worth it? how many of your friends have survived a situation like this? how many haven't? what are your odds? are you feeling lucky? are you sure?

[foxstens]

personally i really like that cat laila and jeremy don't handle jean's situation perfectly. why would they?

as far as we know the three of them are 'normal' in ways jean simply isn't. even if jeremy's backstory is on par with any of the foxes, it's still obvious that he lives in a very different world and has a different worldview

there's bound to be missteps, especially since the three of them are only college students woefully unprepared for a situation like this

if it blows up in their faces, good. presumably it will lead to conflict and then character development which will ultimately make things better for jean

[tls12lessthan3]

thinking about orvs metatextual engagement with its genre and specifically how that interacts with its women again. kim dokja is a self insert for the reader - what he thinks is largely meant to represent what we think, especially in the beginning before sing shong really fleshes out his character. kim dokja sees the world through tropes, directly acknowledging the genre around him and the cliches we expect e.g. the overpowered mc, the scheming villain, the beautiful heroine.

but a major part of his arc is deconstructing this reductionist view of the world in a way that parallels the author's deconstruction of the genre, and that plays really well with the way orv writes women. yoo sangah is perhaps the best exanple - shes introduced as the heroine, a one-dimensional pretty girl who in any other novel would become kim dokja's love interest. but the authors allow her to be her own character, directly challenging the stereotype of the heroine and calling attention to the genre's typical lack of depth for such a character. i think this undercurrent plays in the background often but really comes to the forefront when yoo sangah reminds kim dokja of her putting pepper in their bosses' coffee, a memory kim dokja had supressed because it didn't fit with the pretty girl persona he made for her.

i interpret that moment as yoo sangah pushing her way out of the mold of heroine often found in these stories, demanding a depth be added to her character, asking kim dokja - and thus the reader - to see her in her entirety, to see the heroine archetype for what she could be. orv is at all times in conversation with its genre, and its simultaneous writing of female characters with agency and depth and acknowledgement of the tropes these women are expected to fulfill is undeniably a part of that. and its a part i enjoy. most of the time.

[tathrin]

Hey, so do you ever stop to think about how the premise of Lord of the Rings being an in-universe book written by some of the characters who lived through that story means that they decided what parts and perspectives to use to tell that story...?

And when our authors weren't there to experience the events themselves, they have to rely on what they're told about them by the characters who were there, right...?

Okay so stop and think about the Glittering Caves.

We never actually go to the caves in the narrative. Tolkien LOVES describing nature and natural beauty, but we don't actually see the caves described "by him" the way we do other places. Obviously Gimli's words are Tolkien's, yes; but we only see the caves filtered through his words about them, after the fact.

When Gimli and Éomer and the other Rohirrim take refuge there, the narrative doesn't follow them. Obviously from a narrative standpoint this is to keep the focus narrow, and not to interrupt the battle-sequence with a long ode to the beauty of the caves, and to create tension in the reader who doesn't know if these characters are okay or not. Which all makes sense!

But think about it in terms of the book that was written in Middle-earth by the folk living there. Why DON'T we get to have a direct experience of those caves? Gimli obviously related several other parts of the story that none of the Hobbits were there to witness to them, and which were written into the books as Direct Events Happening In The Narrative (think of the Paths of the Dead scene, for one of the more visceral moments!). So why not the Glittering Caves?

Was it because they wanted to keep that narrative focus and tension, and so they didn't include his perspective on that part of the battle? Perhaps, that's certainly a possibility to consider.

But also consider: when we do hear about the Glittering Caves, what we hear is Gimli telling Legolas about the Glittering Caves. THAT is the part of that event that is considered of importance to include in the book: not Gimli's actual experience when he was in them, but rather the part where he relates that experience TO Legolas.

And I kind of just THOUGHT about that today.

And went HUH.

[bumblingbabooshka]

When the only person who might understand what happened- understand. Not sympathize or empathize or comfort you but understand what happened, isn't there anymore. Or: 'A Man Made Me Do Something I Didn't Want To', for when you can't talk about it or look it in the eye [Patreon | Commissions]

[bayetea]

a lot of people hate the hazel mist magic stuff and I won't deny that it was developed and implemented very weirdly but I actually really appreciate that it's partially connected to marie levesque who mind you summoned the lord of death/riches through her own powers. he didn't just meet her on the street and fall in love like other mortals parents she summoned a big three god to come directly to her (and then he fell for her afterwards). thusly it wasn't some late game add-on it was established very early in hoo that marie already had mystical powers of some kind based on new orleans gris-gris traditions and exploring that for hazel is pretty cool actually and makes sense! 👍

(also something something about frazel parallels where they both have special gifts that stem from their chinese/african heritage and not their godly fathers 😌)

for me the thing about it that sucks isn't that it's inherently bad or op as a lot of people seem to think (look me in the eyes and tell me that hazel is written on the page as more op than the likes of percy. rick limits her powers so much still even tho imo big three kids have a right to be op) it's that hazel's magic appears primarily tied to hecate and greek/roman mist magic instead of louisiana-haitian vodou influences (haitian vodou/louisiana voodoo are actual religions that have some key distinctions from each other, I'm just saying that rick could have drawn from either/both of them more when establishing hazel's powers). hecate mentioned marie explicitly when explaining why hazel has potential with magic but it's still pretty much all about nebulous greek/roman magic instead of new orleans-specific magic. let hazel levesque practice voodoo and cast hexes and work with spirits she deserves it (she is already a daughter of pluto so the connection to spirits should be there!!!)

[cinammonelles]

I want to talk about this page in particular because the implications here are so riveting.

Lavi is currently 19. Allen is believed to be 16.

Which means that either

The Bookmen are lying

Bookman Jr. did die then and Allen either didn't age the first few years or his age got fucked up multiple times before he met Mana

The first seems highly improbable at this point tbh. If the Bookmen were planning to make Allen take the poison to make him remember his past then lying about when Past!Junior (presumably) died seems counterintuitive and would only make Allen mistrust them more once he was in full possession of his memories.

It doesn't seem like Allen de-aged to an infant. He says his earliest memories are from when he was in the circus. Even if he did age back to an infant, he would've needed caretakers and nothing in the story suggests he had any.

(Note how little Allen doesn't have his Innocence in the last panel. What the fuck does this mean Hoshino.)

Allen looks perhaps 4-5 in both of these panels. If Past!Junior died over 19 years ago and Allen aged linearly since then, then he would have to be 23+ by now. Even considering the possibility that he aged back to an infant, he he should be 19+ by now and he looks barely over 17.

We can assume that he must've aged in a somewhat even fashion once he joined the circus because otherwise the performers would've commented on it at some point of time.

What happened in the years between Junior dying and little Allen getting into the circus? Was he in a child's body till he acquired his Innocence? How did he even acquire his Innocence in the first place?

There's also a final possibility that came to me while I was writing this post— Lavi was born while Past!Junior was still alive. He was born with the 'mark' because Past!Junior was no longer fit to be a Junior. I genuinely have no idea how Hoshino will explain this. Will it be some sort of corruption? Memory loss? Chronic illness?

All of them seem equally unlikely options at this point. But so did the possibility of Allen and Bookman Jr. being different people before this chapter :)

Either ways, this was a very intriguing chapter and I'm looking forward to whatever Hoshino has in store for us.

[naamahdarling]

Sudden and hard. Felt like a small explosion, like when the compressed gas factory a few miles away from my house exploded years ago, but with no sound besides the soft, faint thunder of a dozen nearby houses shuddering.

And our house shaking, obvs.

Cats were/are not happy.

[muddyfrankenstein]

jee im so eepy

[vaguely-concerned]

in his and davrin's banters, lucanis exhibits a certain little shit energy I don't think we see him have with anyone else other than illario and honestly I am living for this

[vethbrenatto]

Sorry it’s strange that I’m crying, think it’s ‘cause you’re the one...

[emmerrr]

far and away my favourite thing about tsc was the direct parallels we got between neil and jean now that we've been allowed inside jean's head as well.

we have neil who's almost frighteningly self-sufficient; getting to grips with his surroundings when he moves to psu as soon as possible by going for long solo runs, not waiting for his teammates after he's done at the stadium, going shopping on his own for stuff on foot and only buying what he can carry back by himself, hitchhiking back from columbia -- the fact that he could have asked coach or any of his upperclassmen to come and get him not even occuring to him. but through forced proximity, he gets to know them more, and he gets to like them, and they become the people that he would do anything for, that he fought so hard to stay with.

on the other hand we have jean, whose time in the nest has had the adverse effect; he's never alone, he's hardly ever off-campus, and he's never had the kind of freedoms that you'd usually be afforded at college. the idea of living off-campus is horrifying to him, the idea of having his own room is unheard of to him -- and unsettling enough for him to want jeremy to move in there with him. jeremy shows him the way to the court but he's too disoriented to follow along properly because he's not used to being out in a city like this. for years he hasn't been allowed a life outside of exy and the nest, so he doesn't know how to be out in the world. he has no idea how to navigate it. he sees exy as his only purpose, so anything that doesn't seem to serve this goal is meaningless and egregious to him.

...but then there's jeremy, and cat, and laila.

idk, just, something something neil didn't realise how lonely he was until he met the foxes, and jean was painfully aware of how lonely he was despite being stuck with the ravens all of the time, and is now getting the chance to learn that it doesn't have to be like that with the trojans.