#like most of the most important threads

[roominthecastle]

Siegfried & Audrey + the big divorce arc of S4

[fleshadept]

part of the reason the locked tomb characters are so memorable and complex is because they are very, very weird in the way only writers who understand that every human being is a little freak in their own way. harrow is the standout example of this—she is unnerringly pious to the rites of her religion in a way that to others comes across as zealotry but once we get into her point of view is revealed to be both, yes, because she is a zealot and also because the rituals and safety of painting her face, praying, etc calm her down. she eats penitently because she actually hates strong tastes. she is both schizophrenic and quite literally haunted, facts that recontextualize her behavior in gtn in an important way.

gideon is a butch and this universe’s version of a jock, and the first thing we see her do is try to escape harrow and the ninth and join the army (something that’s forgotten a little too often when people talk about her being “out of character” in ntn) because she wants to have a purpose, but we also come to learn that despite being raised in the literal dreariest place in the solar system she’s funny, sometimes even on purpose. she doesn’t know what a salad is. she reads sleazy porn magazines. she’s a talented swordswoman but is head over heels for every pretty woman she meets, to her own detriment at times.

every character is like this! they feel so real and complex because they have contradictions and weaknesses and opinions and incorrect beliefs and correct ones that are hard to tell the difference between.

[doufudanshi]

for anyone who criticizes jyl for bringing soup to yiling instead of like, money—

we should first ask: could jyl actually have given wwx money? she must have something, you say. the jins are rich! she could even give him some of her betrothal gifts.

but realistically jyl probably didn't have much money at all! let's think this through. not only did she not marry jzx yet at the time of her yiling visit, but (based on many, many imperial palace tv shows lol) all her worth would be in betrothal gifts of jewelry, fine clothing, or other misc items, which is 1) heavy and difficult to transport without notice, but that doesn't actually matter bc it's ultimately 2) disrespectful to sell and worse to have the gifter find out when they come by for tea and you begin chatting about the event in two days and they say oh where's that one-of-a-kind jade bracelet I gave you wouldn't it match the also one-of-a-kind silk garment that lady jin gave you sooo well oh you will look so lovely in it won't you wear it.

or worse, have it recognized in some random pawn shop on the street by someone who has never really liked you and WILL get you in deep shit for it.

does jyl have any money from the jiang side? well, jc has been busy at work rebuilding lotus pier and the clan since before wwx's defection, and even if he's not borrowing a shitton of money from the jins (which he almost certainly is), he definitely has the opposite of surplus funds. he's also busy organizing and buying gifts for the wedding too, making him go more in the red because you know the jins aren't going to want cheap-ass things even if you don't have money.

let's say jyl did get a significant bride price (aka given money money)—not only does that go to her family (jc), but it is given during the ceremony (which, again, hasn't happened yet). and, realistically, jc probably will have to use it to offset the costs of the above.

beyond that, let's just take this scene from a storytelling perspective. sometimes it is simply about the emotional resonance. the vibes. let's say jyl did have some funds to give wwx. but imagine if jyl was like here a-xian take all this money 😐 ok sure useful for some period. but is that the gift that wwx would want during the first time he's gotten to see her in months, and likely the last time he will see her in a long, long time (possibly years)? would that be impactful for the story?

meanwhile, the soup she brings represents her love. we hear in the extra, from wwx's own words, the care she put into selecting the ingredients, making sure the lotus root is fresh and perfectly ripe. it also takes hours for her to even make iirc. wwx derives so much comfort from it—that's why it comes up again and again. it is one of his first memories of feeling safe in lotus pier, of home. it provides wwx some semblance of normalcy. he hasn't had any this entire time, and is likely something he aches for whenever he's homesick or sad or questioning his choices. it is simply, given the circumstances, incredibly thoughtful. (and how meaningful was it to see wn treat it with such respect? seeing that is literally the moment in the chapter when wwx realizes—ah. the wens are people I cherish as well.)

and regarding jyl coming in her wedding dress—it is not for herself. it is for wwx. we saw how devastated wwx was just to even hear that jyl was getting married because he had to hear it from someone who wasn't jc or jyl. and to immediately then realize he cannot go? even more heartbreaking. and jyl, who clearly knows wwx extremely well, would know, without having to ask, how upset wwx would be to miss such a huge occasion in their lives that was previously a given. this is what she can do to offset that, even just a little. because jyl came in her dress, wwx gets to experience a piece of her wedding even though he cannot physically be there. not to be a 2000s mastercard ad, but there really are some things that money can't buy.

idk there's also some fist-shaking at the class discrepancy in the scene. and I get it. it sucks! her dress is certainly lavish, and the wens are farming on a corpse mountain and have only just started making a bit of money. yes, it's fine to think that if you were in the character's shoes, maybe you would've found it to be in poor taste—but the story isn't about you. it is about these characters, and what this scene means to them. and I'm of the camp that if there is no indication that wwx is upset by any of this, and in fact moved by it, there really isn't reason for the reader to be righteously indignant about these things on a character's behalf. that's just not the focus or the point of the scene.

plus, jyl is sharp. she is likely more aware of the discrepancy than most people think. she has also been shown in the text to not just be another sheltered, spoiled noble (re jzx soup incident). but if what you want is guilt from jyl—I personally think that guilt is performative, and accomplishes nothing. her guilt would've only made wwx unhappy. instead, here is an action that is meaningful and brings joy to wwx. to share her joy with him is not selfishness, nor is it some lack of awareness of their situation. if in this moment, she shows off her dress, if she revels in her joy, her happiness, it is for wwx, and wwx is incredibly moved by it.

and let's face it—wwx, of all people, would want to see jyl in a wedding dress that cost more than rebuilding lotus pier from the ground up. he wouldn't want anything less.

[sendmyresignation]

i truly think nearly every my chem song has more than one meaning (this is true of most things) but also that many of those meanings are contradictions and thats the point because that's the heart of my chemical romance: an enterprise which is both fake shrouded costumed performed and also the most genuine thing on planet earth

[macbethz]

some of my friends and I (hi @merupasse and @cyclopsboxhead) are working on our own little version of the marvel universe a la elseworld or “what if?” and I’ve been rewatching the new timeline xmen movies so naturally I had to do my own little version of Professor X (and a little Magneto) pre-xmen. 

Really enjoyed how XMFC and DOFP reinterpreted the X-Men mythos through the lens of 60s/70s culture and politics, and I wanted to take that and push it even further. Charles’ pacifism fits in nicely with the hippie movement and I’ve been doing a lot of reading on 60s psychedelia lately so I decided to make him a Timothy Leary-type drug guru figure who uses psychedelics to develop his mutant abilities. (There’s a lot of very clear DOFP Charles DNA in this especially vis a vis addiction and telepathy.) Another fringe part of 60s psychedelia I’ve been deeply invested in is self-trepanation (yeah I don’t know either but if you go on your own little research deep dive I think you will understand) which is so perfect for this I couldn’t resist. 

in conclusion

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

there are a lot of reasons i'm really, really impressed by how well sdmi portrayed the dynamic of an abusive relationship with pericles and ricky, and one of the big ones is how accurately they show what it looks like when abuse starts to escalate.

the extent of that is yet another thing that'll take a longpost of its own to go into, because it spans like.... the entire arc of their relationship in the show. but one thing that stands out to me in particular is their portrayal of the massive red flag that is a partner trotting out bigoted behavior against a group you're in. especially insults, and especially directed right at you.

this show has a LOT of fatphobia, jesus christ does it ever, and there are certainly some fatphobic tropes going on with ricky; but i've always been surprised and impressed by how many of the nastier ones they avoided, especially considering his role in the story and what his arc is about.

he is a major, nuanced character whose trauma is treated with full weight and sincerity. it's implied that his body type changed the way it did due to the trauma he went through when he was younger, and the ensuing mental illness, which is a pretty realistic experience for a lot of people. the things that happen to him are played for full tragedy and horror, when it would have been so, so easy for them to make light of it because Tee Hee Fat Guy and Tee Hee Male Abuse Victims Funnee. despite how his whole thing involves corporate greed, they don't go the route of portraying him as Gluttonous and Hedonistic; if anything he is very obviously not using all that money for even basic physical self-care, and the only time we ever see him eating anything it's when he's drinking wine grape juice with pericles. which, like, there's issues to be unpacked with that too, but jesus christ it's an improvement over what usually happens with characters like him.

he's a fat queer man who isn't degendered or made feminine in a mocking and/or predatory way. (there's nothing wrong with feminine fat queer men and they need more non-shitty rep, please and thank you god, but there is a lot of nastiness in the tropes they're often used for in mainstream media, and one of those tropes is when people consider 'fat queer man' and 'masc' to be oxymorons.) no one ever once calls him ugly; if anything multiple people in his life think he's attractive and desirable, for better or for worse. no one body-shames him. and no one ever mentions his weight.

except pericles.

'The Horrible Herd' and 'The Devouring' are two halves of a whole here, re: escalation of abuse. 'Devouring' is when the abuser goes full mask off and shit hits the fan; 'Horrible Herd' is the wind-up before the punch. HH is when ricky realizes things are getting Bad and he needs to put a stop to this now, and Devouring shows what happens when he tries, because by the point where it's gotten bad enough to give him a wakeup call it's already too late. it's how abusive relationships tend to go, and it's chillingly accurate.

and what's one of the things pericles says during Horrible Herd when that punch is winding up? something no one's ever said before now, including him? 'you pudding-faced dummkopf.'

he body-shames him. he insults his weight, and that's a major turning point. bigotry is something that's often there to some degree from the start, but not always, because some abusers are good at hiding things like that until they're confident they've got you where they want you. the message with ricky and pericles is loud and clear: when this happens, the walls are dripping blood. get out.

(if you can. and be careful when you try.)

when this show is good, it is really, truly good. god damn.

[cdroloisms]

hot take: las nevadas four does not queue up a c!q redemption arc. las nevadas five makes some interesting forays in the direction of comeuppance but fails to make the narrative link between that comeuppance and, ultimately, any change. the reason for this is because the prison arc is inadequately integrated into ln4 and ln5. (i'm writing an ln5 essay rn and this is my prompt for you to join me in hell)

i think people who think LN was heading towards a c!quackity redemption arc were tripping fr 😭 like it's not that i would oppose the idea of c!quackity like, even heading in a different direction. but he didn't? he literally didn't. his interactions with c!slime were never examples of c!quackity realizing the dark course he was taking and changing his ways--if anything, they were a reason to double down? he makes a literal slime army in LN5 like. a literal slime army.

i feel like it comes from this misconception that c!Quackity's whole deal revolves around how he ~cares~ for people, and when he felt betrayed and whatever by the fiances and such then his heart froze over and he went for ambition instead. and therefore learning to care for something can unfreeze his heart and make him good again, or something (<- oversimplified). but c!quackity's deal isn't that he closed his heart off to love? like c!quackity's issue is that he's terminally insecure and therefore kinda terminally self-centered--even in c!karlnapity, he was frequently portrayed as being insecure as hell about c!karlnap and preferred when the attention was on him. when c!karl was freaking the fuck out at him in LN4, his immediate reaction to c!karl like having literal memory loss was to scream at him.

all of this is way oversimplified for the record but it's like.

like, c!quackity and c!slime isn't about redemption as much as it is giving c!quackity an opportunity. and what we largely see, honestly, is c!quackity caring about c!slime...and also grooming him to be like, the successor of his country, seeing him as something malleable that he could use to create another version of himself. it's not that c!quackity was necessarily seeking to harm c!slime, but was he being manipulative? i mean, yeah???

and yeah, for sure, LN4 and especially LN5 heavily suffer from a lack of the prison being properly addressed. the prison and c!dream in specifics haunts c!quackity throughout the entirety of LN--any conclusion to this arc no matter what direction c!Quackity took needed a proper resolution to the prison imo ???

like i don't hate purpled's revenge quest, but bringing it back to purpled-quackity-slime Again in LN5 after the conclusion of LN4 made that all hit a lot less hard. i liked the c!punz scene tbh and i also liked c!dream's ditching las nevadas, but that also feels a lot less impactful when he had like, five lines and barely a confrontation (fuck the internet connection there FR). like, c!Quackity rejecting change isn't bad in itself, but it feels like later parts of las nevadas emphasize his decisions less in favor of what's done to him, and what's done to him doesn't feel enough like a consequence of his own actions. furthermore, so much about Las Nevadas and the Prison (the revive book in specifics) has everything to do with self-centered ambition moreso than revenge, and it feels like that in particular gets kinda poorly addressed? like, the deal with c!Purpled doesn't have to do with revenge, he's not really taking revenge on Purpled--he is, however, ambitious and doing everything that he thinks will make Las Nevadas Great, and the whole thing with him still continuing doggedly on LAS NEVADAS!! even after alluvthat is much more of a commentary on his relationship with power and ambition than on revenge.

this is kinda scattered (like the LN finale LMAO!) but yeah. las nevadas is literally created as a response to imprisoning c!dream, the beginning of this arc happens in parallel to the beginning of his visiting the prison, so having c!dream play as small as a role as he did in the latter two streams really ends up hurting the arc as a whole when so much emphasis had been on c!quackity and ... violence? both outside of the prison and inside it. having c!quackity come to terms with the fact that he does in fact suck fell kinda flat without properly addressing the ways that he actually does suck...? anyway yeah not the best essay kat dorry

[akkivee]

🙂↕️🙂↕️okay okay okay so so far within the og divisions we have:

❤️: they strive for a world where words solve conflict. they pointedly did not use mics to express this. at the end of the track, they’re dynamic as brothers has shifted to a more equal dynamic, where ichiro doesn’t feel so compelled to raise them

💙: they strive for a world without violence and used their mics to resolve the conflict. at the end of the track, they reject their status quo and aim to find a new one to change the world without the use of violence

💛: wanted to be real with each other and used their mics to get that across. at the end of the track tho, they say that truth doesn’t really matter anyway and stay true to the selves they formed their bond with

🩶: a battle of wills using the mics. jakurai’s love for yotsutsuji manifested in the form of sacrificing himself and dohifu trying to stop him using their love for their bond as mtr. at the end of the track it’s that love that’s saved jakurai, healed hifumi and elevated doppo’s status at work

and things have changed for all they’ve stayed the same so i’m genuinely curious where nagosaka fits in this lol

[lycankeyy]

Good morning last night I was trying to think abt rgbfverse stuff to help me sleep and I shit you not Darnell Imagery fucking bled into it so hard that it just became about him. The Specific Character autism is going prompt critical

[evilasiangenius]

This is what Tumblr has to say:

"The new dashboard is here to stay, and there isn’t a way to switch back to the old dashboard, so we’re committed to improving the new experience."

I believe this is called, "Fuck you, get used to it, we're a shitty Twitter clone now."

[cabeswaterdrowned]

Adam envying Ronan’s effortless innate capacity for magic vs what he has to work for / sacrifice to be good at it is super interesting too bad td3 did nothing with this concept when it was trying to explore their relationship problems

[worthyheir]

Think about this - Rhaenyra leaves for 10 days to search for Luke or any sign of him before she finds Arrax's wing and the cloak, and Jace arrives back at Dragonstone AFTER she has. But who sent the raven to the North to get ahold of Jace?

He also probably was doing so well in the Vale and in the North securing the alliances they needed and probably thought that, because Luke's journey was shorter and everyone was so confident that Storm's End would support them, that he was already back at Dragonstone and everything was fine because there had been no news until the worst news.

Travel time for a raven from Dragonstone to Winterfell if 4 days (add a day if Jace is at the Wall per the show for the raven to fly) so 5 days, if the raven was sent immediately (and it likely was, though probably not from Rhaenyra since she probably left immediately). Jace obviously traveled to the Wall with Cregan, which means Vermax was probably still at Winterfell (unless he flew ahead but unlikely as dragons did not like going near the wall and Vermax was young), which means they went by horse, which is 16-22 days of travel time. I suspect Jace was in the North at least 2-3 months after his time in the Vale (probably a week), and Sisteron and White Harbor briefly (like 2-3 days each), so 2 weeks before he gets to Winterfell, where he is for 2-3 months because he is said to have been hunting with Cregan as well, especially when 3 weeks of that was travel BACK to Winterfell so he could return to Dragonstone.

In retrospect, it's only like 55ish hours from Dragonstone to Storm's End on Dragonback, and then how long did Borros wait to send the raven to Rhaenyra at Dragonstone in the first place after Luke was killed by Vhagar and Aemond? How long did Aemond wait to go inside and inform the lord of Storm's End what had occured just outside his walls? He wasn't stupid - he knew that was like to shedding the first blood of the war (who really counts what happened in the small council, especially since that wasn't common knowledge / Aemond wasn't there anyway?).

[rawliverandgoronspice]

trying to assign instruments to gerudo characters for thralls' soundtrack. Nabooru is getting the sitar so far, as I think she's good at representing the gerudo side that's closer to the Wild Era in terms of long-term vision for gerudo prosperity, not to mention that it works great for a more laid-back character; though Iftaah could also get that aspect, even though her perspective is a little bit more desperate and a little less actually strategizing about diplomacy and commerce in the way that Nabooru's is... not sure I have nailed down the perfect instrument for her yet though? Maybe a duduk, for its plaintive quality and capacity for softness? But I don't know, I feel like there could be something better out there. Saeruk and flamenco guitar seem pretty great fit for the versatility of the instrument, both harsh and defiant, playful at times, but also extremely sad if needs be, and the fact that she represents more the "older" kind of gerudo works well with more hispanic/romany inspirations. And then there's Aveil, who I feel represent the best the connection of the gerudos to their land, and I'd love an instrument that really represents that. Still looking for that one.

There's a bunch of fun things for Ganondorf that can be done, but I think he'll get... bigger instruments, in general. And church organs are quite versatile too it turns out. :) I like the marimba from his first phase boss battle, but it's a little too... I don't know, I feel like it lacks the roundness and depth and imposing quality that we could get with other picks. But Ganondorf so far has about *eight billion* leitmotifs going on with what I have selected for him (him and Ganon's, as they are... not exactly separate entities in the story, but sort of, it's kind of weird), so it might be more a case of actual melody rather than instruments, or maybe on top of instruments that swap in and out depending on what we want to invoke...

Sorry, rambling, but I would really love to compensate for my lack of voice actors with a pretty meaningful stab at the soundtrack. I feel like I kind of have to honestly. ;;

[solitaireships]

shepherd i forgot to ask, what did you think of the new arcane trailer if u saw it already? :o

I haven’t gotten to watch it yet! It came out while I was at work and then I forgot to watch it </3 I was told this one actually has Jayce and Mel in it for like a single shot so finally, one that has even the slightest bit of crumbs for me. I’ll come back to this once I get a chance to watch the new one tho!

EDIT:

I just watched it and I blacked out everything but them. I’m pretty sure these are old scenes bcs they don’t want to reveal too soon that they’re both alive (they definitely are) but ough I live my bf and gf. Kissing them

[outofthiisworld]

👽//guidelines have been spruced up! —and it kicked my ass for no reason!!! i’d link it on this post too if i wasn’t already laying in bed

Take a gander if you’d like; there’s no major changes outside of some fluff being trimmed up while expanding other parts to be more transparent & hopefully more useful yippeeee!

[flovverworks]

thought again how overwhelmingly lonely akira would become after everything while time does its healing. u go from having a twenty-something ppl around u at all times to being alone. no one to knock on ur door in the morning, no ppl going in & out, no chaos of sudden fights. even in the (more likely) case where akira forgets its like. this haunting feeling of having forgotten something u shouldnt have. guy who goes to every social gathering ever to have that chaotic energetic experience of having so many ppl around again