#like these characters existed for him and even now that they’ve left the roles they originally played for him they’re still like

[cologona]

It’s interesting how Talia differs between Batman annual 25 and Lost Days, what with the two being published 4-5 years apart. If you pay attention you can see how Judd Winick went from having a general idea of using Talia to explain how Jason got his new moves + pairing them up to glorify Jason, to actually needing to flesh the story out and being forced to contend with the fact that Talia as she was wouldn’t have been into Jason like that. He could get away with making Talia kiss Jason in the annual because it was only one issue and who gives a shit about her, but in Lost Days she’s a main POV character. If Winick was going to keep his professional integrity as a writer at all, he had to pull some kind of excuse out of his ass to make that happen.

And yeah. Pull an excuse he did. Lost Days Talia doesn’t express any kind of sexual or romantic interest in Jason until the last issue, which took place after Death and the Maidens so now Winick could take advantage of the New And Improved CraZyy Talia to get them to bang. Woohoo I guess?

[thefallenangelsgang]

BALDUR'S GATE 3 x MAMMA MIA! AU

CHARACTERS

[YOU HAVE PERMISSION TO USE MY IDEA FOR ANYTHING YOU WANT, I ONLY ASK YOU CREDIT ME]

(break to save your dash)

Now, not every character is going to fit cleanly into character slots (there are too many characters to fill the main cast) so some of our Baldur's Gate loves will be sharing character traits and plot devices amongst each other.

Let’s start with Donna: She will be played by Tav obviously. I mean there really is no other choice here. We need someone who has gotten romantically entangled with multiple if not all the companions. The one unfortunate snag is that Tav has to carry or otherwise create the child of dubious parentage without the other parent knowing. That does pigeonhole the characterization a bit unless you want to go the magic route with it (which opens a line of ethical questioning beyond not telling the Parent of your child about the existence of said child)

For the purposes of this thought experiment, I'm operating under Tav being AFAB and having a womb to carry the baby. I’m also operating under the idea that all the companions have the reproductive organs of the gender they present as in game. If anyone wants to actually do something with this they are free to do whatever the fuck they want and use whatever headcanons they want. 

Sophie is going to be played by Tav’s kid. This one doesn’t have a hard and fast gender rule (TIL Sophus is the masculine version of Sophie) but they have to want to know who their other sire is and be generally chaotic which is not hard when they’ve grown up with the Tadfools as their role models. It is important that they display mostly Tav’s traits with others that could be any one of their other parent’s. (think Amanda Siefried and Meryl Streep are both blonde and similarly built. Sophie draws like Sam and sings and plays like Harry and has Bill’s adventurous spunk)

For ease of writing Tav’s Kid will be referred to as Soph from here on out.

Speaking of Sires, the Dads:

Sam: I waffled a LOT on who to choose out of the Baldur’s Boys because I wanted to keep it to just the traditional three and to just companions. You can obviously shuffle around people (I'm sure the Rolan girlies (gender neutral) would love putting him in this AU) and expand the possible dad list (though I don’t know how to split the characteristics like the Donna’s Friends). I chose to go with Gale here. I think he fits the very no nonsense and very anxious vibes from Sam in the show/movie. Instead of a business person who “went home to get married” perhaps Gale got called upon by Mystra as her Chosen and left to focus on his Wizardry. He is definitely the kind to break Tav’s heart over duty and be so ashamed he doesn’t really speak to them for 20 years. 

Bill: This one was damn near a no brainer once I was considering it. It’s Halsin. Who better to be the Hippie, fun-loving, sex god and travel writer? He retains all his Baldur’s Gate characteristics. His experience with Tav is truly just a bit of fun before they both go their separate ways. Their relationship is HEAPS less frigid than Gale and Tav’s. 

Now this is where you can go two ways with this. You could give Halsin is canon good ending (Reithwin with the kids) BUT we miss Bill being scared shitless at the prospect of having a child which I always loved as a characterization (Skarsgard plays it like a champ in the film, he looks like he’s gonna have a heart attack lmao). I feel like Clan Dad Halsin after 20 years is way too open to the idea of having something permanent like a kid. Wandering Arch Druid Halsin might be a little more scared shitless at the idea. That one is a personal preference, I think I’d prefer Reithwin Halsin even though I miss the majesty of an internal conflict.

Harry: Now this one also was a no-brainer but needs to be explained with some tact. It’s Astarion. It is not because Astarion is the most effeminate of the group. For those that don’t know, Harry is canonically gay. The companions are all pan. I chose Astarion because there is an opportunity to do something else transformative with Astarion and Tav’s tryst. 

In Mamma Mia, Harry talks about how Donna is the last and only woman he’s loved and their time together helped him accept his sexuality. In the stage show he’s in a committed relationship (his partner's name is fully escaping me atm). It always stuck out to me that Donna changed Harry and that’s why he still loves her after all these years. Sam obviously regrets leaving to do what was expected of him because he didn’t love his first wife. Bill sees the life of adventure and companionship he could have had with Donna but acknowledges that that time is behind them and still loves her anyways. And Harry loves that Donna made him see himself clearly for the first time in his life and loves her for it. You can see why Astarion came to mind I hope. 

Astarion’s night with Tav was him figuring out what intimacy meant to him after finally closing the Cazador Chapter of his life. The encounter was brief but it changed him for the better and allowed him to start healing.

EDIT: I realized I didn’t cover Astarion’s Vampirism at all. For story purposes assume he has some kind of temporary solution to the sun issue because I need his ass to be present when this is set on a fantasy Greek island. The Dhampir issue is… something. I sludged through some further thought experiments. Tav and the kid being Tieflings hides the fang coloration issue. Explaining away that the characteristics haven’t presented yet because the kid is still quite young by nearly all standards (20 is just barely of age for humans, and though they are full grown biologically they are still children in Elven society) and also have been largely sheltered from danger their whole life also works.

But to be honest, despite what the second movie and its director want you to believe, I think Harry is the least likely father of the three. I am comfortable extending this to Astarion. 

Okay now we are into the Dynamos! Fuck yes! Rosie and Tanya are my favorites (it helps that they are PERFECTLY casted in the movie oh my god). I have split their characteristics across the girls. There are some of the companions that are obviously one or the other (Karlach is the most Rosie coded while Minthara SCREAMS Tanya) while others send mixed signals (Shadowheart is the most even, skewing towards Tanya slightly while Lae’zel has Tanya’s bitchy attitude and Rosie’s  “lone wolf” outlook) SO I’m going to make a chart

Like Astarion, for story purposes, assume Karlach’s heart issue has been solved.

Graphic design is my passion

ANYWAYS you may have noticed three of our friends are missing from this line up. Our intrepid Folk Hero Formally Known As The Blade of Frontiers, Wyll, Pack Mother, Jaheria, and her trusty ride or die Rashamen, Minsc (and don’t forget Boo!). 

I had some trouble with these nerds because initially I was playing with making Wyll the second half of Sam, he would have usurped the businessman and maybe the gone home to get married bit while Gale was the heartbreaker and took something from Bill’s characterization, but I was having trouble with losing character motivations. Plus Wyll is canonically not the type for flings. So I am having him be a good family friend invited to the wedding but not involved in the parentage. He essentially is a more involved part of the Greek Chorus. He could take Sam entirely if you are not the type for Gale but you will see why I did this when I get into the songs (yes I am that fucking insane about this.) 

Jaheira does have the countenance to be a Dynamo BUT there is this minor character that I think about way too often that I wanted her to take. She is only mentioned in the first movie and the stage show in one line and seen a little in the second movie (which is a fever dream and convolutes the “lore” but I love it anyways). It’s Bill’s Great Aunt Sophia that left Donna the money to start Villa Donna. OBVIOUSLY she isn’t directly going to be playing Halsin’s Great Aunt or be dead (though she will be ancient by then) but she’s going to fill the mentor role for Tav and help out with Soph. She is the only one who knows that Gale Halsin and Astarion are the possible fathers until the beginning of the shenanigans.

Minsc, like Wyll, doesn’t have a direct parallel. He is also a part of the more involved Greek Chorus. He is Soph’s crazy uncle. He got them into all kinds of trouble and still does to this day. He gives a less emotional and personal version of Sam’s “are you sure you want to do this, you are so young” speech that essentially is offering to run off and be warriors (His plan does not get them away from anyone, he’s unanimously elected that the entire tadfool group is coming with them). But he does it after Gale gives the original speech that severely upsets Soph so it serves as a cheer up speech (“Minsc is unsure if the Wizard should come along seeing as he has upset the little warrior so, but Boo says he is very useful and Minsc agrees. So he can come with, but he does not get to pet Boo’s furry little bottom!”). 

The rest of our Greek Chorus and people like Sky and Sophie’s Friends are filled out by various NPCs. Pepper is played by Mol. Ali and Lisa are open to OCs to be honest but the idea of Yenna and Arabella hearing the saucy details of a story they were partly involved in is really funny to me so they are listed in the song list as the backup singers. Sky is an OC because I wasn’t fully comfortable using any of the child NPCs. He’s referred to as Soph’s partner.

[glitterpensupremacy]

Time for the problematic Queen!

Chloe MTS

As usual:

1. General Info

2. Personality

3. Key Relationships

4. Character Growth

Edit: I’m so sorry guys I forgot the “read more” 😭

1. General Info

It’s probably pretty obvious by now, but this will be a Chloe-demption Miraculous story. I don’t blame people who don’t really like that or her in general, but that’s the story you’re gonna get here. (Granted, this Chloe will be a bit easier to make a better person than the original, for reasons I’ll go over soon.)

2. Personality

Chloe Bourgeois seems like the typical rich girl: self-centered, superficial, vain, spoiled, not very good at listening to others, melodramatic, mostly mean to other people, and used to getting what she wants.

That being said, there’s a bit more to her than that. Her lack of self control and immaturity is mainly the result of having a father who would hand her whatever she wanted to keep her busy. Similarly, her mother is only interested in the “exceptional”, so Chloe often strives to be more like her. The fact that neither parent really tried to raise her is why she’s so infantile and prone to ridiculing others to feel better about herself.

A different side of Chloe tends to come out around her loved ones. She’s somewhat overbearing and clingy, but will shower those close to her (especially family) in gifts, pet names, and affection. Compared to OG Chloe, (and most other fan made takes on her), she’s a lot softer and more naive (dare I say a little cute). Every once in a while she lets the confident facade drop, becoming quieter and being genuine about how she feels.

3. Key Relationships

Marinette: As I’ve mentioned in the Marinette MTS post, Chloe and Marinette have a friends-to-enemies storyline in the first season. Basically, Chloe’s constant need for attention and favors was too emotionally draining for Marinette, so she broke things off between them, which Chloe does not take well. At all. After spending the larger part of season two trying to antagonize her, Chloe finally understands why Marinette left and leaves her alone. Things are still pretty tense between them, but they can exist in the same room without blowing up (and if Chloe sometimes still misses her ex-best friend? Well she doesn’t! Don’t be ridiculous, utterly ridiculous!!!)

Adrien: Chloe and Adrien are also childhood friends, (only they’ve known each other practically since birth while Marinette and Chloe met in their early school years) with Chloe actually being the one to introduce the two. At first, Chloe’s glad that her precious “Mari-roon” and “Adrikins” are getting along; when he decides to keep being Marinette’s friend after she stops hanging out with Chloe, she’s a little less enthused. Adrien also plays a more active role in helping Chloe become a better person, as he’s one of the people with the most knowledge of why she is the way that she is, as well as her better qualities (that and Chloe is determined not to lose him like she lost Marinette, even if she isn’t consciously aware of this yet). It also probably goes without saying that her feelings for Adrien aren’t ever really romantic like in the OG show.

Zoe: Chloe adores her darling baby sister, and tends to bring her wherever she goes. She initially tries to help her younger sister understand how the world issupposed” to work, but when that backfires (due to that pesky traitor Dupain-Cheng and her new friends) she has to remain content with simply showing Zoe off and doing what she can to help her sister succeed in her ambitions. (Due to being more of a people and family pleaser, Zoe doesn’t really do much in Chloe’s redemption, but she is one of the characters who can occasionally get her to play nice.)

Alya: These two don’t really know each other very well at first. To Chloe, Alya’s just the blogger girl who doesn’t properly appreciate the perfect Ladybug! When they interact more often due to being in the same class, things aren’t much better, seeing as their opposite ideals and personalities clash (hardworking vs lazy, integrity vs self-indulgence, etc). They do have to team up against a common enemy though (that being Lila), as well as share the struggles of being the only two superheroes with public identities. By the end of season two, Chloe and Alya become hero partners. (Despite sometimes being annoyed at what a “goody two shoes” Rena can be, Queen Bee can admit that she’s pretty smart, and secretly considers her to be a better hero than she is.)

Other key dynamics include: her parents, Ladybug (and Chat Noir to an extent), Kim, and Sabrina.

4. Character Growth

A lot of Chloe’s development is about learning to care about others and not resort to making other people’s lives more difficult just because she’s unhappy about something. This is mainly through how she interacts with acquaintances (not being as insulting or harming the rest of the class through her schemes) and her friends (learning how to be a good friend is a major part of her character arc). Another aspect of this how she matures.

MTS Chloe’s stunted growth is generally attributed to the lack of involvement that both parents have had throughout her childhood. While she doesn’t completely grow up (which makes sense, seeing as she is still very much a child), she does learn to occasionally think things through beyond the obvious and take certain issues more seriously.

Her familial relationships also factor into this development. She both grows in relation to her family (trying to be a good big sister for Zoe and eventually realizing that Audrey is a terrible mother/person and standing up to her), and inspiring them to change as well (seeing Chloe work to improve herself is one of the motivations for Zoe wanting to be more honest with others, Andre also acknowledges that he’s been a selfish and irresponsible father and works to become a better parent for Chloe and Zoe).

Conclusion

Alright, that’s the general rundown for Chloe. The more whimsical vibes that she has might be a bit disappointing for people who prefer a tougher, sassier mean girl type of Chloe, but hopefully she’s still likable in her own regard.

Up next will be Alya (who will also have an akuma design posted around the same time I have her character notes ready, so keep your eyes peeled if that kinda thing interests you)

[wanderpawn]

An In-Depth Analysis of Neuvillette's Character Stories and how they tie into my headcanons

I posted part of this on twitter yesterday because some fellow neuvifuri enjoyers were asking me to write a Neuvillette character analysis, so I'm posting it here, too. And I realized I never actually explained why I believe the things I believe about Neuvillette, so I'll be doing that here as well.

This analysis is divided into three parts— Foundation, Gender Identity, and Dissociative Identity. The "Foundation" section is the basis for all of my headcanons for Neuvillette.

⟡ Foundation

Neuvillette’s character is essentially a story about being freed, which is a parallel to Furina’s story. Though, instead of being freed from a burden put onto them by others, Neuvillette’s story is about finally being freed from a burden placed upon themself, by themself.

It’s the symbolism of external conflict vs. internal conflict that makes Furina and Neuvillette's relationship so interesting.

Neuvillette is a very strong person, having been able to be completely impartial and separated from society for their entire life. Something that’s mentioned a lot in their character information is that they’ve always felt like an outsider around others.

They felt like they had to “act as a normal human,” which prevented them from being unequivocally themself.

But after the events of Masquerade of the Guilty, there was no longer a need to be so closed-off. The worst had already happened, and there was nothing left except to pick up the fragmented pieces of what they once had, and put them back together.

Despite regaining the full extent of their Dragon Sovereign's powers, Neuvillette was left having become even more human than they were before. Just as Furina became fully human with Focalors’ sacrifice, it could be argued that Neuvillette did, too (metaphorically).

There is no longer a need for Neuvillette to pretend. Now they are free to exist, in whichever way they choose.

⟡ Gender Identity

Neuvillette is not human, despite how human they seem. They are in essence a Hydro Dragon, and given what we know about dragons in Genshin (re: Zhongli, the genderfluid shapeshifter) and what we know about the Archons (inherently genderless), we can assume Neuvillette is also inherently genderless.

And the truth of the matter is that they take the form of a man, so we can assume they've done that by choice, i.e., pretending to be a "normal human", or what a normal human looks like in their eyes. And if they have dysphoria with how they look (which is not necessarily a trans thing in this case, dysphoria can also be dissociative), they would want to assume the role that would alleviate it. Therefore, Neuvillette = transmasc. I need to be clear about that.

So, after regaining their powers, and feeling the weight lifted off their shoulders, it would make sense that they'd stop caring about looking like a "normal human" as much, and assume their naturally genderless stance.

⟡ Dissociative Identity

These excerpts all have one thing in common: incongruence.

Definition (in psychology): "Incongruence is when there is a misalignment and not a balance or overlap between the real self and the ideal self." (link)

Neuvillette's struggle with incongruence can be interpreted as Neuvillette themself, the alter, being Neuvillette's mind's manifestation of what a "normal human" looks like, which can be backed up by the quote "The only person who isn't really him is the one who goes by the name of Neuvillette."

It's really convoluted... it took me a while to understand, too.

I'll try to explain it like this: Neuvillette is the one who is trying to fit the mold of a human. That's why the Melusines say they're not really the "real Neuvillette"— because the "real" Neuvillette has desires and a personality that Neuvillette has subconsciously decided doesn't fit for a "human" to have. (of course, there's some cognitive distortion going on there.)

The "real" Neuvillette is the one I like to call Leviathan. They're the one who shows up more after the events of Masquerade of the Guilty. They're the one who has the courage to cut their hair short and smile at their friends.

Of course, all of Neuvillette's parts are equally Neuvillette, it's just worded that way for literary effect, I suppose.

⟡ Conclusion

In the end, Neuvillette's story is a story about being freed, but it's also very much a story about identity, at its core.

It was fun to write this... I'm sorry it's so long... but it really is nice to have all of my theories written out finally. I've been rolling all of this around in my head for the entire past year! It's so nice to see it in words :')

Hopefully you found it interesting!

[denimbex1986]

'In the autumn of 2021, Christopher Nolan knew just where to find Cillian Murphy. The director flew to Ireland with a document in his hand luggage, Hollywood’s equivalent of the nuclear football. It was a script for his top-secret new film, printed, apparently, on red paper. “Which is supposedly photocopy-proof,” Murphy explained. He wasn’t surprised by the in-person visit. The two had worked together on five previous films, and every Nolan script, Murphy said, had been dropped off by Nolan or one of his family members. “So, like, it’s been his mum who’s delivered the script to me before. Or his brother; he’ll go away and come back in three hours. Part of it has to do with keeping the story secret before it goes out. But part of it has to do with tradition. They’ve always done it this way, so why stop now? It does add a ritual to it, which I really appreciate. It suits me.”

Murphy met Nolan at his Dublin hotel room – and Nolan left him to read. He read and read and read. All 197 pages; the rarest kind of script, written in the first-person point of view of the film’s protagonist, J Robert Oppenheimer. All action, all incidence, swirling around this character – a big-brained, psychologically complex giant of world history. Murphy had never played a lead in a Nolan film before, but had committed to this role as soon as Nolan told him about it, before he’d even seen a page of the script. “He’d already called me and said he wanted me to play the part. And I had said yes, because I always say yes to him.” The afternoon ran out. “And he doesn’t have a phone or anything,” Murphy said. “But he knew instinctively when to come back.” Nolan in command of time, as ever. They spent the rest of the evening together, and then Murphy took the DART train home, and got to work.

The result was one of the most watched and most acclaimed films of 2023 – a nearly billion-dollar blockbuster about a tormented genius (and, yes, the father of the atomic bomb). The performance affirmed for many what has been quietly known for some time: that Cillian Murphy is, or at least was, one of the most underrated actors in all of Hollywood. In small potent roles in those other Nolan movies. As a shapeshifting bit player and lead in dozens of films and plays over the past three decades. And, of course, across 10 years and six seasons of Peaky Blinders – the hit series that made him truly known globally. “Some years ago,” Christopher Nolan said, “I made what was probably a mistake in some moment of drunken sincerity of telling him he’s the best actor of his generation. And so now he gets to show that to the rest of the world so everybody can realise that.”

Part of the reason that Murphy still felt like something of a secret until recently is that he lives, breathes and resides at a remove from the noise. This is by design. In 2015, Murphy returned home to Ireland from London, already some distance from Hollywood proper, to a quiet hamlet on the Irish Sea – not exactly off the grid, but one ring further outside the blast radius of his industry.

One evening this winter, I took the DART down the coast from Dublin city centre to Monkstown to have dinner with Murphy. We met at a restaurant where, he told me, “I have a usual table, would you believe it?” He sat there comfortably for most of the night, bouncing, leaning forwards, his floppy rocker-dad hair swept casually across his forehead, his famously light eyes drawing in passersby like two pockets of quicksand.

Murphy and his wife of 20 years, artist Yvonne McGuinness, live by the sea with their two teenage sons. In Ireland, the abundance of their creative existence is all around them. The art galleries all seem to be filled with work by his family members. The music on the radio is curated by friends – or Murphy himself. There are occasional pints with his elder Irish actor idols, Brendan Gleeson and Stephen Rea.

Life here for Murphy is filled with, well, life. His boys are approaching exit velocity. There are exams. Chores. Errands. He and his youngest were flying out in the morning to attend a football match in Liverpool. “I would’ve taken you elsewhere for some Guinness,” Murphy said, “except I have to drive to drop my boy off at a party tonight.” The brand of busyness felt quite far from the bubbles that typically cocoon the leading men in the film industry.

“I have a couple of friends who are actors, but a majority of them are not,” Murphy said. “The majority of my buddies are not in the business. I also love not working. And I think for me a lot of research as an actor is just fucking living, and, you know, having a normal life doing regular things and just being able to observe, and be, in that sort of lovely flow of humanity. If you can’t do that because you’re going from film festival to movie set to promotions… I mean that’s The Bubble. I’m not saying that makes you any better or less as an actor, but it’s just a world that I couldn’t exist in. I find it would be very limiting on what you can experience as a human being, you know?”

Cillian Murphy, at least on that weekend last winter, seemed to me to have something so deeply figured out that I spent the month after our time together unable to shake the experience of being in the presence of someone living so much the way that so many other actors – so many artists, so many people – claim to want to live. Away from it all, but in highest demand. Delivering Oscar-worthy performances while also seeming convincingly content to disappear for a long while, at any point, no questions. The stabilising forces at home seemed to work as an anchor point from which Murphy could go off and wander as an artist. “He has this rare blend of humility with this supercharge of creativity,” Emily Blunt said. “He’s just a lovely, sane person. He’s so, so sane. And yet he’s got such wildness in him in the parts that he’s able to play.”

He was the first of his friends to have kids, and thus will be the first with an empty nest. More time for films. (Maybe.) More time for music. (Certainly.) More time to go on runs at night, when the lights streaking by make him feel like he’s going faster. Even more time for sleep: “I sleep a lot. I do 10-hour sleeps.” He seemed immune to the need to be in the mix – of fame, of fashion, of free dinners, the titillating offerings of a scene. A lot of actors age out of that compulsion, but the thing is, Murphy’s not old. Forty-seven. At the height of his powers, entering his prime. Not exiting the industry, but just floating lightly beside it until called upon, which he often is, and will be more now than ever.

He tries to do one movie a year, preferably not in the summer, when he likes to spend most of his time on the west coast of Ireland, doing nothing much but finding new music for his radio programme on BBC Radio 6 Music or walking his black Lab, Scout. He is perfectly happy to be “unemployed” while he waits for the right new film to come his way. “There could’ve been a situation when Chris called me up that I was doing something else,” he said. “And that would’ve been the worst of all scenarios.”

In this way, Murphy seems to adhere to his version of Michael Pollan’s adage about healthy eating: “Make movies. Not too many. Mostly with Christopher Nolan.” Imagine the discipline, the confidence, the peace of mind, to not worry about missing an opportunity, a lunch, a party, a fork in the road back in one of the frothier Hollywood hubs, but rather to stroll along emerald shores, as the days stretch out until 10pm, knowing that they know you – and that, ultimately, they know where to find you.

In Monkstown. Probably at his table. Looking present. Clear-eyed. Like any local, but with more moisture in his skin. At dinner, he asked me just once not to put something in the piece: a nuanced take he shared on a local establishment. Nothing so dangerous as an unwelcome opinion in a small town. No truer sign of someone “just fucking living” there. The dream.

Nolan had first seen Murphy in 2003, in a promotional image for 28 Days Later that had run in the San Francisco Chronicle. “I was looking to cast Batman, looking for some actors to screen test, and I was just very struck by his eyes, his appearance, everything about him – wanted to find out more,” Nolan told me. “When I met him, he didn’t strike me as necessarily right for Batman. But there was just a vibe – there are people you meet in your life who you just want to stay connected with, work with; you try to find ways to create together.” So Nolan put him on camera just to see what happened. “He first performed as Bruce Wayne, and I saw the crew stop and pay attention in a way that I had never seen before, and really have never seen since. And it was this electricity just coming off the guy, it was an incredible energy. And so I called some executives, and they were impressed enough with him that they let me cast him as Scarecrow. Those Batman villains at the time had only ever been played by huge stars – Jack Nicholson, Arnold Schwarzenegger. So it’s just a testament to his raw talent.”

Batman Begins was the first of his smaller roles in Nolan’s three Batman movies, Inception, and Dunkirk. “I hope he won’t mind me saying, but when I first worked with him, he was all pure instinct, and the technical side of acting wasn’t something that had registered as important with him. We would literally put a mark down and he would just walk right over it,” Nolan said, laughing. But over two decades, “as I saw him develop his technical facility, it did not in any way distract or diminish the instinctive nature of his performance.”

For the lead in Oppenheimer, Murphy prepared at home for six months, focusing first on the voice and the silhouette (in other words, shedding weight to reflect the skin and bones of a world-renowned physicist who subsisted primarily on martinis and cigarettes during his years developing the bomb). On set, as the days of filming wore on in the New Mexico desert, the significance of what Murphy was up to started to spread across the set among the cast and crew “like a rumour,” Nolan said. “I remember the same thing with Heath Ledger on The Dark Knight.”

Blunt, who plays Oppenheimer’s beleaguered wife, Kitty, first got to know Murphy well on A Quiet Place Part II. “Cillian’s really kidnapping to be in a scene with. He pulls you into this vibrational vortex,” she told me. “He loves a party. But when he’s working, he’s intensely focused, and won’t socialise very much at all. Certainly not on Oppenheimer; I mean, he didn’t have anything left in the tank to say one word to someone at the end of the day.”

Matt Damon told me that when they were shooting out in the middle of New Mexico, he and Blunt and the rest of the cast would go down and eat at this one little café. “It was like a mess tent,” he said. “And Cillian was invited every night, but never made it once.”

Murphy was back in his room, preserving his energy, prepping for the next day, minding the Oppenheimer silhouette.

“OK, he’s losing weight, he can’t eat at night, you know he’s miserable,” Damon said. “But you know he’s doing what’s best for the movie that you all want to be as good as possible, and so you’re cheering him on. But at dinner you’re sitting there and you’re all shaking your heads, going, ‘Man, this is brutal.’

“The one thing that he would allow himself, his one luxury, is that he would take a bath at night. I mean he would allow himself literally a few almonds or something. And then sit in his bath with his script and just work. By himself, every night.”

The performance is so big, but so much of it is invisible to the audience, in the concentrated intensity of the interpretation. The nucleus towards which so many elements subtly draw us, closer to his character. Just one example: if it were period-accurate, Murphy said, everyone would be smoking and wearing hats, but he’s the only one doing either: “It’s emphatic, but subliminally so.” The author Kai Bird, who co-wrote American Prometheus, the monumental biography of Oppenheimer on which the film is based, spent a day at the Los Alamos set, watching Murphy play the scene where Oppenheimer talks to his team of scientists about the bomb while someone drops marbles into a fishbowl and a brandy glass. “At one point during a break, he approached wearing his baggy brown suit and turquoise belt, and I raised my arms and shouted, ‘Dr Oppenheimer, Dr Oppenheimer, I’ve been waiting decades to meet you!’ ” Bird said. “He especially captured the voice and Oppie’s intensity.” (At one point during our conversation, Bird asked me to confirm: “Those are his blue eyes, right? Or is he wearing lenses?”)

The film was released on Barbenheimer weekend, just after the SAG-AFTRA strike began, and despite enjoying some lighter time with Blunt, Damon and the cast, Murphy was relieved to cut short the promotion of the film. “I think it’s a broken model,” he said of red carpet interviews and junkets. Outdated and a drag for actors. “The model is – everybody is so bored.” Look what happened when they went on strike, he said. It all stopped. But the fact that the film was good, and Barbie was good, two at the same time, with people going crazy – it just shows you don’t need it. “Same was the case with Peaky Blinders. The first three seasons, there was no advertising, a tiny show on BBC Two. It just caught fire because people talked to each other about it.”

Murphy’s reticence in many interviews is palpable. “It’s like Joanne Woodward said,” he told me. “ ‘Acting is like sex – do it, don’t talk about it.’ ” Although I wouldn’t characterise his disposition on, say, late-night TV as gruff, he’s basically just incapable of going full phoney. He is, in other words, reacting the same way you might to being asked the same question for the hundredth time in a week. I’m curious to watch him suffer through his first Oscar campaign, where answering the same questions about his performance is essentially the point, for several months.

“People always used to say to me, ‘He has reservations’ or ‘He’s a difficult interviewee,’ ” Murphy said. “Not really! I love talking about work, about art. What I struggle with, and find unnecessary and unhelpful about what I want to do, is: ‘Tell me about yourself…’ ”

Nonetheless: He grew up in Cork. Went to a Catholic school better suited for a certain kind of athletic boy than an artistic soul. “I always fucking hated team sports. I like watching them. But I was terrible at them,” he said. That classic system for schooling was not good for him, “emotionally and psychologically,” he said. “But at least it gave me something to push against.”

Murphy played in a successful band with his brother, half-heartedly entered the local university as a law student. While at school in Cork, he stumbled into a performance of A Clockwork Orange and fell in with the stage scene there. He hadn’t trained in any way, but he got the first role he ever auditioned for, in Enda Walsh’s Disco Pigs, which travelled around the UK, Europe and Canada, and transformed his life. “It all happened to me in one month, in August ’96: we got offered a record deal, I failed my law exams, I got the part in Disco Pigs, and I met my wife,” he said. “I now look back and go, Oh, shit, I didn’t know then how important all these things were – the sort of domino effect that they would have on my life.” I asked Murphy, who has said in the past that he identifies as an atheist, if such a confluence ever made him wonder if there was indeed a higher power organising all of this. “Ohhh,” he said. “I love the chaos and the randomness. I love the beauty of the unexpected.”

That winter weekend, while walking around Dublin on a bit of a Joycean ramble, we passed a bookshop. “This was my favourite bookshop when I first moved up to Dublin. I didn’t have any money and I was living with my mother-in-law. And I would come in here and get a coffee for 50p, but then they would, like, refill it, you know? So, I’d sit in there all day and just read plays and then put them back on the shelves, and then go home and my mother-in-law would feed me dinner,” he said. “Just to educate myself. To catch up. ’Cause I didn’t go to drama school, so I’d read all the plays I should’ve read if I went to drama school. I’d ask all these writers and directors to tell me all the plays that I must read.”

“Theatre is the key to Cillian,” director Danny Boyle told me. “Weirdly, given that he is such an extraordinary film actor.” It’s the ability, from the theatre, to travel the great distance of an extreme character arc. “Everybody talks about his dreamy Paul Newman eyes. And all that’s to his advantage, of course, because behind is this capacity, this reach that he has into volcanic energy.” (The other key to Cillian, Boyle said, is that he’s a bloody Irishman: “He’s one of the great, great exports, and the homeland clearly nourishes him constantly.”) Boyle cast Murphy in 2002’s 28 Days Later, the first film of Murphy’s that made him known. It led, in its way, to the Nolan partnership, as well to working with Boyle again on 2007’s Sunshine. “When we did 28 Days Later, he was really just starting off,” Boyle said. “By the time he came back for Sunshine, he was a seriously accomplished actor.”

In the noughties, Murphy was working frequently. Some of the movies were better than others. “Many of my films I haven’t seen,” he said. “I know that Johnny Depp would always say that, but it’s actually true. Generally the ones I haven’t seen are the ones I hear are not good.”

I asked him if he’d seen Oppenheimer.

“Yes, I’ve seen Oppenheimer…” he said, rolling his eyes.

When Nolan finished the film, Murphy, his wife and his younger son flew to Los Angeles to watch it for the first time in Nolan’s private screening room. “It’s pretty nice…” Murphy said, trying to balance obvious enthusiasm with not giving too much away. “You know, he shows film prints there. The sound is extraordinary.” How many seats? “Uh, I’d say maybe 50?” So, Murphy did see this film of his – in perhaps the most dialled-in home cinema known to man.

In the summer of 2005, just a couple of months after Batman Begins came out, Murphy was back in cinemas with Wes Craven’s Red Eye. It was villain season. And the two roles, in close quarters, seemed to coalesce around a feeling: that guy creeps me out. When casually canvassing people about what they think of when they think of Murphy, I was shocked by the imprint that Red Eye had on an American of a certain age.

“Oh, I know, it’s crazy!” Murphy said. “I think it’s the duality of it. It’s why I wanted to play it. That two thing. The nice guy and the bad guy in one. The only reason it appealed to me is you could do that –” he snapped his fingers “– that turn, you know?”

“They say the nicest people sometimes make the best villains,” Rachel McAdams said, recalling her time with Murphy on the cramped aeroplane set of Red Eye. “We’d listen to music and gab away while doing the crossword puzzle, which he brought every day and would graciously let me chime in on... I think the number one question I got about Cillian way back then was whether or not he wore contact lenses.”

“I love Rachel McAdams and we had fun making it,” Murphy said. “But I don’t think it’s a good movie. It’s a good B movie.”

During that same stretch, Murphy starred in Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley, one of the best films he’s made, and one that Murphy is uniquely proud of. It’s a period epic that tells the story of a crew of Irish friends who find themselves fighting first the British, in the Irish War of Independence, and then one another in the Irish Civil War. The film is lush, harrowing, relentless and transporting. Murphy has a face that sits cosily at home in any decade of the 20th century. He is at his most vital in the ’20s, the ’30s, the ’40s – and that’s one of the factors that works so convincingly in Oppenheimer. Matt Damon, for better or worse, looks like Matt Damon. Emily Blunt, again for better or worse, looks like Emily Blunt. Whereas Cillian Murphy looks like a scientist from 1945.

Murphy and his filmmakers have run this play several ways in recent years. In Anthropoid (2016), as a Czechoslovakian resistance fighter in Nazi-occupied Prague. In Free Fire (2016), as an IRA member caught up in an arms deal gone horribly wrong. In Dunkirk (2017), as a British “shivering soldier” suffering from PTSD. And, of course, in Peaky Blinders (2013–2022), as a First World War hero turned gangster in 1920s Birmingham. With that face, he can play every side of the die of the embroiled conflicts of pre- and post-war Europe. “Cillian’s always laughing about how he’s perpetually playing people who are traumatised,” Blunt said. “There must be something about his face that sort of entices those kinds of offers.”

In the first frame of Anthropoid that Murphy appears in, a moonbeam strikes his cheekbone like it’s a plane of alabaster, and the question immediately pops to mind: are you a Nazi or the resistance? Are you the good guy or the bad guy – or both, that “two thing”? The stable and the wild. The duality. The pull within.

In Dublin, we found ourselves walking through busy streets, beneath abundant winter sunshine and caustic seagulls. We were approached by fans at a shocking clip – but also by sisters of friends.

“I’m not a stalker…” one said, politely.

“Oh, hi, Oona!”

I asked him if he’d sensed that his life had palpably changed in any way since last summer, given that a billion pounds’ worth of people saw him in practically every frame of one of the biggest films of all time. “To me, it always seems to go in waves,” he said. “When Peaky was at its kind of apex, you’d feel a different energy around, walking around, a little bit like I do now – but then it settles down again. It kind of comes in waves. And then you don’t have something in the cinema for ages, and people forget about it. So. It seems to be like that, and you sort of ride that, and then things go back to normal.”

With all due respect to the Peaky hive, this film did seem to go especially wide.

“Yes,” he said, laughing. “But you’d be surprised. Peaky is still the thing I get asked most about in the world.”

As if on cue, Murphy was approached by a fan on the street, who asked for a photo.

“Oh, I don’t do photos,” he said to the disappointed lad, who nonetheless got 20 seconds of Murphy’s time to chat.

“Once I started doing that,” he said, “it changed my life. I just think it’s better to say hello, and have a little conversation. I tell that to a lot of people, you know, actor friends of mine, and they’re just like, I feel so bad. But you don’t need a photo record of everywhere you’ve been in a day.”

“There is a culty, effervescent kind of wonder about Cillian,” said Blunt. “I think for someone as interior as he is, this level of kinetic fame is, like, horrifying for him. If anyone is not built for fame, it’s Cillian.”

To make it up to that fan, I asked Murphy what the status is of a potential Peaky Blinders film. “There is no status, as of now,” he says. “So I have no update. But I’ve always said I’m open to it if there’s more story. I do love how the show ended. And I love the ambiguity of it. And I’m really proud of what we did. But I’m always open to a good script.”

We passed some young people in dark dresses and heels, absolutely the worse for wear. “Look at these guys, out from the night before,” Murphy said, smiling. I asked him if he had his days of partying in Dublin, in London. “I mean, I did, but it was with my friends. I was never part of any scene – or went to, like, acting clubs. I would never go to the premiere... The idea of going to a premiere that isn’t your own, seems to me like…”

We passed Trinity College, an occasion to discuss the breakout Irish series Normal People and its breakout Irish star Paul Mescal. “He is the real deal. He is like a true movie star. They don’t come along that often. But,” Murphy said, serving the lightest and rarest touch of pride and swagger, “luckily, they seem mostly to come from Ireland.

“It’s a good time,” he added, “to be an Irish actor, it seems.”

We stopped in at the Kerlin Gallery to see the show of his sister-in-law, Ailbhe Ní Bhriain. She and Murphy’s wife were friends in graduate school in London, and Murphy’s brother met her while visiting Cillian there. This is his scene. He walked around admiring the pieces, which he’d heard about at family functions but not yet seen in person.

“Now this work immediately appeals to me,” he said, “because you can feel it’s pushing at big, big themes, and to me, that’s what I’ve always loved. I don’t really go for pure entertainment. I love when it makes you feel a little bit fucked up. Not in a horror-genre way, but in a psychological, existential way. That’s what I love in all the work that I enjoy and the work that I try to make.”

Murphy executive-produced the last three seasons of Peaky Blinders, but had been looking for a first film to produce. He secured the rights to Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, a Booker Prize finalist, and one night on the set of Oppenheimer, while they were just sitting there in the desert, Damon told him about Damon and Ben Affleck’s then unannounced new company, Artists Equity, whose novel financial model is based on profit sharing with the crew. Murphy sent them the book and Artists Equity ultimately financed the film. “Normally, you’re trying to put together all these different entities, and then you have all these points of view on the edit,” Murphy said. “This was just those guys.”

Small Things Like These centres on an average man about Murphy’s age in a small town in County Wexford, who, one Christmas, stumbles upon a horrifying secret in the local convent – the Magdalene Laundries, which from the 18th century to the 1990s held thousands of girls and women prisoner in Church workhouses. I asked Murphy if, with his new power, it was important to him to tell Irish stories. Not especially, he said. The only criterion was: what’s the best story for right now? “Still,” he said, “it’s a good time to be looking at that story, because we have distance from what happened with the Church and everything. But yet I don’t think we’ve still fully addressed it. So, if you can make something that’s entertaining and moving, but also asks a few questions about who we are as a nation, and who we were as a nation, and how far we’ve come – then that’s great. But, again, they should happen after you’ve gone and had a reasonably entertaining evening at the cinema.”

Murphy joked at one point that he spent the actors’ strike at home “eating cheese,” but what he really did was spend the strike editing Small Things and overseeing “all the lovely stuff that we actors never get a look in on.” (His production company, Big Things Films, would’ve been called Small Things Films, he said, except that Small Things suggests “a lack of ambition, perhaps.”) Small Things will premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival this month.

One film a year, control, restraint, a hand firmly on the wheel.

Murphy has a natural propensity to an analogue lifestyle that works well with Nolan, who doesn’t use email or have a smartphone. “I aspire to that life,” Murphy said. “I was just clearing stuff off my phone, but have to keep the apps for music and music discovery.

“I still have all my CDs and DVDs and Blu-Rays,” he went on. “I cannot get rid of them. I did get rid of my VHS, though. I just left them on the street because nobody wanted them. I went and brought them to a library and was like, Look at this pretentious collection of art films! and they were like, No thanks, man…”

I asked him if he saw the viral TikTok of Nolan showing a zoomer how best to project Oppenheimer. He started laughing. “My son showed me that. A clash of cultures.”

Working with Nolan can feel like a much-desired retrenchment from modern life. “When I’m on a Chris set, it does feel a little bit like a private, intimate laboratory,” Murphy said. “Even though he works at a tremendous pace, there’s always room for curiosity and finding things out, and that’s what making art should be about, you know? There’s no phones – but also no announcement: everybody just knows. And there’s no chairs. Because he doesn’t sit down. Sometimes a film set can be like a picnic. Everyone’s got their chairs and their snacks and everyone’s texting and showing each other fucking, you know, emojis or whatever, memes – which I do know,” he said, referring obliquely to the meme of Cillian Murphy not knowing what a meme is. “But why?”

Do you know what Nolan is doing next? I asked him.

“Nooo. But, like, I didn’t know that he was writing Oppenheimer. We don’t stay in touch that way.”

It’s like Mission: Impossible. Do the hard thing together, then sever communication. “Chris is the smartest person I’ve ever met,” added Murphy. “Not just the director stuff, but everything else.”

Nolan had told me that he’d wanted to give Murphy the role that he would be dogged by forever – that he would spend the rest of his career trying to crawl out from under. “And,” he said, “I think I’ve done it.”

When I put it to Murphy, he took a beat: “There’s a big, big body of work that I think people that know know.” I think it was his modest way of saying: I’ve got a few others too.

Murphy told me he’d heard that “one of the Sydneys” – Lumet or Pollack – once said that it takes 30 years to make an actor. He believed that. “I’m 27 years,” he said. “So I’m close.”

After Nolan hand-delivered the Oppenheimer script to Murphy and left him to read in that Dublin hotel room, he made his way to the Hugh Lane Gallery, and, more specifically, to the Francis Bacon studio there, a perfect preservation of the impossibly messy London studio where the Irish-born painter had lived and worked for much of his life. Murphy and Nolan share a love of Bacon – a towering figure of the 20th century, born in its first decade, dead in its last. Besides the reassembled studio, the museum has several paintings by Bacon – some finished, some unfinished. In all instances, though, the portraits of people – ghoulishly distorted figures – are rendered unsparingly. Never perfect representations. Never straight impressions. But rather an artist’s interpretation of another being, reconfigured into a stark image. You can see what might appeal to both a director of a biopic and his leading man.

That winter weekend, I made the same journey across the River Liffey that Nolan did, past a poster for Oppenheimer in a Tower Records window, past the Garden of Remembrance (for all who gave their lives for Irish freedom), and met Murphy at the museum. He had on a black puffer jacket, a black hoodie, and a pair of black Ray-Bans with that starburst that movie-star lenses do when subjected to a flash on a red carpet. He removed them inside and took the well-worn path back to the Bacons. “Most people don’t know about this place,” he said. “It’s kind of like a little secret. But I just come here when I have time to spare in town.”

We looked at Bacons. Bacons everywhere. We talked about the Bacon biography that came out in 2021. “I love the work,” Murphy said, “but just the life. That kind of unique relentlessness that he had as an artist.” I asked if he read actor biographies. “When I was starting out,” he said. “I always worry, though, reading them – because I can’t remember what I did last week... I often wonder about the self-mythologising.”

We peered in on the studio itself, every cigarette butt and crate of champagne archived and put in its place. “Chaos for me breeds images,” Bacon had said.

Do you have a room in your house that looks like this? I asked.

Murphy laughed. “No, I do have a man room, a man cave. But it’s incredibly tidy.”

In another room of the museum, we sat before a looped TV special on Bacon from 1985, an hour-long interview with presenter Melvyn Bragg, where the great painter spits off charisma and wisdom in pithy responses to the biggest questions an artist can be asked, all while wearing a perfect black leather jacket. We sat there quietly together, until Murphy interjected: “It’s kind of mesmerising, isn’t it?”

Before I’d arrived in Dublin, Nolan had told me that Murphy’s career tends to make sense if you think of him more as an artist than an actor – as you would a painter or a musician. That his filmography isn’t a line going up or down so much as filled with distinct periods of development. It helps explain the approach to the work. How patient and restrained. How clear the point of view. An act of accretion rather than explosiveness and volatility. So unshaken by the things that rock the boat for so many actors. It’s the clarity. The authenticity. The answer to the question: when you’re tested again and again, what is there? Who is there? Here is a man – a 47-year-old who could play 27 with the right light and 67 with the right make-up – who is probably going to win the Oscar for best actor, but whose mind couldn’t be farther from the chatter of his industry and the noise, the noise. At one point, I asked him if he feels like he’s uniquely well-positioned to play roles of middle age – if Oppenheimer feels like the first film of what could be the strongest stretch of his career.

“I really don’t know,” he said. “I really haven’t thought about it.”

Here, then, was another thing Murphy had seemingly figured out – consciously or not. Almost all religions, coaches, gurus, and enlightened friends tend to offer the same advice: don’t lose yourself in the past, don’t fixate on the future, but focus six inches in front of your nose, and on the Now that you can control. “I really am kind of like, pathologically unsentimental about things,” Murphy said. “I just move forward very quickly.” The past wasn’t a problem because he couldn’t remember it – or wouldn’t romanticise it. The future wasn’t a concern because he didn’t like to plan too far out. And so: the one film on the horizon; the one song on the radio or the one painting on the wall. He was, in this way, an authentic presentist. Or, less abstractly, just a good listener, a good seer, a good scene partner, a good person to have dinner with.

There, in the museum, we sat and we sat, watching the Bacon interview as though there was nowhere else to be (because there really wasn’t) and nothing else to think about (what more was there than how an artist’s life might be lived?).

Murphy broke the silence. “Did you ever hear this theory that [Brian] Eno has? About the farmers and the cowboys? There’s two types of artist – there’s the farmers and the cowboys. The farmers, like in his studio for example,” he said, gesturing to Bacon on the screen. “He’s mostly kind of doing the same thing, refining and refining and refining the same thing. And the cowboys, who go off, they’re like prospectors, that go off and do mad work. Eno puts himself in the second bracket, ’cause he’s such an innovator, with the music and the production and all of that. Or somebody like Bowie, constantly reinventing. Neither one is better, it’s just a different way of making work.”

Which do you fall into? I asked.

“Definitely the cowboy, I think. But there are actors that just play similar parts, versions of themselves all the time. Again, I don’t think either one is better.”

Do you think that sometimes an actor falls into the other category by accident, when their public persona intersects with – or eclipses – the work? I asked.

“Perhaps. Yeah. I’m sure that’s the case. Yeah.”

He sat back and sank into the film again, giggling at some of the things that Bacon said and did. “There’s a few things he says that I always think apply to our work,” he said. “ ‘The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.’ ” Provocative movies. Provocative performances. No easy answers – but perhaps a few new questions.

Don’t give it all away. Don’t even give most of it away. Retrench. Be clear. With yourself, but not necessarily with others. Let the fame wave pass. Live by the sea.

He said it again: “Deepen the mystery. That’s it, isn’t it?”'

[fruitymarcy]

The Batman is actually pretty interesting politically. The film somewhat centers around a mayoral election, and politics plays a large role in most of the character’s motivations. The Batman looks at how different working class people respond to the struggles in life caused by the elite, and how a billionaire who is actually empathetic grapples with the inherent contradiction of his existence.

Catwoman and The Riddler actually have a somewhat similar past, but the people they become as a result are very different. Catwoman is more of a left wing anarchist, while The Riddler is more of a right wing anarchist. You’d think these characters are polar opposites given their vastly different ideologies, but in reality they’ve struggled in similar ways, and as a result of the same capitalist elite. The difference is how they responded to their struggles.

Catwoman despises the rich and wants to burn down the system that lead to her struggling, whereas The Riddler also despises the rich, but he wants to make the people of Gotham who had it better than him (including other working class people) suffer. He doesn’t seem to have much of a long term plan, he just wants to make everyone feel the pain he did. Catwoman, on the other hand, wants to go after billionaire hedge-fund types and do what she can to disrupt the system. Both of these characters are flawed in their belief that violence will lead to the change they want (though Riddler is far more flawed.)

Bella Reál is the winner of the mayoral election, and is Mayor of Gotham by the end of The Batman. Bella is a progressive who believes in reforming the capitalist system. Reál believes the corruption and inequalities under capitalism are not inherent, and that reforms can make the system work for all. This is also a flawed perspective, but at least unlike Catwoman and The Riddler she has the right idea of how to bring change. Bella wants to bring change by being elected democratically to represent the people, compared with Catwoman and Riddler’s desires to destroy.

Bruce Wayne is a billionaire, and he’s rightfully called out by then candidate Bella Reál for not using his vast wealth to help the working people of Gotham. Now obviously Wayne, as Batman, is fighting to improve Gotham every day. However, Bella points out something that he perhaps hadn’t thought about, that he can be a hero even when he isn’t wearing the cowl. At another point in the film, Catwoman mentions her plan to go after the rich, and even contrasts Batman with the rich explaining just how different they are. This clearly makes Bruce uncomfortable, and he really struggles throughout this film to figure out how he can bring change when his very existence is a result of the uber-capitalist status quo.

Bruce is a billionaire, and not even a self made one. He inherited his wealth and he barely does anything to manage his company. Not only is he a billionaire but he didn’t get there on his own and he has done zero work to attain or maintain this elite status. Wayne grapples with the idea that he is the embodiment of what he strives to defeat, and that is only further exemplified by Carmine Falcone treating Bruce like a nephew of sorts. He knows that people like Falcone are supposed to be his people. And he hates that.

Bruce understands by the end of the film that the city government was corrupt under his father’s administration, and that he can do more to be a hero rather than a vigilante, both as Batman and as Bruce Wayne. This is pivotal in his understanding of how he should fight crime going forward. Batman will be a beacon of hope for Gotham, rather than a manifestation of vengeance. And the same is true for Bruce Wayne, as he will likely work with Reál’s administration to donate some of his money and lift thousands of Gotham’s people out of poverty. That simultaneously helps him fight crime too, because that prevents the next Riddler from ever going down that route.

The Batman doesn’t try to sell the audience on any one particular political ideology being the best, rather it tries to demonstrate how some are problematic. It attempts to portray what happens when people who think violence and crime will solve their problems have the means to go forward with their ideas. It shows what happens when people simply defend the status quo as well, like Gotham’s incumbent mayor at the beginning of the film. It demonstrates how the status quo is unacceptable and how the elite want to get richer and richer and make the poor poorer.

As far as politics, The Batman may not please everybody. I mean, there are people with ideologies it portrays as bad, and they’ll be upset, but I mean that even beyond that there is no one this movie is trying to say is best and thus there is no audience that will view the movie and come out of it thinking that it reaffirmed their beliefs. Rather, the film seems to aim to challenge a number of ideologies and call on the viewer to question their own views.

[drkroots]

The Deities

Note: This is not all of them ( or all their info ) but the important ones for now and this post can and probably will be updated / altered occasionally when I flesh stuff and things out!

Anuka - The Allmother

There are other gods, but she is the only one in the pantheon that gets the title with a capital G, or M ( as in The Mother )

She’s often depicted as a woman of racial ambiguity, often surrounded by nature of various types, depending on where in the world she’s being worshipped, often with Mother Magic on her left side and Father Forest on her right.

While she’s most famous for the creation of witches and wolves, she’s seen as the mother of all natural life.

She is the most worshipped of the pantheon and it is fair to say she’s ( assumed to be ) worshipped by all, while the other entities on this list mostly take on the role of side gods, for lack of a better term.

She created the wolves and witches to keep balance in the world: wolves to represent chaos and witches to represent order.

Her night of worship is the full moon and to celebrate their worship the wolves will ritually hunt, sacrifice and feast on prey, while the witches will spend times in gardens, often planting new things, their way of replacing the lives the wolves have taken.

She’s older than time and is a giant mass of energy and light, but can take on a human appearance when lowering herself to be in the earthly realms.

Mother Magic - The First Witch

The first witch

Associated with feminine energies

Associated with fertility

Associated with the old magics

Often depicted as a woman with a staff in one hand and a wreath in the other

Father Forest - The First Wolf

Associated with masculine energies

Associated with the hunt

Often depicted as a large wolf ( larger than other wolves in there’s imagery where he’s with a pack )

Algora - The Keeper

Depicted as a giant, sentient cephalopod

Heavily associated with knowledge

Associated with the newer magics

While none of the gods have taken claim for them, vampires deeply worship her

Grigori - The Master of Luck

Man who became a god

Depicted as a two headed coin

He assigns people their lucky numbers and can manipulate the luck

He’s a Rumpelstiltskin sort of character, always working in deals and the like to always get people tangled in his games and gets great entertainment out of people misunderstanding his rules and requirements.

He gets great joy out of manipulating his followers so whenever people say they worship him, there are always eyebrow raised

Svetlána - The Lady of Wrath

Associated with ice / the cold

Hasn’t had a true form in millennia thanks to being tricked by Grigori, so she exists from vessel to vessel

Whether she represents vengeance or justice completely depends on what side of her wrath you happen to be on

Her vessel is temporarily immortal for as long as she’s using it, but the second she leaves or is removed, all damage done catches up to them and being a vessel is pretty much seen as a death wish

Often depicted as a polar bear because one time, she spent a hundred years in the body of one and it became something of a mythic creature

The Twin Hawks

Depicted as two hawks in flight, one red and the other a tawny yellow

Associated with speed and with luck, specifically in the context of the hunt

Because of them, seeing a hawk in flight is considered good luck and an indication that good things are on the way ( even more so if one happens to see a pair )

The Old Ones

They’re a set of five dragons believed to be created from the first magics. While no one can really say how or why they were created, it’s easy to assume that these early people were curious about the giant bones they found poking out of the ground and ice. Since then though, they’ve been turned into something of gods, almost negative reflections of the pantheon.

Altath - Associated with dreams, nightmares and self-righteousness, some even thinking him an aspect of Svetlána. He’s often depicted as white and gold with blood all over his mouth.

Magnero - Associated with excess and cannibalism. He’s depicted as a sickly, corpse-like  dragon and its believe that he gorged himself so much as if he’s attempting to repair himself and restore his body mass.

Ema - Associated with gems, materialism and narcissism. She’s often depicted with purple scales and diamond eyes and talons, her form sleek and slender.

Tunna - Associated with extreme weathers and natural disasters, either seen as an entity to provoke them or to make them cease to exist. She’s depicted as a small dragon with grey scales.

Tulka - Associated with authority and order, she’s the largest of the dragons and would be considered the leader if they were to actively be in existence today. One of her horns has been snapped off in a fierce battle and she’s covered in auburn and charcoal scales.

[lovesupernova25]

okay, so... the new episode came out and i was sucked back into tss against my will. sorry to everyone who followed me for dsmp stuff 😅. buuuuuuuut- that means it’s time for another character analysis!

So I want to talk about Remus.

There’s been a lot of theorizing about Logan’s character development and the orange side (which i am super excited for!!) but i haven’t seen that many posts discussing Remus’s role in this last episode, which I think was a LOT more important than we all realized.

Here’s the thing: Remus is smarter than he looks. We haven’t gotten to see much of this before now- I mean, sure, he had like an entire 45 minutes devoted solely to him, but that was just the introduction. There’s clearly a lot more to Remus than he lets on, and we got a bit of that in WTIT. Now this episode was great for a lot of reasons, but especially because it started to answer a question i’ve had since DWIT-- what is Remus’s purpose? He’s intrusive thoughts, yes. But that isn’t why he exists. Every side has a certain job to fulfill, all of which help thomas in some way. For example, Virgil’s title is anxiety, but his purpose is to keep Thomas safe.

So what is Remus really trying to accomplish? If we just look at DWIT, it seems like all he’s trying to do is hurt thomas. But that can’t be right- it seems the only common factor between the sides is that they all want to help thomas as much as possible (though they have very different ideas of what ‘help‘ is). So how does Remus help thomas? Lets look at what he does.

Probably the most beneficial thing Remus has done is get Logan to snap at him. Why? Because Logan ‘I do not have emotions and everything will be fine if i simply ignore them’ Sanders needed that. And Remus knew this. He also— because it’s his job--knew exactly what buttons to push to get get to Logan’s breaking point. He knows that Logan is feeling ignored- which already makes him a lot more perceptive than any of the others seem to be.

Here’s the thing: A problem can’t be solved until it’s addressed.

So what’s Remus’s purpose? What has he done?

Remus is honesty. That’s not his title, no, but that’s his purpose. To get Thomas to be honest with himself. Remus takes all the nasty, slimy, twisted parts of everyone that they’ve all preferred to just shove under the rug and he brings them to the light. He pokes and prods and needles until they have no choice but to address their problems, and, consequently... fix them.

And here’s the thing! WTIT isn’t the first time Remus has done this. Remember when he first appeared? Remember all those little comments toward Virgil, pushing his buttons and dropping subtle hints that left everyone else confused?

Remus was the tipping point, the last straw that led to Virgil finally telling thomas about his past. And Remus knew this. Sure, it was awful, and there was definitely a better way get Virgil out of his shell—but it eventually led to what we saw in the first asides. Thomas let Virgil know that they were still friends, and it was okay. They were okay, despite a rocky history.

I‘m sure Virgil himself would’ve preferred never to tell thomas— but they couldn’t have truly moved on and worked through other problems if he hadn’t.

I‘m almost certain the same thing is going to happen with Logan being ignored, and whoever the orange side turns out to be.

Remus is working for Thomas’s benefit, even if it’s hard to see.

[suesheroll]

Bojack Horseman // A Straight-to-Television Life

Bojack Horseman has always alluded to the fact that TV shows have played a big role in his childhood and as is obvious from the events of the show, they’ve played an even bigger part in his adulthood.

This is a sort of deconstruction of that concept.

Spoilers for all seasons

TW suicide, overdose, choking and death

Horsin’ Around

Bojack’s magnum opus, despite his best efforts, remained his nine season long sitcom, Horsin Around. It was a part of his identity that he refused to let go of. During the Oscar campaign with Ana Spanakopita he struggled not to defend it, he struggled to badmouth the show and distance himself from it. The show was his safe haven from all the damage he’d left back with his parents. It’s not just that he suddenly had a functional family on TV that he never had in reality, but he was the parent of that functional family. He emulated the type of perfect parent his mom and dad hadn’t even come close to and Bojack attempted to heal his inner child by showing himself what good parenting was. It was a reiteration that good parents can exist so his weren’t the norm but the exception.

He took the emulation so far that the only way he recognises family is through TV shows. After Sarah Lynn dies, partially due to Bojack himself, he sees a do over opportunity only in the little girl who plays his grand daughter (sorta? Idk) on the reboot of Horsin Around, Ethan Around. He doesn’t treat Hollyhock as that do over who at the time is presented as his actual daughter. He fucks up with her multiple times during Stupid Piece of Shit in season 4 and only spirals when he finds out that she overdosed just like Sarah Lynn. He does nothing to prevent that eventual outcome despite having witnessed it with Sarah Lynn.

In the end, s6 ep14 sees bojack lose all connection to Horsin Around. Angela Diaz has him sign away his rights to the show and bojack is to be edited out of the existing footage. He has to watch himself be erased from such a large part of his identity. Once that identity is taken from him, what tether does he have left? It is this pivotal realisation that triggers him to attempt suicide that night in episode 15. He realised that now that he was being edited out he couldn’t make a reboot or a sequel or profit off of it in any way. That really cemented that Herb and Sarah Lynn would never come back. That he wouldn’t get a do over on his sitcom life. It’s like in Free Churro when he likened losing a parent to Becker being cancelled, you knew it could’ve gotten better but now it won’t have the chance to. Until he had Horsin Around he thought he had a legacy, something positive to leave behind. But now that he doesn’t have that anymore, his life is meaningless and the show can finally stop. The episode ends on Bojack’s face parallel with his audition tape for Horsin Around showing in one clean shot what exactly bojack has lost and therein begins the View from Halfway Down. Horsin’ Around is dead and everything is worse now.

The Bojack Horseman Show

There isn’t much to be said for this 2007 disaster except that it serves the basis for his character’s insecurity. His stint on Horsin Around, although not taken seriously, was still his best work. Now The Bojack Horseman Show he was making with Cuddly Whiskers was met with praise from the network. That set an expectation on Bojack to deliver the work and with quality. Not in a place to grapple with his own skill as an actor outside the world of sitcom, he did what bojack does best. He sabotaged himself. He roped Cuddly Whiskers into making the script of the show an absolute mess so that that’s what critics focus on rather than what could be sub par acting. The show would tank because it was horribly written, not because bojack didn’t size up to the role. He wanted to hold onto the only thing working for him, TV acting. If the critics tore him to shreds on his acting, he would no longer have that reprise of TV and would have to reflect on his work on Horsin’ Around.

Philbert

This show, although successful, also didn’t see bojack do any acting, hilariously enough. The shows script so intimately paralleled his own life that he was already a living philbert. He becomes so entrenched in the character because philbert gets what bojack didnt, a free pass for all the weird morally dubious shit he’s done. Bojack in real life is urged to take accountability for himself over and over again by Diane especially at the premier party for Philbert.

He loses himself in Philbert so much that he goes through a disassociative episode blurring the lines between the TV show and reality. The title sequence for the episode, The Showstopper becomes the title sequence used in Philbert. Bojack stops taking his costume off when he gets home, the set of Philbert is an exact replica of his own home so he often forgets where he really is. He sets up a paranoia induced mystery for himself to solve as if he really is a detective like on Philbert. The fact that he and his costar are dating in real life and on the show certainly doesn’t help. The final plunge into paranoia comes when Diane writes Bojack’s own misdeeds into the shows script. Suddenly, the TV show is no longer showing him a life he fantasises about- guiltless and praised- but his own gruesome reality reflected back at him. It drives him to the edge and he almost chokes his costar and girlfriend Gina to death.

Looking at Life Through Technicolour Glasses

In the end bojack has always framed his life through sitcom philosophy. He references TV shows like Maude in Free Churro wanting a grand gesture to fix his relationship with his mom like it happens in sitcoms.

It’s why his Escape from LA episode is also framed like a sitcom: with the happy happy title sequence of Kyle and the Kids and the exaggerated events that’s only happen in sitcoms like a celebrity taking a girl to prom. It’s sitcom framing is why it went sooooo pear shaped in the end with Bojack traumatising Penny and Charlotte. Because as early as season 2 Raphael Bob-Waksberg wanted to make it clear that Bojack’s life wasn’t and couldn’t be a sitcoms. It took bojack himself four more seasons to realise that.

Bojack thinks you can’t have a happy ending or life won’t go on because its only through constant action and issues that sitcoms can continue to have episodes. And above all, you can’t stop dancing Although this particular nugget of wisdom wasn’t internalised from Hollywoo(d) but from the wonderful Beatrice Sugarman herself. If Bojack stops dancing, stops having a constant slew of problems or drama, the show stops. The show stops and you find yourself halfway down to nothingness.

Bojack Horseman is over and everything is worse now.

[lazyliars]

/rp

Before I get into it, I want to state that is EXPLICITLY an analysis of the Characters, and is not intended to touch on how the cc’s played them in a meta sense unless specifically stated otherwise.

Also, this is technically a part two to my other post, which took a more in depth look at Techno and Phil’s reactions to Tommy’s death. It’s not necessary when reading this post, but I don’t address their reactions here.

So. The question must be asked.

Are we [the Syndicate] the baddies?

Yes.

The End.

 Why are the Syndicate the baddies?

They got damn logo is a wither skull.

The End.

That's not how this works.

Yeah, yeah. You’re right.

The Syndicate's goals as an organization are not inherently bad. They seem to have good intentions behind them, and the focus on the freedom of it's individual group members is important to remember when talking about it; It is not a government. There is no hierarchical power system. No one is forced to do anything against their will, or surrender any of their rights or power to remain a member. It is not a government.

I also want to address Techno and Phil backing Ranboo into a corner – I see them getting a lot of flack for this, but I personally do not think it is relevant to the greater discussion, or necessarily representative of any contradictions within the organization. It was clearly played for laughs, and after they back off they clarify to Ranboo that they won't force him. Then later when Phil and Ranboo are alone, Ranboo feels safe enough to express that he felt like he was pressured into it, and Phil assures him he is allowed to leave whenever he wants; He is not being forced to do anything, and he is not being coerced or blackmailed.

None of the Syndicate members have done any wrongs against each other in the context of the Syndicate, OR gone against any of the Syndicate's core principles.

That, said, holy shit are they the baddies.

Listen, there's trying to telegraph a meaning or message to the audience and then there's having your logo be wither skulls on blackstone. That is straight out of the skit I keep referencing, seriously.

Okay, but, they laughed at it! It was played as a joke, just like the Ranboo thing!

The Ranboo thing was improv, the Syndicate's headquarters were planned – the artistic choices that they made reflect on what role they want the build and the organization inhabiting it to play in the future storylines.

Wither Skulls kind of have some CONNOTATIONS. Techno is an English major, I don't think he chose the most threatening imagery possible on accident, and then joked about the way people would interpret it just to stir the pot. This reads as hugely intentional.

And beyond that, the jokes they make during this part aren't “haha yeah, we look bad but we're actually good!” they're “you can tell by looking at these that we're the good guys wink wink, this is good guy stuff right here :)” It is a joke about how they are definitely not the good guys. This isn't even a case of unreliable narrators, this is one step down from flat out saying the meta intent.

But okay, I hear you, I'm talking about things that haven't happened yet. The Syndicate hasn't used any Withers, they could be an aesthetic choice.  Lets look at what they do in practice.

So, they barge into private property, assess Snowchester's right to continue existing based entirely on their own ideals of what Freedom is, and then only once Tubbo assures them that they have no standing leader do they grant the place their approval to, and I gotta stress this part, continue existing.

 In my Quackity meta, I already talked about how Government in the context of a M1necraft RP cannot be compared to IRL Governments on a one-to-one scale. They don't serve the same purposes or have the same type of power. What I didn't talk about was Agency in the context of m1necraft governments.

In an irl government, if you are born into one, you can't really leave without committing a massive overhaul on your life, which can be expensive and difficult, if not impossible for many people. Even in a “benevolent” government, the simple physicality of where you were born can prevent you from leaving it easily.

The same hurdles do not exist in the Dream SMP. People who join M1necraft governments choose to. They want to, either at the beginning when they form one, or later on when they join up. So far, no Government has just Sprung Up and forced the current residents of an area to become dependent on them, except maybe the Eggpire, who's status as a government is... shakey.

And even when people want to leave or separate from the government, they have been historically able to do so without any trouble or any effort from said governments to stop them. Jack Manifold emancipated from Manberg. Fundy and Quackity both left to start new nations. In all cases they were allowed to do so without any attempts on the part of the governments to stop them, either through force, or institutions preventing them from doing so.

The most anyone has lost when leaving a government is their house, which is still usually their property anyway, and is something that is easily rebuilt elsewhere and is inconvenient to move anyway.

The only exceptions to this might be Schlatt exiling Wilbur and Tommy - but even then, they weren’t trying to leave, they were trying to get back in, and of course the original L’manberg revolution, where Dream attempted to force L’manberg back into the Dream SMP, which wasn’t even a government at that point in time.

I don’t consider Phil’s house arrest an example of a government forcing someone to stay a citizen - that was treated less as a matter of a citizen wanting to leave the country and more as a threat to national security. Still pretty fucked up, but it’s a different issue.

What I'm saying is, If Tubbo wants to create a government out in the middle of nowhere, threatening no one, forcing no one to join either through force or desperation, and allowing people to join willingly because they want to, then he should be allowed to do that.

The Irony of the Syndicate, a group of people consisting of some of the richest, strongest people on the server, going around and enforcing 'Freedom' that entails no one person having more power than any other, is absurd. 

It shows an extreme lack of self-awareness and/or self-righteousness, as they seem to think that they deserve to be the ones who decide what constitutes a government.

Snowchester is a small independent nation - they shouldn’t have to live in fear of being obliterated if they don’t walk on eggshells to meet an arbitrary standard decided by people who’s only authority on the matter COMES FROM THEIR PERSONAL POWER. No one elected them! No one chose them! They were not “approved” by the server at large to enact this kind of law.

The Syndicate are not a government, but they are an unsupervised power structure exerting their ideals on a land that did not ask for them. Like, These people have invented an actual Authoritarian-Anarchist faction. How the hell did they manage this?????

Back on topic.

Tubbo shows them the crater left by his nukes. The reaction is oddly positive – the nukes are fine by the morals of the Syndicate, apparently. I'd argue that they come across as more impressed than anything else; they seem to respect Tubbo for having gotten ahold of “real” power.

(There's a few good memes out there about “We can excuse nuclear weaponry, but we draw the line at Government!”)

So. By the Syndicate's standards: A single person or group of acceptably equal persons with weapons of mass-destruction are only worth “keeping an eye on” because they might provoke other people.

Like, I consider Project Dreamcatcher to be one of, if not the most morally ambiguous thing Tubbo has ever done, largely because it was all on his own initiative. He holds some culpability for The Butcher Army and Phil's house arrest, but they weren't his ideas and he was mostly following Quackity at that point.

And Phil tells Tubbo, IMMEDIATELY AFTER SEEING THE NUCLEAR CRATER:

“Looks like you've reformed a little bit Tubbo, I'm proud.”

And it's fine. Crimes against nature? Fine. A sign of healing in fact!! Tubbo is having a sweeeelll time and he definitely didn't make these nukes specifically in fear of being attacked by these exact people! Tubbo is doing great. Tubbo is doing fine. Tubbo. is. FINE.

Anyway.

I don't think this presentation of the Syndicate was an accident. Looking at the greater lore of SMP right now, after the Egg is done, their list of enemies is slim, and considering that they seem solely invested in taking down governments, that leaves maybe Snowchester, Kinoko Kingdom, and Eret and the greater Dream SMP.

Snowchester has not been shown to be corrupt, evil, or have any intent to go down that route. The most ambiguous thing they've done is, again, is the nukes. Other than that, it's pretty much your average cottagecore snow village.

Kinoko is presented in an even more morally 'good' light, Karl having founded it specifically for his Time-travel library purposes, which are currently being treated by the narrative as a selfless act, if not downright heroic.

Eret is also a fairly 'good' aligned character atm. He's been on that redemption grind since the og betrayal, and doesn't seem keen on backtracking. He's actively tried to leverage his position as king to make things better, and hasn't been quiet about that. He was also 'validated' by Tommy*, a character who has been described both by his allies and enemies as “the hero,” so take that as you will.

What I'm getting at is, all of the current potential enemies for the Syndicate aside from the Egg, are currently being cast as 'good,' and if they were to be attacked, they would undoubtedly have the moral high-ground, unless something drastically changed.

The only potential shakeups I can think of is are a Dream escape and/or a Wilbur revival, both of which could draw the Syndicate's attention and ire, depending on how things go. That said, it's just as likely that either or both of them would join the Syndicate – Dream still has that favor, and Phil and Techno both seemed to think Wilbur would've agreed with their blowing up L'manberg.

Both of those characters are currently **villains – the fact that they're both prime candidates for the Syndicate is a huge indication of the direction it's going to go as the plot moves forward.

((*I know some people are gonna come at me for painting Tommy as the “deciding factor” of what is morally good, so lemme just stop you there. I'm not talking about Tommy somehow having the 'right' to decide who is and isn't good, and definitely not the right to decide who should and shouldn't be king. I'm saying that Tommy, a character who the narrative treats as, if not a good person, then a person who is trying to be good, was in support of Eret, a character who has also been trying to be good.

Eret doesn't gain the moral highground because Tommy said so, he gets it because a character who the narrative treats as trying to do better, acknowledged Eret's earnest attempts at doing the same.

**I'm referring to Wilbur here as a villain because Tommy seemed convinced he would be if he were to be brought back. There is always the possibility that he's wrong.))

So, to summarize this: I read the Syndicate as being intentionally positioned as future antagonists, if not outright villains of a future arc. They are NOT a Government but their goals are contradictory with their means, and it is important to keep in mind that they plan to enforce their own brand of freedom on people who did not grant them either the authority or permission to do so.

So, uh. Can you tell I loved these streams? They were seriously so good. I kept switching between Ranboo and Techno's POV's trying to keep up with everything. I still have to watch Niki's!

All in all, I'm super, super excited for whats coming next, egg stuff, Syndicate stuff, Tommy stuff, all of it.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

I’m sorry, but can I just go on a little rant about the Louis, clouis, and the Clem comic...? 

I didn’t really talk about Louis in my overall review of the comic because I wanted that to be more contained to the content shown on the pages, Clementine’s relationship with AJ, and her as a character.... but the more I think about these comics and Louis, the more frustrated I become thinking about what Clementine abandoning everyone would do to him. 

[... okay it’s not little anymore since I guess I can never just do anything simple when it comes to Louis, sorry my bad]

So, no surprise, we all know the comic’s bullshit by now. Clementine leaving everything and everyone behind because she’s not happy is dumb, AJ just letting her go is dumb, and Clem going to the mountains on crutches and a peg leg to find this so-called happiness is dumb. 

Now that we’ve established it’s dumb, I wanna talk about Louis because I got a lot of built up feelings about how bullshit this storyline is with how Clementine would not only abandon AJ, but also abandon Louis. 

Because let me tell you..... his heart would be broken beyond repair and I need to talk about why.

Sigh.... so.... muh boy. 

Before he met Clementine, Louis was this laidback, irresponsible, but caring and musical person who kept his head down to avoid conflict and never looked at the future. He was the kind of person who took things one day at a time, saw survival as a day-to-day task, and said that the future doesn’t exist, there’s only today. You get the point, he was never too concerned with things because they always seemed to work out, and if they didn’t, then that sucks and that’s why we should appreciate every day while we have it. 

Louis is shown to be charismatic and friendly, he spends his free time playing piano and card games, but no one really takes him seriously. Not even Marlon, his best friend for 8+ years. While he doesn’t seem to be on bad terms with anyone [including Aasim, they just act like people who disagree with the other’s point of view and have had the same argument many times, but that doesn’t mean they hate each other, y’know?] he also doesn’t appear super close with anyone outside of Marlon and possibly Violet, but even then. 

Marlon’s shown to have little faith in him with the way he talks about if Louis will even show up to hunt. He has a controlling grip on Louis that’s prominent during the confrontation scene when he uses intimidation to try to convince Louis to not interfere. Oh, and there’s the fact that Marlon’s been lying to Louis for the past year about the twins and then continued to lie to his face about what really happened to Brody... which isn’t great when you consider how Louis was the only one who had blind faith in him as a leader and, according to Marlon, was the only one who couldn’t see how pathetic he always was. 

Violet, while having a few more nicer moments with him than Marlon, still invalidates him and his feelings several times throughout the first half of the game which makes me wonder how close they ever were, or at least if Violet ever considered him a close friend to begin with. And no, a small monologue in the dorms doesn’t make everything better or confirm they were brotp the whole time... especially when once they’re on the boat, Louis might as well not exist because Violet can’t be bothered to acknowledge what happened to him or inquire about how he’s doing. I guess she just didn’t have time react while standing in her cell for several unbothered minutes-- no wait, it’s she already reacted off screen. Right. Good writing is good.

What I’m getting at here is that even though Louis is surrounded by people who he genuinely cares about, there is an argument to be made that he’s a lonely person. Hell, he’s aware of his loneliness when he says that no one hears past his music and jokes. I mean, how many nights do you think he spent by himself playing the piano because no one wanted to hear it? Are they like Violet and crack jokes about how he doesn’t have actual talent? Probably, given that someone literally carved “you suck at playing” onto the side of the damn piano. 

Oh, and let’s touch on that backstory of his. Louis grew up wealthy with two parents who loved him and each other, and they gave him anything he wanted except singing lessons. Louis says he wanted to be a real musician. But I guess his father didn’t like that idea and told him no, with the [as Louis puts it] dumb dad lesson of, “You get to be happy, or you get to be rich, can’t be both.” ...which is interesting given that Louis and his family were stupid rich but also.... were they not happy? well, that doesn’t make sense because little Louis knew that if he broke up their marriage, they would be hurt. 

So yeah, Louis was so upset that his father continually refused to let him take singing lessons that he broke into the man’s credit cards and faked an affair, which led to his parents divorcing... and then he spit his father’s words back in his face. 

Then they dumped him at Ericson. And the walkers came. 

There’s so much to unpack from the story he tells that it could be it’s own analysis, but basically.... Louis is aware of why what he did was fucked up, and he carries it with him every day. 

He regrets what he did, chews himself out for being such a “vindictive fuckhead” [and the amount of force used in that line tells you a lot, like how it’s not the first time he’s chastised himself like this] and he admits that he doesn’t even know the person he’s talking about. Yet, he still sees himself as bad, saying that they [I assume the staff] told him and the other kids they’re bad people. I don’t doubt that Louis internalized that which played a huge role in the confidence and self-esteem issues he has during tfs. 

Anyway, I’ll come back to this later, but when you take that amount of guilt and regret, and mix it with the fact that they dropped him off at this school that was supposed to make him better.... then the walkers came and those teachers, staff, and headmaster? Gone. Left a bunch of kids to fend for themselves, with the exception of Ms. Martin [but given how she looks when we find her I doubt she lasted that long] and I cannot imagine how horrifying that was for all of them. The dead are up eating people, and if you die you become one of them... and the people you thought you could rely on just fucking left you to die at this school. 

Every kid in that school has trauma and abandonment issues from before and after the world went to shit, every last one, and Louis isn’t the exception here. Over the years, a lot of kids died and they’ve all seen horrible shit. They all knew they were never going to see their families again, and as far as we know, no one came to get their kids at the beginning. They had to find ways of coping while trying to survive, and all they had left was each other. 

Louis copes with music and games and jokes. He’s built up this persona where it seems like he’s unaffected by the comments the others make, that the death and suffering he’s gone through is in the past, that he is confident and open to those around him.

But then Clementine and AJ show up, and Louis grows close with both of them. They had immediate chemistry upon first meeting, he was the one who looked after AJ since it seems like everyone else saw him as a little terror, and he went out of his way to be kind and make them comfortable. 

When they go hunting with him, Louis and Clementine have a moment after taking care of the walker where they lower their guards a bit-- Louis gives her more in-depth reasons for his views of survival, and going off her expression, it gets to her and makes her think.... but they’ve know each other a day and he’s not quick to infodump his life story or let her in, so he cuts the conversation short.

Then we have the Marlon confrontation scene that I have gone over so many times in the past. I won’t dillydally with it too long but..... Clementine appeals to Louis, who curls in on himself because of the control Marlon has on him. He wants to help, and hell, he knows this is wrong but he’s so used to not getting involved that he gets defensive.... plus, he’s known Clementine for two days, and he’s known Marlon for 8+ years.... he wants to believe Marlon but you can tell he doesn’t want this, either. It takes Clementine talking to him to give him courage to stand between her and Marlon’s gun and it’s a lot.

AJ shoots Marlon and everything goes to shit, and Louis is a goddamn mess. His best friend was murderer right in front of him, so add that to the trauma list, and he’s overwhelmed with all these feelings that again.... they keep getting invalidated by Violet because “Marlon was a liar and murderer, therefore you shouldn’t feel bad about his death. Get over yourself, Louis, you can be such a shithead sometimes.” 

Oh yeah Vi, I guess he should care more about two people he’s known for a total of two days rather than for the safety of the people [including you] he’s grown up with and cared about for 8+ years.... makes sense. 

So yeah, little to no support during this time. Alone again. 

And just because I have to make this clear so no one gets a hair up their ass-- both Louis and Violet are wrong here. Kicking them out isn’t the solution, but neither is acting like AJ was right to commit murder just because it was Marlon.

 But plots gotta plot, so they get voted out and you can see that Louis is conflicted about the whole thing. He wants them gone, but at the same time, he knows what kicking them out means. You can see it on his face that he’s not okay with kicking them out. He’s hurting when he’s there in the dorms telling them how the vote went... he literally doesn’t know what else to do. He just knows that everything hurts, Clem and AJ caused it, and he wants the pain to stop. He even tries to justify it to himself by figuring that they’ve done this before so they’ll be fine. Not a great thing to say, Lou. 

Anyway, we know the story, Clem and AJ come back and Louis once again sees the consequences of acting out of pain.... AJ is shot because Louis was hurt and he made a bad decision that he’s gotta live with.... something that he’s done before, and this affirms to him that he’s bad. He wishes he could take it back, and goes as far as to admit that to Clementine during the archery scene. 

By the way, credit to him for his apology to her. It’s rare in these games that Clem gets a genuine apology from someone who hurt her and doesn’t turn around to repeat the hurtful behavior, y’know? Plus, I can think of plenty of characters who owed Clem an apology in the past or if they did apologize, it was half-assed. 

You can feel how conflicted he is with this whole thing-- learning who Marlon really was and what he did, feeling something for Clementine before everything went down and not knowing how to handle those feelings afterward, caring about AJ and understanding why he thought shooting was the best choice but still hurting that his friend is dead.... 

And the thing is.... Louis forgives her for so much, as she does him, and through all of that bullshit, they manage to develop that strong connection that turns romantic. Louis lets himself be fully vulnerable with her and is honest about his feelings, how she listened when no one else did and seeing him for more than just the persona he put on. 

This works on Clementine’s side, too. Clementine has been through her own fair share of bullshit-- trauma, abandonment, loss, injury, you name it. She’s made mistakes, done terrible things, and has been in enough groups to know that romance usually ends in heartbreak.... and yet, she’s willing to open herself up to Louis and admit she feels a lot for him. 

Is it a little rushed? Yep. Could it have been handled better? Of course, most things this season could’ve, but what we got was pretty good. 

So Clementine and Louis are romantically involved now, the raiders attack, and she saves him... and boy does Louis feel guilty about that one, too. He feels bad enough that he questions why she would pick him because he can’t fathom his life being worth saving over another’s. He doesn’t see himself as useful, and even though Clementine is literally his girlfriend at this point, his self-esteem is so all over the place that he can’t understand why she would have him at her side. 

And when Clementine tells him that he’s too important to her, he’s too baffled to even give a response. He looks at her in disbelief like he wasn’t expecting her to say that.  But this shows that at the beginning of their relationship, he still doubts himself, and through her working with him, he begins to build up that strength in himself. 

He becomes brave enough to share what got him sent to the school with her, and he plays Don’t Be Afraid for everyone at the party and like.... for once, everyone is listening to him. Really listening to him. They’re not talking shit about his musical skills, they’re not ignoring him or the feelings he’s putting into the song, they’re sitting there with him and I just..... if you watch him, you can see that his eyes get pretty glossy throughout the song. The moment meant something to everyone. 

There’s also the fact that Clementine asked him to come with her and AJ onto the boat, and to be the one in charge of the bomb... that’s a huge responsibly and he feels the pressure of that. He starts to panic a bit about if he can do it, because what if he fucks up? What if he gets them caught and makes everything worse? What if something happens to Clementine and he can’t do anything about it? 

She’s there to reassure him that she believes in him, and that he can do this. They’re going to get everyone back, and he needs to focus... then he asks her to slap him which why would you? that’s dumb, so Clementine smooches him instead and like.... he physically relaxes into her because he’s comfortable and trusts her in this situation. 

Also, he loves her and cares about this mission enough to cover himself and his fancy jacket in walker guts.... sure, he complains while doing so but how else is he gonna cope with rubbing rotten guts on himself to blend in with a herd of walkers? 

Skipping ahead so that we’re not here all day, I wanna talk about the walk back to the school because it’s one of the most important clouis moments in the game and a huge reason that solidifies why the comic is bullshit.

Louis went off on his own to go out and find them. He didn’t know where they would be, he just knew that he had to go out and find them after making sure everyone was okay back at the school because he couldn’t bare the thought that he had lost them. And the way the AJ gets so excited to see him? and the group hug??

At this point, Louis has grown so much as a character. With Clementine by his side to support him, he’s grown stronger and more reliable. Remember how he never thought about the future? Well, now he is because his relationship with Clementine has given him a reason to long for a future. He talks about building this imaginary house with her, one he knows they can’t physically build... but it’s his way of saying we can build a home together, that he wants a future with her and AJ and everyone else. It’s such a personal conversation that flows so easy between them. Louis is more comfortable talking to her about things from his past, which is something he didn’t want to do back in ep1. 

He confides in her how he’s feeling after he shot and killed Dorian, he tells her that having a home means protecting it and I just.... it’s so good, okay? And from Clementine’s side, you can feel how at ease she is with him, too. Just the way she smiles at him as they’re walking? like he’s the cutest thing and she’s so happy to have him with her? 

But then we gotta deal with Minerva’s crazy ass on the bridge and well, AJ shoots Tenn and Louis is having flashbacks to Marlon and it’s not great. That’s a whole thing, and he ends up separated from them while escaping.

We don’t get to see Louis’ reaction to Clementine getting bit and losing her leg since I guess that puts a damper on the overly happy ending. But, going off of what we know about him and what I’ve explained [which isn’t even all of it, this isn’t a full Louis character analysis. if it was, it would be much longer and in multiple parts... believe it or not, I’m trying to not make this too long and only sorta failing...] we can get an idea of how he would react. 

Um, to say he was upset is an understatement.

Because remember, he had no time to think and climbed over the fence, thinking he could get them to climb over and they could get away, but it didn’t work. He ended up leaving them in order to save himself since walkers were closing in on him.

But you know that he’d blame himself for the bite. A lot of, “if I had just stayed” and “I should’ve climbed back over, I should’ve stayed with you.” I’m sure there were points where it looked like Clem wouldn’t make it and I can’t imagine how much hurt he went through watching her suffer and heal from losing a leg like that. 

Not only that, but knowing that AJ was the one to do it? And him thinking about what Clem’s death would do to AJ after all this? There isn’t a doubt in my mind that Louis would take care of AJ if she died. He cares about AJ, and he loves Clementine, so he be there for both of them, even if he’s still hurting from Tenn’s death. 

However, Clementine didn’t die. She survived the bite and amputation, and when we flashforward, she and Louis are still happily together. Louis is right there next to her at dinner, and he’s the one to help her with her crutches. He’s there to go over future plans to meet the traveling caravan, and Clementine wants him to be the one to go. 

Oh, and Louis once again forgives AJ for shooting Tenn, claiming that he understands that AJ saw something that he couldn’t. Like with Marlon, he’s not happy Tenn’s dead but he can see why AJ did it to save his life. 

I just..... happy ending. Clementine and Louis are together and she’s truly happy to have found a home for her and AJ with him at Ericson. 

....But then the comic thought it would be fun to say “nah.” 

The comic isn’t canon, I’m still insulted that it would ever consider itself as such, but even so I can’t help but feel so frustrated about how this would destroy Louis. 

He finally found someone he would consider his best friend, not just his girlfriend. She saw past that funny man persona and he trusted her enough to let her past this wall he built around himself. He let himself become vulnerable around her, he named his song after her. Their initials are carved into his piano with a heart surrounding them. He loved her. 

Clementine left him feeling loved, something he probably hasn’t truly felt since he was a little boy with his parents before their divorce. She loved him even after hearing his past because she knew that wasn’t him anymore, and she helped him build the confidence he needed to step up. Because of Clementine, Louis wants to enjoy every day while also looking at the future. He isn’t lonely anymore, he has her and AJ. He’s truly happy.

So to tell me that Louis would wake up one morning only to have AJ tell him that Clementine’s gone, she’ been planning an escape without telling anyone because she wasn’t happy...? I’m sorry, but if you think that wouldn’t leave Louis absolutely devastated, then you know nothing about him as a character. 

This idea is just.... look, Louis is perceptive. That’s a big part of his character, he’s perceptive of those around him. If Clementine was showing signs of being unhappy or depression, he would see it. He would notice a change. He would be able to tell if something was off, and he would ask her about it. Louis is the type of person to ask you what you need. What can he do to help? What do you need to feel better? And if you don’t know, it’s okay, he’ll help you figure it out in any way possible. 

Plus, the comic suggests that there are times where she went off on her own but came back [probably doing her escape prep ugh] and you expect me to believe that Louis wouldn’t notice that or wonder what she’s doing? Wouldn’t sense that something’s going on? 

After she’s gone, he’s going to blame himself for not being enough. He couldn’t make her happy and he was a fool to think he ever could. AJ lost the only family he’s known since he was born because Louis couldn’t help her, couldn’t do anything to stop her from leaving. 

And for him to realize that she didn’t love him? Clementine, the girl he thought the world of because of how strong and confident and in-charge she was, because she saw him for who he was..... she left him, abandoned him... and she couldn’t even be bothered with a goodbye.... that says that she didn’t care all that much about him in the end.

You KNOW that he would think he had this coming, too. How could the universe allow him to fall in love and be happy with someone who loved him back after what he did to his parents? He would feel so heartbroken that he would see this as some sort of karma for breaking up his parents happy marriage as a kid years before he ever met Clementine and before the apocalypse.

I fucking can’t.... I don’t have the words to fully explain how much I hate this. Louis wouldn’t be okay afterward, and I doubt he’d ever fully recover. I wasn’t joking when I mentioned before that Louis would stop playing piano. How could he sit there and play when I he can see is their initials and remember the night she confessed to him? When he named his song after her? Clementine left and took the music with her because Louis wouldn’t have it in him... something that he used to cope would be ruined and that’s just.... it’s fucking awful. 

Not only that, but now he has AJ who I assume is hurting just as much [though the comics inaccurately assume he would just let Clem go sooo... yeah] and he would be the only one Louis would really talk to about it, but then again.... what if AJ doesn’t wanna talk about it? What if AJ starts to act out and things just become terrible and Louis is just too overwhelmed? 

I just.... UGH. That’s how I feel. UGH. 

Clementine from the comic? Not her. She would never fucking do this to Louis, AJ, or anyone else at Ericson, and you would know that if you played the tfs. 

Sigh.... sorry, I just needed to get this all out. I haven’t seen anyone talk about how Clem leaving would affect Louis and I’ve gotten some asks/come across some posts about Louis that have left me incredibly annoyed.... well, I was annoyed before because of the comics, so my annoyances with those things were only heightened. So yeah... I wanted to talk about Louis’ character in hopes of explaining why he would be so hurt if this comic was canon. 

Which it’s not. So it’s fine. 

How are we all feelin’ at this point, by the way? I know I’m not the only one still annoyed with the comic, so I hope y’all are doin’ okay. Hope you’re stayin’ chill and thinking about your faves to help cope with this mess hahaha

[hamliet]

Twisted Skeletons of the Past, Masks of Justice, and Dreams of the Future: the Burden of Legacy

This arc has been heavily hitting us with the idea of legacy, and this chapter in particular shows Compress musing about Dabi and Shigaraki’s heroic legacies and Dabi exposing Hawks’ villainous one. So, let’s examine the foiling between Dabi and Shouto, and to an extent Deku, Shigaraki, and Hawks. 

Hawks having to hide his identity to be a hero parallels Dabi hiding his identity as a villain, and hero society as a whole (cough Gran Torino cough) hiding Shigaraki’s true identity. Gran Torino claimed that he did this because no matter what Shigaraki’s heritage is, he’s still a villain:

Except now we know hero society is just fine with covering up a villain’s heritage to allow him to be a hero; they know heroes and villains aren’t just born. . It’s good that they allowed Hawks to be a hero (though questionable how much Hawks chose to be on his own since he’s more than once implied to be at the mercy of the commission). Still, they won’t let Hawks be himself as a hero because of his legacy, and thereby objectify him by grooming him into a tool. Now because the hero commission forced Hawks into a double-agent role that he did not want, now they’ve only hurt their own reputations when he killed Twice (this isn’t to absolve Hawks).

Hero society focuses on the present at the expense of the past and of the future. While putting on a face of only caring about the present, the hero commission is very concerned about maintaining present appearances, even if it means allowing skeletons to rot in their closets. They prefer to deal with villains heroes and everyday folk as they are, but pay no mind to what made them what they are, nor what they could become in the future. Only what you are at the moment matters. It’s a well-known platitude that is more often than not cheap and overly simplistic, and doesn’t have a place in determining fate. 

Shouto, for one, has always been grappling with legacy as part of his arc, defining himself in opposition to his father rather than as an extension of his father (as Endeavor defined him for a lot of his life). Or so he claims. 

I say “or so he claims,” because Shouto’s actions show that he is well aware he cannot just do away with his heritage, and seems to walk back this claim slightly when he takes an internship with his father not just once, but twice.  On the one hand, he might be trying to learn from his past and that’s good, but on the other, he still clearly struggles with seeing his fire quirk as part of Endeavor, rather than his own. It’s fine if he wants to reconcile with Endeavor (and the series is clearly setting him up to do so eventually), but it’s hard to say this isn’t also symbolic of Shouto regressing after his fight with Midoriya.

After all, we have seldom seen Shouto use his fire quirk after that fight with Midoriya. He lost to Bakugou because he would not use his flames (and Bakugou was pisssssed because of it, thus attracting the attention of the villains who would then kidnap him). Shouto’s inability to use his flames thus helps bring Touya back into his life--and part of the reason Shouto then loses Bakugou to Dabi during the kidnapping is because, well, Shouto does not once use his flames. 

So as much as Shouto says he believes this:

He needs to show it and live it himself, because he hasn’t done this yet. Yeah, there’s probably going to be an eventual “agni kai” between brothers, but I don’t think winning is the purpose. Touya is not just Endeavor and hero society’s shadow; he’s also Shouto’s, much as Shigaraki is Deku’s and Himiko Ochaco’s, and you don’t burn your shadow. You reconcile with it. 

So regarding Touya as a shadow for all of these... as @linkspooky said in her brilliant meta last week, Touya believes his flames are Endeavor’s.

Through challenging Dabi that he can be his own person, that he doesn’t have to be defined by his abuse or even by his villainy, Shouto will likely himself reconcile with his own shadow side. Touya has always assumed his purpose is to be an extension of Enji, because that’s what Enji believed as well:

Touya still views himself that way, attempting a murder-suicide with Endeavor this chapter. Like, his comment about DNA testing likely refers to “test from my dead body” given his suicidal plunge this chapter. 

Touya needs to learn he exists as a person, and because of this he can decide his own purpose, he can take responsibility for his actions (like how Endeavor will probably eventually by sacrificing himself to save Touya): 

The irony is also that Endeavor’s legacy is still, indeed, likely to be defined at least in a major way by Touya. The paneling is brilliant this chapter: Touya is on the back of a mountainous giant monster that is very symbolic of what Endeavor is facing. Endeavor’s words about what he hoped Touya would become are likely foreshadowing: his legacy will be decided by what he does with Touya. Saving Touya might just crush all the frustration/envy/ugliness in Endeavor’s heart to dust. Well, not really. It won’t likely be crushed into nonexistence, because that’s not how the past is portrayed here and not how shadows work in stories. But it might well reconcile Endeavor with his family (this isn’t me commenting on whether I want this or not, just predicting based on what I see in the story). 

Returning to the idea of existing as a person outside of legacy... let’s talk Shigaraki, who is literally being somewhat possessed by legacy right now. AFO is trying to control him, and Shigaraki refuses, keeping his agency... or is he? 

Shigaraki is still driven by his own trauma, trauma that was used by AFO to groom him from Shimura Tenko into Shigaraki Tomura. Even before AFO tried to literally possess him, Shigaraki has not been allowed to exist as a person and discover his own purpose; he’s been groomed as a weapon by AFO since AFO saved him. (It’s also not a coincidence AFO is a long-past-his-time monstrosity: the embodiment of the worst of the past.)

Shigaraki struggling to wake up this chapter is symbolic on a few levels. 

Being controlled by the past, even past trauma, leads to broken bodies and pain. It destroys you as well as the world around you. However, narratively it’s not time for Shigaraki to wake up to this reality just yet, though I believe Deku will get through to him eventually. Shigraki is yes, literally a symbol of the world in that the more he destroys the world the more he hurts himself, which means to save the world is to save Shigaraki.

Deku himself will have a decision to make. He literally carries the past One for All holders around with him. How does Deku want to define not just his legacy, but theirs? Because they certainly have not been perfect; despite good intentions, Nana hurt Koutarou who passed on that pain to Shigaraki. The past continues. The past is the present. Unless those twisted skeletons are exhumed, the future will be poisoned by them. OFA’s legacy is supposed one of saving, but because of Nana’s mistakes (even if instigated by All for One!) is also one of abandonment. If Deku really wants to carry on OFA’s glorious legacy, doesn’t he have to take responsibility for the pain this quirk has caused as well? If he really wants OFA to be used to save everybody, should that not include even the scariest of villains? Shouldn’t Deku confront the burden of having a quirk and being a hero in addition to the opportunity? 

It’s your power, Deku. You get to choose what to do with OFA regardless of the hero commission’s wishes.

The thing about legacy is that it's complex. It will provide links that will likely help Shouto and Deku want to save Touya and Shigaraki, respectively. But it also objectifies, makes it difficult to see someone as a person rather than as a cog in a machine, a tool in a system. Because that is how the hero society views the kids, as we saw with Hawks. Legacy isn’t good or bad: like heroism, it can be used for good or bad, to empathize or to condemn (cough, all the takes good victim/bad victiming Shouto/Touya and Eri/Shigaraki). It’s up to you what to do with it. 

Likewise, the characters can’t bury the past. But they cannot let it claim them, either. They need to decide what they want to do with it: to declare it doesn’t matter at all, the perspective Gran Torino, who was symbolically taken out during this fight, advocates? Or to reconcile with it in order to heal what it left broken and behind, and move forward? 

It’s likely both Deku (with Bakugou) and Shouto (with Endeavor) will save Shigaraki and Dabi respectively by giving them the empathy they are both crying out for (and Ochaco giving Himiko empathy too). 

[discotechque]

till my hand shook with the way I fear

pairing: abed nadir/nby! reader word count: 1.6k rating: T

me and abed have neurodivergent solidarity and for that, we would be besties. also the mc in this is specifically non-binary so whatever.

There's clear haze that settles over the bar, that's the first thing Abed realizes once he settles into the space. It's dim, like most bars are and he assumes that's the charm of places like these. Jeff and Britta are adults ( he is too but he's overlooked and therefore his opinion is mute ) so he follows their guidance. Watching from afar, observing their inebriated choices while downing another shot.

He doesn’t get the point of alcohol, much less bars, and it seems the whole point is to get pleasure after an initial sting. A sharp weight that lays in the back of one's throat before elation rips through you. Bourbon burns through him with too much consequence, gin coats his mouth with a bitter tang, and wine falls flat on his tongue.

Maybe it's his upbringing, he's never witnessed his father take a sip to this day, or the pressure that rushes to his frame when he's offered a drink. Abed understands the appeal of bars, it does not mean he shares the same sentiments to them. They're noisy little backend places where melancholic characters come to waste away their sorrows, typically finding pathetic people who drool over glass rims.

However, he is not pathetic ( even if his oldest friend is rounding his seventies and community college all seemed like a folly ) and he had never been overtly dripping with melancholy. So he stood by the small arcade game in the corner, unbothered and safe, until someone offered kindness.

And he takes miles of that even if all they've given was an inch because even if he isn't pathetic or melancholic, he is greedy. He likes eyes being on him because he has so many thought he wants to share with one mouth that can only do so much. Abed is not dumb, he knows what the man wants and how his friendly touches are slowly rising above his knee.

He knows what the man wants and isn't surprise at his outburst once learning that the feelings isn't reciprocated. There's streams of Mint Julep dripping from his jaw and lashes, softly mumbling about his love for Farscape before having it degraded. Abed knows he deserves it and was warned by Annie that people are sensitive ( but he is not held by the bounds of common decency or empathy no matter how hard he tries to keep his mouth shut. )

Then, he remembers the man's proposition ( the only reason someone would be interested in him ). He isn't familiar with being viewed as a sexual object and men weren't unwelcome in his eyes. Gay? Is he gay? Maybe something that exists within the unorthodox box that is sexual realization? The questions sound so foreign even within the echo chamber of his mind.

He's in a dingy bar celebrating his best friend's birthday, this is not a time for the sexual exploration of his subconscious ( although he saves the thought because he considers if not now then when ). The drink is seeping within his clothes, it's going to stick if he doesn't move. He needs to fucking move.

And he does, swiftly pulling himself away from the chair and heading towards the bathroom. Wherever that is, Shirley said it was in the far back and Annie said fair left. Yet, she meticulous as ever so what if she always assume her left is everyone's true left and Shirley is vague with her directions but it doesn't even seem to be enjoying her time here at all.

He's not enjoying it either if he's honest. His loose shit now sticks to his chest and he knows it would make sopping sounds if the man's glass was any larger. Jeff brought them here to celebrate because they're all adults and Troy deserves to have a birthday party in style but if all Jeff and Britta do it bicker, doesn't that make them children themselves? And if he shares his companionship with them, does that make him and all the others children by association?

He's going nowhere with this train of though, this he knows but it can't ever seem to stop. His brain becomes a leaky faucet that can never be screwed back just right so it drips and drips just like the alcohol does along his jaw and lashes. Abed wants to go home but he's with his friends and it's his best friend's party and it'd be so rude of him to leave so soon. At least, that's what Annie tells him.

( Parties were far and few between when he was younger and even then, he cannot replace family functions for beings that truly care for him. )

But then he remembers you, nursing an iced tea in the corner because you are not interested in bestowing wisdom onto Troy that you do not have or participating in anybody's shenanigans. Bars are where people come to hook up or fuck up, you proclaimed on the car ride here, there's no in between.

Then he hears it, bursting against his ears as a smile splits across your face, a discotheque pop song that might be pleasant if it wasn't so overwhelming. His hand involuntarily taps against his thigh in tune with the rhythm. It helps sort out the sensations, the noise is different than the bland flavoring of water, and he knows what's what but it all feels the same in his mind.

Abed's eyelids shut, another involuntary tick he can never seem to shake, and his hand has created it's own beat. Rapid and rushed with no real rhyme or reason except for the fact that it's something that will tug his mind away from everything. ( It's the same thing he does when he's at the edge of a rollercoaster, it makes him safe. ) If everyone else can sway to a rhythm, why can't he?

"Hey," an unexpected voice softly call out to him ( tenderness within this group almost borders on unnatural ). Abed slowly opens his eyes to see you, you call out to him. He feels his hands move away from his pants, tangled within your fingers instead as you gaze at him with earnest. "five things you can see?"

Your hands feel polished, no—plush. He's afraid that if his thumbs press too hard, he'll begin to meld into your being. That's a great idea for a movie, he thinks and he knows you've been his muse from time to time. Maybe it means something, he's not willing to deep any deeper.

His eyes scan the room for a brief second before he rattles off, "The wooden floors, the bartender, the door, the chair behind you, and Annie still trying to be a Texan."

Her accent still lingers within her mind, poor acting for someone so involved a role they've assigned for themselves. The though nearly amuses him but he's getting off track, he needs to focus on you. On the way your hands gently rub over his knuckles and needs to ignore this growing pit within his stomach on whatever that insinuates.

"Four things you can feel?"

"My feet against my shoes, my jeans against my legs, how hot my ears are, your hands."

You don't let go even after he's mentioned it, instead he receives a squeeze that sounds throughout his body. A continuous cycle the runs on until you ask him for something he can taste, he doesn't know what lingers within the crevices of his mouth. ( He'd want it to be you and licks his lips without a second thought. ) Yet, settles on the answer Mint Julep.

Something about thinking this way must be wrong, he shouldn't want to keep holding your fingers or gaze into your fervent irises. He shouldn't be attracted to someone like you and shouldn't be searching for so many reason on why he has to tear himself away from your presence. Still, shouldn't doesn't stop him from doing so.

Maybe his hands have melted into yours, it'd be a good excuse on why he can't bring himself to let go. The song changes again, how long has he been in this small little world with you?

"Hey, it's Mazzy Star, this fucks so hard." he's heard of this before, maybe you've shared it with him. It's less grating on his ears, smooth melodies being shifted on strings, and he watches you sway from the corner of his eye.

( He likes to be watched but something about you commands all his attention. )

Still shifting from foot to foot, you turn to him with a far more lax expression. Both shifting into familiarity as you ask, "You wanna sit down?"

"Not really," he shoots back suddenly but you're not perturbed at his fast response reflex. However, his heart sinks as the next words tumble from his lips. "but we can stand here and sway?"

You don't pull your hand away from his, instead, pressing into his fingers as you ponder a reply. Perhaps you think this isn't real as much as he presumes you'll humiliate him for even asking. But you don't and another smile splits down your features, large than the last one he saw from across the room.

"Of course, Abed Nadir has a genius idea. Let's do it."

You don't move him from this space you've cultivated with him. Instead, wrapping arms around his neck as he places them on your waist ( he never went to prom but this is better than any teenage fantasy ). Moving side to side, never shifting around in a circle but rather awkwardly figuring out a steady pace while his stares becoming fonder while the night grows.

Abed still doesn't get the point of bars but he can figure it out the next time he's here with you.

[ethernetchord]

lets talk: popular iwwv criticism

(disclaimer: i know criticism is subjective and thats why im doing this, i wanna look at some common points made against iwwv and dissect them just a little bit in the opposite direction. also none of this is directed at any individual- it’s all based on the general talking points i’ve seen surrounding the book.)

SPOILER WARNING !!

lack of exploration into james and oliver (+ gay characters feel performative)

i’ve seen loads of people say that oliver and james’ relationship felt very performative, a way of including the queer romnce which clearly is very important to the plot but not actually giving it any space in the novel, nor developing it to the same extent which meredith/oliver was.

oliver and meredith had a very strictly physical relationship and while he did love her, he wasn’t in love with her the way he was with james. the juxtaposition in the way that oliver/james is delivered and the way meredith/oliver is delivered is, i believe, far too repetitive to not be intentional. i actually realised upon re-reading how much focus there really is on meredith’s sexuality, even in subtleties in the book. meredith and oliver get more blatant sex scenes, get more physical parts because oliver was (to an extent) using his attraction to meredith to distract himself from his infatuation with james.

we also have to remember that oliver and james didn’t get their real moment of honesty about their relationship till extremely late into the book. i’d honestly see it as more ‘performative’ to then after or in the middle of kind lear throwing in some wild sex scene between the two. it wouldn't have fit.

“why didn’t james and oliver get together earlier then >:(((“ because the slow burn between them, the subtext, the subtle-ness, the yearning, they were all crucial to the decision which oliver made at the end. the fact that they burned so bright for each other but (oliver particularly) were so desperately repressed, that was what made this such a tragic romance. yes its tiring to read stories about queer people being repressed, yes its tiring to see the bury your gays trope. but like oliver says, it goes beyond gender.

if oliver’s second love interest was a girl, and treated this way, we’d be a lot more on board with these tropes- but the fact that james is a man, and this therefor becomes a queer relationship, makes it feel performative. i can’t convince you of anything- but i like to believe that their relationship being treated like this not only makes it so much more “heart wrenching because why! why couldn’t it work out, why couldn’t it be better!” - not because its a queer relationship but because they were soulmates.

alexander wasn’t performative. not in the slightest, rio just didn’t make being gay his entire identity. same goes for colin. just because they’re queer doesn’t mean it needs to be the only thing about them. this isn’t a lgbt novel- characters dont have to be gay just for plot. they can just be gay.

i’ve also seen people complain about not just making oliver bisexual. guys. did you read the book? he was bisexual. he was emotionally and physically attracted to both meredith and james. guys that’s literally what bisexual means.

i'm totally on board with the coming out scenes! and realisation of feelings and all that stuff- but again, not an lgbt centric novel and also- these were things oliver probably did and realised far before this book. remember that its set in 4th year, at an art school. he knew he was fruity ok. not every queer character in every queer book have to have these grandious coming out scenes or realisations. the lack there of doesn’t equal performance.

the ending was rushed and bad

believe what you will, but i don’t think james is dead. there’s a little too much ambiguity in that ending, in the extract he leaves oliver, in the “his body was never found.” so if your main quarrel with the ending is that “bury your gays” situation- please know there’s a chance- and that giving it that chance opens up so much more discussion and reader response.

yes, the ending is sad. but it’s not rushed. “but that is how a tragedy like ours or king lears breaks your heart- by making you believe the ending might still be happy until the very last second.” doing king lear, doing macbeth, doing romeo and juliet, the plays are chosen not only for reader convenience (they’re plays readers will most likely be familiar with) but also because they all, so very deeply, foreshadow a “bad” ending. killing james, makes sense. as much as people don’t want to hear it, from an authorial perspective- from the reader’s perspective and as a human being it makes sense. why do keep arguing that he “should’ve stayed alive for oliver” or that “if he really loved oliver he wouldn’t have done it” - why are we limiting a character’s entire existence down to their love interest. yes, they were best friends, yes they were set up as lovers but that doesn’t mean that that would be enough to keep james around. james was a fragile character- he was always checking with oliver if he had upset him, he was always worried, overthinking, james wasn’t strong minded- and he was suffering. the only person he had left to depend on was in prison, he was plagued with the guilt of causing the death of a classmate and letting oliver take the blame, if he did kill himself, it sure as hell doesn’t have any reason to sound forced.

“its not nearly as good as the secret history!!!!”

to be honest here buds, why the fuck do we keep comparing them so insistently. they are not the same book. iwwv wasn’t trying to be tsh 2.0, yes there are similarities because hey! guess what! books in similar genres tend to do that! always comparing it tsh when they have different motives, different plots and vastly different execution makes no sense. the only reason that they are compared is because tumblrtm dark academics like to group the two together. and yea- makes sense, but stop trying to belittle iwwv because it isn't as grandiose as tsh, because it’s a little more literal, because it’s not as intertextual as tsh. half the people saying iwwv isn’t as good as tsh are practically just subtly going “shakespeare isn’t as complicated as ancient greek huehue” stop forcing the two together and let them be separately appreciated.

the characters were flat/archetypes/etc

sigh. okay.

these characters are actors. this book shows us their transition from themselves entirely into a conjunction of the roles they’ve played and the stereotypes they’ve portrayed.

“we were so easily manipulated - confusion made a masterpiece of us.”

“for us, everything was a performance”

“imagine having all your own thoughts and feelings tangled up with all the thoughts and feelings of a whole other person. it can be hard, sometimes, to sort out which is which.”

“far too many times i had asked myself whether art was imitating life or if it was the other way around”

“it’s easier now to be romeo, or macbeth, or brutus, or edmund. someone else.”

are you seeing it now? this focus on their archetypes, this focus on the character they are; the way they see themselves not merely as human but as a walking concoction of every character they have turned into and out of. they depend on their archetypes to give them meaning. rio uses these archetypes to remind us of the submersion of her characters. they weren’t flat, their intentional lack of dimension due to their pasts is what makes them so intricate. furthermore, there's an evident subversion- the tyrant becomes a victim, the hero becomes a villain (they all become villains really), the ingenue becomes corrupted. like mentioned before, i think we forget ourselves easily reading this book but there is a great deal of emphasis on this being their last year- which is so important. the damage has been done and a lot of the issues people have with the content (or lack thereof) in this book has to do with the fact that it’s all things that would have occurred in books focusing on previous years at delletcher.

“it didn't live up to expectation” (also leading on from read tsh to this and being ‘disappointed’)

i cant argue this because its entirely subjective. whatever expectation was created for you, i cannot know that and appropriately respond however- if you liked the secret history and understood the secret history then there's a good chance you also liked and understood this book- even if not to the same extent but you must be able to recognize the authorial approach and its significance. i think a lot of ppl read iwwv (and a lot of “dark academia” texts and films) and hope to be able to romanticize the aesthetic or the concepts and then are disappointed when they are presented with mildly unlikeable and overwhelmingly human characters who aren’t easy to romanticize.

a great majority of these books are criticisms of the very culture you’re trying to romanticize, and the only time you’re willing to admit that is when boasting about the ‘self-awareness’ of the people indulging in them, and then a moment later complain about those same qualities because they don’t serve this idealized expectation.

bad rep for arts/liberal arts/ humanities students as being pretentious/cultish

as a humanities student with a great love for eng lit- all of these things are indeed pretentious and cultish. not all the time and not always and not every person- but it is a common theme. academia is overwhelmingly obsessive and extremely white-washed. people become so fast to believe that they are indulging in finer arts and are therefore a higher standard of person. academia is problematic. and the recent influx of people interested in it is good, very good because hopefully, we’ll be more diverse, more open-minded, more accepting. that's what i hope at least. if you know, as an individual, that you’re not a pretentious academic who places themselves above non-academics then that's wonderful- but there are dangers and negative sides to academia that need to be understood so that we can see to not perpetuating them.

i cant refute all points, mostly because there's a lot of good and well-explained criticism because no book is perfect. and my intentions are not to belittle anyone's opinion. these are merely opposing arguments, food for thought and to be fair- a critical look into why not everything is always going to be what we expect of it and why every ‘problem’ can be assessed.

[buffyfan145]

Cobra Kai Season 4 Finale and Season 5 Speculation

I finished season 4 and it was amazing!!! :D Those twists in the finale were nuts and sets up so much for season 5!!! Also maybe some of the prequels/spinoffs that are in development too. I’m including in this my speculation about what’s going to happen in season 5 as well, which I’m pretty sure is going to air this fall since they’ve finished filming and it’s now in post/editing.

That finale was just great!!! :D From having Eli winning the boys tournament, to Tory winning the girls but revealing Terry paid off the ref!!!, Johnny and Daniel both helping Sam, Robby realizing how Kenny’s become now and that Kenny’s now bullying Anthony, Robby and Johnny finally making amends, Miguel running off to Mexico to find his dad, the possibility that with Johnny going to find Miguel with Robby (those Puerto Rico pics confirmed that) and meeting Miguel’s father that he’ll finally look into his own dad with his boys’ help and even more certain it’s Terry, Chozen coming back to help Daniel, and Terry framing Kreese from hurting Stingray!!! :o It was just a lot but so awesome and I’m so excited for season 5!!! ;D

Now like I stated above we know from spoilers during filming that Miguel, Johnny, and Robby are in Puerto Rico (which they used to pretend to be Mexico) to find Miguel’s dad and I posted a couple weeks ago an extra posted a pic with Luis Roberto Guzman who was in “Narcos: Mexico” and likely is playing Miguel’s father. Will be interesting to see how this goes as this guy has no idea Miguel exists.  And of course that Robby is helping Johnny find Miguel but that questions if he’s still in Cobra Kai with Terry. 

Then Terry teased having friends come back and I know most think one is Mike Barnes but Sean’s been really busy filming “The Bold and the Beautiful” and is a main character on it again so I don’t know if he had the time (though one of his B&B castmates is also on “Roswell New Mexico” in a recurring role so it’s possible) but there is that theory he’s Tory’s dad so it’s possible. I posted last night about how there’s rumors about Col. Paul Dugan from “The Next Karate Kid” also being a friend of Terry & Kreese’s and finally be the way to bring back Julie, so that likely will happen too. This also explains now why Martin was able to do “DWTS” and film another TV show during season 5 filming as he’ll be in prison most of the season so he’s not going to be in that many episodes But they did cast a prison therapist so that’ll be interesting to see.

Then Chozen helping Daniel will be great and hopefully having him meet Johnny and Terry.  That scroll is likely going to come into play too. But other than that I’m not sure what is going to happen with them, most of the teens’ storylines, or the couples.

But am certain they will finally reveal Johnny’s father and that he is Terry. That line of him “taking care” of him to Kreese was creepy but also works for this. I’m certain Kreese doesn’t know they’re family but we’ll see. It’s pretty certain that Nick and Barrett likely filmed more flashbacks for season 5 as Nick’s hair is still long like Thomas’ and both were not attached to other projects while it filmed. Also there’s a comment from the mother of little Johnny Thomas Parobek she made on the Instagram she runs that Thomas filmed more scenes but it’s for season 5. All this does seem to be timing out to be the same storyline and my guess is they likely cast Terry’s father too as I’m certain he was involved as well especially if he didn’t approve of Laura (who again she and Terry likely were high school sweethearts) and my guess is they were going to marry after Terry got back from Vietnam but then he changed drastically after the war and couldn’t handle being a husband and father and left. This would also explain why Johnny doesn’t know how to find him since really Terry would’ve only been there for a year or two as he was in Vietnam for years and I know from my own grandpa being there they didn’t have them come home as often as they do now, and Johnny has his mother’s maiden name because she was unwed so he didn’t know his father’s last name. And if they write in Sid dying with Ed Asner having passed away that could be another reason Johnny finds this all out.

Either way I’m so excited to see how this all plays out with season 5 hopefully this fall!!! :D And hopefully they’re renewed for season 6 (which still might be the final season) soon.

[vampireinterview]

It has come to my attention that some of you have not been made aware of the fact that Plato was well known for being a Destiel shipper, in addition to the fact that he also wrote some philosophical works on the side. Let me explain.

Plato was an Athenian thinker whose real name was Aristocles (Plato most likely comes from the Greek word for ‘broad”, he might have been so jacked that people nicknamed him for his wide shoulders, which is irrelevant to the topic at hand but I’m collecting receipts on my hypothesis that all hellers are physical beheamoths). His work regarding the philosophy of love can be interpreted through the lens of the Deancas love story, which can potentially lead us to discover the very essence of what makes Destiel so impactful and universal, so bear with me, I’ll make it as introductory as possible.

Plato’s Symposium is a dialogue which contains the philosopher’s basic view on what love can be. The influence of the aforementioned text has been so strong that even those of us who are blissfully unaware of its contents have heard of the concept of “platonic love”. It is with great disappointment that I have to inform you about the fact that the way in which the term is colloquially used can be considered quite removed from the core idea of what Plato’s love is supposed to be about. Commonly people utilize it to refer to a non-romantic and non-sexual emotion towards an individual. However, even though the extrasensory love was the end goal, it was never too far distanced from the earthly, carnal desire that was supposed to lay the foundation for greater experiences.

One of the most illustrative elements of the Symposium is no doubt the Love Ladder metaphor (also known as Diotima’s Ladder of Love, the Scala Amoris); Plato believes the act of loving to be a part of the process of initiation into the non-material world of ideas. Every step of the ladder helps one approach the transcendence of one’s soul, and so we can single out six steps to immortal absolutes:

1. The first step is developing an appreciation for a particular person. It’s a very much carnal (though not necessarily conventionally sexual) desire for beauty of a specific individual. According to Plato only through the love of the physical can one love the non material. The visceral infatuation with another’s body is often strongly rooted with the self-hatred of one’s own aesthetical poverty: within the carnal love we seek to find that which our own body lacks. The desire between Dean and Cas doesn’t have to be seen as strictly sexual, as the appreciation of beauty does not warrant a conventionally erotic subtext. This sort of fascination with the flesh is most noticeably highlighted in the many “eye sex” scenes in seasons 4-5, and is later brought up by Hester:

The very touch of you corrupts. When Castiel first laid a hand on you in Hell, he was lost. 

2. The second step stems from the appreciation for all physicality derived directly from the love one has for the lover’s form. It’s fleshed out any time Dean finds beauty in the dark times, where he would have never found it before or when Cas sees humanity through the lens of the love he has for the beauty within Dean Winchester. This step is all about finding the allure in everybody, not in spite of but rather because of having fallen for a specific person’s material form.

3. The next step is a love which transcends the physical and teaches an individual to feel affection towards the souls. The attraction one can experience in relation to that which is non material is precisely what takes the function of the driving force behind both Castiel’s and Dean’s decisions in season 6 and onward (arguably even much earlier for Cas? or even Dean? Maybe we’re talking about season 4?). As evidenced by the apparent lack of attraction Dean experiences towards Jimmy himself, he must have already moved on to this stage (the Cas he loves is not just the vessel he inhabits). Castiel on the other hand feels heavily infatueted with Dean’s spiritual allure (even when he’s physically on the verge of a breakdown, he’s still beautiful, still Dean Winchester). 

4. It is only then that one can find love for the institution. If one worships souls, then one also has to worship the product of those souls: and, sure enough, loving humanity led Castiel to love its structures and ethical systems and be willing to die fighting for them. In the later seasons he exhibits fascination over all the little rules that guide an average human’s life (which is especially fleshed out in his season 7 dialogues, where he contemplates all the small details of the societal structure, ie: how important is lipstick to you?, maybe the human institutions should ban its production). Same can be said of Dean: the customs and traditions of other people are subject to his affectionate protection in the later seasons, which sets s6 and onwards Dean apart from the early seasons Dean who cared mostly about his blood relatives. The found family arc was for him a process of growing attached to the order of life which was previously foreign to him, and him learning to navigate functioning within a big family structure and an organization (the last one is physically manifested by his move from a chaotic life spent at random motels to living at the bunker, property of the institution of Men Of Letters).

5. Then comes the deep appreciation of knowledge. Now, it is widely disputed whether what Plato meant should be strictly narrowed down to just one kind of knowledge (in many English translations you might encounter the word ‘science’, though used in the ancient sense). The process of gaining knowledge is often equated with the understanding of ideas in Plato’s work, therefore we’re going to stick with that. The act of loving the process of discovering both the external and the internal world is a strong factor which pushes Dean to self examination, or the examination of the inner psyche. It is that pursuit of knowledge that is the very coronation of his entire character arc: the realization of his role within the story (”I’m not the ultimate killer”) which was directly derived from the act of loving Cas.

6. The final stage of platonic love is reaching the love of the very concept of Love. Once again, interpretations vary, but for the sake of the argument, I’ll clarify that: the discussed kind of love transcends both the body and the soul. An individual is in love with Beauty, not just one of it’s physical or spiritual manifestations. In my opinion, this stage is extremely well depicted during the 15x18 confession scene, for it is a kind of love achieved by Castiel. He is no longer just in love with the body or soul of Dean, he’s also in love with the sole idea of loving him. He quite literally states that he’s fallen in love with the idea of just being, just saying it, just falling in love. 

Upon achieving this state, he transcends his material conditions both by leaving the human world (his move to another dimension - the Empty - could be just an illustrative manifestation of the transcendental move of his essence) and giving birth to a new world order. The way in which he later on goes to rebuild Heaven and give birth to a completely new, structure of the universe is in line with a concept that Plato ties into the finale step of the Ladder - pregnancy of the soul. At one point in Symposium he describes Diotima saying that:

That in that life alone, when he looks at Beauty in the only way that Beauty can be seen--only then will it become possible for him to give birth not to images or virtue (Because he’s in touch with no images), but to true virtue (Because he is in touch with the true Beauty).

What is the christian equivalent and personification of the true idea of Virtue if not the abstract concept of Heaven? The moment Cas creates a new portrayal of Virtue he finishes the Ladder. It could also be argued that the true pregnancy of the soul was actually finished when Jack ascended to the status of God: an entity which belongs to the realm of ideas and is perfect by its very nature is birthed through Castiel’s love (which can be traced back to the feelings he has for Dean Winchester).

And it is the fact that Dean’s arc got stuck on the fifth stage of the Ladder that causes me so much pain. He dies before transcending and experiencing the non-temporal and non-relative feeling of love that one can gain only through the admiration of beauty itself. His life was cut short and his soul has already left the mortal, physical world, therefore he is forever unable to experience the feeling of loving Love and Virtue so much that his soul gives birth to an unbreakable idea.

In conclusion: if you ever see somebody say that Dean and Castiel’s relationship is platonic, just agree. It is very much so platonic in the sense that through their carnal and spiritual desires they’ve manged to (nearly, in Dean’s case) transcend their material conditions and reached the divine aspect of ideal Beauty and Virtue, rooted in a love that’s so deep that it’s perfectly able to redefine the structure of one’s existence.

tagging some people who have vaguely expressed interest in acquiring the third eye:

@cryptcas​ @futureheadnerd​ @doctorprofessorsong​ @sinnabonka​ @theangelwiththewormstache​ @absoluteheller​ @fivefeetfangirl​