#love is a very powerful core

[shepscapades]

Surely this will have no negative consequences whatsoever!

[teacup-of-candlelight]

100%. But let me add to this.

Not only was Hannah the only, or perhaps last, person that Stephen ever loved, I think it was her death that drove him to become the monster we knew him as. After her he didn't let anyone in emotionally, he became obsessed with conquering death, the thing that took her from him, and he was also low-key dead inside. But also, and I think this may be a hot take (no it's not lol he's the only one who would think so) I think she was wrong for him. Hannah seemed... interesting. Fun. But not a challenge. Not a partner. Not like Maddie.

Stephen and the team took the UTMOST pains to make sure Caspian had the same life, experienced the same things, so that he would turn out the same as Stephen-- and yet they failed. Stephen was so convinced that it was his past his pain and his trauma that was key to his "genius". But I think he was dead wrong. He and Caspian were already geniuses by their genetics. What Phinneas/Stephen's life experiences did was break him, emotionally cripple him, and destroy what little empathy and morality he had left. That wasn't genius. If anything, it was those experiences that kept him from being the best he could be-- unlike Caspian.

But where did that change? Everything for 18 years followe that path. They were about to kill that poor girl pretending to be Hannah just so Caspian could be as equally traumatized as his predecessor. And that may have been the final straw that would have forged him into Stephen 2.0, but they weren't counting on Maddie.

I think one THE fundamental difference between Holstrom and Caspian was love. The love of Cary, Caspian's fake dad who did all he could to give his fake son a terrible childhood and yet he did love him, and most importantly the love of Maddie and her family.

During his interrogation with Yair, Caspian talked alot about how important the core of a person was. A core memory especially. How without this core, a person wasn't them. Yair kept asking for Caspian to show his, which he wouldn't obviously. Caspian seemed to claim he didn't even know who he was, but I think that was just a convenient obfuscation. Of course we know he had a core. If simply for no other reason that by that point we knew well and good that he WASN'T Holstrom, so whatever that core was, it was something Stephen didn't have. I am so thoroughly convinced that Caspian's core was Maddie, his feelings for Maddie, that I just kept waiting all scene for them to say it. But that might just be another way he's like Holstrom-- not admiting to impact the woman he loves had on him.

With Hannah, that impact came from loss. With Maddie, that impact came from presence. Maybe if Hannah hadn't died Holstrom wouldn't have become the monster he did, but I still don't think she could have been the one to help him reach his full potential. From what we were shown of both the original Hannah and the actress playing Hannah, imo she wasn't a match for him anyways. Not to say she was shallow, but certainly it seemed to me their relationship was based on attraction and simple companionship more than anything. Caspian was lonely, and simply being shown interest was a game changer. No doubt Holstrom was lonely too. Not just because of the parents or the silly name, but because their intellect always set them apart and made them different.

Hannah never seemed to bridge that gap for me. Maybe she was the favored woman let into heaven, but that doesn't mean she belonged there. Maddie presented a challenge to that intelect with her own intelligence and emotional understanding that Caspian desperately needed and that I don't believe Stephen ever got. It's why Caspian could solve the flaw so easily when Stephen never could. Maddie is the one who taught Caspian that life was about other people. In the flashbacks, to me, Hannah and Holstrom seemed to have a relationship of tolerating and patronizing. At one point it almost felt like she was his pet, like a prized gerbil he kept around to talk to even though he never expected it to understand. He still loved her, but not as an equal. But then you had Maddie, who torn down the veil herself entered Caspian's solitary sanctum, his holy of holies, and basically emotionally slapped him in the face and said "Hey! You're not alone."

And that's what changed him. That's what made Caspian, Caspian. Maddie was his core, and she made him who he was. Just like loving and losing Hannah made Holstrom, Holstrom.

Deep down he and Caspian really were the same.

They were both defined by the woman they loved.

let’s also take a look at the alias chosen for rachel: hannah. the name of stephens dead girlfriend, and a name meaning “grace” or favored by god. biblically, hannah is the only woman in the old testament to have ever been allowed in gods house. to me, this indicates that the only woman stephen holstrom truly loved has been dead for years. supported further by rachel, who took the name, also being the name of one of jacobs two wives and the one who he favored, perhaps indicating that Stephen favors a dead teenager over Renee, the only other person we see him pictured with in an intimate context and the only woman in his inner circle left.

[bluerosefox]

Hmmmm... This one and this one I guess -digs through old AU/Prompts ideas and starts tossing them into a melting pot to make something new-

Royal errors, maybe Ghost King (Or just very powerful and respected by the Infinite Realms) Danny, AND deaged Dan and Ellie. With half-sibling Damian.

Talia is a woman with many, many secrets, this is a cold hard fact.

She has so many secrets its no wonder not a single living soul knows them all...

So when seventeen, almost eighteen, Damian really shouldn't had been surprised (he was though) when out of the blue he gets a call from an unknown number that somehow bypasses his firewalls against unknown numbers about his apparent five year old half-sister and brother Helen 'Ellie' Fenton and Dante 'Dan' Fenton.

That their father, Daniel Fenton was taken (by a shady should had been disbanded government agency) and they couldn't get a hold of their mother Talia at all (she was in a middle of stopping a coup happening, a rival assassin group, AND some idiots trying to revive Ra's at the same time, thus radio silent). About how Ellie and Dan were in danger of being taken as well but they needed to put in them a safe place so they could go rescue Danny before word gets out to... well lets just say some very POWERFUL beings weren't going to be happy and they are working on very limited time to get him back.

Jasmine Fenton tells him she knows he had no clue about his mother being with her brother and having kids with him, its something she and Talia often got into small arguments about but try not to bring it up to often around Danny, Dan, or Ellie, and that his relationship with her is often... rocky but she begs him to please watch over them while she, and her brother's best friends go a rescue mission for him.

That they were two very scared five year olds that had to watch their father be taken away after he barely managed to get them to safety and that Damian was the only one she could think of being able to watch over and least protect them at this serious moment.

Damian, and the rest of the family, are stunned silent when Jasmine finishes explaining, her voice on the verge of breaking and no doubt she was trying so hard not to sob.

[sysig]

You're still standing off to the side. Somehow, center stage has shifted from under your feet without you realizing, and you're standing in the wings, performing to no one.

Starring Role (Patreon)

[cogentranting]

Skeleton Crew also uses the world of Star Wars really well to its advanatge. You're not in a blank slate sci fi world. You're in Star Wars and they use that iconography and that history to integrate their themes. We know, as an audience, that there was this grand Republic, good but flawed, and it was destroyed. We know that there was horrible evil-- Order 66, the Empire. And we also know that the Empire ended and the New Republic was formed. And it uses that positioning. There was this great good that the kids believe in (the Republic and moreso the Jedi) but its gone now and the kids learn that and we see the effects of that shattering all around them, all the little evidences of when the world broke and all the people that were broken by it. There was a war and we see that aftermath. And then there's also this ongoing renewal and we know that before the kids too. Even to the extent that Wim never actually learns that the Jedi are coming back, but we know they're out there.

[ruvviks]

finally got around making a proper outfit reference sheet for nathan! he likes wearing dark clothes which really emphasizes just how pale he is. he was a STEM developer at MOBIUS for nine years what did you expect </3 click for higher resolution and to get a closer look at all the details! outfits from left to right: his gear for the evil within 2, 1am convenience store trip, his mobius gear, and an improvised outfit for my own fictional the evil within 3 =^)

taglist (opt in/out)

@shellibisshe, @florbelles, @ncytiri, @hibernationsuit, @stars-of-the-heart;

@lestatlioncunt, @katsigian, @radioactiveshitstorm, @estevnys, @adelaidedrubman;

@celticwoman, @rindemption, @carlosoliveiraa, @noirapocalypto, @dickytwister;

@killerspinal, @euryalex, @ri-a-rose, @velocitic, @thedeadthree;

@jacobseed, @swordcoasts

[cervinae-canine]

is it fair to call people like this "hack writers" if the only way they find a relationship interesting is when it involves pedophilia, incest, cannibalism or necrophilia?

[fidgetspringer-art]

✧ The Ardal stars ✧

[tealime9]

You guys remember that design of broken daycare attendant?

[elvisqueso]

I am on some bullshit right now, bruh

[cathalbravecog]

i'm the antonymph of the internet

[cloudbends]

Ok more articulate thoughts on heartcatch's midpoint in the tags

[sukugo]

character who is so powerful that their presence itself overgoes all consent, where the other characters exist below their desires and are made to please them, regardless of whether they want to or not.

esp when the character isn't even relatively domineering or authoritative during it. instead they're completely passive. whimpering and twitching and overall being so lost in pleasure that leaves no space for action, much less coercion. they're a passive receiver of pleasure.

except they, as an existence, cannot be passive. they're mingling with godhood, they're bigger than themselves, than their body, their pleasure holy and divine and all-encompassing. their touch a religious experience.

to have them, a compulsion, more than an action born of actual personal desire

[cogentranting]

The Hunger Games succeeds (and more so achieves sort of mythic effect) because it approaches dystopia through the timeless-- it (and Ballad) brings these universal ideas to a very personal lens and asks questions like "how do we begin to excuse evil in our lives" or "how do you hold on to goodness in the midst of oppression". And because it is so invested in the transcendent it lends itself to very powerful symbols, which give it that mythic feel.

Orwell's books (Animal Farm and 1984) both succeed through a very different approach to dystopia (Animal Farm isn't really a dystopia in the traditional sense but it has a lot of the elements). Orwell succeeds through real perceptive insight into the inner mechanisms of the subjects of his critiques. Orwell has vision that can cut deep into the way that things like propaganda or 'controlling the narrative' work and then, having dissected them, hold those tactics up for all to see.

And I think a lot of dystopias fall short because they get tangled up in the Idea of their story. The "what if" they've created. Either focused too much on the Issue-- too narrowly to be universal, too broadly to be revealing-- or too disconnected from anything genuine. And because they get stuck at that particular point they don't have much more to offer than "wouldn't this be bad?" And if you get a pretty good writer they can make that feel insightful but really it doesn't have much more to offer than whatever absurd YA book comes to mind first when you hear "bad dystopian novel".

[girltakovic]

hello upper middle class northern usamerican tumblr user. i want to play a game. you will notice that you are in a super america convenience store in rural kentucky - you have three minutes to purchase a snack and drink of your choice and make normal small talk with the cashier. however, if you use the word "cryptid" or generally make reference to appalachia and its inhabitants as "wild", uncivilized, or lacking restraint around alcoholic beverages during your time here, i will personally tie you to the chassis of a four wheeler and tip it into the river. live or die. make your choice

[todayisafridaynight]

What do you think Mine’s reaction to Masato / Aoki be like?

tbh they'd probably be. amicable. at the very least.