#me when the inescapability:

[16ruedelaverrerie]

Pathetic, honestly 🌸

[wlwanakin]

i hesitate to use the term victim blaming in relation to anakin because at the end of the day he's a fake guy whose crimes range from domestic violence to genocide but people's obsession with holding him "accountable" (let me reiterate, fake guy) and emphasizing how much choice he had starts feeling like that! cuz yeah ultimately his actions are his own, the narrative tells you this as much as very annoying fans who love stating the obvious do, but it feels rather insane to me to act like he was making choices under normal circumstances. like, at the end of the day he was being groomed and later on horrifically abused by palpatine and it feels like a lot of people really want to pretend that it’s his fault for not catching onto it as a traumatized child. he didn’t randomly switch loyalties bc he was hungry for power or whatever, his entire sense of reality was very meticulously broken down by a man who has been preying on his vulnerabilities since he was a child! and i just think people should maybe think about that before making arguments that sound dangerously close to “well why didn’t he just leave his abuser”

[floralcrematorium]

I will not compare other beauty to mine, And I will not become a thorn in my own side

Belarus | Belgium | Czechia | Hungary | Liechtenstein | Monaco | Seychelles | Taiwan | Ukraine | Vietnam

read the tags before you repost, please

[fruitageoforanges]

elia martell character of all time because she was playing the game of thrones AND WINNING — survived aerys, set up an alternate court on dragonstone, universally beloved even by most of robert’s anti-targ regime, was probably at least angling to get rid of aerys — but the literal song of ice and fire was being written around her and well. you can’t outrun your inevitable doom.

like. that’s elia’s tragedy, and what makes me so insane about her. she was in the wrong story. she was playing the game of court politics but ended up yoked to 300 years of targaryen collapse and dynastic rot instead. there’s nothing i love more than characters doing their best with the pieces they can see on the board, while the fact slowly dawns on them that the board is in the process of being swallowed by an eldritch monster.

[allenwalkerbitch]

It's a small detail amidst the craziness that is the rest of 252, but I'm losing my absolute mind at the fact that Past Allen was apparently soldier.

We just had it confirmed that our protagonist, our child soldier protagonist, had a whole previous life that he lived and completely forgot about. He had a whole first life where, until he was at least an older teenager, he had nothing to do with the inescapable holy war that's taken over his existence the second time around. He was just some kid with no connection to the battle between the Noah and the Black Order.

But what was he instead? Was he free to actually have a childhood in this other life?

Nope! He was just a normal soldier in some non-spiritual, completely mundane war, and he would have died in battle if Nea hadn't swept in and drafted him into the holy war instead. There is no life in which the young Allen is not a soldier.

[violetscanfly]

Once again I offer you art that I didn't post when it was made✌🏻 One thing I have learned is to never throw away your art because even if you don't immediately like it you might some day

[jichanxo]

uhhh um yuri 👍

[sanctus-ingenium]

is that a Of Monsters and Men quote in your blog header? if so, good taste!!!! if not, it's still very cool!!!

Yes :) it's one of the best fit songs for the seascapes & associated characters

[burinazar]

I've been giving some thought to "what is the best way for a person in 2024 to get into/get back into Sound Horizon" as I reconnect with it myself (the more I do so the more I realize how massively and almost ridiculously influential it was to what i like in storytelling...)

I'd like to post more about some options now and then. Lately I've enjoyed these Youtube uploads by QueenoftheHorizon of the album Elysion, which are bundled with not only translations but tons of additional notes and information.

Elysion is, like certain others of Sound Horizon's albums, a series of interconnected stories with tragic thematic elements in common and a general framing device in the form of one story that connects them; in this case the framing story is that of a father and daughter -- an assassin and his sickly albino child El, both of whom pass away in the events of the first song. The child hopes they will somehow reunite someday in Paradise. After death, the father's soul begins to wander, seeking a person conceptualized as 'Elys' (representing the longing for his lost daughter), and we see the tragic stories of various other girls that his soul perceives, wondering if they are the one he seeks...

Elysion was probably the first Sound Horizon album I heard (i'm 70% sure a stage show video of "Ark" was my actual intro to Sound Horizon; since it was like 15 years ago and I rapidly watched as much as I could of them in the ensuing hours and days the memory is unclear haha.) This channel and playlist first went up in 2010 so, and thus wouldn't have been around when I first got into Sanhora in idk ~2008, which is a pity, because they're a wonderful entry point for a canon that can be inaccessible to those who speak little or no Japanese -- in addition to the English translations themselves in each video, the uploader has packed the video notes with explanation and analysis of each song's associated story.

If you are interested in "Elysion" as an entry point to Sound Horizon, I highly recommend watching the videos on this playlist and reading both the video descriptions and the pinned comment for each list, for both translations and a wonderfully detailed explanation and further analysis of each story. For example, the one for Ark elaborately lists out not just the events that are likely to have transpired within the song but also alternative explanations to the common fandom interpretation as well as highlights of extra material (ex. a two-chapter special manga release) that support the ambiguity of interpretation.

Also, definitely check both the video notes and the top comment, where the uploader put translator notes. Here are some of the uploader's translation notes for "Baroque" -- they really are amazingly thorough and interesting, and are a can't miss if you are a language learner yourself who wants to connect with and understand the original wording as much as possible:

Elysion also has music videos and stage shows (ex., Ark stage, Stardust stage, El no Rakuen MV. 'Probably-scary doll' warning for that last one-- in fact the use of BJDs in their shows and videos is how I first heard of Sound Horizon lol, they were being discussed on Den of Angels.) This is material that I think is wonderful and, as mentioned, this kind of thing is the way I personally first experienced the tales; anyone who enjoys these uploads will hopefully go on to look them up. However, the stage shows and MVs are targeted at existing fans and often assume the audience already knows the story (or at the very least speaks Japanese!), so for anyone who doesn't speak fluent Japanese and wants to get the meaning of the songs, their plot and theme and characters, this is really an unbeatable way to enjoy the music for the first time.

[lennyjamin]

i'm a big fan of scifi/fantasy romance novels and it's really tickling me how many of the ones i've read over the past year have involved Confessing To The Murder(s) as a major relationship development milestone

[reactionimagesdaily]

[capcollector]

Sometimes he wonders what it must be like to be the one on the examination table, the one to be cut open, the one to be told his own secrets.

[memento-morri-writes]

ship in a bottle

Excuse the shitty 3am first draft, but I wrote another fucked-up nightmare for Rook... (continued under the cut. tw for death/drowning/corpses)

The water is rising even faster now, and within seconds the deck is awash with sea water.  It reaches his ankles, then his knees. He clings desperately to the broken wheel, but it will not save him. Nothing will save him. As the water reaches his neck he sucks in a breath. The water closes over his head. As it continues to rise, he begins to swim, searching for whatever is trapping him. A few strong strokes, and his outstretched hand meets something smooth. Glass.  He swims forwards, following the curve of the glass, searching for a way out. It slopes downwards, and he dives, following it into a narrow tunnel. At the end is a cork. There’s an indentation in it, as if something heavy has slammed against it. He pushes against it with all his might. His shoulder fits perfectly into the groove, but it will not budge. Exhausted he pauses, floating in the water. He should have needed to breathe by now. Should have drowned by now. But he hasn’t. The thought gives him hope. There must be a way out. Another thought crosses his mind. The rain alone was not enough to fill the bottle at this speed. There must be another opening. With renewed desperation, he swims back down the neck of the bottle and dives deeper, towards the bottom.  A dark shadow passes through the corner of his vision. He looks and sees the Tide Breaker sinking, having finally succumbed to the waves. As it falls past him, fading from his vision, he swims after it.

After several minutes of swimming, he begins to see shapes below him, coming closer. Dark silhouettes rise out of the murky water. As he grows closer, a sinking feeling sets into his stomach. The shapes are not natural rocks or stony ruins. They are wrecks, so densely packed that he can’t see the sand beneath them. Hundreds upon hundreds of ships lie at the bottom of the bottle, stretching as far as he can see in every direction.   No. Not hundreds of ships. One ship. Piled up on the ocean floor are countless copies of the Tide Breaker, in various states of disrepair. Some remain almost completely intact, while others have been ripped apart by the waves. Some are covered in seaweed, swaying gently in the waves. Others look recent, hulls clean and firm. For the first time since the water closed over his head, Rook’s lungs begin to strain. His heart is pounding in his chest. He kicks harder, swimming not upwards, but downwards, closer to the wrecks. Something white catches his attention, and he swims towards it. At first it looks like some kind of large shell, balanced on the broken wheel of one of the wrecks. But as he gets closer, its grisly shape reveals itself. A skull, bleached white and picked clean of flesh, is perched jauntily on the helm. Its naked grin seems to be taunting him. More white catches his eyes and he sees bones scattered across the deck.  Movement draws his attention from a nearby wreck, and he glances over. His vision is going dark at the edges from lack of air, and it takes him several seconds to process what he’s seeing. Tangled in the rigging of a nearby wreck is a corpse. His corpse. It twists slowly in the current, spinning around to face him. The eyes are gone and the flesh on his face has begun to fall off. Bite marks are visible where some deep-sea creature has been feeding from him. A scream is building in his throat, his lungs are sending shooting warnings through his body. He needs air. Against his will, his mouth opens, and water rushes in, salty and cold. As his vision fades, the last thing he sees is his own rotting corpse, drifting in the water. It seems to be laughing at him.

[regicidal-defenestration]

HAYWARD: (Dizzily, chuckling merrily) Just occurred to me. If she’s been leading you on for that long, chasing you for that long, and you still haven’t reached her yet… (Proud of himself for coming up with it) …she’s really not trying to show you the way to where you die so much as showing you the way to keep on living, is she? Silence. CARPENTER glares at him. His point is both inescapably true and far too corny for her to ever accept.

MAN. MAN!

[hnnny]

Frederick's adventures, DLC edition