#not Man vs Nature

[triviallytrue]

we've had a lot of memes lately about like. math illiteracy

[totally-not-an-awkward-okapi]

Still thinking about that little angel I dreamt about a bit ago so I’ve been binging other angel stuff and felt inspired to try to draw him as @hoaxghost ‘s style of angel.

[bisexualjonahsimms]

Sweets trying to help Brennan recognize emotions is peak autism to autism communication

[novelconcepts]

In watching more interviews with Liv about Van and the escalation of Van's pragmatism to such dark degrees, I find myself genuinely baffled that anyone could ever think Van the bad guy. I mean, I'm perplexed at finding ANY of these girls The Bad Guy. The bad guy is the situation. It's being lost. It's freezing. It's starving. It's being scraped down to the barest bone of being alive. They make choices that might be snippy, or cruel, or hard-headed, sure--Shauna refusing to just hash it out with Jackie; Jackie being too stubborn to come inside; Taissa refusing to discuss her situation plainly; etc--but by the time we reach the end of season 2, it doesn't even matter. Petty bullshit doesn't matter. Jealousy doesn't matter. Those things are still going to be present and complicated, because--for all their choices, for all the distancing they're trying to do--these kids ARE still human beings. But it isn't the point.

The point is survival. Plain, simple, straightforward. Van's pragmatism is survival. It is the difference between living another day with blood on your teeth or dying pretty. It is the difference between fighting forward through the fire and the snow and the hell of it all, and laying down to die. Van knowing, in watching the ritual violence of Shauna beating Lottie nearly the death, that they will be killing and eating one another soon. Van coming up with the cards for the hunt. Van not blinking when the moment comes, Van choosing a weapon that doubles as a tool to bring the body back, Van refusing to apologize for staying alive--it's not evil. It's not Bad Guy behavior. It's purely about survival, because there is nothing else left to her--or to any of them. They can play the pretty little Sweet Angel Girl game and die, or they can get dirty, bloody, horrific and fight. Van chooses the fight. Van chooses to fight for herself, for her lover, for her team, even knowing not everyone is going to make it out...because the alternate path there is that no one makes it out. Van knew the baby wouldn't live. Van knows the rest of them won't, either. Not unless they start making the hard choices.

And, honestly, the fact that Van sees this narrative coming. Comes up with this plan. Brings out the cards. To me, that is the opposite of Bad Behavior. That is as close to justice as anyone can find in the wilderness. If someone else came up with an idea, maybe it would have come down to voting--but that would have had such a human element to it, with bitterness or hostility or whatever ultimately petty shit always comes of humans selecting who to Other. The cards don't leave room for that. It isn't fair, because the situation isn't fair, because Man vs. Nature isn't fair, but it's as close to a just system as they could possibly find. It's the kindest solution to an unwinnable game. Not to bring it back to American Gods again, but all I can think is "it's easy, there's a trick to it: you do it, or you die." Van gave them that.

[immediatebreakfast]

It's kinda fun, and all of that make jokes about how Van Helsing is probably shitting himself out of fear while Mina watches him without blinking a single time, but considering the whole picture between the two... Van Helsing is in a deeply fucked up situation straight up from a more horror like narrative than a gothic one.

Yes, there is a really good difference between the Gothic and Horror as literary genres. The Gothic genre uses amplified emotions such as terror as a response plot device to give commentary on any socio-political-cultural anxieties that were happening in the real time period which the plot is centered. More times than once it is also hand in hand with a personification of these anxieties in the form of the Monster or the Villain of the story. However, in the Horror genre this terror shapes itself in the front and center of the narrative as a way to explore the extreme of the darkness that lays within the human condition through emotions like disgust or the emotionally disturbing. By putting the characters in unsettling conditions, and against the inevitable grotesque, the Horror makes the readers have a reaction to its situation, and questions about said reactions as humans beings.

And what else to call this if not Horror? How does the character of Van Helsing, a man who thrived in the Gothic setting as the role of the foreign man of science with rational and cultural knowledge on his side, can defend himself against this change when the literary Horror declares that he can shifted from protagonist to victim whenever the narrative decides to inflict a new emotion to the reader?

Well, this sudden shift leaves Van Helsing utterly afraid.

She make no entry into her little diary, she who write so faithful at every pause. Something whisper to me that all is not well. However, to-night she is more vif.

There is nobody else but him, and Mina in this isolated mountain as winter falls down on the ground, absolutely nobody to turn for help.

At sunset I try to hypnotise her, but alas! with no effect; the power has grown less and less with each day, and to-night it fail me altogether. Well, God's will be done—whatever it may be, and whithersoever it may lead!

As Mina changes the closer she gets to Dracula's castle, it was never like this and never so unnervingly quickly.

I go to help her; but she smile, and tell me that she have eat already—that she was so hungry that she would not wait. I like it not, and I have grave doubts; but I fear to affright her, and so I am silent of it. 

With only his journal as a listening ear for his very justified worries, because Van Helsing fears that the questioning would finally break the very thin liminal feeling that is protecting him right now.

Madam still sleep, and she look in her sleep more healthy and more redder than before. And I like it not. And I am afraid, afraid, afraid!—I am afraid of all things—even to think but I must go on my way. The stake we play for is life and death, or more than these, and we must not flinch.

Right now Van Helsing is holding in his hands the promise that he made to both Mina and Jonathan before departing, he is holding onto that little ray of hope that tells him to ignore all of the warning signs all over Mina that any other character except Jonathan wouldn't have just ignored. All of these days Van Helsing is taking care of Mina while praying that she doesn't kill him if her transformation becomes complete before ever teaching their revenge, he has to write his "last" letter now before he can't ever write again.

[jerreeeeeee]

i don’t know if i’m ever gonna write the fic but i’ve been thinking abt like. the eternal stockade. the implications. lup, a lich who was trapped in a dark featureless cell for a decade completely isolated with nothing to keep her sanity but her own mind. she has to put people in the eternal stockade. how many liches does she see herself in. how many liches started out just like her. how many liches are truly too far gone. and the only liches we ever see other than her and barry are edward and lydia. they’re certainly evil, but mad? they seem pretty sane. they’re not, like, tattered echoes of souls, they’re definitely still people. even as much of a grudge as lup surely has against them, wouldn’t they remind her incredibly strongly of herself? do they deserve to be trapped just like she was? for eternity? isn’t eternity what turned john to existential despair in the first place?

[borgialucrezia]

THE BORGIA BROTHERS + putting the family's interest above their sister's concerns

"Everything I do is for the family."

[floridazcrazy]

Girl you made the bet what do you mean you don't know 💔

Pls disregard my tags chat

[solaestial]

end roll X stranger things 2v2 🔥

super random and self-indulgent crossover but. i did some pixels in a kind of semi-battle setup for fun ehe. the pairings feel both a little similar to me and VERY different ofc it's so funny

separate duos and alts under the cut :>

[rush-the-stars]

perhaps it is time to dust off the western omegaverse au with wolfwood. perhaps.

[rogloptimist]

reading through this interview with tadej’s parents and hmmmm being conflict averse soo fun i think something could be said about this

[duncanor]

Mage Viktor read the Richard Siken quote

"Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story."

And said, you know what? FUCK YOU, I'm inventing a new version of this story actually.

[ki1ldeer]

The power went out at my house for like 2 days (pnw bomb cyclone iykyk sigh) and the only device of mine that can hold a charge is my ipad so you KNOW I was drawing

[nicomoon69]

I need a fic where Cass and Jason are twins separated at birth and everything happens the same way except that now whenever they butt heads (and butt heads is to put it lightly) over their opposite morals they’re harshly reminded that they could’ve come out like the other had the switch been different

[monstraduplicia]

"both predators and society can and do use the possibility of the victim enjoying part of the abuse and even seeking out further abuse as evidence that there was no wrongdoing to dismiss the victims claims" and "sometimes abuse is enjoyable or pleasureable and victims do sometimes seek out further abuse" can both be true

[weneedatdcharacterwho]

We need a Total Drama character who packed a bunch of relatively obsolete, but still used in specific situations, things (like a compass, mini flashlight, pocket watch, polaroid camera) which only comes in use one episode where no one has their (airplane mode) phones which can do those exact things. The camper goes on a huge tangent about modern tech not being as reliable as the 'good ol originals', which in turn means nothing because their talking caused them to lose the challenge by a close margin anyways