#shes very fascinating to me

[theellipelli]

yuki tsukumo as a jujutsu tech student

[seefasterdraws]

from the homumiko mines

[starry-bi-sky]

mmmmmm read a disciple shen yuan/shizun luo binghe fanfic about two days ago where the first chapter was the Immortal Conference arc, and SQQ was the one who had to be pushed into the abyss (he was still the villain) except Luo Binghe was refusing and was like, lowkey losing his mind about SQQ being so close to the edge. SQQ ended up having to be the one to fall in himself because of the system's punishment system. The rest of the fic is leading up to that moment. But like, MMM i've been obsessively thinking about that first chapter for DAYS ever since.

now i've been in svsss for a grand total of *checks watch* a week. but god obsessed with that. I want to write/read a fic where disciple SQQ goes a little nuts down there. Like keep all of the things that make SQQ, SQQ, but just. Throw in a little bit more trauma in there. A little bit of a mental break. Let him go a little nuts as a treat. Just a tad unhinged. I wanna see him go, just a little, "god fuck it, i've tried so hard to change this shitty story's outcome and it feels like everything i've done has been for nothing. I'm going to die in this world no matter what I do, I've been doomed from the start, so might as well die the way I want to." and he just, breaks a little! Under all the stress.

He still retains the traits that makes shen yuan, shen yuan, like his overwhelming kindness. But he's just! yk. A little less patient. Paranoid. Jumpy. Colder. A little more aloof and closed off. A little more Shen Jiu. He's no asshole child abuser, but he was a Number One Hater in his past life and he's leaning into that old habit a little more now.

(On a totally coincidental not-at-all related note, there's not enough SJ-and-SY-are-the-same-people fics out there that i've found. This is totally unrelated...)

The Endless Abyss turns the mind into an over-sharpened blade, and SQQ is both fascinated and perhaps a little excited to explore a place that doesn't have a lot of info on it in the mortal realm, but still terrified out of his mind. And he's no Luo Binghe, he doesn't have the sheer brute strength and power to just bulldoze his way through, so he has to be a lot more sneaky and cunning if he wants to survive.

The fic itself role-swapped LBH and SQQ so that SQQ was the half-demon (which lowkey fucks) and LBH the human, but I'm equally-if-not-more obsessed with the idea that LBH remains the half-heavenly demon and SQQ the human. If only because I keep thinking about SQQ befriending some demons (particularly and specifically a group of succubi) and they grow very attached to this Human Cultivator so through magic plot stuff they create some kind of seal/illusion/talisman that makes SQQ appear as a demon because a human cultivator in the endless abyss may as well be the equivalent of putting a giant neon target on your back.

And iirc Shen Jiu was taught demonic cultivation by that one guy(?? i've only been here a week so im not caught up in ALL of the lore yet) so that could totally happen here.

(On the other end of the realms, poor Shizun Luo Binghe is just. losing his fucking mind over losing his most precious and beloved disciple. About .5 seconds from burning down the peaks himself. somebody sedate him.)

The Endless Abyss sucks and SQQ is having a really terrible time and can feel himself going lowkey mad, but also holy shit look at all this WORLD-BUILDING. look at all this flora and fauna, and oh if he had the equipment for it he'd be writing all of this down. ALL OF IT. He was kinda-sorta-already planning on never leaving the Abyss as some sort of fucked up self-exile and self-preservation thing, but now he might? actually just?? never leave if he can help it, like he lowkey likes it down here.

anyways the next time anyone ever sees SQQ again he's got hair so long its almost touching the ground and he's either in rags and half-feral or he's been completely dolled up by his adoptive succubi sisters and still about three seconds from biting anyone who tries to touch him. (he's also lowkey trying to book it back down to the abyss even if he has desperately missed all of his friends and shizun)

[fictionadventurer]

Maybe the problem with Christian fiction is that it's non-denominational. People are just "Christian", with no effort put into showing what practicing that religion looks like for them specifically. No indication that there are other Christians who could have different beliefs. No wrestling with differing ideas and the struggle of how one should live out their Christian faith. And that makes it unrealistic and unrelatable.

[lady-raziel]

hate to put anything about JK Rowling on your dash but I saw this post and immediately thought about how much of Rowling’s future ideology was foreshadowed in Harry Potter looking back and how much the really shitty things both the “good” and “bad” characters do are all totally reflections of herself…

Like I was specifically thinking about how much Dumbledore’s insistence on calling Voldemort by his birth name bothered me more and more growing up…and now it’s like oh my god duh it was because Dumbledore was literally deadnaming him because using a person’s chosen name (and by extension, pronouns!!) is something that Rowling thinks should be a privilege you receive if someone respects you that can be instantly taken away if you are “bad” and not worthy of respect

Dumbledore refusing to call Voldemort by his chosen name and calling him “Tom” instead (and keep in mind how Voldemort willingly changed his body to a form he was more comfortable with) was literally just thinly-veiled transphobia wasn’t it and the only reason Voldemort isn’t explicitly trans is because Rowling wrote these books in the early 2000s and Voldemort probably IS a trans woman but the whole damn time she’s being misgendered by an unreliable narrator

[thermodynamic-comedian]

imagine ianthe's suffering rn. its so funny to me. girl all u wanted was power and i respect that but turns out that the side effect of power isnt the moral implications or whatever, its dealing with god's personal drama.

[luck-of-the-drawings]

EDYN TIDESTRIDER, CHALLENGER OF THE UNDERSEA, RIVAL OF THE DEEP. WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOUR BROTHER WAS CHOSEN TO BE A WEAPON OF THE GODS? HOW WILL YOU UNDO WHAT THEY HAVE DONE TO HIM?

[owlsie-hoot]

"All is well that ends well" // Family

[isagrimorie]

In season 2 Hotch is suspicious and worried that ‘Is that Legal’ Emily Prentiss is a pawn Strauss placed in the BAU.

Prentiss is the last person troubled by Elle Greenaway's 'questionable' shooting. Spies are built with moral ambiguities. But Hotch didn't know that.

(Pre-London Emily tried to reset her life. And succeeded before Ian Doyle re-entered her life. Post-London!Emily realized and learned she could 'live' with her moral ambiguities.)

[dykedvonte]

I think it’s so ironic that the Pony Express escapes a lot if not all blame in discussion. I can’t even say I am excused from it but it’s just how hard people circle back to the characters alone without considering the environment they were made to be in.

Why would they design a ship where only two of the rooms lock? Not the bathroom? Not the sleeping quarters? We assume that all the companies in the universe are this shallow and careless to their workers but we explicitly know the Pony Express in extra vile. They are fed processed slop pack they can’t even really cook and the ration of those pack is meager at best. They hired and made people with a plethora of conflicting demeanors and beliefs work together on a mission where cohesion is important if not an outright necessity and punish them for not being happy about it. There’s no social protocols, not chain of command other than Captain’s word/choice and the only way to enforce that is with a literal firearm. They don’t allow them to celebrate freely and even took away leisure activities that would make them less stir crazy. They are only allowed a few hours of sleep despite their being no other real responsibilities or work on the ship, no matter the position or its importance. With any crew, with any level of synergy, this was a powder keg waiting for a spark.

I’m not saying characters that made mistakes didn’t make huge ones, but I think part of the horror is that at least for some (this is targeting Jimathan) those mistakes are partly made by a force of the hand. There’s a running theme of lack of choice and being forced into something and the very nature of how The Pony Express expected them to function plays a big part.

[elvisqueso]

Pocahontas (1995): 3 times Pocahontas is compared to her mother + 1 time she's recognized on her own merits.

rambling lil meta under the cut

see, what's crazy about this whole situation is that it makes me wonder what exactly pocahontas's mom was like to have left such a massive impression on literally everyone in their community? there's that outright statement that "yeah, your mom's spirit is in the wind, basically, and our people venerate her as a spiritual guide (at the very least)." we know that she's the main connection between pocahontas and grandmother willow, and there's an implication in there that whatever leadership role she held in the village is expected to fall on pocahontas's shoulders someday.

i am so convinced that this role is some kind of spiritual leader/shaman position. wise-woman, priestess, whatever it's called. we don't see anyone else besides kekata performing any kind of spiritual rites, and even he isn't seen acting in direct contact with spiritual entities. kekata has to perform chants, provide offerings, and use a medium. pocahontas can just fuckign. talk to the things. how is she doing that? why isn't anyone else really able to do that? john smith could talk with grandmother willow but would he be able to if pocahontas wasn't there (i actually think he could but that's a different post)? has she ever done that for literally anybody else? nakoma never mentions grandmother willow. nobody mentions grandmother willow. apparently, the only two people who knew about her before pocahontas brought her new bf over was pocahontas and her mom.

i'm losing track of myself here, but the point is pocahontas is Highly aware of the ghost she's expected to live up to. and it sucks. and there's a lot more to her character arc about this but the eventual come-around to accepting that she has a responsibility to be more than herself and more than her mother's ghost is so heartbreaking because it also meant she had to let go of her soulmate at the same time so i c ry

[blackhholes]

teen wolf meme: [1/4] families -> the argents

Our family has a surprisingly progressive tradition. Knowing wars and violence are typically started by men, we place the final decisions - the hard ones - with the women. Our sons are trained to be soldiers. Our daughters... to be leaders.

[island-in-the-shadows]

Truly, my sympathies to people watching IWTV and are getting tired/bored of different perspectives. I'm not bored or even remotely tired.

Interviews by their very nature are perspective based. The story has this specific framing. As did the first book. They added to it with Armand now being an active participant and Daniel being more seasoned at interviewing. I understand how Armand's very edited and hyperbolic take on events that Book Lestat describes in The Vampire Lestat rubs people the wrong way. I do think that one could argue the way Lestat writes his own autobiography is the objective truth (note Armand in his book does not contradict Lestat). However, sorry to say, there is never an objective truth. The truth is always subjective.

I was raised by a whole family of lawyers and if I learned anything is that you can spin things in any way, but an objective truth will never exist. Not in crime, not in person to person storytelling, not in fictional storytelling. Hell, viewers seeing the SAME show CANNOT come to a consensus. Why? Because we all put our thoughts, experiences, and feelings to it. That's all perspective.

We see Louis give Armand a kiss in bed. Some think aw domestic and cute. Some think Louis is deliberately withholding and rewarding Armand for good behaviour. Some saw the act they put on in E2 as some version of truth and domesticity and some think it's only an act. Some think Dreamstat is actual Lestat out there somewhere and some think it's Louis' conscience.

Yes, the narrative will confirm one thought or another on some things but not all of them. They're deliberately left up to interpretation. Something btw, Lestat urges the reader to do in TVL when he does not go into details about his time with Louis and Claudia. And part of that has to do with perspective.

We could have a straightforward narrative with no corrections and no perspectives. But would that be as interesting as seeing how minds that far exceed our own twist and bend and interpret events? Would it be as interesting as seeing a vampire who tells himself a story so that he can carry on living despite being miserable? Would it be as interesting as this vampire who tells himself a story get pushback on what he's saying by someone who notices errors and inconsistencies? Would it be an interview at all? Or would it be, as Daniel put it in the very first episode, "a fever dream told to an idiot."

If you want a straightforward non-challenging version of the story, the 1994 movie exists. It's not perfect and a lot of details are missing, but there's only one, unchallenged perspective to it. And even then...how many people didn't (want to) see the queerness in it?

TL;DR I get being frustrated or tired or bored by the way the show is trying to tell the story, but at least it's doing something a little different and not word for word.

[pmpknsoup]

i actually am a defender of georgie and melanie and basira being mean or rude to jon bc that man really needed to be put in his place sometimes. like i understand that they were also wrong sometimes— basira is hypocritical and the other two could be nastier than necessary, but i literally cannot blame them at all. jon was so out of line sometimes

[sysig]

Ellen McLain’s commentary from my trivia playthrough

[rookswarlock]

hilton’s vessels