#so no heavy topics here

[scourge-sympathiser]

SCOURGE SUNDAY 010/???

classic

[sketchy-tour]

Ewe too impatient wanna post!

Anyway! Moral Orel is such a good show. Orel is my son.

Other doodles!!!

I love them. I can't believe I married Reverend Putty and we adopted Orel together omg.

[yomigaere]

As grim as it may be, I do think about how Utena portrays its on-screen rapes.

Even now, you see a lot of attitudes in the real world about how it supposedly doesn't count as rape if the victim doesn't struggle or try to fight back or get away, or how it supposedly isn't rape if the victim doesn't explicitly say "no" or "stop", or how it supposedly only counts as rape if it's in certain positions, or how it supposedly isn't rape if the victim seems to "enjoy" it, or how it supposedly isn't rape if the victim keeps seeing their rapist afterwards -- among so many other horrible attitudes that rape culture perpetuates. I've certainly seen those kinds of attitudes colour the more obnoxious discourse that's surrounded scenes like these over the years.

Something about what rape can look like.

(All screenshots from ohtori.nu)

[tollsoftheclockwerkbelle]

sega please do not save maria please do not save maria PLEASE do not save mariaaaaaaa sega PLEASE

[ratbastarddotfuck]

I am going on a 20 hour flight tomorrow please give me your favourite less well-known narrative fiction podcast recommendations

[absolutely-not-my-main-blog]

"Sounds like a plot by the gang", "oh they're definitely writing this in the next season," I know it's all silly jokes, but with all due respect and no ill will, if they learned anything from their recent seasons, you're all wrong. While Sunny has always been used to perform both political and social commentary and satire since its inception, where they largely failed (and subsequently course corrected away from) in later years was trying too hard to connect the gang to every major current event without regard to who these characters actually are, losing sight of the smaller plots and grounded core of what makes Sunny and the gang so appealing in the first place, (and also needlessly dating the episodes in a jarringly noticeable way).

And the reason season 16 didn't fall into this trap and felt so much like classic Sunny again in a way even 15 didn't is partly because they realized this and reigned the focus back in to be on the gang themselves, rather than the gang as mere mouthpieces or moving props, (while still finding a balance within those core dynamics, covering a much broader modern commentary on things like false nostalgia, technology, allusions to more niche stories and etc. Current issues as seasoning, but NOT as the whole dish.)

But also, all that aside, other than maaaybe Frank in some 'that bastard owes me money from the 80s' roundabout or accidental way, the gang aren't trying to assassinate anyone because 1. they don't care or know shit about politics on a bigger level, get real, and 2. even if they did or ever would contemplate an assassination amongst themselves, which is entirely possible given past discussions (ie jumper and others), at their heart, they don't actually have the purposeful disposition for that sort of thing and have always been all talk, no action, so that kinda plot would never make it past the bar threshold, let alone to the pulling the trigger stage before they chicken out, realize they don't care or get distracted by some other random scheme.

Now, all that isn't to say they might not reference it in some other more subtle way like for example, Frank thinking someone's trying to assassinate him and taking wild measures to protect himself from his enemies or something, I don't know, but we've just recently had another gun focused episode so in all likelihood, it's not in the cards, it shouldn't be in the cards... and that's probably definitely for the best.

[200grandbeaverave]

It's a bit of a shame that the Dada Dog isn't a child of Lila. Considering the motif of the suffering dog and the thematic topics of abuse and lack of agency, and considering the fraternity's intentions when "creating" Lila, Garage Heathen could have incorporated the puppy mill practice as another symbol. A dog maintained by its owners just enough so that it may be indiscriminately bred and provide its owners with offspring, for the owners' benefit— certified Who's Lila moment

[tf2heritageposts]

i’m not sure if you guys like my stories but here’s another one

about a month or so ago, i was doing a deep clean of our apartment, and there was a big heavy box we’ve been meaning to get rid of for a while that was from our mom but we didn’t want it

we decided to throw it away by rolling it like a square wheel out of our apartment and onto the stairs, where our next door neighbor was at the bottom of the stairs bringing up groceries

i accidentally lost control of the box and it started rolling down the stairs, thankfully slow enough that the dude could just walk out of the way of the box of death and then said “hey that’s one way to do it” and i just nervously laughed back

i’m just really glad i didn’t accidentally kill our neighbor

[mothmanwarble]

In the Kaos’ Kastle level in Skylanders: Giants, there’s a hidden area called the Forgotten Sepulchre, and it can only be reached by falling through the floor in the Pushblock Challenge room as a Giant.

In the Forgotten Sepulchre is this hat:

…A princess hat.

A princess hat surrounded by—or rather, buried with—piles of bones in a long forgotten sepulchre beneath the castle that cannot be reached by regular means. It’s suggested that not even Kaos knows it’s there.

I often think about how one of the entries in Book of Kaos mentions Kaos allegedly having brothers. Perhaps he has other siblings.

Perhaps he had other siblings.

I often think about Kaossandra’s diary entires in the same book, in which she writes about the many times she’d cruelly lock up her young son in the castle’s dungeon for days on end, all because she considered him to be irritatingly inept at magic. I think about the Kaos Clan’s unfathomably long legacy of evil and the immense pride they have in their reputation as powerful wielders of dark magic. Anyone they deem weak is swiftly punished. Perhaps much worse.

Kaos ultimately proved himself to be both powerful and ridiculously resilient. But what about the previous children, of which I am sure there were several? The children that…weren’t as resilient. The children deemed weak and useless.

I often think about this royal family of Dark Portal Masters and their twisted dedication to ensuring that their family remains powerful by any means necessary.

I often think about the Forgotten Sepulchre and all those bones. I often think about the little green princess hat that no doubt belonged to someone.

I often think about this princess that Kaos never got to meet. The sister he never knew he had.

[osarina]

ughhhhhhhhh

[chickenstrangers]

Time and Grief in Eternal Yesterday

Eternal Yesterday (Eien no Kinou) is an astonishing show. It is one of the most visceral explorations of grief, letting the audience sit with the feeling of it, that I have seen on screen for a long time. I especially loved how it explored the experience of time while grieving.

Grief alters time. It changes your internal sense of time. It takes you out of equilibrium with everyone who is not experiencing grief with you. The world moves on. People move on. People forget. The clocks don't stop despite our pleas. Grief bisects time; events become labeled Before and After. Everything reorients around it.

This disorientation of time is what Eternal Yesterday conveys so powerfully, both in its magical realism conceit and in its technical structure and pacing.

First, I would also like to talk about a poem. @bengiyo also shared a phenomenal poem by Shane Koyczan in this wonderful post about this show which I have been thinking about and listening to again and again (reading by the poet here, transcript here). While I was watching, I had another poem ringing in my head. I think there is something about grief that is often best captured in the sparseness of poetry for me personally, and in that way Eternal Yesterday feels a bit like a poem, and echoes these poems.

Recently, I have been reading Victoria Chang's poetry book Obit, which frames her grief over her mother's death and her father's illness as deconstructed obituaries.

The difference is called grieving. I think this is the space that Eternal Yesterday occupies. It uses magical realism to forcibly extend the period before reality and grief can fully set in. Mitsuru is desperately clinging to the moment of before, when Koichi hasn't actually died yet, because once he leaves that moment he can't go back.

In the moments before the truck driver comes and sees the body, Mitsuru is in a state of denial, an impossible version of events in which Koichi survived the impact and being thrown in the air for meters, even though all the evidence points to his death. He calls his name, expecting him to just wake up. The truck driver's reaction cements the truth of his death that Mitsuru could not even let himself imagine in those first few moments. There's a moment where we can see the flicker of horrific recognition on Mitsuru's face. But then Koichi starts moving again, and Mitsuru is once again in an impossible reality where Koichi can survive as the living dead, a miracle. Eternal Yesterday effectively resets the timeline to the moments before the death becomes real for Mitsuru.

The rest of the story takes place within that moment, but elongates the stage of denial. It takes place outside of time. Koichi's body has disregarded time, the doctor tells them. It is staving off all actual evidence of decay, but it doesn't erase the damage that has already been done and the bruises and cuts remain as a terrible reminder. This really effective element of body horror forces the audience and the characters to sit in a very specific moment in time; this is not a ghost who has cast earthly wounds aside, nor a zombie who continues to decay. Koichi and Mitsuru are trapped in the moment of death, the eternal yesterday. Mitsuru isn't ready to let go yet, and neither is Koichi.

The drawn out nature of this undeath contrasts with how suddenly Koichi dies. Instantaneous (I think again of Koyczan's poem). There is no way for the characters to anticipate this death. Compare this to Mitsuru's mother, who was chronically ill, dying in a hospital away from her son in an attempt to insulate him from grief. But despite her prolonged illness and her distance from Mitsuru, it doesn't seem like Mitsuru was really able to process his loss, just creating a wall around it to protect himself. With Koichi's undeath, they get that extra time together, and maybe that helps in some ways. As @waitmyturtles writes, they get to spend those final moments together, knowingly, intentionally, in a way that Mitsuru only got with his mom after her death when he saw her ghost. The magic gives them back these moments.

At the beginning, it seems as if time has stopped for everyone around them as well, but slowly people start to not be able to see Koichi. They begin to move on, and forget. Koichi seems to have reconciled with this fact: "If you die, you're slowly forgotten. It's normal. The living are busy thinking of other living people." Mitsuru is angry at the thought that anyone could forget about Koichi, and that the signs of their forgetfulness are proof that Koichi is getting closer and closer to disappearing.

This is such a beautiful metaphor for how it feels to grieve someone when the rest of the world keeps spinning. Time has stopped for Mitsuru, but not for all his classmates, even though they cared for Koichi too. It's a cruel truth. Time starts to speed up again as Koichi begins to disappear in front of others, but Mitsuru is still clinging to him.

Mitsuru holds onto Koichi with both fists. There's anger behind his denial of Koichi's death. He repeatedly tries to remind Koichi that he's still alive, gets angry when he's referred to as dead, and when people can't see Koichi any more.

But it is Mitsuru's love that sustains Koichi for this long, and his unwillingness to let go of his memory. It seems like love itself is what keeps Koichi here. Even when he disappears for most people, Mitsuru and Koichi's family still see him. Even after Koichi truly dies, when he stops being a living corpse, we see that his memory does live on in Mitsuru, and in the lives of the other people who loved him. The teacher who sent Mitsuru a photograph that shouldn't exist. Koichi's friends and family continuing to honor and remember him, and staying in contact with Mitsuru.

@gillianthecat writes beautifully about Japanese dramas and the use of place and space. There's a quietness and a stillness often. Eternal Yesterday echoes this, and in some ways turns time into a place, anchoring the drama to a liminal threshold, the pause that allows Mitsuru and Koichi to process what has happened.

Koichi and Mitsuru's story takes place outside of time. The editing and structure of the show also interrupts the linearity of time. Multiple times we are shown the end of a scene, and then shown its beginning scenes or even episodes later. The show revisits scenes, recontextualizes them, like when they get back from the hospital and Koichi admits he's scared that he's a corpse; the teachers in the stairwell we later learn were found in the aftermath of their breakup. Koichi is hit by the truck in the very opening of the show, but we don't see all of it until the end of the episode and the beginning of the next. Through this editing, the show destabilizes time, and calls into question our perception of events.

It also does this with the opening and closing credits. Each episode grounds the audience at the start in a joyful past that the characters can never return to, and at the end in an impossible future that they will never see ("If we were adults, would we be making a toast and drinking beer?"). The show oscillates between these two endpoints, and they put the viewer off balance for what to expect. But at the close of the show, we see the camping scene recontextualized. Mitsuru is alone, but he still has pieces of Koichi with him. The false insinuation of a happy ending is replaced with bittersweet reality.

How long does it take to grieve someone? Does it ever stop? Their teacher is still mourning his boyfriend's death 20 years later. Mitsuru is shown grieving 5 years after Koichi's death. He tells us his sadness never went away. The experience of grief is different with that distance, but it doesn't disappear. The show invites us to sit in a specific moment of that grief, but it shows us also how it continues afterwards.

Koichi's death is drawn out, the stage of denial extended, but eventually time catches up with both of them. Koichi knows it ("My time is almost up"). Mitsuru begins to understand it ("Isn't it just a matter of time?"). The day Mitsuru's home sick, "the time felt too long." The dissonance between this piece of time that they have carved out for themselves and the reality of time's continual passage becomes impossible to ignore.

Koichi lingering as a living corpse gives both him and Mitsuru a bit more time together. Even if it's just a few days, there's beauty in that. Because of that time, Koichi gets to hold his newborn sister. He gets to be a part of that moment with his family. Koichi and Mitsuru get to love each other for just a little longer. They get to say goodbye.

This is a sad show. But it's okay to be sad sometimes. It's okay to explore this sadness is art, in queer art. It can be healing to sit in these emotions for a little while, like Mitsuru and Koichi do in the show. To take the time to process it and connect with these stories.

Thank you to @bengiyo's post and the podcast for putting a new favorite show on my radar, and @lurkingshan and @waitmyturtles for sharing their thoughts and love for the show.

[mommyclaws]

Hawkfrost moved closer and dropped his voice. "Starclan let it happen."

His breath was hot on her cheek, "If Starclan is real, they must think it's okay. Maybe they don't care. Maybe they don't exist."

Mothwing’s Secret is so fucking sad….

[todayisafridaynight]

i cant explain it but daigo being subtitled to just be like 'you're making me look like i have no balls' feels so illegal and wrong. hilarious but something's off

[gorps]

It's actually so fucked to no longer have access to a rack and barbells

[blueskyheadleft010]

I’m still reeling from the impact Helene left around here. I didn’t want to think the rumors and stuff were true, but hearing it from people I know and trust irl and seeing footage of stuff around areas I’m familiar with has left me devastated and extremely upset about everything.

It hit me hard once the rain stopped and I went into town. It hit me even harder once my internet and cell service stabilized and I saw all the news.

I’m really struggling to process stuff right now. I probably will be for a long time until some normalcy gets restored around here. I count myself blessed Helene didn’t hurt me or my loved ones, but it hurt my community and is continuing to do so and that’s just not okay at all.

I’m burnt out about the news but can’t escape it cause it’s here in my neighborhood happening and being discussed and updated daily. I hope people stop wishing ill on folks. It’s awful and it sickens me the responses I’ve seen from the media and the web from some people.

Just stop.

We’re hurting and it doesn’t matter how prepared you think we were, it was unavoidable. Where do you suggest people should’ve gone when even the highest mountain couldn’t avoid the flooding? I’m lucky to have a decent internet signal on the best days where I live. Imagine everyone else around me who doesn’t have any connection to the world except though maybe radio or a landline?

It’s not like we’re stupid. Just stop assuming things. What we need is help, aid, and general support and awareness.

I don’t mean to monologue here. I’m still grieving over the devastation and that takes time.

I’m just so sick of seeing people acting like they know better about the disaster. It’s way way more intricate than you think.

[teja-has-puppet-autism]

y'know sometimes I go to make a post on this here webbed site, and I almost always end up deletin it cause I measure it through the "how widely applicable is this" + "how horribly can people twist this" metrics and it just stops my little fingies from typin

(this turned into me typing an essay in the tags cause I very much did need to process some shit lmao)