#story: cosmic force

[grahoria]

You know what I think would be cool?

A book with an eldritch and/or cosmic horror in it, told in third person up until the point where the horror is encountered...

... and it’s so unfathomable that the narration is wrenched falteringly but inevitably into first person as its ill-fated attempts to describe the indescribable warp reality and the narration becomes a narrator.

For the remainder of the book, the narrator is very clearly scared and confused as they must now come to terms with their own existence while continuing to tell the story they were born from.

I dunno, I think that would be neat.

[celinamarniss]

Thanks for bringing that quote to my attention, @joysweeper !

[fuckspn]

googles “is it homophobic to still call destiel the greatest love story of all time in this post-hbo the last of us episode 3 world”

[rhythmicreverie]

In the stars' grand cosmic ballet, A lost sibling, once anew, Brought chaos in this family play. Dark forces clashed, and light prevailed, As love and strength redefined the tale.

[corellianhounds]

It’s worth pointing out that Gideon’s clones weren’t him. They wouldn’t have had his memories or personality or motivations. If Gideon had been a strong Force-user and had created bodies for his own consciousness/soul to transfer to upon death, it would make sense for them to be there, but since that specifically was not the case, the clones as they were presented to us— especially in suspended animation— weren’t him. They’re just humans, as individual as Jango’s clones were from him. Gideon may have had some way to mind control them to get them to do his bidding, but the show never said a single word about that, and the clones aren’t exact copies by nature, and it sucks that that’s the implication the writer/show gave us since they didn’t really delve into that whole storyline.

That entire subplot about Gideon’s experiments should have been (pun not intended) fleshed out over at LEAST one whole season (if not spilling into two since these seasons are so short), and now it’s both just wasted, but also wasted space, while also leaving the audience with the in-universe understanding that the main character/writers just killed off a dozen presumably blank slate guys simply for being potential physical copies of the bad guy. Saying “They’re just clones” is akin to the prequel trilogy characters saying Jango’s clones are just cannon fodder or meat droids. “Just clones” is insulting.

They’re also not really introducing a new concept. This is Star Wars. The audience knows cloning exists, and we know it persists to the sequel trilogy, and we know it’s being used for nefarious purposes. They didn’t have to put the concept of clones into the show to introduce us to or foreshadow anything that comes next in the in-world timeline. They also didn’t have to set up anything for the sequel trilogy because the original characters made for the show weren’t connected to them when they started in season 1. Not every bit of expanded media has to connect to everything that has come before it in the source material.

My point is, if that story hook wasn’t going to be substantially explored or satisfactorily concluded (they wrapped it up in one episode with an out of place exposition monologue), and if it wasn’t needed to establish something we don’t already know, then it’s entirely unnecessary and should have been cut out from the beginning. Pershing could have just been experimenting on the kid with ways to directly give Moff Gideon Force-sensitivity via the kid’s physiology

[brokenhardies]

Siobhan's PR Universe (2023 Update)

Rainbow Express: The mysterious Necro Line is a group of aristocrats obsessed with sucking the life out of the Earth and using it for their own nefarious purpose. Four teenagers from Earth are chosen by the Conductor (Ke Huy Quan) of the Chrono Line - an opposing force to the Necro Line - to become the newest Power Rangers team to protect the Earth from falling into darkness. However, the sudden influx of light energy awakens a young android on the Chrono Line named P0PPY (Lana Condor), who becomes the unofficial leader of this rag-tag team. Also featuring Jacob Latimore as Indigo Campbell, Peyton List as Daisy McNamara, Hero Fiennes Tiffin as Forest Whitmore and Ciara Bravo as Camelia Whitmore. (Adapted from Ressha Sentai ToQger)

Digibeast - Everyone in the small town of Summerville is obsessed with the mobile game known as Digibeast - a creature-raising simulator that transforms into a game where you force those creatures to fight. What they don't know is that the app was created by a nefarious group known as the FANG Corporation, obsessed with using Earth's teenagers as an army and using the game to make them docile and more susceptible to brainwashing. To combat this, five Digibeast hatchlings contact their hatchers and use them to combat the corrupted soldiers created by the FANG Corporation. Starring Xolo Mariduena as Maddox Clemente, Hayley Tju as Dawn Sudarso, Diego Tinoco as Dante Carerra, Chantz Simpson as Caleb Jones and Emily Skinner as Brooklyn Matthews (Adapted from Doubutsu Sentai Zyuohger)

Turbo Prism - The ancient underground tribe of Jewelia is under attack by a group known as Axium, which is disguised as an Earth-based mining corporation. Desperate to save her people, Jewelian Princess Seraphina (Isabela Merced) sends four of her people's finest to the surface - a cocky royal guard (Froy Gutierrez), a kleptomaniac urchin (Rachel Hilson), a charming swordsman (Tyler Alvarez) and her personal Lady In Waiting (Savannah Lee May). The only thing missing is a leader, and thus, the group arrive on Earth to prevent Axium from stealing its resources. While in the town of Silver Hills, they meet socially awkward high school student Mitchell Park (Lance Lim) who shows the right amount of courage and imagination to become the leader of the new Turbo Prism team (Adapted from Mashin Sentai Kiramager with Choushinsei Flashman archive footage)

Cyberspace - A hot new VR game named Space Deleter has just come out, and an E-Sports team known as Alpha Phi (αφ) are tasked to test it. However, when Henri (Aramis Knight) accidentally touches something he shouldn't have, he sets off the bad guys from the game into the real world. Fortunately, the company had the exact failsafe for this situation -- grant the five test subjects the ability to become Power Rangers and protect the world from the Bugster Army. Also featuring Quincy Founce as Elijah Frank, Kira Kosarin as Flo Dupont, Lyrica Okano as Stevie Kitagawa and Ryan Potter as Kasper Kitagawa (Adapted from Battle Strike Team Space Deleter)

[sporesgalaxy]

You've followed me for a while so you probably already know of the way I approach the ouroboros in my own art, but I'd still like to note how interesting I find the contrast between the ouroboros as a horror concept, as an endless self-destructive cycle of depression (and possibly addiction?), and ouroboros as a symbol of renewal and rebirth (which is usually what I associate it with). Its like the life/death duality of the ouroboros present even on a meta level. I don't know if this ask makes sense I'm just beaming this into your mind. 🐍

MAKES PERFECT SENSE AND YEAH I LOVE IT. I love you symbols that contain multitudes and that can be used to reflect either or both sides of a duality bc the symbol also represents the relationship between those dual concepts and how they are inextricably linked. 🐍

[wp100]

maybe there should be a term that's like a sister term to 'plot armour', called 'plot power'

because how the hell did sylvanas even have the power to take the helm of domination off of bolvars head. 'plot power'. She can't die, and she has to be more powerful than the goddamned Lich King. So she took his helmet and disenchanted it right in front of him. IN FRONT OF US

[fellhellion]

Hm. Something I’ve been thinking about (since I never shut up about Miguel apparently) is the idea that maybe there’s not supposed to be, to his understanding of what happened, a singular canon event that he breaks when dipping dimensions, it’s more the idea that he “breaks” canon by no longer being present to carry out his own canon events, by wanting something outside of what was apparently predestined to him, and the universe punished him for it.

I broke [canon] once myself, he says, but he doesn’t name the event even as the examples he pulls up are labelled.

Perhaps the “event”, as the characters perceive it, could just be something as simple as by virtue of replacing alt!Miguel he negated the intended effect of the man’s death upon the world around him.

But I just wonder. Because the way Miguel speaks of this to Miles portrays his own wanting for something different as being what he thinks invoked that destruction.

“We all want to live the life we wish we had, believe me I’ve tried. And the harder I tried, the more damage I did. You can’t have it all, kid.”

I wanted something more, but Spider-Man’s fate is set. Any and all events, regardless of their nature. And defying that fate, trying to live a life beyond what it asked of me killed people.

If you alter your course from canon in any way, you hurt people.

[du-hjarta-skulblaka]

Finished an LP of Disco Elysium and now im having Thoughts about my oc verse again

Mainly everything to do with the Pale and how I want my thing to lean into that

[somewhere-south-of-neutral]

They finally created the Torment Wallpaper from foundational work of proto-cosmic gothic horror "Don't Subject Depressed Women to the Torment Wallpaper"

[yo9urt]

a few nights ago i talked about missing a certain fictional japanese mafioso and wanting to play the games he is from and the morning after that the games all went on sale and i bought them. 2 days after that i awoke to the news of a game that is entirely you-know-who's. perhaps there is a god?

[histoires-en-bouteille]

I can just see Ava like realising that something fucked up is happening somewhere, something that impacts her life, and Todd's life, until the irreversible happens.

And I can see Ava completing the puzzle and successfully passing the "test" only for her to fucking destroy everything as soon as she gets out of there.

I can see one of the scientist tell her "You're messing with something way bigger that you, than any of us. It's dangerous, unpredictable. You will be the death of us all!"

And Ava, with blood running down her temple, fire and death in her dilated pupils, breathing out "I fucking am."

[lordsovorn]

In retrospect, it's very impressive how thematically loyal Dandadan stays to the dual theme of alien conspiracies and ghost superstitions. "The world is big and dangerous and unknown, full of mysterious actors and hidden forces that threaten our deepest, most intimate insecurities for unknowable reasons"

Dandadan's aliens are logical and just in a way that is absolutely absurd in practice, but have the power to apply their judgement onto humans regardless, in the ultimate kafkaesque sense. And you might never even know it, and likely never fully will. And ghosts are vicious reflections of this dangerous and unjust world, sadistically hurting random people they encounter from a perverted desire for justice and overwhelming, directionless emotions. These conspiracies and superstitions present a world without grand universal justice, and Dandadan takes that to heart. But there are always ways to fight back, avoid the dangers and stay safe. There may not be divine or cosmic justice in the world, or a promise that nothing bad will ever happen to you. But there IS resolution, and catharsis, and safety nets, and kindness, and stupid fun, and teen romance along the way.

I guess what I want to say is: Dandadan swings from funny to heart-wrenching, from fun to terrifying, and it also has really uncomfortable moments sometimes. And while you could argue that they make the story harder to approach for some, they are very thematically appropriate regardless. And not in a misery-fest way - it always works out in Dandadan. As much as it is a homage to paranoia and dread and injustice, it is a fun ride of interpersonal growth and unexpected friendships, full of hope and nice certainties and fixing things and making things better.

And though it may not always work out in the "justice is restored, evil is destroyed" way and this might be irksome at times as well - it's not out of the blue either. And, in the end, it works out in all the ways that matter for the people living through it.

Not every story is for everyone, of course, and it's okay. But if you were intrigued and had reservations after certain scenes - I say give it a chance, with this in mind.

[godsfavoritescientist]

reblogging this since its homestuck day. here's an excerpt!

Bill Cipher: Lord of Hope (the homestuck classpect)

explanation for why I picked this classpect for him under the cut

First of all: I think classpect is heavily influenced by one's narrative role in a story. It's influenced by personality too, of course, but someone with the exact same personality could have a completely different classpect depending on how the story uses them.

Lord is an extremely powerful class reserved for the big-bad in homestuck. It means having unimaginable amounts of control over your aspect (which here is Hope). It's also a volatile, destructive, and self-serving class. It's also the mirror and opposite of the Muse class, which is equally powerful, but wielded passively for the benefit of others, often using methods more like setting up all the components of a rube goldberg machine behind the scenes, rather than the Lord's preferred method of steamrolling over things whenever possible.

Second side-note: Each aspect has an opposite, and I think these aspect pairs meaningfully influence each other by virtue of being on opposite ends of a continuum. You might even say they're opposite sides of the same concept.

Hope is the aspect of imagination, limitless possibilities, belief, and the literal meaning as well. It also has a ton of religious undertones. Its opposite aspect is Doom, which, other than the literal meaning, is all about rules, limitations, doubt, and what is rather than what could be. They both need each other--without Hope, Doom becomes despair. Without Doom, Hope becomes completely disconnected from reality.

Which brings me to Bill. On the Hope-Doom spectrum, he's leaned so absurdly far towards Hope that he's convinced himself Doom doesn't even exist. In his reddit AMA, he literally says "lie until what you want to be true becomes true. Lie until you can't remember what's a lie and what isn't. Lie until you aren't lying anymore." I can't think of a better encapsulation of what it means to push the Hope aspect to its absolute extreme. He believes so much in the power of belief that he simply ignores any truths he doesn't like.

He embodies the Hope aspect in many other ways, too. Originally he was going to be more of a morally-neutral trickster character, whose whole purpose was just to show up randomly in Dipper's dreams and rattle off wild statements of questionable truth and conspiracy theories at him. The kind of things that people hope are true (sometimes to make the world seem more exciting and magical, sometimes for bigoted reasons, you know how it is with conspiracy theories), but the point is: Bill retains some of this in his canon personality. He tells Ford in the journal that the moon landing was fake. When he first meets Gideon, he says the whole "reality is an illusion" thing. He delights in sharing these kinds of things with people, and yeah, it's to fuck with them, but there's still something to be said about the fact that he accomplishes this through the use of things that exist as uncertain possibilities in people's minds, and things that some people have a strong belief in and/or hope to find proof of. He's wielding Hope as a tool, because that's when he's in his element.

Bill also preys on people's hopes and dreams, appearing to people literally inside their heads, and existing mainly in dreams and minds for billions of years--a place where you really can create anything you can imagine. He uses Ford's hopes of accomplishing something meaningful to get him to create a doomsday device. He also has Ford practically worshiping him, calling him a Muse with a capital M, calling his presence 'divine intervention'... the religious themes that often go hand-in-hand with the Hope aspect are definitely present. Of course a Lord would wield the Hope aspect to give himself worshipers who practically see him as a god.

And, speaking of doomsday devices, Weirdmageddon is the exactly what would happen in a world where the Hope aspect ran rampant without any laws or restrictions or concrete truths. In the codes of Journal 3, Bill says, "why should time only move forward, why must cause precede effect, who voted on the laws of physics - rules are perversions against all will, that's why I'm about to rewrite the whole system buddy, and no one is going to stop me."

We also get some insight into Bill's beliefs when we take a look as Mabel's dreambubble. He literally uses someone's hopes as a weapon against them, trapping her inside a twisted version of all the things that could've been true, if only the world was fueled by pure imagination, without any laws of physics or imperfect days or boring moments. Bill is so confident that this trap is infallible that he doesn't even bother to stop Dipper from trying to get her out once he makes it inside the dreambubble. Maybe the reason why Bill is so confident that this trap is inescapable is because he's pretty much trapped himself in a dreambubble of his own creation, where anything is possible and fantasy wins over reality every time (talking about the nightmare realm here), and was so intoxicated by the limitless lawlessness of the place that he spent billions of years trying to expand his little self-imposed prison to cover the rest of the multiverse, rather than ever stop to question himself or consider the consequences. Because with enough Hope, there are no consequences, only infinite possibilities limited only by your own imagination! ...right?

I could probably go on, but I think this is more than enough to support my case for Bill being a Lord of Hope. I'm always interested to hear about other classpect headcanons though!

[casuallyanidiot]

Imagine Being stuck in the novel of a Yandere author...

Kina a soft continuation of this post.

tw. yandere, forced relationship, cosmic (?) horror

You get hit by a truck and end up in a story! Fortunately you're not the villainess destined to die a horrible fate. In fact, you get the luxury of being the main character and getting the hopeful happy end. Unfortunately, you don't recognize any of the plot points or the names of anything.

That part of it sucks, but you figure you could just follow how you assumed the story would go.

But you find it strange how much the male lead looks like that creepy guy from your work. There's a weird pit in your stomach when he sung your praises, and you can't help but recoil a bit in disgust when he kisses your hand. You know that it's your role in this story to end up with this guy, but geez he's so weird. If the two of you weren't in some weird historical fantasy world, you were sure that he would constantly be glued to your side.

Then you realize that, oh, hey you don't actually have to stick in the direction the plot of this world is trying to lead you in.

You find that the Northern Duke is quite cute, actually, and though he isn't as detailed as some of the other characters that were probably focused on more in the novel, he's still sweet enough. So, when the Male lead proposes to you, you politely reject him and run off to be with your new lover.

But when you arrive at the Duke's estate, you find that he's... the male lead?!

"You're not- how are you here?!" You say with narrowed eyes. The male lead merely smiles at you, if not a little confused. "My love? What are you talking about? Am I not your beloved Duke?" He laughs and spread his arms wide as if to embrace you. His skin feels colder than before for some reason, though you try to brush it off.

Your life in his estate was extremely strange from then on. It was like no one else could tell that the Duke had been replaced. He looked and acted completely different from before, and when you asked the staff about it, they looked at you as if you were the crazy one. They suggested that perhaps the two men were more alike than you initially thought, and that you should focus instead on settling into your role as his happy, unquestioning spouse. You tried not to frown, but with the way their eyes glazed over anytime you began to ask too many questions, you didn't think it mattered if they saw or not.

Your new fiancé was rather clingy. Annoyingly so. You had been trying to stand his lecherous touches and less than innocent advances for weeks now, to believe that perhaps you were crazy and had somehow mistaken the Duke and the Male lead for each other like everyone said you had. That it was just some byproduct of getting reincarnated.

But then you ended up speaking to a gardener.

She was obviously just a background character, one that probably wasn't even meant to be mentioned in the pages of this novel. She didn't even have a face, and her voice was disjointed and soft. When she spoke, her words echoed in the back of your brain as if she wasn't even meant to speak.

"The lord? He's been acting strange ever since you arrived here my lady," She said. You had to blink to make sure you heard her. To make sure she was actually there. "And his face doesn't look quite right. I'm glad you noticed, my lady. Someone has to."

When you sought her out the next day, she had disappeared without a trace.

You decided that whatever was happening with the estate, the Duke and his servants, was far too strange for you to ignore. Perhaps you had strayed far too much from the original plot and setting of the novel. Either way, it wasn't worth all the trouble. Not when the very thing you sought to avoid with the male lead seemed to follow you. Not when the world seemed to be shifting to try and keep you in the plot.

Wherever you went from then on, You would keep seeing the male lead appear. But it was the same as with the Duke. A character that was unique in appearance and personality would suddenly morph into him. And no one would notice. It was like it was completely normal to have dozens of copies of the same man occupying different names and roles.

You feel insane, like you've broken something in the world.

It's one night where you finally snap and stab one of the weird versions of the male lead where you find out the truth. You're panting and covered in blood, a knife gripped in your shaking hand. There's a manic relief that grasps you right then and there. Because, these characters aren't actually alive. They can't be. Not when they all have the same exact face and voice, smiling at you with empty eyes and words that don't feel like anyone would actually say them if this weren't a book.

You let out a sob of relief that for once you're not being reminded of the man who lurked around the corners of your pervious life. He made your skin crawl with the constant muttering under his breath, with the way he watched you. You did not want to see him in these, awful, awful mockeries of real people.

All you want to do, is have a happily ever after in this stupid novel.

Your eyes go wide and you let out a noise that's halfway between a sob and a laugh. The figure shambles up, seemingly unaffected by the wound in it's side. The face of the male lead, no, of that awful wannabe author, stares back at you without a care in the world.

"Did you get it out of your system? [Name]?" It asks you with a polite smile that doesn't reach the eyes and a tilt to the head.

You collapse to the ground, whimpering as the figure approaches you and pats you on the head. It said your name. Not the main character's name, your name from the real world. You swallow thickly as the puppet of a character kneels down with stilted motions. It's like every little movement is being directly controlled right now. As if it's being written right before your eyes.

"Are you ready to behave now?" It asks like you're some scared pet, and not a living, breathing thing that's being played with like a doll.

Your lips tremble as you nod. You feel something in your mind shatter as you realize that the happy ending written for this world was definitely not intended for you.