#superflue

[notbecauseofvictories]

I don't know how strictly accurate this is, but one of the things I find shocking about watching historical dramas is how many people there are around all the time---according to Madame de... (1953) a well-off French household in the Belle Epoque maintains a workforce of at least 3, and the glittering opera has staff just to open doors. According to Shogun (2024) you can expect a deep bench just to mind your household, and again, people who exist to open doors.

Could people....not open doors in the past? Were doors tricky, before the standardization of hinges? Because otherwise, the wealthy used to pay a whole bunch of people to do it for them in multiple contexts, and I find myself baffled.

[silviadeangelis]

SUPERFLUE

nomadismo del pensiero in quell’intrattenersi tra dune, insenature, confini e altipiani come fossero sculture su cui plasmare il manifestarsi di pietre miliari in cui pagaiare. Sulla patina “d’una quasi finzione” parafrasare un menù di convenevoli con cui condire le irriverenze dei dintorni nella memoria che si colora di supposizioni il più delle volte superflue… @Silvia De Angelis

[probablybadrpgideas]

I like to think that most Monster Banishing Rituals are just kind of working on the assumption that really deadly things kill you.

"You need to tear out its heart, cut its head off, burn the head, cut the body into quarters and nail each quarter into a separate coffin buried miles apart"

"And that will stop it coming back?"

"Look buddy, if that doesn't stop it coming back then I think we probably just need to accept our new lives as vampire minions."

[deoidesign]

For my birthday... read my webcomic! It's literally free! (Unless you want books. Those are not free)

It's beautiful, it's gentle, it's funny, they're canonically t4t and gay... And it's about time traveling vampires solving supernatural mysteries!

I've spent thousands of hours writing and drawing it, and it's really good! I'm not biased!

It's on hiatus right now and coming back in 2 months, so it's the perfect time to get caught up

[thinwhitedoc]

SHERLOCK | Martin Freeman as John Watson

[johaerys-writes]

I don't get people who are like "whether Patroclus and Achilles had a physical relationship is irrelevant, their bond is more important than that" like yeah sure they're best friends that have grown up together and are each other's favourite/most trusted person, Achilles values Patroclus more than all the Achaeans put together and wishes to sack Troy just for the two of them, Patroclus asks to be buried with him so that they can be together forever, they are narrative foils but also share more similarities than any other pair in the Iliad, their love transcends physical intimacy; in fact no measure of intimacy could make their bond stronger than it already is, whatever souls are made of theirs are the same........... and also, they are fucking

[bellshazes]

honestly figuring out an etho random mention mystery after several years of having wondered it bc he was shamed into showing his desk setup is amazing. i'd bet money that third monitor has been sitting on his desk, broken, for at minimum four years. he got a "second" monitor in 2020 although he used to have two ages before that. QED the old one broke, he never got rid of it, and eventually got a new second (third) one. mystery solved

[nutcasewithaknife]

It's so meaningful that Wen Xiao is mad about her apparently inevitable fate as a sacrifice. She has been desperately seeking control over her own life for so long, because so much of it has been her tackling what fate threw at her. Her father dies and she is adopted by the Baize Goddess. She's chosen as the next Baize, but the burden will kill her till she finds the other half of the order. She manages to fix the token, only to find that she is dying, the inevitable fate of the Baize Goddess is to be the sacrifice that saves the world, and that too may not be enough to save everyone she loves.

And yet, she keeps a firm hold over her self and refuses to passively accept her predestined role. She cares about the world of humans and demons not because she must, but because her father was killed by a demon and she refuses to let that fester into hatred, insists on protecting both worlds with understanding. She cares about demons not as her duty but because they are people who are repeatedly mistreated and murdered. She wants to save Zhao Yuanzhou and spends 300 years all alone to fix the token because she loves him and wants to save him as much as the world. She feels powerless but refuses to simply accept her role, accept her fate. She refuses to let anyone bear the burden but refuses to accept it meekly either. She wants to live her own life fully. She has to be physically restrained for Zhao Yuanzhou to take the burden of sacrifice upon himself.

To me, FoF is a story of claiming your life as your own in the face of fate, about changing what an action means even when it's pre-destined. Zhao Yuanzhou and Zhou Yichen are the most obvious examples of this, but they take time to get there. Wen Xiao is the one who has been holding her own against her fate right from episode one, when the other two were ready to play by the script.

[a-couple-of-notes]

I too loved everything about Agatha and Rio this week ("she is my scar"--that's my shit!) but I do want to give flowers for how efficiently that relationship is connected to and contextualized by Alice's story.

Alice has spent a long time dismissing her mother and being angry at her, not seeing that Lorna worked as hard as she could to protect her. Agatha and Rio both immediately see it--Agatha is the one to put the pieces together, and Rio's the one who answers the question of "what were Lorna's intentions?" with "to save her daughter"--because, in some way, they are Lorna. They would do the exact same thing to try to protect their child (as we see Agatha desperately attempt to save/protect Teen later).

At the same time, like Alice, Agatha has retreated into anger to avoid grief. She doesn't, or refuses to, understand it was Rio's job to (presumably) reap Nicholas' soul. Alice has to "face" the curse and her own grief by the end of the episode, and likewise, Agatha has to face both her feelings for Rio and the truth about Teen.

This is just really smart writing; it weaves the themes of mothers and children throughout, has two parallel narratives about bridging an impossible gap in a relationship, and furthers the larger arcs of every character involved. Plus it's super gay.

(And they even throw in the bit about Jen's backstory as a midwife! More thematic weaving of motherhood and children--it makes a lot of sense that Agatha specifically would consider midwifery "important work" worth leaving someone alone for, as she said in Episode 3.)

[norringtondeservestheworld]

Humans learning of the androids revolution: "must be military androids and androids created for fighting that started it damn that's why we are losing"

Humans discovering the androids revolution started because of a caretaker, a prostitute, a babysitter and a teacher:

[spookygibberish]

I've sort of developed a strange relationship with the concept of "realism" in the things I make.

Something I was very into as like, an eleven year old (im not implying this was immature to be into, just that it was formative for me), was speculative biology specifically for dragons, and now, specifically in the case of dragons I find a lot of attempts to make them biologically plausible fully missing the appeal of dragons at all.

Thinking specifically about the supernatural elements of JoM and where the line is drawn. The dagnyds are made from the remains of godlike entities, and are not entirely earthly animals. They have a supernatural origin. It would be fully justified in giving them magic abilities or making magic an aspect of the setting, but have absolutely zero interest in doing so. It doesn't interest me. I think about shit like healing powers or glowy energy attacks and my reaction is just "what does this even add? Why do I need this? Does this make things more interesting?" And it simply doesn't. Healing is more interesting as a prolonged process, combat is more interesting with teeth and claws and metal and blood. These are options which are more realistic, closer to real life, but the realism isn't what makes them interesting: it's physicality.

When I design a creature for this world, I am not thinking about making it biologically plausible, and yet, I try to design things which look like they could 'move under their own power'. There is a sense of heft and mechanical "soundness" which I value more than realism, but often also aligns with looking 'realistic'.

I would say that it's better to serve a narrative than strive for absolute realism, but I don't actually write stories, although I do have ideas for them occasionally. I guess a version of this which is more relevant and applicable is that i prefer to strive for a particular vibe.

[survivor-of-my-childhood]

I feel

so fat....

So annoying...

so unimportant...

so ugly....

So unlovable...

So disgusting...

so complicated...

so superfluous...

so undesirable...

like a problem....

Okay.

[bookshelf-in-progress]

Most important thing to know before writing: What is the point of your story?

There are two parts to that question.

-What are the main story elements you want to feature? A certain character? A setting? A moment of the plot? A particular theme? Which elements are essential to the story you're trying to tell?

-What type of ending are you aiming toward? It doesn't have to be super-detailed, but knowing something about where the story is going is how you know you have a story and not just an image. Is the main character going to change/grow somehow? Learn the answer to a question? Accomplish a certain goal? Make a friend?

Defining those things before you start lets you know that your idea is a story, not just an image or a concept that won't go anywhere. It also gives you a core to base the story around and keeps you from going off-track.

As long as you have defined the essentials to the story and the general direction that you need the story to go in, everything else is negotiable. You have freedom to adjust the non-essentials and explore different possibilities as you discovery-write, so long as none of those non-essentials interfere with the point of the story. If it distracts from the main point, or turns the plot in a way that'll make it impossible to reach main point of the story, it needs to be discarded. Anything else will most likely enrich your story.

[rottmnt-residuum]

Helloo!! I wanna ask about something from Arc 1 Part 18 to 20, what does the chip do? Is it a tracking device?? (The chip that they are putting in Donnie's brain). sorry if this had already been asked

but, to be clear... the tag and the chip are very different

[pandorem]

Me every time I check out the dead boy detectives tag: *rolls up sleeves* welp. Looks like it’s time for another Crystal Palace defence post

[kyouka-supremacy]

Again the sickness speaking but here's something that has been going through my mind since forever:

I feel like a good way to mitigate a lot of discontent with the doa arc ending and in general the whole Dazai-being-flawless issue bsd has going on is by comparing bsd to Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. Please bear with me for two minutes.

When Sherlock Holmes was being published, people were intrigued and enamoured by Holmes' brilliant and charming, crimes-solving figure. People read the stories for the pure joy of being left gaping at his superhuman wits again and again; they didn't want to see him fail, they wanted to be shocked and amazed by his genius. When Holmes died and then came back, nobody lamented it being unrealistic, because realism was not what people were reading the books for! They were reading to be impressed, to cheer for the hero and then take satisfaction in seeing him turn out victorious. That's the author-reader deal that was made there: to impress and to enjoy being impressed.

As of recently I feel like we've been asking from bsd something it never promised us in the first place. Maybe it's just not that kind of series! Maybe it's more about surprising the reader with how the hero is going to make it and less about highlighting his flaws and insecurities. And like, that's okay! That's why Dazai getting away with it isn't it him getting away with it “again”, it's just how bsd is; in a way, it's what makes bsd bsd.

I think it really clicked with me like it never did before when I watched the last episode of season 5; because the arc ending felt so shocking and unpredictable, very deus-ex-machina trope, a little underwhelming in its lowering the stakes that were there the whole time, and yet so extremely on brand with bsd, I didn't even have it in me to be disappointed. It was so similar to the Guild's arc ending and even more to the Cannibalism arc ending, and maybe it really is just a pattern, maybe it really is what bsd aspires to be, and that's okay too.

Also, I can't stretch this enough: if it's not your cup of tea, that's fine. I can't say it's mine either. But I feel like criticizing bsd now for how it's always been falls quite short, because it really feels like demanding from it what it never promised to deliver in the first place. That's just as far as my current perception of the series goes, though, so feel free to disagree with me on this.