#that damn quote is not in the novel

[lemonavocado]

"oh i love frankenstein! my favorite quote from the novel is i have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine-" grabs you by the throat and chokes you violently

[iwt-v]

🕸️ The Vampire Lestat & Queen of the Damned references/foreshadowing (season 2)

[orv-random-quotes]

day 44

Yoo Joonghyuk then glared at the [Murim Dumpling] resting before his eyes with some suspicion, but eventually made up his mind and cautiously reached out to it.

And very slowly, so very slowly, as if he was studying his new enemy, he brought the dumpling near his nose.

Yoo Joonghyuk: This aroma???

That's right, eat that damn dumpling, you bastard.

[after-witch]

The old man’s soul may have been invisible to the eye, but as usual it burned placidly in the darkness. In the dark tunnel, Mahito used the soul’s flickering light to read by.

--Jujutsu Kaisen: Summer of Ashes, Autumn of Dust

[nautilusgays]

The cutest thing in German Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea graphic novel is that right at the back there's a bit that says:

"I think nowerdays after an adventure like this they would take a selfie to seal their friendship. Here you can see it."*

* My own translation.

Original: "Heutzutage würden sie nach so einem Abendteuer, glaube ich, alle ein Selfie machen, um ihre Freundschaft zu besiegeln. Hier sieht man es."

[virtuouslibertines69]

"No human sentiment can be as terrible as joy. It was the visage of a demon who has just found his damned soul." - Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Art by Plácido Merino

[cultivating-wildflowers]

📚

[the-feathered-dragon-hoard]

I watched the scene like I was reading a novel. 「 A new wave was pouring in from where the night and the sea met. 」 It was a scene that had never been seen in Ways of Survival. It was beautiful. The battle itself was spectacular, tremendous and marvellous. I pulled out my sword. Then Dionysus’ surprised voice was heard. [What are you doing now?] “I can’t just watch.”

— Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, Chapter 336: End of the Myth (3)

[murasaki-cha]

Chekhov's Gun: *exists*

Yoo Ryeo Han: And I took that personally

[yoakkemae]

kakashi on becoming a legend and sakumo's funeral.

[howifeltabouthim]

Their eyes met, and suddenly she felt weak and powerless. Not because he was so tall and strong, nor because he was so breathtakingly handsome—although he was certainly all of those things. It was the way he was looking at her that took her breath away. He was gazing at her with the look of smoldering passion that men get when they don't care what happens to them—if their wife leaves them or their house burns down or they are killed—as long as their gaze finds its desired object. His glance created an electrical charge in her, making her body feel quiveringly alive.

Anna Biller, from Bluebeard's Castle

[isaacathom]

thinking about the hornblower/bush pleading paragraph again and being reminded of a scene earlier in that same book where hornblower is trying to tell bush about how he can navigate and demonstrating the math for him and all bush can do is nod dumbly and admire hornblower's delicate and nimble hands

[dreaming-for-an-escape]

I can’t believe it took me this long to actually start reading Pet Sematary.

[antics-of-a-spiteful-stickbug]

Bro I have to write and record an argumentative speech, write a literary analysis, get started on a short story with a pre-determined theme, write a reflection of the previously mentioned tasks and what knowledge and experience I got from them, as well as start planning for my oral examination which I apparently have to choose a subject for??? and make a powerpoint for???? Why did they not give me more details about the *final, most important examination in my course*?????

All in FOUR DAYS

The only redeeming qualities of these tasks is that I get to choose the movie I write my argumentative speech about (I'm supposed to argue for why it should be movie of the year, aka just infodump about why it's awesome), and that the only requirement I've been given for the short story is that it has to be about "the unknown" in one way or another

But none of that matters because they didn't tell me anything about needing to write a text for the final oral examination???? Or that I need to have a powerpoint???????? What do you mean "What subject have you chosen for your oral examination?"?????? I WASN'T TOLD THERE WOULD BE WRITING INVOLVED

MY ORAL EXAM FOR THE ENGLISH COURSE REQUIRED NO WRITING OR POWERPOINT PRESENTATION, MAYBE YOU SHOULD BRIEF YOUR STUDENTS ON WHAT THE FINAL ASSIGNMENT WILL EVEN BE BEFORE YOU THROW THEM INTO THE COURSE???

Smh I hate private-owned education-based companies

Like bro maybe put some money into an actually comprehensible website, teachers that don't hate their students, and classrooms that actually have heating instead of buying that new car that just entered the market, just a thought

I am very angry about this entire system, this company is ass and it's no wonder they're closing later this year (something I found out ***after*** applying for and accepting two courses and showing up for the voluntary in-person introduction.)

[musicrunsthroughmysoul]

I'm not going to write a dissertation on this, but I may write a bit of a novel, so feel free to not read this. LOL

(I'm going on and on about singing and the symbolism of it by comparing two vocalists, basically, but my main focus is one vocalist in particular who I've been listening to for pretty much the first time all year long so I HAVE SOME THOUGHTS.)

I've finally identified what it is about Stuart Adamson's voice post-The Seer/around the time of Peace in Our Time that I hate so much, that bothers me SO MUCH, and it's not just the symbolism of directing Big Country's music at the American market specifically - it actually has to do with singing and the art and the science of it (generally speaking; I'm no scientist as it is, but as a former-sometimes-still-but-rarely vocalist, I KNOW SOME STUFF).

So here's why and it's going to sound like a letdown (which is appropriate because that's exactly how it feels every time I listen to him sing post-The Seer): he's singing in a purposely nasally voice/tone.

Do you want to know how I know this? (Besides being a vocalist and being able to naturally hear the difference in my own voice when I sing in my chest or head voice and when I miss my head and chest voice and end up sounding...uh-huh, nasally!) I have the perfect example - an example that I have listened to hundreds (possibly even thousands) of times more than I've listened to Big Country yet.

Here is one example of someone (not to mention an INCREDIBLY DISTINCTIVE example) using his normal chest and head voice (he slips into a nasally tone in a few phrases, but it's much less prevalent than...in so many other examples, lmao), particularly when he's in the higher part of his singing range, but only up to the 2 minute mark when he starts singing in his nasally voice on purpose/for effect.

Now here is an example of the same person singing almost entirely/exclusively in a nasally tone.

You hear the difference, right? In the first one, his voice is clear, even as he uses his head voice to reach the higher notes (okay, it's like an A4 - not that high, but for a man who really isn't a tenor, it kind of is!). In the second example, he's singing in a nasally tone even for notes that he could easily hit in his chest voice (which is the most standard voice to sing in, as apparently your vocal chords responsible for your chest voice are thicker than your vocal chords responsible for your head voice, and your chest voice is also naturally the most comfortable voice to sing in because it's the same voice you speak in).

Do I...do I even need to provide examples now of differences between Stuart Adamson's voice pre-Peace in Our Time and from Peace in Our Time-on? Okay, I'll do it, even though it's probably just for me. So: in his normal chest and head voice (me, impressed: all of those high notes! In! His head voice!! Period!!!!! I think the highest note he reaches is an A-sharp/B4 flat, btw - I don't have a piano/keyboard at my disposal to confirm that, though, so I'm making an educated guess), and then in his deeply flimsy (irony intended) nasally voice. I actually don't think I can say that he sings that song entirely in a nasally tone/voice, but the CHORUS - that whole thing, oh, yes, shamelessly so and I hate it.

Now I'm finally gonna talk about why the nasal voice, as compared to his regular chest and head voice, is so bad (and if you want to read this as an equal critique of Tom Petty's voice, be my guest!).

So when I called Adamson's post-The Seer nasally voice "deeply flimsy," what did I mean by that, and how does that reflect his use of a specifically nasal voice/tone in a bad way? By "deeply flimsy," I mean that his nasally voice - used on purpose - is disingenuous. It is inauthentic.

And, okay, for a song like "Republican Party Reptile" or "We're Not in Kansas" I can somewhat understand the use of a nasally tone that is inherently disingenuous because it works to further illustrate how fake the characters in "Republican Party Reptile" (his "cousin PJ") and "We're Not in Kansas" (the place, Kansas; in this case, his perception of Kansas) are.

But for any song that IS NOT "Republican Party Reptile," "We're Not in Kansas," or anything else that doesn't obviously call for a disingenuous voice - when it became the voice he sang in pretty much all the time, it meant that he wasn't being honest, voice and tone-wise, toward any of the songs he was singing. Which...I could psychoanalyze him about that if I really wanted to, but I really don't want to here (currently), so I'll just stick to critiquing it regardless of what it might've meant for him personally to do so.

Basically: for him to sing in an unnatural (and thus inauthentic/disingenuous) voice/tone all the time meant that every time he chose not to sing anything in his natural, slightly accented voice (honestly, it's rarely noticeable, and I can't imagine that he was so self-conscious about it that that was the reason he chose not to sing that way anymore), it was just that - a choice. And, in a way, if he chose to sing every song that way, regardless of the song's subject matter or getting into "the character" of the song, then doesn't that cancel out the times he sang that way fittingly (like in "Republican Party Reptile" and "We're Not in Kansas")? ...I'm going to say yes. Because then he wasn't choosing to sing in that tone to fit the song; he chose to sing that way for everything, even everything he would sing in his normal voice before he started singing that way.

So yeah, the nasally voice/tone was unnecessary, except when it wasn't, but it became unnecessary for all time because he used it when he didn't ever need to.

And, really, this is why it bothers me so much: he started out in punk rock, right? And the first rule of punk is "You don't need to know how to do it, let alone how to do it well - you just need to try/do it, anyway." I mean, okay, yeah, he kinda speedran that because he was an incredibly talented guitarist whilst in the punk band The Skids, but as a singer, nonetheless, he always had the permission to do it anyway, no matter how good or bad you are at it. So he brought that idea to Big Country (necessarily, as a vocalist; not as a guitarist), and, naturally, he did improve as a vocalist (especially if you listen to his vocals on the entirety of The Seer)! And he did it all in his natural, authentic fucking voice. But then came Peace in Our Time which, not every song on that album is sung entirely in a nasally tone and, a decent chunk of it includes (but does not feature, imo) his authentic voice, but any time especially AFTER that album (and from specific years - I'd say 1990-on) he sang exclusively in a nasally voice/tone and abandoned his normal voice pretty much altogether.

Which leaves me with the knowledge that all along he could've sung in his normal voice - no matter who he was playing to or why - but that it became a choice to sing in an unnatural, inauthentic, nasally voice and tone. And it was bad! It wasn't Tom Petty "I'm an American Southerner so I can manipulate my voice and tone to accentuate that or even to downplay it" - it was full-on "This is how I sing now even though I've never sounded like this before," and, to be real - it never got him or Big Country anywhere better (capitalistically, if that is how you define success) than they got to before. Now I said I wasn't going to psychoanalyze him but I will say this: maybe he was bitter about that fact, or about the idea that he and Big Country had "peaked," so he imposed his feelings on all of his and Big Country's songs in every fucking performance? But what I can't understand is, did he really not respect his fans OR HIMSELF that much? He chose to sound fake to spite everybody's expectations of him and Big Country? Oof...isn't that a self-destructive bruise that I sure don't want to poke...

I also want to add, after watching a live performance by Big Country from 1990 (you know the music is just fine, but then Stuart sings the whole fucking thing in that tone AND MY EYE TWITCHES), the consideration that (and I'm just guessing here) maybe Adamson used that voice because he thought it was more rock 'n' roll - like maybe he was going for a gravelly voice that a lot of rock singers are known to employ in the middle of their songs or whatever? But...really man, every song you sing is rock and roll, no matter what? I mean, okay, I get it - gone are the days of 'I've always just played folk music with really loud guitars,' (that's the gist of a quote Adamson said at some point) but even quieter, softer songs don't require a gravelly voice that was really never mastered (or *coughs* even started) in the first place...so again I circle back to: even if he ignored his audience, he was still going to ignore what the songs needed, and what he needed, too? It's just...all so unnecessary, and it makes me sad.

Anyway, if you read this far, I will say one last thing about all of this: I'm sorry. About all of it. Except where I mentioned Tom Petty. Then I'm not sorry at all, and please don't ever expect me to apologize for anything I say regarding him. Thank. Honestly, it pains me to say all of that, because Stuart Adamson's natural voice was lovely but above all it was HEARTFELT and I think he very much could have improved even more as a vocalist if he hadn't just straight-up chosen not to sing in his natural voice no matter what, anyway.

[joycrispy]

One thing I love about Crowley --never stated, but consistently shown-- is that he is, at heart, an engineer.

I have a few different things to say about that. Let's unpack them.

As the Unnamed Angel, we see his designs for the Pillars of Creation are millions of pages long, comprised of cramped text, footnotes, diagrams, schematics, etc. It's very...Renaissance polymath, in the way it implies a particular intersection of artist and inventor.

Also: in the naked romanticism with which he views his stars.

We already knew he made stars, but in s2 we learn that he did NOT sculpt each of them by hand. He designed a nebula ("a star factory," he says) that will form several thousand young stars and proto-planets, and all --aside from getting the 'factory' running-- without him lifting a finger. We also learn that these young stars and proto-planets stand in contrast to those made by other angels, which are going to come 'pre-aged.'

...I'm reminded of Hastur and Ligur's approach to temptations. Damning one human soul at a time, devoting singular attention to it over the course of years or decades, and how that stands in contrast to Crowley's reliance on, quote, 'knock-on effects.'

Ligur: It's not exactly...craftsmanship. Crowley: Head office don't seem to mind. They love me down there.

Hm.

I'm also reminded of the M25.

The M25 may not be as grand as a nebula (sentences you only say in GOmens fandom...), but LIKE his nebula it's an intricate, self-sustaining engine that does Crowley's work for him, many times over. Again.

That's some pretty neat characterization --and so is the indication towards Crowley's disinterest in victimizing anyone tempting individual people. It takes a considerable amount of planning and effort (and creeping about in wellies), but in accordance with his design the M25 generates a constant stream of low-grade evil on a gigantic scale.

Cumulatively gigantic, that is. Individually? Negligible.

But no other demon understands human nature well enough to parse that one million ticked-off motorists are not, in any meaningful way, actually equivalent to one dictator, or one mass-murderer, or even one little influential regressive. That's the trick of it. Crowley gets Hell's approval (which he NEEDS to survive, and to maintain the degree of freedom he's eked out for himself), and at the same time ensures that any actual ~Evil Influence~ is spread nice and thin.

It's some clever machinery. And he knows it, too:

The Unnamed Angel and Crowley are both proud of their ideas.

(musings on professional pride, Leonardo da Vinci, the crank handle, and 'the point to which Crowley loves Aziraphale' under the cut)

In the 1970's Crowley gives a presentation on the M25, projector and all, to a room full of increasingly impatient demons. Maybe the presentation was work-ordered; the 'can I hear a WAHOO?' definitely wasn't.

Before the Beginning, the Unnamed Angel can barely contain his excitement about his nebula. Aziraphale manages a baffled-but-polite, "....That's nice... :)"

11 years ago, Hastur and Ligur want to 'tell the deeds of the day,' and Crowley smiles to himself because (according to the script-book) he knows he has 'the best one.'

(Naturally, his 'deed' has nothing to do with tempting anybody, and everything to do with setting up a human-powered Rube-Goldberg machine of petty annoyance. Oodles of 'Evil' generated; very little harm done.)

Hastur and Ligur don't get it, of course. That's also consistent.

Nobody ever knows what the hell he's talking about.

It didn't make it on-screen, but, in both the novel AND the script-book, Crowley was friends with Leonardo da Vinci. The quintessential Renaissance polymath. That's where he got his drawing of the Mona Lisa --they're getting very drunk together, and Crowley picks up the 'most beautiful' of the preliminary sketches. He wants to buy it. Leonardo agrees almost off-the-cuff, very casual, because they're friends, and because he has bigger fish to fry than haggling over a doodle:

He goes, "Now, explain this helicopter thingie again, will you?" Because he's an engineer, too.

(It is 1519 at the latest, in this scene. Why the FUCK would Crowley know about helicopters, and be able to explain them, comprehensively, to Leonardo da Vinci?

...Well. I choose to believe he got bored one day and worked it out. Look, if you know how to build a nebula, you can probably handle aerodynamics. And anyway, I think it's telling that this is his idea of shooting the shit. 'A drunken mind speaks a sober heart,' and all. He probably babbled about Aziraphale long enough to make poor Leo sick)

Apart from Aziraphale, Leonardo da Vinci is the only person Crowley has any keepsakes or mementos of.

Think about that, though. Aziraphale's bookshop is bursting with letters, paintings, busts, and personalized signatures memorializing all the humans he's known and befriended over 6000 years (indeed: Aziraphale has living human friends up and down Whickber Street. He's part of a community).

Crowley doesn't have any of that. It's just the stone albatross from the Church (for pining), the infamous gay sex statue (for spicy pining), the houseplants (for roleplaying his deepest trauma over and over, as one does), and this one piece of artwork, inscribed, "To my friend Anthony from your friend Leo da V."

To me, at least, that suggests a level of attachment that seems to be rare for Crowley.

...Maybe he liked having someone to talk shop with? Someone who was interested? Someone engaged enough to ask questions when they didn't immediately understand?

...Anyway.

There's also the matter of the crank handle.

This thing:

This is one of the subtler changes from the book. In the book, Crowley knows Satan is coming and, desperate, arms himself with a tire iron. It's the best he can do. He's not Aziraphale; he wasn't made to wield a flaming sword.

The show, IMO, improves on this considerably. Now he, like Aziraphale, gets to face annihilation with what he was made for in his hand. And it's not a weapon, not even an improvised one like the tire iron.

He made stars with it.

[both gifs by @fuckyeahgoodomens]

If you Google 'crank handle,' you'll get variations on this:

Crank handles have been around for centuries. Consisting of a mechanical arm that's connected to a perpendicular rotating shaft, they are designed to convert circular motion into rotary or reciprocating motion.

Which is to say they're one of the 'simple machines,' like a lever or a pulley; the bread and butter of engineering. You'll also get a list of uses for a crank handle, archaic and modern. Among them: cranking up the engine of an old-fashioned car... say, a 1933 Bentley. That's what Crowley has been using his for, lately. But he's had it since he was an angel and he's still, it seems, very capable of it's angelic applications.

Stopping time. For instance.

(This is conjecture on my part, but, I like to imagine that Crowley has the ability to stop time for the same reason I can --and should-- unplug my computer before I perform maintenance on it. Time and Space are a matched set, after all, and in his designs in particular, one feeds into the other.)

I know everyone has already said this, but: I REALLY LIKE that when he needs to channel the heights of his power, he does so not with a weapon but with a tool. Practically with a little handheld metaphor for ingenuity. One from long-lost days when he made beautiful things.

(And he loved it. Still loves it --he incorporated that metaphor into the Bentley, didn't he?)

Let Aziraphale rock up to the apocalypse with a weapon: he has his own compelling thematic reasons to do exactly that. Crowley's story is different, and fighting isn't the only way to express defiance. And if you've been condemned as a demon and assumed to be destructive by your very nature, what better way than this?

He made stars. They didn't manage to take that from him.

Neither Crowley nor Aziraphale are fighters, really --they have no intention of fighting in any war. They'll annoy everyone until there's no war to fight in, for a start. But between the two, if one must be, then that one is Aziraphale. Principality of the Earth, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, Wielder of the Flaming Sword... all that stuff. Even if he'd prefer not to, it's very clear that Aziraphale can rise to the occasion, if he must.

Crowley was never that kind of angel. He wasn't a Principality. He doesn't have a sword.

...And yet.

It's Crowley who protects. He's the one who paces, who stands guard, who circles Aziraphale and glares out at the world, just daring anyone else to come near.

In light of everything else I've said here, I think that's interesting.

Obviously part of it is that Aziraphale enjoys it and, you know, good for him. He's living his best life, no doubt no doubt no doubt. But what about Crowley? What's driving that behavior, really?

Have you heard the phrase, 'loved to the point of invention'? Well, what if 'the point of invention' was where you started? What if where you end up involves glaring out at the world, just daring anyone else to come near? What is that, in relation to the bright-eyed thing you used to be?

What do we name the point to which Crowley loves Aziraphale?

...Thinking about how an excitable angel with three million pages of star design he wants to tell you all about...becomes a guard dog. Is all.