#theme: other's rejection

[spacedustmantis]

thinking about if they got out

[kindaorangey]

dude assad zaman is a good actor. did u guys know this

[nashvillethotchicken]

Thinking about Lestat seeing Louis’s eating patterns as a waste of his gift/himself while Armand gives Louis food that he literally can not enjoy or digest just so he has something on his stomach

[knife-em0ji]

Sorry for this long post but can people stop treating Vader and Anakin as completely separate people. Like. That type of dissociation were obviously coping mechanisms by Old Ben and Vader. Not like. A literal fragmentation of personalities. Like if you love Anakin Skywalker imo you have to accept that he was a cute kid and a padme simp and a fun older brother and a boy desperately in need of acknowledgement and praise and a father who ultimately loved his son but also a guy who commits atrocities in his anger and strangles people who annoy him and has a victim/persecution complex (although admittedly for good reason) and was also a notorious child killer. This man contains multitudes.

Imo falling to the dark side/using the light side of the force isn’t marked by a shift or fragmentation of personality, but rather what emotions are used to channel the force and guide one’s actions. I think part of what’s so hard about resisting the dark side and coming back to the light is that there’s positive feedback loops of power, and resisting that by doing good and healthily channeling emotions is just plain hard. Especially in the case of Anakin, who is notoriously a “in for a penny, in for a pound” type of guy. He’s loyal and loves completely and dangerously with his whole heart, and he hates just as much.

And I think guilt is a huge factor with him struggling to do good; it’s pretty much a thought process of “Well, I’ve already committed thousands of atrocities and have countless amounts of blood on my hands, I have to believe whole hog in what I’ve been doing because then otherwise what was it all for.” I think that’s what makes his sacrifice for Luke so poignant, because it speaks to how much he loves his son that he’s able to overcome that spiral and do one last act of love for his son, unselfishly and without rationalization.

Idk, I just watched ESB again, and I think beyond just wanting to possess Luke and use him for power, it’s reasonable to think that part of the reason Vader wants him so badly to turn to the dark side with him is that he still thinks the dark side is the only way he can have enough power to protect his family and therefore keep them—he’s objectively much more powerful than he was in the prequels, and a main part of his struggles during the fall of the Republic was that he didn’t feel “strong enough” to protect the people he loved as a Jedi. He wasn’t able to free the slaves. He wasn’t able to save his mother. He wasn’t able to stop Ashoka’s expulsion from the order. He wasn’t able to prevent Padmé from dying. With the commitment he’s had to his path and the objective amount of power he’s amassed since the twins’ births, I think it’s reasonable to assume he desperately grasping at the idea that somehow, this time, he’ll be able to achieve what he’s never been able to do before. But his failure always lies in the fact that his motivations are, and always have been, ultimately self-serving, that his pride and fear of loss—which are completely understandable in moderation and not something he should necessarily be punished for—outweigh his real and genuine care for his loved ones and the galaxy at large.

Idk. All this to say that Anakin has always been Vader and Vader has always been Anakin. They’re the same fucking person, you fools! Stop taking dissociative rationalization literally!!! It’s right there in the text!!!! His return to the light does not negate his time in the dark and vice versa! There is good in him !! He is capable of unspeakable evil !!! BOTH ARE TRUE AT THE SAME TIME!!!!!

[rosefires20]

The one thing that gets me about the Lord of the Rings movies is how much they fail Faramir's character but manage to really show Boromir's specifically in the extended cuts.

Faramir gets so little time in the movies compared to how much he gets in the books. He is genuinely such a good character in the books and I adore him so much. He has one of the best lines in the series as well that really captures some of the larger themes of the peace.

"I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend." - Faramir in The Two Towers

He is genuinely such a kind man, and in the books, you see that through his actions but also the actions and words of everyone around him. In the books, you get Beregond and Pippin's interactions and conversations where Beregond talks about how much he admires and loves Faramir as his captain and how much he trusts him. Beregond's love and dedication is part of the reason why Denethor's plan to burn him and Faramir alive gets delayed long enough for Pippin to go and get Gandalf and return with enough time to save Faramir at least.

The movie fails so hard because they have Faramir and his group take Frodo and Sam forcefully to Osgiliath and he has a moment with the ring. In the books, before even knowing for sure that Frodo had the ring, he said he would not take it. When it is revealed, he completely denies it and aids Frodo with food and shelter for a bit. The scene of him rejecting the ring especially with the knowledge that it got to his dearly beloved brother is so good and so core to Faramir's character which drives me nuts with how it went down in the movies.

In the books, you also get most of a chapter dedicated to Eowyn and Faramir and their healing journey. There, you also get to see how kind and loving Faramir is as a person with how he respects and interacts with Eowyn. Just god. He's such a good example of the series's gentle masculinity. He parallels Aragorn a lot in it especially since Aragorn is the one who is meant to be king while Faramir had the hearts of the people.

[greenerteacups]

Which is your favourite and least favourite harry potter book?

while i think Prisoner of Azkaban is the best on a technical level, my favorite is Goblet of Fire. because it's a fucking blockbuster. like, this is a book that is firing on all cylinders, trying to do a million billion things at once, and it executes the fuck out of basically everything. besides the fact that it dives deeper into character dynamics than any previous book (ron and harry! hermione and ron! hermione and krum! sirius and harry! ron and percy! etc!!), it's a massive expansion of the universe: it opens up whole new wizarding hemispheres, new countries, new cultures, TONS of new characters, the Quidditch World Cup, the Triwizard Tournament, the Ministry of Magic's bureaucratic politics, the Old Guard death eaters, and the beginning of the Order of the Phoenix. it gives us Fleur and Krum and Mad-Eye Moody and Cho and Cedric and Charlie Weasley, and the first taste of Snape's backstory, not to mention pensieves and mermaids and fucking dragons, like sorry, are you seeing this shit??

and then, finally, it gives us the beginning of the second wizarding war. it gives us the graveyard scene and Cedric Diggory's sacrifice, one of the best and most important moments in any book ever, because it's the whole story in a nutshell, and it's also the moment that the plot starts. Goblet is the crux of the entire series, and it nails almost everything. (the exception being the Moody plot twist, which... I did not love, but like: must a conclusion be "good"? is it not simply enough for a story to plow headfirst off the rails in a wildly entertaining direction, and then end? i think it is.)

so those are what I see as the Objective Goods of Goblet. my Subjective Goods are: i love a tournament arc, i love a GAME, i love a set of rules and rituals and ceremonies and opportunities to demonstrate character through contrasting behavior in response to pre-ordained challenges and rule sets. i love you Yule Ball, i love you prom arc, i love you dressing characters up in silly little outfits and making them take each other on dates, i love you teenage drama and misunderstandings and jealousy and teenybopper romantic subplots. i love you goblet of fire.

[sysig]

Red Eyes and Evil Time, practically the same thing right (Patreon)

[good-beanswrites]

In the final chapter of "Lights, Camera, Sing Your Sins", you name-dropped Muu as one of the overall guilty prisoners. Now what bits of flavor might you add if you picked Kotoko?

Ooh, so the main difference is that Kotoko would carry a different type of guilt than Muu!

I tried to bring up the imagery that would haunt Es: “The tears. The screams. That final look in Muu’s eyes burned in their brain,” really creating this image of a sobbing, screaming, scared little girl. I wanted readers to feel that guilt of killing a sweet, big-eyed child. For Kotoko, though, I'd include a feeling of hopelessness – she thought she was doing the right thing. She thought she was a hero. But her “justice” only led to tragedy. And now, Es would realize that theirs did too. Instead of “oh god there's a child's blood on my hands” I may go the route of “the harmful cycles of justice and punishment continue, because of me.”

There would also be a new relief when Kotoko stands up to protect Es. Muu has a sweetness to her that lets her follow along in those ending scenes, but it's even more telling of the prisoners' love for Es if someone like Kotoko would defend her own murderer.

I’m planning on revisiting that last chapter and changing things to reflect the real ending, so we’ll see what other new and exciting forms of pain certain prisoner executions will give us post-T3 (so that I can immediately fix it by saying “and they’re all alive and well!!!!” 😂)

[hella1975]

the mutuals are like. ethel cain and blood and cannibalism and love as consumption and toxic psychosexual obsession and dog motif and teeth and sex/violence parallels with love/hate parallels and deer motif and antlerlock and ouroboros and religious themes and greek mythology and hair symbolism and sympathising with the monster and personification of the house and the mother as a god and tragic siblings and fruit symbolism and vampires and stabbing as a metaphor for penetration and body horror and. but if you asked we’re just really normal guys

[vampiricsheep]

so since I may be free this summer after all, would anyone be interested in an RP event that's a potluck? I've been wanting to do it for ages but there's never any interest compared to other themes

for a discord rp, I would make a separate server explicitly for this purpose so you don't have to be in any guilds or anything! I would also delete the server (or at least channel, if people would like an event-planning server long-term) after a week - enough time for people to read over their stuff but not preserved forever and ever.

[bamtwozled]

dan and phil crafts - slime // moscow by autoheart

[moonstalk]

for elena, it’s like:

"they say i’m a beast. and feast on it. when all along i thought that’s what a woman was / how can i teach her some way of being human that won’t destroy her / how can she bear the pain of becoming human? the end of exile is the end of being / when i looked around, i saw and heard of none like me. was i then a monster? / does she wander still, searching human faces for one who might speak of her in her own language? / i didn't want to be a woman, being a monster was the best solution."

[v-arbellanaris]

under the cut in case tags are broken but spoilers for the game & fandom crit

i rly think some of you are just rancid for no reason btw. like i just think if u look at a queer man LI who is a canonical victim of abuse - inc sexual abuse, and the story does not shy away from it & the ramifications of that - and a deep, rich, layered story about regaining autonomy and healing and personal liberty and trying to forgive yourself for all the horrible things that you did & were while you were abused (that you were a Real monster for) and all you have to say about it is "ugh another fucking white LI ofc you're all into him" like... idk. i dont think the problem is the fact that he's white. i think there's something wrong with YOU.

[menstits]

Still thinking about the anon from yesterday and the more i think about it the more mad i get like you're insane for calling kaeya mid i hope you blow up. Bitching in the tags ft arguments my smart sexy boyfriend brought up yesterday while we were talking about this so credit where credit is due

[totally-not-an-awkward-okapi]

Not sure if I’m submitting them to @spidersociety-rejects too, but I felt bad not also doing a page for good ol’ Birdeater.

[coquelicoq]

i finally wrote an xword that i think might be nyt-submittable...i originally wrote it for the local paper though so i now have to go back through and rework the clues to take out the specific local ones and make some of the others harder. i know exactly which day of the week this would run in the nyt (if it gets accepted) because this type of theme always runs on the same day, so at least i know which clue difficulty to aim for, but i'm still finding it difficult to hit that precise level! i'm used to just making the clues as easy as possible because my local paper's audience is mostly people who aren't xword aficionados. i already reworked this puzzle a couple times based on feedback from friends and family but that was all still when i thought i'd be running it in my local paper. i kinda just want to be done with it but i've never had a theme and fill i thought were completely nyt-worthy before!