#there ARE ways to make it interesting and keep it relevant

[angelicgirlmj]

an angels guide: january media recommendations

hey angels, here are my favourite media pieces for what can feel like the rainiest, dreariest month (sorry january…). in order to cheer myself up and beat the end of winter blues here are some of my most beloved pieces of media!

books

my year of rest and relaxation, ottessa moshfegh - for those days when you also feel the desire to sleep for as long as you can.

murder on the orient express, agatha christie - i love a cozy wintery murder mystery!! especially by agatha.

before the coffee gets cold, toshikazu kawaguchi - i read this when im craving connection (and also a good cup of coffee).

small things like these, claire keegan- beautiful religious imagery, gorgeous setting full of intriguing characters. historically relevant.

poems

sonnet 97: how like a winter hath my absence been, shakespeare - i love the sonnet form and this poem encapsulates that winter feeling for me, the fertility and feminine images are so so interesting.

the snow fairy, claude mckay - may be my favourite poem that ive found this year! definitely going to check out some more of her work.

white eyes, mary oliver - nature and mary oliver go together like a cute mug and hot chocolate, total perfection!

dust of snow, robert frost - short and sweet, gives me winter chills!!

films

the holdovers - christmas film maybe, but still relevant and lovely for miserable januaries!

the lion, the witch and the wardrobe - one of my childhood favourites, this film is so cozy and comforting, just what is tvneeded.

notting hill - unrealistic and silly? 100% but it’s still so funny and cute, helps me stay optimistic and hopeful in the winter.

the shining - some days i go a little stir crazy and need some old horror to snap me out of it!

albums

diamonds & rust, joan baez - this album is so beautiful and a fairly new discovery for me, im still letting it sink in. my favourites probably blue sky!

blue, joni mitchell - my perfect winter album. listen to river. always makes me cry.

bury me at make out creek, mitski - some days you just have to sink into those winter blues. i love the last words of a shooting star.

evermore, taylor swift - an underrated taylor album! my go to from november till at least march. marjorie is hitting so hard right now and im not fully sure why!

we’ve made it this far through winter angels! we can make it a little further. stay cozy, safe and most importantly keep romanticising your days in even the little ways.

love, m.

[noitsbecky127]

12 or 35 for the Rook story time prompts!

Thanks so much for this! Gonna go with 12: Rook making a new friend. In my head, this takes place after The Smuggled Relic Case and before Sea of Blood. If anyone else wants to send me asks, the post is here! And if you’re interested in reading more about my Rook, that’s here!

---

Neve comes to her room a little after they've returned from Minrathous, once she's sent Teia a letter and is anxiously awaiting a reply. "Everything alright in here?"

Violetta looks up from the knife she's sharpening. "Perfectly fine. And you?"

"Me? No issues here. Just figured I'd check in. The Treviso return seems to have you on edge."

Oh, right. Most people don't habitually sharpen knives. It probably looks like she's plotting someone's imminent murder. "This is just how I pass the time," she clarifies.

"That tracks." Neve steps inside, false leg clinking against the stone floor. "But even so, you've been away from home for six months. Anyone else would be overjoyed to return, and do it as soon as possible. You decided we'd start with Minrathous, a city you clearly despise. I'm wondering why."

Violetta puts down her knife and whetstone, looking up at the ceiling, trying to find the best ways to phrase it as Neve sits down on the couch next to her. "I didn't exactly leave on the best of terms," she settles on. "I don't care to discuss it further."

"Understood," Neve says.

That's not the answer Violetta had been expecting. She'd been anticipating further prying, more than anything. "The detective is just leaving it at that?"

A shrug. "I'm a detective, not a busybody. I don't see why I would need to know the details of your departure from Treviso. If it becomes relevant, will you tell me?"

"I will." It likely won't become relevant, but if it does, it wouldn't do to leave Neve in the dark.

"Well, that settles it, then." Neve smiles. "Until that happens, you can keep your secrets, Vi. Can I call you Vi?"

That's not a nickname she's ever really had. The existence of Viago made that a fairly impractical option, so once she got old enough that people bothered to remember her name, it was always Violetta, the whole name.

She likes the sound of Vi, though. It sounds casual, affectionate, caring. Coming out of Neve's mouth, it sounds right.

"Feel free to."

[cute-little-fly]

The thing I have wondered since Sinsmas is how is that Blitzø seems to have an ability to unconsciously create fire? Why there were so many shots in Sinsmas about Blitzø doing that? Or the thing about him going to work because he is afraid of burning the house?

Is red fire, not the green one, does it mean anything ?

For example Asmodeus can produce blue fire, Octavia purple fire, and Blitzø red fire related to wrath.

He is shown to be very good at cooking and taking care of everything, but at the same time, he has the risk of suddenly put things on fire?

I think that they might have hidden abilities… but those abilities were silenced somehow for someone in hell to take care of the basic things they do: make the food, service to other hellborns in general, etc…

Also, hellhounds are relevant in this debate, because we see how they are not as prevented to be powerfull, but still, a lot of them are almost sold like pets or slaves.

They are also in the bottom of Hell’s hierarchy and then having powers and being kinda stronger doesn’t prevent hell from exploiting them. At the same time, they are the ones that are more coerced and violated, even more than imps, because they were used for services that demanded them to be strong (being guards of Hell).

So, Idk, I think it would be kinda interesting to see if imps that are born from wrath and are trained to be fighters are the ones that are kept with less powers, somehow, to prevent them from being a menace. They keep a culture when they expressing violence towards each other is accepted (sometimes in a joyful way or to bond), so they don’t direct that towards others that are also stronger than them anyways?

If they find a way to reach those powers and start a rebellion? I don’t know if this is the way that will happen; but still is an interesting possibility. If they start a rebellion as they are rn I think they would need to use another strategy and not just plain combat.

Also, I don’t think that imp’s abilities necessarily need to be for them to transform in an epic gigantic dragon or something like that. It could be just them having the same characteristics but them able to reach some sort of power up. So, they would be like the same, just stronger and less vulnerable to damage.

I refuse to believe that imps don't have magical ability

[radellama]

Picky but.. when watching a docco/docco style video, while it can be interesting to hear about how you ended up in contact with certain relevant people, or how there were plans to contact people that fell through, or that you couldn't get in contact with them... I hate when the filmmaker harps on and on about their 'investigative' process and try to dramatise it.

Sorry but. I don't really want a 15-20+ min detour of you lamenting over trying to get in contact with certain people when all that's happened is you sent an email and didn't get a reply.

[deus-and-the-machina]

ngl I might get crucified for this but I think the dunmeshi yuri/yaoi discourse was stupid and misrepresenting the ao3 factoids. as of today the most written for mlm ship is labru with 69 (nice) and the next most popular has less then half that at 31. meanwhile farcille has 125 out of the 154 F/F ships in the tag. it is by FAR the most popular ship, with the next two most written about sapphic ships being marcille/izutsumi (9) and kiki/namari (4) and also a couple of x readers? so farcille dominates by far

it seems to me that what's going on is that several mlm ships are in rotation in terms of popularity whereas farcille dominates as the singularly popular wlw ship.

and this doesnt mean that the issues people were bringing up about the general lack of sapphic content and the way fandom treats female characters aren't valid, but idk man when farcille fanart is cropping up daily and getting thousands of notes and has about twice more the amount of fics that the most popular mlm ship on ao3 has its like. I dont think this is really a fandom that proves that point.

I would like to see some more variation in smaller wlw pairs to make up the difference though! I dont think I see any tade/izutsumi fics and we need to change that they could be so cute.

[billdenbrough]

fundamentally disinterested in the recurring discourse about kevin's drinking that aims to a) make it his Specific Problem To Focus On And Overcome when it is a crutch and coping mechanism to get him through a Much Bigger Problem (emotional fallout he can't square with by himself, culture shock, trauma, loss of his extremely wildly co-dependent relationship w riko, losing the structure of the nest, mourning a future he was meant to have, processing a grave injustice, anger and fear and desperate grief, all of which is his Actual Specific Fox Problem) while he builds himself back up, and b) thinks that even if it is a problem (more on that later), it's the foxes' problem to deal with.

like. it's just not.

yeah, he doesn't drink until he meets them. they gave him that habit, and in traditional terms, they're (the monsters specifically) a 'bad influence'. but these are the foxes. this is kevin day, son of exy, whose meteor is crashing spectacularly through no fault of his own. there are no traditional terms to be found here. the framework for it literally doesn't exist. neil comes into the foxes with more conventional expectations—appalled at the athletes' substance use, his horror at matt's trip to columbia, his steadfast and early repeated stance that none of the foxes should let andrew treat them the way he does, and certainly not nicky—and tends to engage with them less as the series goes on and he folds himself into the foxes. the thing about the foxes is that they've all been in pits deeper than they are tall. and some of them got a helping hand on the way—erik, andrew's extreme intervention methods, stephanie walker—and wymack was always waiting for them on the other side, ready to throw down a rope, but all the foxes dragged themselves out of their own holes. often not alone, often not without assistance, but at the end of the day, they have to do it.

there's that line neil has about aaron in that scene that got deleted when the timeline shifted around, when he thinks about how aaron got this far in life on his own, surviving on willpower and sheer desperation. that applies to aaron in a way that's a little more acute than some of the rest of them—boy who doesn't let the foxes in bc of andrew, boy who doesn't let nicky in bc he doesn't know how, boy made of flinching and seeking an escape and grieving the one who hurt him—but is broadly true for the foxes en masse.

this isn't to say the foxes can't help each other, but it's not their job. it just isn't. they'll keep kevin alive, keep him safe, keep him flanked and contained within their ranks. they'll fight tooth and nail in this battle with him, fight to get him to that championship game, fight to get that trophy in his hands. but that's all they've agreed to. that's all they're responsible for, in this covenant they've made with him. he says they can make this happen, and they're going to get him to that final game, but it's up to him what state he's in when he gets there.

like. they're foxes. they've been triaging their whole lives. they hate each other and they hate everyone else more. they're the kids with their backs up against the wall. half of them are addicts. i don't think kevin is comparable, personally; he's getting through a horrific situation with a coping mechanism. that's not the same thing as battling yourself to stop using. but that's not really the point of this. what i'm getting at here is that to the foxes, it's easy math: kevin who can lean on vodka and andrew and wymack and the foxes to stay upright when he's not ready to stand on his own two feet is still a kevin who is standing. a kevin with one less piece of scaffolding to lean on is a kevin who falls over, a kevin at risk of complete collapse, a kevin one phone call away from running back to the master, a kevin one crucial loss away from not ever making it back to himself at all. they're triaging. this is low on the totem pole of things they have the room to care about. they very much have bigger problems, both individually and even just kevin-related. if alcohol makes seeing the boy he knew best in the world and moved in tandem with his whole life and who destroyed their entire legacy and his entire life in one move — if alcohol makes facing that boy easier to stomach, then, fuck, why would they take that away? they're foxes. they've all got their demons. this is what kevin needs this year and a half to let him face his, that's all. they can understand that. it doesn't have to be pretty, as long as it keeps him in the fight. that's the priority.

i think there's absolutely space to explore this in fic and art and fandom in a way that maybe does explore it as a Problem, both that it's an active problem for kevin & that it's something to explore other foxes helping him with (there's a t&n fic that i've been gnawing at the bit to read for months that seems poised to explore this premise, and that's super up my alley)! i just think we're in different territory when we're talking about the series—and its characters and dynamics—in a conversational rather than transformational way, and end up talking about this like the foxes are responsible for kevin's choices. i love kevin day. i read these back at the start of 2015 & he's so dear to me that loving him was the blueprint for how i feel abt kageyama. but it's been pretty weird to see how the conversation has been translating Loving Kevin Day into... thinking the foxes are doing wrong by him with respect to this in actual canon. like that's just not how it operates there

[cecoeur]

.

[whatudottu]

Regarding your cerebrocrustacean headcanons mentioned in the previous ask: they very well could be somewhat canon given how, when asked if Albedo and Dr. Psychobos would be willing to work together, Derrick J. Wyatt responded with "Psychobos seems like a total team up slut, he'll team up with any villain any time" (his words, not mine).

Which he likely meant in the sense of "Psychobos is so power-hungry he'll team up with anyone in order to get ahead", but with your headcanons and the fact he never talks much about his personal life in mind, you could alternatively interpret it as "Psychobos is so desperately lonely he'll accept anyone he has even the slightest similarity with into his clique, even members of a species he's violently xenophobic towards" (probably to cope with/serve as a rebound for his mancrush Azmuth friendzoning him /lh /hj).

Now all of this is making me realize that it was a massive missed opportunity in Omniverse to not have Psychobos' demeanor do a complete 180 around the people he works with compared to everyone else (whether sincere or a thinly-veiled manipulation tactic) if not solely for a few jokes. Especially him acting like an affectionate father figure towards Malware (whether he likes it or not) solely so he can rub it in Azmuth's face that "I'm a FAR more attentive and caring parental figure towards your creation than YOU ever were, and I use the term loosely".

WHAT DO YOU MEAN DJW SAID 'TEAM UP SLUT' HAHAH WHAT!? dear god it's true it's on the wiki what the fuck what the fuck assdfjhghsdlfkgfkl-!

I mean, look at his already canon group; Khyber, allegedly the greatest huntsman in the galaxy, teaming up with Dr Psychobos to make a little watch that can sample (specifically predatory) animals; and Malware, a technology absorbing mutant mechamorph, working with the cybernetically enhanced (also listed as a mutant???) cerebrocrustacean in order to make said watch- if liking the concept of animals and incorporating machines as part of oneself is enough to get into Dr Psychobos' clique well, he's certainly stretched what that means far enough to at least snag two others into his initial team up. Same can't be said for Attea and the incurseans which seems to be more of a sponsor type relationship, and Maltruant commissioned him to repair his body but violated the trade agreement so whether or not Psychobos would do business with the incurseans again, he's already squarely sequestered Maltruant in the outest of out-groups :P

Hah, the 'Dr Psychobos adopting Malware specifically to stick it to Azmuth' bit reminded me of a signing-the-adoption-papers version of the 'I throw my used car batteries in the ocean' thing- something along the lines of; [psychobos voice] "You are the most calamitous individual I have had the pleasure of meeting, and I use the term loosely." [malware voice, threateningly] "I have devoured and absorbed the specs of the Omnitrix." [psychobos signing adoption papers] [malware, experiencing the affects of cerebrocrustacean in-grouping and having no frame of reference on how to deal with it] "What the fuck is happening-"

[musical-chick-13]

Regarding the whole "Fandom Is An Escape, so why should I have to care this much about misogyny/racism/ableism/transphobia/etc." thing. Idk about the rest of you, but it gets kind of hard for me to "escape" when I keep seeing people say the same vile things about characters who share aspects of my identity that I hear all the time in real life.

[lowwgold]

I really wish that the final boss of twewy neo was Kubo himself, not the bird noise. The bird was cool, but I feel like there is definitely an issue with power balancing here. If they had just had Kubo be the final boss, we would have an idea of what a more average angels (albeit downtuned) power level is. Plus it would show that you can actually defeat an angel, even if it is a team effort (with some of the strongest players around). How is someone supposed to kill a composer if you can't even defeat an angel of a lower rank? Did Joshua (if he was even born human) catch the previous composer by surprise or kill them in a game similar to what Neku went through? I do wanna see it happen in a future game, if/when that happens.

I'm just tired of seeing angels having such a huge power gap from reapers and players. Especially when they have enough power to just fix the whole plot of the game whenever they want, but choose not to do so (looking at you, Joshua).

[mossiestpiglet]

once again stressed as hell because i have the opportunity to apply for a job and i feel like i HAVE to take it despite the fact that i really dont want it and also feel like it wouldnt necessarily even be the best move in terms of career… but like. Fatal American Desire To Seize Every Financial Opportunity At The Expense Of My Own Well-being.

[chiropteracupola]

the amount of time I spend on tumblr dot com has given me quite the set of standards when it comes to artworks on the theme of 'Trans Angel', and actual museums are failing to meet those standards quite spectacularly.

[waywardsalt]

was going through my blog trying to track down an old post i made talking abt my feelings on jolene and it was. much longer than i remembered it being. and haha yeah i still agree with it. i need to fucking. sort out my feelings on that character and that subplot

[thebaffledcaptain]

I’m going to sound like a filthy british bastard by saying this but one of the things I think turns me away from this heavily fandomized tumblrification of the american revolution is genuinely the lack of british perspectives. I obviously don’t fault tumblr for this being the case (it goes without saying that it is a far deeper issue than just that… cough cough american nationalism and exceptionalism and the effect that has on the media) but in spaces like this there really just isn’t… any nuance at all to this conflict which was so undeniably nuanced in so many ways. it’s all about gay founding fathers and cool spies which. I understand the appeal but at a certain point I’m genuinely not sure how much of it we can call history

[textualviolence]

okokokok you know what. the lesbian label fits me best specifically because i hate romance & falling in love i think all that shit's stupid. The only thing thats worth it in life is having a tension filled two-little-girls-on-the-playground-pretending-to-be-horses level intensity friendship where basically no words or outside concepts exist beside the deep fascination and kinship you have with another human being & its a friendship to the outside world but on the inside its an unspeakable understanding of self & other with no limits or boundaries as to the aspects that are concealed and revealed and the kind of intimacy that is possible & the only rule is having fun and keeping up the synchronicity thats vibrating between your two spirits. Sorry if that makes me sound like a cringe hippe but genuinely people who are like i wanna fall in looooove im like your desires are lame & small and i pity you. Romance-love is inferior to playground bff friendship-love in every way but we live in a society that does everything to hide this fact from people....why.....

[wereh0gz]

Issue 69 (nice) is very good and very fun :]