#they are just so so good at not taking themselves serious despite being successful etc etc

[sages-of-hell]

coming freshly out of the rite here rite now film the only thing i want to say is how much i love how deeply unserious of a band ghost is

[tmariea]

You Cut Through All the Noise

Fandom: MDZS/Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation/The Untamed

Pairing: Xiyao

Characters: Lan Xichen, Jin Guangyao

Rating: G

Summary:

There are many things one cannot say to A-Yao. Xichen had tried once, saying, ‘The night is beautiful and I am here with you. That is all I need to celebrate.’ A-Yao had replied with precise and perfect courtesy, exactly as expected from one sect leader to another in response to a compliment. Scripted. Exactly what Xichen did not want him to be. So he said different words now - a holiday, or a successful night hunt, or the completion of a project - and tried to let his face and his actions say all the rest. --- A look into Zewu-jun's and Lianfang-zun's late night talks, featuring gifts, gossip, and quite a lot of yearning.

Read on AO3

This was written as part of the @xiyaogotcha4gaza for @eternal-brainrot's prompt: xiyao spending an evening together at jinlintai or cloud recesses drinking tea, gossiping, etc. just them being able to put down their burdens and perfectly crafted appearances for the evening in a way that they cannot with anyone else and having a silly side of themselves that they arent able to show to anyone else. laughing together!! lxc giggling!!! maybe lxc staying up past lan curfew despite getting sleepy because he wants to make his time with jgy last as long as possible. sleepy lxc being a bit sappy maybe? maybe the other ends up falling asleep in whoever's room they’re in and ending up staying the night there?

Well, tooth-rotting fluff with a side of serious yearning is my bread and butter, so it was a match made in heaven for me! I hope you enjoy!

Title from Bastille's 'The Anchor'

The door to Jin Guangyao’s rooms was unlocked, but his sworn brother was not in sight when Xichen pushed it open one-handed, keeping careful balance on the tray of tea, wine and cups in his other.  The sliding doors to the private garden beyond were open just a crack though, enough to give him hint of where A-Yao could be found, without letting in too much of the cooling night air.

A-Yao was indeed in the garden, settled at a small table beneath the pavilion with his back to Xichen.  He was wrapped in a thick, fur-lined cloak against the late-fall chill— much less severe than in Cloud Recesses, but always still enough to bother A-Yao.  Xichen took a private moment to feel the disappointment at a lost opportunity to ask A-Yao if he was cold and drape his own outer robe around his shoulders.  Then he stepped out of the door, and closed it audibly behind him.  A-Yao turned at the noise, a smile on his face which softened into a much more genuine one as he caught sight of who was at his door.

“Er-ge, good evening,” he said, and beckoned him over.  And then when he noticed the tray, “Oh, you are a guest, you should have allowed me to call for refreshments!”

Xichen stepped down from the porch and walked between the neatly groomed beds of peonies to join A-Yao at the pavilion.  “Gifts from Gusu,” he explained without remorse for his tray, setting it down on the table, and taking a seat at the side adjacent to A-Yao.  He turned the bottle of wine to display the label proclaiming it Emperor’s Smile.  The tea, too, was a blend native to the region.

A-Yao gave him a look which conveyed ‘that was not necessary,’ over the top of a current of genuine pleasure.  They’d had conversations to that end many times, until Xichen had finally offered to stop if it made him uncomfortable, and A-Yao had remained suspiciously silent.  Xichen had just smiled wide and accepted his win.  Even still, A-Yao gave him a demure look of thanks, perhaps for his own peace of mind.

Now, instead of more protests he asked, “What is the occasion?” and reached for the pot and cake of tea to begin brewing.

There are many things one cannot say to A-Yao.  Xichen had tried once, saying, ‘The night is beautiful and I am here with you.  That is all I need to celebrate.’  A-Yao had replied with precise and perfect courtesy, exactly as expected from one sect leader to another in response to a compliment.  Scripted.  Exactly what Xichen did not want him to be.  So he said different words now - a holiday, or a successful night hunt, or the completion of a project - and tried to let his face and actions say all the rest.  He thought he’d gotten better at that with practice.

Today he said, “The success of Jin Ling’s party,” as he peeled back the lid of the wine jar to pour A-Yao a cup.  It wasn’t even breaking a rule to say so - that was the reason he had come to Lanling today after all, and the party a testament to A-Yao’s organizational skills, as every event held here was these days.

“And why would er-ge find Jin Ling’s fourth birthday to be worthy of such celebration?” A-Yao asked with a look that Xichen chose to interpret as ‘I appreciate the sentiment but we both know you are making excuses.’

“It seems the other sect leaders are determined to fawn, why should I not do the same?”

“I find er-ge to be far less likely to travel with a herd, or turn a white fluffy tail and run at the slightest provocation.”

The thought of the other sect leaders bolting from the hall this afternoon as soon as Jin Ling had begun to wind himself up to a tantrum, contrasted with A-Yao’s perfectly serene face as he said it, startled Xichen into a burst of laughter.  

A-Yao’s smile grew until his dimples were showing, and as always, Xichen was consumed with a gripping temptation reach out and trace them with reverent fingertips.  Instead, he contented himself with taking the cup of tea held out to him, letting his fingers linger far longer than necessary against A-Yao’s before bringing the cup to his mouth to drink.

They spent the time while drinking their respective tea and wine talking about the party anyway.  A-Yao had witty things to say about every present Jin Ling had been given, never outright disrespectful, but only because his turns of phrase were so very clever that Xichen doubted the guests would have realized even if A-Yao had said it to their faces.  Oh, how he wished he could watch him say it to their faces.

When the teapot was nearly empty, Xichen set down his cup and said, “I hope A-Yao will forgive the presumption of one more gift.”

“Er-ge is far too generous!” A-Yao said, his voice admonishing but his dimples gave him away.  He shook his head and added, “You should be careful, lest someone take advantage of that nature of yours.  I should say no, if only to keep you on your toes.  What would you do then?”

Xichen hummed, pretending to think on it for a moment.  “I would be disappointed to not get to dote on A-Yao the way he deserves.”  And then, feeling bold in the way he rarely did outside of these nights where it seemed the world shrunk down to only the two of them, added with a confiding smile, “And then I would keep the gift for a different day.  But, I don’t think my A-Yao will refuse, will he?”

A-Yao opened his mouth and then closed it then, in an uncharacteristic lapse of control.  It was hard to tell in the golden lamplight, but Xichen could swear his cheeks colored as his eyes tracked to the side.  “No,” he said, and then cleared his throat.  “Your A-Yao will not.”

This time, it was Xichen’s turn to feel his ears heat as he realized what he had said.  To hopefully distract from that line of conversation - and the fact that he was loathe to take it back, and may even want to say it again immediately, my A-Yao - he reached into his qiankun sleeve and drew out a roll of silk mounted with a wooden frame at top and bottom.  He rolled it out in A-Yao’s direction, for his inspection.

Perhaps this boldness had been simmering in his blood for a while now.  He had painted Cloud Recesses for A-Yao many times before, as expected when it was his most common reference material.  This painting, though, depicted the small garden and stand of pines visible from the back porch of the Hanshi, with the lazy stream trickling between them.  It was not a sight that many people got to see, something only those in Xichen’s greatest confidences would recognize.  

A-Yao knew it immediately.  His eyes softened as they scanned the ink strokes on silk canvas, and then his lips parted just slightly again in surprise for the second time.  Xichen wanted to kiss them with a desire swirling deep in his belly.  Instead he contented himself with watching A-Yao raise a hand and use one elegant finger to trace in the air, never quite touching, the small black shape beneath the trees.  Just a silhouette, barely a curl of ink.

The last time that the two of them had met, they A-Yao had mentioned that he was considering getting a spiritual dog for Jin Ling.  ‘Terribly useful creatures, spiritual dogs,’ he had said, and then added, ‘shame though, I really do prefer cats.’  And so when A-Yao left, Xichen had painted, in almost a haze, his garden and into it placed a black cat.

This was another of the things that one could not say to A-Yao, that he knew the most intimate corners of Xichen’s life, that he belonged there, that his presence left ripples even when he was far away and gone.  So Xichen brought gifts, and painted, and treasured the moments they had together.  

And he thought that he could read some of it back in A-Yao’s clear gaze as he met his eyes unwaveringly and said, “It’s a beautiful work er-ge.  I will hang it in my study.”

“Thank you, A-Yao’s praise means much.”

Xichen felt a little thrill too, to read between the words and see that A-Yao intended to display openly all of the unsaid meanings between them.  And that the world would look, but never see.

If he let himself, he could fall into that gaze, into all of the unsaid words.  He could let it carry him forward, around the scant barrier of the corner of the table between them, until he could taste the unsaid words from A-Yao’s tongue.  He wondered if they would taste like wine.

To keep himself from doing that, he asked instead, “Has A-Yao made a decision on the spiritual dog for your venerable nephew?”

Xichen could feel the moment the tension between them broke, like a summer storm over the mountains, with A-Yao’s bright, surprised laugh at the thought of a venerable four year old.  Xichen tucked that laugh away into a corner of his heart, and let himself breathe out a long, steadying breath.  It wouldn’t do to dwell on the things he might wish from A-Yao, and forget the time they were granted.

“Ah, yes, I do think I will give one to him.  It will be a good exercise in responsibility, and a companion.”

Xichen knew that A-Yao worried about the way the other children in Jinlintai reacted to Jin Ling, influenced by the way their elders would tell them to keep a respectful distance in one breath and then turn around and gossip with the next.  It was a mixture liable to curdle with time.  He didn’t know if it was better in Lotus Pier, but he hoped so.  

“What are Jiang-zongzhu’s thoughts?” he asked, hoping to let A-Yao give voice to his delightfully sharp opinions on Jiang Wanyin’s parenting style, and varied emotional outbursts.

Instead, A-Yao raised his cup to take another sip of his wine, and from behind his sleeve told him coyly, “I haven’t said.”

“A-Yao, you wouldn’t!” Xichen knew he sounded delightfully scandalized.

“Er-ge, I don’t know what you could possibly mean!” A-Yao intoned in his best impression of Nie Huaisang.  “Jiang-zongzhu loves dogs, doesn’t he?  It should be a nice surprise.”

“A-Yao!” Xichen said again, losing the battle against his own laughter and unable to force anything else out.

“Such a nice surprise, in fact,” he continued, the dimples in his face deepening as he obviously fought to keep his voice steady, “that it might even lift his spirits in a trying time.  Perhaps if he were first to learn when we all must attend Yao-zongzhu’s daughter’s wedding next spring.”

“Oh no,” Xichen said faintly.

“It will only just serve as repayment for all the swear words Jiang-zongzhu was so kind as to teach our darling nephew the last time he was in Lotus Pier,” A-Yao said, holding onto his highest dignity, before he dissolved into giggles too.

The giggles were not dignified.  They rose and fell in pitch, interspersed with lower chuckles and higher peals.  Lan Xichen was not sure if another person alive beside himself had ever heard A-Yao laugh like this before, and he was so in love with him that sometimes it felt like his golden core was trying to claw its way out through his heart.  

Or maybe it was just that he couldn’t quite catch his breath without starting to laugh again.

It took a little while for the both of them to calm down well enough to speak normally, but when they did, A-Yao said, “Come, we still have a little time yet.”  He poured himself a final glass of wine, and stood to lead them to another set of cushions laid at the edge of the pavilion’s floor.  He set down his cup and picked up a small book which had been strategically placed next to his cushion, that Xichen hadn’t noticed until now.  “This one had discovered a new book of poetry, if er-ge might be interested in finishing the night with a recitation?” he said, turning the cover so Xichen could see the title.

Xichen looked up at the stars and the moon overhead, framed by the dark silhouettes of trees along the garden wall.  It was getting on towards hai time, but he said anyway, “Please, go ahead.  I do not mind staying awake a while longer.”  He kept behind his teeth the words, ‘I would listen to you read beautiful words every day if I could.  And then I would want it to be your voice that lulls me to sleep each night.’

A-Yao gave him a skeptical look from the corner of his eye, but he opened the book and began to read.  He got through several poems, lovely and indicative of A-Yao’s well-read taste, before Xichen let his eyes drift closed.  Only to concentrate better on A-Yao’s voice against the background of the late night sounds of the garden.

“Tsk, er-ge you are so bad at this!” A-Yao scolded. 

Xichen blinked his eyes open again, and made the argument, “Every sect leader must be acquainted with spending more time on work than his sleeping hours would allow.  It is no hardship to spend the same on pleasure.”

“Oh yes, I am sure.  And how many of those hours has Lan-zongzhu spent by waking early instead?”

The rules said not to lie.  In absence of the waking brain power to come up with anything better, he remained silent.  A-Yao laughed at him, so fondly that Xichen had no choice but to return a rueful smile.

“Here, I’m not about to have you falling off the porch and hitting your head.  Lie down.”  He pulled off his plush, fur-lined robe and folded it into a pillow.  Instead of setting it on the porch beside them, he placed it in his own lap in invitation.

Any pleasantly polite response Xichen could make to that deserted him, and he felt suddenly more alert.  Ears blazing and with the sense that his words were distinctly clumsy on his tongue, he asked, “Will A-Yao not be cold?” in an exact mirror of his earlier desires that was not lost on him. “Here you should take my outer robe.”

A-Yao scowled up in his direction, but Xichen could tell that he wasn’t putting any real heat in it.  “I’m not so fragile as you think.”

No, A-Yao really wasn’t.  He had experienced things that many of the Jianghu, even after being through a war, could only imagine and come through it still steadfast.  Xichen also knew that he frequently worked through pain even now, for all that he so infrequently caught a glimpse of it beyond A-Yao’s perfectly crafted face.  The cold made it worse.  “Won’t you allow your er-ge to make sure you are comfortable, though?  It’s a lovely night out to me, much warmer than Gusu is at this time of year.”

A-Yao didn’t say anything in reply, but the edges of his lips did tilt just the tiniest measure further into a smile.  Xichen took it as permission to pull his arms from his loose outer robe and drape it over A-Yao’s shoulders instead.  It made him look just that much smaller, with his own gold colors still just peeking through but almost subsumed by swirling white and blue.  Xichen was absolutely going to do something embarrassing if he kept looking at the sight, like lick his lips.  Instead, he turned away and stretched himself out on his back at the edge of the platform, so he could lay his head in A-Yao’s lap.  Out of the corner of his eye, he could swear he saw A-Yao hug the robe to himself after pulling his arms through the too-long sleeves, but he could not be sure.  As a concession to all of the other things he wished to do or say, Xichen reached out to hold A-Yao’s forearm, the easiest part of him in reach, and give it a light squeeze before letting his eyes fall closed.

Xichen dozed for a while after that, with the feeling of the fall breeze cool on his face, but A-Yao warm beneath and beside him.  It was too late in the season for most insects, but the trees rustled in the distance, a calming, lulling sound.  Given half a chance, he would fall asleep here.

He had not quite done so when careful fingers brushed across his face in the ghost of a touch.  When he did not startle or pull away, it seemed A-Yao became bolder; the fingers began to massage at his temples, his forehead, at the tension at the tops of his cheekbones and around his eyes.  They worked around his ribbon, always careful not to touch.  Xichen gave a sigh of pleasure, and received a faint laugh from above him in reply.

Eventually, A-Yao must have been satisfied with his work, because he stopped massaging.  Instead, he just ran his fingers across Xichen’s brow in a rhythmic pattern.  He was so relaxed and content that it took him a moment to realized that A-Yao was tracing skin just beneath his ribbon, in constant parallel.  He would not touch without permission, Xichen knew, but he could, he could; it had always been A-Yao’s to touch, from the moment they met.  The sudden rush of wanting this inspired was so heady that Xichen stiffened just slightly.

Naturally, A-Yao noticed.  “There, you are er-ge, back with me?”

The game up, he didn’t have much choice but to open his eyes to the sight of A-Yao leaning over him slightly, silhouetted against the night sky.  One strand of hair hung over his shoulder, dark against blue over goldenrod robes, and his smile was far too soft and serene for his dimples.  He was the most beautiful thing Xichen had ever seen.  Instead of any of that, he said, “good evening,” in the warmest voice he could possibly muster, and was content to catch what might just be a tinge of pink in A-Yao’s cheeks.

“Alright, I think it might be time for Lan-zongzhu to retire for the night.”

Xichen did not miss the use of his title, the chance he had been given to ask, ‘but what of er-ge?’  He would play this game, but not with such obvious bait.  Instead, he tilted his head to look past the edge of the pavilion and judge the position of the moon in the sky.  “Yes, it is perhaps later than is proper for a Lan to still be awake, and seen wandering the halls or gardens of Jinlintai.”

A-Yao gave him such a withering look that Xichen nearly started giggling again.  He held it back with the help of years of practice keeping his face serene and neutral.  “Yes, quite.”  A-Yao’s voice was dry enough to cure a fish, and so obviously affected.

“Then, will this noble and filial san-di help his er-ge save some face, and let him spend the night here?”

A-Yao’s nose wrinkled up and his mouth tilted into a smile again.  “I think your face is plenty thick, er-ge!”

“Mn, one must not tell lies.”

A-Yao made a noise of disbelief, but his face softened even further as he reached out one finger to run it below Xichen’s ribbon again.  “Alright, you can stay.”

[endlich-allein]

If you could describe Till with just five qualities, what would they be?

Till has many qualities, even if he doesn't always realise it himself. I could tell you that he's perfectionist, hard-working, sensitive (even if he hides it very well), thoughtful, intelligent, independent but also attached to the group, supportive, down-to-earth, full of humour (ironic and often dark, very teasing), extremely loyal in friendship (I specify in friendship because in love he's not, in his own words), very very creative (I'd even say that artistic polymathy describes him perfectly), ultra charismatic, etc

But I'll choose five to answer your question :

• Humble : Till is often described as "a humble human being" (Olaf Heine). Despite his fame, he shows a great deal of humility, confessing that he welcomes success "with a lot of humility. And it also scares me a little. It brings responsibility and extreme pressure". He also knows that he is nothing without others, without his friends at Rammstein, without his teams, without the many people he works with, and he never hesitates to put them forward, to recognise their importance and their contribution, to make them feel good and to make sure they don't need anything. As Flake says, "He never pretends to be a great artist who needs to express his deep feelings. He prefers to think about what else can be lit on stage." It reminds me of when Joern Heitmann was doing the video for "Mutter" and Till didn't want to be alone in the video before giving in and saying "Why me ? I'm not special"... Yes, Till, you are special !

• Generous : A man with a big heart, Till shows generosity in his life as an artist, but also in his personal life. As Zoran says, "Till has a heart bigger than a football pitch". Till is very committed to charities and various social causes: sick children, the fight against cancer, Ukraine, refugees, LGBT rights, and so on. He also supports young artists by offering them opportunities to make a name for themselves and by encouraging them. Till is also very generous to us fans. One of the things that means the most to him is giving us the best shows possible, and he puts his heart and soul into them, a true conductor and master of scenography. And this has been the case since the beginning of his career, as Flake says: "An effective and well thought-out stage show was always more important to him."

• Dedicated and willing : Till is extremely dedicated to his art, even if it means compromising his well-being. We've already talked about the fact that he's done a few shows while ill or injured, that he'll do anything to make his videos as realistic as possible, even if it means getting punched in the face. He puts a lot of time and energy into making sure that everything he does is a unique experience. Till is a man of action, he's very pragmatic and prefers to act rather than talk. He is able to turn ideas that were initially theoretical into tangible facts. It is no doubt thanks to this pragmatism that all his projects come to fruition with varying degrees of success. Man of action, he is also very strong-willed. Admittedly, Rammstein has no leader and Till has never wanted to take over the leadership of the band, but we know that he is an authority figure and that when he speaks out, he is listened to. He's capable of making decisions when others are still dithering. Paul said : "We are very lucky with him - I should actually kneel down every day and thank him that we have him."

• Resilient : Throughout his life, he has faced and overcome a variety of personal and professional challenges, including criticism, controversy and media pressure. From an early age, Till has faced major challenges. First the swimming school, separation with his family, long training sessions, iron discipline and intensive doping. Then came the serious accident that put an end to his swimming career and plunged him into uncertainty. The various jobs he took on, and his rebellious and provocative behaviour, didn't help him to find stability. His eldest daughter, Nele, whom he brought up alone, dropping her off at school in the morning before going with his friends to steal and sell cars on the border with the Czech Republic, and picking her up again in the evening. His career as a musician, playing wherever he was needed, sometimes bass, sometimes drums. His violent relationship with his father and their inability to understand each other. And then there's Rammstein. A band for which, despite his shyness and introversion, he occupies the roles of singer, frontman and songwriter. Roles that he assumes, despite the enormous pressure and violent criticism, for better or for worse. A band he believed in from the start, and during the second concert he shouted : "Remember the name Rammstein !" And there's everything else we don't know, many other things, and of which Paul said : "We are lucky to have a man with life experience at the front. He went through things that none of us want to experience. Very bad things, but they are useful to us now." Yes, we're lucky that you're here, Till, that you're still here.

• Authentic and unconventional : Till is someone who, off stage, is known for being himself, not conforming to the expectations of others or society. He addresses you with polite honesty, his clear gaze plunged into yours, never twinkling. This honesty is very frank, sometimes sharp but always realistic. Till shows himself as he is, unpretentious, sincere, passionate and sometimes vulnerable. He remains a simple man, attached to his roots, his family. Gitta, his mother said : "Home, that's Mecklenburg. His homeland, his roots, his source of strength." He does not give in to the commercial demands of the music industry, preferring to retain his artistic freedom. And this artistic freedom is expressed with the provocation that has always stuck with him. But this provocation is never gratuitous, it always provokes reactions and reflection. Till is an artist and a man who doesn't fit into any box, prizes and awards leave him indifferent, what he prefers is to do what he loves in his own way...

[luvstrology]

saturn conjunct ascendant

-this aspect tends to manifest as a person who is perhaps more shy, reserved or even conservative; this is because saturn is the planet of limitation, restriction etc while the ascendant represents a persons identity and how they come across to others

-responsibility is often a key theme or aspect of a persons life if they have this aspect; they may feel responsible for others, struggle with responsibility, feel burdened by responsibility or take on the responsibilities of others because it is what they are used to dealing with; they may feel responsible for things that are not actually anything to do with them [eg feeling guilty for problems that are not their own fault or caused by themselves] or may have experienced people dumping their responsibilities onto them from a young age/early in life

-because of their possible issues with responsibility, they may struggle with feeling like they need to be serious or the responsible one in life as this may simply be what they are used to; sometimes they may feel like they cannot relax, unwind or have fun because they are too concerned with their responsibilities or things they need to do

-people with this aspect tend to be the type to worry a lot; what makes this worse is that not only do they have a tendency to worry a lot about their own problems, but they also become overly concerned with the problems of others; burdening themselves with other peoples issues and even feeling like it is their responsibility to resolve or take on the burden of other peoples issues

-sometimes, people with this aspect may feel very down and exhausted as at times it can seem like the universe is playing them and testing them; they may experience struggles, delays, restrictions, challenges etc frequently and at times this may cause them to feel like success/achievement etc is being denied for them

-if they have experienced a lot of setbacks and struggles, this can cause them to be extremely cautious and at times even pessimistic which can also lead them to worry even more; perhaps struggling to feel confident in their abilities/skills, even constantly feeling like they aren't ready or aren't deserving of success

-this negative mindset can create a negative cycle of self-doubt followed by hesitation to take action, leading to the reinforcement of the belief that they are incapable of achieving whatever it is that they want

-people with this aspect will do well to understand that it is not good to constantly procrastinate or put things off out of doubt, fear, worry or hesitation; it will only make them feel less confident, ensure they miss out on opportunities and cause them to doubt themselves even more than when they started

-it is important that they keep working towards what they want and do not let fear based mentalities hold them back; this doubt will only hold them back and make things worse for them, they need to learn to take action despite any insecurity they may feel

-people with this aspect may experience feelings of depression, loneliness, insecurity, pessimism etc and they may also have a tendency to often 'get too into their head' and become consumed by their worries/doubts/negativity etc

-a lot of issues they experience may be helped or avoided by constantly taking action and trying their hardest not to remain idle; when they aren't doing, they will usually be getting lost in their own head which is never good for them

-because of this, people with this aspect may benefit from writing to do lists, journalling, planning, preparing etc so that they know what they need to do and know what steps they need to take to get it done; they are usually not the type to be able to take action spontaneously and usually need to feel a sense of achievement after ticking tasks off that they planned to do, otherwise they may slip into feelings of negativity and end up procrastinating/hesitating/putting things off

-this aspect does seem to bring with it a lot of negative traits/experiences, but many of the things that those with it in their chart may struggle with in life do tend to improve as they get older; saturn is often the planet that teaches us lessons to improve ourselves so once we learn to improve or work with these less desirable traits/experiences we can become better and feel better [for example, with age and experience, people with this aspect may learn to worry less and take life less seriously because they have been through situations that have taught them that it is okay to have fun and not be so serious/responsible all the time]

-although people with this aspect may have a tendency to procrastinate [this can seem very contradictory to their tendency to be overly responsible; but this sense of responsibility can be very pressuring and worrying for them which causes them to put things off in an attempt to find relief from this] if they are eventually able to learn to take action, embrace opportunities as they come and get things done, they will likely be respected/admired for their hard work, reliability, loyalty, attention to detail etc

-even though people with this aspect may be big worriers; their experience with responsibility usually allows them to be good at providing advice to others and they are also usually the type to be good in a crisis or in difficult times as they are used to handling things [even if they might not feel like they are good at dealing with things, in the moment where they are forced to take action they usually handle it well]

-those with this aspect are often very time conscious; time is commonly something that can bring them a lot of stress/worry/concern; they may frequently experience feelings of 'time running out', 'not enough time', 'waiting for the right time', 'needing to do things at the right time' etc

-because saturn is the planet of restriction and the ascendant impacts self expression and identity; people with this aspect may come across as cold or reserved to others. if they are particularly self aware, they will know that they come across this way to others which can cause them even more stress and cause them to worry that they don't come across well to others, which can lead them to struggle to connect with people [again, doubt/fear holding them back]

-on a lighter, slightly brighter note, these people are often the type to be caring and can tend to take on the 'motherly' role in a friendship group; they are seen as responsible, dependable, good at giving advice etc [maybe others cannot sense/understand their inner turmoil and instead only notice their ability to handle responsibilities and show compassion to others]

-if they aren't particularly reserved, cold or shy, it may just be that they instead have more of a desire/inclination to try to control how they are seen by others; as saturn is the planet of restriction, it is possible that people with this aspect can still act confident and outgoing yet really want to restrict how people see them and only want others to perceive them on their terms

-as saturn is the planet of rules and limitations; people with this aspect may have a lot of rules they have set for themselves, and these may or not actually limit them from things more than they serve them

-even if a person with this aspect is very confident and self-expressive, they may at times feel a bit held back by their tendency to be very concerned about how they are seen/perceived by others, they may feel at times like no matter how carefree/confident they try to be, they still struggle to 'let go' or be exactly who they want to be out of fear of looking stupid to others or being judged by others [therefore, in some cases their confidence may just be a carefully curated mask of a personality that they think others will like to see and will respond to better]

-people with this placement are not doomed to struggle with their identity/image/self-expression their whole life, though! every step they make to express themselves authentically, develop their confidence, fight their doubts/insecurities etc will provide them with increased confidence and a sense of achievement; some aspects of life [taking action, showing their true selves etc] may be simply harder for them but once they learn to relax around others, let go more, take action, get out of their head etc they will be able to embrace more opportunities, develop their sense of self, build their confidence and become more self-assured etc

-it is important for people with this aspect to learn to find balance; balance between handling responsibility and letting loose, balance between discipline and risk-taking, balance between timing things right and taking action...

[cancerjupiter]

🌱earth moons🌱

Those with earthy Moons react in a very grounded, matter-of-fact way. The reaction may be so self-contained in those with Taurus or Capricorn Moon, in fact, that others may wonder if there has been any reaction. Those with Virgo Moon, on the other hand, react rather quickly, mentally, and sometimes nervously to any stimulus in a way obvious to everyone, even if the person is trying to contain his or her emotional reaction. Just like the earth itself, those with an Earth Moon have a crust over their emotional reactions; and they prefer to present a certain form to the public rather than to reveal their vulnerabilities.

taurus moon

The Moon is extraordinarily happy in the comfortable, stable sign of Taurus, for the emotions are steady and the person has little self-doubt. Those with the Moon in Taurus are not easily perturbed, even by powerful attacks or shocking events that would strongly affect others. They are in fact amazingly resilient, bouncing back from any defeat, disappointment, or trauma. Perfect examples are politicians Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, and celebrities Demi Lovato and Lindsay Lohan; who, despite unmerciful attacks, still manage to have their shit together and maintain at least some degree of popularity.

The poise with which Taurus Moon people face life’s demands and unpredictability is remarkable, and they therefore have a steadying influence on others, who appreciatively value their reliability. Note that I said “reliability,” not necessarily readiness! This sign is known for being the slowest in the zodiac, moving actively only when they are good and ready and insisting on their own pace in everything they do in life. Their inner contentment and resistance to change can thus make them frustrating to deal with if their considerable stubbornness causes them to dig in their heels to resist what you want. The other side of the coin is their remarkable persistence when they are focused on attaining a certain goal.

Those with Taurus Moon are attuned to the rhythms of nature and the earth, and this gives them their particular pace of life and much of their strength. They are notably physical and sensual, and have a great need for the “pleasures of life.” And they insist on taking the time to enjoy them. This unique attunement leads to a trust in earthly life that enables them to accept others with few demands and to take life as it comes. They are pleased with life (generally) and rather pleased with themselves. This can of course result in smugness, conceited self-satisfaction, and self-indulgent laziness. As Grant Lewi wrote, the key to improving oneself for Taurus Moon is to “turn self-satisfaction into active self-confidence”.

Emotionally, those with this Moon sign are not at all cold, but neither do they readily reveal their feelings. They are good listeners and are usually warmly responsive and solidly supportive, but not gushingly effusive. They really prefer not to allow anything to affect them. Some comments from questionnaire responses add additional perspectives to this lunar type:

1. “Seems very positive, giving men good relationships with women. It also appears to give talent in crafts such as cooking and other home arts.”

2. “ … sensual, heightened sense of material/physical aesthetics (e.g., clothing, home, colors, etc.), wonderful sense of humor, stubborn, and sometimes impervious to what’s going on beneath the surface of things.”

People with the Moon in Taurus like to be touched, especially to be hugged. Also, I’ve noticed a certain resistance to change. This resistance ranges (in different people) between a reluctance to accept the moods of another and a reluctance to allow any out-of-the-ordinary spontaneity to enter their life (usually hate surprises).

virgo moon

Those with Virgo Moon need a sense of order in their own minds and in the environment to feel comfortable and secure. This leads to their instinctive analytical reaction to all life experience, sorting their perceptions and thoughts into categories and discriminating between them according to their personal principles or prejudices. This need for order also motivates their obsession with neatness and cleanliness. They likewise feel more secure by making definite improvements in their environment, in their scientific, artistic, or intellectual pursuits, or—something not always appreciated with this sign—in other people. In fact, as one woman wrote in a questionnaire, “Sometimes they can be busybodies, putting others’ lives in order with advice—usually not so tactful. They’re so busy organizing friends’ lives that they forget about their own”. This “workaholic” tendency can also manifest as a broad range of criticism from afar directed even at total strangers who, evidently, just don’t measure up to the Virgo level of perfection.

Being helpful makes them feel better about themselves and aids them in overcoming their habitual self-doubt and sense of personal imperfection. In fact, “perfectionism” is a keyword for Virgo, and their unavoidable awareness of their own imperfections leads often to excessive self-consciousness, sometimes of a type so severe as to render them unable to use their genuine gifts with any confidence. Their tendency to notice the imperfections of others, and to voice those observations far too often, frequently makes the other person feel uncomfortably and unproductively self-conscious. Those with Virgo Moon would do better to heed their deep need to serve and to help others or improve things in the outer world. By doing so, they can eventually gain a sense of having improved themselves—at least in the modest way they will allow themselves to acknowledge. Virgo is the most modest sign in the zodiac—one of the few, in fact. Virgo Moon people can seem shy and reserved.

Habitually nervous types with a tendency to worry, Virgo Moon people often find their personal tranquility and self-validation in work and compulsive “busyness.” Work also provides an escape from the unpleasant emotions or depressing feelings of guilt or worthlessness that so often afflict those with this Moon position. But, because emotions interfere with productivity, as Donna Cunningham points out in Moon Signs, they are conveniently put aside or suppressed in the routine of daily life. Hence, Virgo Moons are among the few people who love all kinds of petty, boring activities — even housework. A friend with this placement even admitted to dreaming about being a mother/grandmother, so she could do chores and serve her family all day (of course, she’s also a Cancer Rising).

Doubt and skepticism pervade their mode of thinking and reacting, and of course there is always something to criticize in any person, place, thing, or concept. The infinitely small is always available as a target! This constant mental tension and the sensitivity of their nervous system, and their hyper-attunement to hygiene and purity, make these folks fascinated by and eager for involvement in the areas of nutrition, biological sciences, natural therapies, the healing arts, and/or the medical professions. This natural affinity also, however, bends them toward hypochondria, at its worst, or at least to a sensitive digestive and/or intestinal system. The quality of the food they eat is of utmost importance, since it directly affects their nerves and mental state, not just their digestion.

Their talent for detailed work is without equal (except for those with certain other planets in Virgo), and they often get great satisfaction from employing their natural craftsmanship in the practical or fine arts. Because their mind can always find something wrong with any idea or plan, indecision often afflicts those with this Moon placement. Moral indecision as well is often observed, as their perfectionist and puritanical tendencies battle with their more practical or sensual needs.

capricorn moon

Those with Capricorn Moon, as is also the case when other major planets or the Ascendant are in Capricorn, seem unnaturally old and serious when they are young, but they can lighten up as they grow older. In their youth, they are unusually capable, disciplined, and conservative, taking the well-trodden path to their goals of worldly achievement or to follow a vocation. Their real confidence is late-blooming, as their sense of inner security develops over time and they feel that their age at least, if not their accomplishments, has earned them some respect they have always craved. Capricorn Moon people eventually learn to relax somewhat and to trust life and other people to a greater extent. The aura of melancholy that those with Capricorn attunement so often carry around with them can also slowly dissipate over time, sometimes helped by a more and more adventurous—but dry—sense of humor.

The fluctuating, responsive, emotional Moon is not at all naturally comfortable in a sign that is often rigid and distant, and prides itself on not revealing any sign of vulnerability or personal need. People with Capricorn Moon have instinctive reactions to life that are characterized by self-control and caution, and sometimes by a defensiveness or negativity that is almost shocking. They feel that they need to manipulate and control the world (and their feelings) in order to attain the power, authority, and recognition that they deeply desire. In fact, they are most secure within themselves when their identity is confirmed by a social role, title, specific duty, or mantle of authority. Even at an early age, Capricorn Moon people are comfortable assuming responsibility and feel perfectly at home in the role of provider, protector, or organizer. They are most relaxed and truly themselves when they are carrying some weight, or when others have to depend on them! Very hardworking, these folks share with Virgo first place on the list of people who absolutely love to work, which often ultimately results in professional success. They may not always be fun, but they will often get the job done.

Perhaps the most oppressive thing about this group occurs in those who become too obsessed with being recognized as important and having authority; sometimes, there is a persistent “one-upmanship” that pervades their personal and professional lives. The constant drive to be “on top” can cripple their capacity for any human intimacy and eliciting automatic distrust from others. As psychologist-astrologer Glenn Perry, Ph.D., wrote,

“The tight controlled responses often lead to loneliness and despair as it prevents the individual from flowing and responding to the changing mood of others. Moon in Capricorn nurtures by taking charge and giving orders. This dry mechanical approach to feelings is not sympathetic and tends to imply that the other is incompetent. Unable to respond directly to emotional needs, Moon in Capricorn gives the impression of being callous, hardened and unaffected by the tender side of life. (Aspects magazine, Fall 1981)”

If the emotional suppression and denial become chronically extreme and rigid, the result can be a person who others may respect but not love. However, from another view (from the inside, so to speak) of this Moon sign’s emotional nature, I quote here from an interview with a Capricorn Moon young woman who characterized herself to me as having “a seriousness about the emotional life, an interest in getting down to bare bones, an impatience with small talk, and a need to get to the core emotionally.” She continues:

“All Capricorn Moons I know (there have been a lot) have a certain gravity to them, an ability to take the emotional life seriously. The women especially are almost never giggly or flirty — we’re too serious to flirt much. The women are kind of ‘masculine’ I guess, sort of businesslike in their manner (men too actually… it’s not a placement I ever see that is friends with everyone and instantly, openly affectionate). I think ‘a few serious, long-term friendships’ sums up all the Capricorn Moons I know.”

A questionnaire reply from another woman also emphasized that women with this capable, ambitious orientation are liable to feel “ambivalent about their sexual identity,” although they have strong physical needs, and that women with Capricorn Moon have “a great need for appreciation to develop their self-worth”. Two other questionnaires confirmed the self-disclosure quoted above regarding the practical agenda underlying emotional commitments. The words they used were “cool in affections and looks out for self” and “very calculating—not necessarily bad—just a lot of planning, no spur-of-the-moment reactions.” Another quite thorough questionnaire reply from an experienced practitioner of astrology included the following:

“this Moon placement shows marked proficiency in handling the self in the material world, or at least a lot of concern over and attunement to material affairs. They are very shrewd in taking care of their financial needs. Very often they are involved in some secure structure, like working for the government, etc. They like a secure financial position. For all, they take things very seriously; they approach many things cautiously. This is also a very sexual placement in laid-back ways.”

In conclusion, the Capricorn demeanor of slowness, caution, and hesitation should never mislead you. They may be conservative in most attitudes, but they are actually very progressive and results-oriented in action. They just don’t like to make mistakes.

[yellow-mapleleaves]

Realistic Personalities in Characters: Alice in Borderland

⚠ Spoilers ⚠

Short Summary

Alice in Borderland  今際の国のアリス  is a Netflix original series about a young boy called Alice (Arisu) and his two friends who happens to find themselves trapped in an abandoned version of Tokyo in which they must take part in many life threatening games to survive.

I wanted to do a review on this series because I noticed that there were some characters that possessed very accurate and realistic behaviours and others that didn’t convey any emotion the entire show. I found it interesting that the mix of very different levels of well-displayed people was able to add to the already amazing plot of the series.

Characters Present:

Alice, Karube, Chota, Usagi, Kuina, Chishiya, Niragi

Alice - Protagonist

The main protagonist of the series is not always the favourite in most tv shows, but from looking at different reviews and people’s comments about Yamazaki’s character Alice, I’ve noticed that he is actually rather popular in his own fictional world. He is honestly probably one of my favourite characters as well, and that’s based on how realistic his behaviours and emotions are conveyed.

Some aspects and scenes of Alice that makes him a more convincing and realistic personality:

Being a normal young boy with no incredibly amazing skills

Not having god-like survival abilities just from being able to play battle-royal videogames well

Having flaws

Having only two close friends rather than a huge friendship group

Not being incredibly attractive and well-groomed

Not having a close relationship with his brother (not all siblings get along)

Having a bad relationship with his father

Having the very human instinct of survival by becoming willing to kill his friends to save his own life out of panic

Reacting badly to watching someone being killed (vomiting, screaming, trauma etc)

Not being incredibly serious all the time; actually having a sense of humour

Showing respect towards Usagi’s privacy

Having a very average style of clothing

Being awkward around people he doesn’t know

Excelling in one area (puzzles) but being quite disadvantaged at the rest

Making mistakes E.g. during the distance game, he doesn’t realize the trick of the game until it ends

Not being able to defend himself physically due to lack of strength

Not moving on after his friends’ deaths immediately like as if it doesn’t happen (it takes him a few days to even develop the energy to get up off the floor)

I would say I personally believe that Alice’s character has a strong and realistic personality, as Yamazaki’s acting and Alice’s reactions to certain experiences creates a sympathetic response from the audience.

____

Karube - Deuteragonist

Let’s be honest, everyone loves a bad boy character. During the short time that Karube was present during the show, I think he conveys both strong and weak personality traits. At some points I think the producers were trying too hard to bring a “tough man” façade to him, when I think he could show more realistic emotions and reactions.

Some aspects and scenes of Karube that makes him a more convincing and realistic personality:

Having a fiery and defensive personality (although it can more than often come across as immature)

Having a sense of humour even in tough times

Having obvious advantage in strength related survival skills

Not being invincible to fear E.g. running from the tagger during the “Tag” game and not even trying to fight back at first

Dealing with work related issues

Actually having a realistic dream life rather than one that sounds almost impossible

Being flawed but not too flawed

Having a love interest that he is forbidden to love (she is with another man)

Conveying fear through anger when Alice tries to kill him to save himself

Not having the nicest of personalities (not everyone is friendly to everyone)

Not having a overly selfless personality

I think Karube should’ve been included in the series more than he is, because his character is very lovable and many fans of this show obviously show sympathy when he dies. His character has a big, extroverted and blunt personality, and I think it is conveyed very well during the time he is present.

____

Chota - Tertiary

Although Chota is one of the main three characters in the beginning of the series, I honestly never felt that sympathetic for him. His character comes across as rather more annoying than weak to me. I understand that the point of his character is to have a weak and smaller personality to match Karube and Alice’s loud energy, but I think this person is kind of just there. He doesn’t do much, considering he almost loses his leg in the first episode and having to use crutches for the rest of the time he is alive.

Some aspects and scenes of Chota that makes him less realistic:

Being friends with people who obviously have dodgy jobs or no jobs at all when he is a successful technician himself

Doesn’t seem to have much of a life outside work and his friends, what are his hobbies?

Not exactly having much of a purpose in the show

Constantly having his guard up and being anxious or worried

Having too many flaws

Following a very different religion to that of his mother

Generally being incredibly different to Alice and Karube (I believe if their personalities were actually friends in real life, they would have too many arguments).

During the short time on the show that Chota had, it was more the point that his personality felt incredibly unneeded. It didn’t exactly serve a huge purpose in the storyline. As well as, he was hard to sympathize for.

____

Usagi - Love Interest / Deuteragonist

Usagi definitely has my most favourite back story of the series. Although, when researching about her I noticed that she is actually one of the characters that get the least recognition by the viewers, despite being in basically every episode and always being beside Alice. I have mixed emotions about the realism in her character, so I made both a positive and negative list to state both sides.

Some aspects and scenes of Usagi that makes her a more convincing and realistic personality:

Having a tragic yet realistic backstory

Using her mountain climbing skills as a huge advantage during physically challenging games

Showing obvious signs of grief for her father, even during the time she was placed in the game

Being insecure of her body

Fighting back against Niragi even when it’s obvious she won’t win

Having good survival instincts from past experiences

Willing to help others out when they need it E.g. during the “Tag” game she went along with Alice’s plan for everyone to work together

Having a obvious more introverted personality

Being too trusting, which ends up getting her hurt

Some aspects and scenes of Usagi that makes her a more unrealistic and poorly convincing personality:

Having too serious of a personality, not seeming to lay back and laugh for even a second

Seeming to have an unrealistic bravery E.g. during the tagger game, she didn’t seemed frightened at all despite that the tagger had a machine gun

Doesn’t react to graphic violent sights that would be traumatizing to humans

Not knowing what “The Beach” was despite being in the game for god knows how long

Overall, I think she is the awesome strong female character that a lot of thriller genres have. Although, I would love if for once a strong yet bad ass character didn’t act so mysterious and quiet all the time. But regardless, she is a good character that shows very human qualities.

____

Kuina - Confidante

Kuina is one of the more popular characters in the show, which I honestly can understand. She has obvious very strong manipulation skills as well as physical strengths like martial arts. Although, I believe her backstory is what truly shapes her as a character and is the reason why the audience develops such an emotional connection with her.

Some aspects and scenes of Kuina that makes her a more convincing a realistic personality:

Having a trusting and good relationship with Chishiya

Having a personality that conveys carelessness

Both social butterfly and keeps to herself

Being a character part of the LGBTQ+ community

Having a realistic backstory

Although having a bad relationship with her Dad, she still respects what he taught her

Having a parent that accepts her rather than just being abandoned, which is what a lot of Transgender characters have been stereotyped as

Being able to defend herself incredibly well

Giving her a human flaw (smoking addiction)

Having a elaborate hairstyle

Showing that she is not mysterious, she just has a lot of walls up

Showing care for people she doesn’t know E.g. warning Alice and Usagi about the militants

I really like Kuina’s character for her strong personality and her ability to build good relationships with the members at the beach paradise. Although she is not featured a lot during season one, the times we have seen her have obviously been enough to make her character very loved by the audience.

____

Chishiya - Confidante

I honestly could not find a more loved character if I tried. This character is such a small part of the show and yet you’d think he was the protagonist. I honestly think anyone would love a sly fox character though, because that’s exactly what he is. Although his personality would probably become annoying if he was a real person, in a genre like this he fits perfectly. So personally, I have mixed emotions about him, because I honestly didn’t get that emotionally attached to him as other audiences may have.

Some aspects and scenes of Chishiya that makes him a more convincing and realistic personality:

Having a cocky attitude at times

Has a underdog appeal to him

Mimics that of a selfish manipulative personality

Showing obvious signs of high intelligence, yet doesn’t blab it around like it’s a trophy

Gives the audience some entertainment

Having a sassy remark, even when his life is on the line

Going out of his way to do things that only benefit him

Having a personality that everyone loves and hates at the same time

Having that personality in which you can’t tell if he’s a good guy or a bad guy

Having a trademark, his white hoodie

Having a caring relationship towards Kuina

Some aspects and scenes of Chishiya that makes him a more unrealistic and less convincing personality:

Attempting to kill Niragi with no hesitation after knowing him personally for so long (that would be difficult to do even if you hated the person)

Not showing human emotions such as fear, worry or anger

Sometimes his personality came across as too selfish to be realistic

Not showing any signs of fear E.g. when Niragi waved a machine gun in his face, he didn’t even flinch

Sometimes his fancy words became a bit annoying

Everyone trusts him, regardless of how manipulative they know he is

Overall, he is a very entertaining character. In my opinion he’s like the personality that throws a match into gasoline then walks away like he didn’t start it. Although his realism in character isn’t exactly good, he is definitely loved for his good looks and sly actions by the audience.

____

Niragi - Antagonist

As much as I dislike this guy as a person in general, when it comes to creating a interesting and great character, he hit the nail on the head. He has one of the most realistic evil character developments probably in the whole series. His personality is so complicated and psychotic, which is what makes him an amazing antagonist and probably the second most popular character among the audience.

Some aspects and scenes of Niragi that makes him a more convincing and realistic personality:

Has a tragic backstory, making the audience believe that’s why he’s so psychotic

Having the delusional mindset that human nature is violence

Makes the audience feel bad for him, despite being a horrible person

Being a hidden antagonist (didn’t expect him to cause all the trouble in the end)

Showing obvious signs of psychological trauma

Conveys positive (yet destructive) emotions and behaviour, which is always a good break when all the characters are serious 24/7

Hits a breaking point in his emotions and goes on a killing spree

Shows loyalty to Aguni

Being awful to everyone, probably due to the fact that everyone was awful to him when he was younger. It’s a way of revenge

Becoming embarrassed when someone challenges him

Scaring people into submission (tactic for some leaders)

Conveys no care for anyone, honestly just uses everyone for either his own entertainment or his own benefit

Has a trademark, his machine gun and checkered shirt

Being self-aware of how evil he is

As evil and bad as he is, he’s one  of the most endearing antagonists I’ve seen in a while. He is a very psychotic and emotionally wrecked personality to him, as if you know something traumatizing must have occurred in his life for him to be able to murder anyone without batting an eye.

[argumentl]

The Freedom of Expression, radio version - Ep 47, August 2016 - Hierarchy in groups/bands, the language barrier overseas.

Kaoru starts by commenting on how the Summer is getting towards the end, and Joe asks him what type of things he considers typical Summer stuff, for example swimming in the sea etc. Kaoru says he did actually go to Okinawa recently, and went to take a look at the beach, but thats it, he didn't go in the sea. When he got there, he could smell the stench of tanning oil coming from the other beach goers, so he left pretty soon. He says he didn't go in the sea because he always thinks, 'If I go in, what am i gonna do about my wet feet after I come out?'.

Tasai joins them for the Tokyo Sports corner next, with some news from the comedy world for his first story. This relates to the comedy duo Nippon Elekitel Rengo (Joe has no idea who they are, not owning a tv, but Kaoru knows of them). The duo originally lived together in the city of Higashiyamurayama before getting their big break, due to not having a lot of money. But they have now moved into separate places after making it big, due to the danger of disbanding if the continued living together. The duo, Nakano and Hashimoto, had followed a specific lifestyle at home. Nakano, being the one who wrote all the comedy skits, imposed the rule that because she did all the writing, Hashimoto had to do all the house work. Not just cooking and cleaning etc, but even as far as laying out Nakano's futon each night, and passing her the tv remote. It was as if there was a hierarchy in their relationship. Tasai asks what Kaoru thinks of the arrangement. Does he see any similarities when writing music? Kaoru says it depends on the amount of people involved. With just 2 people its too easy for one of them to end up feeling like they are the brains. He doesn't really feel this in music, because the people who play the song also put their feelings into it/leave their mark on it. Tasai says that this should apply to Hashimoto too, because she was playing the parts that Nakano wrote. Kaoru repeats that for a group with only two members living together, its too easy to fall into this cycle. If two more members entered the group, it might throw this pattern off course a bit.

Joe says he once interviewed a particular band which had one member who wrote the songs (whereas the other members did no writing). The song writer said that although he may sometimes feel like he leads the band, he also sometimes gets into song-writing slumps. It is at these 'slump' times that he realises that although he writes the songs, it is the other members who complete them. Its easy to feel like you are the brains behind the whole thing when you are having a good day, but its those slump days that remind you how much you depend on the other members. Kaoru responds to this by saying 'I'm forever in slump mode'. The others laugh, Tasai exclaiming, 'What are you talking about?!'. Returning to serious mode, they agree that this is what being in a band is all about. Joe says a comedy duo should have more of a left/right relationship as opposed to a hierarchical one. Tasai says he wants to ask Nippon Elekitel Rengo about this directly, and hopes they make up.

Tasai's next news story is that the anime school, Yoyogi Animation Academy has recruited as its producers: Akimoto Yasushi (hugely influened record producer for AKB48 etc,), Komuro Tetsuya (also hugely influencial producer for many artists, including TRF etc), Tsunku (producer of Morning Musume), and Sashihara Rino (of the AKB and HKT groups). Each producer explained in an interview that they each have different methods of sensing a spark in someone, or finding a diamond in the rough etc. Tasai asks Kaoru if he has any experience with this from a producer's standpoint. Kaoru says he hasn't, but upon hearing that these 4 producers had been hired by Yoyogi Animation Academy, he felt no spark at all (the others laugh at this). He doesn't quite understand the point of hiring these 4 people.

Tasai explains that Tsunku in particular had expressed his envy that anime was able to  transcend the language barrier and make it big overseas so easily, whereas a lot of his hit songs in Japan could not. Tasai mentions that Dir en grey are very active overseas, and asks Kaoru how he copes with the language barrier. Kaoru says he doesn't think about it. Although communication is important, the purity of what the band wants to express gets a bit lost if they deliberately make songs in a different language. They can express themselves best in Japanese. He says using English is best if you want to make it big overseas, but he didn't start a band with the sole intention of 'making it big'.

Joe brings up the Tokyo based band 'Roth Bart Baron', who do a lot of shows around Europe and Asia, but sing entirely in Japanese. The vocalist/writer for the group speaks fluent English, but uses Japanese to sing because he can most easily express his true emotions in Japanese. In this day and age, people can easily translate lyrics on their computers anyway. Kaoru thinks that if you can easily express your emotions in English, its best to do that overseas, but Japanese has a lot of small nuances, which may be quite difficult to express clearly in English. On the other hand, says Joe, a lot of people who sing in English will tell you that English fits better with the tempo and sound of rock music than Japanese does.

Kaoru brings up his memories of singing along to English songs when he was a school kid, despite not knowing what it meant, so he doesn't really think its such a barrier these days.

They realise this conversation has taken a sharp turn away from the story about the anime school hiring music producers, but then they remember that anime has been massively successful at breaking international barriers, and could hold some lessons for the producers.

Kaoru finishes by reading out a few tour dates from the next two tours. Both tours will end with shows at Namba Hatch. This is because someone who helped Dir en grey out a lot in the early days works there, so they liked to finish in Osaka for that reason.

Songs - Dir en grey/Revelation of Mankind, The Crown/Face of Destruction, Dir en grey/Kyuukoku no kyouon ft. Sugizo.

Back to radio top page

[echodrops]

I’m obviously late to the tumble party... but I stumbled across your Notagami Essays posts and they are absolutely Fabulous! Love your writing and the amount of detail you go into :)

So I figured you may be a good person to ask - if you just had to guess (bc as far as I know it’s never been officially confirmed?) but if you had to take a guess or give a rough estimate, how old do you think Yato was when he first met Sakura? We know he’s estimated to be at least a thousand years old, we know he’s - from the start of the series to present - estimated to be somewhere between 18 and his early 20s (physically)... but I can’t find a single thing/discussion/post/stickynote/whatever where it talks about how old he might have been when he first met Sakura - let alone the emotional/psychological effects of Sakura coming into his life and introducing healthy mindset/morals/maternal-influence etc. etc. (obviously no mom and Father’s neglect played a big role in him not knowing how inappropriate it was for him to ‘accidentally touch’ and yell “boobs!” but you can also just say he was so young he didn’t know how inappropriate that was?) My point is: how old do you think Yato was (physically anyway) at the time of their meeting? and Do you know of any discussions or care to share your opinion on how being the no more than the age of blank affected his mental/emotional understanding of Sakura teaching him a new narrative?

Sorry this is a random out of the blue ask 😅😓 if I rambled on and you don’t feel like answering, I get it, just figured it was worth asking :)

I fell down a serious rabbit hole trying to see if I could figure out the answer to this question about Yato’s age but unfortunately I’m mostly coming up empty-handed.

The answer to this question actually depends on two different pieces of information which--as far as I can remember--we’ve never actually been given for certain.

1) We would need to know when Yato was actually born.

The manga has kind of hinted at a total (not physical) age for Yato in the flashbacks which showed him as a young child during the Heian era (putting him somewhere in the vicinity of a little over 1000 years old) and Father not making masks before ~1100 years ago, but the problem is we still don’t know how many years might have passed between this scene (the youngest we’ve ever seen Yato):

And the next flashback scene, where Yato meets Nora:

If gods age normally when they are children, these two scenes might be only a handful of years apart. But if gods don’t age normally, then these two scenes could be decades or centuries apart, which leads to the other missing piece of information (under the read more to save people’s dashes):

2) We would need to know the aging process for gods who are just born/reincarnate.

Up to this point in the manga, we’ve only seen two gods reincarnate--Ebisu (who reincarnated too recently to really help answer this question) and Takemikazuchi. The implication of Takemikazuchi’s backstory is that his shinki forced him to reincarnate and then hid his reincarnation from all of Heaven. The only way they could have kept other gods from noticing that Takemikazuchi had reincarnated would have been by not allowing him to go out at all until he had grown enough to match his previous reincarnation in appearance. This seems to suggest that gods probably do age normally when they are children--hiding Takemikazuchi away for ~20 years seems a lot more likely than being able to hide him away for centuries, after all... (I also feel like I have very vague recollection of some scene in the manga where someone comments on Takemikazuchi not having been around for a “few years,” but it’s been so long since I reread I can’t recall if this is a real moment from the manga or just me misremembering.) 

Overall, however, based on what we’ve seen in the manga, my guess would be that when they’re young, after just being born or being reincarnated, gods age pretty normally. This would suggest that, for the first few years at least, the physical and mental ages of reincarnated/newly born gods actually overlap; baby Ebisu acts like a little kid because he is, in fact, both mentally and physically a little kid.

That would mean that, for all intents and purposes, Yato’s physical and mental ages lined up when he was young and meeting Sakura, and he acted like a little kid because he really was just a little kid, god or not.

(Detour for a second though: 

This line always struck me as interesting in that it might, just might, give us a more specific timeframe for Yato’s “birth”: although the constellations, of course, are visible in the sky every single year, this particular combination of concepts (kanoto-tori, yin metal rooster) is known much more commonly as one of the sixty years on the cyclical Chinese calendar, also used in Japan. Counting back on the calendar, 961 A.D. was a yin metal rooster year and would align just about right for what we know about the timeframe in which Yato later met Sakura (~970ish). Just referencing constellations doesn’t mean Adachitoka was pointing to a specific year, but it might have been another hint as to the timeframe of the flashbacks.

Okay, detour over.)

Anyway, without 100% confirmation on either of those pieces of information--when Yato was born and whether gods age at the same rate as humans after reincarnating--I don’t think it’s really possible to pin down Yato’s “real” age (physically or mentally) at the time he met Sakura. We mostly just have to estimate. 

Personally, based on his size and behavior at the time, I’d put him somewhere between seven and maybe up to ten, but the way Adachitoka draws characters kind of makes it impossible to judge their ages by appearance; Yato is about the same size as Nora when he meets Sakura, implying that he and Nora were around the same physical “age” at that time; meanwhile, Nora is later portrayed as being roughly the same age as Yukine, suggesting she was maybe 12-13ish years old when she died. So, despite being drawn tiny, it’s possible Yato was meant to be anywhere from a little kiddo (6-7) to all the way up to Nora’s age by the time he met Sakura.

But all that said, I think what you were really asking about was more the mental state Yato would have been in when he met Sakura and how his young age would have impacted his ability to change his world views, right? The answer to that is... complicated and could be approached a lot of ways. Coming from a background of working with and educating social work students, there are several common psychological theories of child development that might apply here, for example. 

I’d recommend checking out Erik Erikson’s psychosocial stages of development, though. 

(Pulled from here.)

I don’t have time to explain the entire theory with the complexity it might deserve, but the basic idea is that, as children develop, they experience a series of crises or challenges that they must overcome. Successfully overcoming each challenge results in successful psychological and social development; failing to overcome a challenge in childhood will result in long-term negative impacts later in the child’s life. (There are plenty critiques of this theory too, so don’t take this as gospel or anything--just a theory worth thinking about!)  

Given Father’s lack of interest in teaching Yato basic concepts of humanity, I would put Yato at approximately the “Initiative vs. Guilt” stage when he met Sakura. At this level of Erikson’s theory, children struggle with asserting themselves and developing a healthy sense of how their personal desires might conflict with the expectations and rules set out by others. In this stage, giving a child positive feedback for their actions teaches the child that those actions are “right,” while giving negative feedback teaching the child that their actions are wrong. In order to overcome this particular challenge, children need to begin taking initiative and aligning their actions with social standards; the child acts, and the parental figure reacts--through this process, children learn “I can do X thing but I cannot do Y thing.” 

When you hear things like “Children are cruel,” most often what people are referring to is that it takes time for children to learn empathy and to experience guilt when they cause harm to others; children do not natively understand the repercussions of their actions. It’s only through a process of testing the boundaries, of receiving praise or punishment, that children define what is “right” versus “wrong,” and begin to feel bad when they do something deemed wrong.

And this is pretty much word-for-word what we see Sakura teaching Yato.

If they have healthy role models and caretakers during this phase, children develop successfully. Successful children in this phase get their first taste of personal responsibility; unsuccessful children are (supposedly) plagued for years afterward by a sense of guilt and shame when their actions produce disapproval from everyone around them.

Yato... doesn’t exactly make it through this development stage unscathed, because he receives conflicting definitions of right and wrong from his Father an Sakura:

Which ultimately results in, years later, the Yato we know and love who still does his Father’s bidding to kill humans even though it fills him with a horrific sense of guilt:

Through his time with Sakura, I think it could also be argued that Yato moves into the next stage of Erikson’s theory as well, getting into the “Industry versus Inferiority” crises. 

Meeting Sakura brings out Yato’s true, deep down desire as a god: to help people. (I think it’s important to note that this isn’t something Sakura teaches him--it’s a quality Yato already possessed; it was explicitly Yato’s desire to please people that led to him murdering in his father’s name.)

Once he learns what makes people happy, Yato immediately pursues that with intense focus:

The primary goal of this phase of psychosocial development is to experience a sense of confidence in one’s actions. When children practice their skills, pursue areas where they are praised, and gain new skills and aptitudes through mentoring from healthy role models, they gain confidence in their ability to excel, to fit in with peers their age, and to create meaningful things. By encouraging Yato to pursue positive behaviors--playing peacefully with other children, appreciating natural beauty, and creating useful things like boots for the needy--Sakura moved Yato toward successfully completing this phase and developing a sense of confidence in his actions and his ability to achieve positive things in the world. 

Of course, Father cannot have that (because confident children with a sense of self-worth are much more difficult to abuse), so he puts an immediate end to Sakura’s influence over Yato in the most insidious way possible: although he clearly manipulated the situation to achieve Sakura’s death, out loud, he blames Yato, implying that Sakura’s death was all Yato’s fault, the results of Yato taking unwanted action “industry” and yet failing--creating a sense of “inferiority” instead.

This, of course, haunts Yato all the way to the present, as he--again and again and again--blames himself for things outside his control or failing to live up to expectations that no one in his situation (still being manipulated) could possibly hope to get “right.” 

Finally, you could say that Sakura’s presence is Yato’s life is ultimately what sows the seeds of the manga’s main plot up to this point, with Yato’s quest to create an entirely new identity for himself as a god of fortune instead of a god of calamity. Personally, I would say that Yato is currently still in this phase of development, still working out how to define himself and who he will ultimately become once he is finally free to decide on his own path in life. It was Sakura’s gentle influence--his desire to become the kind of god who could make her smile--that eventually sparked his conflict and finally led Yato to the brink of catastrophe. If he wishes to become the god Sakura told him he could be, he can no longer suffer his father to live.

So, long story longer, I think it can be argued that Yato meeting Sakura at such a young age is EXACTLY what made it possible for him to change, and exactly what has led to his crisis in identifying himself and redefining his sense of right and wrong. 

Uhhhh... I hope that answers your question!

[jasonbrennerold]

new stuff for jason’s (modern) adult verse that i will eventually write up but for now is just bullet points:

the truth about what happened in the lab becomes public knowledge, causing a large uproar for a variety of reasons but especially as it was a government funded lab. jason ends up at the center of it all thanks to being brenner’s biological son (happens when jason’s around 23, but knowledge about the lab had been slowly sprinkling out here and there for a while)

jason ends up being paid a Hefty Sum by the government as a “formal apology” for everything that went on in the lab

he uses that money to found the jason brenner house for those in need. he very specifically chose the name brenner rather than stilinski as a lot of the publicity had been around his birth name, and the intention is to overshadow his birth father’s name. he wants to make sure that if his father is ever remembered it’s as a monster, and that it’s easier to find the brenner house on google than it is anything about the lab (the success of this is debatable, considering any news articles go out of their way to talk about the lab when talking about the brenner house)

jason continues to sell his story to the media wherever he can in order to continue to fund the house, though they also accept donations and have a variety of sponsors. jason also uses ravenna’s money sometimes, as his mom has pretty much infinite money.

the brenner house is essentially a mixture of things: an orphanage, a boarding school, a homeless shelter, anything else along those kind of lines. the house primarily focuses on youth - especially youth that have been abused, have powers, have nowhere else to go or who have behavioral issues. despite the focus on youth, the brenner house will take in anyone of any age and won’t force the people in the house to explain what led them to coming to the house. the only required information is a name/alias and what they need out of the house - if they need a place to stay, food, education, rehab, support, etc. whatever they need, jason will get.

jason meets everyone who comes to the house, will generally try to be their first point of contact. while the house is, technically, a business he tries not to let it feel that way.

the property is huge. there’s more than enough housing, primarily in apartment/hotel style rooms varying from one to four bedrooms, though if bigger places are needed jason won’t hesitate to make it happen. there’s schooling (preschool through high school) on site, a rehabilitation center, medical care, a large cafeteria (though each room has its own kitchen if people would rather provide for themselves) and plenty of space for outdoor activities. anyone can use any facility they like, with no age limits on any of it (though if minors are using facilities he’ll generally make sure there’s at least one adult there). jason encourages the adults to attend the school if they need to, including providing adult only classes and one on one tuition where available.

there’s a separate building for staff to live in if they so choose, though they’re welcome to live off-site. any staff living onsite do not have to pay rent. jason ensures a good salary for all staff, with everyone getting at least the average wage for their profession, but most people getting above average.

the medical facilities on site are pretty good, but they also have connections to local places and hospitals in case they need more serious care. medical attention costs nothing at the home, even for people who don’t live there. he’ll also personally pay for any medical costs and debts that anyone from the home has.

there’s tvs, computers and internet in every room. jason will arrange other tech as needed. he likes to provide everyone with cellphones where needed, and every room has a landline.

jason personally works with kids that have powers to help them learn control and help them learn the good that they can do with their abilities. he makes sure no one is ever shamed for their powers, nor are they ever treated differently. 

jason also attends the classes quite a bit to try to fill the gaps in his own education. usually he’s in the adult classes, but he likes to go to classes with the younger kids and stop by the preschool too as he still has plenty to learn from them.

if people treat anyone badly for discriminatory reasons (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, because they have abilities, etc) they’ll be put into another building for a few days where they’re mostly isolated from others as a form of punishment, though it’s never full isolation and doesn’t actually act as that much of a punishment. if they continue to show prejudice he’ll ask them to leave.

anyone who is likely to be violent is kept apart from the general population for the most part, though not entirely. they’re put into social situations in rather controlled environments until they’re deemed not to be a harm to others.

if anyone within the home is in need of a job jason has people onsite a few days a week to help them to find employment, but he also offers jobs around the property (cooking, cleaning, gardening, etc).

jason will fund the college education of anyone within the home, no matter their age. if anyone has outstanding debts jason will pay them.

jason considers everyone in the house family, and will treat them as such. he lives within the staff building but has given everybody both his landline and his cellphone number and encourages them to contact him for anything he needs.

while the house is founded in jasons early/mid twenties, by the time he’s 26 it’s running pretty strongly and still gets plenty of press. jason continues to live and work at the home for the rest of his life.

it’s free to live at the brenner house, though residents are welcome to pay rent if they so desire. people can come and go as they please (though, children aren’t generally allowed to just go wherever in town they want unless they’re accompanied by someone older), people can live at the facility as long as they want. he welcomes everyone, human, superhuman and non-human alike. he caters for everyone’s personal needs and is very particular about everything to ensure no allergy problems.

[dramaticviolincrescendo]

I've really enjoyed your recent meta takes and was wondering if you could elaborate on your thoughts on Mandy + Ian and her going for Lip as a result (from your Ian Relationships meta)? I love reading about M+I and their connection is just so dear to me 😭

(P.S Thank you for being such a beacon of positivity in the Shameless fandom! I only got into the show during lockdown last year but it's become such a comfort so it makes me so happy to see positivity right now. ❤ )

Oh my gosh, thank you so much! You’re seriously too kind! I totally sympathize with you: Shameless has shot straight to the top of my list of comfort media since watching it right around the same time, so I’m really passionate about sharing the love around. 😃🧡 

To me, one of the most important things to look at in this analysis is motives—who each of these characters are, what they desire for themselves, and how those factors fit together like a puzzle.

Mandy is in such a difficult position. It’s not as easy as saying that she’s a victim of abuse and wants nothing more than to get as far from her family as possible, because that’s simply not true. In s1, we see that she’s very comfortable in her house. She and Mickey exhibit your standard sibling animosity (and competition for Ian’s attention, unbeknownst to her), she makes breakfast for Terry even though she’s obviously not super respectful to him as a parent, and she clearly has a solid understanding of where her family stands in the neighborhood. In a way, she thrives on that in the beginning. At but a word, she can do serious damage to somebody without raising a finger herself. Viewing Ian’s lack of response to her advances as an insult, she takes full advantage of that. In s2, we know that she is being abused in such a heinous way. She takes charge of the situation, although not in a manner that would save her from it. She leaves the house for a while to avoid Terry; she holds him at gunpoint and forces him to accept what he already knows so that he won’t hurt Ian. When they talk afterward, she even recounts what happened in a way that makes it sound like no big deal—he was drunk, and he didn’t know who she was, so it’s whatever. (It isn’t. We know it isn’t. If this is going to be her reality, however, then she’s going to own it. No one will look down on her, especially not a Gallagher who’s barely ahead of her in social standing.)

We’ll pause there because so much of how Mandy changed afterward is tied to Lip, but we can already see that Mandy isn’t like Mickey. Mickey stuck it out with his family and very clearly fell into the same trap we’ve heard verbalized by other male characters, namely the notion that men can’t be abused. It doesn’t matter that that is entirely inaccurate—that’s what they’ve been taught in their environment. That’s what’s normal to them. (That’s part of the dramatic irony in this scenario: we can see how damaging and traumatic these events are, but the characters don’t have our perspective. I don’t think Mickey sees what happened to him as rape, just like Ian doesn’t see what happened to him as grooming or assault. That’s for the audience to comprehend in terms of gravity and should add to our sympathy for them.)

Mandy is different. Women are abused all the time in their neighborhood. It’s visible, and it’s pervasive. In s3, Mandy immediately teaches Debbie how to defend herself against it. She didn’t have to learn. Like not seeing themselves as victims is part of the boys’ culture, fighting not to be one is part of the girls’. But there’s a contradiction in her life: the Milkoviches are the neighborhood badasses, and while she shares in that, it’s limited by her sex. There is something she will never be able to overcome in order to see the same return on her reputation that Mickey and Terry do, not unless she gets out, which will be extremely difficult on her own merits. She’s living in poverty and not doing well in school. Her prospects are limited—she told the counselor so. Based on that conversation and her history with boys even before meeting Ian, she clearly sees one surefire avenue to get out of this hole she’s stuck in: a man with the resources to get out and take her with him.  If she’s lucky, it’ll even be a good man with a good heart who wants to do good in the world.

Now, let’s talk about Ian. (See what I did there?) This doesn’t need to be long because I’ve already talked so much about Ian already lately, but let’s wax poetic just a bit. Ian wants to be a good person. He wants to be able to get by, even be successful, without having to do it through scamming and stealing. He has goals and ambitions, and whatever anybody thinks of those ambitions, he did it with the mindset that he would be a hero—a protector. Along with that, he never gives up. When Mandy sets her brothers on him, he doesn’t hide forever—he seeks her out multiple times to fix the situation. When he can’t get into West Point, he doesn’t quit ROTC and ignore his dreams. He keeps going.

Not only is he someone who wants to be good for himself, but he wants to be good for others too. He shows Mandy kindness that she arguably hasn’t seen from anyone else before. He takes care of his family when hers tends to focus on themselves and their own individual survival more of the time. Ian has what she would have seen as the potential to get out, and at the time, that is what he wants. It isn’t as an escape for him, but as a way to facilitate his own dreams.

The problem? Ian is gay. We can see that that bothers her sometimes because she forgets. She goes in for a kiss in s2 and has to reel back, settling for a hug instead. She gets tired of hearing him talk about Kash in s1 and kisses him to shut him up, saying she just wanted to kiss her fake boyfriend. Ian isn’t attainable. If Ian leaves, he won’t take her with him as a partner, and she can’t ask as a friend. How desperate would that seem to someone who refuses to be put in a position where she even slightly perceives him to be pitying her? She can’t ask. Not Ian. She needs someone else, someone who is also good and capable of getting out of here—who can be convinced to even if they don’t want to. Someone she can also trust and has some sort of connection with. Someone who is a fixer, and someone she can draw in with the only thing she thinks she has of any value: her body.

That would be Lip. Not only does he meet all of those criteria at the time, but she knows she can trust him. She trusts Ian, and Ian is closer to Lip than he is to anyone else—even her. No, Lip doesn’t have any convictions or real desire to leave, but he has potential. She can work with that. She’s also there for the entire Karen saga, so she knows that Lip is someone who takes his responsibilities to the people he’s with very seriously and tries so hard to cultivate that connection. (For example, feeding him, making herself sexually available as often as possible, letting him stay with her when he can’t go anywhere else without any conditions, etc. We even begin to see her distancing herself from Ian a little bit by s3, putting all of her energy into what she has with Lip when, a year ago, they were sneaking around because she said she didn’t want Ian to know about them. That isn’t to say that Ian was seeking her out either, being quite distracted with Mickey, but it’s noticeable for me.)

Like Mickey, Mandy also has a very deep capacity for emotion and affection that seems incongruous with her personality a lot of the time. Also like Mickey, nobody brought that out in her—it was always there. As much as she seemed to hope that Lip would take care of her, the process of growing closer to him led to a level of affection. I don’t particularly read their relationship as being a deep one. Both of them were using the other, to an extent, to deal with their trauma in other areas of their lives. But that sort of thing can foster a kinship, a mutual understanding that transcends time and place and even the terrible stuff that people do to one another.

So, it doesn’t work out. Mandy is hurt and does something unforgivable. She then runs from Lip, straight into what she feels is her only alternative now: an abuser. What else is there for a girl in her position? Ian was unattainable because of his sexuality, but to someone beaten down again and again, perhaps she believed he was also unattainable because he was too good a person. Lip was unattainable despite her best efforts to bridge that gap because of what he had with Karen, but to someone beaten down again and again, perhaps she believed he was also unattainable because her position in his life was to give but never to take. With Kenyatta, all she does is give. She’s embraced being beaten down because what else is there? She leaves with him, believing there’s nothing for her there.

When she finally finds her strength, far from home but hopefully under better circumstances than when she lived in Chicago, she still follows the formula that has ruled her decision-making for some time: finding a place where she can have the control over her life that was never there before, but still with the belief that what she has to offer isn’t academic or able to be built or improved upon. Ian has worked past his perception that his body was what he had to offer, that it was what would provide him with the love he was looking for. But of course, he has. He’s had Mickey to love him when he’s healthy and love him when he’s lost a bunch of weight from a depressive episode spent in bed. He’s had his family to mess up here and there but ultimately love him so much.

Mandy doesn’t have that. She didn’t then either. She got what she wanted—she got out. She even implied that that was the most important thing by telling Ian that being born on the South Side doesn’t mean that’s where they have to stay. But Ian “got out” of the spiral of abuse he unknowingly suffered and the mindset that it fostered while Mandy didn’t. This isn’t to say anything negative about sex work, of course, only the mindset that led Mandy to this point in her life. And when she leaves the house for the last time, she looks at Lip after having asked about him, and they acknowledge each other the way that people who once knew each other do.

I’ve made the joke before that to Milkoviches, Gallaghers are like catnip. It’s flippant and funny enough when we consider how many of them have dated at one point or other. I’ve also said the Milkoviches are designed as a foil to the Gallaghers, a juxtaposed image of what they could have been had their situation been altered slightly. In s10, Mickey mentions how the Gallaghers are messed up and he’s never been happier to be a Milkovich, so there’s some awareness there that these are the two notorious families of the neighborhood, albeit for different reasons. For Mandy to see that not one, but two Gallaghers are out of reach? To perhaps feel as though she’s less than even them, or made to feel that way in her interactions with Lip? It’s the ultimate slap in the face.

She trusts Ian more than anyone else in her life, to the point where she will still call him to help her hide a body long after she’s left him and their home behind. But trusting Ian led her to loving Ian, and she couldn’t have him. Trusting Ian led her to meeting Lip, and if Ian was so good and loved Lip so much, he had to be worth it too. And to her, he was. The problem was that she felt that she wasn’t.

Self-fulfilling prophecies suck: when you’re treated like garbage by a neighborhood that sees your family as garbage and repeatedly experience things that will make you feel like garbage around people with the best intentions, you’ll start believing that you are, in fact, garbage. I think what we’ve watched with Mandy is a steady decline from a place of strength in herself and weakness in her environment to an overall place of weakness that she couldn’t escape. Not with Ian and, when she realized that wouldn’t happen, not with the only real alternative she thought she could trust since she trusted Ian so deeply. 

[gingus-doon]

pov u just shot your childhood hero, wdyd

i.e. i ramble about keiji post-shooting; his occupation, what he does, how he copes, how he feels, etc. etc.

just putting this little thing here because the post got quite long and i couldn't split it up because it's all somewhat related. it started out as a rant / informal ramble but then it got serious lololol

—

one thing i don't understand is why people hc keiji as still having a job with the police post-shooting? like that just doesn't make sense to me– not only based on his character but like... why would you wanna make him a cop with all the talk of how much the police suck lately? personally i'm a brown bitch so i couldn't be down with thirsting over a cop lol. it's just kinda confusing sjdhd

i've seen the hc of him as a private investigator, though, which i like! it's a very neat way to let him flex his detective skills without being part of a corrupt organization and without forsaking his own personal beliefs and feelings about the police, because i don't think those would change anywhere near easily and i just kinda can't see him going back into the police force because of that.

i have often wondered what keiji would do after the death game, and what he was doing before the death game or after the shooting, because i think he'd definitely quit after the shooting, with all the grief and trauma surrounding the job and his newfound cynicism.

i don't think he'd be doing private investigation before the game, or more specifically, before his character develops into something reminiscent of his old self– as he is at the start of the game, he just doesn't have that faith in protection, so i can't imagine him being an investigator at that point. HOWEVER, in a post death game OR non-death game au where keiji has started to pull himself up from that tar (most likely with the help of others lol) i think that's definitely a plausible option for him and i like it a lot :]

as for other options, though... i really don't know! this is more of a stupid idea but i considered him working in a convenience store like shin lol. i had a whoooole au about him, kai, and shin working in the same convenience store just because they can't hold down any other jobs / don't know what else to do for work. shin is able to actually hold down the job because the last manager was mysteriously taken out of commission (i don't know lol) and they were ridiculously short-staffed already so shin ended up being the "most qualified" for the now vacant position. keiji's had a string of odd jobs since the police and this is just the next one. he's hoping to find something with a better wage but this'll do for now, it's even in walking distance from his apartment. and kai, kai's trying to exercise more independence from the chidouins' after becoming his own person! so he gets what i think would be his first job (well, his first official job, anyway... being an assassin and the chidouins' personal maid were more unofficial gigs lol.) ahh that was a lotta rambling about my dumb little au but i just think it'd be neat, they're three of my favourite characters so having them just vibe with each other at work and become friends sounds nice 2 me :] also Coincidentally i ship literally every combination of those three characters so that may have played a part in my casting decisions lmfao

oh wow that was a really long and uncalled for synopsis but this is just a rambly post so it can't really be uncalled for because this post doesn't have any particular point lol (A/N after writing this— IT HAS A POINT NOW, DISREGARD PAST ME)

SO ANYWAY ! i was just considering what keiji would do right after the shooting. honestly i have noooo idea, it's the beginning of a long road of him burying his trauma in a desperate attempt to avoid facing the pain it brings, and it marks a profound loss of innocence which makes his heart begin to grow cold. it's just hard to see the beginning of the process when where he started and where he ended up are very different places.

obviously, he'd quit his job. i wonder if the hallucinations would start right away? him being naïve in the beginning, i'm sure he'd acknowledge them– cry out apologies and plead for forgiveness until his throat is hoarse. the rule of hallucinations in yttd seems to be that if you acknowledge them, they'll burn themselves into your brain and you'll never be rid of them– implying that keiji has done so, as it's likely been years since the shooting and he's still suffering from the visions despite seeming to ignore them now.

ahh, i'm getting in my feelings about keiji now 😭😭 when i started this, i wanted to be held by him, but now i just wanna hug him like damnnnn

but back to what he'd do after the shooting– this scenario is self indulgent, but wouldn't it be nice if he took some time off and just stayed at his mom's place for a while? help her with chores while she's at work, try to regain a sense of normalcy in his childhood home...

i don't think he'd be able to do this right after the shooting. keiji had shame, once upon a time– the guilt would rack him like nothing else. i can imagine him spending a lot of late nights with alcohol, just wishing it was a dream. his resentment towards megumi slowly building as he feels he's being left in the dark as to why, why he isn't allowed to atone, why she's being so cold towards him about the shooting when he's suffering so heavily from the effects of it.

he wouldn't want to be around his dear mom as a murderer, and as a resentful alcoholic who's coping very poorly with his circumstances.

also (tangent incoming), i kind of wonder about keiji and alcohol a lot. in his fondness events with mishima, he says the following—

the "haven't drank that much in years" part makes me wonder– for how long? did he start to restrain himself before the shooting or after? i would say it's most likely after, considering the "feels like it'll swallow me up" comment he made soon after. and, how he talked about binge drinking when he was still a newbie. perhaps it was fine for him to do so, before the shooting— he'd just get wasted and flirt, have a good time. but after, it morphed into an inefficient coping mechanism which he fell far within the depths of to try and control the worst of his grief and self hatred. after that, heavy drinking couldn't just be for fun anymore.

i assume in the "before it got this way" comment, the "way" he's referring to is how he doesn't drink much anymore? or, he could be talking about the depression drinking, but i think the prior makes more sense.

even though i think, given keiji's example of drinking with megumi, that he could have gotten blackout drunk a couple of times purely for fun pre-shooting, i think here he's referring to the painful side of his relationship with alcohol here, the part that took place when he was trying to cope with his trauma. i think he brings up the story of drinking with megumi immediately after, then, to avoid talking about that part of his past. though he doesn't show it much, i think he's deeply ashamed of himself. not only of what he's done, but how he's handled it afterwards.

on a lighter note, though, it's quite funny to think of Lawful Good young keiji shinogi getting drunk off his ass and flirting with every woman he comes across willing to flirt back. like, what's up with that??? he seems like such a serious dork in the flashbacks, but doing well in his police job, he just... lets loose?? no no, honestly i think he hadn't drank much before going out with megumi and he took her insistence on him drinking a little too far, and with his inexperience with alcohol and the successive lack of self restraint that comes with each new drink, you get casanova shinogi, lmao.

BACK TO THE SERIOUS STUFF THOUGH !! i really like the idea of him going to his mom to help him pull himself back together. i think they'd have a solid relationship, fight me! he seems to adore his mom as a child with a good single parent usually does. i'm sure he appreciates her immensely for all the care and love she managed to give him when he was a kid while also working her ass off to support them financially. this very respect for her is what i think would drive him to isolate himself from her after the shooting– as i said above, he's a murderer now. a disappointing human being in general, and an even worse son. to let down his mother who worked so hard to raise him right... how could he? as his condition worsens and his heart grows colder, i'm sure that feeling would fester inside of him. he'd try to ignore it, as he does with everything else, but it's already wrapped its tendrils around his soul. that particular guilt isn't leaving him any time soon.

now that i'm thinking about it, also, i don't think it's likely that he'd quit his job right right away. it'd be more of a slow descent over the span of a few weeks. immediately after the shooting, he may stop showing up to work for a while. he just can't put on that uniform when it's practically caked in the blood of someone he held in such high esteem for so long. eventually, though, he gets a hold on himself– just a bit. he doesn't want to be cooped up in his apartment with his thoughts anymore, and he doesn't want to lose his job. what else would he do?

so, he takes it easy on the first few days back. megumi tries to make it easy for him. paperwork, whatever job he could do that's not on the field. he clings to her like a wounded puppy, hoping that she'll explain why she's covering it up when he doesn't want her to, what he's supposed to do with these feelings around the incident. he's drowning, and she's made herself a big sister figure to him– she's supposed to help him. but, she shrugs him off when he brings it up. she's so harsh about it compared to how she usually speaks to him. perhaps because of her own guilt around the incident, perhaps it's the family's response and how keiji is now, how panicked and sleep deprived the poor kid has looked since that day.

so he continues to spiral with nothing to hold on to. grasps at alcohol in a futile attempt to stop falling, because it's all he can think to fall back on. he's a wreck at work– he's barely living, much less working. but megumi tries her best to keep him from getting fired. she'll get him coffee and breakfast and try to say something encouraging. "hey. hang in there, shinogi." with a touch on the shoulder. but in spite of her efforts, of course, it hits a breaking point. everyone in the job thinks keiji's too damaged to continue, saying he either needs to see a shrink or get the hell out of the way and let everyone else do their job.

and keiji just stops coming into work one day.

the downward spiral ensues.

[sunritual]

Robots don’t need to be sentient to destroy us.

Navy mock neck long sleeves big orange and little white stripe on tube cage sides

A veritcal line stretch waistband

Cross cross and straps back

Square high neck

Scarlet polka dots around can light blue text and beach image as front

Blue stroke red inside square, blue triangle rainbow with eye and funky font

Y either know a particular topic or not , but it’s hard to pin down intelligence on one category

Cream background , ice cream pink script name kinda bev hills hotel script looking ish

Move your mouth in a differ way

Supersonic vibrating butt cleaner

Half magenta half red violet a blue teacup in the center with white floral frills thick serif font

Pink background am orange flower in a vase white present ribbon n red as a table

An app that familiarizes people with science - through experimental learning ― hands on experiences that make it seem less top down and authoritarian , and more like a set of steps that we take, things that anyone can do to get closer with nature and the world

A social media philosophy app - teaches what others said and gives people a chance to express their views , postulate, argue, etc gadfly? How would be avoid a shit show, how can we make social media more humanitarian. how can we care about people while also expressing deeply held ideas , how can we encourage users to examine their deeply held ideas without alienating them. How can we discourage hatred and abuse and groupthink with design? How do we slow people down and encourage them to recognize the human behind the screen. Street epistemology? Socratic dialogue?

Socrates - asking questions. Breaking it down to bits. Deeply understanding their argument. Asking about different possibilities and circumstances. Take vast assumptions and show scenarios that make go against them.

Build fact checking into apps

Narrative self vs experiential

Walks you through steps of the sciefitifc method and encourages you to explain how you feel each step actually helped you- then walks you through a scientist doing the same for their reasarch

Republicans only want to be free in the specific ways that benefit corporations

Are Christians more willing to support the death pen early because they already believe in the cruel and overstepping punishment of hell?

Where did the idea come from that you need to remain impartial when trying to persuade

The idea that there is someone in a similar but different dwelling, hearing similar but different sounds and feeling similar but different feelings is wild

We synthesize sets of traits, and particular actions in a super biased culturally constructed way

With the way we see things as humans- we categorize things into groups that aren’t really reaaal ― paratheletic groups

I just want the people and jobs that benefit society

Connection to nietzsches Dionysian art and eckheart tolle/Taoism

No matter your personality, there is probably a part of the world that you would fit in with naturally.

An ordinary girl is selected as one of the representatives of earth in the first meeting of various alien species after one advanced planet discovered and United 10. Confused as to why she was chosen, she goes on her journey meeting

Wha ba Bada da da da da dada he’s a wha ba ba dadada as a matter of fact it’s not my fault if you came up here thinking that you would win

Wanting to break boundaries and rules for the sake those who are hurt by the rules

You are imagining the best case scenario of the life you want to have and experience Ming the reality of the life you so have.

Yes her drips cosmetics line to students i. Class

Chez it people can goldfish people

Your personality flows where a system needs it to go to maintain balance

Ah you fucking saw a tik Tok about that didn’t you

Coincidence and intention are two sides of a tapestry, my lord. You may find one more agreeable to look at, but you cannot say one is true and the other is false.””

Clay busts with abstract art and philosophical musings (throws up)

Do a sketch a day

What if someone ran for president as an impression of a famous person

Full stemmed flowers, wiggly text creeping behind

Balloons of various sizes and cooors holding people and things

Kelly green cream hot pink black

Green outline one pink air brush cream background black marks

Emdr applebees , bat mitzvah toasts Amitals bat mitzvah , Fiona - i like her better just kidding ,

We tend to learn words by synonyms and not definitions

A bully who takes a kids lunch money everyday all through out high school and secretly puts it in a Roth IRA and presents it to them at graduation

Set up drum set

When it comes to something we have no knowledge of or evidence or proof being certain is the most illogical thing you can be

Getting a degree in philosophy is the not going to college of going to college

It ain’t what they call you it’s what you answer to

You don’t just get to jump from bright moment to bright moment - part of the job is the frustrating ones and the climb to get to be actually good. It’s gonna be bad in the beginning but it’s a measure of how dedicated you are to your craft. Frustration is the process.

You have to decide whit shit sandwjicj you prefer - everything is gonna suck some of the time but if you pick your dream you’ll have those bright moments and at least that shit sammie will be worth it - the bad parts of job you have no interest in don’t add up to anything. If you love what you do you will accept the downsides.

People are like tape. Going through the world collecting bits and pieces of things but none of those things are really them . We can identi ft with them and create with them but we can also escape from them.

I wonder what all these people think about being alive

Curiosity makes everything play. It invites exploration. It makes me see opportunities everywhere makes everything new

Bias to action. Try things. Get your hands dirty, fail Fortean and find what works. Remaining nimble and constantly rethinking

Reframe the problem. Step back, re-examine the problem, examine biases and be open to new solutions

Clay matches clay fire

The differences and similarities between us

Looking back, historical events seem bound to happen, but a few small events could’ve stopped them. Thinking diffently.

“They became revolutionaries despite themselves”

Artists way workbook design

I’m at Eton having to walk around to quell the feeling of being so exited about the future and my possibilities and so sure of success and beauty and magic and love and adventure. I’m going to make beautiful pictures I’m going. To tear down the status quo I’m going g to make people feel like they have on antigravity. I’m so a part of it i made it. I’m a muse I’m it omg I’m so exited - listening to John Denver

Joy is just a thing that he was raised on love is just a way to live and die.

The only thing that made Abe Lincoln Abe Lincoln (tm) was doing what Abe Lincoln (tm) did. The actions that he took made him a hero in history. There was nothing i ate in him that made his great, his actions did. Whatever help inate qualities may have gave him in terms of doing the actions that made him what he was could be negated by pma and doing the damn work to get yourself to where you need to be. Believing it so makes you inclined to take the actions that improve your skills and get to to the point where you can do the things it takes to be who you want to be.

Little vases

I feel like we’ve become addicted to finding things wrong with what people say. Silence the critic. It’s fine. Most people have the best intentions. It’s not that serious. The group you are offended for likely aren’t mad anyway. There is way more you can do - they don’t care about picking the right term

I wanted a very simple menu that could maximize customization options in The shortest amount of time possible for a very fast paced food truck. The system allows the customers to design their own grilled cheese sandwich but ideally would save time by not requiring each guest to decide which cheese and which bread from a long line of choices.

I feel I’m so afraid of being dunning Krueger that i tell myself i am terrible at everything no matter what i actually think about my abilities. You can just say your a beginner you don’t have to say you suck. Plus thinking you suck doesn’t make you any better, honestly worse. You don’t have to rate your abilities just focus on the future, make sure your doing baby steps and make sure they are the right baby steps

Chives ward off insects

Loving thebsunlightttttyt!!

I don’t think music is really something that needs to be critiqued for me ― it’s more about feeling it’s about magic and truth and light or darkness. Getting whatever needs to be out out. it all serves a purpose and is for an audience , if your not in that audience then there’s no need to comment

I have to is weird backwards idea that it’s Nobel to be like you know what I’m not good at this imma bow out. But that is so wrong you have to struggle through it. Pike how i feel like my thoughts are more concise then my writing. There’s no glory in not trying to improve that. You have to awkawardly write until you can beautifully write.

[dropintomanga]

A Look at “I Sold My Life for 10K Yen Per Year”

We all have kinds of taboo topics that reinforce what’s appropriate to talk about. Religion, money, politics, sex, etc. While these are reasonable topics to avoid addressing in many cases, there’s one taboo topic that really affects everyone. It’s death. In modern urban society, we all avoid any mention of it with good reason. Yet we live our lives to a point where we may feel that death is an appropriate way to escape.

What if you felt that way? What if you realized that life is mostly meaningless and then try to get rid of your future? A manga adaptation of a well-known Japanese novel takes a look at that possibility and how it can lead to an unexpected and profound experience for the better.

This manga, “I Sold My Life for 10,000 Yen Per Year” by Shoichi Taguchi, made me wonder about how much people matter in living a life well lived.

The series, based off a novel called “3 Days of Happiness” by Sugaru Miaki,  is about a 30-year man named Kusunoki, whose life hasn’t turned out the way it expected for him. While he was an ace student in his younger days, Kusunoki has no direction in life. He spends his days living off of part-time work. One day, while selling old books and DVDs to a secondhand shop, the owner of the shop tells Kusunoki about a place that buys your lifespan for a set price depending on how much value your life has accumulated. Kusunoki finds the place, gets a quota and sells off the 30 years of his life for 300,000 yen. He only has 3 months to live. Kusunoki is assigned an observer, a girl by the name of Miyagi, whose job is to chronicle the rest of his existence. The two would find a connection through shared experiences and the story becomes a sad and beautiful story about love in the face of certain death.

Death is scary to talk about and it makes us feel alive. When confronted with their own mortality, people tend to live life differently. They may focus more on helping other people as they want to be remembered well by those that love them. Of course, there’s a flip side where people aware of their death start to become more protective of themselves and lash out at anyone different from them. A big key to this is anxiety without any sense of reflection. The more anxious you are, the less reflective you become. Self-reflection isn’t something that’s taught very well to many people (and arguably a major reason why therapy exists).

Kusunoki starts to develop a sense of self-reflection when it comes to his past relationships. A big theme of this manga is relationships and how easy it is to lose them. 

In the first chapter, there’s a flashback of Kusunoki and a girl he liked named Himeno. Both got along with each other during elementary school as they were smart and disliked by their classmates. They made a promise to get together as a couple after their ‘20s if they couldn’t find a partner by then. One of Kusunoki’s bucket list wishes was to reunite with Himeno, which Miyagi protests. Kusunoki wants to tell Himeno how he feels and goes through a makeover. The two do reunite out of chance, but their reunion turned out to be sour. It’s later revealed that Himeno was planning to kill herself in front of Kusunoki as she wrote him a letter back in high school asking for his help, but he never responded. This ties to how Kusunoki felt about life after school. He never kept in touch with his friends from those days due to him looking down on others.

However, Kusunoki’s connection to Miyagi becomes something more than observer and subject. They both fall in love with each other. Kusunoki wanted someone to acknowledge him even if the person may not always agree with his way of thinking. Miyagi later reveals that she lost a childhood friend like Kusunoki. She empathizes with Kusunoki because of their desire for closure involving their childhood friends. Plus Miyagi loved that Kusunoki made her feel important by dragging her around to do his activities with him.

When people talk about what it means to live, they think about factors involving only the self. Get a high-paying job, getting a nice house, buying a fancy car, etc. There’s no emphasis on helping someone in need, donating money to a good cause, having an enlightening conversation, and/or making someone’s day better. Stuff that involves being around other human beings that feel insecure as much as you do.

Speaking of human beings, Kusunoki’s connection with Miyagi makes him frowned upon by his local community members. That’s because Miyagi is literally invisible to other people. When he talks to her, other people see him as talking to air. They start to think he’s insane and/or delusional. Kusunoki doesn’t care since he’s accepted his circumstances. The fun part is near the end of the series is that his neighbors start to accept Miyagi is there with him. They start to feel more optimistic and happy because they see how happy Kusunoki is. He’s enjoying life more than they are.

It made me think about someone with a serious mental illness and has delusions. They are avoided because no one understands them. More often than not, they’re labeled as dangerous to talk to. But once you’re able to talk to them and not feed too much into their delusions, you start to find how lonely they are. You realize that they’re trying to live their lives as much as you are. You realize they want some kind of connection (there’s a movie about this which covers how the mentally ill may need some kind of community acceptance to manage life). I see this with Kusunoki finally getting love from his neighbors as he deep down wanted some kind of connection that makes his life meaningful after seeing how hollow he became without the lack of emotional support. 

Kusunoki’s desire for meaningful connection can be reflective of how hard it is for adults to make friends/relationships of any kind as they get older. Asking someone to be friends feels “childish” as it doesn’t always lead to external outcomes that mark “success.” I read an article from someone who believes wanting friends in contexts outside of socializing is considered shameful. Kusunoki feels like an all-too-real example of someone who was taught that you can wing it with relationships since materialism will solve all your emotional needs.

The ending to the manga (and the original novel) isn’t exactly a happy one and it teaches some great lessons. Death comes for everyone at some point and all we can do is live life in a way that matters. However, we need acceptance of one another in order to do so. When you see how the relationship between Kusunoki and Miyagi blossomed until the end, it will make you wonder if what we really need in life is someone who’s willing to embrace our emotional vulnerabilities and continue to love us despite them. It may not be the ultimate solution, but it’s an important one to consider as there’s still am alarming amount of people who want to die because no one truly hears them.

If the world realizes how having an accepting person/community can lead to better outcomes, maybe we can go beyond just a few days of happiness into a lifetime of joy. 

[hitchell-mope]

ABC headcanons part 2. Doug Greenman

WARNING!!!! THIS POST CONTAINS NSFT MATERIAL

His relationship with Evie will be included with this seeing as it makes no sense to me to not include it if you know what I mean

A = Aftercare (What they’re like after the act). Doug is very attentive after the act. He’s got a mini fridge stocked with water and snacks. And thanks to some inner house tweaks they’ve got a self cleaning “macrame room” made specifically for their sessions so they don’t need to worry about cleaning up the bed. At least not often.

B = Body part (Their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner’s). Doug takes great pride in his hands. They’re very skilled and very fast. And he loves Evie’s smile. Especially when he’s the cause of it.

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically). He’s not a fan. He’s doesn’t like the mess. But fortunately the macrame room takes care of it if there’s any unforeseen messes

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs). The macrame room is their own secret. Though thanks to Jay it’s more of an open secret. But the contents of the room is still under wraps. So it still counts

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?). Very experienced. Between research and the many times he’s had the actual act itself Doug is very adapt in all areas of intimate affection

F = Favourite Position (This goes without saying). Doug likes to stand up straight and hold Evie up. As in. Standing up straight and holding her up in the middle of the room. It’s Evie’s favourite position too

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc). Oooh. Doug is very serious in the heat of the moment. Very focused on what he’s doing. Evie finds it to be incredibly attractive.

H = Hair (How well groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.). Beneath the suits and the bow ties and the ardent professionalism. Doug is a true wild man. He’s only ever shaved his face. The rest he allows to grow freely. Just like all dwarves

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…). Doug is definitely a romantic. Despite their exploits being enough to make even the most coarse person on earth blush and faint he tries to make the experience as romantic as possible. And he’s always successful.

J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon). He’s not adverse to it. And he’s had a lot of personal experience. But he prefers the a actual act to the solo act by.

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks). They both like it when Doug shows off his impressive strength. Hence their favourite position. He likes calling Evie “princess”, “my queen”, “your majesty and “your highness”. And he likes it when Evie refers to him by a certain paternal honorific.

L = Location (Favourite places to do the do). Their “macrame room”. It’s private, soundproofed and fully equipped for all their needs.

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going). The aforementioned honorific. Teaching Evie how to build a cars. Certain dance routines. Massages.

N = NO (Something they wouldn’t do, turn offs). There’s no way on heaven, earth or hell that he will do it on a magic carpet in flight mode. The royal jet is more than enough. And he doesn’t like being called royal titles. It just doesn’t appeal to him

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc). Doug is a giver. And a very generous and skilled one at that. He’s also big on receiving as well. Evie’s just as talented as he is

P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual? etc). He likes to go slow and powerful. He only goes fast towards the end of the session

Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc). If they absolutely have to then Doug is fine with a quick one. But he and Evie both prefer longer sessions

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc). Yes. Hence the macrame room. And the cloning machine set to Doug’s DNA. And the invisibility spray Evie made so she could surprise his at the office. And the little green pills they made to enhance their experiences with each other. Etc etc. Each and every new addition to the room, including the room itself, was and experiment and a risk that paid off beautifully

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…). Doug can last up to four hours nonstop. Wether it’s continuous or split up into rounds is up to how he’s feeling. But it’s never less than two rounds a session. For her part Evie is very good at keeping up

T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?). Yes. All situated in the macrame room. All used on Evie. Except for the cloning machine. That’s used on Doug for Evie’s benefit.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease). He mostly uses teasing as payback for Evie teasing him. So if she sends him a selfie when he’s in a meeting. He sends her a very loud video with a caption saying something along the lines of “not tonight” when she’s sending out the to bed delivered. Don’t give out what you can’t take.

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make). Doug mostly grunts and growls. Evie screams in enjoyment. Doug gets louder as he reaches the end. Evie tends to cuss in German

W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice). He’s the one to suggest they start recording their exploits on film. Evie was very enthusiastic about that suggestion

X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants, picture or words). His smart trousers hide some very heavy duty equipment. That he and Evie both know how to handle. He may not be royalty but he is definitely king sized

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?). He hides it better then most bit he’s always ready for it when Evie asks. And that happens to be once a day minimum.

Z = ZZZ (… how quickly they fall asleep afterwards). He only falls asleep after he’s cleaned up and made sure that Evie’s alright. So around 5-10 minutes. More if they need to tidy up the macrame room

[shuttershocky]

Shutters, your Houdini idea is amazing!!! Xan you talk more about him?

My main inspiration for a Nasuverse version of Houdini actually came from Apocrypha materials, where it’s stated that Fiore fled to North America to escape the wrath of the Clock Tower. Given the Mage’s Association’s incredible reach (to the point where they can even quickly deploy their forces into far-flung areas like Alimango Island), one of the best reasons I can think of for America to be a safer haven for runaways would be because there would have to be another organization in there capable of standing up to the Clock Tower. In which case, the Society of American Magicians (or it’s Nasuverse equivalent at least) is perfect for the role, an organization that just so happened to gain its reach and influence through nine years of leadership by Harry Houdini.

So here’s how I imagine that went down:

A Jewish family with minor magical heritage migrates from Hungary to America. The Clock Tower has no problem with that; there are magic families all over the world. So far, so good.

As they were rather poor at the time, young Ehric Weiss began using the family knowledge to put on shows. Nothing too serious - just card tricks he could perform without magecraft if he continued to study sleight of hand. Still, ever careful and aware of the Clock Tower’s gaze, he makes up the stage name of ‘Harry Houdini’ to protect his relatives.

The Clock Tower moves against him for having defiled magic’s secrecy. Due to America being far outside their sphere of influence, they can only send a few assassins who are tasked with making it look like an accident.

Houdini defeats his pursuers and realizes he may just have a talent for escaping death traps. In attacking him, the Clock Tower accidentally gave Houdini what he needed to go from a small time nobody into a force to be reckoned with.

Houdini’s star explodes, he performs everywhere across America, and his incredible escape skills only improve as an increasingly frustrated Clock Tower fails to capture him. 

Growing arrogant with his wild success, Houdini moves his act to Great Britain, right at his enemy’s doorstep, in a bid to humiliate them to his best ability. Not only do they fail to kill him, but Houdini notices that his shows are beginning to have an effect on the families: despite his insistence to the audience that he has no supernatural powers, belief in magic’s existence booms, causing a noticeable decline in Mystery and his rivals’ powers.

Now aware that he could legitimately defang the Clock Tower and avenge centuries of their oppression on... just about everybody, Houdini returns to America in 1904 and begins his work on building a true resistance. He writes down the secrets to his great escapes so that his family may learn how to protect themselves from the MA’s assassins, he begins making movies, magazines, etc, both to discredit rivals and to serve his inflating ego.

Realizing his family couldn’t have been the only migrants to America, he takes charge of an organization of American magicians, seemingly a group of stage magicians, but also a front for gathering all the mages who had fled the Association under one banner. Noting that they could easily be picked off if disorganized but much more powerful if they stayed together, Houdini would use his wealth to tour the US and recruit new members, his goal of making America a safe haven driving him.

As his society gains strength and brazen attacks by the Clock Tower grow common, Houdini spends the last years of his life on the counteroffensive. He begins actively seeking out Clock Tower mages and “disproving” their abilities before the world, stripping them of their powers and shaming them to the public as frauds. He’s particularly irked by anyone conducting seances, because while he understands using your powers to make cash like he did early in his career, he cannot abide using them to take advantage of people in grief. At best, those sorts of mages would lie and make stuff up for a quick buck. At worst, they actually summon the spirits of the dead, which could prove extremely dangerous to innocent people if the ghost is marred by curses or grudges. 

He dies in 1926 after a terrible bout of appendicitis, but his brother Hardeen carries on his legacy. The tradition of stage magicians disproving hoaxes and the supernatural persists until modern times, and while America is never truly free of the Clock Tower’s reach (see Snowfield), it’s not their stomping ground either, and continues to be a place where Clock Tower runaways can seek asylum.  

[lady-plantagenet]

Unsolicited Book Reviews (n3): The Sunne in Splendour

Rating:

⭐️⭐️⭐️(+1/2?)

Even before I had an account, I tended to go to tumblr to see people’s opinions before buying a histfic. Certain books are either severely underrepresented, where I feel like there needs to be something on them, whereas others, though talked about enough, something more can still be said about them. So for my quarantine fun, I have decided to start a series where I review every medieval historical fiction novel I read. Hopefully, it will either start interesting discussions or at least be some help for those browsing its tag when considering purchasing it.

TL;DR: Keep in mind that I’m harsh with my ratings. I don’t expect my historical fiction to offer some sort of insight about the human condition or be some perfectly manicured prose, but this book’s biggest detriment was its lack of depth. Some scenes packed a serious emotional punch, but then again I am attached to this era and given the length, it would be insane not to. I learned a lot - no lie, but while my background knowledge on the wars of the roses has become enriched, I feel no closer to Richard.

Plot: We follow Richard III from a young boy at eight right before the catastrophe that was Ludlow to his death and a few years after. This story seems to be told through omniscient third person point of view, which creates issues when it comes to voice - a lot of the characters sound the same (John ‘Jack’ Howard, Francis Lovell, Richard Catesby to name a few). This is only a natural consequence of the sheer amount of people Penman chose to portray. I’m honestly still grateful for this as I was not a fan of Richard III’s POV, but really enjoyed Richard Neville Earl of Warwick’s, Margaret of Anjou and Cecily Neville’s. Everytime these three were the center of the chapter, it was truly enjoyable and multi-faceted which comes to show that Penman is capable of writing complexity when she wants to. I would also like to add that the author’s knowledge of medieval life (e.g. the food, the dogs, the nature of battles) was a high point of this novel and did something to counter-balance the rampant late 20th century flavour in this novel. She tries way too hard to adapt a medieval man such as Richard to our modern values to propagate her Richardian Agenda, which ultimately underscored this.

It must be said though that the author clearly did her research as most of what she said regarding minutae such as: what day of the week it was, where the characters were at one time, details of documents, who did what in which battle, what laws were passed etc... I had just come back to this time period after some years and I thought I knew all there was to know, yet, here comes this book which springboarded me into a wealth of new research - I suppose I am grateful for that. However, do not let that delude you into thinking it is comprehensive. There were historical innacuracies which I can only guess were intentionally made for the sake of the author’s Richardian goal e.g. Anne Neville being forced into her marital duties when historicalMargaret of Anjou made it clear that there would be no consummation until Warwick would prevail at Barnet, Isabel Neville being ‘abandoned’ by her husband in France when really it was only about 4 months they were apart and it would have made no sense for Isabel to sail with an invasionary force, Richard III abolishing benevolence tax because he thought it unfair as opposed to the reality which was that he had failed in his initial attempt to raise them because the population opposed, Richard III allowing the marriage between Jane Shore and Thomas Lynsom when in reality he had initially opposed it... Historical fiction is entitled to innacuracies but given that the author made it clear in her afterword that the only time she strayed was setting a scene in Windsor as opposed to Westminster, it is dishonest to conceal the aforementioned blips, especially when they are so unobvious that it would take a seasoned enthusiast to spot them. As you can tell they either do have a negative bearing on Richard’s image as a saint or show detractors in a positive light, clearly neither that which she was in a mood to explain away.

Characterisation: I can not stress enough how well Cecily Neville was portrayed, every scene she was in, I felt. She tends to be a very difficult character to get because of the whole illegitimacy rumour which casts shades of doubt. She was proud but also pious, subservient but also commanding... just an incredible woman of gravity. I enjoyed Warwick in all his flamboyancy as well and Edward IV was masterfully portrayed as the intelligent but forgiving man that he was. You could clearly see how despite his indulgent character, he knew when it was time to be serious, it was a joy to read the scenes where he strikes people into subserviancy. Anne Beauchamp was also quite a treat for the little time we had with her.

There were also some portrayals of mixed quality: George Duke of Clarence for one, his warped sense of humour and charm were well presented, his unpredictability adequately captured. The issue I have though is that no man is unpredictable to themselves and while it may make sense for other characters to see his temperaments as those like a weather vane it would make no sense for it to be this way in the chapters where he is the POV. Penman’s basically wrote him off as crazy (I mean literally mad) for the majority of the story which is utter tripe given that the whole madness angle is a modern invention. I won’t write more on this now as it deserves its own post (btw if anyone wants me to elaborate on anything I said so far send me an ask). Last thing I will say though: the last scene we have with him is utterly tragic and still sticks with me today, honestly the best writing in this novel was during the ‘Anne’ Book and ‘Protector of the North’ in the years surrounding George’s death. Speaking of, where do I begin with Isabel Neville and Elizabeth Woodville? Their marriages with Richard’s brothers are portrayed negatively for no other reason than to set up Richard and Anne Neville as a perfect love story. This story-telling technique is cheap as hell and I did not expect to find it in a novel so highly acclaimed for its ‘quality’. Let me make this clear: The marriage which was hailed as a love match at that time was that of Elizabeth Woodville and Edward IV. Anne and Richard could have been just as much a marriage of politics as George and Isabel’s, or the latter’s just as much a love match. George fought for Isabel just as much, if not more than Richard did for Anne, George stayed loyal for a surety whereas Richard’s bastard John’s conception may have coincided with his marriage according to Hicks, Marrying Anne was highly advantageous for Richard as marrying Isabel for George... I could go on. Therefore, why is Isabel constantly described as wretched, miserable and at one point abused(!) by her husband whereas Richard was nothing but gentle to the happy Anne. The Mary of Burgundy proposal story is often cited as proof that George only cared about power... but what about Richard’s proposal to Joanna of Portugal one month after Anne died? This may sound minor but it’s a perfect example of the author trying hard to make Richard a modern romantic figure which he wasn’t. I think he may have loved Anne Neville, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was a medieval king and made marriage provisions after her death to secure the succession. For a 800+ page novel about Richard III some seminal pieces of information were left out such as his seizure of the aged Dowager Countess of Oxford’s Howard fortune, the mysterious circumstances in which George Neville Duke of Bedford died young and unmarried after becoming his ward. All in all, do not let the wonderful historical detail fool you into thinking this is a complete account of Richard III’s day to day life.

Don’t even get me started on the Woodvilles... They were all treacherous villains and social climbers who belonged in hell. EVEN ANTHONY WOODVILLE - what has he ever done to Penman or anyone? All scenes with Elizabeth Woodville at the beggining were bedding scenes pretty much, which shows that the author saw her as nothing more than a heartless seductress. There was even a point where Edward in his rage said: ‘you would lie with a leper if it meant you becoming Queen’ and I was just shocked at that. I was further shocked when her daughter Elizabeth of York was musing that if her mother had been a good wife her father wouldn’t have needed to stray and I was just like... ‘I thought we were trying to be sensible in this book 0_0’ - How is it appropriate to have a woman blamed for her husband’s infidelity? How can we have such blatant classism and sexism on the one hand and late 20th century wokeness on the other? It’s what I said earlier, the author can’t prop up Richard and Anne without putting down all other couples in this book. By the end of the book I was honestly finding myself cheering for Elizabeth Woodville as she was becoming the woman with sense and cunning as we all know her, the saving grace of this entire characterisation was that Elizabeth became the only person with a brain by the end (I doubt this was the author’s intention). Down here in this category of bad characterisation I will add Richard and Anne themselves. Anne Neville though often absolutely adorable to me lacked any personality trait apart from being in love with Richard and past sexual abuse by Edward (which didn’t historically happen). Anne’s father and only sister die and she barely thinks about them, which severely undermines her portrayal as a loving and empathetic person. Her death scene and wane was tragic and affected me as a reader but holy Christ before that the author was very heavy handed throughout the book with her martyrisation of Anne, even when she was a young girl and everything was going well she cried in nearly every goddamn scene. Yes, this is Warwick’s daughter we are talking about. Richard (unlike the real great man that once lived on this earth) was similarly flawless and any small flaw he had was something like: ‘too trusting’, ‘acts then thinks’ - essentially ‘too good for this world’ flaws. No one is like this, least of all the real Richard who would not recognise this weird contrived romanticisation of a man. The saving grace of all this is that he admitted around the end to himself and Anne that he did want to be king a little bit, which YES, at least we get that because no one goes through all the procedures he did and endangers the survival of their house, unless they wanted to become king, at least a little bit. All in all, if Penman’s Richard III is the real man, all I have to say is: thank god his reign was cut short because this character would have made a terrible and weak monarch.

Prose: And here is where another of the stars was deducted. The prose is largely very pedestrian. It was full of modern phrases such as ‘hear me out’, ‘He thinks I am in the wrong’ ‘he can’t get away with this’ and other such likes. Also, I know it’s difficult to write a book where everyone’s names are Elizabeth, Edward, Richard and Anne, but apart from ‘Nan’ which was a nickname of that time, the modernity of ‘Bess’, ‘Bella’ or ‘Lisbet’ and the use of them in-text and not just dialogue, did much to draw me out of the medieval era. This is not just a criticism towards Penman but a grand majority of historical fiction novelists of this period. Having said that, her choice to cut conjunctions and use the word ‘be’ intead of ‘is’ or ‘are’ did not bother me at all and I found it effective in dating the language a bit. I appreciate that writing in poetic prose for 800+ pages is extremely difficult, but other’s have done it. And even in other novel where that’s not the case, the writing is still profound and impactful and conveys a deeper meaning, whereas here it’s more of a fictionalised history book. The author appears to have some imagination as the few scenes she made up e.g. Catherine Woodville’s visit to Richard or Edward summoning Edmund’s previous carer John to talk about Edmund as he was trying to deal with the grief of losing George, any scene with Cecily Neville in it, Anne Neville and Veronique (OC lady-in-waiting to her) when they were in hiding, Rosamund and Richard at the end, Margaret of Anjou when she was lodged at that abbey, When Stillington visited George before his death to give him a rosary and last rites and he refused to get them from him, Anne and Richard going to Middleham and Isabel’s lying in state were just some of them. However, even if you took all those well-written scenes and stuck them together they would not be more than maybe 150 pages which is not good in such a massive novel. I really don’t know how I would rank the prose, I feel weird saying it’s at the low bestseller level because at least it’s not overwritten and annoying, however, it lacked a lot of soul most of the time, which is dissapointing given what Penman had to work with. I can see that the author has some strengths, for example she’s good at writing about the weather and the natural landscape, she’s also good at describing facial expressions. But her massive flaw is dialogue and flow - especially the latter. The flow is hindered by her abject inability to weave historical events and their happenings into the prose, so she often settles for an exposition dump, especially when it comes to some male chatacter’s POV such as John Howard, Francis Lovell or Buckingham. A lot of the characters exposited at each other too, which wasted the opportunity for some serious character profiles. Basically too much telling and not enough showing. In conclusion, It didn’t always feel clunky, expository or laboured, but it way too often did for the good to be redeemed by the bad prose-wise.

In Conclusion, I cheated on this book a couple of times when it dragged, but got right back into it whenever the good sections came along. It is one of these books which people cannot stop raving about and I can’t stress how much I wanted to love it when I got it. It’s nice being a fan of something a lot of people are too for once, but it was just not to be. But at least now I can say I have read the cult classic of this histfic niche which apparently everyone has read and cried over. Even though it took me 7 months where others got through it in a week through sleepless nights. Despite all the negativity in this review, I would still reccomend it as it is a solid book and written by someone who clearly gets the conflict and time period. You will learn lots with this book (I intend to keep it as a sort of timeline) regarding things that you might otherwise find too dry to research in depth e.g. battle strategies and sieges. But what you will not learn about is the characters’ psychologies and personalities though Penman tries very hard and heavy-handedly to exposit their feelings to us.