#this episode was TORMENT personified

[hyog-blog]

Fangs of Fortune (ep. 25)

This was such a heavy episode! Beyond emotional. Zhuo Yichen having his biggest nightmare come to life - becoming a demon whom everyone hates, an outcast. Li Lun has really outdone himself this time, this is like Evil 101, his pettiness knows no boundaries. He wants everyone around him to suffer just like he does, so they would understand his pain and become just like him.

They wouldn't, though. Zhuo Yichen's dialogue with Li Lun at the end of the episode was so powerful. "I will never understand you. But I understand Zhao Yuanzhou now." It's like everything Li Lun did had the opposite effect. People will still not play his game, they will choose for themselves even if he creates some messy circumstances. Even if he tries to break them, they can choose not to be broken. Top-notch acting from Tian Jiarui and Yan An, the torment was palpable. And "We are not weak. We have kindness in our hearts." One can always choose to be violent or not, despite whatever the world throws at them. Li Lun chose to be evil. Zhuo Yichen chose to remain true to himself. I love how this series is always about a choice the characters make, about the freedom to do so no matter what.

"You are the loneliest person in the world."

The visual juxtaposition is also great! Zhuo Yichen chooses the higher ground and refuses to fall. Li Lun has already fallen, and he's looking up at him. Poor evil broken baby. Even playing the Bai Jiu card when Zhuo Yichen finally leaves, but the man is unyielding. Good for him.

Uh, and not Zhu Yan almost losing it when those people started throwing vegetables at Zhuo Yichen. As much as he hates hurting humans, that could have turned into a bloodbath if his malicious energy got out of control.

It's a tale as old as the world itself - people turning on their heroes when they fall to see them fall even further. But I love how they showed Zhuo Yichen's character, our boy is super strong and unwavering. They may say whatever they want, but his true nature will remain untainted.

Hugs were also happening :3 And Zhao Yuanzhou promising to save Zhuo Yichen, ah. He could totally see himself in Xiao Zhuo, knowing all too well the pain he was going through D: Heartbreaking stuff

Also, I noticed how Zhao Yuanzhou at some point went from politely calling Zhuo Yichen 'Zhuo-daren' to a friendlier 'Xiao Zhuo' just like Wen Xiao calls him :3 It just warms my queer heart)))

"I will save you."

[sapphorror]

Short Moderate Length List of Small(ish) Things I Appreciate About The Wettening

Dib being conspicuously absent from the opening pan of the classroom, only to cartoon-teleport into existence at Zim’s desk the second Zim starts expressing mild apprehension at the sight of unfamiliar weather. This kid spends his time just hanging around staring at Zim, waiting for him to show the slightest sign of discomfort, confusion, or unease in order to immediately taunt him about it—and the surrounding chaos, if anything, is just an opportunity to come watch even more closely. We all already knew this, but it still kills me to see it in action.

Also, he’s animated popping up from below, and like… were we meant to interpret this as him just chilling underneath Zim’s desk? No, absolutely not—but is it funny (and, to add to the hilarity, miraculously somehow not completely unbelievable within the context of the show) to imagine that he was? Yes. Yes it is.

Zim confidently walking out into a downpour he has already confirmed to be acidic just because Dib implicitly dared him to—no one’s looking, Dib hasn’t even said anything or made a claim against his humanity, Zim just can’t stand to give Dib the satisfaction of seeing him vulnerable or afraid of something (which backfires pretty spectacularly, since I’m pretty sure ‘writhing on the ground shrieking in indescribable agony’ is a significantly worse look in terms of appearing vulnerable, but all’s well that ends in Victory For Zim, I guess).

Also Zim's little baffled gesture right beforehand like he's silently asking Dib to confirm he's not hallucinating the rain dance (he does not receive an answer)

Gaz presumably seeing Zim sneaking up behind her brother, saying nothing and making no reaction that’ll tip Dib off… only to immediately be made to regret her choices when she gets caught in another splash. Shows her for trusting Zim to be at least a little bit cool about tormenting Dib (honestly, we see her exact fitting justice on Dib at the end of the episode, but I cannot imagine she wasn't still planning to do something equally petty to Zim).

The faucet drip scene and the underlying awareness that this is just what Zim and Dib do to each other during class. Every day. It is, in fact, probably one of the least disruptive forms their constant warfare takes on a routine basis. Suddenly I understand a little bit of why their entire class hates them.

Also Dib’s happy face while he's terrorizing Zim into a shell-shocked stupor is absurdly cute and heartwarming. If I cropped that picture no one would ever guess what he's smiling about. This kid? A sadist? Impossible.

“I don’t even feel good about winning this one,” and it's said with his hands clasped together, practically vibrating with glee, his expression vaguely reminiscent of a teenager in the throes of hormonal infatuation (the hypothetical object in this case not so much being Zim himself as a personified abstraction of Zim’s suffering). If someone hit him with the Return of Keef happy goo in this exact moment, I am completely certain it would kill him. His statement is only true insofar that a more accurate term for his current state of being would probably be euphoric.  I take back everything I’ve ever said about Zim being unreasonable in this episode—he was merciful.

Also this face the moment Zim gets up and starts threatening him. Zim still isn't even all that intimidating at the moment, but Dib knows he just fucked up. Maybe he's getting flashbacks to Dark Harvest.

Dib’s ridiculous water balloon device. Seriously. I feel like it gets (reasonably) overshadowed by the sheer absurdity of Zim’s entire operation, but it really is so amazingly stupid and pointless in a way that is… not dissimilar to the ultimate Irken water balloon. Not only is it really not necessary for the task it's meant to accomplish, it's actively detrimental in that it slows Dib down, blatantly telegraphs his attacks, and reduces accuracy by a significant degree. The only actual benefits I can think of would be the exponential increase in force and range and the instant accessibility of a water supply—the former of which is totally unnecessary in this scenario and the latter being possible to accomplish with a much simpler device (or even just… a water tank). To summarize, it is an incredibly impressive feat of both skill and creativity in design that is also completely and utterly useless! Which is just the perfect demonstration of what I mean when I say Dib really does share nearly all of Zim’s flaws, just to a less obviously ridiculous degree—he comes off just calm and clever enough to pass as moderately reasonable  at a glance, and in some ways, that makes him more of a potential flight risk than Zim. At least that's a lunatic you see coming. 

Irkens are collapsible, apparently

[thecountesstribe]

HOTD 2X6 Review and Spoilers!!

Another slow episode. The episode dragged especially considering it's currently down to the last 3 episodes of the season.

Alicent got booted off the council, LMFAO. I don't take pleasure in seeing women suffer but older Alicent earned her shit, it's what she gets. Larys thinking he was gonna be named the hand of the Regent King LMFAO. Aemond said get your toad looking ass tf on and go call my grandfather. That was smart as much as I hate to admit it. Aegon definitely remembers his brother trying to kill him though. Larys is going to be protecting Aegon from now on because he knows that they can't control Aemond, I'm mad I gotta say something decent about him but he's actually thinking with his brain. The green council is still in a mess and divided and they know Aemond is going to be a tyrant king, hell Alicent knows and she's still somehow shocked by the monster she created like she didn't have a big part to do with him harboring his worst qualities and helping him mold into it. Delusional I tell you. The small folk are suffering already and got on their asses though, the only thing I didn't like is Helaena getting caught in the crossfire again. Another Daeron mention and did they just subtly hint at Criston being his father? Meaning Alicent was really sleeping with him before Vizzy T kicked the bucket? The writing for the show is all over the place, my God.

We were a diva down and I didn't like it one bit. WHERE TF WAS BAELA?! Like we saw her husband but where was she? Ugh. Rhaena and Joffrey sighting. They were so cute! Rhaena is still trying to convince herself she doesn't need a dragon to be important 💔 and Joff just wants his momma. Nettles looks like she's officially scrapped. I'm so pissed. They could've totally given Rhaena something else to do in the meantime, they didn't have to merge Nettles and her story together. Wtf Sara and Ryan?! This is why people say there is a Team green bias and they aren't beating those accusations. What does this mean for Rhaena hatching Morning? There were four eggs does that mean she still has a chance to do it? I'm so mad. Then again after what Dumbass and Dunderhead pulled in the final seasons of GOT why tf am I surprised!

We saw baby Stormcloud!!! I never realized how much I missed seeing baby dragons on screen. It's like having baby Viserion, Rhaegal and Drogon back. My heart did a little quick thump. He was so derpy too 🥺🤣 How Aegon's supposed to get away on him is beyond me, he's literally the size of a kitten. The timeline is so messed up as well.

Daemon is still in spooky land and although I'm over it, I understand it's a culmination of all his regrets and things he wishes he could've had and done differently. We saw Vizzy T and that scene where it showed Daemon wanted to be there for him, he just didn't know how.... Man I kinda teared up. At the end of the day Daemon just wanted his brother's love and approval, he went about it in the wrong way because he's chaos personified but that's what it was always about to him. Vizzy T was his parental figure, his everything really and man 💔. Miscommunication trope strikes again. Him and Alys becoming friends even though she's the one that's tormenting him wasn't on my bingo cards. Somebody come get Caraxes outta there, I know he's bored asf. Every time we catch a glimpse of him he looks more and more over the entire thing. 🤣

One of the highpoints of the episode was Seasmoke. Dragons have personality y'hear me. More of that! Seasmoke is a whole clown 🤣🤣🤣. Why would he do Ser Steffon like that? I mean sure he got a little cocky but intentionally bending his neck for him to get on and then essentially saying “BITCH YOU THOUGHT” AND THEN BURNING THEM TO A CRISP?!! He was so funny for that 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😭😭😭. He said “get y'all mid looking asses on” I already got eyes for one person and he's so real for that. You guys think he used to have dragon conversations with momma Meleys about picking their riders? We know dragons pick their riders as much as riders claim their dragons but do you think Meleys taught him if the unfortunate should ever happen make sure and pick the baddest of the bunch? We know Meleys picked Rhaenys as Rhaenys picked Meleys, that was confirmed. Meleys said Pretty Women Only and do you think she told Seasmoke to get him a pretty rider to match his aesthetic if the need ever arises? I know Laenor hatched him but Laenor was pretty asf. Seasmoke saw Addam smiling on the beach once and said “yeah I gotta have that” plus it helps that he has dreads, a pretty smile, a pretty face and looks like Corlys. He said welcome back Laenor Velaryon. Addam being Laenor's brother makes it hysterical as hell too, I'm creased LMFAO. He didn't have to chase down Addam like that but I respect it, he saw what he wanted and shooters shoot. I too would chase down Addam until he accepts my advances and affection, Seasmoke been eyeing him for awhile.

Corlys is officially the hand of the rightful Queen of the 7 kingdoms.

We got canon bisexual Rhaenyra. Although I wish she was kissing another beautiful Velaryon instead, Laena I miss you so much baby, that was for me. Her and Mysaria kissing before Jace and Baela is egregious to me though. I'm just saying why everybody locking lips before the main og star couple?Rhaenyra smacking men, 100000s across the boards. She should've been doing that sooner but better late than never I suppose. That lady is still in her resentment of her husband era. Her face when Jace said they needed Daemon 🤣🤣🤣😭😭😭 She's sick of hearing about that man. He's right btw, Rhaenyra go get him, he's out there giving our diva Simon grief. Mysaria actually helping her with PR and actually giving her great advice. I love women supporting women! Her sending food with her banners for the common folk was so politically savvy. Mysaria being one of the few that is actually coming in clutch to help her to win the war 😉. I still don't trust her though, something about this entire thing tells me it's gonna end badly for her. I'll enjoy them trauma dumping and bonding on one another before the shit hits the fan though. I know doomed Yuri when I see it. Jace and that one guard immediately knowing something is up with both of them is sending me though. She took off at the end of the episode to go confront her ex-husband's new dragon rider and Syrax about to be screaming at her dragon ex husband too apparently. 🤣🤣

Since they're essentially changing the entire plot and the leaks that I thought were written like fanfiction might actually be true could we get Jace surviving the battle of the gullet? It's not slated for this season but I'm here to spread my agenda. Since we're essentially fucking canon atp instead of in certain scenarios and all this for Bran the broken to sit the Iron Throne (I'm still fuckin disgusted and furious at that btw, fuck you D&D) could they switch that shit up? Let's come together and manifest it guys.

Until next week guys. I better see Baela, Rhaena, Jace and more dragons though. I'm here for them and them only.

And another thing, could you guys stop leaking shit. I block words and myself from certain pages and sites but y'know how stuff still slips through the cracks. Have some decorum and etiquette please!

[kerink]

in the server i was given the opportunity to explain what we know about the history of the joycon so far, and bulk and sarah asked me to post it. unfortunately it was an audio file so here's my best shot at a cleaned up transcript

---

basically all you need to know about the joycon is this: in it devours pastor munn says that at some point in the past kevin had found an old oak door, had gone to the dow, had discovered the centipede (which they personify as being the smiling god [there may also be some personification with the light that exists in the dow that torments carlos while he's there, and is the reason the masked warriors wear masks]), and while kevin was in the desert otherworld he wrote a bunch of scripture about the centipede and his perceptions of its behavior. it's unclear what kevin knew about the about the worship of the smiling god before going to the dow for the first time. pastor munn says that after kevin was in the dow, he came back to desert bluffs and started proselytizing his findings over dbcr. but kevin said that strexcorp first showed him the smiling god. however, strexcorp was still taking over desert bluffs at the beginning of wtnv. in episode 19B kevin talks about how strexcorp is still buying up pieces of desert bluffs, so i don't know what the timeline looks like in terms of the potentiality of strexcorp encountering kevin, taking over dbcr, teaching him about the smiling god, sending him to the dow, bringing him back to desert bluffs, having him proselytize, and then taking over the town. it seems like a very tight, but possible, timeline, which gets into a lot of my theorizing about kevin, that I'm not gonna get into because it's outside the scope of this.

in addition, when dana goes to the dow, she tells cecil that there is an abandoned settlement of what we can assume were former smiling god worshipers (based on the orange triangle imagery in the abandoned settlement). so at the very least, kevin went to the dow, possibly with an expedition or team of missionaries or something, and they had some kind of settlement there for however long they were there studying the smiling god dana implies that something happened to the party (possibly something similar to what happened in it devours: the centipede, came up and ate everyone or destroyed the settlement beyond the point of them being able to recover it). so then kevin survives, comes back to desert bluffs, and starts proselytizing. it seems like the ability to get back to the dow was lost, because in the e38, the strexcorp representatives are looking for the orange that has the key to the old oak door. so i read that as strexcorp (which is either controlling the joycon or is controlled by the joycon) trying to get back into the dow but not having free and easy access to it. in it devours nilanjana and darryl were talking and darryl is telling her about what heaven looks like in their religion, which leads nilanjana to theorize that the joycon's heaven was the dow. based on this is seems like the joycon higher ups conceptualize the dow to be heaven and the centipede as being god (or the centipede being god manifest in the flesh because they also worship the light of the desert otherworld). so the joycon kind of factions off into what is like kevin’s controlled and led joycon in the dow (which has, i would assume lost communication with the night vale division) and the night vale division which seems to have kind of like a generational schism, where the younger folks (darryl and his friends) don't understand that their religion is not metaphorical. while the older generation (pastor munn and gordon), who were likely taught under kevin (pastor munn references to the fact that it's a very young religion and that the texts she has were passed down, i assume passed down from kevin or from one of his administrators [because it's even known from e135 that kevin has administrators within the church and is likely not directly leading the congregation]). the joycon is kind of multi-fractured between the folks who are directly following kevin in the dow, getting sermons and prophecies from him, and then the folks in night vale’s dimension (i'm assuming there are joycon worshipers in the other towns) whereas the older generations would have been ex-desert bluffs citizens (or I believe early in s1 maybe sometime in s2, cecil alludes to there being joycon worshipers in night vale, so i think it's like kind of a pervasive, minority faith within the universe). there would have been people, whether they're ex-desert bluffs citizens or not, who were getting pretty direct teachings from what would have been kevin-centered faith. a more pure, i guess, kind. and then the younger generations who grew up in the joycon and didn't get that same tutelage due to not having that direct link to kevin and hearing his story of actually having gone to the dow and knowing about his very real connection to the light in heaven and to the centipede. and they’re therefore taking everything as metaphor. even in it devours pastor munn kind of scoffs at darryl like “there's a centipede on the door. what are you talking about? how to do not understand this?” so something is not being communicated effectively.

[anawkwardlady]

May I ask a veeeeeeeery naive question about Umineko? (So naive that I wouldn't dare ask it publicly)

I know that episodes 1 and 2 are basically the messages in the bottles by Sayo, and the other episodes are basically forgeries by Tohya. OK.

But I read analysis that talk about "a very different style of writing between" between these episodes, and... what are these differences? I must have missed them when I was reading Umineko, there are absolutly not obvious to me at all.

OK, more precision about my last ask: I don't fully get the meta-twist of Umineko. Why is there only two messages from Sayo? What do these messages tell about her (that the forgeries don't tell, or tell differently)? Why isn't it more messages from Sayo, are these two messages the only things that Sayo had to tell to the world? What did she exactly want to tell? (What Tohya wanted to tell through his forgeries seems to be clearer to me)

Okay so I need to preface this with the fact that I definitely don't have the level of most people developed essays and thoughts about Umineko (bc first of all I need a re-read like yesterday)

The reason given for the two message was that they're the only ones that were found, it's said she wrote a lot more.

To really simplify and I apologize if I miss some stuff, I think when people mention these difference of writing it can refer to different perceptions and portrayal of characters + different tones of the games. Episode 2 might be the first actual game taking place during Beatrice and Battler and it might play into it but most and I'd say that that the tone was darker and a bit more bleak. You could say that Beatrice was crueler, especially to Shannon and Kanon in the early days and truly personified Sayo's torment, self hatred and to some extent power fantasy. Beginning Episode 3 ( and that continues post Episode 3 deception reveal) she is a bit more faceted, softer, has the silly sides. Some could also say that the ushiromiya siblings are at their most antagonistic at the beginning and being shown in a more "sympathetic" light through the forgeries.

The first games are a scream for help to be seen, to have Sayo's heart understood as who she is, what she is about to do and why and retrospectively hints a lot at everything we will discover after (Shannon and Kanon being "furniture" and therefore impossible to love relating to Sayo's view of her body and circumstances of birth, their respective role and relationships relating to her view of love and internalized gender roles (which is also seen through the adults), the hints to Battler's promise etc). As said earlier, only 2 bottles were found but she supposedly wrote all the possible way it could have ended and all are basically, a confession. So what is so different to the forgeries, well the forgeries were not replicas of the formula, they're also a response to this call, perpetuating the legend of witch and following Sayo's will since it's too late to save her too.

[semper-legens]

116. The Sandman: Endless Nights, by Neil Gaiman

Owned?: Yes Page count: 152 My summary: Seven stories from the world of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman - one for each of the Endless. Walk in Destiny’s garden, experience the love of Dream, watch Desire twist a young woman’s life, twirl and fly alongside Delirium, find a man trying to escape Death, dig for future artefacts alongside Destruction, and gaze at the portraits of Despair. My rating: 3/5 My commentary:

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might have seen my posts from a few years ago where I read through the entire Sandman series. Since then, the Netflix series has come out - I watched the first episode on a plane, wasn't very impressed, then had no inclination to continue. Sandman is…my reactions to it differ depending on how I feel when you ask me. The general throughline is that I do really like it, and it holds a dear place in my heart, but it's not perfect and certainly not without its flaws. So, we move on to this. Endless Nights contains seven short stories, one for each of the Endless, set at various places in the Sandman canon. Some before the main series, some after. I've actually talked about it before, but now I want to give it less overview, more actual thought. So I'll talk about the four that stood out to me the most this time round.

The first is Dream's story. In the previous post, I mentioned liking it - not so much, these days. I think my problem with it lies from the fact that the others are at least trying to engage with the concept invoked by that Endless. Dream, though? It kind of features wishes and wants, but the fact that it centres around a romantic relationship between Killalla, a star, and Dream himself, makes it feel like more of a Desire situation than a Dream. Desire does more in this story than Dream does! It's showing Dream-as-a-character, not Dream-as-an-idea, which is annoying because all the other stories try and do both. It's also the one that's most conventional in its storytelling, and feels more like a straight prequel to the main Sandman story than a self-contained little narrative.

Death's tale I ended up liking a little better - at least, the general conceit of it. Death is trying to get into a mansion stuck in time in the 1700s. The man who owns the mansion is some sort of alchemist or sorceror, and has stuck himself and his guests in a time loop to evade Death. But with the help of a mortal, Death gets in, and takes him and his guests regardless. This is such a cool idea, especially as we see the man using the fact that he can't be touched by death to its hedonistic limits. He pushes his body as far as it can go, dying again and again safe in the knowledge that he will just rise again the next morning. And Death is there to stop him. She's not cruel, she's not unkind, she's just a reality of life. A necessity. I'm very fond of how Gaiman personifies Death in this series, and this is a good outing for her character.

Then there's Desire. My least favourite of all the Endless, Desire is more disappointing to me than anything. The trouble is that while desire as a concept is a very broad category, Desire the character seems to preside exclusively over romantic/sexual desire. Which is just less interesting to me than other types. Where's desire for money, for power, for anything other than hot women? Because, yeah, that's sort of the thing here. While the main character is a woman, it's more about her as an object of desire as it is her own desires as a character. She teases and tantalises the men in her life, from the man she would make her husband by playing hard to get, to the men who killed her husband by tormenting them until they all murder each other. Her active wants are somewhat lesser to the effect she causes on others. And that's just not interesting, Neil! Get your shit together!

Despair's story is still my absolute favourite. It's not really a story at all - it's called Fifteen Portraits of Despair and shows a small glimpse into the lives of fifteen people at their absolute lowest, complete with creepy, surreal artwork and unsettling prose descriptions. I love it. Despair doesn't get much screentime in the original series, so it's good to delve into just who she is and what her domain contains. Despair is one of the less 'nice' Endless, she presides over sadness and pain, so it's interesting to see her as this somewhat impartial god. Also, it's creepy and macabre and I just love it.

Next, to the pumpkin patch, with two best friends.

[doomzday-zone]

Hi I'm a new follower here! There's something I'm curious about and wanted to ask you if you don't mind. Can you tell me a little about your Fnaf au story and how you interpret the characters (especially William Afton), is there anything that inspires you?

HELLO !! :3 i dont mind at all. okay so. i have multiple fnaf aus actually jghkhcgj, ive started just tagging certain stuff vaguely cause i have a very fuck around until i find smth i like kinda process to making aus n such lol 🙈 so its more like. a collection of scenarios and storylines and themes...... etc........ teehee<3

ANYWAYS most of my more circulated ideas n stuff rn tho r more focused on moments and such we DONT see in canon but still within like the Known timeline somewhat. even if the lines get blurred severely, and ofc adding my own flair in certain places as well i giggle<3

some of the more concrete concepts i have tho r the Rabbit Demon, sort of inspired by ITP and also im a SUCKER for tangible representations of characters inner conflicts and what have you 🙏 the demon in this case follows william as hes haunted by it, its not a one to one of any particular ghost its more of like an entity manifested by his Evil Deeds lol. it doesnt just haunt william tho Vanessa has her own(also should be known my Vanessa is more movie leaning than games leaning, movie vanessa is more interesting to ponder for me personally:3c) as well as it hangs over the aftons in general. and in a way The Rabbit as seen in ITP explicitly is also technically a part of this but shes also like. her own phenomenon too lol as she operates a little differently.......

the entity doesnt hurt any of them physically its more psychological, kind of like a divine punishment. and the way it hangs over the family is representative of how williams misdeeds seeps over into others and how his actions effect people even in subtler ways other than just his victims. Vanessa and Michael are the Most affected by the haunting other than William himself, as they are the people most directly influenced by his actions with them carrying out his will in some way(see sister location for Michael and fnaf movie for Vanessa) the Bunny Call if you will 😏 *i am promptly booed offstage*

theres also a bit more i could say about it but its mostly like Visual Representation kinda stuff, like the specifics of the haunting r supposed to be seen rather than explained :3c (coughs in guy who draws LMAO) BUT ANYWAYS, i really really do enjoy personifying Concepts like thia ESPECIALLYYYY in horror settings<333 monsters who r embodiments of themes n shit my beloveddddd teehee i giggle and kick my paws<33333 a lot of my insp for this tho visually comes from @/scope_wad's Family Comes First <333 it had such a profound effect on me i still think about it on the daily. as well as sum other more vague/general inspirations(i am also a huge fan of abstract and meaningful visuals, which manifest themselves greatly in the... hallucination episodes william n the others have<3) but i digress🥹,,,

Another big one is the weird Industrial Horror Pit<333 its supposed to be like sort of... limbo-ish place. if UCN is purgatory then this place is something much more.... barren. a place Between the in-between. William usually resides here when his soul isnt being tormented in UCN but also isnt tethered to something in the real world(ie springtrap r smth). visually this place takes a LOT of inspiration from tsutomu nihei's work, specifically his architectural/environmental landscapes in Blame!

but obv with a more..... general fnaf look yknow lol..... think of sister location specifically again too teehee<33 🤭 very nonsensical..... otherworldly place, this is not where living beings reside.... this place was not made with Humanity in mind.....etc etc... i giggle and blush all cute like😁😁😁

ik theres more but i cant think of anything else Of Note at the moment.... :P you can literally ask me anything tho if you have more questions/smth more specific ill gladly talk about it i think about Everything all of the time always forever okayyyy okay<33 heart<33

How in interpret williammmmm ermmm!!! my Will actually sticks pretty closely to the games canon(specifically the first. however many games pizzeria simulator is LOL) hes sillayyyy 2 me, the games will always come first in my mind ive been a fan since the first came out<33

you can peruse my William Afton tag tho #willie fnafton for more of my mini-essays n thoughts n whatever about him i CANNOT relay everything properly in this little ask im sorry😭

i typically dont stray too far from his canon characterization, i do like to put him in situations tho Obv so like..... any changes made to his character via character growth moments n the likes r very much informed by the text<33 im Not a fanon liker guy in the slightest LOL 👎👎👎👎 i loveeee canon and. informed character analysis and Evidence<33333 😁💖 HVFjbefbfv

and lastly my general inspirations vary greatly, im always inspired by the things i like<33 typically im into darker, gritty, bloody n gorey, and just plain Weird art :3c ive already mentioned Blame! and tsutomu nihei, im a HUGE HUGE MASSIVE FAN OF SCOTT CAWTHONS ARTWORKS naturally(🥹) and manyyy many more that i cannot possibly name all of em rn hsjsbjd, im constantly looking at new(relative to me lol) and interesting arte so rest assured my internal catalogue is Vast💖💖

[tgammsideblog]

Tgamm AMA Discord Summary (Bill Motz)

Will there be any human antagonists? ¨It’s a Spoiler¨

Andrea will be in Lucky Penny

Scratch butt joke started as a storyboard joke I believe by Alayna Cabral

All Night Plight episode builds up to the finale, but it's basically a separate story

The ghosts' ectoplasm colors don’t have any correlation to their death,  it's about a balance of colors within the Ghost World.

The process behind coming up with the songs consists in The writing team thinking about where a good place for the song would be, the kinds of things it should cover story wise, the thematics and emotional intent, and then they discuss it with Rob Cantor, often suggesting possible genres of music.

The Mcgees had a dog pet in the concept show art, the creators never came up with a name for the dog but Bob, though, wanted to kill the dog and have it become a ghost.

Mayor Brunson’s sexual orientation is open to interpretation (in reference to some of his lines in Citizien Mcgee that he never married or had children)

We may learn how Scratch died in some future episode

The chairman communicates by using grunts and hisses.

The sobgoblins are a type of ghost, but different from the human derived ghosts. They are more like negative emotions that haunt us (like self-doubt)  that have become personified.

Andrea Davenport, like every character in the show, has her own journey

It’s impossible for a ghost to escape the Flow of Failed Phantoms on their own with enough willpower

Molly and Scratch are both a contrast and a complement of each other. But they are better together than they would be apart¨

The chairman shares some of those characteristics with the Grim Reaper

Scratch gets another solo song, but Bill Motz couldn’t remember how soon

Bill Motz love to have an art book from the series. They are looking into how Matt (Amphibia) and company have done theirs.

There wasn't any intentional connection of Tgamm to Lilo and Stitch, but Bill can see where there are some similarities between them

Molly and Scratch are Bill Motz’s favorite characters

The story behind Andrea’s obsession with her name gag was that Bob has a friend for whom the Andrea name pronunciation was important.

Bill’s favourite episode is "Festival of Lights." and some upcoming episodes.

The origin behind Scratch’s name will be answered in the show in the future

Scratch likes listening to jazz from the 40's-70's. Molly would probably consider that "chaos music."

What happens when a ghost enters in the flow: ¨It's not so much pain as a sense of loss... of everything that made them feel like "them"¨

The creators originally came up with the idea of the show 14 years ago.The relationship of Molly and Scratch is based on Bob and Bill (Bill being Molly and Bob being like Scratch)

There could be a Libby song takeover in the future

Originally Molly's name was Piper, but there was another show in development at Disney with a lead character named Piper, so we changed it to Molly. Scratch’s name came from Bill ¨It struck me as being this subtle torment... and itch you just have to Scratch.¨

We will see some light touches of Libby's Argentinian heritage. 

Ms. Lightfoot is Indigenous. She's played by Julia Jones, who is Choctaw and Chickasaw.

Libby's aspiration is to be a writer, she would like to write about turtles

There are going to be some romance plots

Matt Braly (Amphibia’s creator who is also Thai) helped with the Thai representation in Tgamm

Scratch really doesn't remember how long he has been in the ghost world since he died

They had an idea about that the real expert ghosts don't startle you at all. They're the ones that wake you up at 3am to make you worry about work or school or family, etc. You never even realize you're being haunted, you're just miserable.

There are going to be half hour episodes in season 2

It takes about a year to make an episode of the show, from story idea to final mix and delivery. The Tgamm work on multiple episodes all at once.

Molly wearing a blue wig in ¨Scratch the surface¨ isn’t intended to be a reference to Chloe from Life is Strange, a character voiced by Ashly Burch

Andrea Father’s name is Maxwell

Molly's disdain for maple syrup comes from the story editor Madison Bateman

Most of those quirky traits are direct lifts from the writing team. Madison hates syrup, Sammie Crowley hates close-up magic.

There is a design language created for the show, which means that there are frequently similar and unifying elements in the show that do not necessarily infer a story connection. (Similarities in design between Alister and Geoff doesn’t mean anything between them)

A number of people contributed to Scratch's design, including John Loter, Alex Kirwan, and Lead Character Designer Justin Rodrigues

Molly had many friends in other cities before she had to leave, which is why leaving has always been so hard for her, why having a "forever friend" means so much to her.

The word enhappify came from the creators looking for an "ownable" word that would be uniquely Molly's and tell you instantly her point of view on life.

The Ghost Council used to be human, in Chairman’s case: ¨If he was human, he's a very ancient spirit who has transformed over time into the embodiment of misery.¨

We will find out at least part of that story of why Libby’s mother moved to Brighton

 The person that's usually seen around Irving the Illusionist is called Rowdy Joe

We may learn more about Ghost lore in the future

The series will explore Molly’s hatred for street magic in the future

Google doc with the summary and questions asked:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vyP6934BoxTmltqAb50UoFZK2_OtmhZZnpLUXOLDu0Y/edit

[blzzrdstryr]

Reveries of turmoil

Yandere!Childe x fatui!reader

[Previous chapter]

Just as you predicted that short and stifled conversation was a portent of future changes. Childe stopped trying to talk to you outside the business, he even avoided your eyes in those rare moments when you looked at him first. Normally obnoxious and persistent Harbinger seemed to deflate in your presence, as his swaggering and blustering attitude disappeared within mere moments.

You would be overjoyed for this turn of events, if you didn’t have any experience of dealing with and tolerating Tartaglia. Childe, as you already established, is a chaos personified, an erratic whirlwind that twists and ruins everything in its way wrapped in human skin and caged by human bones. It wouldn’t be a surprise if some nasty complications arose out of this faux armistice and sneaked upon your unsuspecting self.

Ajax wont do anything drastic, you reassure yourself - the Rite of Descension gets closer and closer with each passing day, he just can't afford to fail this, meaning that he will have to keep you on-field. It would be logical to do so, let you work, but logical sometimes means predictable and nothing about Ajax is predictable.

Fortunately he continued to keep this strange distance as days passed. Was your little episode and words you said to him enough to stop him in his pursuit? Maybe it truly hurt him, maybe it made him see how miserable he was making you, maybe his obsession with you ceased to exist, it’s flames fizzling and going out just as fast as they ignited. You doubt all of it, yet continue to hope for the better, despite the evidence of the opposite shoved in your face.

Ajax will never let go of you, not in the way you want. He killed and tortured people right before your eyes, sometimes had you assist him in doing so. Most of the time this was done in Tsaritsa’s name, for the future of Snezhnaya and her people, just another working assignment regardless of the blood curdling screams and alien agony.

However, in some rare cases the torment of others isn’t something that is totally impersonal to you, sometimes you’re the main cause. Childe is possessive, terribly so. He watches over you like a dragon guarding his gold, scaring away other possible admirers. And if his title and reputation wasn’t enough to keep away whatever poor sod who decided to tempt the dragon, well, other way more grim methods were used.

You never personally witnessed these kinds of torture, but you heard rumours and sometimes saw the bodies after, images that keep reappearing in your nightmares. Maybe this lull is nothing but a quiet before the storm, a short breather after he commits some unforgettable atrocity again.

He personally summons you the day before the Descension. You brace yourself for incoming nonsense, except nothing comes. “Agent [Last]”, he says, his voice tense and restrained.”I need you to attend the Rite of Descension with me. You will be disguised as a civilian", and then he dismisses you, no hint of mind games he likes to play in sight.

You want to hope that he changed, you succeed and fail at the same time - this new Ajax is pleasant, he’s cold and disinterested, just like any boss should be, yet you just can’t relax and focus wholly on doing the job - it’s a privilege only those who haven’t met Tartaglia can afford.

He’s a sea, treacherous and ever changing, calm and serene in one moment, yet violent and crushing in the other.

You spend the day torn between the anxious thoughts of Tartaglia and what he might do and the preparation for upcoming ceremony - it's a once in a lifetime event, it's Tsaritsa’s will and hope, it's Ajax’s eyes focused on you. You can’t afford to fail, you have no right to do so.

Wearing a simple Snezhnayan overcoat with nothing hiding your face is surely strange after years of donning a fatui uniform. Tourists and Liyuens alike pass by, not paying you any attention. Both vision and delusion glow under the thick fabric, asking you to use them.

You walk faster.

The top of the Yujing Terrace is lit with sunlight and full of human sounds, as merchants and other workers haste to finish their tasks and join the people at the top. You look around, quickly noticing the familiar ginger - he stays half-turned to you, his eyes focused on the figure of Tianquan. You quickly avert your gaze, as if not recognizing him, and shift it towards other people - you spot two vision holders among the crowd too - an electro and geo one, and a strange person cladded in the exotic clothes with some sort of flying fairy(?) floating around.

You walk to the altar placing Liyuen flowers nearby the multiple offerings of food, wine and gold, their simple white petals contrasting against the gaudy luxury of the rest.

"Qingxin flowers?", someone suddenly says, a speck of genuine surprise evident in the phrase. Their voice is too close for your comfort - you quickly turn on the heels, alarmed by a person somehow sneaking up on you only to be met with a pair of the golden eyes.

It’s a nicely dressed Liyuen gentleman, with the air of wisdom and elegance surrounding him, an inner dignity shining from beneath, and most importantly the one you saw wearing a vision at the back of the coat. You try to look as calm as possible, despite the senses telling you otherwise - after years of service any vision holder unadorned by the Fatui colors is perceived as a threat.

“Yes, it is”, you quip back, not wanting to look suspicious: “Is this improper? Qingxin as an offering?”, you mimic a light concern - something that would be appropriate for the foreign merchant who might have offended the god of commerce.

“No, not at all”, Liyuen laughs: “just in all of my years, I have never seen anyone offer these flowers”.

“Huh”, you smile, looking at the man before you. Is he a simple liyuen you thought of him at first? He has Geo vision - the symbol of Archaic Lord’s recognition - and the way he said “all of my years” carry more weight than usual, a mark of something hidden beneath the mundane phrase.

“Something tells me, you must have attended every rite of Descension”, you continue, the starter vague and innocent enough - a perfect way to fish out more information. For some reason, his golden eyes widen a bit, it’s subtle and quick enough to go unnoticed by most people, but you’re not the most people - all Fatui agents are trained to catch even the smallest changes and educated in multiple fields, physiognomy included.

What could have caused such a reaction and why did he react the way he did? The Rite of Descension is a prominent event in the life of every Liyuen, even if it’s annual, as thousands of thousands of people traverse great distances to see their god fly down from the heavens and grace his subjects with the wisdom of countless years. You remember seeing Liyuens living in Snezhnaya consistently take a leave every year for a week, when the prominent date showed on the horizon, missing working days and no doubt a lot of nerves, only to see the archon of their homeland.

So why did that man looks so surprised?

“You’re quite perceptive, aren’t you?”, he responds, voice calm and pleasant, despite the masterfully hidden surprise: “And yes, I have always tried my best to be at every Rite to this day. Rex Lapis shares his experience with his people, so it’s an incredibly important day. And what about you? What brings a foreigner here?”, he makes a gesture at your obviously snezhnayan clothes.

“Well, I am a travelling merchant as you can see”, you raise your hands, showing him more of the coat: “Having blessing from the God of Commerce won't hurt, right?". He, again, reacts in the way you haven't anticipated, a handsome face adopting a contemplating expression for a short second.

"Rex Lapis rewards diligent people, work hard and he shall bless you too", he says with an air of wisdom around him, like an old enlightened monk passing his knowledge to the disciples surrounding him: "And you shouldn't keep your vision beneath the layers of cloth. I feel its chill just standing here, who knows what it will do to your body?".

Then he simply turns away and goes to the exit of Yujing terrace, and it’s your turn to suppress the rising agitation - how did he know, where’s he heading now?

“Wait”, you say: “why are you leaving?”

“I dedicated my whole life to my job, which consists of a collection of small and incredibly repetitive tasks, they took up most of my attention and I slowly, but surely became a creature of habit, deaf and blind outside its limited field of experience and comfort zone. Time never stops, so I decided to leave the work I’ve been entrusted with, and I want to start it by breaking my strongest habit - religiously attending every Rite of Descension”.

“Ah”, you reply, equally impressed by his speech, and feeling that you are talking about two completely different and unrelated topics: “well, good luck on that”.

More and more people flood the terrace as one of the main threats to your plans finally arrives - stern and ambitious, Ningguang looks as elegant and intimidating as ever, geo vision and the tassel attached to it, shaking with every graceful step. She throws a short glance at Tartaglia - he stands surrounded by the rest of the agents - yet her face doesn’t change even a bit, whatever hostility she may hold for your faction masterfully suppressed.

You quickly look around - tourists and citizens arrive at the last minutes and milleliths come with them. Soon, all of the exits are heavily guarded by at least four soldiers, all carrying spears and clad in armour - surely a necessary precaution, given the presence of Fatui and their Harbinger.

There are no milleliths among the crowd though, not in the on-duty uniform at least. You study the group again, this time looking for anyone with weapons, as someone lightly pushes you away - it’s that foreigner again. “I am sorry, we need to go closer”, the pixie-like creature apologizes, as it flies after the stranger, and you conclude that there are no armed people, except you, Tartaglia, milleliths, Ningguang and that strange person.

“The hour is upon us”, Tianquan starts, after looking at the bright sun above, two women around her slightly bowing down, as she invokes the power of geo. The gold glow surrounds and illuminates her whole figure, before condensing into hard rocks of the same shade. They shine and fly around her for a bit, leaving the yellow trails behind before starting to spin around the shrine in the middle of the rock table.

Soon the golden inscriptions on the shrine start to glow too, before it sends a bright orange beam into the blue sky. The crowd "Oh!"s and "Ah!"s as the clouds deform around the pillar of light.

Tension, so thick it can be tasted, descends in the waves upon the Terrace as some - carefree and ignorant - hold their breaths in excitement and anticipation, whilst the rest focus in caution - Fatui and Qingxin alike. You shift, taking out both vision and delusion out of your coat, as your eyes frantically shift between Tianquan, Tartaglia and the spiraling clouds above, your whole being ready to aid Childe in his mission.

And then something unexpected happens: a majestic dragon does descend to his people. By falling straight to the ground. Serpentine body slumps around the crushed offerings, elongated tongue escaping the confines of the maw.

A long second of absolute silence passes before Ningguang collects herself, checks the body and orders milleliths to close off all the exits, as the crowd erupts into turmoil and chaos realizing what exactly has happened. You disguise amongst the panicking masses, hiding two glowing orbs in the deep pockets of your coat,before looking at Tartaglia again - he in turn intently stares at the blonde foreigner, who quite clumsily tries to sneak past the soldiers.

Milleliths catch onto that running after the stranger and you use this opportunity, turning invisible in the same second. People around you are too panicked to question your sudden disappearance or the unnaturally cold breeze swaying past them, as you make your way - Childe has already departed, chasing after the group of soldiers, and Ningguang is seen leaving too, giving the last orders, before turning to the Yuehai pavillion.

You contemplate for a second, unsure what to do - Tartaglia has ordered you to aid him in case of Qixing intervention, there was nothing about the death of your target and the glimpse into Tianquan’s actions might be a key to solving the mystery of said departure. The thing that you plan to do is opportunistic, reckless even - who would have known that Ajax will rub off onto you? You chase after Ningguang, careful to keep yourself invisible.

Who is Rex Lapis’ murderer?

She goes up to the aged man standing at the stairs of the pavilion, they exchange a couple of words before Ningguang steps up on the little floating island and it starts to levitate! You run after her, still unsure what to do - the platform is too small, Tianquan will no doubt feel the chill coming from you, but the opportunity to learn what Qixing are planning is too good to miss.

In the end, you come to compromise, jumping after the rising platform, as your hands clutch into its rough protrusions and you grit your teeth, enduring the pain and cold from the vision overuse. The little island rises higher and higher, as people and buildings underneath turn into small dots. Your fingers start to slide off a couple of times, yet you grab onto the island with a renewed strength everytime that happens, asking Tsaritsa to let fortune favour you.

The platform finally stops moving, and you pull up, once you hear her heels clicking away.

Jade chamber, as it turns out, exceeds all rumours, luxurious and opulent, shining above the prosperous city, it glows under the sunlight with a golden radiance. You would have stopped to admire it if it wasn’t for your goal. You sneak after Ningguang, following her to the office as she takes out papers and folders from the shelves. She focuses on them, as you carefully step near her, glancing at what she’s reading - it’s reports of fatui activity throughout the months, leading to this day, thankfully vague and very far from reality.

Does it mean that she also has no idea of what or who caused Rex Lapis’ death and tries to find his killer? Or does it mean that she looks for a way to deduct Fatui's next actions?

You don’t have time to contemplate, as the frost worsens and you feel cryo energy exhausting from the overuse - one more minute and you’ll become visible. You quickly walk away - you don’t have enough time to reach that platform, so you do the most logical thing - fling yourself out of the window, opening the wings of the glider halfway the jump.

You push the most of your invisibility, letting go of the cryo powers once you're only a couple of meters above the ground. In the end you find yourself tired and frozen to the very bones, slowly coming back to the Northland bank.

***

You approach the building as the Sun begins to set - its pink-orange rays dying everything in the warm glow. The bank looks glorious like that, sinking in the reddish tones, it looks like an illustration out of children’s books - a place of something miraculous, a place of something hopeful.

“Hi”, you throw to the tired Vlad and he nods, after suppressing an escaping yawn: “Is boss here?”

“Yeah”, he croaks, drowsiness evident in his speech: “came back like an hour or two ago. Can’t really remember”.

“Huh.. Well, thanks”, and with these words you enter the bank, pushing the doors and preparing yourself for the confrontation to come.

After chatting with Ekaterina and confirming that yes, he is in his office, you head for the staircase, all of the information you learned today buzzing inside your head.

Childe sits, hunched over the papers, as you enter, not paying you even the sliver of attention. For some reason he’s in a different clothes.

“Eleventh Harbinger”, you start the standard greeting, all formal and stiff: “this subordinate has finished the task”.

This finally prompts him to raise his head, cold blue eyes look at you, no hint of the usual obsessiveness in sight: "you may speak, agent" he succinctly says, putting the writing feather aside. You quickly report to him all you have seen today, without your own thoughts involved - they’re just baseless theories, after all.

“So you say, Tianquan was reading the reports about Fatui activity. Haven’t you destroyed those reports earlier?”

“Those papers contained nothing about the current situation, they were actually far from reality, I doubt that any of those reports survived the fire”.

“Seems, I’ll have to take your word for it”, a sigh, he leans closer in his seat, propping left cheek on the palm: “Why did Tianquan look at them? What was she trying to do? Pin her crime on us?”, he glances at you again, gesturing that you can speak your mind and you do.

“Highly unlikely, sir. From the short time I spent watching her and her reputation, I have an impression that Qixing Tianquan is a person who prefers to plan her every action. If she or any other Qixing higher up, were the one who murdered our target, then every needed preparation would be done months, if not even years in advance. She would somehow cast us as the killers right at the ceremony, in front of thousands of Liyuens, making us a scapegoat for public outrage and creating alibi for herself”.

“So, that’s how you think”, he hums, blue eyes deep in thought: “Your entire conclusion is based on the mere impression. With Tianquan’s ambition I wouldn’t be surprised if she was the one behind this...”, a vague hand gesture: “catastrophic situation”.

“When I sneaked inside the Jade chamber, she looked very frantic, it didn’t show on her face, but her movements were harsh and quick, lacking any of her elegance. She looked like she tried to keep herself together”.

“Anyone would try to do that, especially after killing a god”, he looks somewhere to the left, no doubt imagining battling the dead archon: “Well, my conclusion isn’t based on anything solid either. We don’t know who killed Rex Lapis, but we still need to somehow obtain his gnosis”, the last part isn’t addressed directly to you, it seems that Ajax just decided to voice out his worries.

“You can go”, he says, standing up from the table. You are touching the door handle, when you hear him asking:”what’s with your hand?”. The tone is nothing like that time, yet shivers still go up your spine when you remember what happened that day.

"Frostbite, from my vision", he comes closer to you, hand outstretched to yours: “Can I?”, he asks and waits for your faint nod, before gently pulling it closer to his face.

“It’s a second degree”, he mumbles, inspecting the white-blue discolorations and small angry blisters - the skin throbs and aches at his touch, yet most of it remains numb, muffled, like sounds underwater: “You should get it treated”.

“I should”, you agree, eager to leave this room and situation: “I will ask medics for some..”

“I already discharged them”, his hand suddenly shifts, now resting atop of the door handle, his frame suddenly looming over you: “I have a medkit here, with the ointments and balms. Maybe you should stay here and let me patch you up?”

Why did you even think that Childe could change?

***

Ajax has you sitting on his chair, with sleeves rolled up to the very elbows, as he frets around you - checking the temperature, pulling the warm water closer to you and taking out needed medicine out of the kit. It’s mostly silent, except the tune he quietly hums - Childe looks peaceful and content like this, maybe he likes caring for you.

“Does it hurt?”, he takes a discolored finger, probing around the blister, as the warm hydro energy engulfs your damaged hand. The burst of sensation explodes at this action - pain, tingling, throbbing, even relief.

“Bearable”.

“Understood”, Childe gets back to his task, continuing to rewarm your hands, still humming that tune as he does so. He takes out the healing ointment, when the healthy color and warmth returns to your limbs and spreads it on the skin, bitter herbal scent filling the room in an instant.

“[First]”, he says, as he rubs the place between the index and middle fingers: “I think we need to talk. About that day and your reaction”.

“And what about it?”, you respond, too quickly and snappy for the calm-facade - the memories of that day, of what you thought he will do to you, of how he witnessed you falling apart - all of these are too much, a maelstrom of conflicted feelings rising every time your thoughts stray to this topic. He finishes applying the balm and now switches to the bandanges, wrapping treated hands in them.

“Don’t you think you treat me too harshly, [First]? I understand I may have been… unpleasant in the Past, but I thought we moved past that. What have I done to warrant such ire?”, he says it with his usual smile, but there's a tense, heavy tinge in his words. It’s subtle enough to miss, but you knew Ajax since you both were fourteen, so the strain doesn’t go unnoticed.

Everything, you want to coldly respond, but you stop yourself again - Ajax is still a Harbinger, even if he trailed your steps at the training camp like an overeager and highly murderous puppy not even a decade ago, no matter your own feelings or sentiments or even experiences he still holds that power over you, whether he realizes it or not.

“There were.. things”, broken bones, coppery scent of blood, someone else screams: “training with you wasn’t pleasant for sure”. Childe laughs at the last part, yet the tension clouding in the air doesn’t dissipate, turning more tangible instead.

“I see”, a long pause: “I want to prove you're wrong, I want to prove you that I will never do something against your will”.

You already did. You stay silent at that, anger and fury and frustration boiling underneath, burning and scorching your insides like a magma moments before the eruption. His hands finally wrap the last layer of bandage, tying the ends into a neat little bow, yet he doesn’t let your palm out of your hold, as his lips hover over it, breath burning the skin even through the fabric. And then he releases it, not doing anything.

“Good luck with that”, you finally suppress the inner storm, and stand up from the chair, quickly heading to the door. The place where he almost kissed your tingles and throbs with a renewed strength. Your cheeks burn for some reason.

[luvecult]

Everything we know about Wonder Egg Priority in a simple, easy to follow post.

Weapons

Each girl’s magic weapon transforms from an ordinary item. Its speculated that these items were taken from the dream world, a theory supported by episode six when we see Ai take Yae’s beaded bracelet into the real world. I’s also theorized that these items were once possessed and given to the girls by the girls each of them wish to bring back, which I believe to be a more plausible theory.

Ai’s item is a multi-colored pen, capable of transforming into a complex hammer or mace-like weapon.

Neiru’s item is a [drawing] compass that transforms into a sniper. She is able to control its form and change it into different kinds of guns such as an Assault Riffle. 

 Rika’s weapon is likely a box cutter or razor blade. This would be symbolic of the harm she inflicts upon herself. Her magic weapon takes the form of two individual blades that also resemble scissors, however the lines that appear on them more closely resemble a box cutters. 

Momoe’s item has yet to be shown to us, but her magic weapon takes the form of a long spear or sword so it’s speculated that her item is a [hair] pin, a [sewing] pin, a needle, or some other kind of small, sharp object.

Temporary Weapons

When fighting against the Wonder Killers, we’ve seen the Wonder Egg Girls provide some kind of assistance to the protectors. However, Ai is the only one who’s been able to receive and use physical items given to her by the Wonder Egg Girls to her advantage. Some of the items Ai has used include--

The Gymnast Ribbon from episode two that transforms into a glowing, yellow whip.

The Stick Lights and Cell Phone from episode five that take the form of dual blades.

The Beaded Prayer Bracelet from episode six that allowed Ai to see Yae’s Wonder Killer.

Dream Domains

Each girl has their own domain. For Ai-Chan it’s a school, for Neiru it’s a bridge, for Momoe it’s a train station, and for Rika it’s a cliff. These places are where the girls they’re trying to bring back killed themselves.

Acca and Ura Acca

Acca and Ura Acca’s role thus far has been providing the protectors with assistance by providing them with information about the Dream World, telling them how to defeat Haters, Seeno Evils, and Wonder Killers, and providing them with extra help-- the Pomanders. Acca and Ura Acca are capable of communicating with the protectors in the real world, although its speculated that they do not exist outside of the garden connected to the Dream World. We see them talking to the girls while at the bowling place, we see them spying on the girls when Ai is discussing her mothers relationship with the school counselor, and we see them help and guide Ai in the first episode. Both Acca and Ura Acca closely resemble mannequins, so it’s possible that they only exist in the garden. However, I think it’s possible that they are real people outside of the garden.

A popular theory is that Acca and Ura Acca are completely in control of everything, including what Wonder Egg Girl goes to which protector. This theory leads people to believe that in the final few episodes, Acca and Ura Acca will make it so that the girls each of the protectors are trying to bring back will appear from the Wonder Egg and they’ll have to help them overcome their trauma. 

Wonder Killers

Wonder killers are the personified trauma of the Wonder Egg Girls and are the cause of their suicide. They often have a complex and abstract appearance that is creepily phantasmic. The wonder killers are always symbolic of people and/or things that caused the Wonder Egg Girls to suffer when they were alive. The Wonder Killers seek to lure in and further torment the Wonder Egg Girls. We’ve seen in past episodes that the Wonder Killers are capable of controlling the Seeno Evils.

Seeno Evils

Seeno Evils are small entities that wear black clothing that exist within the dream world. The Seeno Evils are capable of tracking the Wonder Egg Girls no matter their location. They carry knives and leave red paint tracks in the areas they pass over. A popular theory is that the Seeno Evils are symbolic of those who stood around and did nothing while the Wonder Egg Girls were suffering when they were alive. They pretended to see no evil and did nothing to help the girls. Further proof for this is when Rika and Ai are together in the dream world and Rika calls the Seeno Evils “bystanders.”

Haters

As told by Acca and Ura Acca, Haters are born from the spite and envy of Seeno Evils. They closely resemble the Seeno Evils but are green instead of red, which could be symbolism for their envy. The Haters, instead of chasing after the Wonder Egg Girls, chase after the protectors. It’s possible that the haters represent those who envied the Wonder Egg Girls when they were alive. Though they were suffering, there was still something people found envious about them and the Haters represent those people.

Promanders

Promanders are power-ups, as Ura Acca puts it. Each Promander turns into a tiny reptile animal. In order to be used, they must first be activated in the real world with the phrases “Venti” and “Redi.” When brought out in the real world, they are very tiny, but take a much larger form in the Dream World to help the protectors fight against the Wonder Killers and Haters. For Ai, it’s a chameleon, for Neiru, it’s a pink snake, for Rika, it’s a tortoise, and for Momoe, it’s a crocodile. 

One-Liners

Each girl has a catch phrase. Nice flashy touch.

Ai- “Now, I’m mad”

Rika- “I will knock you off your feet with a blow to the heart”

Momoe- "Get Lost"

Neiru- “I will blow your mind”

[hyog-blog]

Hello Saturday (Fangs of Fortune Cast + Liu Yuning)

Finally, I've laughed back a few years of my life after that short-term depression I got having finished watching FoF XD Seriously, these babies are EVERYTHING. It must be one of the most hectic episodes of Hello Saturday I've watched.

Oh, and Tian Jiarui? He's such a babyboy, like the absolutely cutest person, but also has that ferocious extravert energy that borders on violent in terms of people's personal spaces XD I can't, he's hilarious and kind of made for TV shows like this)) To think that he played such a reserved and deeply tormented character like Zhuo Yichen D: He's a really good actor!

I also loved Cheng Xiao, the girl is like a ray of sunshine - and she can MOVE. That dancing challenge was chaos personified in each and every team member of the show. I almost died laughing, they were trying so hard! And dancing Laoshis were literally losing it over everyone :D BUT! When Tian Jiarui demanded a one-on-one dance battle finale (ferociously! like he meant it! :D) our girl Cheng Xiao stole the show and the female dancing Laoshi just instantly fell in love XD

Oh, and the boys TJR and HMH nerding it out about how to jump further, I can't, they're so cute and serious about it XD But they did jump far! And then the girls were happy-celebrating that they didn't need to do it :D But everyone still made them XD Liu Yuning jumped the furthest though XD Those long legs are no joke.

Anyway, everyone is so pretty even without costumes, they look like a bunch of fairies, I kid you not :3 Even when they had to remove half of the makeup from their faces as a 'punishment' XD This show is ridiculous.

And Liu Yuning, my poor boy, they really made him dance this time, like A LOT))) Everyone was so tired in the end they could barely move))

This show is so full of life, go watch it if you haven't yet :D

[romanceforransom]

Are you possibly taking writing prompts? I would love to read about Sanders POV during ep 9 when stays at the mental health centre after his episode

Hi! Nobody has ever given me a prompt before 🥺 but yes I would absolutely love to take them! 

I hope this is close to what you wanted ❤

White walls… so crisp… so clear. Almost like they were trying too hard to make the place welcoming. The only thing that I could think of when I looked around the room was that it felt cold. Not only a light breeze but a feeling inside of me. I was used to the warmth of my own room. The bright colours splattered over the walls and paintings haphazardly scattered around, creating an almost collage effect.

There was only a simple light in the ceiling. Nothing spectacular or eye catching. Just a simple bulb that cast out a dim yellow light across the room. Another colour that was supposed to radiate warmth and comfort. Ironic considering the only shades I would use to personify the location was dark tones of blue and black. A void that swallowed up my lasting feelings of happiness and joy. 

I knew that checking myself in was the right decision. After everything that happened, it was safer for me to be in an environment where I could get the help I needed. But that didn’t stop me from being depressed about the entire situation. The only thing I wanted to do was be curled up in my own bed, surrounded by things that are familiar and radiate a certain amount of solace. Even more than that, to be held in the arms of the sweetest boy that I had ever known. The feeling of his body against mine making me feel like nothing else before.

The night we had shared at the hotel… even though I could feel myself slipping away, the oncoming episode taking its toll on me, being wrapped up so tightly not just physically but also in the feeling of him. Getting drunk off our love.

I wanted to get back to that place so badly. Not the hotel room with the oddly patterned walls and clashing colours. Just the boy that I was falling for… fallen for. There was no use in trying to think I was anything other than head over heels for the small brunette. He was absolutely breath-taking. The most magnificent boy to walk the planet.

Being away from him was a torment like no other. The want to be near him again was almost unbearable. I had run away in the middle of the night and probably left him terrified… all I wanted to do was make sure he was alright and tell him that I was ok too.

But at the same time, sending him a message with so many emotions packed into it would probably just add to his stress. Sending him something more jokey, reassure him that I was still the person that I had always been before and that having a meltdown didn’t change that… it seemed more fitting.

I still had my phone for the time being, so after a while of agonizing over what to write, I settled for a short message.

Me: The last hotel was better

Short but sweet. Light-hearted. Hopefully enough for him to see that I hadn’t changed. And pray that his image of me remained the same as it had been before our picturesque relationship crumbled.

Of course, it was probably an exaggeration of how things had been previously. It had been a rocky start and things definitely were not perfect from an outsiders’ view… but to me, and I hoped to Robbe too, it felt unimaginably magical. Better than anything I had ever experienced in my life. When I was around him, my entire world just felt brighter and more full of light than any other time I could remember. It was like he was my own personal sun, chasing away all the storm clouds that tried to hang over my head.

That was why I needed him so badly. Although the people that worked in the institution tried to be as kind as possible, nobody could compare to the loving nature that my beautiful little Robin had. One flash of his doe eyes and everything inside me would feel so much better.

Even just a text would have sufficed.

But I had to wait for around three hours to get it.

When I heard the ping of the notification coming through, I almost jumped to open my phone and read it. It was the biggest burst of energy I had had since first entering the institution, all of the desire to speak to Robbe building up inside of me and spurring me on.

Yet, what I saw sent my heart plummeting. Like a weight had been dropped onto my chest from a great height.

Robbe: I don’t know what to think anymore. Maybe

we should put an end to this.

Me: To what?

I replied, hoping that it was all just some big misunderstanding. That my sleep-deprived brain was just joining dots together that weren’t actually there. I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t happening… that it would never happen and the love we shared and the memories we had already created would be enough for him to stay.

Robbe: To us

Me: Why?

Robbe: Because there is no us

Clearly it wasn’t enough for him. The thing that I had done when the mania had taken over seemed to have tarnished the image he had of me – of us. It was something that I had been terrified of happening, that he would leave me just like everyone else had before. And I had foolishly hoped that, since we had become so close, he would stay by my side… it was not like I could blame him for wanting to distance himself and cut me out, though. Having someone like me in his life would only drag him down and he deserved to soar higher than anyone had before.

I didn’t reply to the last message. Instead, locking my phone and tossing it down beside me on the bed. White, like the rest of the room.

Suddenly, it didn’t seem like such an odd colour. I had been wrong in my thinking before. Blue and black was not nearly enough to represent my emotions… but white? The colour of blankness. The colour that in some places symbolised mourning.

Well, that is exactly what I did. I laid there on the slightly hard mattress, much like my heart had become, and mourned the death of my relationship with Robbe. I silently said goodbye to the beauty that had come of such a wonderous time in my life and accepted that my future would just be as I was at that moment. White. Colourless. Blank.

[frumfrumfroo]

I'm very curious as to what you mean by "invoking the shadow of Palpatine" being appropriate for TRoS VS what we got. Like, a flesh and blood zombie Grandpa clone dangling from his little Space Crane was certainly one of the most embarrassingly stupid film moments I've ever had to witness, but do you think revealing Palps in some form as the power behind Snoke and the source of Ben Solo's torment is still inappropriate narratively, if it had been handled better and actually resolved?

Basically just that he is The Big Bad of the saga who personified temptation and it’s appropriate to tie the story together by making the last trilogy sort of the ‘clean up crew’ who need to mop up the scattered evil Palpatine left behind. The ST is about loose ends, really, which is the only way it works since its setting is just a reheated OT setting.

I was thinking anything on a scale from ‘his influence lingers in the form of a power vacuum easily filled by another authoritarian who carries on his legacy of appealing to fear, selfishness, and pragmatism’ through ‘Palpatine had some kind of auxiliary plan in place which is triggered/exploited by Snoke/Hux/the Knights of Ren’ all the way to ‘someone gets deep into dark side shit and can use his voice/appearance to fuck with Ben/Leia/anyone old enough to remember the Emperor’.

Like, having him not be dead was always going to be really problematic and undermine the existing story. But I don’t think the connection needs to be as explicit as Palpatine being the literal power behind Snoke. It originally appeared that Snoke was just an opportunist who exploited the Skywalker family’s failure to fully reconcile with Anakin and the weakness of the New Republic in the wake of the Empire’s collapse. I think it’s enough for Snoke to be a Palpatine wannabe and they could easily have included background to that effect in an episode IX where Ben gets to be an actual character whose fall is further clarified (in a scene with Luke where they finally talk about the temple and what really happened) and who speaks post-redemption.

The source of Ben’s torment is the Skywalker legacy, which is Vader’s legacy, and that’s already intimately tied up with Palpatine. They could have just put a bow on that with a very brief flashback to the way Snoke manipulated him with his family’s fear and with their history where he invokes the Emperor. Or just cover it in dialogue with Ben and Luke or Ben and Rey.

And the physical aspect of the fight could be the First Order military (lead by archetypal True Believer Hux) and the Knights of Ren (or ‘Sith cultists’ or the Vader cultists who were allegedly in tros could be trying to manifest the Emperor with dark energy or whatever nonsense if you absolutely have to have a Force user battle). They’re a ‘remnant’, too, so they are part of Palpatine’s shadow already. Fear and complacency allowed the Empire to rise in the prequels and will allow it to return if people don’t stand against it. TLJ did the heavy lifting on reiterating this point already, you just need to follow through. The movie they should be trying to mirror thematically is, appropriately, The Phantom Menace.

Really, the Force plot/A plot could just be Rey saving Ben while the Resistance struggles to survive as more FO generals seize power and shit gets more out of hand without a functional supreme leader holding things to a plan, second act climax be his redemption and defection, and then the third act be F/nn rallying the galaxy to defeat the First Order while Ben and Rey work together on an ultimately life-affirming Force mission of some kind which requires both of them (rescuing Leia from Vader cultists maybe?), plus positive new growth plus reconciliation.

[centaurianthropology]

The Magnus Archives ‘A Guest for Mr Spider’ (S03E01) Analysis

After hyperventilating for a while, because IT’S HEEEERE, I got down to listening to the first episode of season 3, and … well, it wasn’t what I had expected, but it was an absolutely fascinating contextualization of a character we’ve known for a while, and also sets the scene for what we might expect going forward in season 3.  Come on in to hear what I thought about …

 The statement of Jonathan Sims, former Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, regarding a childhood encounter with a book once possessed by Jurgen Leitner.

Hooooo … this is going to be a pretty long post, because we have A LOT to get through.  This episode was exposition-rich without feeling like an info dump, which is a credit to Jonny Sims’ writing.  We got really surprising amounts of information about Sims as a character and about what brought him to the Institute.  But we also got some discussion of recent events as well, from a Sims who seems perhaps a week out from the events of the finale.  

First, we got confirmation for something I had suspected throughout season 2: a lot of Sims’ paranoia was induced by the Not-Them.  But then again, while Sims insists that it was all the Not-Them, I think it was more complicated than that.  I have a feeling that, given the very specific reactions that Sims was having compared to Tim or Martin, it was likely a combination of the Not-Them, the Beholding pricking at him and warning him that there was danger nearby, and his own natural paranoia being hugely exaggerated.  Because Sims has always been a little paranoid.  

He is, however, a lot more self-aware in this episode than he has been in quite some time.  He knows that, for the majority of the last season, he really wasn’t playing with a full deck.  I doubt he’s as recovered from the events of season 2 as he thinks.  While he does sound saner, he still frays and starts sounding a lot more broken again when he discusses the fact that his former colleagues now likely think him a psychopathic killer.  A lot is hitting Sims all at once at this point: the loss of his job, being on the run despite the lack of wide-scale manhunt (my guess is that the investigation into Leitner’s death is going to be a very secret thing, likely undertaken by Daisy alone), and having lost people he might not have even recognized as friends before he did indeed lose them.  Sasha is dead, and Martin and Tim both suspect him of murder.  As dismissive as he was of his assistants, I think he’s feeling their loss a lot more keenly than he thought he would.

But most of that remains subtext or only hinted at, because Sims might think he’s no longer the Archivist, but something is still driving him.  Something has made him find a new tape recorder, new tapes, and to start recording again in the exact same manner he did at the Institute.  One could say it was habit, but I think that the Beholding is still claiming him.  He is still the Archivist, and as such the compulsion to behold and to record is overwhelming to him.  The only way he can start to make sense of everything that happened to him and because of him in season 2 is to finally recount the story that started him down this path, that committed him to the study of the paranormal, and that even seems rooted in some of the stupider decisions he’s made in this podcast’s run.

One thing I noticed, even early on, was that Sims was ready to dismiss almost any statement—no matter how compelling—as insubstantiated nonsense.  And yet whenever Jurgen Leitner’s library came up, he took that statement, even flimsy and without any proof, as 100% fact.  Sims was a believer in Leitner’s library and its horrors, if nothing else at the beginning of this series.  And in this statement, we learn why.  Sims himself had an encounter with one of those books, and it changed him in a fundamental way, setting him on the path to become the Archivist.  For Sims, Leitner was the definition of all that was horrific, supernatural, and evil.  Sims readily admits that he was functioning in a very (understandably) self-centered manner at the beginning of his tenure as the Archivist.  He had experienced the horror of a Leitner book, and so that was real. His fear and his suffering were real, but everyone else was likely lying or hallucinating or drugged.  Sims is a deeply self-centered individual, not because he’s a narcissist, but because he has defined himself as something independent of … well, just about everything and everyone else for basically all of his life.

In addition to being a nicely creepy story, we finally get a lot more insight into what formed Jonathan Sims into the man he is today, and even in his childhood he seemed to be defined by two characteristics that seem to have spilled over into his adulthood: isolation, and a belief in his own intelligence that very frequently veers into arrogance.  We also know that Sims was “a child of the 90s”, so is likely in his early to mid-thirties (I think of children of the nineties as those who remember that period as their childhood, so were likely … five or six in 1990?  Making him 32 or 33ish?).  We also know he looks considerably older than his actual age, even to the point of already having graying hair.  We know that both of his parents are dead.  His father died when he was two of an accidental fall, and his mother died a few years later due to complications of a routine surgery.  As such, the only caretaker Sims really knew was a grandmother grieving her dead son, and who resented having to care for a rather difficult grandchild.  Sims’ sense of isolation clearly started early, as while he doesn’t seem to have any outright hostility toward his grandmother, there is a definite distance in the way he discusses her.  She tried her best, but they were clearly never particularly close, and Sims in turn never really developed any deep bonds in his childhood.  The entire statement is devoid of mentions of friends or profound connections.  Even the person who eventually saved him from the book wasn’t a friend, but instead a bully who used to torment Sims, and whose name Sims can’t remember.

This all fits so well with everything we’ve already learned about Sims.  Sims really doesn’t get the idea of family.  think Martin’s story didn’t resonate with him nearly so much as it might with others partially because of the Not-Them’s paranoia, but also partially because the idea of completely upending his life and lying about something fundamental like who and what he was for someone he loved was something that Sims didn’t quite comprehend.  Sims has always functioned for himself first and foremost.  Putting others before his own self-interest is something he is clearly working to be better at.  Indeed, he does have moments of great selflessness, like when he tried to protect his assistants by sending them home in ‘The Librarian’.  But while Martin is naturally caring, and puts others before himself even to a fault, such actions are not natural to Sims.  

Instead of friends, Sims has always preferred books.  But even in that, Sims was difficult to please.  He apparently disliked reading anything that seemed familiar, meaning he would only ever read any given author once, and any given subject once.  His grandmother took to buying every second-hand book she could find that was 50p or less, and just presenting him with piles of books to sort through and choose ones he actually found interesting.  

And second-hand books, of course, lead us straight to the library of Jurgen Leitner.

The description of ‘A Guest for Mr Spider’ is somehow even more chilling than most of the other Leitner books, because it’s a picture book.  The implication there seems to be that it specifically targets children. The strange, horrid, twitchy illustrations depict a series of flies in various costumes coming to visit Mr Spider, only to vanish as more and more of Mr Spider’s home is covered in brown ink and Mr Spider becomes more bloated.  The final consumption of Mr Horse and his son sets clear the context that the book wants children.  It will take older people, and indeed it does end up taking the 19-year-old bully who snatched the book from Sims before he could finish it, but this was a book meant to be found and read by a child.  A child who, like Sims, recognized the book instantly as something wrong and horrific, and yet who was powerless to stop reading.  Who would be drawn through the streets to a house that wouldn’t be found later.  A house full of darkness and webs, and long spider legs.  It puts one in mind of Raymond Fielding.  I wonder if, when reading the statements regarding the house on Hill Top Road, Sims saw reflected in those experiences that house from his own childhood.  Did he read Ronald Sinclair’s statement about Fielding, about the children bound in webs in his basement, and think of himself and that nameless bully?  Or did he ever think to tie those spiders together with Mr Spider?

I wonder if he might not have done.  Rather than focusing on the house and the spiders, Sims seems to have focused all his fear and his anger at Jurgen Leitner.  He would dismiss the statements about spiders readily enough at the beginning, but never a statement about Leitner.  In Sims’ mind, the supernatural was rare, with the majority of the statements he read—even those on tape—made up of hoaxes.  But Leitner was evil personified, and had tapped into some primal power that he wielded to harm 8-year-old Jonathan Sims and reshape his entire perception of how the world worked.

It shines a whole different light on how profound actually meeting Leitner must have been for Sims. Leitner wasn’t some great villain or all-powerful master of the things in his books.  He was a stupid, arrogant man who thought he could control and define things without control or definition.  He was, as Sims says in this episode, a spoiled child.  He looked at the nightmares in this world and thought he had the ability to confront them and contain them purely because he was interested and had a big enough ego to think he could.  He decided to create a way to hold the supernatural to his own whims, much as Robert Smirke had done with his architecture.  But whatever power Smirke wielded that made him so lastingly effective, Leitner lacked.  He contained the books only for a brief time, and then they all found their way back into the wild, potentially more readily available than they had been before. Even his and Gertrude’s scheme to destroy the Institute could well have been similarly short-sighted, and just another effort to exert control from a man who was ultimately just as powerless as anyone else.

This man, who Sims had so feared and hated, is remarkably similar to Sims.  They both believe that if they confront the horrors of this world, they will somehow have the ability to resist and defeat them.  They are both isolated, both believe themselves more intelligent than they actually are, and are both supremely arrogant.  Leitner isn’t a monster.  He’s a cautionary tale.

And now Sims lacks that driving fear of Leitner.  He lacks a job, and he’s realizing that everything he set out to do in season 1 and even his desire from childhood to protect people from the darkness has roundly and repeatedly failed.  He wanted to organize the archive and failed.  He wanted to disprove the majority of the supernatural statements that weren’t directly related to his own trauma, and he failed.  He wanted to keep his assistants as far from harm as possible, and he failed.  And now he’s on the run.  He’s out in the wild without direction or any real idea of what he needs to do.  

So he falls back on compulsion.  He records his own statement, lacking anyone else’s.  He hides and he looks at the shattered remains of his life.  Something is going to happen, I’m certain, to roust him from this hiding space, and to plunge him into the wider world of the supernatural.  Having him out of the Institute may well be exactly the boost to his skill and his understanding that Elias thinks it will be.  He will see the powers of his world in a much more direct fashion.  He may well be able to get statements from faction members who would never set foot inside the Institute.  And he will likely be in terrible danger from all of them. We still don’t know what it means to be the Archivist, but we know that whatever it is, members of other factions want the Archivist.  They want to use him, or tell him things, or get information from him, or kill him. But Sims’ position makes him marked, not only by the Beholding, but every supernatural entity out there.  And this season, I think we’ll learn a lot more about what that really means.

This was quite the episode for big reveals regarding the backstory of Jonathan Sims, and what makes him the man he is today.  So much of it jives perfectly with the man we’ve gotten to know.  He’s protective of others, but in an abstract way that speaks more to a belief that this is the way he ought to be than a sense of genuine connection with others.  And yet he believes enough in this abstract sense of right and wrong that he is willing to put himself in danger to protect innocents.  It was why he tried to deck Michael when he realized a woman had been snatched right under his nose.  Looking back, that experience must have been even more traumatic for him than it had seemed at the time, given how closely it resembled what happened when he was a child. There was someone else walking through a door, never to be seen again, while Jonathan Sims stood by helpless to stop it.  So many of the previous statements have new resonance now that we know how closely Sims’ own experience mirrored them.

His early isolation, as well as seeing someone snatched up by Mr Spider, goes a long way to explaining why he wouldn’t reach out to Martin or Tim throughout season 2, even when he knew he should.  It explains why he’s been so hesitant to foster anything but the most professional relationships with them, despite Martin’s best efforts.  He’s never learned how to connect with anyone on a deep and meaningful level, and he’s only now realizing how detrimental that can be.

More than that, there is a guilt in Sims, unacknowledged and perhaps unconscious, that this bully he can barely even remember died and thereby saved him.  Imagine the guilt that rears up when Leitner revealed that Gertrude had three assistants, and they all died.  Imagine his guilt when he realizes that Sasha is dead and he never even noticed because of the Not-Them.  Imagine his guilt when he realizes that Tim and Martin are unable to quit, and are therefore meant to die for him as well.  These people he could almost call his friends, and some great and unknown power will kill them just because that’s what the assistants of an Archivist do.  There may well be some unconscious belief that if he just pushes them away, if he keeps them as far from him as possible, and if he stays away from the Institute, he can save them.  I doubt that’s the way it works.  I think that something will draw Sims and Martin and Tim back together, but I think that Sims is always going to be operating with that low-level terror that more people, people he cares about this time, people with names and faces he will remember, are going to end up dying because of him again.  Sims has massive amounts of survivor’s guilt, I think, and he doesn’t even realize it.

Conclusions

Starting the season out with a deep-dive character study wasn’t what I expected, but I really liked it. We now have a good idea of what’s going on with Sims right now, and have a better understanding of his head-space. He’s staying with Georgie, the hostess of the ‘What the Ghost’ podcast, and someone Melanie once mentioned actually spoke pretty well of Sims.  It’s still not clear if Sims and Georgie were once romantically involved, but he’s now staying in her guest room and cat-sitting for her.  Their conversations are awkward, like two people who haven’t interacted in years and are suddenly together and realizing how little they have in common.  

I’m interested what they’ll do with Georgie.  I’m honestly hoping she’s not another outsider character, as we already have that in Basira Hussain.  It would be more interesting if she was already an insider, perhaps a member of the Open Eye or working with Trevor the Vampire Slayer or something.  She’s said she’ll believe anything.  What if that’s because she’s already seen so much and has way more contacts in that world than Sims?  What if she’s not just a random character, but the gate through which he’ll be thrown head-first into the wider world of the supernatural in TMA?  That would be a fun twist.

I’m also hoping that, now that we’ve established Sims, we get to see what’s happening at the Institute. What is Elias doing to clean up after season 2?  Was that Daisy on the teaser trailer?  Is she hunting Sims?  If she is, does she intend to deal with him the same way she deals with other supernatural threats?  Is Martin the Interim Head Archivist?  Is Tim still there?  What is their relationship like now?  There are so many questions.  We’ve gotten a surprising number of answers about Sims, so I’m hopeful we’ll start to get a few about our other favorite characters as well starting next week.

[flyingseacow]

Star Wars - The embrace and rejection of love (part 1)

After seeing The Last Jed twice I must say that I am firmly in the love-it camp.    I understand some of the criticism, (the communication misnomer in particular) but there is just too much goodness for me to dislike it in any way.

One of the things the movie did for me was actually making Kylo Ren more appealing. He is still a walking garbage-fire and I want to see Rey to slamdunk him into a reactor core sooo much. But The Last Jedi did give me enough to put him into the mythology of the Star Wars universe in an interesting way.

And in doing so, I found an overarching theme that I need to talk about.

Love.

Love have always been something of a power in all the movies, but The Last Jedi punctuates it in ways I had not seen coming, and it is fascinating what love means for all the characters throughout the series, and so I will go through it under the cut, with focus on specific characters from The Last Jedi.

This part will focus on most of the force sensitive characters.

Obviously massive spoilers, and beware, this will be long.

Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader

So, while his presence in TLJ was near nothing, I need to begin with Anakin, for it all begins here. From the very first episode, Anakin is a person who embraces love, who hungers and grasps it with all his might. And this is his undoing. 

Yoda is not wrong when he days that fear leads to suffering. It is Anakin’s deep love of his mother, and the pain of her loss that firmly puts him on the path of the dark. Not that Anakin wasn’t without troubling idea’s to begin with. Both due to Palpatine’s manipulations, but also most likely due to his upbringing as a slave. Anakin do genuinely want the galaxy to be a better and kinder place at first, but the Jedi clearly fails to bring him the right solutions, and the prequels does make a good job of showing the bureaucratic restraint that the order has been lulled into. Slowly Anakin turns to idelogy of fascism and dictatorship. 

And so, when the he fears the loss of Padme, the love of his life, and the Jedi only tells him to let go, while the Sith offers to stall death, Anakin grasps love so tightly and so smothering he literally ends up choking it.

Anakin murders and burns down anything that stand between him and his love, and so he fails, killing the very thing he coveted.

Darth Vader is born from the ashes of lost love, and is terrifying in his coldness and effective destruction of everything standing in the way of the Empire. For Vader has given up everything for love lost, and so he only has the ambitions of the Empire to fight for, and a heartless Emperor to love.

Then Luke appears.

Luke, the very embodiment of Anakin’s love to Padme, one of the things he burned down a galaxy to protect.

Vader is now split, and the conflict appears. For throughout the years he has come to love the Empire, and the Emperor as only a trapped apprentice can, but his love for Padme was never gone, and now his son appears.

Thus, as any proper Sith would do, Vader aspires to overthrow Sidious, and place himself and his son on the throne. Had Padme not opposed him, Anakin would have done the same, killed both the Jedi and Sith, finally crowning Padme as eternal empress of the galaxy.

And so Vader’s offer to Luke is genuine, a last chance for Vader to fulfill his dream of remaking the galaxy according to his will, with his loved ones at this side.  

But Luke rejects him, rejects the dream, but this time Vader refrains from choking love, instead falling back into the role of the apprentice, watching as Sidious tries to turn Luke into his replacement.

But this time Luke reaches out, offering a different path, a different love. And in his final moment, Anakin is reborn as Vader grasps this love offered, ending the nightmare he himself created and dies doing the one thing he always wanted. 

To save those he loves.     

Luke Skywalker

Luke is a mirror to Anakin.

Both embraces love, both fight for love, both will do everything they can for love.

But where Anakin would burn the world, Luke would burn himself first.

At all times Luke puts himself on the line first, leaving behind even destiny and power for the chance to keep people safe. Even when it seems hopeless, even when he knows it is a trap, a trick meant to harm him, he will try. He will go to Bespin, he will reach out for Vader when he glimpses the glowing embers of love. “I will save you” He says. “We will survive.” He says, radiating hope and positivety.

Where Anakin closed himself around the few, brutally cutting away anything that did not fit, Luke opens his arms, radiating love to all who will receive it. 

It makes him perhaps a bit naive, and very vulnerable despite his power, but also makes him a glowing sun of hope. 

It is no wonder that Skywalker becomes a legend.

And so Luke fails when his unending love is not enough. Not that Luke had not before meet those without love. The Emperor is a black hole of darkness, but ultimately evil in simplicity. Jappa the Hut was greed and hedonism personified, and Luke only gives him the simple chance of letting go.

Deep evil is not confusing to Luke, but an absence of love and an obstacle to be overcome with love.

But what does one do when evil appears in someone who was already loved? Someone who was surrounded with love for whole their lives? Someone who Luke deeply and sincerely love from birth? His own flesh an blood?

This is not a new thing in neither stories or real life. How often do we not hear of people committing atrocities, and their families stands left behind, confused, betrayed and uncomprehending how this could occur?

And so Luke fails Ben, and he cannot comprehend how, cannot fathom why, and in one horrible moment Luke acts with the blind terror of seeing something alien and foreign, something terrible and threatening. 

The Rejection of Love.

Vader may have struggled with his love, but he did not reject the very idea of it, he may not have seemed to feel worthy of Luke’s love in the form it was given, but he was never denying love, only what his options where, what reality offered him.

But not Ben. Ben was a deep churning darkness, a chaotic maelstrom of violence and hatred, rejecting the hands reaching for him, surrounded by light as he was.

But despite the urge to end the threat, Luke still cannot commit to it, he acted with instinct, not thinking, and will forever be tormented with the shame of it. 

But he almost did, and so everything he build is destroyed, the Legendary Luke Skywalker is a lie, and his actions, his failure sets loose a new darkness on the galaxy.

And so Luke hides himself away, placing himself as the greater threat, and thus removes it. For he can only worsen it with his failure, if he tries to mend it, he is likely just to make it worse.

Shame is obviously a motivator, the sheer pain of failure, not just to the galaxy, but to his family.

Perhaps he sought out the first scriptures with hope, searching for an answer, or maybe he saw the whole Jedi order as a failure from the beginning.

After all, the old Jedi created Vader, and he created Kylo.

“The Force does not belong to the Jedi”

So arrogant the Jedi where, claiming ownership of something that truly belongs to all living things. It is better if they all die out, that they are destroyed, so that they cannot harm others, no longer create monsters by failing love, as he did.  It must be his mistake, and his alone, for how else could a boy, a sweet young boy surrounded by so much love, ever reject it so willfully and darkly?

Ben also failed Luke, but Luke struggles to understand this, and may never understand what fully created Kylo, for Luke is love.

Luke understands love, he even understands, and fears, the absence of love. But the willful rejection, the violent wish to burn down even those wanting to help. That he cannot understand, and so he hurts and hides himself in agony and bitternes. Ironically falling into the same darkness that his father did, binding himself to an idea. 

And so Father and Son mirrors again. Anakin ends in bitternes from trying to control his loved ones and the world around them, Luke ends in bitternes from trying to shield his loved ones from himself and his failures.

And it is in the end, when Luke returns to his love, when he finds forgiveness, not from the one he failed, but from himself and those who truly love him, that he finds peace. 

Kylo Ren/Ben Solo

Where the Skywalkers both embraced love in different ways. Kylo rejects it. 

Kylo is chaos, death and destruction, and seemly without reason. 

Previous sith always had a goal, an outlet for their passions; power, revenge, a belief in a specific order of the universe, or simply the preservation of love. 

What do Kylo want?

“Burn the past, kill it if necessary” 

But when you simply burn away everything, kill and salt the past, reject everything given to you. What is left?

Destroying the past may free you to become something new, but you need to have something to become at first. And Kylo has nothing but the destruction of himself.

Killing Han Solo did not make Kylo stronger, in reverse it simply made him weaker, more lost and chaotic.

It is no wonder Snoke is so disappointing,but is perhaps of his own making, something was missing in Snokes plan, in his training. For Kylo, despite his raw power, fails to focus, fails to fully dedicate himself. His anger explodes in childish fits, flashy and destructive, but ultimately pointless.

Kylo is, in many ways, the worst sith to ever grace the galaxy.   

Kylo cannot become as Vader, will never be able to reach the power Vader had. For Vader did not reject love, Vader did not kill the past just to become something else. 

Anakin became Vader in the name of love.

Poisoned, warped love, but still love.

And as long as Kylo keeps trying to kill those who loves him, and whom he loves back, regardless of how hard he tries to deny these feelings, he will never be able to become what he thinks he needs to be.

His goal is hollow, pointless and nothing but empty destruction. For each bridge he burns, he simply kills more of himself, becoming less and less.

And perhaps he already know this himself.

But Kylo is so obsessed with killing the past, so blinded by his ritualistic rejection of love, that he cannot grow, cannot center himself, cannot admit that his failures lays at the feet of his own actions. Instead he acts as a destructive toddler, crying and screaming at a world that does not grand him the things he feels entitled to.

And he keeps chasing any lead that may justify his beliefs, punishing and killing any who tries to disprove him. 

So he is drawn to Rey. For Rey has power, Rey has focus. In Rey he could find proof of his beliefs. He sees how she clings to her past, to a hope of love lost. If only she could be convinced to let go, as he tries, to burn her past, and become more powerful for it. 

Kylo needs Rey, in a deeply selfish hunt for confirmation.

“You are nothing, but not to me.”

And so he has believes. For Kylo had spend so much time rejecting love, that he has convinced himself that love cannot make a person grand. That it is only through rejection that you can become great.

Kylo proposes Rey to follow him, as Vader proposed Luke. 

But Vader loved Luke. His offer was toxic, but laced with true affection, love and passion. Vader had a goal, a dream of a future he wished to see forfilled. 

Kylo belittles Rey, mocks her feelings for Han and Luke, tells her she is nothing without him, spitting in the hope and love of a future in the light that she offered first. For Kylo does not have anything to offer but fire and destruction, he only wants her to convince himself of his delusion. He does not want an equal, he may seek her out of loneliness, but he refuses to truly listen, refuses to acknowledge that he might have been wrong.  

And so Kylo fails. 

He may have been manipulated by Snoke for years, and his family may have failed to reach him or even understand the depth of the darkness he was falling into.

But he still made the choice to reject love. Makes it abundantly clear that he does this by choice, by forceful ideology. Rejecting and killing them at any moment they do reach out. Rey tried to hard, so naively to reach him, guide him back to the light, prepared to forgive even his atrocities, if only he will help end the nightmare of the First Order. 

And yet he still rejects love, continuing down his spiral of darkness into mad nothingness. 

Rey

Where Kylo is chaos, Rey is focus.

Where Kylo destroys and rages, Rey builds and learns.

Where Kylo regresses, Rey grows.

If Anakin and Luke are mirrors, Rey and Kylo are counterpoints to each other.

Rey, who has been through more hardships than most. Anakin at least had a loving mother, and an owner who saw value in keeping him well fed and encouraged his passions.

Rey was left alone for so long, with nothing but a faint hope of her family returning. Yet she clings so deeply to this hope, grasps at the flickers of love she craves.

Yet Rey isn’t bitter. 

She is curious, and compassionate, with a strong sense of justice, and once she sets a goal, she keeps to it.

At first this is a hindrance. Her hope and obsession with staying and returning to Jakku harms her. Yet she cannot let go of the smoldering embers of love for her family.

For Rey embraces love. 

Not with the consuming fire of Anakin, nor the enveloping light of Luke.

But with dedication.

It is almost frightening what Rey can do once she sets her mind to it. The force comes easily to Rey, and not just the light side, even the dark side she explores, and with a willingness that horrifies Luke. 

And one wonders, the prophecy that Anakin was thought to embody, what if they were wrong? What if it is Rey, who will find the balance between light and dark, and walk the grey path?

Luke does not comprehend the dark, he knows what it is, but he does not contemplate it.

Rey does. Rey meets the dark, willingly, raging in righteous anger, yet without getting consumed. For Rey understands the dark, have lived in nothingness, and pain and loneliness, with only her hope and her focus keeping her afloat for so many years.

And when offered kindness and love, she takes it, embraces it and returns it.

It was not an instant thing. Han Solo offered her everything she may have dreamed of; the life of a pilot, freedom and something that could have been a new family. But Rey had made a promise, a pact with herself bound in love, and at first she turns away, pained, confused and sad. But still grateful.

Finn leaving also hurts her, and with the reveal of her force-sensitivity she is  torn and pained.

But Rey grows, she overcomes. She finds a new hope, a new plan, and forges a new pact of love. This time founded around Finn, a person whom she now loves, and who loves her in return, who fought for her, who bleed for her. 

The one who came back.

Rey learns, she adapts and flourishes. 

She doesn’t understand Kylo, cannot see how he can reject so much love offered. But she has hope, and she can face the darkness, so she searches for Ben, and naively, thinks that she has reached him.

Luke did the same for Vader, so why could she not do the same? Finn turned his back on the First Order, so why should Kylo not be able to do the same? She decided to forge a new path, and leave Jakku, searching for answers elsewhere, so why should Ben not could do the same?

She have found the legendary Luke Skywalker, and found him wanting, yet she still believes in the legend.

And here she fails, and Ben fails her. 

But she moves on, hurt, betrayed, hopefully wiser.

For Rey is focus, Rey is dedication, Rey is a new beginning. Forged in love, in hope, in darkness embraced and overcome.

For when Rey confronts the truth of her past, she lets it go, she does not burn it away, but accepts it and turns towards her future instead. There may no longer be any love in her past, but she can grow from this, she can release herself from the pain, and beyond it is her new life. For she have found new loved ones, people who deserves her love, who loves her back.

Rey does not need to kill the past to become who she is meant to be. She makes the choice to become something herself.

There is a irony in a way, for if Rey did turn to the dark side, If Rey did let herself fall into despair, and burn everything away, she would likely have become the most terrifying sith ever. With her power, and her focus, and her easiness with the Force, she could have destroyed Kylo in an instant. He was lucky she rejected his offer, he would have been nothing compared to her. Snoke was a fool for simply wanting to kill her. Had he done as Sidious attempted with Luke and succeeded with Anakin, he would have gotten the Vader he coveted.

And so Rey instead is now affirmed in her beliefs of love, choosing Finn, choosing the Rebelion, choosing the light? That remains to be seen.  

As of now Rey has closed the door, and turned her back on Ben.

For Kylo is a self-destructive black hole.

And Rey is pulsar of focused dedication and love. 

TL:dr - The overall theme of Star Wars is love. Anakin, Luke and Rey all embrace love in different ways, making them dangerous, powerful and flawed people. Kylo rejects love, making him a terrible and childish person, but at least The Last Jedi made him slightly interesting and made him fit with the rest of the story, if only in confirming his uselessness.

[zalrb]

No. Can you explain why not please?

Because symbolically and narratively, I think Stefan is the only character on the show who is treated as a vampire.

I saw your really long ask about how “theologically” Katherine and Klaus are true vampires along with Stefan because Katherine has spent 500 years on the run and isolated and “forgot how to love” in the process and Klaus is power hungry but for me, that isn’t enough, there isn’t anything particularly vampiric about these narratives except for the fact that they were immortal.

Stefan is the archetypal vampire.

He is tortured by his eternity which is why the whole “hell” plotline of season 8 really bothered me because vampirism is supposed to be its own hell, that’s the point, they’re denied eternal rest and are tormented by their sins forever:

Vampirism is also a metaphor for excess and marries sex with death: “The vampire represents this excess as he personifies “those aspects excluded or rejected by society, its existence in itself denotes excess”. In addition to this, Calabrese associates this vampiric excess to the exotic erotic which alludes to the scandal and breaks the boundaries of what is socially acceptable. In this sense the vampire’s bite is linked with the erotic. Further to this explicit erotic act‟we have an unavoidable act with death.”

It can be argued that because Katherine sleeps with both Damon and Stefan in 1864 she represents a break in boundaries of what is socially acceptable but even that isn’t enough for me because how does TVD make that break in social boundaries inherently linked to the vampiric instead of Katherine simply being a woman who is breaking social boundaries?

With Stefan, his bite is frequently linked to both death and the erotic, which should not be confused with what Damon does or what Katherine does. Katherine will bite during sex because a bite is erotic and Damon will sleep with his victims as he uses them (as will Katherine) but when Stefan feeds on particular women, his goal is the blood but the feeding itself is erotic, the death is erotic:

and because of the ripper, he is a representation of excess

Even his behaviour changes into someone who indulges excessively when he’s high on blood

Not to mention, on a non-symbolic note, that Stefan acts non-human in the beginning episodes, he’s statue-esque

and becomes more and more human the more he interacts with Elena. Back to symbolism, vampires can also represent isolation and a sense of non-belonging:

And of course these aren’t the only metaphors within the [Western] vampiric mythology, the blood-sucking vampire has been likened to the blood-sucking capitalist or the fear of the unknown/fear of what’s foreign and what’s “Other”, True Blood shifted the narrative into vampirism being a metaphor for sexual liberation instead of the danger of excessive sexuality but I still don’t see how Klaus and Katherine fit into these categories that highlight their vampirism. Like yes, Katherine says that she wants a life with Elijah, she’s tired of running from Klaus and wants to put down roots but that can be like anyone who is running from something, which is my issue. What vampires represent should still entwined with the condition of vampirism

And Klaus, for me, he’s one of the better portrayed vampires on TVD but I wouldn’t put him on par with Stefan and I actually find him to be more representative of a werewolf than a vampire.