#this man makes me froth at the mouth

[starry-bi-sky]

mmmmmm read a disciple shen yuan/shizun luo binghe fanfic about two days ago where the first chapter was the Immortal Conference arc, and SQQ was the one who had to be pushed into the abyss (he was still the villain) except Luo Binghe was refusing and was like, lowkey losing his mind about SQQ being so close to the edge. SQQ ended up having to be the one to fall in himself because of the system's punishment system. The rest of the fic is leading up to that moment. But like, MMM i've been obsessively thinking about that first chapter for DAYS ever since.

now i've been in svsss for a grand total of *checks watch* a week. but god obsessed with that. I want to write/read a fic where disciple SQQ goes a little nuts down there. Like keep all of the things that make SQQ, SQQ, but just. Throw in a little bit more trauma in there. A little bit of a mental break. Let him go a little nuts as a treat. Just a tad unhinged. I wanna see him go, just a little, "god fuck it, i've tried so hard to change this shitty story's outcome and it feels like everything i've done has been for nothing. I'm going to die in this world no matter what I do, I've been doomed from the start, so might as well die the way I want to." and he just, breaks a little! Under all the stress.

He still retains the traits that makes shen yuan, shen yuan, like his overwhelming kindness. But he's just! yk. A little less patient. Paranoid. Jumpy. Colder. A little more aloof and closed off. A little more Shen Jiu. He's no asshole child abuser, but he was a Number One Hater in his past life and he's leaning into that old habit a little more now.

(On a totally coincidental not-at-all related note, there's not enough SJ-and-SY-are-the-same-people fics out there that i've found. This is totally unrelated...)

The Endless Abyss turns the mind into an over-sharpened blade, and SQQ is both fascinated and perhaps a little excited to explore a place that doesn't have a lot of info on it in the mortal realm, but still terrified out of his mind. And he's no Luo Binghe, he doesn't have the sheer brute strength and power to just bulldoze his way through, so he has to be a lot more sneaky and cunning if he wants to survive.

The fic itself role-swapped LBH and SQQ so that SQQ was the half-demon (which lowkey fucks) and LBH the human, but I'm equally-if-not-more obsessed with the idea that LBH remains the half-heavenly demon and SQQ the human. If only because I keep thinking about SQQ befriending some demons (particularly and specifically a group of succubi) and they grow very attached to this Human Cultivator so through magic plot stuff they create some kind of seal/illusion/talisman that makes SQQ appear as a demon because a human cultivator in the endless abyss may as well be the equivalent of putting a giant neon target on your back.

And iirc Shen Jiu was taught demonic cultivation by that one guy(?? i've only been here a week so im not caught up in ALL of the lore yet) so that could totally happen here.

(On the other end of the realms, poor Shizun Luo Binghe is just. losing his fucking mind over losing his most precious and beloved disciple. About .5 seconds from burning down the peaks himself. somebody sedate him.)

The Endless Abyss sucks and SQQ is having a really terrible time and can feel himself going lowkey mad, but also holy shit look at all this WORLD-BUILDING. look at all this flora and fauna, and oh if he had the equipment for it he'd be writing all of this down. ALL OF IT. He was kinda-sorta-already planning on never leaving the Abyss as some sort of fucked up self-exile and self-preservation thing, but now he might? actually just?? never leave if he can help it, like he lowkey likes it down here.

anyways the next time anyone ever sees SQQ again he's got hair so long its almost touching the ground and he's either in rags and half-feral or he's been completely dolled up by his adoptive succubi sisters and still about three seconds from biting anyone who tries to touch him. (he's also lowkey trying to book it back down to the abyss even if he has desperately missed all of his friends and shizun)

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

thinking about Eddie & hyacinths again

[khainovo]

i may have an unhealthy obsession with an unreleased character.

[joeymerenset]

Song of the Crimson Nile, S2 Ch6

THE SET CG?!

SCREAMS

SCREAMS LOUDER

HOT DAMN THIS SCENE CARRIED THE EP

Sir I am shitting myself just thinking of you from the moment I met you, if you decided to take your wrath out on me, I’d thank you. But yeah, “I like you” works too

[iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid]

read some unbelievably well written fic last night, like the kind of thing that blows you out of the water and rewrites your brain chemistry for the rest of the week and makes you want to reread/study it so you can one day write like that, like it's inspiringly fucking good, and then i go to the person's tumblr and scroll for a bit and suddenly see a fanart they reblogged of MY fic. very much a "gordon ramsey just walked into my kitchen and asked if i was making enough ramen to share" moment

[izzehands]

[calumhoodgoss]

GUYS WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THIS

WHAT THE FUCK

[lolli-says-stuff]

I literally accidentally threw my phone at my mother when I saw this in my camera roll

[fuck-off-im-ace]

A while ago i listenned to "A House in Nebraska" by Ethel Cain and honestly i don't think i've moved on since. On all levels except physical, i am still in that Nebraska house.

[greenerteacups]

falling in love with writing all over again when you write a scene that makes you giggle and kick your heels like you're five years old and learning that you can make your barbie dolls kiss

[magnusmodig]

||. thinking about thor-specific insecurities and mentalities he'd have having grown up with a parent like odin ... who loved but was seemingly never emotionally available [insert fully fleshed out headcanon here] about thor's mentality on love being so contradictory to his core value of love and how love - for him - is CONDITIONAL . it is finite . it is based on worthiness and selflessness and works . what can he offer , and how swiftly , how surely ? ESPECIALLY in the way of protection, because his love comes from his hands, his toils, his works, his devotion, his protection. thor and the struggle of love being something so easily pulled from right out from under his feet. the inherent expectation that love will leave him because love does not want him — and all of his self-sabotaging (namely : his emotional withdrawals) with his core relationships coming from an internalization of that. (re: jane... but notably, platonically, he also pulls away from steve in AoU) he's "loved" for his role as the crown heir, he's "loved" for his strength and joy and hope , his might and valor, he's "loved" as a protector or as an ally, he's """loved""" for being physically attractive – and none of this is enough and it has never been enough even when he sought these things out (his entire 2011 facade), but all of this is what he has and all he's ever known. something here about how jane flies in the face of that because she is gentle and she is kind. or how, once, loki also flew in the face of that because he is thor's brother and he is persistent but then loki turned away and wanted him dead. so of course if his own family can't love him and can't stay, then why would jane? and so then it becomes this subconscious, self-imposed waiting game until jane figures out what thor already knows. or when the avengers find out what he already knows : this is finite / this is not meant to least / this will end in ruin / and maybe he ruins love , as the common denominator here, and maybe love is not meant for him to touch so much as it is to guard. something something else thor + the mentality of there's some things you hold close and things that you keep sacred / you cannot be both . especially with jane but MAYBE, just maybe ... also with most things.

[portmantaur]

because I am a Very Normal person who does Extremely Normal and Understandable Things

I finally watched the Amazing Maurice animated movie and had a little cry near the end. it was so clear that at least a few key people on the art team had an intense love for the source material - a reverence, even. I mean, there’s even a reference to Dibbler’s invented toilet dragon as the fountain in the town square, which is such a throwaway line that I can’t actually remember which discworld book it’s from without looking it up (but I -think- it might be a Watch book). The Morpork owls as a recurring motif. Twurp’s Peerage and the bat-embroidery on the chair in almost all of the scenes from which Malicia is narrating. Obviously the bust of Pratchett in the mayor’s office. There were so many visual references to the whole body of work, not just the exact source material, that I can’t even remember them all. I could feel the love coming from the art/design team.

And then the script itself betrayed so much of the original narrative’s purpose that I ended up crying a little (you can’t judge me, remember we already established I am Incredibly Normal and thusly Not Weirdly Emotional About Inconsequential Things). It did not strike me as a movie that would have survived into being made had Pratchett been alive - which is not surprising, he pretty famously rejected scripts, especially regarding Tiffany Aching. But I also remember the animated versions of Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music, and how utterly tickled Pratchett was in interviews regarding them — I especially remember how twinkly and pleased he was with some of the artistic direction taken with Cliff, particularly his voice direction and the sound effects used for his movement. So while Pratchett did have a reputation for rejecting film adaptations of his work, he clearly wasn’t impossible to please. I just, in my bones, in a totally Normal And Not Weirdly Sentimentally-Driven Way, do not believe he would have approved the final version of -this- script.

Primarily because it was a children’s book on purpose, and the book spends a lot of time respecting its intended young audience by posing a lot of questions without bothering to provide definitive answers. And so when there is one theme/moral that feels very deliberate and intentionally blatant within the novel, that feels incredibly important to me. To wit: This book makes a very clear statement about how evil is a creation, an action; evil is something concocted by people and put into the world. It is not an accident, it is not happenstance, and most uncomfortably, it can thusly usually not be entirely undone. In my opinion, Spider/The Rat King could not be a clearer way to communicate this concept.

Yes, Spider is evil, and yes in typical Pratchett fashion he indicates that evil is a bit of an expansive concept that cannot be contained within the simplified notion of “doing bad things,” and he very poignantly wraps this into the concept of creating/exploiting fear. But as a rat king, Spider’s existence is intentional and unnatural. Rat kings are a real, “historical” concept insofar as they have existed as a myth for a very long time. I remember reading about them in my wee years, when rats and rat-keeping became admittedly a special interest of mine. The concept of them in Pratchett’s book mirrors almost exactly their concept in real life: They are a human invention, and the only “evidence” of them has always just been evidence of the extent of human cruelty, largely in service of making a buck. Pickled rat kings were a common sight in early sideshow exhibitions, and you’ll even still find some modern references to or models of them in similar settings today. But they are simply an impossible concept when considering them as “natural” phenomenons — The Amazing Maurice (the book) explains that petty well via Keith’s knowledge of rats and their habits, but even that leaves out the obvious explanation of the fact that rat tails are bony structures that simply do not have the ability to bend into any conceivable knot-shape without being intentionally broken for that purpose. For a book that doesn’t shy away from the carnage and cruelty humans otherwise enact on rats historically, I have to wonder if that was simply the point at which Pratchett himself shared his much-written sentiment of “not wanting to draw you a picture.” Either way, readers of course find out that Spider in particular was created as a “masterpiece” by one of the resident rat-catchers in order to secure entry into the local rat-catching guild. As a result, Spider is both creation and burden to the rat-catchers.

But this entire discussion of rat kings as evidence of cruelty, this whole allusion to evil being a human-made thing, is mostly thrown away in the film. The film takes away both Keith and Malicia’s knowledge of rat kings (the practicality of them and the mythical reputation of them respectively), instead gives both halves of the knowledge to Maurice, and then claims that the rat catchers did not intentionally create the rat king. Rather, while carelessly storing rats they had caught, the two men simply tossed a few rats temporarily into a pot, and upon later lifting the lid to retrieve them, discovered a rat king had been formed — conceding every possible falsehood about rats, their anatomy, and the history of rat kings that Pratchett spent the bulk of a chapter meticulously refuting.

And I, as the Incredibly Normal And Not At All Weird Person we have already established that I am, had a good cry. I was so sad that whoever was in charge of these changes to the script simply did not respect their child audience the way Pratchett himself did. How can you claim to honor or even love his work if your retooling of it is so fearful, so dishonest? The message of “evil is something you put into the world, not something natural to be observed” is such an important concept for children of all ages to be exposed to, and it’s such a narratively satisfying climax to reach after the buildup of sympathy for this rough and tough rat colony who already navigate the casual and perhaps even somewhat “justifiable” cruelty foisted upon them merely for existing in the shapes they have. And while there are a lot of changes in the script that I found disappointing or un-artfully implemented, this particular change felt utterly cowardly. Of course, if as an executive or screenwriter in charge of what gets finalized in a script, your goal is rooted in creating something to mass-produce and sell, then I understand why arming an audience of children with the idea that evil is an action and not a circumstance would frighten you to your boots. But then I have to wonder: Why take this work to adapt? It's not as if it's incredibly well known outside of a somewhat niche and probably slightly older audience. What was there to be gained by taking such a lovingly crafted, respectful narrative aimed at younger people, only to dismantle and subvert the very clear message it contained? By review standards, this film was kind of a flop. So what was the point?

Mostly, again because of how Deeply Normal I am (such that it obviously doesn’t even bear repeating), I felt a lot of sadness for the art team. At least a handful of people in charge of the artistic direction of the film had a deep connection to the Discworld series, and I have to wonder if any of them felt disrespected or otherwise unhappy with the final product they ended up being party to, especially with the love and dedication to visually crafting this story being so apparent on screen. And while I feel personally that there are valid and constructive criticisms to be made about Pratchett’s work, and perhaps more largely about the specific perspective from which he wrote, something that has always struck me about his novels aimed at young readers is the sheer amount of respect he always had for them. This movie carrying a weirdly clear bias of believing that children would only be -seeing- the movie, engaging with it on a strictly visual level, while adults would be the only ones actually -listening-, felt like such an absolute disregard for the love Pratchett clearly had for young readers that it actually made me angry.

There’s not really a larger point to this essay on something as inconsequential as an animated rat movie, but I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and I can’t help but cling to the idea that I’m not the only Really Very Ordinary And Not At All Strange person who had this sort of emotional reaction to this piece of media. Somewhere out there in the wild world of tumblr, someone else might see this and go “yeah…yeah!!!” To which I want to answer, in total commiseration, “yeah :(”

[lightningbig]

goddd botw makes me a little bit insane. link going through the story and meeting all of these people who use to know him. he doesn't remember. but they talk about him, "you used to train me!" "we were kids together" "I always looked up to you". they have lived a whole life while he's been asleep. he has not changed.

[newcathedrals]

bisexual in that i love fictional and celebrity men and real women i meet in real life who are real and exist in the same physical space as me and are real. it's like lesbianism with extra steps

[steelycunt]

sorry need to vent to someone about it because it makes my brain shrink

who's WE ALL?? HAVE YOU SEEN HIM? that chewed up plush toy??? A CASANOVA??????? my god people let's use our cognitive skills bc this is just disrespectful to our special dry doggy bone

no literally WHO is we. WHO. i literally made him up and i am telling you that nobody wants him. hope this helps

[dirtyoldmanhole]

so the big characterization epiphany that came out of revelation's ending is there's three personas i need to keep a good handle on in the last third of this gunter slowburn fic.

original!gunter, i'd like to think, i have a really good handle on writing wise. he has some skeezy thoughts - (imo both sexually + flirting with that resentment death spiral!) but over all, over all, generally his actions bend towards trying to do the right thing. there are acts that possessed!gunter commits, that i think genuinely would and does break him in crossing the few moral lines he holds dear.

and in the other box there's anankos, who feels completely alien to me, other than that raw fury at being spurned. (oh jeezus i just realized how much gunter spurning him, specifically, would remind him of his kingdom spurning him. the fuck. oh no. OH NO. no wonder he takes personal interest in breaking the man!!!)

and then there's possessed!gunter who I am now feeling in a terrifyingly, morbid way - is wall to wall with the darkest, most depraved naked resentment at always taking the hits, over and over, by being wrecked and punished and degraded by those on top for trying to do the right thing - and finally giving up on it.

he snaps.

put bluntly, this is a man who would have corrin on her knees and intentionally, very pleasurably, shatter her, mind, body, soul exactly as he is at that point. he wants to see her (and everyone else) smeared on the floor before he burns the world down around himself.

Gunter: I would tear every last bit of innocence away from you.

.................................

but

that's a lie i'm telling to myself, isn't it, to tidy them up in separate boxes - ("I am him, he is me.") (jesus christ that line )

because it's really more like a spectrum between those three; one of the absolutely brilliant, FUCKED UP things about rev!gunter - is that FE doesn't take the easy path and do the 'evil eyes when possessed/harmless character you love when not'.

and gunter himself goes out of his way to blur the lines between the three! the real whammer line of absolutely everything is he straight up confesses to corrin he was using her all the way back in the northen fortress days! even/especially when he loved her like his own!!!!!!!

LIKE.....

Corrin: Gunter... How long have you been lying to us? Gunter: Hmm... You have no idea how difficult it is to accurately answer that question. The simple answer is...the whole time. One way or another.

you can't let original!gunter off the hook any more than you can blame anankos for absolutely everything!!! what! the fuck dude!!!!

no wonder, one of the last acts of original!gunter coming briefly to his senses when corrin gave him that smallest space to breathe without anankos' influence, was to suicide himself - between the shame, the absolute blackest guilt of breaking every last act of decency -

he knows, better than anyone, that he has no right to ask for mercy.

damn