#tumblr absolutely nerfed this one

[legendhasitart]

what if your girlfriend was god and you were the devil

[tma-themed-brain]

I needed to give her a chelsea cut. For my health.

Like this post? Check out some Palestinian fundraisers!

[ceaseless-rambler]

I just did Jonny d'Ville eyeliner and how the hell did he get his off. I used a pencil which I believe is generally easier to get off than liquid liner (although I could be making that up idk) and it was horrible to remove. I think Jonny's eyeliner looks more like liquid based on the smoothness of the lines and opacity and stuff. How the FUCK

[mcl-mia]

god, i want a secret life where you and i can get bored out of our minds

(//zeus week day 4 - affection)

[mangoisms]

making my monthly stop to the The DC Writing Blog Ever to pay my respects

[tormie-tormie-chopper]

well tumblr appears to have absolutely NERFED the colors but here's one last WIP update before i close the canvas and work on oc stuff

bonus:

Ko-fi comms are open!

[laurentidal]

Ice Core Report ❄️ September 2024

September is over so let's do our monthly check in!

#1 Story: Come Get Me

While this isn't one that I'd had on my old blog, this is a story I wrote a long, long time ago. I'm glad to see it was so well received. A lot of my old writing would not be. (It wasn't very good or long). But this was one of the exceptions. I've always been quite fond of the image.

#2 Story: Monitored Activity

This was the surprise of the month I think. Maybe it's the fact that tumblr doesn't nerf a fully clothed image. Maybe you all just really enjoyed it! I hope it's the second!

#3 Story: Maid Service

This is the only story in the top 5 this month that's part of a series. I've been watching the analytics and you guys don't seem to vibe with series as much as the one-off's. Maybe that's just tumblr making it hard to navigate things, or me forgetting to add links before publication. I can't help that anything I write spins up into an entire world!!

#4 Story: Orientation

This is another oldie that wasn't on the old blog. This one absolutely had the potential to spin up into a multi-story arc. I even had 1 person DM me asking if there would be more. Sadly, I'm leaving this one as-is. At least for now. I've already got I think 6 active series running, each on generating less engagement with each iteration.

#5 Story: Let Your Hair Down

The first story of the month and probably my second favorite. I love this one and I'm very pleased to see it in the top 5. I had said on an ask that of all the stories I've written, I'd want to be the woman in this one most, and I stand by that.

Sunda Systems

I've taken a longer hiatus from Sunda than I'd originally anticipated. I am still working on it, but law school midterms are next week and I'm sure you all understand where my focus is and should remain.

Of Magics & Mesmerism

Still hammering away at this bad boy every spare second I can get. But to appease your appetites for now, here's a look at a few of the lower-level customization options for the "Entertainer" character class:

If anyone has any brainstorming ideas they think could be cool inclusions in the game, don't hesitate to reach out. I'm always looking for new ideas.

General Thoughts

My writing has slowed dramatically and I think starting this month, I'm going to move to an every-other-day schedule to more accommodate my school and work and social life. But don't worry there's still plenty to come. I love this community.

[vikinglanguage]

9 number things you might not know as a foreign speaker of Danish

This is a mishmash of both cultural things and linguistic things. The idea for this post appeared in my head at 3 am so bear with me. As for the lack of links, I am adding them in a reblog to try to avoid tumblr nerfing my post.

1) Quarters – how to measure time In Denmark, we love measuring time in quarters of an hour. We love it so much we don't care about specifying the kind of quarter, it's just kvarter (itk.). Generally, we tend to use kvarter mostly just when speaking about 15 or 45 minutes, but it does go further than that. So here's a quick guide on how to tell time other than just doing as you would in English:

15 minutes – et kvarter 30 minutes – en halv time 45 minutes – tre kvarter 75 minutes/1h 15m – en time og et kvarter · fem kvarter 90 minutes/1h 30m – halvanden time (see 2) 105 minutes/1h 45m – en time og tre kvarter

and so forth, if you care to. Using fem kvarter is uncommon but acceptable, but never go further than that using just quarters of an hour. I would say that once you pass 2 hrs, I most commonly hear people starting to just count hours and minutes as you would in English.

2) Halvanden – half second An archaic way of saying 'one and a half' that just stuck for some reason. This is the preferred way to say 'one and a half ' for most people. No, this is not a joke.

Halvanden, 'half second' means halfway between one and two. Until quite recently (we're talking less than a century) halvtredje (2.5), halvfjerde (3.5), etc. were also in common use, but they have disappeared so rapidly that most current speakers will have absolutely no idea what the hell you're talking about. However, the ghosts of this way of counting live on in the numbers halvtreds (50), halvfjerds (70), and halvfems (90). You can read more about that in my old post about Danish numbers (see reblogs).

3) Week 42 We use week numbers! Week 1 is the first week in the new year to contain a Thursday, as we count weeks as Monday through Sunday. You don't necessarily need to know what week it is all the time, but a lot of adults use weeks in place of specific dates. I am forever thankful to ugenr.dk (you just type in a date and it tells you what week it is in or vice versa).

Important weeks are:

Week 7/8 – winter break for kids in primary and secondary school (not to be confused with Christmas break). It varies depending on municipality whether it's week 7 or 8. Lots of people go skiing these weeks.

Week 26 through 31 – summer break is usually during these weeks. All students in primary and secondary school, as well as university students and students doing professional bachelor's degrees and the like have these weeks off from school.

Week 42 – arguably the most important week. All students mentioned above have this week off from school. It's autumn break and it's ALWAYS week 42 and JUST week 42. Originally, it was to allow students in rural areas help their parents harvest potatoes (a nickname for autumn break is kartoffelferien 'the potato break'), and we just kept it.

4) DD-MM-(YY)YY If you write dates as MM-DD people will think you're a lunatic. Don't, unless you're specifically talking about 9/11, colloquially referred to as just 9/11 (nine-eleven, as you would say it in English).

5) 00:00 Denmark, like a lot of other European countries, uses 24hr clocks. Obviously, analogue clocks and watches are common, and it's perfectly ok to say stuff like klokken fire om eftermiddagen 'four o'clock in the afternoon' or klokken otte om aftenen 'eight o'clock in the evening', but you are expected to just know that 21:00 is the same as 9 PM. You can also say klokken toogtyve 'twenty-two o'clock', and it's quite normal to ask for clarification of whether people are talking AM or PM by saying stuff like klokken elleve eller klokken treogtyve? 'eleven o'clock or twenty-three o'clock?'. You cannot use AM and PM when speaking or writing Danish. The day begins at midnight; 00:00.

Don't worry yourself too much over this. Everyone occasionally forgets that 19:00 is in fact 7 o'clock and not 9 o'clock.

6) Halv to – half one When you're measuring half hours in Danish, you're always measuring towards the next whole number. It's never half past, it's always half to. As such, half (past) one is halv to 'half two' in Danish.

7) Grades (years) This is an ultra quick rundown of the Danish school system. School is mandatory for 10 years and homeschooling is allowed. This covers primary and lower secondary school.

Most people start school the year they turn 6. My birthday is in April, so I was 6 when I stated school, my sister's birthday is in September, so she was 5.

The mandatory grades are as follows. The ages are all possibly ages of a child attending that grade (not accounting for starting school early or late):

Indskolingen, grades 0-3 0. klasse/børnehaveklasse - 5-7 yo 1. klasse – 6-8 yo 2. klasse – 7-9 yo 3. klasse – 8-10 yo

Mellemtrinnet, grades 4-6 4. klasse – 9-11 yo 5. klasse – 10-12 yo 6. klasse – 11-13 yo

Overbygningen/udskolingen, grades 7-9 7. klasse – 12-14 yo 8. klasse - 13-15 yo 9. klasse - 14-16 yo

Some may choose to do 10. klasse, if they feel like they need more schooling or maybe if they're attending an efterskole.

Once they've finished their mandatory schooling, a lot of Danes choose to attend upper secondary school. You can do it in 3 years (stx, hhx, htx, and eux) or 2 years (hf, 2-årigt studenterkursus). Special circumstances like being an elite level athlete or attending MGK (preparation for attending a music conservatoire) may lead to people spending 4 years in upper secondary. Hf often sees a lot of adult students.

Gymnasium/HF, the grades are said as [ordinal number, letter(s)] 1.g (15-17 yo)/1.hf 2.g (16-18 yo)/2.hf 3.g (17-19 yo)

8) Grades (performance)

Danish schools have a 7-grade system. It's called 7-trinskalaen, and each grade corresponds to an ECTS grade (in fact, it's specifically designed for compatibility, and a lot of people above the age of 30 miss the old scale). Generally, students don't get grades until 7th grade. The grades are:

12 – A 10 – B 7 – C 4 – D 02 – E 00 – Fx -3 – F

If you are not familiar with the ECTS system, E, Danish 02, is the lowest passing grade. The intention behind the 0's in 02 and 00 is to make it impossible for the students to "change" their grade by just adding 1 in front of the grade, but the 0's are in fact also said out loud.

9) Ordinal numbers

Ordinal numbers are written as a number followed by a full stop. You do not capitalise the first letter of any word following the full stop (see 7) even though MS Word will try to convince you it's the right thing to do.

You can read a lot more about numbers on the Danish numbers post (again, in a reblog), but the basics that might not be covered by formal learning materials are:

nulte zeroth. This literally only exists for 0. klasse and for numbers to the zeroth power. fyrretyvende/fyrrende* – fortieth halvtredsindstyvende/halvtredsende* – fiftieth tresindstyvende/tressende* – sixtieth halvfjerdsindstyvende/halvfjerdsende* – seventieth firsindstyvende/firsende* – eightieth halvfemsindstyvende/halvfemsende* – ninetieth

The forms marked with an asterisk are largely informal spoken language to the degree that they are even considered wrong by some. Generally, they are accepted as the standard forms among the younger generations, but be careful when talking to people above the age of ~45.

[daylilifiedsundrewdrops]

Oh hey, they're here!

@heliosphere-underthesky I hope it still counts even if the canvases are separated because I CANNOT fit them into one canvas(( also sorry for the quality, Tumblr ABSOLUTELY NERFED IT- )) Love how you can just TELL Luna is the favorite(( I mean, she has a second eye! IM SORRY TERRIUS BUT I CANNOT FIT YOUR EYE IN THERE. )) Btw Luna is more fantasy-based while Terrius is more Earthy and grounded. Gotta love the nails though It's unlikely that I'm going to win 2nd or 1st place but this was fun!

Extra artworks under cut

And of course- Solar Eclipse Luna(( Made with the same base as the above ))

So, fun fact, Solar Eclipse Luna's outfit is actually based on the outfit that my design of Personified Venus has. The reason she has rings is for the '' Diamond Ring '' effect of the Solar Eclipse. That line across her chest represents the line of totality. Those extra beads she has are just a reference to Bailey's beads, if I'm spelling it correctly. Also, she's wearing shorts.

[bambiraptorx]

He stared down at the businesswoman smirking in front of him, even she could even be called that. It was too nice a word for Big Mama, too legitimate. It would imply that she was capable of honest exchange or straightforward deals, when the only thing she could actually ever be relied upon for was to work in her own interest.

And that was exactly was he needed her for. If there was anyone qualified to safeguard the Key with their life, it would, rather ironically, be the woman who always looked out for herself. If he could convince her that keeping the Key was in her best interests, she would defend it, simple as that.

Sure, it's risky as hell to give her the opportunity set the terms of a deal, but she was more predictable than he'd ever let on to her. He could feel her eyes on his scars, from the multitudes of tiny, nearly invisible lines crisscrossing his arms from decades of training to the large discolored patch of scales spreading up his neck. They'd probably make him pretty intimidating even if he weren't absolutely massive. He was built like a fighter, had been one for well over a decade, and Big Mama would have to be losing her mind to not want him as a gladiator. It's what this whole gamble was based on, after all.

"Obviously I'd put you in my Battle Nexus, should I accept your offer," she said, steepling her fingers in front of her. If he didn't know all of her tricks by now, it might look almost intimidating.

He snorted. "We both know that the Nexus has been declining since Lou Jitsu's fights stopped. The way I see it, I need this--" he gestured at the Key--"to be impossible to find, and you need someone to draw people back to the fights. We could solve each other's problems," he rumbled out, far more confidence in his words than he felt. He'd been a leader since he was a kid, faking assurance was like wearing a second skin by now.

She stood, pushing her chair backward and walking around her desk. She picked up the Key, casually running her manicured nails along the crude carvings. "A dimensional gateway opener? What sort of skantonious irritankle could be awful enough to require locking it away with a relic of this mystic caliber?"

Memories of zombies and food shortages, guard rosters and mercy killings, hopeless battles and sleepless weeks, of the portal opening and hell itself raining out, sprung to mind. "Let's just say you'd be lucky to die a quick death after finding out."

She huffed in amusement and set the Key down. "I'll draw up the contract."

---

I've been rotating a "Future Raph goes back in time but he goes a decade or so too far" story in my head for a while. I don't know if I'll do more, but I wanted to post this much.

(I'm gonna be so mad if tumblr nerfs the quality of this I spent so much time drawing the comic.)

Sequel of sorts

[dragongirlsnout]

was very tentatively entertaining releasing an update for dashboard unfucker because while i absolutely do not want to spend time working on tumblr fixes that i could spend doing literally anything else, the update that "broke" it requires only like 4 lines of code to fix, and in fact i did already fix it but didn't bother releasing it because i had other sites to use at the time and wanted little to do with tumblr but apparently feature feature flags got nerfed and while i did at one point rewrite the entire project from the ground up as a durable, standalone extension that works completely independent of feature flags, releasing that is something that absolutely crosses the boundary of "too much work for a fundamentally flawed site", so i guess that is my principles' way of telling me not to get back into developing tumblr stuff

[graceofhearts777]

Tumblr’s gonna nerf this one as well, but may as well post this piece i did for Inktober last year. Golden was the prompt i think. Gotta be homest this AU is the only thing keeping me in the ML fandom at all 💀 absolutely love the characterisations and the artstyle is sooo cute

[potat0bag]

hello famous tumblr person potat0bag

so i saw that one tweet u made about nerf blasters and it was probably a joke but if it wasnt

• whats ur fav ammo type? personally im a rival round type of gal

• springers or flywheelers?

• if springers: pump action or top primed?

• if flywheelers: rev trigger or rev switch?

• whats ur fav nerf line of blasters? my fav is zombiestrike !!!

• fav blaster (in general)

• fav blaster (for hvz)

• fav blaster (for regular matches)

• have u ever modded/painted/built/generally customized a blaster? if so, SHOW IT !!!! please

ok thats all bye

oh it wasn't a joke i'm deranged and miss all my blasters since my guardians sold them - favourite ammo type is definitely the rival balls;,;, never got to own any rival blasters myself but my god they look like so much less of a hassle to reload/load mags;,; - flywheelers are so fucking neat and i loved revving up my regulator and hearing the HORROR in my younger cousins' screams... that being said... ough springers are so satisfying to use;,;, and i'm always much more fascinated by how springers get extra ammo capacity into their frame than flywheelers cause with flywheelers! ...bigger mag, that's that. for flywheelers, i've always found the rev trigger so much cooler and just more convenient than the switch. as for springers, i prefer bottom primes a lot more. it feels like it fucks with the consistency of my aim less.. that being if the blaster has a stock/attachment point for one. we don't talk about the roughcut (ey love the roughcut, it's ribs favourite blaster) - my favourite line is zombie strike without a doubt... so many cool blasters that were absolutely revolutionary for the hobby. you owe zombiestrike your hammershots, nerds... - favourite blaster... roughcut... 8 darts... shotgun... slamfire... smart ar... feels nice in the hand... the smooth prime... the KA CHUNK before you shoot... being able to choose to shoot only one dart... it's just so neat. - never played hvz! on the bucket list though if i ever rebuild my nerf collection;;,; - never played any competitive nerf actually;,; again i would love to be able to. the closest i got was playing with my friends when i was younger. - never customised a blaster but. taps side of head. i could make a rival kronos splat3 hero shot replica. i could do it. thank you so much for all those questions you let me go cuckoo crazy autism ^^ nerf is such a niche interest for me ahsgdvah

[prairiedust]

one thousand days of destiel, or cas: fuckerupper of endings

Idk why I’m crawling out from under my woodpile to write this, except that it occurred to me that in three years I’ve not rewatched a single episode of Supernatural and have at least two dozen tags yet blacklisted on tumblr, and that I am still not okay about this stupid show.

I never tried to tie up the folklore/author themes I’d been geeking out about through the last seasons, neither as the show was ending nor afterwards. I’ve been simmering now for over a thousand days. I could not even write a complete sentence about spn for all this time, and so I just left that pot on the back burner and did other things. Finished my Master’s degree. Started a new job. Saw my oldest child graduate from high school and move off to college, and helped my younger child move on to sixth grade. Watched some other shows, got a new blorbo, saw some movies, started painting again, picked up a couple of new hobbies as I am wont to do.  

Today is the 5th of November, 2023. (ETA i sat on this for a bit.)

November 5th, 2020, was exactly one thousand and ninety-five days ago.

I see gifs from the show from time to time and I think to myself, wow, that scene/episode/series is completely irrelevant to my life now. I am fine and normal about everything. But if it really was, if I really was, it would not hurt so much to see the gifs and the lyric posts and the amvs when they aren’t caught in my tag filters. So maybe it’s time to get some things out of my head and onto paper.

I genuinely, nearsightedly, naively thought that since Dabb et al had been the ones writing the whole folk v author themes, and thus posing as someone we could count as being on “our side,” the folk-side of the postmodern audience, they’d honor that conceit, even to the very last shot. 

They did not.

And yet… they absolutely did.

Which hurts and is fucked up, but also it’s fine. It’s fine.

In the end, the only “folk hero” (by which I mean the only force in the spn universe capable of warping the threads of the story with any permanence) was Castiel. When Castiel left the story (of his own volition, if you can find a comfortable layer of this meta pie for that concept to rest in,) the writers reverted to God Mode. Because Castiel had been their freedom, their mouthpiece, their avenue for improvisation, and so at the end of the series…

well, we got You changed me/I love you

   •

and then we got “Cas helped.”

So much has been written about that pivot point, but genuinely I don’t give a rat’s ass about rewrites, producers, the cutting room floor, or COVID. It exhausts me, and I’m not beholden to writing about spn for grades or notes or any kind of other bullshit that would oblige me to do research.

I feel like… we got what we got.

So let’s criticize some media.

The Paradox: 

Cas imploded— went from flexing the narrative from within to being narrated by a force from without. And I couldn’t bear to wrap my head around that for a long time. It seemed that this “twist” was beyond cruel. That’s what he got. Vanished and nerfed. For saying ily. That was what happened when he was finally in focus, fully revealed. He lost. He was relegated, along with Jack, to become heaven’s Two Men and a Truck.

It was a trick, the whole “Chuck is a writer” plotline. The Author regained control of the character that had previously been acting independently. Very Pirandellesque, very frustrating, ultimately even tragic.

So, yes, thematically and critically, having Castiel give up his Agency for Characterhood– giving up his ability to create plot for a role as a character in a plot— was ‘literary’ brilliance. It cemented his status as a grand fucker-upper of the show in a way that any show writer “authoring” a requited destiel ending would not and could not have done. Even Jack, I believe, had been “manipulated” into god-hood from within the narrative. Jack was Dabb’s grand metaphor, he was a product of Author. Castiel was… well, he was a chaos engine from the moment he walked through those barn doors. 

To seal the metaphor, the writers ended up living that truth.

I really don’t know if I’m being cogent about this. I’ve been struggling to turn this idea into words for, like, ONE THOUSAND DAYS.

The folk-vs-Author themes becoming A Thing in The Supernatural Show was like a chemical reaction: once the ions had bonded, the resultant compound could not be separated back into the different materials. What on that screen was Author, what was “author,” ie show writer, and what was text-experiencer-as-author? Where did the Sam-as-magician arc go, what were we supposed to do with the semi-metatextual moments that Mary had, having been brought back into the narrative by Amara, not Chuck? Everything got so out of control. Add in a smidgen of secret-sauce-TPTB possibly superseding the author/Author, and what you get is that ridiculous mess of a final two episodes.

It’s not about the rusty trombone or the butt hole pleasures. It’s about love. And kids.

Thank you, hon. It really is. (The above line was left in this doc by my spouse. It is a quote from The 40-Year-Old Virgin. I’ll allow it.)

Anyway. It was hard to see past the sound and the fury of it all. 

*****

I was feeling nostalgic several months ago and took a swim in my old meta tags; I found a gem from season…10? Idk and idc, but it was from “The Things We Left Behind.” 

I compared Claire to Sleeping Beauty (a tale that got a lot of use in later seasons) and wrote: “I tend to think that Castiel’s entire arc is about desperate and unintentionally misguided attempts to Change The Ending of whatever story he’s shown up in” and reading that again really kind of sucker-punched me.

‘We’re making it up as we go’ was the crux of Cas’ existence. Remember that half-related story in Baby wherein Cas got himself hitched to the Djinn queen? Remember when Jack died and the Empty came to claim him in Heaven and Cas made that terrible bargain? The last-minute attempt to gank Lucifer that actually got him killed and sent to The Empty?

Time and time again, Castiel’s go-to for “changing the narrative,” for advancing his plot, is self-sacrifice. In Chuck’s house against the archangel. The Leviathan disaster. Saying ‘yes’ to Lucifer. The Bargain for Jack in Heaven. And those times it worked out. Not without great pain for both the other characters and for the viewers, but he always came back. 

And with each return, his motivation became clearer. (Picture your favorite screencap of Dean here.)

Cas’ love grew, crystalized, and then disappeared, like frost on the windowpane of a house on fire.

If they had continued the CasDean storyline, it would have ultimately been The Author IRL writing/creating/manifesting/materializing ‘destiel.’ And so by putting a torch to all of that architecture, they essentially gave everything to us. Unspoilt. Fingerprints wiped. Serial numbers scratched away. Jailbroken. Whatever floats your boat. 

The confession was both affirmation and abnegation. Symbolically, The AuthorTM had washed his hands of it, but with destiel out of the picture, The Author also got his ending.

This is why “Cas helped” felt like a ‘fuck you.’ If Cas was out of the narrative, why did he come back as one of Heaven’s real estate developers? It did not fit. 

And yet. It did. Because Chuck won. Chuck, or everything that an Author represents in television land– TPTB, showrunner legacies, multiple producers, a chaotic and treacherous and politically messy writer’s room, multiple incompatible or unresolvable MOs and visions— all that ends up being packaged and presented as a single unerring vision.

So I have to admit, although I don’t have to do it with any ion of grace, that in the end it was pretty fucking smart.

Destiel is ours. Destiel is the folk ending. The Author never got to touch it, never so much as breathed on it, was so far divorced from the concept that the absence thereof going forward hit us like a truck full of bricks.

Yes, it hurts that Dean was just left on the floor until the credits rolled, that there were no final words, no ensuing acknowledgement. 

I’ll go so far outside the Text as to address the ‘Dean can’t reciprocate’ direction from one of the scripts:

If Dean had made a single move onscreen. Uttered a word. In Despair or either of the other two episodes.

Destiel would have been claimed by The Author. 

Anyway. I’ve been collecting posts now and again under the tag ‘the endless folklore of supernatural.’ For three years, the fandom has continued to loot, to ransack, to graffiti, to create and re-create, to burn, to mix, and to distill. 

There’s all kinds of things in that tag, it’s sort of a kitchen sink of everything that I thought was even tangentially relevant to folk-Destiel and the postmodern experience of creating text as a reader/viewer etc. 

We turned a literary story based on an urban folktale back into folklore. 

And so it goes.

I doubt I will do much more analysis of this show, even if it comes back, and I unfortunately can’t touch The Winchesters. But I can’t say I never will. I just thought three years, one thousand days, was a pretty good place to leave a marker on the trail.

—

Epilogue: About The Winchesters:

I did not finish watching The Winchesters because of something wildly, randomly, but highly personally triggering that was built into one of the episodes; however I am very sorry that it was canceled or possibly ironically lost to the WGA-SAGAFTRA strike of 2023.

“What is the maddest thing a man can do? Let himself die.” That’s the clue that leads Castiel to his hidden grace in a copy of The Man of LaMancha in 10.18 ‘The Book of the Damned,’ written by one Robbie Thompson.

I noticed from the get-go that Thompson gave Carlos the last name Cervantez. He was nodding to the self-immolation of the last cadre of writers of Supernatural and stating clearly that he was holding a pen, not a match.

Want some very fun and amusing and wildly pertinent facts about the Don Quixote books?

The narrative conceit of Don Quixote IN THE FIRST PLACE LOL is that Cervantes claims to have found a manuscript by a historian named Cide Hamete Benegeli and Cervantes thought the story was pretty neat, if a little rough; Cervantes retells the story for us from what he’d read by that author, distilling the “original” into the book we experience as Don Quixote the Man of La Mancha.

The final words of Cervantes’ Part One are “perhaps another will sing with a better pick.”

Later, someone publishing under the pseudonym Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda wrote their own part two, feeling that the original author was taking too long to get their ass in gear (or judging by their own preface they felt that Cervantes had not even done the original story justice in the first place. Which is A Mood.)

So when someone actually did have the audacity to run off with his characters and commit word crimes with them, Cervantes absolutely obliterated the dude in his own Part Two. 

Thompson left Spn after season eleven. But, lest someone think this is a commentary about fan fic, he also wrote the episode Fan Fiction. So anyway all the Cervantez-Cervantes business was certainly something.

[menlove]

sorry if this is something u don’t wanna talk about feel free to ignore this but i remember a while back u said smth like “anybody [queer] can be femme or butch” but idk if you ever elaborated and im really interested in that statement but i feel like i don’t have enough information to support my argument if that makes sense

sorry i tried answering this and tumblr absolutely nerfed it the other day but !!

i don't have the energy to go and find sources so i'm sorry in advance fasdfasd but basically for me (personally) it just comes down to like... femme and butch did start primarily as roles in the lesbian/bisexual community (though they were one in the same for a very long time). so already, i feel like bisexual women should definitely have a claim to the labels. but outside of that, the terms "femme" and "butch" are also heavily used in ball culture as well, which is/was made up of a lot of gay & bisexual men (& ofc trans women & other gnc folks, but i feel like at least Today most people would accept that trans women can label themselves butch or femme so they're not my focus here). and also very heavily inspired by black queer culture as well. they don't Exactly mean the same thing as they do in the lesbian community in how they're used, but they're still broad labels used for decades by all sorts of queer people

and as for like. their definition among the lesbian community applying more broadly, i think there's a lot of merit there too... bc imo femme and butch are roles as much as they are identities. & those roles queer masculinity & femininity. sometimes in a very lesbian specific way, sure, but not always. so if any other queer person really relates to those roles and gender expressions, i say go for it. like a Majority of us in butchfemme are going to be lesbians but i feel like that might not be the case if more people were able to explore it without feeling like they Had to label themselves a lesbian for doing so... bc they really are very beautiful identities and gender expressions in how they queer masculinity & femininity and i think many people could benefit from exploring those sides of themselves!

but yeah, for me it's just like.... it may have Begun in primarily lesbian/bi spaces, but the queer community as a whole has always had different connections to the terms & modernity has really just expanded that imo

[susandsnell]

For the musical ask game: Carrie or Phantom of the Opera (whichever you’d rather do)? 😁

Send me a musical in my ask box:

Hey anon! Just for you, I'll do both! Beneath the cut it goes, as it's a little long.

Phantom of the Opera

Listened to It | wtf is that | LOVE IT | meh | um…hate it | heard of it | yes!!

Rate 1-10: Solid 10. Sorry. I have not progressed since the age of twelve and I never will.

Favorite Lyric: Angel, oh speak / What endless longings / echo in this whisper? I mean, you don't get much more gothic romance perfection from this (though the entirety of Wandering Child is perfect.)

Favorite Song: Oooh, tough one. Favourite to listen to is probably Masquerade, favourite to watch is probably either Down Once More/Final Lair for the sheer high octane melodrama of it all (and some truly phenomenal performances at its best), or Angel of Music for the Megstine goodness.

Favorite Character: Christine Daae!

Best Moment: When Meg takes her top off while congratulating Christine in the restaged tour When Christine gives her "tears of hate" speech to Erik and defies him at every turn in the Final Lair. When Erik comes diva-ing down the stairs in the Red Death muppet mask during masquerade.

Something that makes me angry: Carlotta did nothing wrong!!!! She's an aging woman in the entertainment industry whose career is being threatened by a skinny girl half her age and a fucking serial killer, of course she's mad!! She has every right to be a diva! And Piangi just supported his wife!

Gives me the chills: The entirety of Raoul I've Been There, especially the gorgeous high notes Christine hits, but I'll also hand it to the Don Juan Triumphant rehearsal scene because the self-playing piano into the terrifying Transition to the Graveyard is so endlessly iconic.

Overall opinions: One of the all-time greats. Perfect costumes, perfect plot, perfect ending. Christine and Meg are in lesbians and there's nothing you can do about it.

Carrie the Musical

Listened to It | wtf is that | LOVE IT | meh | um…hate it | heard of it | yes!!

Rate 1-10: 7, but the best moments really do stand out. Unfortunately the original is kind of unwatchable outside those moments and the redux got bogged down in ballad hell and spent wayyyyyy too much time humanizing Margaret. Kudos for the Sue's interrogation framing device and devolving into pure lesbianism between her and Carrie!

Favorite Lyric: I felt/As though/This girl revealed herself to me/And now/I know/That once you see/You can't unsee... For a cult classic that keeps pendulum swinging between camp and boredom (especially in the 2010s retooling), this lyric proves to me that Gore, Pitchford and Cohen completely and totally understood the character of Sue Snell, her trauma, and her relationship to Carrie. Honourable mention to God has seen your sinning/just beginning/pray for your salvation/from damnation/pray or/He will burn you, but only when it's Carrie's reprise in versions of the Destruction that keep Eve Was Weak.

Favorite Song: The World According To Chris is an absolute bop and campy fun, but A Night We'll Never Forget is such a fantastic full-cast counterpoint song before the storm, and musically hits the sweet spot the 76 film nailed so perfectly balancing a teen coming of age Cinderella comedy vibe and a deep, eerie sense of foreboding for characters we've been told from the beginning are all, in one sense or another, doomed. The build, the swell, the way it evokes the rays of sunlight in the last weeks of the school year with a horror movie twist...I love it I love it I love it.

Favorite Character: oh gee i wonder who it could possibly be could the favourite character of tumblr user susandsnell be Susan D. Snell herself

Best Moment: The Destruction!!!! Even though they kind of nerfed it orchestrally in the retool, I am a staunch believer in the horror musical, and I love watching various productions go wild with effects and acting as Carrie takes bloody vengeance in the unforgettable prom sequence. Honourable mention to the musical getting the closest of any adaptation to the book's ending with Sue being by Carrie's side as she dies, and, unable to quite adapt their telepathic final communication, they settle for the sapphic A Little Fall of Rain because these two are soulmates.

Something that makes me angry: At the risk of sounding like those cringe Steven Universe "all conflict in media is problematic" type of posters, I really think it does the story a disservice to overly sympathize with Margaret and give her so many songs. Don't get me wrong, I have no moral qualms with stories that humanize abusers in an effort to meaningfully explore and understand familial violence, cyclical or otherwise -- obviously, given I've been hyperfixated on IWTV this year, and Hereditary is one of my other favourite works of horror.

The problem here is that it's not executed particularly well. Margaret White is, whether played more human or more monstrously, a force of nature, and part of the sympathy we have for Carrie is that we share in her terror of this figure that looms so large that this sweet girl has to become a monster herself to overcome her, and even then can't quite. Rather than having us understand yet still fear and hate Margaret, the musical goes so far in her humanization as to almost afford her tritagonist status to Carrie and Sue, which utterly defangs her. We do not need to know her interiority that well, and in fact seeing that much of it and that she's "trying to help" Carrie from her perspective feels somewhat icky and more importantly, unnecessary. To be clear, I'm someone who thinks the Johanna (Mea Culpa) bit from Sweeney Todd is superfluous despite musical beauty and the sheer chutzpah of Sondheim trying to write the first instance of a man self-flagellating to orgasm in a broadway show. With villains, less is often more so they have more impact and menace.

Also, while I understand that it's usually a big star that plays Margaret (Betty Buckley and Marin Mazzie to name a few) and you obviously want to showcase her talent, her songs, with the exception of Eve Was Weak, are among the dullest and most skippable of the show. Like maybe in the show called Carrie we could spend more time with Carrie? Maybe more Sue? I'd even take giving Chris more character development than her being kind of sad at the end of The World According to Chris. I don't know, but all in all, where the show absolutely got Sue, they really whiffed it with Margaret.

Gives me the chills: "Doesn't anybody ever get it right? Doesn't anybody think that I hear?" Hits painfully close to home, especially with those stunning high notes; this followed by versions that keep the Eve Was Weak reprise with Carrie spitting her abuser's words back at her bullies, declaring herself the only God she trusts in, is incredibly powerful.

As well, stagings where Carrie's spirit during the epilogue pauses and gives Sue a last, lingering look on those ending lyrics I quoted above are heartrendingly beautiful.

Honorary mention to Carrie scaring Margaret slamming the windows the first time, but that's more an awesome moment than chilling!

Overall opinions: The sheer insanity of the original version is wildly entertaining, but once you get past the whole delightful mess of the legendary flop, what you have his a very uneven, meh show as far as horror musicals go, especially with the retooling taking out some of the best stuff or softening it questionably. With this being said, it absolutely has its moments, both musically and otherwise. The show adapts certain parts of the book other versions haven't that I was so delighted to see, and recognizes that the story is in fact about Carrie and Sue (I mean, Sue's final song to Carrie is a reprise of the melody of her love song with Tommy, come on!), so I can't help but love it for that.