#what a beautiful metaphor

[geekeryisafoot]

Since their introduction, so many of us have been trying to find the theme and metaphor of World Hater as our primary antagonist. Is is hunter v prey? Hunter v farmer? Life v death? I love all of theories and I'm inclined to believe all of them are true in one way or another, and I'm excited to see what we lean into as the story continues

And now we have this page

Now I'm leaning more towards the circle of life. Ichi embraces the cycle. He kills only to survive, and he knows someday it will be his turn to be killed for something else to survive. What we've seen of the witches works this way too: they aquire and aquire until they fail, and when they die their majiks return to the ecosystem to be acquired again.

But World Hater breaks the cycle. They are not life until death until life. They are obliteration. They are entropy. And, as of now, I think our thematic core is that they will need to be hunted to be put back into their place in the cycle.

[br1ghtestlight]

i do love that canonically suitcase's voice was always much deeper she just put on a higher voice in the beginning to make mephone/viewers happy. and as she became more confident and stopped caring about what other people thought of her she started using her natural deeper voice more :) The transgender metaphors are all around us for those with eyes to see.....

[deoidesign]

Thinks about my next series again... I drew the icon for it!

I'm planning to have it launched within a year! I'm hoping for summer 2025. I want to make a prelaunch page before Time and Time Again ends so people can subscribe if they're interested, but I'm worried the series return would be too early...

[bakudekublogblog]

izuku didn’t just have to see katsuki’s dead body, he also had to see the fucking all might card right next to him. physical proof that katsuki always had a tender spot in his heart for izuku and their childhood together. evidence that katsuki fucking LOVED HIM THIS WHOLE TIME and now it’s TOO LATE. it’s actually so devastatingly romantic and fucking tragic. izuku really only finds out katsuki loved him all along when he thinks he’s lost him forever.

[soupmanspeaks]

Michael Ao3 author AU walk with me here

"hey guys sorry I havent posted much on the Immortal and the Restless fic, I had to do this one errand my father sent me on, its actually a funny story; my dead sister actually possesed this big robot clown that killed her, and I had to like, put her scattered parts back together again, it was a whole thing, but yeah, her murder AI kind of just took over and she tricked me into being a meat suit, so that kind of sucked, and im actually organless atm, so sorry for slower updates, but it is what it is yk"

And then wayyyy later "heyyyyy what's up superstars, sorry for the long hiatus, my soul got put into a robot bear, but that's all taken care of, so chapter 27 soon :3"

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

I realize this is actually a very normal Tumblr thing but like I want to tell certain people I'm in love with them/kissing them on the mouth but like nonsexual style. aromantic type beat. I'm in love with you the way a bird is in love with the air, longing to be touched by it. the way a flower is in love with the sun, following it in any way it can. the way puzzle pieces are in love, or a picture with a frame. a sentence with a period, or a comma with words. in love with you in that you warm me, brighten my soul, I find myself drawn to you like the magnetism that holds the very solar system in place, but I don't mean I'm in love like I want to be your girlfriend or anything like that. does this make sense?

[beautifulhigh]

Welcome to the next edition of Jen's meta ramblings

I have watched the movie at least once a day since it came out and I kid you not, I see something new every time. The fact that this is Matthew López's first directoral debut is just... I'm in awe. And you can tell how much he loves the story because of the way things like this are set up and played out

In the novel, Henry and Alex are skinny dipping in the lake at night, and so I absolutely got the change in both time of day and also attire. But let's talk about that little island shall we?

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea

Every single one of us is not meant to be alone, without connection and without a link to someone else. We are parts of a whole and if we lose that... well. It's not good.

Henry is on that island, our prince who belongs to Britain and Henry Fox who thinks he has to belong to himself. The prince is forced into status and circumstance, of appearances and mindless ribbon cuttings. When he does something that means something - like the trip to the cancer ward - then he doesn't do it with cameras. I'd argue he's not the prince there, he's Henry Fox. The man who lost his father to cancer.

But this is not that meta.

Henry has shut himself off, shut himself away. He doesn't date the people he's interested in, he doesn't live his truth (and for very good and valid reasons). He has decided that while Prince Henry belongs to Britain, Henry Fox is an island.

And look who is swimming up to that island. Look who is coming out to Henry, having realised the night before that oh yeah, I do feel forever about him and so Alex swims out to that island.

And the first thing he does? He makes Henry laugh. He is silly and fun and the complete antithesis of the composed and collected Prince of Wales. And then he joins Henry, on his island.

This gorgeous overhead shot shows us that Alex is putting himself on Henry's right (protocol or his good side?) but he's also in the centre of the island. He's not on the edge of it. In the metaphor of Henry Fox's island, Alex is putting himself at the heart of it all. RIght before he lays out his heart to Henry.

The shot that broke our hearts too, along with Henry's. Because we can see the shore in the background now. We're reminded that islands are not - they cannot be fully independent. People cannot be islands and even though Alex is literally and metaphorically planting himself at Henry's side, Henry knows that this island he's formed for himself in his heart and his sense of self cannot stand if Alex is there. If Alex is with him then he is no longer an island. Henry Fox will not belong to himself and the sense of protection and self-preservation we see coming out in the Storming of Kensington is under threat.

So he bails.

The island is submerged, like the mythical Atlantis, because how do you render land useless? Drown it. How do you deal with water? Drain it away. He abandons his island and flees back to the only other space he has left - Kensington Palace - in an attempt to regroup. He drains his life of Alex and what he brings. He has to return to being the Prince of Wales because Henry Fox got too close. Because Henry Fox realised he was being loved by a man who would literally swim out to where he is.

Moment of appreciation for the shot. Matthew, you have a fucking talent and I cannot wait to see what else you do. Because our #imtaller boy looks so small here. So lost. When else have we seen someone look so small and lost?

Oh. Yeah.

When he's curling in on himself in an almost last-ditch attempt to protect himself and his boundaries from what is coming. You can see that he's no longer dry, that Alex's "shower time" has changed him. Alex brought laughter and love and water onto his island and Henry has just realised what this means. This isn't a visitor's visa. This is immigration.

Which is what makes THIS so much more. Back to our boy, drenched from the storm, plaintively asking Henry to talk to him.

Because yes, the Storming of Kensington happens during an actual storm, but by now you know I overead into everything... so once again we have Alex "swimming" out to Henry. He's dived right in and gone are the jokes, gone is the humour. He is here and he is asking to be let in and daring Henry to send him away.

This is Alex, serious and in love and following Henry to whatever landmass he is setting foot on. Henry is trying to be an island and Alex is out here going, "I'll just build another boat you fucker". A true 'ship if you will. He swam out to an island on a lake, he flew to a tiny island across an ocean. He is standing at Henry's borders and he isn't launching an offensive. He's just saying that if Henry wants to be cut off from everything then he needs to do the cutting himself.

Prince Henry felt like he belonged to Britain, Henry Fox felt like he had to belong to himself, and Alex turned up and went "nope. Mine now". (Insert additional historical quip about the English being colonised for once.) But there is still some truth in that: the Prince is part of England, and we should all belong to ourselves even in relationships. Henry just learns that the different parts of him can co-exist. Bit like how water and land can co-exist without one destroying the other.

Henry is Alex's North Star but he's also his solid ground. Insert quip about Alex colonising Henry and claiming him for his own, planting of flag, your innuendo of choice goes here. Pyramus wished there wasn't a wall - Alex straight up scaled Henry's.

There's a divergence between Prince Henry and Henry Fox, but at the heart of them both there's Henry. And this is the man that Alex sees, this is the man that Alex loves. Alex swims out to the island for Henry Fox, Alex pushes through the rain for Prince Henry. Alex holds steady in the storm of talking with King James/Queen Mary and the public.

And it started with Alex literally making his way out to Henry on an island: be that England for the Royal Wedding, a pontoon island on a lake, or knocking down Henry's walls.

To this moment. Which is very hard to grab a screenshot of, but Alex asks Henry to "take a walk" with him. This time it's Henry going to/with Alex. The fact that he's there is one thing (and a rant rather than a meta) but at this point they have each other. They belong to each other. Where one of them goes, the other one follows. Independent, together, co-existing.

Anyway. I'm sure there will be more bullshit ramblings and metas at some point. Follow me if you want more of that (but be warned: blank and empty blogs are blocked on sight) because we are not islands in this metaphorical storm of life. Let us swim out to one another, dry off with one another, and live a life with broken down borders and walls.

ETA: I now have another name to add to the thanks. Stephen Goldblatt, from the bottom of my soul, thank you

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Something something about the cursed mummy working at a rodeo and the connection to lassos and wrangling bulls and foreshadowing. Something something about buck wearing a moustache when he dresses up as billy boils which connects things to Eddie.

How rodeos are connected to Texas in the general psyche. The idea that Eddie needs to go and wrangle with his bull in the next episode - Helena.

That she has been constantly trying to Buck him off but he needs to hold on in order to break the curse she has been on his life - the play on Buck being a massive support to Eddie - that gives him the strength to stay on and win the fight and pen the bull.

That he needs to break free of that curse in order to transform into his true self and how the werewolf is a representation of that happening and also a foreshadowing for the shaving off of the stache

[lilacerull0]

can't stop thinking about lila and nino's time in the shoe shop for no particular reason (lie), but she brought books to that shop... the whole affair started by the sea... the books, the shoes, the sea... all symbols of lila's childhood that have been morphed into something else, something eerie and adult, and she attached their original shape and meaning to nino, just like she has always done with elena, because he was supposed to be her way back to these things, if only indirectly, if only the small way she could possess them again existed in watching him have them. and i've mentioned this to mal the other day, but the heart of this relationship is based on a cruel contradiction: on one hand it is an attempt to reestablish childhood innocence (the books, the shoes, the sea in their original fairytale, dream-like form), but on the other hand it's overwhelmingly defined by adult themes like adultery and sex (melina and donato's relationship) it's a warped perspective on both childhood and adulthood ultimately. it's got the spirit of each right, but the motifs are all wrong, like they've crossed to the wrong side of the timeline. so, in many ways, nino, to lila, exists as both the essence of elena and rino, the gods of her childhood, and as the essence of marcello and stefano, figures tied to her brutal push into adulthood. and lila is already an extreme example of adult motifs crossing into childhood's territory so when nino appears, her understanding of sex and adultery hasn't been sugarcoated, but is rather present in, not the only possible form sex and adultery can exist in, but certainly in one of their truest forms, vulgar and dangerous in their banality. (thanks to stefano and melina and donato respectively) thanks to that, lila's relationship with nino can't be a new beginning because it's only a response to preexisting experiences and everything good about it is only good because it's better than something that happened before, but ultimately it stays within the circle it appears to be rebelling against.

[peskyvinot]

the s2 episode 8 of Hannibal Lector I'm watching right now is beyond me. the ending-literal chills. first time Hannibal alluded to admiting to the things he did to Will, while holding his head (the same way he held him when Will came to him in a state of feverish nothing-and-too-much-of-everything burger with Gideon huh?) while also. OK. it's not me imagining it right Hannibal is looking at him with hearts in his eyes and a hypothetical boner purely because Will is so broken he was ready to shoot a man ne never even directly talked to (the man was covered in horse blood) (yes. if you haven't watched Hannibal. it's hypothetically normal but also thus feels fucking different)

I think im starting to understand the homierotism of it all finally. shame I haven't watched these series earlier

[poppytuft]

the bear s3 spoilers

below the cut! thinking about claire and stuff we saw this season re: carmy/syd/the restaurant/donna, just finished the season so itll be a mess and also im comin in way too hot on this so my bad

sometimes...... sometimes i believe you guys are all watching different tv. im not sure how this season didnt feel like a direct through line from s2?? and im not sure WHY everyone is SO MAD about claire LITERALLY "haunting" this season. girl. come on. we need to have a sit down talk about how the berzatto generational trauma is the real meat of this show (this will make sense, just trust me). thats the MAIN EMOTIONAL POINT. syd's relationship with her dad, marcus and his mom, richie and evie, even tina and louie are all examples of parental relationships that are tender, sweet, supportive, etc. these are INTENTIONAL!! by creating these relationships we see PLAINLY how fucked donna is and how much she fucked up all of these kids. thats why "ice chips" was such a FANTASTIC episode. there was SO MUCH unpacked, so much revealed, so much worked through with sugar and her but at the end of the day she's still learning how to unlearn all of this horrific narcissistic bullshit. SHES STILL UNLEARNING THOUGH. thats where fucking DONNA of all people sits right now——somehow, she's learning how to heal. EVERYONE IS LEARNING. that's also what is so important about that episode.

now lets look at carmy. in "ice chips" we are LITERALLY told about how each berzatto is born: mikey fighting against the idea of being alive at all, nat into a quiet, soothing room, and CARMY is fucking born into EVERYONE SCREAMING and ARGUING and FIGHTING. we are BLATANTLY told that all carmy has ever known is HELL and all he's ever known how to communicate is through exploding. this is so violently against what we also know about his personality from childhood in "fishes" (anxious growing up, arts-oriented, had a hard time making friends). now, he works a violently stressful job, processing the trauma from both his mother (and chef fields [joel mchale], realistically) through the high-stress environment.

NOW. ENTER CLAIRE.

HOW is she not fascinating to you all. we don't see her whole story (because the bear, duh) but we are given just enough pieces here to put together that her story runs parallel to carmy's. how are you not getting this. walk with me.

claire. glasses, nerdy, quiet, sweet, girl next door. family friend! cute, but considered mid for a long time by everyone at school, but suddenly the berzatto men all badger carm, "oh she got a glow up, oh shes looking for you, she wants to see you," etc etc etc. what happened in between?

she finds herself. she finds the stressful thing she LOVES, which is the hospital. her job is objectively more stressful than carmy's (illustrated by that scene earlier in the season but i forgot the episode, where claire talks about the girl who got her shit wrecked by the glass table), and while we don't have an exact understanding of what her home life was like, we understand that her and carmy both have a level of internal anxiety that thrives on the stress of their careers. HOWEVER, claire does it because she loves it. carmy just doesn't know how to stop.

this is what makes claire feel like "peace" to carmy——because her high-stress job is a choice, an active choice she is making because it fulfills her. it's not to prove her dead brother wrong, or to honor his own legacy, or to prove that dickbag boss wrong, or to leave a mark on the world, or to make her own life worthwhile, or to prove that she doesn't need anyone else. she genuinely enjoys helping people even when the days are stressful, or scary. he's obsessed with this. he wants to know how she does this. every day she leaves that stress at home——and he wants to learn how to do that too.

claire is VITAL to this season and to understanding carmy's stress——and how far back he is in his healing process. it should only become more and more apparent, as we see characters like tina (the beef/the bear became vital to her success/development as a chef AND person, both for the people AND her love of food), marcus (not hiding his grief, but using it to help rationalize how much his mother loved him and wanted to be surrounded by people that love him), and richie (finding a purpose through service/expo and understanding he can start over again) push through their own traumas and struggles to become better people. if donna can be not only present at sugar's bedside during labor, but WELCOMED at this point in the show, it makes carmy's inability to heal all the more present. claire is an important part of this puzzle: she helps us see a window into a world where carmy is balanced emotionally, but unbalanced professionally, because he has no idea how to make the two coexist.

however, the idea that he can be balanced emotionally at all is so fucking enticing——with the help of someone who experiences stress in the same way as him (and who is familiar with his familial trauma), he has the opportunity to grow up and move on from his family trauma and wounds perpetuated by the industry he works in.

on the flip side of this....... his inability to process any of this is starting to impact syd. and frankly, that's some bullshit. his lack of communication, inability to community build/trust ANYONE, and his violent stubbornness is pushing her into the same space that he was in under chef fields, in a much slower, more subtle manner, and for slightly different reasons. her panic attack at the end of the season could read in two directions to me: her stress over the responsibility of changing so many people's lives has boiled over once she remembered that the beef once was truly great (hey five star review on the fridge!), OR, she realizes how much she isn't in it for the food. fuck a Michelin star: she wants to cook with her family. chef terry says at the end of "forever", in the garage with carmy, that she's so grateful she got to do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, where she wanted, with the people she wanted to do it with. sydney is so close to having those things at the bear——but carmy's dysfunction is keeping it just out of arms reach. the two of them are now on opposite sides of the approach from last season: syd dying for a star, and carmy dying to cook for the woman he loved. now, carmy is hungy for recognition again, desperate to prove something, and sydney is remembering (thanks to the conversation with other chefs during the ever funeral service) why she loved cooking in the first place. so this leaves us to wonder: should she stick it out? for the people? or make something of herself? is she carmy, or is she terry? i guess we will just have to see.

all this to say: every character is connected. the bear is a show about family, found and blood, and the choices we make for, with, and because of the people we love, for better or for worse. food is only the center of it, because it's the center of all of our lives. you can't hate claire without understanding where she sits in the web of the berzatto family. and really, you can't hate her if you understand what her presence means for carmy, for syd, and the restaurant as a whole.

[jazzically]

i cannot tell u how many times ive watched this in the last 12 hours

[skunkes]

guy liker moment

[impasta-wall]

“The ocean doesn’t change though right?”

His eyes were like the ocean, deep blue, broken in places by white froth, “just like the snow or the forests or the sun or the clouds and mostly the stars.” He raised his hands up motioning to the vast array of them in the sky, twinkling in the distance, blinking in and out of existence; the world so wide and for their taking even from the back yard they both shared now—a sense of awe washing over them both as they looked beyond.

He couldn’t help it but whisper, nearly seventy years late;

“The snow changed me.”

Steve looked back at him, same eyes, same hair. His hand comes up and gives Bucky’s shoulder a squeeze. Infinite understanding and a deep, deep longing.

“But we’re still here. That hasn’t changed right?”

I think a lot about how traumatic Bucky’s life has been so far, same with Cap, and I can’t help but shed a tear. In parts they are their own hope, it’s a little bit of codependency but it’s hard when there’s only one other person out there that understands you so carnally. It’s the shared experience of hope and loss and grief and love, romantic or platonic.

[thegreatyin]

How did you manage to handle not one, but FOUR separate accounts in fl? I recently made the account for my HD little guy but having to do the tutorial again just seems miserable

there's... weirdly several answers to that question, actually??

a HUGE part of it is due to the way FL is structured. the 10-minute action timer is a core part of the game on a fundamental level, and the fact that i can very easily run out of stuff to do on one character and thus have an excuse to quickly and easily swap to another is just... convenient? satisfying? i'm not entirely sure how to explain it. the fact that i can make progress even while i am fundamentally simultaneously Not Making Progress is like pure dopamine for my freak insane awful little brain. there's just something really pleasing about spending all of my actions pursuing The Goal Of The Day™ on one account before casually swapping to another and doing the same without feeling like i'm wasting time or acting to the first account's explicit detriment. the downtime helps! the recharge time helps! the structure really really works!!

i'm technically only actively playing three, maybe two accounts minimum. the only reason the fourth (the one that'll be my future BaL playthrough) currently exists at all is so i can get his earlygame completely out of the way now and not have to waste time running through it all later, when what i actually want to do is play the ambition i've made myself wait a full year to play. and also getting free goodies as seasonal stuff happens,, something something surprise tools to help us later. the only two accounts i'd say i'm really "actively playing" at the moment are caeru and lark- and of the two, lark takes the most priority, since his ambition is the one i'm currently pursuing in earnest. for a couple months now- despite being My Main FL Character- the scoundrel has actually been pretty inactive on a gameplay front outside of the occasional progression in TLC and discordance content. purely by virtue of having Very little left to do outside of Very long-term grinds and vanities. they're in their "now what?" "now you can start playing the game" era. they've graduated to previous protagonist background cameo in a sequel anime series. they're like the yin FLPC equivalent of red at the top of mount silver. they're Literally just vibing rn. i only keep posting about them regardless because i'm insane and i will never ever ever ever ever let that bat go. but yeah, big TLDR, outside of doing the bare minimum to keep making waves/notability up every week, i'm not actually spending that much time on accounts i'm not currently actively interested in playing. and that accounts for way more gaming spoons than you might think.

i have a virtually lifelong history of playing MMOs, especially and specifically world of warcraft. i was born in the endless grind for useless video game pixel vanities and/or bragging rights. molded by it. you all have merely adapted to doing the same piece of content a pointlessly excessive amount of times for literally no reason besides whimsy and folly. me? i've done my time. i've served my sentence. i've spent weeks doing the original burning crusade netherwing dailies. i've devoted days to running praetorium over and over and over again, back-to-back, nonstop, long before square enix cut it in half and made it NOT take at minimum an hour and a half per run. i've perfected my silverwastes + auric basin goldfarming strategies. i've (almost) crafted dragonwrath tarecgosa's rest. i've killed the sha of anger so many times its dying scream of agony is embedded into the very fabric of my being. ""only"" doing making your name content four times over? that is nothing to me. it means nothing to me. it is so infinitesimal i can do the persuasive seduction quests in my sleep. it's not a matter of handling misery, or having the capacity, or even sighing as i remember the brass embassy raid segment of the watchful questline seriously i don't know why i keep forgetting that exists or what even is my problem with it i just am so consistently mildly inconvenienced by it and its highly specific resource requirements and it is the worst thing ever. maybe i'm just so used to the scoundrel's near-infinite money and troves of disposable items that i've completely forgotten what being poor is like. despite having done that step 3 fucking times now. ahem. anyway. i have transcended the feeble mortal bindings of my resistant-to-grinding flesh and ascended to a higher plane of enlightenment, they may call me insane but they will be the ones left laughing when they see what that "insanity" has wrought, i've usurped them, i've usurped them all-

hacks and coughs and awkwardly clears my throat. i mean. uh. um. Ahem.

the empress' court artistry + tales of the university nerfs helped too.

[holmsister]

The way her mom phrases this gets me so bad. "You run at a different pace".

At some point, a parent can rely on their child starting to build an extra support system of peers. Not necessarily a family in the traditional sense, but you know - someone who will come collect you if your car breaks down, someone who will water your plants and feed your cat if you go on a trip. Friends, coworkers, neighbours, partners, spouses, their own version of a family. The parents can feel reassured that when they eventually die, their child will have people who will be with them and will support them. Someone who will keep pace with them even as their parents slow down and then, eventually, stop.

But what if your child runs at a different pace than anybody else? Too fast, too slow, too irregular - it doesn't matter. They cannot be assured to find that community of peers who can help. In Marcille's case, she might find a few - but she will outlive them all. The possibility that she might be actually, truly, brutally lonely for the majority of her life looms large. How do you prepare her for that?

I wonder how many nights the Donatos spent talking in bed, after Marcille went to sleep, discussing when to break things to her, how to explain them, what words to use. "You run at a different pace." It gets me.