#which also means inventing something new for his character in general

[quibbs126]

So I'm writing down things for my Ralia characters, as I'm trying to flesh out everything. Basically, what I'm doing is writing out the broad strokes of their characters, so I know what I want to do with them and what I can change. And I came to a conclusion with doing this

Namely, that Marcus, Julian, Marilyn and Lauren have absolutely nothing to do with the plot in any way. But the main problem here is Marcus

Marilyn originally had no role, but I can maybe do something to give her and her family more importance, since they're supposed to be an influential family that's mostly jerks outside of her with the right guidance. And with her comes Lauren, who doesn't have much outside of her. Which maybe I should fix

And as for Julian, I know I've considered him taking a scientist role like his grandfather, and also him being associated with his grandfather in general due to looking similar, which can at least pull him into the Striker plot

But Marcus? He has nothing to do. All he's really got is whatever situation is going on with Marilyn, and then his rift with his brother. He shows up in other stories, but only as a side character, and similarly his issues with his brother are supposed to be happening on the side. And if that gets explored, it would only be on Julian's side, because he was originally supposed to run away and have his own adventures in a circus

But I don't really want to get rid of Marcus. But then, what do I do with him? I genuinely don't know, because he's never had much of a purpose

[emptyjunior]

It looks like with the movies taking off, everyone is on the Dune train now!! Which is very exciting, I’m glad a bunch of new people are discovering this media and reading the books, but can I recommend you the David Lynch, Dune (1984) movie.

First of all, if you are invested in the lore of the books and the deeper messaging of the story, you’re going to need to turn that part of your brain Off. If you love kick ass shit and are willing to be slightly tipsy while you watch and have a great goddamn afternoon, this is the flick for you.

Now first fun fact I’m going to share with you. David Lynch (twin peaks, eraserhead director, celebrated surrealist) turned down the opportunity to direct Return of the Jedi for this film. A film that was devastatingly slow to make, changed hands multiple times, had a pricy VFX budget of $40 million and then made barely $31 million, David Lynch turned down Star Wars to work on it. And he did this when he had never read the novel, and did not even like or engage with sci fi media. THAT’S how you know we’re really in for something.

Now this film has some big names in it! We’ve got a young Kyle MacLachlan who is rocking some Devastating outfits:

We’ve got Sir Patrick Stewert as our Gurney and Sting, lead singer of the police, playing the 15 year old Feyd Rautha! If you wanted to see a grown man, sprayed orange, basically naked playing a free wheeling maniac you are in for a treat! And another fun fact, David Lynch also did not know who these actors were, he made a mistake and thought Patrick Stewert was someone else and when Sting said he was in the police he assumed he was in an organization of lawmen.

Now these characters are familiar to you, but let me get into the unfamiliar. Lynch made some directorial executive decisions throughout this film, for I suppose the ease of the viewer? I mean an adaptation is supposed to adapt so he went let me change some stuff up👏👏👏.

Those who paid attention to Jessica’s backstory may know about the Weirding Way. This is a martial arts style created by the Bene Gesserit, and practiced by Paul. It is more than just a fighting style but also an important philosophical concept, like Aikido or how Kung Fu has foundations in Buddhism.

You may also be familiar with the quote “My name is a killing word.” This inner monologue of Paul’s refers to how his title Muad’dub will be used to spur a holy war. A simple name is what people will die and bleed for, it will be what they scream as they cut down enemies.

Dark! Intense! That’s Dune, anyways in the novel it’s easy to take your time exploring these concepts. Introducing the audience to the religious ramifications of a simple name and fighting practice and how these things can have rippling repercussions upon a society like the Freman.

Now David Lynch didn’t have time for that! He had the belief (that may be right🤷‍♂️!) That watching a bunch of people kick each other on top of a sand dune would be Lame😭😭

So he made the choice for his film that “My name is a killing word” was to be taken Absolutely Literally and invented a device where if the freman said the name Muad-dib, shit would explode.

If they said Paul’s name, they could Explode Stuff. Let it sink in how rad that is. Hell yeah man, hell yeah. Imagine me interpreting religious text that way, imagine if I made a bible movie and the moral I took from a parable is that when Jesus asked for food and everyone donated fish, I concluded that Jesus was a mutant who had fish powers and could immediately conjure fish with magic and gave him fish death rays that shot out of his hands.

So that’s what you can expect from this interpretation, the weirding way now means everyone has Lasers its rad as hell.

Some other incredible choices made! This is a spoiler, but in the novels and the new films you can see the Freman collecting every scrap of water they can. Dr Liet-Kynes, the planetologist, reveals to us it’s because they have a long, multiple generation spanding plan to fix the planet. By introducing this water back they hope to reset the ecosystem over centuries of work. The reason they have been unable to do this is because a green planet would obviously not have worms and sand who produce spice, the most coveted drug in the empire, so imperial and harkonnen forces have been stopping this from ever happening. They want to be free from oppression so that they can start to work on slowly fixing their world, a project that plays out in Paul’s adult life and has its own dramas and complexities.

In Dune 1984??? The moment, the Moment Paul lays out his cousin and throws the final punch, it begins to rain in Arrakis. As if they were all under a magical curse and were just waiting for a teenager to come fight another teenager and then the water will come back. It’s so good, it’s so funny.

Also Pugs! House Atreides official Pugs! Paul has pugs in his lap!!

This is honestly an adaptation choice that I really really like! Paul is the result of centuries of selective breeding, this practice is an artform to the Bene Gesserit and a skill that they monitor closely. It produces bizarre and sometimes terrifying results and is the reason for Paul’s existence.

I think having an animal that was also created through selective breeding, was engineered from a wolf into an animal that can hardly breathe is an incredible metaphor! A smart and identifiable symbol for the audience, I think it’s a slam dunk and the new movies should have done it to.

Anyways can not recommend this film enough.

-The body suits the bad guys wear are made out of real body bags, that actually had been used.

-David Lynch to this day hates it.

-The original cut was four hours.

-The cast and crew were sick the Entire shoot with something they called Montezuma's Revenge, which was probably just food poisoning, side effects from the constant smog because they shot the whole thing on backup generators, illness from the cockroach infestation and terrible morale.

-Frank Herbert saw it multiple times and said he absolutely loved it.

-When they ride the worms, sick rock jams play.

If you love electric guitar, lasers, worms and will forgive me for not including all the trigger warnings cause Yes this film will gross you out, then go watch this movie.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Some Poetry Vocabulary

alliteration: The repetition of consonant sounds.

allusion: An indirect reference in art or writing to another visual or literary work or a historical personage or event.

antithesis: The contrast of ideas through the use of terms with opposite meanings.

appropriation: The practice of incorporating elements from a preexisting literary or visual work to create a new work.

assonance: The repetition of vowel sounds.

calligram: A type of poem, such as that created by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire in his book Caligrammes, made up of words that are placed in such a way that they visually represent the subject of the poem.

coined words: Invented words.

concrete poem: A poetic work that calls a reader’s attention to the visual appearance or shape of the letters, words, or lines comprising the poem.

ekphrastic [ek-FRAS-tic] poem: A poetic work written about a work of art.

epic poem: A long, rhymed, narrative poem, usually about heroic characters and their actions.

epic verse: Text written in a rhythm traditionally used for an epic poem.

epistolary [eh-PIS-toh-lehr-ee] poem: A poetic work written like a letter, with one person addressing another, often including conventions typical of letters, such as a heading, greeting, body, closing, and signature.

form: The structure of a poem, whether standard (like a sonnet) or without a regular pattern.

hyperbole: A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used to convey a particular effect.

imagery: In literature, mental pictures of a feeling, sensation, or idea that are suggested by language; also, actual pictures.

list poem: A poetic work composed of a list of items.

metaphor: A type of figurative language in which a term for one thing serves as a symbol for another thing.

onomatopoeia: A word, such as swish, zoom, or whiz, whose name describes a sound.

pattern poem: A poetic work in which the words are artfully placed in the shape of a picture or symbol.

plastic poem: Term used by the Japanese Surrealists to describe a poetic work that utilizes photography, in addition to or in place of text, to evoke complex and symbolic meanings.

rhyme: The repetition of the sounds of words in a poem.

rhythm: In poetry, a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.

simile: A type of figurative language in which two different things are compared using “like” or “as.”

sonnet: A poem traditionally comprised of 14 lines written in a set rhyme scheme.

surrealism: A 20th-century artistic and literary movement that emphasized the role of the unconscious mind in creating visual and textual works.

symbolism: The process of using an object or idea to represent or suggest something else.

tableaux: Scenes depicted through posing without talking or moving, usually with costumes.

typographic poem: A poetic work in which the way words and letters look on the page is more important than what the words say.

visual poem: A general term for a poetic work, such as a calligram, concrete poem, pattern poem, or plastic poem, that uses an arrangement of text and/or images to visually convey meaning.

a list of poetic terms ⚜ More: Word Lists

[yellowocaballero]

i very much enjoy the extremely scientific analysis of the naruto verse in which there are three genders, aka naruto, sasuke, and Woman.

AM I WRONG? AM I WRONG? pulls down projection screen and plays powerpoint

Obviously let's give room for nuance. A ton of Naruto characters don't fall into these gender norms. This does predominantly apply to the rampant proliferation of the three-person dynamics that were assigned by the government and dictate your entire life. And, like, society. It does not end. Gender isn't a biological factor in Naruto, it's a social dynamic constructed entirely by your homoerotic tension with other men. And there are so many.

Madara (S), Hashirama (N), Mito (W). Izuna (N) and Tobirama (S) - tragically, Izuna died before women could be invented. Sarutobi (N), Danzo (S, horrifically) - see above about women not being invented yet. Jiraiya (N), Orochimaru (S), Tsunade (W). Yahiko (N), Nagato (S), Konan (W). Obito (N), Kakashi (S), Rin (W). Shisui (N), Itachi (S), that little deeply unimportant girlfriend (W). Um, fucking, Naruto (N), Sasuke (S), Sakura (W). Even - even, fuckin, Rock Lee (N), Neiji (S), Tenten (W).

And what do they all have in common????

(OT3. They're all OT3s. Is what I'm saying).

There is some room for alternative gender expressions here, like being butch or femme. Naruto gender expressions: teacher, otouto, woman who you can't even tell is woman gendered because she has no backstory but you just have to kinda assume that she has a polycule-based backstory where she was Woman Gender. I feel almost as if 2/3rds of the Rookie 9 are liberated from this. InoShikaCho just doesn't fit (their chaotic cousin energy is just too strong and Ino's too much of a lesbian). Hinata's too busy being defined entirely by a different throuple's N to have codependent dynamics with her own N and S (and I'm hesitant to even say that, since I actually don't know if Kiba and Shino have a codependent rivalry - do they?).

I get, like, the reason for all of this. Curse of Hatred. Cycles. N and S Genders being sourced from demigods or something. Narrative parallelism. Sympathy points. It's not the bad guy's fault he's evil, his N and W gendered counterparts died :(. But an extremely strange side-effect of this is that all of the male characters are, like, Just Naruto or Just Sasuke. But the vast majority of the female characters are - like, completely defined by the men in their lives - but also they are more likely to be a unique person. Mito, Sakura, and Rin have actually nothing in common. Writing so sexist it creates more interesting characters?!?!

Unironically, this is why I'm always saying that Sasunaru is the ship of all time, nothing will ever top it, you will NEVER do it like Sasunaru, etc. Every important relationship in the series is meant to evoke Sasunaru. (Notably, none of the explicitly romantic ones. But we're beyond such paltry understandings of the most iconic pairing of all time as fundamentally based in romance. We're operating on a higher level than that). This unbroken chain of toxic yaoi has culminated at the end point of Sasunaru, and it exists to parallel Sasunaru and define their relationship by the dysfunction of generations of tragedy. That's why Naruto has to consciously break the cycle and free them from the generational hate - it was the only way to save Sasuke. This is also why I'm always saying that Sasunaru is the point of Naruto, and that the entirety of Naruto is about Sasunaru. Come back to me when your work has invented new genders in the all-encompassing pursuit of toxic yaoi.

This also means that the only truly gender non-conforming individuals in Naruto are its mightiest heterosexuals: Minato (W) and Kushina (N). Truly insane. The N/S/W configuration is the societal norm, it's bonkers to make a major good-aligned male character a wifeguy. By Naruto standards Minato and Kushina are the only queer couple.

[messiahzzz]

thank you sm for the ask!! 💕 i’m glad you enjoy my posts and it is not a strange request by any means!

note: this is merely my read on gale’s sexual preferences/kinks. i don’t want to police anyone on their headcanons or claim they are “incorrect”. since the game doesn’t provide too much detail, many things remain up to interpretation. (and lest we forget fanfiction has always encouraged the exploration of dynamics that may not be present in canon.)

gale is a character who isn’t interested in walking the straight and narrow route. he is all about new experiences, favoring non-traditional means, putting his own spin on things, and the thrill of seeking the forbidden. the sheer romance of the uncharted and the unknown. he is enthusiastic in almost every aspect and possesses an infectious zest for life. in regards to his sexual preferences, this translates into an eagerness to explore, witness new sensations, and reach new heights together. while approaching the topic of sexuality with a generally playful, adventurous attitude.

if you’re looking for harder kinks, however — i don’t believe gale is the character for you. and in case it needs to be said again: there is nothing wrong with being vanilla.

initially, i see gale as a switch, who gravitates more towards assuming a dominant role, due to his ever-present desire to give and to impress. i do think he enjoys giving up control, yet you still have to actively convince him to let himself go and be spoiled for once. his first focus will always be to fulfill his partner's needs and drown them in his all-encompassing love and adoration. i also believe that gale will grow more comfortable with being the center of attention, once their relationship has reached a point of total security (and he had ample opportunities to show in just how many ways he can wow them). gale is not a strict dom, nor a sub. in his ideal relationship roles would be discarded entirely, deeming them too restrictive in his expression of intimacy with a trusted partner. it’s all about variety and ridding oneself of the shackles of the worldly, after all. melting into one perfect whole, not knowing where he ends and his partner begins.

gale: we are all sensual vessels. illusory magic lets us sail farther, and feel more deeply.

gale: [..] i could use the weave to make us feel sensations beyond reckoning.

based on what we know about gale, these could be some of his kinks:

lots of praise (this is non-negotiable), sensation/temperature play (waxplay, electrostimulation/all the many perks magic has to offer), sensory deprivation, light restrictions and bondage, the occasional roleplay, katoptronophilia (self-explanatory), altered mental-states (hypnosis, psychedelics), orgasm control & denial, body worship, olfactophilia and given his propensity towards verbosity: narratophilia and some very inventive dirty talk. as for my own self-indulgent take: due to the recurring emphasis on hands during his romance, as well as his being the main tool in how he shapes and navigates the world: quirofilia.

nodecontext: flustered, standing in front of his romance partner in bondage gear. not necessarily uncomfortable with the bondage aspect, just trying to stay focused.

now, what are gale’s hard-limits?

gale, after the player received loviatar's blessing: your hide, your choice. not quite my cup of tea though.

while projecting your own kinks and fantasies onto fictional characters is fine and well, disregarding and ignoring the source material (and the character's stated boundaries) is another matter entirely. fanon!gale is rather ooc and very different from his canon portrayal, which is something that tends to irk me. although this remains a common fandom phenomenon.

personally, i don’t see gale as someone who enjoys pain of any kind, be it giving or receiving (with the exception of spanking and light choking, if a certain mood strikes. although it is kept mostly playful). contrary to what fandom may claim, having self-worth issues, being loquacious, emotionally expressive, and vulnerability-seeking (as well as being commonly perceived as arrogant and insufferable) doesn't automatically equal having repressed masochistic tendencies. he could be convinced to dip a toe into sadism, but only upon his partner’s insistence. although i doubt he himself would find enjoyment in that.

the same applies to degradation/humiliation. i doubt that a character who is still very much struggling with inherent self-worth issues and a general feeling of being defective/not worthy would derive sexual gratification from being degraded. yes, it can certainly be healing for some, but gale doesn’t strike me as someone who would find particular enjoyment in that. quite the contrary, actually. nor would he like to do the degrading for that matter (he would vehemently refuse. all he wants to do is sing your praises.) gale wouldn’t enjoy being leashed and/or collared in any way either. the prospect of being tied up or restricted is rather intriguing, cause it serves to center one’s vulnerability while also allowing for more intense sensations. anything that taps into the puppy play/slave territory tho? he would find it demeaning… and, quite frankly, silly.

gale is also not a voyeur, nor a cuck. the entire scene with the drow twins leans way too much into dub-con territory for my tastes. the only way you can get him to participate at all is by rolling a persuasion check with DC 25. in every other dialogue option, he immediately (and explicitly) declines. even if you do manage to pass the persuasion check, he is still very hesitant about participating.

gale: i might enjoy watching you tangled up with the drow, as long as i was five paces back.

he then immediately runs from the room, because sending a simulacrum in his place was the only way to somewhat remove himself from the situation while still being able to please tav. because of course he wants to please and clearly this is important to tav so he might just… have to discard his reservations and... just go through with it?!

gale: well i suppose it would do no good to back out now. let us begin this little anthropological study, if we must.

i am aware that fandom uses the fact that his “orb lit up in telltale excitement” as a justification that persuading him was the right choice, as well as confirmation that he was secretly into it and “just needed a little push" to explore his desires/get out of his comfort zone. that implication alone is very suspect and goes straight into the sort of logic abusers often use. you can be physically aroused by certain scenes, images, or sounds, even while being visibly uncomfortable with the presented scenario. it is a natural response that you can’t often control. which is what he is showing throughout the entire scene: discomfort. he was coerced into this situation, without any prior discussion or an opportunity to talk about his boundaries. furthermore, this is what he has to say if you approach him after the threesome:

gale: ahem. i hope you're not here to ask about our recent, erm, activities. i'd rather those were consigned to the footnotes of our romance, if it's all the same with you.

since he is strictly monogamous, any arrangement involving another person is also a no. he made this rather clear when tav sought him out after receiving halsin's proposal. him being monogamous isn't solely rooted in his trauma, it isn't something he has to “overcome” in order to heal, nor does it mean that their relationship is any less fulfilling. call him greedy, stubborn, or old-fashioned, but he cannot comfortably agree to that.

[onceuponatown]

The history of Christmas traditions kept evolving throughout the 19th century, when most of the familiar components of the modern Christmas including St. Nicholas, Santa Claus, and Christmas trees, became popular. The changes in how Christmas was celebrated were so profound that it's safe to say someone alive in 1800 would not even recognize the Christmas celebrations held in 1900.

Washington Irving and St. Nicholas

Early Dutch settlers of New York considered St. Nicholas to be their patron saint and practiced a yearly ritual of hanging stockings to receive presents on St. Nicholas Eve, in early December. Washington Irving, in his fanciful History of New York, mentioned that St. Nicholas had a wagon he could ride “over the tops of trees” when he brought “his yearly presents to children.”

The Dutch word “Sinterklaas” for St. Nicholas evolved into the English “Santa Claus,” thanks in part to a New York City printer, William Gilley, who published an anonymous poem referring to “Santeclaus” in a children’s book in 1821. The poem was also the first mention of a character based on St. Nicholas having a sleigh, in this case, pulled by a single reindeer.

Clement Clarke Moore and The Night Before Christmas

Perhaps the best-known poem in the English language is “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” or as it’s often called, “The Night Before Christmas.” Its author, Clement Clarke Moore, a professor who owned an estate on the west side of Manhattan, would have been quite familiar with the St. Nicholas traditions followed in early 19th century New York. The poem was first published, anonymously, in a newspaper in Troy, New York, on December 23, 1823.

Reading the poem today, one might assume that Moore simply portrayed the common traditions. Yet he actually did something quite radical by changing some of the traditions while also describing features that were entirely new.

For instance, the St. Nicholas gift giving would have taken place on December 5, the eve of St. Nicholas Day. Moore moved the events he describes to Christmas Eve. He also came up with the concept of “St. Nick” having eight reindeer, each of them with a distinctive name.

Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol

The other great work of Christmas literature from the 19th century is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. In writing the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, Dickens wanted to comment on greed in Victorian Britain. He also made Christmas a more prominent holiday and permanently associated himself with Christmas celebrations.

Dickens was inspired to write his classic story after speaking to working people in the industrial city of Manchester, England, in early October 1843. He wrote A Christmas Carol quickly, and when it appeared in bookstores the week before Christmas 1843 it began to sell very well.

The book crossed the Atlantic and began to sell in America in time for Christmas 1844, and became extremely popular. When Dickens made his second trip to America in 1867 crowds clamored to hear him read from A Christmas Carol. His tale of Scrooge and the true meaning of Christmas had become an American favorite. The story has never been out of print, and Scrooge is one of the best-known characters in literature.

Santa Claus Drawn by Thomas Nast

The famed American cartoonist Thomas Nast is generally credited as having invented the modern depiction of Santa Claus. Nast, who had worked as a magazine illustrator and created campaign posters for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, was hired by Harper’s Weekly in 1862. For the Christmas season, he was assigned to draw the magazine’s cover, and legend has it that Lincoln himself requested a depiction of Santa Claus visiting Union troops.

The resulting cover, from Harper’s Weekly dated January 3, 1863, was a hit. It shows Santa Claus on his sleigh, which has arrived at a U.S. Army camp festooned with a “Welcome Santa Claus” sign.

Santa’s suit features the stars and stripes of the American flag, and he’s distributing Christmas packages to the soldiers. One soldier is holding up a new pair of socks, which might be a boring present today, but would have been a highly prized item in the Army of the Potomac.

Beneath Nast's illustration was the caption, “Santa Claus In Camp.” Appearing not long after the carnage at Antietam and Fredericksburg, the magazine cover is an apparent attempt to boost morale in a dark time.

The Santa Claus illustrations proved so popular that Thomas Nast kept drawing them every year for decades. He is also credited with creating the notion that Santa lived at the North Pole and kept a workshop manned by elves. The figure of Santa Claus endured, with the version drawn by Nast becoming the accepted standard version of the character. By the early 20th century the Nast-inspired version of Santa became a very common figure in advertising.

Prince Albert and Queen Victoria Made Christmas Trees Fashionable

The tradition of the Christmas tree came from Germany, and there are accounts of early 19th century Christmas trees in America, but the custom wasn’t widespread outside German communities.

The Christmas tree first gained popularity in British and American society thanks to the husband of Queen Victoria, the German-born Prince Albert. He installed a decorated Christmas tree at Windsor Castle in 1841, and woodcut illustrations of the Royal Family’s tree appeared in London magazines in 1848. Those illustrations, published in America a year later, created the fashionable impression of the Christmas tree in upper-class homes.

By the late 1850s reports of Christmas trees were appearing in American newspapers. And in the years following the Civil War ordinary American households celebrated the season by decorating a Christmas tree.

The first electric Christmas tree lights appeared in the 1880s, thanks to an associate of Thomas Edison, but were too costly for most households. Most people in the 1800s lit their Christmas trees with small candles.

The First White House Christmas Tree

The first Christmas tree in the White House was displayed in 1889, during the presidency of Benjamin Harrison. The Harrison family, including his young grandchildren, decorated the tree with toy soldiers and glass ornaments for their small family gathering.

There are some reports of president Franklin Pierce displaying a Christmas tree in the early 1850s. But the stories of a Pierce tree are vague and there doesn't seem to be contemporaneous mentions in newspapers of the time.

Benjamin Harrison's Christmas cheer was closely documented in newspaper accounts. An article on the front page of the New York Times on Christmas Day 1889 detailed the lavish presents he was going to give his grandchildren. And though Harrison was generally regarded as a fairly serious person, he vigorously embraced the Christmas spirit.

Not all subsequent presidents continued the tradition of having a Christmas tree in the White House. By the middle of the 20th century, White House Christmas trees became established. And over the years it has evolved into an elaborate and very public production.

The first National Christmas Tree was placed on The Ellipse, an area just south of the White House, in 1923, and the lighting of it was presided over by President Calvin Coolidge. The lighting of the National Christmas Tree has become quite a large annual event, typically presided over by the current president and members of the First Family.

Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus

In 1897 an eight-year-old girl in New York City wrote to a newspaper, the New York Sun, asking if her friends, who doubted the existence of Santa Claus, were right. An editor at the newspaper, Francis Pharcellus Church, responded by publishing, on September 21, 1897, an unsigned editorial. The response to the little girl has become the most famous newspaper editorial ever printed.

The second paragraph is often quoted:

"Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS."

Church’s eloquent editorial asserting the existence of Santa Claus seemed a fitting conclusion to a century that began with modest observances of St. Nicholas and ended with the foundations of the modern Christmas season firmly intact.

By the end of the 19th century, the essential components of a modern Christmas, from Santa to the story of Scrooge to strings of electric lights were firmly established in America.

Source

[bugcatcherkit]

do you. have. shigeo hcs… I need to talk about him he is rattling in my brain like a marble.

KICKING MY FEET. PERHAPS SOME

I assume you mean Shigeo Separately. Which actually, even when I do portray them as a system I still view them as having very blurred lines. Like they have their own senses of self but there isn't exactly a specific point where Mob ends and Shigeo begins and vice versa. At a certain point they just blend together because they share the baseline identity of Kageyama Shigeo. If you didn’t mean separately i am so very sorry

Also, these are all post-canon, because that's where most of Him is, in my brain.

But with Shigeo his identity centres more around "well I know I'm not Mob" and "I know what everyone thinks of me" and "dealing with Extremely Stressful Situations". He doesn't really have much of an identity outside of that. So post-canonically he doesn't really know what to do with himself, he doesn't know what he wants, and he doesn't know how to react to these new and exciting situations (aka incredibly mundane ones). But he also doesn't want to miss out on them so he just kind of lets himself Exist in these "non-important" moments even if he's vaguely uncomfortable or unsure or scared he's making some sort of Big Mistake. he’s still volatile and cautious but generally a bit more Open.

Okay back to bullet points for this one

i like to think he is a low energy guy outside of experiencing his Big Emotions. He likes CHILLING and does not like high-energy things. But at the same time he’s always buzzing with energy also. Confusing

i also think he tries to get his own hobby, but he doesn't really know what he likes so he picks up a bunch. But he gets so impatient when he isn't good at them immediately that he drops them quickly.

He likes when people show their love/support/kindness but has no idea how to actually respond to it and it gets kind of awkward anyway

he psychic power stims a LOT. He is inventing new stims never before perceivable by humankind. Specifically I think he likes low or high gravity related ones. Great for emotional regulation

Ritsu is his BABY BROTHER and he loves hanging out with him so much. He will waltz into Ritsu's room and lay on the floor and not say anything to him at all because he just wants to be there

I think he really likes insects. Shigeo goes "i understand you, beautiful creatures" and he loves them. Type of guy to let a spider live in his room instead of even putting it outside because that's his pet now.

every time i draw him in outfits i base it off a Kid Shigeo outfit. His natural gravitation towards nostalgic things

his demand avoidance persists even post-canonically. Like for example, he enjoys helping out around the house but cannot stand it when he's told to do something or do it in a specific way. He goes "ok" and drops the task entirely and walks away

I didn't mention any of his dynamic with Mob because that is a whole different beast and I would have gotten way off topic. Actually same with his dynamic with any other characters. I'm crazy about them all. Also the way I characterize him is hard to put into words let alone tidbits i STRUGGLED.

[pynkhues]

What do you mean when u say Lestat is a Milton’s Satan hero?

Ah! Okay! Going to try and keep this shorter than my Byronic Hero post, haha, but we’ll see how we go.

Before we start…

When we talk about Milton’s Satan as a character archetype, we’re talking about something that was originated in John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost, which was published in 1667. This was before gothic literature was quote-unquote ‘invented’ (as I mentioned in my first Byronic Hero post, gothic literature is widely accepted to have begun with Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel, The Castle of Otranto – worth the read, even just for the bonkers prophecy-speaking skeletons and a character dying from a helmet falling on his head, haha), but had, and continues to have, an enormous impact on gothic literature and horror in general.

The poem is set across twelve ‘books’ (chapters, basically), and is effectively a re-telling of the Book of Genesis but with two narrative throughlines. One throughline is Adam and Eve who represent more conventional biblical heroes in the poem, and the other is Satan (also called Lucifer in the poem). We’ll talk more about them in a sec, but before we begin it’s important to note that Paradise Lost was never intended as a criticism of the church.

Milton was a religious man, which is a really important thing to note when we start talking about Paradise Lost, but he was also heavily influenced as a writer by King Charles I’s autocratic rule and the English Civil War which lasted from 1642-1651. I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty of all of that, but what’s important to note is that he wrote Paradise Lost in a really increased period of anti-authority sentiment in the UK and believed strongly in rebellion against authority, which feeds into how he invented his Satan.

Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost

Lucifer’s arc in Paradise Lost is a relatively straight forward one. He begins as God’s favourite angel but his pride and his vanity gets the better of him as God starts to invent (and favour) earth and mankind, and he comes to resent God’s authority over the kingdom of heaven. He believes he deserves to be loved as God is, so he leads a rebellion against God, only to lose, and he and the rest of the fallen angels, get cast out of Heaven and into Hell.

Out of spite, Lucifer decides to make Hell his own, with the iconic line “Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n” and to set his sights on corrupting God’s new favourite thing – Mankind (at this point, just Adam and Eve) – and he’s ultimately pretty darn successful. I’m not going to talk too much about the specific ways that he does that, but it’s basically a mix of deception and sowing seeds of lust, and the end result is that humanity’s corrupted, and God further punishes Satan by turning him and the other fallen angels into snakes.

The devil had been depicted a few times in literature and poetry before this time –most notably in Dante’s Inferno – but these depictions of the devil were always monstrous. Dante’s Satan is a three-mouthed beast keeping his sinner’s constantly in pain, trapped in Hell himself instead of reigning over it, and this is where Milton’s Satan hit the streets and changed character archetypes for good.

Because Milton’s Satan was hot.

Sure, he was evil, proud, vain, impulsive and did terrible things, but he was also charismatic, beautiful, graceful, funny, with all the best lines in the poem. He was “a lonely rebel…[and] an appealing, sympathetic deviant.”

And – I can’t stress this enough – nobody had ever done that before in Western writing.  “[Milton] transformed the way evil was depicted in Western texts and cultural imagery,” and also created the hero-villain archetype, something we now often refer to as an antihero.

On top of that though, Milton’s Satan was deceptive (literally a shapeshifter!), impulsive, had an incestuous family, and made sex sinful by making it lustful (Milton’s thesis over and over in his writing is that sex is great as long as nobody feels lust lol). He was also a loser, haha – he lost every battle he fought, and is in some ways regarded as a caricature of the epic odyssey hero, but look, I’m not going to get into all of that here.

Milton’s Satan is a tragic struggle between the entirely villainous and the entirely heroic.

Let’s just grab a quote from the excellent paper Miltonic Influences in Gothic Victorian Literature:

“As a rejected, troubled child of God, Satan decides to forcefully take what he thinks he should have by birthright. When he does not succeed, he decides to corrupt God’s new children…Satan is narcissistic, vain, proud and jealous. However, he is also remorseful and aware of the wrongness of his actions. He alone thinks he cannot be pardoned for the sins he commits so he forcefully pushes forward in his need for revenge. At the same time, Satan shows disturbingly human characteristics, but also inexplicable immorality. Just when one thinks one can reach a humane reason for Satan’s behaviour, one is left baffled by how evil he actually is.”

The important thing to remember about your Milton’s Satan archetype is that he was not just invented as a means of Milton’s grappling with autocracy and anti-authority sentiment, he was also really Milton’s way of grappling with humanity.

He leaves Adam and Eve as the Biblical heroes of the story, which makes them hard to engage with. What Milton wanted with Satan was to lean into the fallen angel element of him and show him as a character with the capacity for both good and evil, and the tendency to choose evil, thus making him both ultimately tragic, but also more human than the human characters. He was a way for Milton to explore what he felt were his own sins and moral failings, and in the process of that, became a way for readers to explore that too.

Evolution of Milton’s Satan

Milton’s Satan as an archetype has grown a lot over the years since his invention. Even by the time gothic literature started being ‘officially’ written a century later, the character archetype really existed on a spectrum, with some Milton’s Satan’s such as Ambrosio in Matthew Gregory Lewis’ 1796 novel, The Monk leaning more villain than hero, and the Monster in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein, who’s cast out by his maker and not given the chance he needs in life to be good. The Monster lacks a lot of Milton’s Satan’s typical traits like pride and self-love, but he continues the archetype’s throughline of being a cast out child who out of loneliness, becomes vengeful against the authority that rejected him and ultimately depraved/

Like I said, this archetype underpins all antiheroes today, and there’s a lot of writing about characters as wide-ranging as Hannibal Lector to Batman as being owing to Milton’s Satan, so there’s heaps out there to read if you’re interested, but yes! Let’s talk a little about Lestat.

Lestat as Milton’s Satan

Trying to keep this short(ish, anyway, haha): I really do think Lestat is born out of this archetype. Lestat’s an anti-authority character – an enormous part of which stems from his father’s autocratic and abusive reign of the household, and the feeling of abandonment by God when his father pulled him out of the church where he’d learn to be a priest only to continue his abuse. Lestat in that sense also faces rejection from three ‘God’s’ / makers not just one one – his spiritual God, his biological father, and later Magnus as his vampiric maker.

Interestingly too, Miltonic Satan’s remain heavily tied to their maker’s even after their rejection. In that paper above on Miltonic Influences in Gothic Victorian Literature, they note:

“The Satanic hero or the hero-villain is a dark, troubled and mysterious individual. He is shaped by life experiences and traits which he inherits from his maker.”

Something the show has reminded us a few times now. Lestat’s grounding in trauma and abandonment is steeped in the Miltonic trope of rejection by authority leading to rejection of authority, but even beyond that, Milton’s Satan is impulsive, morally weak, self-centered, proud, vain, lonely, beautiful but also, vitally, has a capacity for real good and an ability to love (and, more often, lust, haha). He’s a hero-villain that ultimately draws the viewer in because he’s exceptionally human in his monstrousness, and that is what is at the heart of the Milton’s Satan archetype. He’s evil but he’s human in a way traditional villains were robbed of, and similarly, he’s good but he’s human in a way traditional heroes weren’t allow to be, and to me that is Lestat in a nutshell.

[horizon-verizon]

Why exactly does HotD feel the need to ignore that Rhaenyra, Rhaenys, Laena, Baela, and Rhaena already had characterizations that are not only tied to their actions, but also manage to distinguish them from each other while also linking them to one another?

The "boring" and "dry" source material managed to give us five related women who expressed a "Targaryen woman's strength" and agency in five unique (but still related) ways. And HotD thinks it's somehow an improvement to insist that actually, no, they're all just (by circumstance) variations of a "generic targ girl" template.

The same people who removed Jace's accomplishments, which in turn were a statement about Rhaenyra, and filled in the characterization void they left by portraying him as a mini-Daemon moreso than Baela, because Baela can't be her mini-Daemon book!self because that suggests a good relationship and Daemon needs to have as many of his good qualities removed as possible and as many new crimes invented as possible, including one that necessitates stripping Laena of her characterization, in order to service an invented "redemption arc" that will be used to justify removing Rhaena's characterization for a nonsensical dragon conflict that consumes her whole identity to the point that she ends up merged with another character she has nothing in common with.

You can't change core traits of characters from a book like Fire & Blood. The fact that the characters feel so "utilitarian" might make it feel like you can. But the fact that they're utilitarian means that all those (interconnected) traits are there for a reason because all their (interconnected) actions are driven by those traits.

And yet something tells me these writers are going to try to make a statement about "hubris."

The fact that the characters feel so "utilitarian" might make it feel like you can

@rhaenin-time

If Condal or Hess said this, flame them. If you can't design a person from the role given in the original work, you shouldn't be a creative writer. I really hate that you might be right about the hubris. Like, why the blacks? So do the Starks have hubris for having pride in their house or loving their family? No, so why the Targs and esp the blacks? Though they revealed themselves to be as close to Targ antis as they can get from all their marketing-focused internet search for how the general fandom regards the Targs and their narrative roles.

Part of the reason why they might think of these characters having no real distinct personalities is that they've never really adjusted to reading the book and picking up on characters from the mix of setting, actions, and words. The lack of PoVs triggers a certain wrong kind of detachment.

[yanderes-galore]

Hey man. I have a question. Is it possible to do an Yandere Concept for Miles Tails Prower (Either Romantic or Platonic is Fine).

Sure! Here you go! Obviously doing Modern Tails for this. This is primary platonic but eludes to something else, yet it never actually goes anywhere. I think I depicted "Yandere in denial" well in this :)

Yandere! Miles "Tails" Prower Concept

Pairing: Platonic/Romantic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Denial/Lucidity, Overprotective behavior, Stalking, Jealousy, Fear of abandonment implied, Tails is mentioned to have a crush but doesn't entirely pursue it, Slight delusional behavior, Guilt, Trackers mentioned, Clingy behavior mentioned, Manipulation, Blackmail mention, Implied violence, Isolation, Dubious companionship.

Platonic or romantic I feel Tails would be really sweet.

He genuinely just wants to help and impress you, maybe even be more like you.

He'd be like a best friend who has a budding crush on you.

He knows he wants to do anything he can for you… he just doesn't know the extent of it yet.

Tails is a fox who gained his confidence through his adventures with Sonic.

He still gets insecure and dependent on others at times, but he has grown from when he was younger.

He has grown to realize his genius when it comes to technology and is definitely a different fox from when he first met Sonic.

I personally feel Tails can meet you around Sonic Forces or sometime during the IDW comics as he is most mature there for his character. Maybe even the start of Prime?

However I'm going to keep this concept general.

I have a feeling Tails would express hopeful/delusional yandere behavior.

He's naive but very positive and loyal.

Tails would most likely be content with just being a close friend, but if he had a crush he'd be hopeful that you reciprocate.

Tails is calm and mostly spends time working on his inventions.

Speaking of which… he would use inventions to aid him in his “little” obsession over you.

Tails probably met you through Sonic or you being a rookie if we're talking forces.

When you become a new ally you may appeal to Tails in some way.

For example, you listen to his technobabble with intrigue.

You even ask questions to learn more.

It probably isn't hard for Tails to be attached to a new friend.

Especially if you spark something within him.

You just make the fox feel all… fuzzy?

He doesn't entirely understand but he always finds the feeling lingering when you're with him… even when you leave.

Tails seems very naive about how he feels towards you.

As time passes he sees you as a great friend, one he treasures like Sonic.

Although… Maybe there's something hidden within that?

Something more intense? Something darker?

He isn't sure… but he likes how you make him feel!

Tails would be a yandere concerned about your safety like most yanderes in this universe (Hero yans, not really villains).

He'd also make drones and tech to aid/watch you.

Yeah I feel Tails, like most scientist yanderes, would stalk you through tech like cameras and drones.

He tries to tell himself and you he means well… but deep down he isn't entirely sure if that's true.

Tails has grown to be independent yet he may have lapses where he's clingy.

I feel Tails may fall into the category of the yandere who looks cute and innocent… but is darker deep down.

He tells you he means well and you trust him.

He's your friend!

When in reality something darker is brewing.

Tails would feel insecure if you didn't include him in your daily life.

It starts with events, he wonders why you don't invite him to hang outs with some people and it gets to him.

His insecurities would drive some of his actions which pushes him to be clingier.

Being included in your life soothes his obsession and makes him calm.

When away from you… he wonders if he's good enough.

Tails is also not the most demanding yandere.

He wants attention but he is more willing to smother you in his.

Tails would do anything for you and not ask for anything in return except maybe your attention.

He just likes making you smile, it makes him smile!

Tails seems like he'd adore hugs as his preferred form of affection.

They're innocent and not very invasive.

It works if he's a best friend, even if he has a hidden crush.

If anyone is bothering you, Tails will listen to your rants and comfort you if you cry.

I really can't see Tails murdering… it just isn't him.

He'd be more likely to manipulate them away from you with threats or blackmail.

Unless that's what he wants you to think…

Maybe he is the reason you never see anyone who was with you again… you didn't notice any red stains on him, did you?

The second option isn't really his character… but people will do anything for love and adoration, yeah?

Tails would hide his obsession, always playing the lovable fox friend.

He'd make it hard for you to suspect him of anything.

Any manipulation, stalking, picture taking, or violence is cleverly hidden from your eyes.

He even hides it from Sonic and the others.

If they found out… they could take you from him!

… take you from him…

Oh no.

Tails doesn't really like these darker thoughts of his.

You're just friends… aren't you?

Does he even know?

All he knows is he wants to be by you… but what are these other thoughts?

Why's he so violent?

Why does he feel so irritated?

He… he doesn't want to hurt anyone, right?

Well… maybe… as long as they don't take you from him.

Tails isn't even sure if he can be away from you.

He worries things will get worse.

In fact, they might.

Especially when he starts thinking about isolating you with him… sticking trackers on you… upping security.

He's sure it'll pass!

He's in denial.

He can fix this!

Can he, really?

Tails would be a yandere who breaks from his delusions at times and hits denial about his actions.

He isn't sure if he should reprimand himself or tell himself he's okay.

This isn't normal… he knows this as he falls into darkness.

Yet he can't seem to clear his mind of you.

He's too far in… He can't go back now…

It can't get much worse than this… can it?

He hopes not….

[howtodrawyourdragon]

Craving Ice Cream

@jayalaw

Summary: Set after Httyd 2. Hiccup has a craving and Astrid wants him to voice it.

Warnings: Pregnancy

Rating: General

Words: 546

Fandom: How to Train Your Dragon

Characters: Hiccup, Toothless, Astrid, Snotlout, Ruffnut, Tuffnut, Valka

Pairing: Hiccstrid

Author's Notes: Written for a request because I got an ask on Tumblr a few days ago telling me that they loved my Pregcup fics the day after I posted two, so I made a post asking for requests and this is one of them. Really enjoyed writing this one!

Enjoy!

-XOXOX-

“I…” Before he dares to finish his sentence, Hiccup closes his mouth and presses his lips together, wondering if he should finish.

It’s not quiet in the house, Tuffnut and Snotlout are in a heated discussion with Fishlegs about something while Ruffnut watches and instigates wherever she can. Gobber and Valka are in the kitchen. Eret stokes the fire and Astrid sharpens her axe. But when Hiccup decides to speak, they still hear him.

Curled up around him, Toothless lifts his head to look at his Rider and Astrid stops her sharpening to gaze at her husband, the fur of her hood still damp from the falling snow outside. She was chopping wood until minutes ago. Devastating Winter is steadily approaching and they need to be prepared.

“Finish that sentence, Babe,” she tells him, already using a more motherly tone even though the baby isn’t even here yet. The baby that grows in his womb.

Somehow even more dramatic in his pregnancy, Hiccup opens his mouth again to speak, hands up to animate, only to sigh, drop them on his quiet belly and lay his head back on the dragon he sits against near the fire. Toothless snorts at him, which gets him a look as Hiccup wipes at his face.

He’s seven months far, which means he’s getting quite round by now even for a tall and skinny lad such as himself and they can expect the baby to come in the middle of the most devastating time of the cold season. It’s why the other Riders are here. Because they’re about to get buried by snow inside their homes and they want to be here when the first of a new generation of Dragon Riders is born. And they want to help where necessary.

“Hiccup.”

“It’s fine, it’s nothing. It’s stupid.”

“What’re you craving?” Astrid asks. If he says it’s something stupid, it’s almost always because he’s craving something. And his new appetite, that was something he needed to get used to.

Looking over his shoulder at her, he takes a moment to consider it. How badly is he craving? “... ice cream.”

“That weird invention from the twins?” Snotlout asks, now standing nearby after having torn himself away from his discussion with Fishlegs when he grew too annoyed.

“Uh, weird?”

“Try “genius!” At that comeback, the twins high five.

“Weird how exactly?” But Hiccup takes offense, crossing his arms and glaring up at him. He feels a hard kick inside of him, like the baby agrees. When Snotlout feels a lot of eyes on him, he notices that almost everyone seems to share Hiccup’s sentiment. Especially his soulmate and life partner.

“How would you like your ice cream?” He asks, deciding that is the only way to avoid invoking Astrid’s wrath. She’s been very protective of her husband ever since Gothi confirmed their suspicions. Which is also the reason why she just needed to hear him utter a single vowel before jumping on his case.

“Good boy,” Valka praises his change of mind before disappearing into the kitchen again, Gobber guffawing a laugh from within. And the twins crack their knuckles, deciding to make a batch for their craving friend.

Needless to stay, he got his craving satiated with a bowl of ice cream.

[autisticandroids]

are u a down to agincourt guy at all? i notice it’s not on any of ur rec lists (which is valid even if u do like it lmao it’s everywhere so there’s no need to let the people know about it) any chance ur a hater and want to let loose a little 👀

i mean, i'm not really a hater? i'm more an ambivalent.

first of all, to be clear, i've only read map of the world. i tapped out after that, partly because i just wasn't that into it but mostly because there was some unspeakably stupid stuff about godstiel at the end and i was in my sensitive era about godstiel things.

i also tapped out because i had heard some rather withering reviews from two friends who both tried it and had the same reaction, which is that the narrative of dta lacks tension and forward-movement. i, having only read map of the world, agreed with this, because that's certainly true of map of the world. most notably, it's true that dta actively removes tension by taking the basic premise of the story - that cas' dean and dean's cas are both gone - and just.... removing as much friction from that as possible. endverse cas and endverse dean, in dta, had so little positive relationship that seperis had to invent a way of being soulmates (also. cinemasins ding. i hate soulmates. partly for exactly this reason: they're a copout in terms of the messy and therefore narratively interesting work of relationship building) in order to justify why cas was attached to dean. dean seems perfectly happy to stay where he is and is not panicking about losing his sammy at all, samlucifer haunting him in the white suit doesn't even bother him that much! and he's actively happy to start over with a different cas, because he comes from a post-godstiel time and doesn't like his cas anymore.

personally i really disliked the whole dean and godstiel element for obvious reasons, not least because it annoys me that seperis chose to portray dean as *afraid* of godstiel and not just. enraged at him. however i think the much bigger problem, narratively, is the lack of love lost between endverse cas and endverse dean.

the first reason for this is pretty simple. dta dean is not my little guy and he has no relation to my little guy. he's a nice dude for cas to glom onto. and this isn't a crime, generally speaking fics will do this to one or the other of the dudes, and i'm happy to see it done to dean instead of cas for a change. but it means that dean's characterization doesn't matter as much.

the second reason is that dean didn't just lose cas, he lost literally his whole world. his entire timeline. and he should be upset about that, not cas in specific. i would still say he's insufficiently upset, but it's not as specific and personal.

but like.... if dta is about anything, it's about dta cas. and that means the tensions at the heart of cas' character matter. and he should have WAY more trouble slotting new dean into his life!!! like, the reason for thing #2 on this list is basically just me vagueing dta. in canon, the point of divergence for endverse is ftbyam. when cas and dean already have an intense, close, and sweet relationship. it's soured by the time endverse rolls around, but there was something to sour, inititally! and like to me it's also an excuse to like. use the classic deancas trope of having dean give cas a bunch of mundane firsts that he receives with childlike wonder. like in dta dean teaches cas to enjoy food. and like, that's against the spirit! of endverse cas! the point is that he's already HAD all those experiences with another dean but then things went sour!!!! AUGH.

anyway. making endverse dean Just A Bastard With No Redeeming qualities is like. a serious copout. imo. and it's symptomatic of a broader aversion to conflict and therefore a broader aversion to tension and movement and change. and so what you end up with, (again in map of the world at least, but from other people's reviews i suspect the rest remains the same), is a hundred thousand words of portraiture. it's beautiful, and it's lovingly painted. but it's not a story, because nothing happens in it or is being set up to happen.

but also, i wanna be clear. i REALLY liked elements of the portraiture. i think generally speaking people in fandom get their heads easily turned by pretty prose. like if the story is poetic at a paragraph level, they will give it wildly undue credit. but dta's prose really worked for me in a way a lot of other celebrated poetic fics' prose doesn't. like the density of it really adds something meaningful to the story i think. as a character portrait for cas, it really pulls you in.

and the cas characterization is so..... like it's so powerful, to me. for me i think it's more a characterization for canon cas than for endverse cas but also endverse cas is just canon cas with a few different experiences so like it still completely works. like i love the cas stuff.

the magic worldbuilding is like awesome to me. the thing about me is i love a magic system. i will risk it all for a good magic system. one time i was like, to my friend who liked dta, hey is seperis a programmer? and they were like yeah. and i was like yeah i figured. anyway. magic system <3.

and then also i like that endverse cas Lives In A Society. i like all the ocs and the relationships and the history. i wish that was more consistent, like i wish the endverse cas on the page felt more like he was situated in his history, rather than a new man born into his circumstances (so for example, i like that dta cas Quit Every Drug immediately at the start because endverse fic is so weird about drugs so not touching them is a nice choice imo, but it's also a symptom of this disconnect: cas is not weighed down by old habits and old wounds the way he should be. he's not stuck in place. and like that's the POINT of endverse cas: that he has history. and dta cas feels disconnected from that. and this is also wrapped in with my main criticism of how endverse dean and endverse deancas is handled). but i still like that he lives in a society and i think over the course of map of the world seperis becomes a little better at situating cas in a history in small ways instead of disconnecting him.

anyway in the end, dta is simply not my bag, and this is why. but i also get why people like it, because i also like parts of it.

[kainereee]

Photographer - The Emperor

Going insane over the new idv tarot design like a very normal person, specifically looking at Joseph.

I'll be looking at meanings from a range of websites though most tend to follow the same message.

General Meaning

This is the card that asserts authority, organizes systems to retain maximum control and is the paternal influence of the Tarot deck, assuring that protection and security are provided to all those playing by the rules.

From this meaning alone it feels like the Emperor is the perfect card for Joseph. Immediately my first thoughts go to his inventions and obsession with the mirror world. The CN translation of his third character day letter sees him call the photo world akin to an "eternal kingdom", which has more hopeful connotation.

Joseph doesn't necessarily have malicious intent. Yes, the things he's done are utterly heinous and would be to any rational person who heard of them, but the bottom line is that both Joseph's hubris and his genuine belief that what he is creating and working towards will help people. Joseph sees living as suffering, but he doesn't see the afterlife as something that can guarantee him happiness either. Because the afterlife is foreign and unknown to the happiness he experienced as a child.

Instead he chooses the camera world. Preservation, something he has created, where everyone can be happy together, trapped together in a beautiful eternity. The photo world is the peaceful world where they will all rest, away from the adversities of life.

So how does this all relate to the Emperor? I like to think that it makes sense that because of how many things in Joseph's life that were out of his control ruined him, in the broader sense he does need (or feels like he needs) a huge sense of control, as much control as possible. The camera world allows him that. He's the master of that world but he does not assert such authority to rub his own ego necessarily, but because he's convinced that people need protecting. That living is suffering, and he's merely doing what's best for all. He is protecting them.

I also want to note it might be important that we are served the Emperor card upright. The reversed position of the card implies a lack of control leading to an abuse of power and unwise decisions. What Joseph does is undeniably an abuse of power objectively, but describing it as just that loses a lot of the nuance behind his actions and motivations. Despite how clearly mentally unstable Joseph is he is in control of what he is aiming to do. Like what the Emperor card represents, he has a burning ambition to achieve his goal no matter what it takes — and we see that from the way he does not falter after all his friends leave him, how it's implied that not even Elliott could stop him even though his words left some impression on him.

Design Notes

Moving on, I'd like to look at the design in more detail in comparison to what the traditional Emperor card looks like.

To get the full picture of the design we can look at the actual heritage of the Tarot card, which read me down a rabbit hole of exploring the history of the Emperor card exclusively. One detail that stuck out to me particularly was the fact Joseph isn't facing the audience in his card. In more contemporary decks the Emperor faces you head on, but Joseph isn't. I'd say this is likely in relation to the Tarot de Marseille characteristics.

By the mid-seventeeth century after Tarot card production had moved to France, the Emperor gained the characteristic of sitting on his throne in profile with his legs crossed.

The position of his legs was staged for maximum effect. Sitting at ease with one leg crossed over the other traditionally signified the highest status person in the room, or someone about to pass a legal judgment.

This doesn't drastically change the meaning of the card itself, but I thought it was a cool detail nonetheless. It feels quite fitting for Joseph ( Judge skin aside ) in the sense that he believes that what he is deciding for people is right, or that he even has the authority to in the first place. It fits well with his arrogance and ultimately all the other decisions that lead him to his self-destruction in a way.

The detail doesn't stop there. The Emperor card changed yet again with the occult tradition.

19th century occultists like Eliphas Levi, Oswald Wirth and Papus retained the Tarot De Marseille image but added their own cosmic interpretation. Particularly They saw the Emperor’s body as a triangle with his legs making a cross. Together these form the symbol for alchemical sulfur and allude to spirit dominating matter ( now where does that sound familiar ... )

What's particularly relevant to Joseph is that Wirth changed the Emperor's legs slightly to be more like the astrological symbol of Jupiter.

Because of the Emperor’s association with the number four and the Hebrew letter Daleth (door or womb) occultists saw the Emperor presiding over the birth of all material things, then ruling the material world as Jupiter. The globe topped by a cross, a traditional symbol of the Emperor’s worldly and spiritual power, was reinterpreted as the astrological sign for Venus, emphasizing the concepts of birth and creation. The Emperor represents the creative fire at the heart of all beings; so he’s also energy trapped in the material world.

So how does this all relate to Joseph? Well as I said this doesn't drastically change the meaning of the card, but there are small details and nuances that you could interpret liken to Joseph. Like how the pose he's sat in originates from when tarot deck production grew in France. On the other hand, the connotations of Jupiter could be the way he did achieve his goal in a way in creating the mirror world — defying the rules of life and death itself. Since the Emperor also represents the creative fire at the heart of all beings it could also be alluded to Joseph's origins as a creative in his journey, and his wish to see something more than the dullness and dread of life.

There is a lot more to the card heritage of the Emperor and other parts I could have mentioned, but I decided to include these as the most relevant. I'll have it referenced in the end if you'd like to check it out!

Now I'll continue my insanity into what the Emperor card means in certain contexts.

Past

In the past position, The Emperor represents a father or other authority figure who laid down the law and set a firm definition of acceptable behavior for you. Perhaps you rebelled against him or his teachings, or maybe they helped to keep you out of harm’s way. If you are in a secure position now, you have The Emperor in this position to thank. But some people do abuse their authority and if you are alone and alienated after being witness to the abuse of authority, this card confirms that the blame is there. Often we are given rule over our world and mess things up ourselves. Other times, the trust that put us in the care of another is at fault when this person goes overboard and so The Emperor represents a tyrant.

Honestly I don't have one set idea of interpretation in regards to Joseph and his story in terms of the past.

The first thing that came to mind was his father. We don't know a lot of things about Joseph's family outside of Claude especially with his relationship with his parents. All I can think of is Joseph's 2021 character day art where there were noticeable cracks over his father and mother in the portraits behind him.

Considering Joseph is hardly in a secure position, it might be implied that something went wrong too with his parents. When he lost Claude he had no other immediate family that we know of aside from them, but until he was of age he still would have been under their care. Was there a certain pressure placed on him as the only remaining son of the Desaulnier family? Did Joseph feel perhaps alienated by his parents who may have tried to move forward much quicker than himself? These are questions that we can't answer yet.

The other "tyrant" of Joseph's past I had in mind could have been the person who lent him those books on the occult when he visited the unnamed manor. I already alluded to such a person bearing similarities to Henry and Dorian in my little ramble after finishing the picture of Dorian Grey. But again, there's nothing to he said for sure.

Present

When The Emperor is in the present position, you have the rule of law before you to guide you on your journey. This card is especially strong in the present position as it gives you an absolute confidence to move toward a goal. This can also represent the influence of another person in your life right now. Are you so enamored of a new friend or lover that you have started following the advice and lifestyle habits of him or her? Have you discovered a new hero in the arts whose work has expanded your consciousness to the point that it is hard to relate to people who have not had a similar reaction to this person’s artistic output? Is there a new teacher in your life who has changed the way you think? Perhaps a new person at work is transforming the way you approach your on-the-job goals. The theme running through all of these possibilities is that one way of seeing the world is coming to dominate the way you experience life.

I've highlighted that last part for reasons that I've already stated in this post. But that line in particular is pretty relevant to Joseph.

Joseph who could not run move on from his grief and instead fell deeper into it. Joseph who could never enjoy life the same without Claude in it and after seeing the horrors that death brings, in his brother's death and the revolutionary war that tore up everything he had ever loved and known. Joseph whose life was dominated by his grief, anger and anguish that pushed away those who might have loved and cared for him — even Elliott, at the very end, could not save him.

Future

The future position is an uncomfortable position for The Emperor. The days and weeks ahead are vague and quite affected by the smallest decisions of the here and now. The Emperor card demands to assert itself. When The Emperor card is here, anticipate a change to come into your life in a bold manner; expectations to conform in the way you carry yourself may be part of this picture. Regardless of the situation, understand that new demands to follow a specific behavioral prescription will be coming your way and coming in the near future. Prepare now to submit, evade or resist.

There's a number of ways you could interpret this and none are strictly right or wrong. A lot of which echoes much of the sentiments of needing control, disliking uncertainty and particularly change in general ...

It could also be interpreted in regards to the trajectory of Joseph's life after Claude's death — what became of his future. We have seen Joseph has gained a habit of self-restraint now — not truly speaking what's on his mind but rather speaking what he needs to achieve a means to an end. He's someone who does feel the weight of peoples' expectations on him and seeks to excel past them, and that particularly becomes evident post the tragedies of his younger years. He changes particularly in the way he carries himself, whether that be influence of his own grief or that new-risen demand as the Desaulnier's surviving son and the pressure he put on himself.

Final Notes

You made it to the end! You must be as crazy as me or smth damn.

Anyways this was an unnecessarily long ramble of me basically saying how perfect this card is for Joseph and his story and I'm sure there's so many other elements I missed out and failed to convey. But this is all for fun! Don't take my words as law.

I kind of want to do some more for a few of my favs so ..

[randomthefox]

https://www.sonicstadium.org/news/features/interviews/takashi-iizuka-wants-to-connect-the-sonic-universes-and-create-a-unified-sonic-experience-sonic-stadium-interview-r1283/

https://www.sonicstadium.org/news/features/interviews/takashi-iizuka-on-sonic-teams-expansion-and-shadows-evolving-motivations-tss-interview-r2254/

Why did iizuka let flynn do this? Want to connect comics and games?

His ideas are honestly just as good as flynn's...why not?

Think about it, he's made the where the wisps returned home and then brought them back to Earth offscreen...

First of all that first one is from 2022 dude. Bit late.

Second of all these are very good demonstrations of why you should take print interviews like this with a metric assload of salt. More salt than meat. Basically you should just completely ignore print interviews. They're total bullshit. Fucking look at this shit.

Third of all as I've emphasized repeatedly: TAKASHI IIZUKA DOESN'T SPEAK ENGLISH. Every question he answers needs to be translated from japanese into english. And sometimes even the question itself needs to be turned from english into japanese before he'll even be able to answer it. The second interview you linked has the DECENCY to specify that Iizuka's answers are being provided via interpreter. But the first does not. Which is disingenuous. Because ALL of Iizuka's answers are absolutely being provided via interpreter.

To the first

Look at this fucking- What is all these fucking brackets? "[to connect them]"? So he didn't actually say "to connect them" that's the interviewer who is writing this shit editorializing. And yet what does the headline say?

The headline is quoting THE FUCKING BRACKET QUOTE THAT THE INTERVIEWER INVENTED.

This is SLIME journalism at its purest.

What Iizuka is ACTUALLY FUCKING SAYING HERE is that he wants there to be brand integrity with the various Sonic medias.

Remember how they had the guys dressed up in the mascot costumes at the Tokyo Game Show, and they were acting super in character? That's brand integrity, baby.

This is something that makes complete sense from a corporate perspective when managing a multi media franchise, where every new released piece of media needs to also serve as a commercial for another piece of media. That's why they made Shadow Generations in the first place. Shadow is getting a lot of hype because of the Sonic 3 movie coming out, so they made a new little game to synergize with that. And the movie DLC they're releasing in December when the movie actually comes out is only going to do that moreso. They want people who buy tickets to the Sonic movie to be able to pick up the new Sonic video game and feel like they're getting an internally consistent experience, instead of going "wait what?" and getting completely alienated. You and I can quibble about the differences in continuity between the Sonic movies and Sonic video games, but the average movie goer doesn't care. And neither does SEGA.

People are getting hung up on this idea of "canon" which is a word everyone likes to use but is very obvious that they don't understand. When he says they want all the different pieces of Sonic media to be a connected universe, they're not talking about it all being part of one canon of continuity. They're talking about brand integrity. Sonic X the anime was considered part of the connected universe of Sonic back then too. Even though it clearly wasn't canon to the video games. They were not keeping the anime's adventures of Chris Thorndyke in mind when making new video games. They just wanted kids who were watching the Sonic X anime on saturdays to swivel over and start playing the video games and feel like it was more or less basically the same thing to a casual observer.

SEGA caring about having a "connected universe" of Sonic which includes the IDW comics doesn't mean Ian Flynn suddenly have more creative control over the Sonic universe, and Sonic Team is suddenly going to start tailoring their video game releases to take the latest storyline of IDW into account. It actually means exactly the opposite of that. The IDW Comics are going to be under additional scrutiny from SEGA to make sure the comic isn't fucking up their brand integrity, and the comic is going to be expected to disrupt their ongoing storylines and character plots to start creating storylines that tie into the wider franchise direction.

Obviously they have actually been fumbling the ball on that incredibly hard, which is why you had the Fang The Hunter mini series releasing THREE MONTHS after Sonic Superstars came out, the Knuckles Anniversary comic is releasing SEVEN MONTHS after the Knuckles Paramount show, and the Shadow Special Comic is releasing a month after the Sonic 3 movie and three months after the release of Shadow Generations. This is probably because the production of this comic is an absolute shit show, and IDW as a company is going the fuck out of business lol.

Anyway anybody who thinks the video games are suddenly going to be secondary to the comic books is fucking delusional and a retard. It's the other way around. The comics are going to be bent and twisted to follow along with the games. Which Flynn has been absolutely dreading, which is why he was insisting for YEARS that the comics were NOT canon.

Anyway

Sounds like a "no" to me, but I speak Corporate =P

also note that this interview actually included the fact that these answers are being delivered via Interpreter. Again I tell you, a Metric Assload of Salt.

[thanx-files]

Gethsemane Review and Season 4 Wrap-Up

Listen. Listen. These get longer every season, but I can’t help myself. I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to put my thoughts into comprehensible language after Gethsemane. So please, indulge me, agree with me, start a fight with me in the replies, but whatever you do, just join me in being unwell about season 4 of The X-Files. Spoilers, of course.

Gethsemane

I, a child of the 21st century, am watching this show on a streaming platform. It has long since wrapped, and I know for damn sure that David Duchovny will return as Fox Mulder for many of the seasons to follow. Even so, I am choking on this ending. What the exact and entire fuck do you mean HE DIED?

I cannot imagine watching this, then waiting MONTHS to know what happened. I know those message boards were buzzing. Not only that, but the viewers would not have had the benefit of the Dean Winchester trope thanks to which every time a main character dies you think, “it’s fine honestly don’t even worry about it, they’ll be back in two weeks.” (Even if you’re wrong.)

UGH okay now that I’ve talked about that, it’s time to be a broken record: I love to see Mulder and Scully at odds. The scene as they’re leaving the Smithsonian is ART to me. They’re no longer fighting the same war; they’re on the same battlefield, arguing about who the fuck is shooting at them in the first place.

He doesn’t see that she needs him because of how desperately she doesn’t want to need him. She says she’s out of the game while sliding all her chips into the center of the table. They’re impossible. I’m obsessed with them.

Also we got more Catholic Scully in this ep, and we know I love that, too. I love that no one can touch whatever God is to her — not a priest and not Mulder either. I love that she is unthreatened by the truth, whatever it happens to be.

Also, the dialogue this ep goes hard in general, but Mulder hearing the phrase, “They invented you” is so fucked up. He’s a cog in the very machine he hopes to dismantle. Or is he? Or was he?

This ep had me, who jumped onboard with MSR the second Mulder turned on that slide projector in the pilot, wondering if I had been wrong the whole time. Then they pulled that ending. The last seven seconds of the ep had me so fucked up. Scully getting choked up — the FBI official she’s been explaining it all to trying to keep her from saying the thing out loud. It’s overwhelming.

This has all been a lot of summary and not a lot of reviewing, but what else is new? TL;DR: This ep fucks. Favorite season finale so far, followed by Anasazi.

Season 4

One of the strengths of season 4 is how connected it all feels. With a few notable exceptions, we start up on this rollercoaster hill of autonomy, mortality, power, and the self. I know those are major themes of the whole series, but when you look at them through the lens of the cancer arc, they look kinda different. Suddenly we have foreshadowing. We have the specter of death looking in on us for more than just an episode, a moment. We start to feel like maybe something bad could actually happen to Mulder and Scully —something permanent and paradigm-shifting.

The weakness, for me, of season 4 is that it has no sense of humor. No Clyde Bruckman. No Coprophages. No Jose Chung. The episodes are good, of course, but none of them are fun! I don’t need another sitcom ep, but I do need a breath, for the love of God.

5 favorite eps:

Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man: Yes! I am as surprised as you are, seeing as I made a comment last season about how little patience I have for the CSM and his musings, specifically. But I find I did actually want to know who this guy is. And the fact that he’s watching the Gunmen the whole time — that’s the power thing I was talking about before. He says it himself: He could kill them anytime. But not today.

Tunguska & Terma: The first time a 2-part mytharc sequence has made it to my favorites list! I fucking love it when Alex Krycek shows his face around Mulder and Scully because he WILL stab them in the back and it WILL be dramatic as fuck. (I wrote down the phrase “just kiss already” something like 7 times in my notes during these eps, basically any time Mulder and Krycek were on screen.)

Demons: I know we all love to see a pathetic shell of a man abandoning all reason. We also love to see Scully as the deranged, protective one, stopping at nothing to save her partner. Even if said partner made some truly terrible decisions.

Gethsemane: See above.

5 least favorite eps:

The Field Where I Died: Not only was this slow and boring, but by the end, I was ready to crawl into the TV and slap Fox Mulder my own self. This case could’ve been solved and no one had to die. But he wasted their time. (Please feel free to correct me in the replies; I would actually love to be wrong.) Also, the southern accent for the big field monologue made my Carolina girl heart wither.

El Mundo Gira: That’s not even remotely what a chupacabra is. I feel like this was supposed to be our Jose Chung this season. It let me down.

Tempus Fugit & Max: Back to our regularly scheduled programming where I get lost in these two-parters because who is that? Where are they going? Who is chasing them? What? Huh?

Zero Sum: I am confused and I miss Scully. Skinner and Mulder will just do circles around each other and growl at people without her. I know this is a glimpse of the stakes of the cancer arc, but it’s not very good TV, is it?

[unforgivablego]

I don't like how people after Comic Con continue to be unhappy. I mean, Neil gave us literally everything. That is, this is the best that he could provide nine months before the release of the S2. The content could've come out much later, I think around May when the official trailer comes out. But we were just given so much interesting cool information literally a year before the release and people just say that they don't like it.

I a little understand why people felt bad abot Neil because of the S1. Like there was no official confirmation of the relationship of the main characters. It meant that the cherished "I love you" didn't sound. Like, the second Sherlock, queerbaiting, Neil wants to get more audience using homo relationships that are so popular right now. But hey, Neil always said that AziCrow were in love. This was long before gay relationships in movies were the norm.

The book was published over 30 years ago. In the fucking book were so many hints of something between the main characters that I don’t understand why people even get pissed off. You don’t need to run far for an example, let’s take everyone’s favorite: “Just remember I’ll have known that, deep down inside, you were just enough of a bastard to be worth liking,” — which literally sounds like “you are a fool, but I love you / you gave your flaming sword to people and impressed me to the depths of the soul,” or when they hold hands, saying their last words to each other before they die, or “Come up with something or… or I’ll never talk to you again,” after which Crowley just stops damn time, because, of course not talking to an angel is much worse than death. Guys, the rest of the characters in the book think that they are together, people and angels, Shadwell generally calls them a couple of Southern pansies (thanks for correct me). “Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide.” — many also liked this moment. And that's not all there is. And the book was published in the 90s!

In the S1 were many new scenes built mainly on the development of their relationship. There were events that were not in the book at all, which were invented specifically for the series to diversify the concept of their "from enemies to lovers" canon. In the third series Neil gave us excerpts from different time periods, in which AziCrow gradually converge.

The most popular scene in 1941, when Crowley runs into the church to pull the angel out of the hands of the enemies, knowing full well that Aziraphale can do it himself at any moment. BUT NO, he like a real knight, runs to save his princess on the consecrated ground, which burns his legs and, most importantly, saves fucking angelic favorite books. “You are important to me, take the books that I saved at the cost of my own life,” — he doesn't say this, but hey, how obvious is it, especially after the words: “I don’t need you, I have lots of people to fraternize with, Angel,” he said in a fit of anger at the last meeting. He apologizes for 1862 and tries to say that he has no one but an angel. When they, a minute earlier, after so many years of quarreling, start such a stupid conversation about a name change:

“- Anthony?

- You don't like it?

- No, no. I don't say that. I'll get used to it”

Because there's nothing that Aziraphale couldn't get used to in Crowley. Despite the differences, they will always be together, they still have a whole life ahead to discuss it. This short, ridiculous conversation is actually very important. Here Crowley understands that Aziraphale in his: “I’ll get used to it,” — informs (yes, that’s the word) that they will see each other again and more than once, that this quarrel is not an obstacle to their relationship. And then Crowley says, very gently, “Lift home,” as if he knows for sure that the angel is okay with it. The only question is, whose home are you going to, Crowley? Since when do you have one concept of home for two?

The whole mess is completed by a freaking shot in which angel looks at Crowley in such a way that here only a stupid person will not understand what the heck he is thinking about. As the background color changes from gray to pinkish, the music, Crowley heroically leaves the frame and this damned love look after him, that the viewer just sits there thinking: "Oh, look at this blushing bastard — he is so in love." All that's missing is some romantic 40s song that starts off with something along the lines of "And I realized..." Because Aziraphale really realizes in this scene that his feelings are mutual. Somewhere someone wrote that in this scene Aziraphale doesn't fall in love with Crowley and I so much agree with this. In this scene, the angel is already in love, but before that he didn't know if Crowley could feel something in return, and the freaking “I don’t need you,” — in 1862 finished him off. He thought Crowley had someone to hang out with besides him, that Crowley doesn't need him. It hurt him. But Crowley had just walked into the church for only him and saved his books at the cost of his life. This is not a moment of awareness of his love, this is not "the princess fell in love with the prince who saved her from the dragon and they lived happily ever after." This is the moment when Aziraphale realizes that YES — he is loved in return.

And Crowley's “I'll give you a lift, anywhere you want to go”, in gratitude for holy water, in 1967. Crowley, you're sitting in a car right across from Aziraphale's shop. Where are you gonna take him? You planned to rob a church a stone's throw from the angel's house. “I'll give you a lift, anywhere you want to go”. To where?

Aziraphale also excelled just great: “No thanks. Perhaps one day we could go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz,” which definitely means, “One day we'll have a date and I'll let you do whatever you want, but not now”.

“You go too fast for me, Crowley,” — that he said in the end, leaves the viewer in a knockout. Because this phrase makes us understand that they have not been talking about friendship all this time. Here it is, the official confirmation of their love. Aziraphale gives him holy water, which means: “Despite everything, you are very important to me, I don't want to lose you, but I trust you”. He's trying to make sure Crowley knows he's loved. And Crowley understands, Crowley is used to speed and he takes the next step, but Aziraphale stops him: “Can you give me some time?”. Aziraphale is not ready, he just got here and hasn't yet got used to it. The phrase: “You go too fast for me,” sounds in most direct meaning — everything is developing too quickly, I can’t keep up with you, could you wait a little more? It finally hits me.

Fucking flirting in a scene in the Bastille during the French Revolution. Yes, then they still didn't have any definite understanding of what was happening, but I think in those years the atmosphere of the 18th century had a special influence. Debauchery, accessibility, openness and lack of shame in people. It seems to me that this was precisely what caused Aziraphale to flirt so openly and intricately. And of course the clothes. It was so seductive.

This is the best scene ever and I won't stop thinking that. What Michael as Aziraphale is doing here — OMG, his game should be banned from showing to kids because it's freaking so obscene it's embarrassing. The way he just lights up when he hears a familiar voice behind him, the way he pronounces his name, so joyfully, as if it weren't Crowley, but the She Goddes herself, who condescended to talking with a mere mortal. Angel, hello, Crowley just said about the cruelty of people, where did you swim, stop your vulgar thoughts and focus. The way Aziraphale scans him from head to toe, the way he sighs languidly, and then the phrase: “Oh... Good Lord,” said with such an expression as if Crowley had suddenly undressed in front of him. The short appraising looks that the angel gives him, as if Crowley is more sweeter than any pancake for which he swam the channel during the revolution (yes, we definitely believe you, Aziraphale) — these are the looks that are called undressing, here it is, in full physical incarnation. And the situation in which the angel allegedly fell. It's just not possible to describe how obvious it is on purpose. He's handcuffed in a local prison that definitely looks like a dragon's castle, waiting to be killed by the guillotine (isn't that romantic already?), dressed in his chicest outfit, even fucking changed his hair — for the first time in 5,000+ years! — and pretends to be very helpless, playing his standard: “I'm an angel”. He can literally snap his fingers and be home. But what does he do? He lets Crowley take care of him, creating a situation similar to rescuing a poor helpless princess from the tower, while portraying such affected and understandable innocence, as if he is not an angel, but a whore maiden who argues before losing her virginity. And why is he doing all this? Why do you think? Because at the end he just invites Crowley to bloody dinner. I fucking love this scene.

"You're my best friend" playing in the background as Crowley tries to find Aziraphale in the burned down bookshop. And the words: “You make me live, whenever this world is cruel to me,” — just aches in the heart. Even though the angel was wrong a thousand times (only because he tried to protect the two of them, sometimes out of stupidity, angelic naivety and a desire to do everything right — yes, they sometimes behave as stupidly, just like people), Crowley still considers him his closest person (?) (creature rather).

A small heart on Aziraphale's contact screensaver on his phone when Crowley can't get through (maybe an accident).

And then when he walks into a burning bookshop and breaks down for the first time in 6 episodes. He's really emotional in this scene. It's so unexpected that it's unnatural to see him like that. His voice is different, he no longer controls the tone and words, for the first time his walk tense, in this scene he cries, which has never happened before. Aziraphale is dead and Crowley feels and expresses as many emotions as he has never felt and expressed in all the 6,000 years that we have been shown. When Fredy goes into post-chorus in the background, I love that part so much. Did anyone even notice that in this scene he literally confesses his love? At the end, Crowley yells “Somebody killed my best friend!” — I can't, it's just heartbreaking.

“It's a big universe. Even if this all ends in a puddle of goo, we can go off together,” — I won't stop crying from now on, my heart shrinks every time (this is one of my favorite scenes, every word really hurts).

“I don't even like you!” — thrown by the angel for no clear purpose: to convince himself of this or to hurt Crowley. And Crowley's “You do!” in response, because, Aziraphale, who are you trying to fool. 6000 years together and you never once thought about to stop communicating. Potential enemies communicate with each other only in two cases: if they are ordered from Above, or if they themselves want it. Remind me when you received a request from the Heavenly Chancellery: "You must get close to the enemy in order to find out his insidious plans." Don't remember? No one remembers, because there was no such thing.

And when Crowley again offers to run away together in a couple of hours — YES! — Alpha Centauri — the best place to wait out the apocalypse, the main thing is not to forget my husband, otherwise he's not at all a person dear to me and in general we had a fight today, I strongly offended, but without him I won’t move a finger in the direction of escape. I'd rather die right here than start saving my carcass without this stupid feathered asshole.

Also don't forget about «holding hands» scene in a bus.

I’m not sure I have much time to end this digging.

And even this is not enough for people? The series not only improves the book and confirms their romantic line, but with the help of the actors and their wonderful performance, creates a masterpiece using gestures, facial expressions and removing innuendo, taking away the opportunity to imagine something left, allowing you to focus on what your eyes see.

Neil said three hundred times that this is a fucking love story. And people just shit in his canon and say: they didn’t say “I love you”, they don’t fuck, what kind of love is that, you're doing everything for popularity. Shut your fucking mouths! Neil is just tired of repeating endlessly that they are an angel and a demon, they are supernatural entities that do not fall within the framework of human relations. Their love is on another level. They are not gay because angels and demons are genderless, which means they have no gender (which also means they can choose their gender at will and change at will, as Crowley did). They are not asexual, because these concepts are invented also for people.

And you know what? Neil just spat in the faces of the fans with a fucking poster of the AziCrow standing in front of a fucking heart made of wings. “Here it is, just choke with this your's canon, here are both main characters against the background of the wrong organ which means love to you, and just try to say that this is not an official confirmation of their relationship.” He crumpled up a piece of shit that prevented him from living and smeared it all over our faces. “Eat,” he says, “I am a local Goddess here and have descended to give you food (for fanfiction). Don’t thank.”

Neil talked about how after the events of the proposed third season, they would move into a fucking cottage in the St. Downs and live together like fucking old husbands. He gave a nod to Crowley's already-acting move to Aziraphale's bookshop at Comic-Con, showing exactly that moment from S2 and no other. In a bloody interview after the panel, he revealed that this season is gonna be "quiet and gentle and romantic" compared to the first and hypothetically third season, and given that the show will have 2 kisses - just choke on fucking tears of happiness. He bombarded Tumblr with answers to leading questions, gave information about when the S2 would be released approximately, leaked new characters, a teaser, part of the plot, a concept photo and people like: we don’t like it. So what is wrong with you, guys? Because I believe that what we have is the best that could be, the best that we could have. And we got it for absolutely nothing.

Yes, golden potato jokes are funny, I wrote a couple myself. And kindly mocking Neil can be fun too, especially when we get the same thing in return. It's a relationship between the author and the fandom, and I really like it. But let's at least sometimes be understanding and patient. I don't like to watch other people's dissatisfaction knowing how much Neil has done for us. So I want you to don't forget about it too. No need to buzz about the teaser and video that we didn't get for Christmas. We all want to please Beelzebub with a tick in front of the task “Annoy Neil every day”, but can we show angelic patience? Neil knows what he's doing. Let's trust him.