thinking about how eiji's a pole vaulter and how ash talks about eiji "flying" and how eiji's associated with bird imagery and how eiji's free (unlike ash) and how eiji comes in on a plane and leaves on a plane and how ash cannot fly, ash cannot be free, how nyc is ash's prison, and how ash is the leopard who dies climbing the mountain, unable to live at such elevation, how he was trying to reach the sky and be free but was always stuck to the earth, how he chose to die instead of climbing back down, how he chose to die where he could see the sky and hope and freedom almost like a bird with eiji's letter right in front of him rather than letting everything go wrong and ruin it once again, how eiji's a failed pole vaulter anyway, how a bad fall ruined his career and grounded him (physically and emotionally), how it took flying to america and meeting ash and needing to save him and skip for him to try flying again, how he landed hard and harsh and still the thought of that escape compelled ash to protect eiji at all costs because if he could fly that means something to him, even if he doesn't think he can fly, how eiji is the manifestation of his hope and how when he breaks and asks eiji to stay with him a while he folds himself over his legs and weighs him down and traps him and grounds him, how ash fights like hell to keep eiji alive not because he thinks he can be like him (hopeful, flying, innocent), but because he makes him forget the gravity of his situation, and so he can see eiji fly again. how he wants to see him escape. how eiji is a bird and ash is a wildcat and how ash never once saw eiji as prey. how eiji never saw ash as a predator. how it is eiji's naivete that first endears ash to him, how it is his freedom and flight and removal from darkness and his ability to leave that darkness that really roots eiji in ash's blood as something essential to him keeping on living in this hell of nyc. how it is that distance from the violence and that hope for the future that ash chooses to surround himself in as he dies. how ash dies in a dream because he feels more than anything that he can't fly like eiji, that he can never leave. how his violence is a part of him and will be forever, how it weighs him down. how he wants to enjoy the view from the mountainside rather than looking up from the ground below. as if they can both fly. as if he is with him up there and not grounded. eye-to-eye with what he can't have, seeing eiji's homeland: the sky. how he dies trying to reach the top because he couldn't take retreating and trying again. how ash, tired and tired and tired and convinced it will go on forever if he crawls back down the mountain, chooses to close his life deluged in eiji, in eiji's insistence that they can fly together, in eiji's hope for him and for them, in eiji's beautiful dream. how ash dies without trying to realize that dream. how ash, in dying, destroys it.

Honestly i have so much sympathy for Ailette and the way she mischaracterises Tesilid.

like i myself also fixate on certain parts of the story and extrapolate maybe a bit too much - although in my defence i've only read like half the story.

-but the same can kind of be said of Ailette? This Tesilid is having a new, currently-being-written chapter of his life. In fact she kind of has things even worse, because her characterisation of Tesilid is based off OG!Tesilid, but current Tesilid had his life and outlook irreversibly changed when they met aged 10. But they never really interacted enough afterwards for Ailette to realise just how much of an impact she made on him. She hasn't really had a strong reason to rethink her characterisation of him. Not to mention that she first read the book with her middle school reading comprehension, which. Probably coloured her interpretation for the worse, at least a little.

I really wish Ailette would go into more detail about her own experience as a reader, to really see better how she's viewing this world and its people.

Which paragraphs are the ones that she thinks defines Tesilid's character? (Mine is "I'm praying that they'll all fail the test and go home".)

Which are the ones that made her cry? (Mine's "Right... you're on the side of this world.")

Which are her favourite silly Tesilid moments that make her so fond of teasing Tesilid? (iliac bones)

Which are the ones that reverberate in her head and which won't leave her alone? (Mine is "Please... show me some of that petty mercy too.")

I feel like the fun part of these kinds of isekai story is that. Whatever reaction you had towards Tesilid, be it "wow what a cute kid" or "i'm going to cry, i need to wrap him in a blanket where the world can't hurt him anymore" or "actually he should just destroy the world tbh i would support him", she's been there first and has been doing for at least 10 years, she's the OG. And she's super intense about it too. Like she can say "I need to save him because the story dictates it" all she wants, but the way she reacts so intensely and immediately to Tesilid in danger really speaks volumes of how much emotional investment she has in this guy. Like idk if she really rotates him in her head as much as I do - that might be a me problem - but if you rotate a character in your head enough times while fixating on certain moments and not others, you probably would end up with a biased interpretation of the character. Especially if you don't have someone else to bounce ideas off. And this gets worse if you're actually living in the character's world, because characters in stories serve certain narrative functions, so all their actions which get included in the narration are inherently biased towards portraying them in a certain way that serves said narrative function. But humans are a lot messier and more dynamic.

i just. shakes her up and down. love the concept of an isekai protagonist and the OG protagonist that they love so much.

anyway this whole post is a testament to how much Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint changed the way I interpret fiction and especially isekai stories. Not me anthromorphozing Ailette as if she's really a person and fellow fan who exists and isn't a character lmaoo, i'm definitely not having a "we're all fragments of kim dokja" moment, no sir. i definitely didn't subconsciously draw connections between ORV's isekai'd MC and myself and S-Class Heroine's isekai'd MC and our commonalities as readers who rotate the same story in their heads very many times, and suddenly make a realisation that's actually more relevant to ORV than the actual story that prompted all this. one whole year after i last read ORV, because ORV's story is So Much and so monumental that i'm still haunted by it and figuring it out and it lowkey never left my mind, even after a whole year. (please read orv.) like there are a lot of otome isekai stories about isekai'd MCs realising that the people in their lives don't line up with the OG characters, but none of these stories ever made me viscerally realise what it was probably like for kim dokja, because none of them had isekai'd MCs be that unironically obsessed with their OG protags, and more importantly none of them made me constantly rotate the OG protagonist in my head the way S-Class Heroine does. Han Sooyoung was right, you get as much out of a story as you put in to reading it and re-reading it and re-interpreting it. By putting so much time into S-Class Heroine I accidentally made some relevations about the other story that I was always trying to figure out at the back of my mind. Holy shit.

anyway if you guys need me i'll be devouring every single post 1941 church scene fic

so, bubby huh ?

The Mighty Nein Reunion: Echoes of the Solstice 

everyone was so fucking right about finney and robin being in gay love. I know I shipped this before I even watched it but on fucking god brother.

scenes i loved from Real Enough to Get Me Through by @marriedzukka <333 [ids in alt]

Zionists want you to conflate Judaism and Zionism. Zionists want you to believe that Judaism cannot exist without Zionism and that all Jews are Zionists. Zionism would have Jews believe that a Jewish state is the only way that they can be safe from antisemitism and will point to any instance of antisemitism as proof that Zionism is the solution- so Zionism wants gentiles to be antisemitic in their support of Palestine. They want you to conflate all Jews with Zionism and the state of Israel, and they want you to treat all Jews regardless of political affiliation as the face of Israel. Antizionist Jews exist, and incidences of antisemitism ostensibly acting against Zionism will not help dismantle the forces propping Zionism up.

Don't do their work for them.

tiny comic about eating toast with friends

My two cents on Aziraphale's "I forgive you" is that he was straightforwardly lashing out. He knows how little Crowley wants to be forgiven. He knows because Crowley just told him. Crowley rejects forgiveness so absolutely that he rejects Aziraphale right along with it. It's the whole fight in a microcosm: Aziraphale standing there offering forgiveness and Crowley saying, I don't want it.

So maybe the words are Aziraphale showing he finally understands Crowley. He knows now that "I forgive you" is the very worst thing he could say to Crowley. That's why he says it. That's how he means it.

VERY interesting that this moment took place in the "woman in house and wilson's building thinks they're gay/dating" episode

also. hugh laurie's little smirk here really adds a certain . . . dimension to this moment that would not be there if he'd responded to the joke in a different way

Ray talking about Gerard's vision for My Chemical Romance

Nothing more humbling than trying to pull the blanket up and punching yourself square in the jaw instead.

do you ever think about how one of doctor who's most famous time loop episodes (heaven sent) isn't a time loop. like the fact that time is passing normally is a huge plot point

there are a lot of daddy issues to go around on DS9 in general, but odo, bashir and garak are really in their own special little fucked up 'what am I but wrought in my father's image' club

it's all fun and games until your goofy ass kinnie jokes actually start to bring some interesting similarities to light.