I feel embarrassed to admit how emotionally invested I am in Lea’s return to Broadway. 

It really is like a movie at this point and I just want to know what’s going to happen. Will people love her performance? Will she crash and burn spectacularly? Can she work well with the cast? I NEED all the backstage drama. 

And who is going to adapt this shit into a movie? Ryan Murphy?

Gortash designs and builds mechanisms so I imagine he has to be able to sketch fairly decently in order to sketch his projects and designs. And I'm imagining a pile of charcoal sketches of Durge, done over their entire acquaintance, starting out with sketches of them in battle and then slowly becoming more detailed and intimate and as they do, the titles changing from things like "The Bhaalspawn" and "Bhaal's Chosen at Their Bloody Work" to "The Chosen in Contemplation" and finally just Durge's name

also, another thing: everything that ever happened to jack harkness was because of the doctor after the first 35 years. EVERYTHING. none of it have would happened if the doctor hadnt 1) invited jack to travel with them 2) stolen the tardis and ran away 3) met queen victoria in torchwood house and caused her to create an organization dedicated to hunting him down 4) helped open the rift with the gelth in cardiff 1869. THE DOCTOR WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO JACK: HIS IMMORTALITY. TORCHWOOD. AND EVEN TORCHWOOD CARDIFF.

Hiiii, if it's not too much, can you describe the biggest differences between the live action characters and the novel characters in MDZS? They are a lot, so I will love even the difference between few of them! I haven't seen the live action and I don't know if I will ever, but I am curious, considering all the meta. Anyway, thank you in general, even if you don't answer!

Hello anon! This has been in the inbox forever because there are soooo many ways to answer this! However, let me be transparent that I've watched maybe like 1/10 of CQL. Among other obstacles, I simply do not care that much about Lan Wangji and he's always there (even though Wang Yibo is giving it his all... it's not his fault I'm a hater...). Chewing through a book with Ms. Mxtx's commentary was just more enjoyable to me, and even then, to be honest, I still liked SVSSS better. (I just love Shen Yuan/Shen Qingqiu so much. That dude is wild.)

Still, the live action definitely affected how I understood certain characters (...primarily Nie Huaisang) and made me interested in relationships that I didn't pay any attention to in the novel. (I freely admit that the nieyao brainrot is 100% CQL's fault.) Also I found Wang Zhuocheng's Jiang Cheng very cute and loveable. It definitely contributed to my Jiang Cheng Brain Disease.

LISTEN. HE HAS BIG SAD EYES AND THE MEANEST SNEER AND HE MIGHT BURST INTO TEARS AT ANY TIME. HE IS A BABY. A baby who could kill you with his terrifying lightning whip! But a baby nonetheless, to me.

So if you want someone with a real and knowledgeable opinion on the live action, I'm probably not the right person for that! However, here's one difference that changed a bunch of stuff about the characters that I found compelling in the novel: the second flautist.

CQL adds Su She as a second flautist doing unorthodox cultivation in a couple of different places, including at Qiongqi Path, where he seizes control of Wen Ning and is therefore responsible for Jin Zixuan's death. Removing the responsibility for Jin Zixuan's death from Wei Wuxian creates a bunch of cascading character and relationship implications that I don't love.

Firstly, all of the people who cautioned Wei Wuxian against his unorthodox cultivation are now... wrong. If he never lost control, then actually his assessment that he could maintain control wasn't overconfidence, it was just true, and he was persecuted because the Jin needed a scapegoat and wanted the Yin Tiger Tally, not because his cultivation path actually involved significant risks and drawbacks. (To be fair, the Jins actively exploited those drawbacks, the public perception of his cultivation, and Wei Wuxian's failure to manage his reputation. But it matters whether the risks exist or are just made up.)

Secondly, removing his responsibility for Jin Zixuan's death transforms both Wei Wuxian's character and how we understand his relationships with Jiang Yanli, Jiang Cheng, and Jin Ling. Because, in the novel, he kills Jin Zixuan under duress but also after a lifetime of conflict with him. Like, he hates the dude, he doesn't think he's worthy of Jiang Yanli, and he's not willing to examine his hatred and resentment even though Jiang Yanli loves Jin Zixuan and wants to marry him, even after she marries him and has a child with him. (I would argue that a lot of the resentment is because of the eventual marriage; by marrying Jiang Yanli, Jin Zixuan becomes legally recognized family to the Jiang siblings, while Wei Wuxian's relationship with them has no social recognition; I think Wei Wuxian is deeply threatened by that but can't articulate it.) It's a huge failure! Like, dude, you loved someone and you killed that person's beloved spouse. That points to a certain degree of repressed jealousy, possessiveness, longing, arrogance, the list goes on... I am so compelled by that conflict, and the adaptation just erases it.

This also affects how we read Jin Ling's relationship with Wei Wuxian. In one scenario, a teenage Jin Ling is (eventually, minus one little stab) ending the cycle of violence by not seeking vengeance for his father's murder. In the other, it was actually someone associated with Jin Ling's paternal family that killed his father, and he's maybe just... coming to terms with that? One of these scenarios is so much richer and more interesting.

How it affects the relationship between Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian is a little more subtle. It locates the responsibility for a lot of the harm done to the Jiang siblings with the Jin sect, not with Wei Wuxian, removing some of Wei Wuxian's culpability in the devolution of his relationship with Jiang Cheng. If Wei Wuxian isn't guilty of wronging the Jiang family (and instead is also a victim of the Jin sect), then all of Jiang Cheng's rage and betrayal was misdirected. They were both tricked. In some ways, maybe that's easier to patch up after canon? (I wonder if this is why many CQL yunmeng shuangjie reconciliation fics have Jiang Cheng apologize to Wei Wuxian, but not the other way around?) But it's so much less interesting to me!

Finally, it removes Wei Wuxian's tragic flaw! Dude is legitimately a genius but he's got hubris coming out of his ears and it fucks him up big time! This is classic stuff. Please stop flattening my boy!!

I love the relationship (or rather, the lack thereof) between the Hilda fandom and Luke Pearson. I don’t know if this is just me, but I feel like we’re just marginally aware that he’s A Guy and that he makes the thing we like and that’s as far as we care to go. You see fandoms researching their favorite creators and following them in every social media and looking for each of their projects and we just. We just want the stills and trailers. Some people care about what he has to say about the plot and animation. And that’s it. He’s just a dude whose name is in the opening and whose self insert shows up sometimes to Be Useless and we’re fine with that! The opposite of a parasocial relationship. We’re parallel playing in the same room

I know we’ve wondered if Mobius’ life on the sacred timeline involves a husband…and it’s totally possible, right?

But I’ve never heard of any fan casting for this hypothetical husband. So, what if that husband was played by none other than…Ben Stiller.

Can you imagine the chaos? Sure it’d be a hilarious cameo, but they could take it one of two ways:

ONE:

Ben Stiller is his usual quirky type of character and that’s what Mobius’ timeline self likes about him cause he has a type and that type is dark-haired sassy men with distinct fashion choices.

or TWO:

Ben Stiller’s character is like nothing we’ve ever seen before: absolutely painstakingly NORMAL. Boring to a T. They met working together at the jet ski shop. Mobius is a salesman, Ben is in accounting. It was convenient to date and get married. Mobius would wax poetry about jet skis and his husband would let him because it was logical to learn about the other departments at the dealership.

It was simple…ultimately too simple because one day, an article in the newspaper detailed the events of the attack on New York. A picture of Loki was splashed across the front paper, complete with signature smirk.

But there was something else there. An emotion hid behind the god’s prideful eyes.

Loneliness.

It’s a particular type of sadness that comes with the knowledge that the people in your life are hearing your words, but no one is actually listening.

Mobius’ heart dropped, compassion filling in the space left behind.

And that’s the moment that an orange door appeared, a small, dark-skinned woman stepping out with a glowing baton.

Over time [that didn’t exist in the TVA], he’d learn all about nexus events and the sacred timeline and his glorious purpose.

He’d dedicate his eternal existence to others’ nexus events.

But he’d never remember his own.

sometimes i feel like that xkcd comic of like “[blank] is second nature to us that it’s easy to forget the average person only knows [blank]” bc what do you mean you aren’t aware of the one specific boss mob from alex’s caves that possesses you and makes you fight it from it’s own point of view, which is what caused the screen to go red and a “second quackity” to appear when all the mobs got tp’d and the server imploded

WILSON FISK aka KINGPIN in Daredevil 1x04 and Echo 1x04

Everyone should go watch Densel’s Animal Crossing series on YouTube right now just for these moments alone

back around

To continue loving is the greatest feat of perseverance. Love is the one thing we always have to give.

Etho will finally reunite with Bdubs, alongside a long, internal struggle, after Bdubs gets back from Double Life. Until then, Etho lives alone, and finally comes to terms with, and accepts, the love he knows he deserves.

(6227 words)

There’s nothing pleasant about respawn.

Etho wakes up in the basement of the monolith and his eyes burn. Around him still lingers the smell of burning hair and charcoal. Joel’s voice rings in his periphery, hoarse and afraid for the very first time. Etho took his time leaving that world, feeling the shape of Joel tug on his sleeve. To remember him in another life. He’s a good guy, a better fighter, desperately loyal. He knows that, at least next time, he might have somebody to trust again. Etho opens his eyes. The world dips and sets him back into bed too fast.

His stomach rolls as he does, onto his hands and knees, coughing up and swallowing down. He sinks to the cool floor, and for a long moment, tries to keep his head from spinning. Wake with the spins, go to bed with the spins. His hands splay out. Wooden slats beneath him. Quiet around him.

When he finally collects himself enough to stand, the first thing he does is stand in the threshold of the bathroom holding the door frame tight with both hands. In the light he can just barely see his bare face, tired but unbruised. It’s a face he hasn’t seen in a while. He tracks his eyes in the mirror and his pupils are big to take in the light. These aren’t the clothes he died in. He washes his face in the sink. He rinses his hands. Twice. Three times. He doesn’t have the patience for a bath, but there’s a fine feeling on his skin—sticky and unclean. Not blood. Sweat.

Etho takes a long breath in, sighs, and stands up straight. Then, and only then, does he try to remember how to be himself again. He pads into the other room, scrubbing sleep from his eyes. He changes his clothes and leaves the old ones in a heap on the bedside. Something about the repetition of changing makes his skin crawl a little less. He changes his socks. He combs back his hair with his fingers. 

Time passes differently here. When he makes it to the staircase that should lead up into the rest of the monolith, he checks the calendar, the remnant of one. A few nights will pass until everyone is collected and brought back. A few nights will pass before people realize they don’t have to stay to watch bloodshed. Or when they get bored. And Etho is here, now. No use watching bloodshed. No use watching someone die.

Etho trails up the stairs. He pulls his mask over his face only when he reaches the landing, right before the door. The air is still and cool. The inside of the monolith is still and cool too, but something lingers. The fragments of living—the smell of cooked food, coffee, still lit lanterns. It’s midday; Etho peeks out through one of the windows to see a bright blue sky and a stretch of birch as far as he can see. 

He wanders up the stairs with his heart thumping in his chest. It isn’t possible for him to be back so soon. Is it?

He keeps going, tracing up the wall as he walks. There isn’t a noise. 

The whole monolith is quiet, a settling sound he hasn’t heard in weeks. No shuffling or movement, no sound of anyone living besides him. He knows it’s not the truth, he knows Ren wanders upstairs–he has to be up there. It would only make sense, given the timing.

Etho pauses at the threshold.

When he stops at the doorway, the sun is pooling into the window, filtering through the dust. On the table is a coffee cup, a dish, a dishrag left abandoned. He pushes past a vine that climbs down the beam and into the entryway. The leaves of their potted plants trickle down the wall. There is silence, aside from the faint sounds of birds and cicadas and windchimes.

When he looks into the kitchen, there are only empty dishes.

Etho rinses out the metal kettle and fills it with water. He lights the burner. The kettle goes on top. He takes down one cup and a tin. The tin, in capital letters, reads: lavender lemon. 

On the stove, the kettle begins to boil.

(read the rest on ao3!)

hey! i hope you're having a good day! i just read your (amazing!) asoue fic "ashes to ashes," and i was fascinated by the way you portrayed kit and olaf. i thought i'd send this ask because i'd really love to hear more of your thoughts on their dynamic if you feel like sharing? but if you don't feel like expanding on it, i totally understand! thank you so much for sharing your beautiful work on ao3!

OHH anon you are so kind...i apologize for being so extremely late but i just finished writing a little analysis so i figured now's about the right time to write a semi-legible response. might have been scary and incomprehensible otherwise. but i am finally here to scream and cry and thank you so desperately because im SO happy you enjoyed them AND decided to ask for more info! <3

to begin, i'd be absolutely inconsolable if i didn't point you towards @virginian-wolfsnake's fic the eye of the storm, probably one of my fave k&o fics of all time that delves into the meat of their relationship through the years from the perspective of kit. they're young and still excited by missions and flirty and tender and genuine, and, in time, when the rest of their world collapses, so do they--messy and tense and so wonderfully realistic you have to read it and then read it again. honestly, if you don't want to read the rest of this but still want an answer, just read that. but also read it anyway

and now i have to ask you to forgive me...i have not read the books in a very long time and while i know the netflix series (in comparison) is bad and awful and terrible, i have watched it a million times. so if i'm wrong on anything. that's why.

to begin, the version of olaf i depicted in my fic is at the height of his...how do you say...pathetic misery. not including the spiral he has during the series. to me, the death of his parents are the beginning of his downfall into something-like-insanity, but he's still (and will continue to be) recognizably himself, if that makes sense. he's always been messy and emotional and dramatic (see the line: "...Kit has seen him in worse states and with a much better view..."), but only now does he reveal not a different side of himself per se, but a different angle of one that already existed.

im a fervent believer that olaf's always been a little self destructive and a lot crazy. hes spent the greater half of his life coming to terms with the fact that he is intrinsically not as noble as the rest of vfd--hes impulsive and obnoxious and self-obsessed, barely even literate at times--and it takes a special kind of guy to carve the insignia of the organization full of people he despises into his own front door. still, his parents' death was a catalyst, meaning he wasn't entirely opposed to vfd beforehand. he probably liked the missions and the secrecy and the dramatics, obviously the disguises and everything, but i think before the night at the opera it was really just a source of fun for him. he never truly grasped the reality of it, the nature of his actions and the weight of his involvement. whether that was out of naivety or pure neglect of the facts is up for debate. (there's a little bit of this in the shattering of thalia and melpomene if that interests you at all, beloved anon. see the line: "...[Esme] could never compare to the extent to which [Olaf] removes himself from everyone else entirely. How he spends so much time worrying about himself he almost forgets to worry about himself...Esme could never truly get lost in her own greatness. Could never turn a blind eye to the inner workings of V.F.D.")

kit, on the other hand, definitely did. serving as a volunteer was her purpose, the sole thing she had to cling to. she dedicated her life to it, making conscious decisions to go against her moral code in the hope that it all truly was for a greater good. i think, at times, she could fall into her own little fits of self-destruction, putting vfd above herself entirely (see the line: "This wouldn’t be the first time she’d done something she would never truly volunteer for...he’d still spent year after year watching her run off...to do something she could never speak of." "...she still returned with clenched teeth and knit eyebrows, as though she had no choice in the matter at all.")

to avoid any more convolution, in my mind it goes something like this: both are volunteers--olaf born and raised (along with beatrice), kit torn from her family and thrust into the thick of it so early on its all she knows. they grow up, probably-definitely know each other but dont know each other until, say, late teens-early twenties?

up until then, they've been everything previously described, but intermingling with one another changes this. olaf's easygoing approach rubs off on kit, partly because she finds more joy in his company than in missions, partly because he makes every attempt to keep her from leaving. i like to think she tries to keep his relatively flimsy moral code in check, or at the very least restrain his temper to the best of her abilities.

to me, they're a simultaneously great and terrible couple. at their best, they counteract each other in a positive way as described above and serve as a welcome distraction from the realities of a crumbling vfd, a little island of tenderness and domesticity in the ocean of turmoil that surrounds them.

and at their worst, their personalities combat so violently it's hard to see how they ever could have been together. olaf deals out the worst of it, prone to neglect and self-isolation, a deeply inset refusal to discuss anything with her, an inclination towards firestarting and an increasingly poor reputation with everyone kit knows. then again, kit isn't free of blame (if you can call it that), she's just as opposed to talking anything out as he is, and her isolation takes on the shape of running off to do as many missions as as she can before she's dead on her feet. she's pulled in different directions--a well-instilled hatred towards firestarers, only further influenced by whatever rumours olaf's growing list of enemies supplies her, versus her love for him, her knowledge of who he really is, a concept that is often tested. (see the line: "He’s reminded of a fight they once had, about something or other, that ended in her angry admission that it was easier to be upset with him when he wasn’t nearby.") 

anyway, the idea is they grow further and further apart both ideologically and physically/relationship-wise until the opera night and the crash following that (see: the whole fic!) and from then on i think they fall into something like an evil situationship. they barely see each other, complete opposite sides of the schism. i say situationship because i think when they do see each other (on missions, at events/in public, in private, etc.) it is just a terrible experience no matter what. they're both torn between hating the other for what they know about them/what they did (i like to think olaf finds out about kit supplying the darts) and reminiscing/yearning for what they once had.

for the sake of this i wont give my thoughts on whose baby kit has because that's a whole other thing (not really. its just more of a fun hc i think about on occasion as opposed to something concrete in canon or even my version of canon) but their scene in the end does make me insane. its a culmination of all the time spent wishing what happened didnt happen, almost as though theyre seeing each other for the first time once again, perhaps not blind to the past but looking away for (on olafs part) one final moment of normalcy.

i hope thats what you were looking for to any degree, anon. im a little rusty on my lore but they matter to me soo much. if i have to leave this on anything, its go read eye of the storm. kitlaf fic of all time.

im realizing lately i really am like utterly & completely terrified of people leaving me either for no reason . or for something i think is a good enough reason to suddenly hate me & want to throw rocks at me & hit me with sticks & crucify me upside down & skin me & spit on me etc. , But really its like either not a problem at all or its just a regular problem that gets better from talking

do you ever think about the fact that the entire phoenix wright: ace attorney trilogy happens because gregory edgeworth dies.

smth abt eddie telling dustin to look after the little sheep -> s5 is going to return to s1 form -> dustin tells mike in s1 that his obliviousness blows his mind -> the whole painting & confession & obvious general fiasco that is willelmike -> dustin's going to have to put on his bob the builder / "the world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes" sherlock holmes hat and get involved

I always warn people when they ask me questions like "What's your opinion on Star Wars?" that if they don't want me to go into a tangent or full explanation of a franchise to tell me from the start lmfao

My roommate asked me that was like "what do you think of the writing and stuff? like is it good?" and I was like "oh that depends on a lot of things, do you know anything about Star Wars?" and she was like "no" and I was like "oh okay I'll just give you a quick summary of my opinions, like original trilogy is great, prequel trilogy is a beautiful dumpster fire but we love it, and i don't even consider the sequel trilogy canon for reasons that is way too much to explain" and then she made the fatal mistake of asking me questions.

She said she likes having these conversations, but I really did try to warn her lmfao!! I ended up giving a lecture/Q&A about the events of Star Wars that went on for probably at least an hour lmfao!! She's like "don't apologize! i like having these conversations!" but I also know that I have taken up a large chunk of her time that she probably wasn't prepared for so I'm like "i warned you!!!" lmfao