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the-ghost-king · 3 years

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love seeing ur tags on my posts it means i get to think 🥰🥰 anyway mostly agree but at least to me nico’s constant need to prove himself is a sign of feeling like he’s not worth other people’s time and effort and he has to MAKE himself worth it. he does all he can in the hopes that people will notice him and tell him that he’s good enough because he relies on the approval of people he loves. he thinks love is something conditional for him and that he always has to be earning it because he doesn’t have enough worth to have it just granted to him. again this is more my own interpretation of his character and possibly a bit of projection

(Post)

I will not fail to acknowledge that I might also be projecting somewhat onto Nico, what is media but self reflection? I think there's a couple ways you can see Nico that are canonically "correct"

What I personally think happened with Nico is that he was aware he was worth more than the treatment he was receiving, but because so much rejection occurred he eventually just assumed he was the problem. There's things on this I would rewrite now but it holds up okay in what I'm about to try and explain.

The thing about being rejected is that the first time you argue it's the other person. And the second time you'll argue it's still them. If you're still arguing it's other people the third time, maybe but it's thin ice... But eventually you just have to accept that you're at fault.

I think this is something that really describes Nico. He is never able to nestle himself in the comfort of sameness after a certain point. He is not given authority in his own story in the beginning, he is thrust into solitude, he is told he is a monster already and if not then he has no choice but to become one.

And he takes this blame upon himself, believing that it's him who has to prove himself. He doesn't acknowledge that maybe other people have their own biases against him, he says "I have to prove them wrong," and then does his best.

It's important to note that Nico is definitely grappling with Childhood Emotional Neglect, he's in a broken situation- and he recognizes that nobody wants him around, and that he's just more stress for an already stressed group of people, so he just backs down and starts to figure stuff out for himself. We see him accept some help and friendship from The Stolls in TTC but eventually he stops doing this at some point.

His leave from camp and time with Minos is when he is used:

you unknowingly wear your heart on your sleeve and people will see this and take advantage of your trusting nature and unconditional love and they’ll never really love you they’ll just see you as an easy tool to be manipulated and used how they see fit and you won’t recognize that this is a bad thing because you don’t believe you’re worth anything more than this

This is something I would say is very true about this time period of Nico's life. Minos emotionally exploits Nico, emotional neglect and abuse (possibly physical abuse, who knows) are defining characteristics of their interactions. Nico talks about how Minos will just randomly leave him for extremely long periods with no assistance, and about how when he's around he's always telling Nico to try harder, to do better, do more. Note the time he tells Nico "you have no power over me", he's definitely holding things over Nico's head. I don't think it's wrong to assume comfort is a part of that, Nico is alone all the time at this point, and I'm sure he's starved for touch, and support, and connection- and he will take whatever he can get whether or not it is good or right.

At first he doesn't do anything against this, and it might be because he was so starved for attention that he was willing to endure abuse to receive somewhat a consistent form of it. I also think there's some evidence that points to the idea Nico was getting something from Minos, training and similar stuff, it's possible he was willing to form and upkeep a toxic relationship with him in order to gain experience.

However, I do disagree with "and you won’t recognize that this is a bad thing because you don’t believe you’re worth anything more than this" because Nico does realize eventually that his situation isn't sustainable and that he has to do something- so he takes his narrative back into his own hands:

“Minos laughed. "You have no power over me. I am the god of spirits! The ghost king!" "No." Nico drew his sword. "I am.” (X)

So Nico, if he ever thought he was worth the treatment of being used for someone elses personal gain, he definitely overcomes some of it here, if not all of it. Nico is manipulated and used for Minos's personal gain, but he recognizes that it's not sustainable and makes a stand for himself. And this is the first time in the series where Nico truly is able to take control of his own narrative, everything before this moment is Nico being forced, or Nico with something looming over him, Nico crowning himself is him claiming his story.

So let's consider Hades in all of this, I don't think Hades manipulated Nico to the extent Minos did- but nonetheless, he did manipulate and abuse him, and this hurt Nico more than when Minos did it. Again, in the situation with Hades this is also true, "you unknowingly wear your heart on your sleeve and people will see this and take advantage of your trusting nature and unconditional love and they’ll never really love you they’ll just see you as an easy tool to be manipulated and used how they see fit and you won’t recognize that this is a bad thing". By the time Nico and Hades truly start interacting, we see that Nico's heart hasn't been fully removed from his sleeve, but it may have been lightened.

Here's the thing about the way Nico approached Hades, it's not naïve to trust family. The text in multiple places implies that Hades was around for at least a handful of years when Nico was a kid, it's not unlikely that Nico may have taken naps on his shoulder, held his hand to cross the street, maybe called him "Papa", "Dad", or "Tata" (Italian, English, old Greek). It makes sense that Nico goes to him, what doesn't make sense to Nico at first is that Hades would manipulate him. Unlike many of the other demigods, Nico knows he was a choice, and that at some point he was something wanted, so he expects some level of okay treatment from Hades. Hades loved his mother, and Hades if not wanting of Nico would have wanted Maria's wishes fulfilled, and Nico probably remembers Hades treating him warmly- or at least not harshly. The way Nico went to Hades makes sense, he wasn't expecting open arms surely, but he also wasn't expecting abuse.

Hades emotionally exploits Nico by using information about Maria, what would a little boy want more than the safety of his mother? He's so starved for human contact, who ever held him more than his mother? Who ever loved him more than her? Once Nico delivers Percy to Hades, his father crushes him, not only by harming Percy but by exploiting Nico's trust through Nico's mother- one of the things he's most desperate for.

We see Nico's heart come off his sleeve at this point, maybe not fully, but enough to where a stranger couldn't recognize it at first glance, and in a way where he has the means to hide it from most.

Except we don't see much of this, because the series is narrated by Percy- and Nico can't hide his heart from Percy.

Almost everything Nico does, everything he tries to do, is for Percy. Nico is so desperate for contact that he is pliant, but in Percy's hands Nico actually wants that contact, he's not interested in imitations of love or substitutes- he's looking for the real thing.

And Mr. Oblivious does-Annabeth-like-me Jackson isn't in any headspace to realize that a boy might like him, let alone Nico. This concern that Nico will join Luke, isn't entirely because Percy is misreading signals, but it's definitely part of it. Nico likes Percy so much that at one point he is willing to go to Tartarus if not entirely for him, then partially for him.

If Percy had realized, and rejected Nico- maybe he would have joined Luke, or at least he definitely would have been more likely to. The perception of Nico we get in PJO from Percy is unreliable, because Percy looks at Nico through the lenses of a concerned older brother, and Percy feels guilty in some way for the situation Nico is in. This gives not only a skewed, but slightly falsified narrative of who Nico is.

The original post of mine I linked, although yes, I would like to rewrite aspects of it now it holds up in the sense that Nico is always trying to prove himself, and this is a bit different than being a puppet. Nico is so starved that it is present in everything, @/arabnico gets it right:

nico’s longing is just so raw it consumes him whole and he cannot hide it at all because it reflects in absolutely everything he does and is nico’s just the means of the way for them and he settles for being it because he doesn’t think he can be much better or even deserves to it is sometting so twisted because nico has this innate utalitarian desire to be useful and to do something and to do the right thing but in the game of things he’s reduced to that puppet in the hands of fate and deities millennia older than him that see a wounded wandering soul doomed to be forever alone by a destiny so cruel it keeps him on his knees

Nico, in PJO especially, has little control over his own narrative. His mother is killed in punishment for his father's "wrongs", Nico is forced to endure this. Bianca grows tired of caring for Nico and leaves him behind, this is not Nico's fault but Nico is forced to endure the consequences of her actions. Bianca's fate is decided on a quest Nico isn't even able to go on, he is forced to endure the results. Nico then breaks the cycle, declaring himself The Ghost King, and dethroning Minos. Nico is forced to endure Hades's manipulation only because he did not see it coming, this wasn't an aspect in which Nico didn't have his narrative (he had already taken ownership of his narrative) but a blind spot in his rational.

The place where we vary is why Nico behaves this way, we can agree that it's because he's starving for human connection- but you believe it's because he has no confidence he is willing to submit himself, while I see his submission as an act of desperation.

Personally, I think to argue that Nico is like this as a result of lack of confidence does a disservice to his narrative (obviously it's fine to view him however you wish, and I wish you all the fun in doing so!). To boil this down to starvation and lack of confidence removes some level of Nico's autonomy in his own life, but also strips him of one of his strongest characteristics- those qualities of him which are like Orpheus.

Nico willing to go to the ends of the earth for love is not a weakness but a strength, his ability to carry on beyond the point in which he needs a rest is not a weakness but a sign of strength. His ability to go to the ends of the earth to right wrongs, and to show his love:

"... Cupid struck, slapping Nico sideways into a granite pedestal. Love is no game! It is no flowery softness! It is hard work- a quest that never ends. It demands everything from you- especially the truth. Only then does it yield rewards."

Cupid is explaining Nico's idea of love in this scene, we see Jason say he prefers Piper's idea of love- but Nico only knows love in the way cupid describes, working desperately for a few moments with Bianca, working just to hear any scrap of information about his mother, always trying to prove himself to Percy- to overcome the way he feels about Percy (and boys in general).

Nico has only known love as something you walk to the ends of the Earth for, but he never stops fighting to be loved and acknowledged. Lesser men would give up and lay down, accept they are unworthy, but Nico keeps pushing to be acknowledged and accepted- to be recognized and loved without having to walk to the end of the Earth, but Nico knows he has to walk to that edge and face it before unconditional love will come to him.

To imply that Nico seeks love the way he does because he's unconfident in his ability to receive love ignores the idea that he's had his life forced into this position because of the fates. It loses acknowledgment to the strength it takes to pick yourself up and walk to the end of the Earth time and time again, because if he was unconfident then he would eventually lay down and accept he shouldn't be loved ever again.

I don't think confidence doesn't play into this at all though, it definitely has some impact on Nico, he does view himself as inherently less (he is overly self sacrificial- think Tartarus :/), and he does try to remove himself from others:

You yourself said: you blame yourself for the way people have hurt you, taken advantage of you, and abandoned you. they exploit your love and your naïveté time and time again. you tell yourself, surely, there must be something wrong with you. because—you are convinced—that people are good. “if they hurt me, it is because i am flawed. it is because i am weak. people will always hurt me—even people i love. it’s an inevitable truth for me.” (X)

And this connects to what I said: "The thing about being rejected is that the first time you argue it's the other person. And the second time you'll argue it's still them. If you're still arguing it's other people the third time, maybe but it's thin ice... But eventually you just have to accept that you're at fault."

I do think there's a reason Nico makes himself so "utilitarian", because he hasn't been handed unconditional love since Bianca. But again we disagree on the why, I see Nico's behavior in his utilitarian example of love as caring, the way more people should be in love. Too many people see love as something given without restraint, and yeah, love should be unconditional but in order for love to be unconditional you have to do the work to lay good foundation. To be utilitarian in loving is not an act of weakness, or a symbol of lack of confidence, it is a showcase of more care in love than most have to offer. We care for things, and place value on them determined by how much love and care goes into those things.

I also don't see Nico's self blaming for what happened as flawed, it's logical in his situation, and a common result of CEN. This self blame shows care and kindness, and this coincides with Nico's arcs, "If I am bad, how do I improve? If I have no choice but to be evil, how do I still be good?". Nico is always fighting not to be recognized for good or bad, but to be recognized for what he is.

Trust is not naivety either, the only reason Nico is regarded as naïve is because of the extreme circumstances of his life. People shouldn't have to expect abuse from people who are supposed to love them, people should have to accept abuse in order to receive love. If Nico's life had turned out different, his naivety wouldn't be viewed as a weakness but a strength- a kindness.

We're not actually viewing Nico all that different, there's this space where his character blurs together, and it becomes an individual duty to determine at what point a flaw becomes a strength, and a strength a flaw. Nico's stubbornness is a flaw if we're thinking about grudges, but it's a strength in his work ethic. Nico's ability to stand on his own is a strength in terms of questing, but it's a flaw when it prevents him from experiencing love in fullness.

#asks #gayleafpool #idk the ending of this is shit but idk how to close ends so hopefully you understand anyhow #also i don't want this to come off as there's a right and wrong way to view something because that's not true #i was just trying to elaborate further on why i view nico a certain way #i can definitely see why you view him how you do #i think we're both definitely projecting a bit because we're both right in a flawed wya #*way #but what is the human mind but flawed?#uhh to tag or not to tag?#i'll tag #nico di angelo #pjo #long post

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maxwell-grant · 3 years

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Any thoughts on Darkman, the Liam Neeson movie? I heard it was originally going to be a Shadow movie.

I love Darkman very much, but I've realized recently that this love comes with some pretty bittersweet feelings at the story behind it.

Michael Uslan: I was going to produce a Shadow feature film with Sam Raimi, but Sam got consumed by back-to-back movies and we ran out of time. We were headed in a good, period piece direction and managed to do so without relying on yet another bout with Shiwan Khan. I later had another major director passionate to do The Shadow, but a person at the company wanted to do a modern day TV series instead, which ultimately did not go... - comment saved from a post in The Shadow Knows Facebook group

For those of you who only now got into The Shadow or don't remember, for much of the early 00s, when The Shadow basically had no current projects and Conde Nast was taking down webpages and fan content left and right, the only things that kept this "fandom" alive were occasional fanfics (many of which are gone now), and the dim light in the horizon that was the rumors that Sam Raimi was finally going to make his Shadow film. Dig back on The Wayback Machine for Shadow web page and you're gonna see this as consistently the only thing they had to look forward to in regards to the character. These rumors floated around for over a decade, at one point Tarantino was even supposed to direct it, but he confirmed in 2013 that it wasn't going to happen. At least, not with him at the helm.

The project has been dead for a while now, and Conde Nast seems to be shuffling around plans for the character, and I deleted my Facebook months ago so I haven't kept up with any news, although it seems the James Patterson novel wasn't received too well, so I'm not sure what other plans they have in the pipeline.

Back in the 1970s, after the release of Richard Donner's Superman and in line with The Shadow's pop culture resurgence, thanks to the paperback reprints and the 70s DC run, there were plans to make a Shadow feature film, and there were quite a handful of scripts being tossed around for the following years (Will Murray states most of them were horrible), several names attached to the project at one point or another. The plans died down a bit following Gibson's death and only really picked up again after the 90s, and of course we all know that the 1994 movie came out with spectacularly bad timing. From what I recall, it seems Sam Raimi wanted to make his Shadow film in the 80s, was unable to secure the rights, and then just made his own version, which would go on to be his first major motion picture.

Even after making Darkman, Sam Raimi still wanted to make The Shadow. I guess that's ultimately the bittersweet part for me. I imagine the current state of Shadow media would be significantly better if Sam Raimi, who was a fan of the character and the pulp version (and even knows of The Shadow's connection to Houdini and stage magic), got to make his Shadow film, years before Blood & Judgment, years before Burton's Batman made it impossible for a Shadow film not to be compared to it, in a time period where it wouldn't have had to compete with The Lion King and The Mask for box office. And second, I have been drawing up my plans for Shadow projects for, what, 5 years now? And I have just barely got my foot off the door as a filmmaker. Sam Raimi had a decade-long career as a cult filmmaker before he got turned down, and decades later, after becoming a household name in charge of Marvel's biggest icon, the project still fell through. It doesn't exactly get my hopes up, y'know.

I love Darkman, it's the best Shadow film that doesn't technically star the real Shadow, and it works pretty well on it's own regardless of that association, but I do get pretty sad looking at it from the outside, because I just can't help but think on what it could have been.

In some aspects I do think the film benefits from not being about The Shadow proper, because it means Raimi got the freedom to do whatever the hell he wanted. The character of Darkman already existed separately from Sam Raimi's plans for a Shadow film, already carrying off the Phantom / Universal Monster influence, and what Raimi did was basically combine the two ideas together.

He took the basic iconography of The Shadow, a terrifying urban crimefighter in coat and slouch hat, and add in other Shadow traits like his mastery of disguise, his disfigurement, and that wonderful scene where he's invisibly running circles around a panicky triggerman while laughing maniacally, a moment which definitely feels like Raimi taking a second to indulge himself to do what you can call The Classic Shadow Scene with a character he's, for the most part, succesfully convinced us (and Conde Nast's lawyers, most importantly) isn't supposed to be The Shadow.

But then he filters these through his own influences and style to make him a new character, so instead of a mysterious mastermind with lots of resources and a enigmatic background, instead he's a disfigured and psychotic scientist with a vengeance against those who made him that way. He's like Night Raven, in the sense that he's built off traits that The Shadow has, but develops them differently to the point he stands on his own as a character. It's The Shadow combined with The Phantom of the Opera, filtered through a 1930s Universal Horror lens, played for greater tragedy and a dash of Evil Dead 2 wackyness.

He hides away in trashed up ruins and bickers with a cat, he has fits of rage that make him endanger innocents, he has a doomed love affair, and sometimes he gets so batshit he gives us hilarious moments like "TAKE THE FUCKING ELEPHANT" and "SEE THE DANCING FREAK! PAY - FIVE - BUCKS! TO SEE THE DANCING FREAK!". Moments that really show why he was such a good fit for Spider-Man despite the liberties he took with the source material.

I think the big thing that helps to make Darkman works as a property in it's own right is also that, ultimately, these influences are ultimately at the forefront of it, and the core of it works on it's own. Darkman is a believable, engaging character in his own right, one who tells a story that would be more at odds with The Shadow proper.

In some aspects, Darkman tries to be The Shadow, he is forced to become The Shadow by literally picking the clothes off a dumpster after he escapes the hospital, and it's a miserable, wretched existence, in a way rather befitting his status as a legally safe knock-off. He is a creature of nightmare who lost his face and takes on a dozen others to fight crime by turning terror against them, except he is still just a man in the end, and no man was ever supposed to live like this.

Raimi was also inspired by the Universal horror films of the 1930s and 1940s because "they made me fear the hideous nature of the hero and at the same time drew me to him. I went back to that idea of the man who is noble and turns into a monster".

He originally wrote a 30-page short story, titled "The Darkman", and then developed into a 40-page treatment. At this point, according to Raimi, "it became the story of a man who had lost his face and had to take on other faces, a man who battled criminals using this power"

A non-superpowered man who, here, is a hideous thing who fights crime. As he became that hideous thing, it became more like The Phantom of the Opera, the creature who wants the girl but who was too much of a beast to have her

I decided to explore a man's soul. In the beginning, a sympathetic, sincere man. In the middle, a vengeful man committing heinous acts against his enemies. And in the end, a man full of self-hatred for what he's become, who must drift off into the night, into a world apart from everyone he knows and all the things he loves.

For the role, Raimi was looking for someone who could suggest "a monster with the soul of a man"

It's the fact that Darkman is ultimately played for vulnerability and tragedy that really sets him apart. While I wouldn't go far enough to say The Shadow is a man with the soul of a monster, still, the difference in presentation is still there when it comes to these two. The Shadow is The Other, Darkman is You. Darkman is the victim of extraordinary circumstance that affects his life, The Shadow is the extraordinary circumstance that affects the lives of others. People react to The Shadow, Darkman reacts to people (and rather poorly).

One is the man who takes off his skin (or yours, staring back at you) to reveal the weird creature of the night ready to prowl and pounce and cackle at those who think they hold power over it's domain, and the other is the monster who falls apart bit by bit until you are left staring at the broken man within who has no choice but to be something he was never supposed to be.

The Shadow is The Master of Darkness. Darkman weaponizes the dark, but in the end, he's still just a man, lost within it. Not everyone can be The Shadow, and you would most likely turn into Darkman if you tried.

#replies tag #darkman #sam raimi #the shadow #pulp heroes #universal monsters

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jeptwin · 2 years

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So, I watched Encanto. Was it amazing? Absolutely, yes. Was it everything I’d hoped for and more? Also yes! I would go so far as to say it is the first Disney movie in a long time to truly separate itself from previous ones, choosing not to follow their tried and true formula and still managing to stand out-and if anything, stand out even more because of it! The music was great, and a nice change of pace from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s typical work, and the voice work was phenomenal-particularly two of my favorite actresses, Stephanie Beatriz and Diane Guerrero-who you might recognize as Rosa Diaz from Brooklyn 99 and Jane from Doom Patrol respectively.

Here’s where spoilers start, so anyone who hasn’t watched the movie and doesn’t want inside info, scatter now or forever hold your comments!

I’m going to start the spoiler talk with my favorite part of the movie: The fact that there was no villain. One might argue that Abuela served as an Antagonist because of her behavior, but she wasn’t a villain. Bruno was a red herring, and honestly the movie is better for it. It showed that a good story doesn’t need a villain to move the plot forward.

Then let’s address the next most important deviation from the typical disney formula: Mirabel failed. She failed to save the Casita, and the Miracle, because ultimately even though she did as much as she could, it was too heavy a burden to bear for any one person, particularly when her own family was making things harder. However that failure also allows all the characters to truly LEARN from it. They get the chance to define themselves outside of their gifts, and Mirabel gets to have the confidence and self-assurance that comes with knowing exactly who she is and what she can do as she convinces her family that they are more than their magic. Rather than having everyone narrowly avoid disaster and never actually having to deal with consequences, we got the chance to see what happens when people fail, and how they can recover and grow from that failure.

Then of course there’s the songs. “Surface Pressure” is probably the most well known, what with it dealing with the pressure of having to carry your whole family on your back, and being a surprisingly accurate inside look as to how that can make you feel. “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is both sinister and entertaining, a mix between theatrics and assumptions regarding Bruno and how his prophecies have a terrible pattern. It gives us a look at the only other character to be ostracized by the Madrigals, and how not fitting in with an ‘amazing gift’ that helps people made them outsiders looking in at the perfect Madrigal Family. All of the songs are amazing in their own right, but those two stand out from the pack. In my opinion “What Else Can I Do” comes close as well, running with a similar theme, but doesn’t quite hit the same way as the other two.

Finally, there are the two things that I would have liked to see elaborated on. Now, I’m not truly upset these weren’t a part of the movie, because both as a film student myself and a frequent consumer of media, I’m well aware that not everything can make it into the final cut. However, personally I would’ve enjoyed seeing more interactions between Mirabel and her extended family. The movie focused primarily on her interactions with her sisters, mother, grandmother, uncle, and to a degree her father and youngest cousin, Antonio.

This leaves us with four others who weren’t explored as well-although I’ll admit that, like with Augustin, there isn’t quite as much to do with Felix. He also doesn’t have a gift, and therefore never learned to define his worth by what he could do. However Pepa, in the brief moments we get to see her, clearly struggles with anxiety and regulating her emotions, which are tied to the weather. The pressure of constantly remaining calm so you don’t bring terrible disasters to your home must be terrible, and it could’ve been interesting to see Mirabel helping to convince her that it’s okay to feel, and that she is allowed to feel sad, or anxious, or whatever she’d like. Maybe, like Isabela, we could have seen her gaining more control over her powers, and finally stop having to worry about clouds constantly hanging over her.

Then with Dolores, we’ve seen in the movie how she struggles with knowing absolutely everything in town. Nothing escapes her hearing, and she’s apparently terrible at keeping secrets. I think with her we could’ve gotten to see Mirabel convince her that, like Luisa, she doesn’t need to carry all that weight on her own, and it’s okay to confide in others herself. Maybe she doesn’t like her powers and wishes she was powerless like Mirabel. It could’ve been interesting to see how Mirabel could help Dolores, though I recognize that it would have been a challenge to find a solution that appeased everyone.

Finally, there’s Camilo, who shapeshifts. Out of everyone in the movie, he got the least screen time, which is kinda sad since he’s arguably the character with the most potential. As a shapeshifter, he is literally defined by changing to be what everyone else wants him to be. We could’ve gotten to see him confide in Mirabel the challenge of constantly appealing to everyone else, at the cost of never truly developing a self-identity he feels confident in. We could’ve seen her convince him that he should find himself, and figure out who he is before he changes everything that he is for someone else.

All in all, I completely understand why we didn’t see any of this get explored, but I would love the chance to see it if Disney ever chooses to revisit Encanto (which I truly hope they do). But yeah, overall, Encanto was truly fantastic, and stands out amongst recent Disney films as special!

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crazy-czech-fangirl · 3 years

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Kristen Stewart - Howard Stern interview

Yesterday I saw the interview with Howard Stern and wow. I’ve never seen her so openly speak about the Twilight era and relationship with Rob. So I decided to transcript the parts about Twilight and Robert because I couldn’t find it anywhere. If you have time go watch the whole interview it’s really worth it!

****

H: The way they’re covering your romance with Robert Pattinson and all this.. I had him on the show and he said no relationship could survive the intense scrutiny that we were under. It was insane.

K: Yeah it was. I mean we wanted to like keep it ours so it was like this thing of going like..well do you like live openly and share your life in a way that actually entitles you to living it sort of more freely and naturally or do you like put it on lock because you hate the idea of perpetuating this like commodified version of your..something that feels real to you and you’re like ‘I’m not selling you shit’! But then you actually deprive yourself of like so many experiences. Like we didn’t walk down the street holding hands because we were like ‘Don’t wanna give it to them’ but then we didn’t get to walk down the street holding hands. And it sucked.

H: Of course it sucked because the best part of the relationship with anyone..

K: Is screaming from the rooftops!

H: ‘I’m in love!’

K: Yeah!

H: And walking around holding somebody’s hand.

K: I know.

****

H: ....Not only were you falling in love with Rob on the set.. Which by the way I think is the biggest mistake an actor can make.

K: There was nothing I could do.

H: The director was even nervous because the first time you guys kind of auditioned together to see the chemistry..it was an immediate chemistry between the two of you.

K: Yeah, yeah. It’s so weird like actually being honest about this like it’s been so heavily consumed and I have this fear that people would assume that maybe I’m like..’oh cool you’re still pushing that narrative’ and it’s like ‘No I’ve actually never been allowed to just say what happened’. Because I was so self conscious about seeming like an attention seeker.

H: Or taking advantage of the fact that you guys were dating.

K: Yeah exactly. We were together for years. That was like my first..you know..

H: Love.

K: Yeah. I mean like I was super in love with my high school boyfriend. Super in love with him. But me and Rob were like little older and it was like *GOGUM*.

H: He’s a charming guy.

K: Yeah he’s the best.

****

H: Rob when he was here told me with Twilight that they wanted to go a whole other direction . They wanted you to be smiling and him to be smiling. Be a lovable little vampire. And he said it was tremendous pressure to act that movie the way he wanted to.

K: Yeah. Honestly thank god he had that.. I mean he like..he wouldn’t do it the other way. And I don’t think he even had that in his wheelhouse like his body wouldn’t do that. And I mean mine either. I was like..The only reason this is good is because it’s like “Aaargh” and they were like ‘But it’s not fun!’. We took a lot of slack. Like we were constantly being like reprimanded and thank god we stuck to our guns because that’s why the movie works.

H: Yes. Yes that’s exactly why the movie works.

****

H: Would you recommend to other young actresses that they fall in love during their movie or should they avoid it? Because that’s my point. You say you couldn’t have stopped yourself falling in love with Rob.

K: I don’t think it’s really a choice..

H: Isn’t it dangerous because the set is such an aphrodisiac. It’s like..

K: Maybe it’s not real. Yeah but then you could apply that to any other...What is?

H: What is real?

K: Yeah.

H: Because they cater to you, they’re treating you like you’re a star..

K: Mmmm no.

H: No? It wasn’t like that?

K: No. Not at all. ‘Get your ass to set and start smiling bitch’. And I’m like ‘Nope’.

H: But did you have a sense that you were in trouble now that you were in love. Because you’re like ‘oh this is cliched I’m falling in love with my costar’.

K: I thought that was the coolest thing ever and I was so proud of it and I was like ‘We’re like rockstars dude’. I was like ‘Yeah you wish you had this.’ You know when you have that thing and you’re like ‘This is the coolest’.

H: Well it’s cool too because you’re really trapped in like high school or college and at least you have this great outside romance going on.

K: It was fun.

H: But it’s always doomed isn’t it because it’s just too much pressure when you got famous as you did so quickly.

****

H: Trump was consumed with the fact that you and Rob Pattinson had broken up.

K: Sure. Yes.

H: And he started tweeting against you saying ‘Hey Rob you can do much better than Kristen Stewart’.

....

K: You would think that he had more important things to do. It’s absurd.

...

H: Did you ever talk to Rob about it? Did you ever say ‘Can you believe the president of the United States is carrying on about our relationship.

K: Yeah we got back together. We like went through a thing and it fucking sucked but like we really wanted to be together...I don’t remember that particular conversation but we definitely were talking about everything at that time.

****

K: I had people genuinely asking me if that relationship was real or fake. And I was like..

H: Like the movie fabricated it for publicity.

K: Right yeah.

H: But they did used to do that in the old days.

K: I know it’s such a weird studio system old school way of...You really think at this point after all these years like that I’m..like that’s how I live my life?

H: There’s no way a relationship could survive the types of scrutiny that you guys had.

K: We were also just so young you know what I mean like there are stages..life is long..yeah.

H: Was there a point you would have gotten married do you think?

K: I don’t know.

H: I wonder..imagine

K: I wanted to..Yeah no I mean like I think I’ve never...

H: If he proposed you would have gotten married.

K: I don’t know. I’m not like a super duper traditionalist but at the same time like I...every relationship that I’ve ever been in I thought ‘This is it’. I’ve never like casually dated..I mean maybe one or two..Yeah I’m not giving everyone that. But like I’ve never really been the most casual person.

****

K: (what she could have done better while acting) .. and certain parts of Twilight. New moon I totally screwed up the like devastating..I was so in love with Rob and so happy that I couldn’t imagine losing him. But now I’m like ‘oh man I could have really done better work in that movie’.

****

H: (Snow white and the huntsman) That movie did really well. And then they didn’t ask you to be in the sequel.

K: We lived in a different time then you know what I mean. I feel like the slut shaming that went down was like so absurd. And they should have put me in that movie it would have been better..not to be a dick but..

H: You’re sayin there was slut shaming of you?

K: Well they didn’t put me in that movie because I went through a highly publicized scandal. So they were like scared of touching that.

H: Because you fell in love with the director? So that’s why they didn’t have you in the sequel? That was a dumb move.

K: I think so.

H: Isn’t that wrong though? Not to put you in a sequel because you fell in love with the director?

K: Well I wouldn’t say that I fell in love with the director...

H: Oh you had an affair..

K: Yeah that was weird..that was a kind of a weird thing. But I definitely...It wasn’t that big of a deal. Do you know what I’m saying. It’s like literally..

H: No because I’ve actually forgotten about it.

K: Yeah..

H: People at the time think it’s a big deal.

K: The work is so much more important. It’s like what do you care if I..I just thought that that movie actually..we could have made a great second one and we could have done it in a functional and healthy way. And then we didn’t ultimately do that and that’s okay because I did other stuff and it’s fine but yeah..that was weird.

H: So you were blamed for not being in the second movie because you had sex with somebody. That’s what you’re telling me?

K: I did not fuck him.

H: Oh you didn’t fuck him?

K: No I didn’t.

H: Oh so why not clear that up? Why not say that?

K: Who’s gonna believe..It doesn’t even matter

H: I believe you.

K: Honestly I feel like you do and I actually feel like this is the most honest setting I’ve ever been involved with.

H: You have been so honest with this so why did you get pegged as fucking..

K: Well because it looks like..you know you make out with a dude in public it definitely looks like you...

H: Oh oh so it was an innocent sort of thing and the media made it out to be a big deal.

K: Yeah I mean look it wasn’t innocent that was like a..you know that was a really hard period of my life. I was like really young and like um...

H: Well it’s understandable you’re a young woman. Yes ok you were going out with Rob...

K: Yeah I didn’t really know how to deal with that and I made some mistakes.

H: Hey guess what everybody does.

K: Yeah exactly. And honestly it’s no one’s business and people get over shit like that. You know what I mean? It’s really not a big deal. Basically what I’m saying is the work to me genuinely was ignored in a really sort of frivolous like silly petty way. For a group of adult people who were like supposed to be running studios and making films that’s what you..I mean honestly the film industry in Hollywood is so fear based and there are like equations that lead people to massive decisions that you assume are creative that are not at all.

H: Yes.

K: And so like that didn’t fit in their equation. And I think they are idiots because if you take a little risk and you make something good people will watch it and like it and pay you.

youtube

#robsten #robert pattinson #kristen stewart #twilight #howard stern #Youtube

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alittlefrenchtree · 3 years

Note

l know you don't want to talk about PR, but if you were managing Timmy's PR , how would be your way to do it ? Cause tbh his team his horrible about it.

Hey there! I love this "I know that you don't want to talk about this, but let's ignore that and talk about it anyway" vibe you're giving here, Nonny 😁 (Don't worry, I'm kidding. I don't mind at all 😉)

It's not that I don't want to talk about PR. I love talking about PR in general ways. I've always been interested in marketing, public images, public relation strategy, etc. It's just that, I now try to avoid talking about Timmy's because I realized it kills the conversation pretty quickly. I was trying to talk about things, marketing concepts that are well known and studied and used (I was going to say by every business, but now it's literally everyfuckingbody with social media including your own mom) and yet, the moment I start talking about Timmy's one and how Timmy seemed to be slightly shifting his image at this or that moment, why and how he could need this or that right now, the majority of what I get in return in my inbox is "you keep saying he's lying all the time and fake, why are you still pretending to love him" or "hahahaha totally agree with you, he's a slut for fame and a fake guy, let's roast him together" and I'm just "why do I even bother writing something if nobody is going to read it anyway?" (because I like reading myself write, that's why I bother 😬). It makes me want to scream at someone's, or like at said before, multiple someones. Then I remember it's the Internet and you never know when you're talking to an innocent 13 yo so, it's ok. (If you're 13 yo and love Timmy, you're right. I'm the liar, he has never lied or do something he didn't like just for work, never fart in his entire life. He's the prince charming, keep dreaming. Everything is good. We'll talk again in 10 years.) Surprisingly enough, I don't get as many passionate reaction about pr when Timmy's name isn't mentioned anywhere, so I rather do that now.

And also many people keep thinking or at least acting like PR only means public romance/sex life and it's a) boring b) lowkey insulting for the art of PR so I'm not usually keen to entertain the conversation.

Talking about Timmy's PR is now also frustrating because the majority of the conversations going on about him for over a year have been... so fucking dumb? I get that COVID is to blame in many ways but it would be naive to think that it's the only reason. In every situation, we're doomed to talk about what color is hair is and where he does or doesn't put his dick because that's how things are. Shallow. And I get it's not only the audience's fault and even if it was, it wouldn't be Timmy's audience's fault specifically because it's how human beings generally are, always gossiping. The guy could spend days talking about interesting stuff about himself, his artistic vision, his career, the shitty industry he's evolving in and all people would talk for a month would be "but where does he put his dick???"

And to answer your question(s), I'm pretty sure I've already talked about it in a few asks but since tumblr sucks, it'll be easier to write it again than to look for links. I apologize to those who've read it back then and still remember it.

I don't think his pr team is doing a terrible job. I think they made mistakes, like everybody but they're far from being terrible. Just because you (or I) don't like what we see at this or that point, doens't mean they're terrible. When you have a client who's career looks like Timmy's, who's global image's looks like Timmy's, whose everybody used any excuse to talk about, to be seen with just to be associated with his image because he does has a good image, you can't say his pr team is doing a terrible job. A few hundreds of people on Tumblr or a few thousand on Reedit or Twitter or wherever saying it's terrible doesn't make it terrible. Like I've said before, talent and personality can only make you go so far. The world is full of talented people with sweet personalities. It isn't full of Timothée Chalamets.

That being said, there are three answers to your question.

I could do my PR job according to my personal taste, but then I would be a terrible job as a PR for him. Like if I was listening to me, I would shut his twitter and his instagram accounts for example. But it would be a bad thing to do at the moment. Maybe there will be a window to do that in a few years, but right now it would be tricky. I consume a lot of live content these (and always talking about Twitch, i know) so I maybe it's something I'd like to do that but Timmy would not be very good at it. For him to be, it would entirely re-shaped what it means to be an Hollywood actor so, so kind of time consuming for an unknown and uncertain result.

So yeah, a lot of what I like wouldn't be very fitted with what Timmy is or needs at the moment soooo, maybe I'd be the terrible PR person.

I could do my PR job for him as a human being and I wouldn't change much to what's happening, to be honest.

I could do my PR job for him as an actor who's leading actor on a sci-fi Warner Bros franchise and a big public person and maybe I'd do exactly the same as they are doing right now.

The only important thing I'd do (and hope he has people to do that for him right now) is trying to protect him. There are way to many example of famous people who have been teenagers idols, walking wet dreams for young adults, global superstar when they were teenagers or young adults themselves who come back at thirty saying how difficult it was. How at first it was a dream come true and so cool but that it too quickly turned into a living nightmare. And you probably can't protect these people that much trom constant attention from millions of people, but I think I'd still try. Nobody deserves to be suffering from depression (if not worse or more) by the age of 25 just because their childhood dream happened to become their daily job.

Should I still apologize for the length of my answers or does everybody is used to by rambling by now?

Anyway, thank you for the question, Nonny. Have a nice day 😘

#alft asks #it's pr talk time again

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adamarks · 5 years

Text

Penny’s relationship troubles and how that relates to Simon and Baz

aka my Baz and Penny mirror post

I said I’d do this and god what a fucking emotional ride we’re about to go on. Strap in, my dudes.

In Carry On, it’s well-established that Penelope is Baz’s mirror character. She’s mostly static in the book (because it’s almost completely focused on Baz and Simon) and she’s used mainly as a literary device. Her mirroring Baz in particular is established very plainly. Both of them being top of the class; both of them geeking out over spells; both of them geeking out over marriage spells; their mothers both being headmasters; both of them getting out chalkboards and making the exact same types of lists. It’s very much in-your-face screaming in Carry On.

It’s not so obvious in Wayward Son.

The main reason for this is that Penny was upgraded from static to rounded in this book. She has an entire arc of doubting herself, which will most likely be completed in the next book. However, just because it’s not banging pots and pans in your face doesn’t mean the mirroring isn’t there.

Let’s dig in.

Rainbow did something I really, really loved with this book: she made sure we know that happy endings aren’t what we’re told. The story doesn’t end because the Prince and Princess kissed-- how did they hang on? How did they make it to the hundredth kiss? Did they even make it to the hundredth kiss?

This book tells us that sometimes they don’t make it to the hundredth kiss.

This lesson is what’s got a lot of people’s panties in a knot. Here’s the thing though: it’s not a bleak lesson; it’s a warning. It’s a reminder that we have to keep trying; we have to want that hundredth kiss.

Simon and Baz want that hundredth kiss. They just don’t know how to get there.

Wow guys I’m gonna have to struggle to not cry while writing this. Wish me luck.

Yes, the boys are morons that can’t communicate. How does Penny fit in?

She didn’t get to that hundredth kiss.

Micah and Penny are what happen when you just expect happily ever after to take care of getting you to the next kiss.

Micah declares what the lesson Penny (assumedly with Shepherd Tornado Chaser Supreme) is going to learn about relationships is in Chapter twelve:

“A relationship isn’t about the end. It’s about being together every step of the way.”

This may be Penny’s lesson, but this is also a sort of (in my opinion) apology from Rainbow. Because, what was Baz and Simon getting together if not just a nice little tie up as part of a happy ending. What are queer consumers of media usually fed? Our representation usually dies, breaks up, or ends up together all happy go lucky right at the end. We don’t get to see characters we relate to struggle. We don’t get to see them still be miserably in love but unsure how to make it work when shit gets rough.

Wayward Son is what happens when you don’t know how to keep going, but god do you want to.

“I told you that I thought we’d grown apart--”

“And I said that was natural!”

(also taken from Chapter 12 of Wayward)

Simon and Baz growing apart when Simon is so severely depressed and unable to communicate is natural. It’s natural, but it doesn’t mean that he’s going about it the right way. Simon is fucked up. He’s fucked up in a lot of ways, but (and this is coming from someone that’s struggled with the same kinds of thoughts Simon’s suffering from) that’s no excuse for him to hurt Baz in the process.

Simon even realizes that this is a terrible way to go about this. It’s why he’s thinking about breaking up with Baz.

i almost cried typing that just now rainbow why simon why i’m dying i-

BREAKING UP WITH BAZ IS NOT THE ANSWER, SIMON!!

Simon needs to learn how to communicate. How to talk about what he’s feeling and what he needs.

Here’s the thing though: Baz does too.

This is where Penny’s mirroring comes into play. Micah and Penny apparently didn’t talk for two whole months and she didn’t notice. They didn’t talk. They didn’t communicate. This is what killed their relationship.

This is what’s killing Simon and Baz’s.

In Chapter Fifteen we see Simon mulling over Penny and Micah breaking up:

“Penelope and Micah were going to get married.

And now... Merlin, what now?”

I’ll come back to the concept of “endgames” throughout this series, but for now, apply that to Baz and Simon.

Baz and Simon were supposed to live happily ever after, but ever afters don’t work like that. So, now what?

Everything sucks. We are all in Pain. The dumbasses won’t talk. What do we DO, JAY?

god, what do we do. suffer i guess idk.

Okay but for real, we don’t have to worry. Rainbow knows what their issue is. And! She’ll make sure it’s resolved! How do I know?

Well, I’ll tell ya.

Shepard.

We were introduced to a brand new, absolutely batshit, completely delightful character in Wayward. He’s spunky, he’s fun, but what does he do best?

Fucking. Talk.

He doesn’t shut the fuck up!! He’s completely honest and he just talks. Bitch will tell you his entire life story without batting an eye! This is what Penny needs.

This is where Simon and Baz are going to end up.

Perhaps not exactly, that doesn’t suit their personalities. This is what they’ll end up being, though: completely honest with each other.

These fuckers are constantly thinking about each other throughout the book.

“Oh he’s so beautiful.” “Oh he’s so charming.” “Oh he’s so funny and smart.” “Oh he’s so heroic and brave.” “Oh, i’d give him my whole being.” “Oh I wish he’d let me in” “Oh I love him so much.” “I love him.”

They’d both feel so, so, so much better if they just said shit out loud. Good god.

But neither of them are a) in a place where they can say it and b) in a place where they’ll believe it.

This brings us to our next biggie:

Baz still doesn’t like himself.

Simon’s obviously having troubles with self loathing. That’s not even a question in anyone’s mind. Simon’s depression and lack of self worth is one of (if not the) main vocal points of the book.

The issue with Simon’s sadness getting the spotlight is that we overlook Baz’s a bit. It’s thrown in so that we don’t notice immediately, because we’re not supposed to. Baz’s self-hatred isn’t as loud as Simon’s and he’s been dealing with it a lot longer. It’s a self-loathing he’s learned to live with-- he’s used to it by now.

Sometimes the demons we learn to live with are the most vicious of all.

I think it’s very clever that the most overt time we see Baz disliking himself is in his Things I Hate List in Chapter Fourteen.

“11. The wind in my hair.

12. Convertible automobiles.

13. Myself, most of all.

14. My soft heart.

15. My foolish optimism.

16. The words “road” and “trip,” when said together with any enthusiasm.”

It’s slipped in there awful sneaky! You’re giggling and going “oh thank god maybe I won’t be sad through the whole book” then BANG! there it is. But, right after we have “my soft heart” and you’re going “oh my poor baby he’s so sweet I love him” before you really had time to process number 13 as anything aside from an “lol i’m hot and icky and i hate myself” joke.

Baz is used to hating himself. It’s everyday whatever. Simon’s is only louder because he’s not used to being allowed time to think about the bad stuff. Everyday before the end of Carry On for Simon was just struggling to get to the next day-- whether that was at Watford or a home. Simon’s happy when he doesn’t have to think; Baz can’t just not think.

Penny’s just learned what doubting herself entails; Baz has been doubting himself for the last decade.

No matter how much they coo at each other, it won’t fix the underlying issue: Baz and Simon don’t like themselves.

This is the main internal conflict of the series for all of the characters: loving yourself for what you are.

This brings us to Agatha.

If you haven’t read my meta on simon being a dragon hell yes then you might want to. I discuss Agatha being a mirror for Simon fairly thoroughly in it.

Remember how I told you to put a pin in the concept of “endgames” earlier? Well, here we are. Agatha was supposed to be the “endgame.”

Endgames! Are! Bullshit!

Human beings are not our consolation prizes for getting through shit. Becoming stronger as people and loving ourselves more is our prize. Realizing how much you can withstand, how hard you can fight, how amazing you are for surviving is your prize for getting through it.

None of these guys realize this yet. Agatha and Simon just think there’s nothing good that’s going to come out of their lives and Baz and Penelope just think that maybe their “prizes” weren’t what they thought they were.

Maybe the rewards for our efforts were really just inside us the whole time. uwu.

Penny is just starting to think of plans again by the end of the book, but this time they’re looser, wilder, even more hairbrained than before and she really only has one plan at best! She’s learning that she can be strong and capable even when she doesn’t have all the facts and doesn’t have all the details thought through. Penny’s learning to loosen up.

Baz is in a better place by the end of Wayward too. He’s learned so much about vampires and even himself. Like sure I fuckin’ hate Lamb but he helped Baz to realize that... maybe he isn’t a monster. Maybe magical creatures aren’t lesser. Maybe he’s not any less human just because he can drink their blood.

They’re the only two that really, really develop in this book. Simon and Agatha change but mostly stay the same mentality-wise. Agatha still thinks she’s doomed to be a damsel in distress and Simon still thinks he’s just The Boy That Was. Baz and Penny are the most dynamic characters in Wayward Son.

I’m putting my money on next book being Agatha and Simon’s big development book. And at this point I’m convinced it’s going to be more than a trilogy.

Now! Let’s talk about Agatha and Penny.

@stressedidiot pointed out to me that Penny and Agatha holding hands and burning shit down in the last scene was supposed to call back to Baz and Simon. They’re absolutely right. I think the most important thing that was calling back to was Simon giving Baz his magic in Carry On.

This parallel confused me at first: why would Rainbow need to remind us of that scene? I know I personally have the Ladybird and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star scenes permanently ingrained in my head forever. Obviously we didn’t forget that Simon could pour his magic.

Here’s the thing.

Baz and Simon don’t stay together during any of the fight scenes in this book. They always get separated or one of them gets hurt or they’re scrambling trying to find or catch the other one.

They’ve forgotten that they work best when they’re together.

That was one of the main takeaways from Carry On. Simon and Baz work best when they’re together.

“A relationship isn’t about the end. It’s about being together every step of the way.”

Every! Step! Of! The! Way!

This is where my dragon Simon theory really comes into play. If Simon does end up with some sort of dragonesque powers, somehow Baz and him are going to share it.

When Baz figures out how to drink from humans without killing them, Simon’s going to be right there, ready to open up a vein.

This is the true beauty of their relationship. Simon wants to be the one to lead the dance of kisses and intimacy and communication, and Baz wants to be there to give him anything he wants. Baz has received Simon’s magic; he’s gonna drink Simon’s blood; and he’s somehow going to receive something from Simon regarding this dragon business.

“I’d give him all that I am.

I’d give him all that I was.

I’d open up a vein.”

They give and take and equal measures. They love each other wholly. I’m gesturing to my computer screen out of stress right now. They literally love each other that much!

Agatha and Penny sharing a magic conduit at the end of Wayward Son is a reminder of what happened between Simon and Baz and also foreshadowing of where they’ll be again.

Imagine how powerful they’ll be once they remember how to work together.

They were practically unstoppable before when they worked together-- they turned back a dragon.

But now their love for each other is stronger than ever. It’ll only grow once they finally talk. Once they communicate.

Two people, so strong separately coming together with only love and understanding for each other.

With their hearts beating together, they could do more than turn back a dragon.

They could change the world.

check my meta about simon’s wings being The Gay

And also my one about the scarf

Thank you for reading this word vomit. Just wanted to tag a few people that might be interested in seeing this shitstorm of a meta:

@goodie-giving-gecko-gets-gatos @singerofsimplesongs @wisest-girl @watfordwallflower @slaying-fictional-dragons @carrybits

#simon snow #baz pitch #tyrannus basilton grimm pitch #basilton pitch #penelope bunce #carry on #wayward son #wayward son spoilers #meta #agatha wellbelove #shepherd wayward son #i can't remember shepherd's last name #did they tell us?#rainbow rowell #snowbaz #dragon simon #Simon and Baz #baz and simon

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spockandawe · 4 years

Text

Okay, I want to pull together more detailed thoughts at some point, I think, because the sheer amount of material means I have about ten billion thoughts to sort out. But I’ve read all three of the mxtx novels now, and loved all of them, in different ways. Though I already tried to figure out if I can pick a Favorite, and tbh, I can’t. I love them all in ways that are too distinct to let me rank them easily. And... man, it’s lucky for my friends that social distancing is in place, or I’d be hassling them shamelessly to give these novels a try.

RIGHT. So.

The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System: Shen Yuan goes to bed full of rage directed at a trashy webnovel with a grimdark blackened hero who conquered the world and collected hundreds of women into his harem.... and wakes up in novel, while that hero is still an innocent youth. As the hero’s abusive teacher. Who is doomed for a horrifying death unless he can somehow turn things around.

I think I had the most fun with this one. I really enjoy self-referential stories, and stories poking fun at certain genres, and I’ve run into the concept of transmigration before (the idea being a person enters a fictional world, a la lost in austen), though I’m blanking on any media like that I’ve actually consumed. This was chronologically the first book mxtx wrote, and it has less of a sprawling cast with complicated relationships than the other two books, but it definitely has the thing where she lays early groundwork for later revelations that shatter my poor heart.

And there may be fewer relationships to play with, but my GOD, do I love the relationships we got. I’ve been rolling around in svsss fanfic since I finished the book, even more so than mdzs or tgcf. There’s a lot of good crunchy relationship content with the 79 ship (they destroy me, all day every day), Liu Qingge owns my whole-ass heart, and Luo Binghe makes for a fascinating love interest. I love that even at his best, he remains a needy, needy, manipulative boy, who’s so smart and strong and nEEDY. I don’t love how the book handled moshang, but mmmm the fan content is Good. And Shen Qingqiu does the unreliable narrator thing that is usually not my jam, but works so WELL in these books, in that his unreliable narration is hugely skewed towards not giving himself nearly as much credit as he deserves. Xie Lian takes this to UNBELIEVABLE heights in tgcf, but in Shen Qingqiu’s case, it’s done on such a casual, immediate, personal level that I’m fascinated by everything he does.

And, since Shen Yuan/Shen Qingqiu is a millennial fan of trashy romance webnovels who gets yanked into the universe of a novel he hates, into an old-timey xianxia setting, the prose is SO COOL. You swing between modern slang and old school high society courtesies at the drop of a hat, and I’m honestly awed that the translators were able to catch so much of that. Like, in-setting, I love all the nuance you can get in ‘qi-ge should give his a-jiu the scroll’ vs ‘yue-shixiong should give this teacher the scroll’ vs ‘you should give me the scroll’. But then it adds a whole new layer when the person ALSO has modern-day casual speech bouncing around in their head. It makes for a fascinating, fascinating reading experience.

The Grandmaster Of Demonic Cultivation: Thirteen years ago, Wei Wuxian died. And then he wakes up! In someone else’s body. I’m not going to try to summarize the premise of this one, go look up The Untamed if you want someone to do a better job of this than me XD

Ahhh, this was the book I read first. I still haven’t watched the show (only clips) and I’m not sure I ever will, because adhd is a hell of a drug. But it’s hard to purely evaluate the prose when there’s also this gorgeous, beautifully-acted visual adaptation all over my tumblr to bias me in its favor. I think this book benefits a lot from the MYSTERY of it all. From the very start, there’s the question of ‘what the fuck is up with this goddamn arm’ that the characters pursue, even as that takes them through flashbacks and other arcs within the story. It gives a thrust to the novel that I think isn’t exactly there in tgcf, though I’m torn on which one is “better.” This gave the story momentum, yes, but it also meant I was much more impatient in yi city and the 3zun flashbacks, because this isn’t what I was focused onnnnnn this is cool but how much longer will we BE HERE--

That being said, I think I’ll be more patient with those flashbacks on my next time through the book, now that I have a better picture of where everything is headed. I think the balance and structure of the book worked really well, I was setting myself up for self-sabotage because of the pace I was plowing through the thing. My reading habits didn’t lend themselves well to the nonlinear storytelling, and it speaks to the story’s strength that it held up that well despite me. And the CAST. My GOD. I went in not caring about anyone but Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji and maybe the jackass nephew, but... that Did Not Last. I didn’t intend to care about 3zun? Nope, too bad, you care so much now. Who cares about Xue Yang? Me. I care. Way too much. HECK!!!

And something that happens in this book and tgcf that was much less of a thing in svsss is that there are some meaningful holes in the story that I’d like to be filled, and I really care about filling-- and the story doesn’t go there. But it doesn’t leave me unhappy, it leaves me cheerfully scrabbling around in the throwaway details trying to piece together a picture of what happened when I wasn’t looking. What happened to Wei Wuxian in the burial mounds? How did Hua Cheng take control of the ghost city? Idk, but let us Rummage and theorize and roll around in ideas and have a fantastic, speculative time. Svsss might hook me more than the other stories from an au+shipping perspective, but mdzs and tgcf do a great job of making me want to roll around and create within the bounds of canon.

Heaven Official’s Blessing: 800 years ago, Xie Lian ascended to heaven. And fell. And rose again! And fell again. Now he’s ascended for the third time, and things are Awkward.

God, I just finished this, and I’m still reeling. This is the LONGEST mxtx book, that’s for sure. I also think it’s the most tightly edited translation. All the translators did an unbelievable job, I could never even approach what they accomplished, but I am genuinely stunned that a book this long was edited so well. I blew through this in about 3.5 days (if not for work, i could have made it in three dghsafdsgf) and my brain was cooking in my skull by the time I was halfway through, but I couldn’t STOP. I was ENCHANTED the entire time! I was reading so much my head was destroying me and I still sulked so HARD every time I had to put my phone down and sleep.

This book sprawls the hardest, I think, because it involves a cast made of mostly immortal/immortal-adjacent people, so time and space get... flexible. And I feel really bad saying this, because Lan Wangji is DEVOTED, but this is seriously the book with the most attentive and adoring and respectful love interest. Hua Cheng is..... god. I truly don’t think I’ve EVER read a character quite like him before, and I am so, so sad, because I don’t know how I’ll find one who lives up to these heights ever again XD I recommend reading this book just for the Hua Cheng experience, if nothing else. I was making audible noises at literally flailing at multiple points in the story, but most often, it was because of him.

Shipping is what usually drags me into a fandom hardest, and all of these books do pretty well for themselves, all of them have a nice selection of fluffy and crunchy ships to choose from. And this one... goddammit. I just realized, that the best, most crunchy ships are too spoilery for me to be willing to talk about them here. Hell. Goddammit. But I think tgcf has the crunchiest ship of all, even better than xuexiao. I was so invested, and then there were Reveals, and then I was like OH NO THIS IS TERRIBLE BUT MY INVESTMENT HAS EXPONENTIALLY INCREASED.

And something that I really, really appreciate, is that across the mxtx books, even though a lot of characters fit into strong archetypes, there’s nobody that is blurring together for me, either within or across the books. Liu Qingge isn’t Jiang Cheng isn’t Feng Xin. They’re all blunt, fighty boys, but all super distinct in my head, and what I want for each of them is distinct and character-driven. I want Liu Qingge to be properly cherished and I want Jiang Cheng to relax with his brother and nephew and I want Feng Xin to [goddammit i don’t want to spoil this book AGH]. It’s something I appreciated in the other books too, but I can really FEEL it in this book, with how long and luxurious it is.

And last thing I have to say, I think, is that tgcf is so long. It’s so, so long. But I would FITE if anyone tried to pare it down at all. I can’t think of anything I’d be willing to sacrifice. I enjoyed every last piece of it so much, and it was all ultimately SO well-constructed and interlocking, that any piece I can think of snipping out would take away significant emotional impact from what was left. It’s a nonlinear story, like mdzs is nonlinear, and I loved mdzs a lot! But the construction here is so, so, so elegant. I’m just in AWE of how well it was assembled. I was in Agony as reveals happened, because oh no no no no, now that they’ve told me this, that casts this whole other scene in a brand new light! The one I read hundreds of thousands of words ago! Literally, I need to go start the book over so I can savor the shitty teens in new ways, given [redacted] as revealed in like, the last twenty percent of the book. The book was a fun experience, but there’s so Much here that I know I haven’t even absorbed yet. I loved the other mxtx books a lot, and in many ways, they were easier to get a grasp on than tgcf was, but even before I finished tgcf I was already despairingly trying to figure out how easily I could fit a full reread into my life, and I think that says a lot

#tgcf #mdzs #svsss #long post/#[sad journaling noises as i realize that whatever ridiculous wordcount tgcf has still only counts as one completed book on my list]#i need to get an actual wordcount at some point #then stack up enough physical books to visually represent each of these monsters #i know i read a lot #enough that i very much want to know *how much* i read #because CHRIST

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silverbastardgoldenfool · 4 years

Text

I'm really Going Through It™ right now and part of that is the therapy I'm doing which requires me to stop overriding my own boundaries and start listening to my body and actually resting and not pushing myself to be Useful™ and Productive™ and trying to Earn My Wretched Existence. I pretty much have to rewire my brain and it's really goddamn HARD like it has worked like this my ENTIRE life. It has become so deeply counterintuitive for me to act or even think in ways that are healthy and acknowledge my own humanity - which is to say, weaknesses, limitations.

And I am striving for balance but in an effort to challenge my preconceived notion that I have to be Good to be worth literally anything I am going all in on the counterintuitive front; I have been pretty much just aggressively doing nothing. And it’s really, really interesting because usually I would have at least like. gone for a walk or something by now. Not in an unhealthy way but just in a “God i need to move my body” way. Usually I would have cleaned the house, written a tonne, developed a new routine. Again, because I do enjoy those things and naturally gravitate towards them. Me not doing those things is - at this point - not about defying the nasty part of me brain. It’s just that I genuinely still physically need to do nothing. It’s reminding me a lot of when I started recovering from my eating disorder and for like a year I just had the most enormous appetite. I feel like my body is now finally allowing itself to feel the full extent of all the exhaustion it was forced to push through for a year and it’s demanding the rest it so desperately needs. Not to mention that my mind is purging all the trauma it accumulated while working, plus all the stress of actually quitting, dealing with centrelink, worrying about money. Then the last two weeks I’ve had PMDD level PMS on top of all of that plus my usual chronic pain, mental illness and usual toxic living situation. It’s no wonder I’m a screaming wreck; when I write it all down it’s really clear why I haven’t just sprung back up already after quitting. It’s been about a month but there still isn’t a tonne of certainty in the situation and the whole reason I quit in the first place is the toll it took on my health.

So to the actual, semi-relevant meat of this post: the nothing I’ve been doing is playing the sims. I’m the kind of person who is either not playing any games ever (I don’t even have a single game on my phone) or has let a game completely take over their life. Sims especially is all-consuming for me which is what I feel like I need at the moment. Of course I have to become capable of being present with my mind while defying it but for now while my body needs such intensive rest I think it’s best not to tempt the devil. Once I’ve recuperated a bit I can transition into different activities that don’t pull me out of myself quite so much. I am hoping that once this period is finished I’ll have recovered enough energy to mostly read as it’s not only more fulfilling than playing games but just more enjoyable for me and also manages to be absorbing without literally hijacking my brain lol. I need to start learning to be connected to my physicality and listening to my body so gaming isn’t really a longterm option (I mean ideally I will get back to creative output as well, just for like, my soul, but I am really trying not to put a timer on anything and just do bits and pieces whenever I can). So. The thing is. I don’t just want to read; I’ve been really, really wanting to reread RotE lately.

But... I just can’t seem to bring myself to do it. I barely read last year which is so depressing and yes I feel guilty about reading something I’ve already read when I have new books sitting on my shelf because I can find a way to feel guilty about anything and everything, but I am also genuinely hungry for all the breadth of diverse voices and stories just waiting there for me. It’s why I struggle to reread in general; I love stories and I want to experience as many of them as possible.

And it’s not that many books or series that I genuinely feel an urge to reread, but obviously RotE is special. It’s also even harder to commit to a reread of when you can’t help but think of rereading in terms of a trade-off of old stories and new; potentially I could read SIXTEEN(!!!!!) new books or I could read RotE again. I have always planned on doing so, but it just feels like a weirdly complicated choice atm. I think I’m kind of afraid that this powerful draw to RotE at this point in time is a subconscious belief that it will cut through the haze around me, open my heart back up and make me feel again. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a story that’s this important to me. Like, there is weirdly a lot at stake if I go into it with the wrong mindset. I don’t want to ruin it for myself in the long run because of timing.

And trust me I know a lot of this is just my mental illness trying to rob me of an experience that could be good for me - even just mildly good. I know in theory I could read a few chapters, realise it’s not the time and put it back on the shelf. I know I’m sitting in my room at 2am liveblogging an existential crisis based on whether or not I should reread a book series. I know!! But the act of consuming media that’s genuinely important to you can become really fucking complicated by mental illness. I so often get stuck in a cycle of putting off the experience of art I love because I don’t feel like I’m in the right space for it only to realise that the Thing I was waiting for to pass is hanging around a lot longer than expected and in the meantime I have been depriving myself of what could have been a sliver of hope, joy, thrill, laughter, empathy, escape, connection.

Idk what this post has even become lol. Perhaps it’s just a tiny insight into the absolute ridiculousness that is my inner monologue over the most superfluous decisions. But even after saying all of this “out loud” and realising how trivial it all is I can’t make up my mind. Possibly another part of it is that I don’t know if I’m going to be forced into another job and doomed to repeat the year from hell I’ve just had. I think if I had a bit of certainty that I will have an extended break from work I would be less worried about fitting as many new/different books in as rapidly as possible.

Anyway, basically I miss RotE and I need someone to make reading it my fulltime job so I can feel justified going back to it again and again. The saddest thing of all is how many fresh memes I know I would come up with through rereading :( rip

#my brain is not a fun place to live #mental illness tw #depression tw #eating disorder cw #fully feel free to ignore this just getting some thoughts down #the therapy i'm doing is super fucking intense and i've been encouraged to reflect #i journal every day but sometimes wording things as if you're explaining it to someone else helps you explain it to yourself #anxiety tw #will most likely delete later anyway #chronic pain cw #chronic illness cw

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bladekindeyewear · 5 years

Text

Boots reads Homestuck Epilogue(s) Part 7 - Meat Page 26

==>

Back on to Jade swimming into the singularity or something. (And trying to stop thinking that maybe Candy ends with a giant polyamorous relationship and/or orgy, because I don’t imagine Rose would have acted so tamely if that’s what she saw.)

Yes, Time is the complement of Space, that was already confirmed in comic if it wasn’t super incredibly obvious all along anyway.

Gah, I’m getting stomach cramps again.

Yeah, too much Space makes Time invisible and vice versa? Or...

Maybe Dave broke her heart a little, and he keeps doing it too, no matter how many different timelines they try out.

God damnit these CRAMPS. Reading further.

Like a garden, where Jade used to spend so much of her time with her hands in the earth and her head in the clouds, dreaming about flowers that bloomed in six colors and grew when she played them a song. Was that real? It’s hard to tell. But it made her happy, didn’t it?

FUCK are you going to start making me doubt the reality of the liFe we saw her living early in-comic????? Cut it out, it’s unsettling!

Alright, alt!Callie is taking the reins from Dirk on this narrative he so smugly thought he could completely consume. That’s good/bad.

slutty adult Jade

FUCKING YIKES!! FUCK YOU DIRK!

FUCK I DIDN’T NEED HER DEATH DESCRIBED IN SUCH DETAIL EITHER. Also alt!Callie’s really embodying Death here.

==>

Pff. Calliope’s writing the story now, in a sense, like she always kind of wanted.

Also pff, this version of her doesn’t know how to describe human stuff colorfully. :)

An adversarial dichotomy between your opposing goals, huh? This might end up as a “none of us can really write the ending” ending that DOES leave it up in the air for everyone else to decide instead.

Fuck, now you’re having THIS Jade suffer by proxy by experiencing the other Jade’s memories. This metatextual ascension’s happening to everyone isn’t it.

Yeah, she’s done it before and stuff--

when jade turns to look at roxy, her eyes are completely black.

FUCK.

my presence shall mitigate, if not altogether subdue, the corrosive effect on reality and the will of its occupants by those who would manipulate the way events are telegraphed for their own megalomaniacal objectives.

Well, fuck. Jade’s been temporarily hijacked for the rest of the story AGAIN, like back in Condesce days, this time as a plot device to keep Dirk from overreaching with his god powers and stepping over everyone’s wills like an Ultimate Riddle style villain. Dirk, I mean. Being the villain. And alt!Callie just doing what she has to to put this back on track. Man I HATE it when Jade’s will doesn’t get to be on full display. Her will is awesome. (Also, alt!Callie just tacitly confirmed that the will of reality’s occupants matters, if that wasn’t obvious already, so ha.)

despite his pretensions to a greater design, the prince of heart cannot be allowed to continue to exert unchecked control over the authoritative recitation of events on this side of my horizon. it cannot be overstated the extent to which he represents a threat to the continued existence of both this world and corporeal life itself.

Yeah, it was indeed looking that way earlier.

Ooh, alt!Callie is really spot-on with her pronoun use.

Alright, Dirk’s voice is shrinking away, and my stomach still feels half-clenched.

Wow, alt!Callie’s really mad at what Dirk’s been doing with this epilogue.

==>

“EPILOGUE FIVE”?????

Did I miss the titles for one, three, and four??? Yeah there were probably there and I just missed them or something.

Pfffff, John looks/smells like shit. :D

...too fresh??

Fuck you John for thinking Monty Python and the Holy Grail isn’t a masterpiece. :P

terezi tips her head to one side, with what john personally regards as a cute expression, one he believes is unique to her. whether he’s correct or not, it’s his belief that there is no one else who emotes in this manner. it’s both quizzical and mocking, two descriptors that he considers to be an apt summation of her personality as well.

Niiiiice. Nice linguistic description of her “>:?” expression.

have no desire to interject thoughts into others’ minds, or to sway intent. nor do i see value in masking the reality of the emotions that i transcribe. this is how he feels. his mind, however, has made a habit of being less clear about his thoughts than i am willing to be.

Oh thank fucking god, I don’t have to question everyone’s thoughts anymore. Until Dirk comes back or something, I dunno.

Oh my fucking god, alt!Callie, you total voyeuristic nerd.

he fears he is in danger of seeming like the type of creepy human male who is likely to collect large pillows bearing the illustrated images of japanese earth females. to me, this idea means nothing. but it is causing him to sweat.

This is one very relatable snippet of text.

Feed Terezi Feed Terezi Feed Terezi

WHY is the gold tooth poisonous??????? ...Wait, Caliborn affixed it to his mouth intentionally. He had every right and motive to make it poisonous for no good reason. Ugh.

Beep beep, let’s find Vriska.

==>

WHAT

WHAT JANE

WHAT THE FLYING FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN DOING

JESUS

Using Trickster Mode as a drug to further one’s political performance. That’s fucking horrifying. No wonder it was on the triggers list.

additionally, it prevents one from dwelling on any given personal problems, or the greater implications of any political statements one might make.

Pff, mhmm.

Problematic, huh? Jane seems like the slightly-old-fashioned sort of person who thinks it’s getting kind of ridiculously silly how much people are caring about stuff being “problematic”. And yet that stuff DOES matter, and ignoring it DOES hurt people, and she not only isn’t seeing that but is drugging herself to see it LESS with that goddamned lollipop. Holy shit.

she turns around promptly, her body jolted by the surprise of her sudden reversal. she bends over, cradles the lollipop reverentially, and situates it carefully in a place signifying respect: atop the mantle, after clearing space for it by shoving several brittle, worthless objects to the floor.

PFFF. Okay, so alt!Callie ISN’T above altering characters slightly from their narrative course when it comes to one of the few things she deems important. Heh.

Having “his control of a shared vehicle fully suppressed”, huh? Does alt!Callie only mean the narrative, or maybe Rose too with whatever weird bullshit he did to her?

Uh, “while the seer both diminishes and ascends”??? D:

--Oh, oh shit. He was planning to NARRATIVE CONTROL Jake into going along with things. D: D:

Yeah, Jake would want to bang all the aliens, really.

Sendificator rifle, or something like that. Got it.

==>

How fucking long is this epilogue, anyway????? I mean, the length is appropriate from an objective point of view, I’m just frustrated because I’m going to have to spend every waking hour liveblog-reading it until I’ve reached the end or I’m likely to fucking explode, and I didn’t want this to be my entire day/weekend/existence again AAGH HOMESTUCK YOU BLACK HOLE

anyway yaay karkat in a suit.

Alluding to assassination attempts? What, is that red rifle going to try and fulfill that old “through the silver screen and straight into my heart” unused foreshadowing-herring from act six, or five, or whenever it was? Five, I believe.

Pff, super pacs, yeah. Dave’s nearly as political as me now or something. Except he actually acts on it here instead of just sitting around talking about it and thinking he’s right all the time, like me.

Wait, JANE ACTUALLY WENT THROUGH with smearing Jake??!??? Holy shit she’s lost touch.

KARKAT: SWEET BRO AND HELLA JEFF IS ABSOLUTELY HORRENDOUS SUBJECT MATTER FOR PRODUCING CAMPAIGN ADS! KARKAT: NOBODY KNOWS WHAT THE FUCK YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT, OR WHAT POINTS YOU’RE TRYING TO MAKE! DAVE: yeah its awesome

Pfffff.

...yeah, Jake isn’t thinking of ANYTHING except Dirk right now, really.

Oh huh, Dirk HAS been as controlling of Jake as he used to be, now that alt!Callie’s pointing it out. Just with an even more insidious mechanism.

Oh cool, Karkat’s version of the policy pitch! :D :D :D Can’t wait can’t wait reading

(dont lie karkat you totally know shes hot)

Pff, stop making it seem obvious that Dirk wanted to assassinate Jake for political purposes. Heck, even if that WAS his plan it’d just be a temporary death that he’d resurrect from and then they’d try to turn it into... what, some media spin on how Karkat might have been responsible? Or a troll?? That latter part would make things MUCH more xenophobic. I’m starting to get seriously into the politics of this.

==>

Pff, now ‘rezi’s eating tobacco.

...okay, is Terezi REALLY going to go for a real conversation with just an honest ask for one? I don’t think so--

--aaand there she goes laughing, as expected. At least at first.

Yep, Terezi’s wearing the shoes. Nice date gift.

--And yep, Terezi remembers all that. She managed to do the nigh-metatextual mind merge with her other selves WITHOUT even needing God-Tier.

Yeah, Vriska always seemed fit to abandon the kismesis you deserved when it suited her, ‘rezi. :(

JOHN: even worse, i might have tried to fix things MYSELF! TEREZI: OH D34R GOD JOHN: yeah!!!

Yeah I cackled out loud at that.

TEREZI: 34RTH C 1S P3RF3CT 1SNT 1T? TEREZI: BUT NOT FOR YOU TEREZI: YOU DONT *F33L* 1T

john swallows a thick breath. he reminds himself that he never wanted perfection, never asked for it. and yet he feels guilty every day for failing to enjoy it as much as he believes he was supposed to.

Holy shit. John’s survivor’s guilt from all the doomed timelines he witnessed and escaped is keeping him from feeling their victory has been real, and making his “squandering” of it gut his self-esteem too. God damnit.

Roxy and John wouldn’t have worked out????? Hey Terezi, quit it! >:[ That’s not fair, just very plausibly and authoritatively dismissing a ship we’d hoped for offscreen like-- Oh, shit, she’s alluding to something that happened in the Candy side I haven’t read isn’t she. She would DEFINITELY have an idea of what happened on the other side of that Choice Split with her hero role. Fuck what am I in for

....pfff, that Callie vs Dirk bit. It’s like revenge against Doc Scratch, which it kind of IS, really.

I didn’t expect this much time to be spent dwelling on really intimate John/Terezi scenes. It’s really refreshing! Making this kind of meaningful no matter whether it’s black or inexplicably red they end up with or whatever, and equally meaningful if they don’t end up in any sort of relationship at all, really.

even without the aid of a juju, he is fortunate enough to be blessed with the only true form of divinity. to be released from the prison of nonsensical inhibitions which so often psychologically hobble the more primitive forms of life.

Alt!Callie, are you causing this? I thought you wanted to be impartial.

Okay, THAT finally brought things suitably closer to the black side of romance like I would have expected.

==>

their finger hovers over dirks number for a moment, but... no. that would not be a good idea. they don’t know why they suddenly think it’s a bad idea. it just is.

Okay, THAT shred of influence is fair. You DID say you were going to countermand his influence, so yeah.

Good excuse to get narration of her thoughts, if flimsy. :)

Lord save me from this fake woke nightmare.

Pfffff. Fuck you, Dirk. ;)

ROXY: guess ill just open the damn curtains and let some light in here

FUCK you’re going to kill JADE aren’t you???? You’re giving Jade a TEMPORARY DEATH just to deny alt!Callie’s proxy?!?? That’s fucking insidious! Fuck you, Dirk!!! That one wasn’t a loveable joke this time, that was an ACTUAL fuck you. This epilogue is really good at making him out to be the villain now that his powers have expanded to the narrative.

Reading reading reading...

...Huh. Is Roxy talking about coming out as non-binary and getting advice on it? Hm!

Alright, and she’s defs a little gay for Callie from what she’s saying if it wasn’t clear before. If “gay” even has any relevance when you’re talking about a pair of non-binary... yeah whatever. :)

Alright, time to hear Dave talk about it all some more I guess.

--Yep, he’s only mostly gay. Called it. There’s a whole spectrum.

...and yeah, I mean... why NOT let it go beyond quadrants with Karkat and never slap an official label on it? You’re just two people who love each other and want to spend time together in any capacity, be it positive or negative. It doesn’t have to result in anything formal unless you want it to, much less boning down or something. Dirk, stop getting creepy with how hard you’re shipping them, that’s the fanbase’s job.

Jade and Roxy are visible from this location, right? Wasn’t it mentioned that they live in a tower in Carapaceville or whatever? Has Dirk successfully conned alt!Callie into having her vessel shot through? Probably.

the ongoing corruption of his cerebrally impaired daughter.

Eewwwwweweewww

Anyway yeah here comes the plot twist or whatever...

Yeah, Callie gets it wrong, and--

......ah, a tranq? That makes more sense and is more than slightly less evil, if still ultimately evil given his eventual presumed goals or whatever.

DIRK: Like the bitch she is.

FUCK YOU

Oh, Jade’s going to be asleep for the rest of the story? AGAIN?!???? FUCK YOU SO MUCH, DIRK.

Jesus christ. How long is this epilogue anyway.

Taken your leave? From this planet??? What the fuck, are you--

Oh. Oh shit.

When Dirk ascended into absorbing the memories of all his various split selves, did he get a heaping helping of DOC SCRATCH in there too??? Was Doc Scratch’s ambition actually for POST-victory ascension in this very manner? FUCK. Either way, him sharing some of those memories puts a pretty unique spin on his descent into goddamn evil, here.

Reading on... oh shit, did Callie write the candy half??

==>

Huh, postcoital; we actually went there. Cool.

Ah, she gives up on Vriska? Better find Vriska really fast, then.

Oh, you’re really going? Or, trying, anyway.

==>

Really committed to this whole ascending to literal godhood schtick, aren’t you, Dirk?

(Hm. Makes me almost think that this situation with Rose is going to end up with someone splitting her essence entirely in two to save her; her raw Seer-ness getting forced into a convenient vessel (cueball, wonk wonk) and herself returning to consciousness a slight bit more mortal than she was before, ie not going completely insane. Hmm.)

Oh, “Vast Fuck” sorta-maybe-confirmed..??

Stop tacitly insulting Jake as you puppet him, Dirk. He’s a dumbass but not THAT much of a dumbass.

beta-bitch

FUCK YOU, DIRK.

She loves you, Jake, more than anything, and you toyed with her heart.

Fuuuuuuck you.

could subsume your entire personality

Shit, he IS trying to pretty much consume them all. Swallow their individuality and take total control of all their actions. All Prince of Heart on the whole world. Dirk you need to fucking DIE.

And to love Dirk is to obey him.

There isn’t a Fuck You large or loud enough to what I feel about the mental violation Dirk is inflicting on Jake right now, and everyone else around him, and I sincerely and selfishly hope this epilogue is almost over because I don’t want too many pages to stand between this one and seeing Dirk fucking PAY.

Jake opens his big, dumb mouth to make the only important contribution to the plot he ever has or ever will make in his whole sad, pointless joke of a life.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOU

Let’s hope that in your hubris your looking away managed to let him say something different or some such.

==>

You try to remember if you’ve ever been revived by Jane before. You honestly can’t recall. So much shit has happened. Maybe?

Yeah, I don’t recall either really.

The poison needling through you is antithetical to narrative relevance. You’re not dying, John. You’re being erased. Cherubs don’t fuck around. We’ve both been learning that the hard way.

Okay, fuck? How the hell? Is this just because Dirk says it is, or???

I guess it’s tragic, though maybe not in the conventional sense. My view is, the real tragedy with you, John, is that you never mattered all that much.

Yeah, Dirk’s first fucking rant when he took over the narrative officially was about John being a you-insert nobody average guy, and the DISDAIN he shows to everything about who John is is pretty goddamn insulting. He has NO concept of how John managed to bring everyone together or... UGH!

even though you knew both then and now that it was the only choice you possibly could have made.

Dammit, so it probably WASN’T a full timeline-bisecting Mind split. Just a side branch that wasn’t as likely, because just like with his Denizen, John’s will was tilted toward this part of the choice. D:

I see how some of this seems to be going, or at least think I do... Dirk thinks that John needs to die heroically “for the good of the story”, and something’s potentially going to come in and say “no”? That the whole reason they WON was to essentially be free of that cruel logic once and for all, and that Dirk is gonna get one hell of a smackdown for trying futilely to enforce it in their new post-victory domain??

She listens to him bleed while she smells him die.

--That, and fulfilling bits of foreshadowing for shits and giggles. >:(

Huh, “friable”, didn’t even know that was a word. Just looked it up; you learn something new every day.

Okay what is Dirk planning with the fucking body.

==>

Jane swept the election, of course. I told you I was going to win. After Jake’s incoherent and scandalous heel-turn at Karkat’s ill-fated rally, no amount of esoteric, three-dimensional jpeg artefacts could have salvaged the Vantas campaign.

Ah, but is that what REALLY happened, or what you’re saying happened, about to be overwritten?

Mainly that their BFF Jade has been in a coma for an entire month. They’ve been in and out of the hospital handling her affairs. Her next of kin is listed as John Egbert, and no one’s seen him in ages. It’s like he just disappeared suddenly. Like some great hand came out of the sky and crossed his name off the big list of guys we ever need to give a shit about anymore.

F U C K Y O U

Roxy, after all, and since her big heart-to-heart about the personal politics of queer onion metaphors, and ten stages of galaxy-braining through the many vicissitudes of the phrase “no homo,” Roxy has decided to really step up her gender experimentation. I guess at this point she’s gone beyond Stage Ten. Which I imagine is somewhat like reaching Super Saiyan 2 of gender, and then going even further beyond.

Holy crap, she’s going full Dave Lalonde. That’s pretty sweet.

...Isn’t Terezi like obviously covered in blood and stuff?

ROXY: they stay home all day with the blinds drawn paintin some weird ass shit on the walls

Oh my fucking GOD real!Callie please save the plot. Nuke this self-indulgent Dirkshit.

ROXY: like lotsa nasty purple blood and um ROXY: nudity???? TEREZI: >:? ROXY: yeah yikes ROXY: but MOST of it is cute stuff like... various combos of all of us being happy and gettin married and shit ROXY: anyway thats kept callie kinda busy

...This is an allusion to the Candy side I haven’t read, isn’t it? Maybe THAT’s part of what she supplants this bullshit with. Or since it mentions “various combinations”, she’s restoring the possibility to everything that the ending was supposed to have?

This is potentially a real fucking indictment of the idea of a narrative-driven ending when what actually mattered was the characters’ escape from said narrative. :)

ROXY: its like theyre traumatized ROXY: and they think ill drag whatever possessed jade back into our home with me

Okay fuck maybe Callie ISN’T helping. Maybe she’s just so worried about the alternate history she could have lead that she’s retreating into every Candy-like fanfic she can think of. :(

What’s with the phone buzz? The intervention we’ve been hoping for, since Dirk’s making her ignore it?

Oh cool, figures Terezi’s been hearing the narrative all along and just politely not acknowledging the fact that she hears it! Maybe SHE’LL help unfuck this mess. (And according to her, Roxy’s gone full “him” too!)

Fuck fuck fuck Terezi don’t listen to him go against his bullshit instead

Where, canon? Is that where you’re planning to escape back to or some such, with yourself as the author? Is that orange Andrew actually you or some BS?

Dammit.

==>

FUCK, “new body”????

The new body I’ve made for her won’t have much use for her usual ensembles. That’s all I was saying.

FUCK FUCK FUCK it IS the cueball isn’t it. Holy shit. That’s even worse than a robot. FZUCZK

Okay calm down. The Rose part of Rose can be cut away and rescued from this fate somehow, if she isn’t just whole-hog rescued entirely which would also be good. FUCK DIRK

...look purple? What?

DIRK: What’s happening here is the best thing for everybody.

Yeah, go fuck yourself. This shit had better be undone soon.

To finally face the truth. If Rose has been spending more time with me than you, if she’s realizing she resonates more with me due to our natural similarities and finds my presence more rewarding than yours, then what does that say about YOU, Kanaya?

PFFFF. YOU’RE GONNA BREAK UP THE PAIRING JUST SO YOU CAN STEAL HER? HAHAHAHAHAHA NO.

Okay, after THAT page’s last bit of horrid manipulation, this can’t end in any way that doesn’t involve ages of existential and literal torment for Dirk, forever.

==>

Epilogue Seven, huh. One last thing he wants to take care of before getting out of dodge, huh. I see Karkat and Dave’s text colors on screen. Is he going to try to force them to finally bone down or confess? This would be the perfect place for his plan to get fucking stopped.

Homestuck, stop making my fucking stomach clench so hard.

That’s a hell of a disaster Dirk thought up for these guys on that stage.

Part of this whole shitshow might be to tell us that this ending, this “fanfic” of dubious authenticity of an epilogue that Dirk is giving us is how DIRK believes it would end best for everyone involved, but not how everyone else would, ignoring their wills... while also discarding the idea of the epilogue that any individual reader of Homestuck would want in favor of the possibilities he meant to leave open with the ending.

Alright, here comes Dirk NOT forcing them to bone down but rather trying to persuade-brainwash them into a relationship talk.

DAVE: so what youre saying is you believe in me who believes in you

Dave. Please.

Hey, the Gurren Lagaan reference went WAY too long unsaid. Even if Andrew literally didn’t know a thing about said anime when he made the character designs.

I look Dave right in his mind’s eye and tell him to cut it the fuck out. He wants it, you want it, so just go for it, my man. It’s now or never.

DAVE: oh DAVE: same

I feel every brain cell in my immortal body begin to perish in real time.

BAAHAHAHAAHHhahahha FUCK YOU Dirk.

I mean, I want Dave and Karkat together as much as the next guy but FUUUUUUUCK YOU DIRK!!! I want everything you ever wanted to go wrong and shit on you. Their equivocating soft-nearly-mance is strong enough to go even against you, who thinks yourself the narrative fucking Sun.

Oh this is fantastic

I’ve literally been decapitated and that was less unbearable than this.

YES KEEP FALLING APART

You see that twinkle? That’s devotion, you unbelievably dense neutron star of a dumbshit.

Nice callback to... what was it, Dave’s first rant at Tavros to troll him back or whatever?

radially effervescing kaleidoscope of more hot boy peckers than you could ever imagine.

Yep, DEFINITELY a callback to that. I’ll never forget the sick flow of that metaphor.

DAVE: i just keep having thoughts i know id never think

SAVE US DAVE

Dammit, near miss.

The privilege of a Strider Eye Moment is about the most earth-shattering experience a young man will ever have in his life.

Pfff

DAVE: GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD AND JUST LET ME DO THIS MYSELF!!!

yaaaaaayyy

I mean we didn’t save the whole story yet but at least Dirk got fucked over and we still get Davekat intimacy.

That’s pretty classy actually, not getting into detail and just sounding blown the fuck away by it even though he’s Dirk. That’s pretty good.

==>

Something about the height of Rose, roughly Rose-shaped, and wrapped in a cloth. I know she’s gonna love it the first time she sees it.

Oh so it IS a robot body. Well, fuck you a little less than it potentially being the magic cueball, but STILL fuck you.

I may have already mentioned, but I’m a bit too deft at this for my own good. Doing the thing where I tug at the part of someone’s latent thought process that already knows they adore me. That if someone would just pull the stops from their sense of inhibition, they’d realize they would do anything for me.

It’s called killing their soul with your role abilities you ASSHOLE

I hope this crush you filled him with bites you in the fucking ass now that he’s here.

DIRK: I won’t be coming back, Jake.

Oh, so you’re just going to drop the truth on him like that? Let’s see how that works out for you, asshole.

DIRK: Jane needs you now more than ever.

Oh fuck you. This is “best for everyone”, huh?????

DIRK: You’ll just be, you know. DIRK: Her candy boy? JAKE: CANDY BOY??? DIRK: Yeah. Being on call. DIRK: Serving a multimillion-year term of giving her the right kind of “presidential action” she needs to keep going. To keep her morale up and such. DIRK: To provide her with many heirs. DIRK: Doesn’t that sound cool? JAKE: HEIRS??

Um. What the fuck? Is this even Dirk anymore? It’s not Condesce intervention, I’m not going to try and suspect that just from the callback or anythiiiii-----

Fuck, we DID just get an alive Meenah dropped into a universe somewhere.

Maybe this IS Condesce intervention. Just a different Condesce. o_O

Two ticks longer than he ever deserved.

Gah???

DIRK: But I’ll never let you break my heart again.

So this was all just revenge for dumping him??????????????

==>

Guh, back to Kanaya-- wait, why does Dirk want Terezi around, anyway?

Jade wakes up and then-- Okay. Okay my eyes flitted down to the green halfway down the page and I saw this phrase before I actually got to it.

JADE: DIRK STRIDER HAS TO BE STOPPED!!!!!!!!!!

Thank FUCK.

Anyway reading the in-between...

The scope of her awareness, she now understands, is truly staggering. Memories are suddenly accessible that are almost impossible to believe. Some of them are unspeakably marvelous to her. Others, deeply disturbing.

FUCKING COOL she got Ultimate-Selved! Now she knows too much about what’s going on to stop her! Get fucked, Dirk!!!!

No, more than just disturbing. She lingers in the dark recesses of her consciousness. There were things she saw, things she was told... Her mouth twists into a silent snarl. She’s been angry plenty of times before. But never so angry that she stopped being cute. She’s not cute this time.

YEAAAAAHHH JADE GET ANGRY

This had better not be Dirk intentionally riling her up since he still has control of the narrative though.

Next post.

#Homestuck #Homestuck Epilogue #upd8 #Homestuck Liveblog #bladekindeyewear #BlastYoBoots

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dailyaudiobible · 5 years

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10/29/2019 DAB Transcript

Lamentations 1:1-2:22, Philemon 1:1-25, Psalms 101:1-8, Proverbs 26:20

Today is the 29th day of October. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian. It’s great to be here with you today as we continue our journey through this week and through, of course, the month and the year and the Bible. And we have come to a day where we are making some changes into some new territory, new books, new letters in both the Old and the New Testaments today. So, obviously, we begin with the Old Testament and we’ll be beginning the book of Lamentations today. So, we can see there's an arc, there’s kind of a flow that the Bible takes us through. And, so, we reach certain books like Job or Ecclesiastes and issues of the heart that we don't normally deal with are brought up and that's what the book of Lamentations does as we move into kind of mournful territory. Again, the idea of mourning or lamenting or regret or grief, you don't usually sign up for those things. They visit us all, but we don't usually get in line for them. But the Bible leads us into all of the territory that we will experience as human beings and that…that's where were headed and it comes at a good time. As we’re preparing to move into the final push of the year. It's important that we explore this territory.

Introduction to the book of Lamentations:

The book of Lamentations is actually composed of five poems and they’re poems of lament over the fall and the destruction of Jerusalem. And it's right here that we need to just pause for second and put ourselves in the right frame of mind. We can think of the ancient fall of the Roman Empire, the ancient fall of Jerusalem and go like, “that happened thousands of years ago. Like it doesn't really affect me.” And if we were to name any modern city like, you know, lamenting over the fall of Tokyo or lamenting over the fall of New York or the fall of London, I mean even saying that snaps us to attention because we can only imagine what that would…what that would do to the world and what that would be like. So, when Jerusalem fell at the time of the writing of Lamentations it would've been like any of the major cities that we just named or any of them around the world falling. So, we can try, at least, to appreciate the magnitude of the soul wrenching emotion that these poems are coming from. Jerusalem was lost and we've been…we've been reading the prophecies and the stories of that destruction, and the exile that came as a result of it. The temple of the Almighty God had been destroyed, right? Fire consumed the city, ash was thick in the air, blood was in the streets. In Hebrew, the book of Lamentations is called “eicha”, which means “how”, “how could this happen”. And we know…like…we know that it did happen. The Babylonians finally breached the wall of Jerusalem and subsequently destroyed the wall and the city, and there's plenty of archaeological evidence of this conquest that can be seen in Jerusalem even till today. How it could happen was…was largely the topic we were covering as we read through the prophecies of Jeremiah. We just concluded that yesterday. Jeremiah warned for decades of the impending doom that would befall God's people if they didn't turn from…from the trajectory that they were on. And now, here in Lamentations the prophecies have come true. This book doesn't…doesn't explicitly name its author. So, that makes things a little bit more difficult, but the traditions of the book was written by Jeremiah, which is one of the reasons why Lamentations follows Jeremiah in the Bible. But that…that's been up for debate among biblical scholars for centuries. And there's plenty of compelling theories that are in favor of Jeremiah being the author, but there's many compelling reasons why he couldn’t be the author. But there is a general consensus on one thing, whoever wrote Lamentations was probably an eyewitness to the destruction of the holy city. The Babylonians did conquer Jerusalem and they did utterly destroy Jerusalem in 586 BC. And, so, Lamentations was probably written shortly after that today. And today in the Hebrew culture, on the ninth day of Av, Lamentations is read on a day of fasting to commemorate the fall of Jerusalem and the reading of each of the poems is a backdrop for personal lamentation, personal reflection, personalizing the story in our lives. And like we said a little bit ago, nobody signs up for that. Lamenting isn’t an easy thing. Grief is hard but…but it has a way, right? It may never ever quite leave us, but it has a way of washing us clean. It whittles us down. It strips off all of the fluff until all that's left is what is true, what is bedrock, what is real. And even though it’s intensely painful it's also freeing. When we’ve gone into the depths of sadness and we’ve reached the bottom then there's hope there for the future. And lamenting helps us to not stuff things inside, and name them and give them voice. Lamenting helps give us a language for suffering and it gives us a language that acknowledges that things have changed and may never ever be the same again and that we have to let go of how it was or how we once were, and be renewed again, begin again. And we’ll find in this book of Lamentations that sort of language and we’ll find it in our own lives as we enter into the book of Lamentations. And, so, we begin. We’re reading from the Amplified Bible this week. Lamentations chapter 1 and 2.

Introduction to the letter to Philemon:

Okay. So, now we’re moving into our New Testament portion, obviously, and we’re entering into some new territory there as well and it's another personal letter from the apostle Paul, this one not a pastoral letter. This one, a personal letter to an individual person in a church. And this book or this letter or epistle is 25 verses long. So, we’ll be beginning and completing it in today's reading. And this is the final letter clearly attributed to the apostle Paul. And it probably accompanied the delivery of the letter to the Colossians, which was a congregation that Philemon was a leader in. So, our likely scenario is that Philemon was likely one of the more wealthy and influential people in the church in Colossae and according to the letter a congregation met in his home and he had a servant who was named Onesimus and this servant ran away, probably stealing from Philemon in the process, which would've been an offense punishable by death in those days. So, Onesimus probably fled to Rome with the idea of disappearing. At the same time Paul was in Rome under house arrest, awaiting trial, and in a strange twist of divine providence Onesimus came into contact with Paul and under Paul's instruction became a follower of Jesus, and after beginning to follow the Lord he served Paul's needs in Rome. So, you have Onesimus the slave being freed to move around to serve Paul and you have Paul, the Roman citizen who's been arrested for his religious convictions who is under arrest. So, sometime later Paul wrote a letter to the church in Colossae with the intention of sending Tychicus on the journey to hand deliver it, but in the process Paul also wrote a personal note that's been preserved to Philemon and sent Onesimus the runaway slave to accompany Tychicus back to his hometown and his…his master, which would've…which would've been a frighteningly large step of faith, one in which he was taking his life into his hands, but the influence of Paul in his life and watching him as he was imprisoned gave Onesimus the faith, the boldness, to leave his life in God's hands as Paul was doing and do the right thing. And this letter actually packs…packs a punch it. It shows the importance of forgiveness and shows us that no matter how much authority we have or how much power we have over someone if…if they’re a believer in Jesus then they’re a brother or a sister, part of the family of God and none of us, no matter how much we have or don't have deserve that. It's God's gift His love for us. And this little letter gives us a real-life example of how God does work things together for the good of those who love him. And, so, we begin, and we’ll read in its entirety the letter to Philemon.

Prayer:

Father we thank You for Your word and we thank You for bringing us into two new different territories in the New Testament today, but we also thank You for the closing reminder, that gossip keeps the fire burning in a bad way, in a consuming way, in a destructive way. And yet when that is removed, the fuel is taken from the fire and contention quiets down. And, so help us Father, not to be…not to be gossips, not to run around today saying things about people behind their back, even just in conversation. And help us Father, perhaps even more importantly to not be consumers of this kind of behavior, to not listen, to not participate in it, because it does no good. It gives us offenses to carry around that we don't have, and it blurs things and infects our relationships in a very negative way. So, come Holy Spirit into our words today we ask in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, home base, and indeed where you can find out what's going on around here.

Check out the Initiatives, including the God of Your Story, a brand-new resource that has just been released that is of us and for the Daily Audio Bible and for the journey through the Bible in a year. So, check that out.

Check out the Community section in the website as well for the different links to different social media channels. And the Prayer Wall is in the Community section as well.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com also. There is a link and it lives on the homepage. So, thank you profoundly, humbly for your partnership. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a Prayer Request or comment, you can press the Hotline button in the app, the little red button up at the top or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello Daily Audio Bible family this is a Leonora calling from the Florida Panhandle. Six years ago, I started listening to DAB. It was an awakening to God’s word like I’ve never had. It burst a closer and growing relationship with our Father. I am 35 years married to a man I love very dearly and have been unequally yoked to a nonbeliever. Five years ago, I called in asking for prayer that after my husband soon retired, I shall continue to have quiet time with our Lord and stay focused on my walk with him. Now, five years later I confess it has not been an easy path. The enemy has a field day with my husband, and I am constantly tested. I need your prayers for strength, for focus, and self-discipline. I have just retired from my nursing career and it seems even harder than ever now to stay focused and make time for our Father and I am ashamed of that. My husband is a good man, but he will not yield to a God he is so unsure of. Please Lord, give me the strength to live through You and in You and every word and deed so that I may show my husband your faithful love. May the scales drop from his eyes in Jesus’ name I pray. I love you all so very much. I listen, I cry with you and pray for you always. Thank you, dear family. This is Leonora calling from the Florida Panhandle. I love you.

I’m sitting here with a patient. I’m a psychiatrist and I’m just reaching out to the Daily Audio Bible family to pray for her suffering from depression and anxiety. It’s affecting her whole life and she’s really scared right now with the different logistical effects it’s having on her including finances and connection. So, please pray for her Daily Audio Bible family. I’m really grateful for you. Take care.

I stand at the patio door watching snow fall upon the deck, the lawn, and the bushes beyond. The lilac leaves hold the gathering flakes as cupped hands receiving a gift. No wind disturbs the downward journey. As the flakes collect upon the deck I think of a summer day when I walked in prayer during the Daily Audio Bible long walk cottonwoods cast their seeds into the air swirling in unseen eddies and gathering near buildings and curbs in great clubs resembling snowdrifts. My praise rises to our Creator. This snow may disappear within a few hours but for now a silent fall of white upon white speaks peace. Oh Lord Jesus my heart aches for those who feel no peace. I lift up my brothers and sisters for whom each day holds pain and anguish. I ask for Your provision for those seeking work and safe homes. I pray for restoration of relationships. I pray for children who have lost their way. I seek Your forgiveness for those who took the wealth of Your house and spent it on pleasure only to find themselves living among the pigs. I weep with those who mourn for loved ones, beloved pets, or the loss of a life they once knew. Show them the path to move forward. Send light on their darkness and comfort their pain. I rejoice with those who rejoice. I stand with many who wait in faith not yet seeing the result of their hope but trusting in You anyway. May Your blessing fall upon this ministry as generously as the snow. Keep us united in love across the oceans, rivers, and hills that separate us. Keep us united until all the world here’s Your word. Amen.

Hi Daily Audio Bible family this is Heather. I’ve been listening for about five years and I’ve always been too scared to call in, but I love to listen and pray with you my family all around the world. Brian, thank you for the work you do. It’s so wonderful and soothing to hear your voice and God’s word every day at the touch of a button and I love praying along with each and every one of you that calls in. And today I’m calling to ask for prayer for my family. My husband recently retired from the military and it’s been five months and it’s been hard to find a job. He’s had a few interviews and a few rejections and most of all he’s starting to lose hope. I’m not really sure of his salvation but my prayer is that not only would he find a job, but God would use this to really get a hold of his heart and show him where his true identity lies. Thank you so much for praying for our family. I love you.

Hello Daily Audio Bible my name is Melissa and I just want to clarify that our Lord is awesome and powerful and mighty and wonderful and He’s working in our lives even when we don’t know what He’s doing. Today is my birthday and I just talked with my birth father that I have never known for 50 years for the very first time. And this all came about because the Lord…I don’t know…He provided an illness in me I guess…He provided it but I had adrenal tumor and I had to go through many problems seeing doctors, psychiatrists, Prozac, and they found out…I said, “there’s something’s wrong”, God was speaking to me, He led me to see an endocrinologist and they removed my adrenal. So, I’ve been on steroids since April. So, just pray that my right adrenal will wake up. But in the meantime, I searched out my family birth history that I’ve never desired or wanted to do before, and I’ve already contacted my birth mother and my birth father, and it’s been amazing stories and an amazing 10 months. And I slip back, and I see how God has worked and He has used all this to bring about other people in my lives and to witness to them about how awesome He is and how He’s just worked in my life to do all this. I’m still struggling from how the effects of the adrenal mess with my system and the hormones but I’m working on it every day and with faith and trust in the Lord and you can do it too. Just love Him and just He’s amazing and awesome and I just pray for anybody who’s struggling, that you might not see what’s happening at the moment but you look back and I see how he’s been working His hand on me the whole time and He was there and I thank you Jesus for that. So, always keep Him in mind and look up.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family this is Amari. I’m asking for prayer for my marriage. Been in my marriage for almost 30 years. Last 10 or 15 the been really really rough on me. We’ve come back from infidelity on his behalf and we’ve been trying our best to come back from that. Our marriage…our intimate relationship is just zero. We’re the best of friends and we’re good parents and we take care of business. We just don’t have an intimate relationship. And I admit that during…out of this conflict that I even had an affair because I was trying to fill a void that I wasn’t getting for my husband. But I knew it was wrong, so I broke it off because I was trying to be what God wanted me to be. But still things haven’t changed and now I’m at a crossroads where I’m ready to give up because I want to be loved and I want to be cared for and I want to be happy. Just want the hundred percent of our marriage and not just bits and pieces. So, pray my strength and pray that God would repair our marriage because I want it from my husband…no one else. And I’ll continue to pray for you all and I thank you, Brian for this platform. God bless all of you all and continue to pray for me and thank you in advance for the prayers and God blessing me and my marriage.

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hisdelicatelittleflower · 5 years

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ADVICE | Love is TOTALLY Overrated! (But Probably Not for the Reason You’re Thinking): A Love Letter to the Lovers

Worry not, dear reader! This actually isn’t the ravings of the archetypal “woman scorned,” here to tell you how falling in love is an awful idea, making yourself vulnerable in a romantic relationship is never worth the potential heartbreak, or that marriage is not a honorable, beautiful, and blessed vocation to pursue.

In fact, quite honestly, despite being the nearly 700 miles that separate us and all of the surprisingly difficult (and fairly instantaneous) exterior trials that tested and later cemented our bond, I feel that I’m truly with my beloved.

The reason that I write this piece is that I see every day, saturating the world around us, the constant and powerful over-romanticization of love. In our books, films, TV shows, even (and sometimes, especially) on social media!

Going by the metric society around us often portrays, what is love? What are some of the concepts and images that pop into your head?

I know a few of my own: candy hearts, drug store romance novels, and Hallmark Channel-esque love stories of the two polar opposite, diametrically-opposed in terms of values people who fall helplessly in love and live happily, ever after with their two and a half kids and family dog, a big house in the suburbs, and never seem to be challenged by big troubles of any kind.

To me, these are not at all reasonable or realistic representations of how romantic relationships of any measurable depth and breadth are, and if you allow these false idols of what love is “supposed to” look like or play out to color or influence your perception of these concepts in the slightest, it WILL inevitably doom any romance you’re in and dash any reasonable hope of one in the future.

Now, I know exactly what you’re thinking…

“Well, darn, what is love, Alayna, if not completely identical to this hollow and ultimately soulless manufactured product specifically designed to inspire delusions of grandeur and attempts of self-insertion in the willing and naïve consumer so that they hopefully stay engaged deeply and well enough to keep paying for them? And, what’s the problem of keeping my hopes up for that perfect special person and relationship, anyways? Can’t a [man/woman/it?] dream?”

All right, all right, I hear you, I hear you! Calm down!

Now, to begin to answer that amazing and eloquently stated question, here’s a couple truth bombs for ya: There exists no perfect person nor relationship—And whom does this huge revelation surprise, exactly? Not a soul.

And, yet, every single day, in person and in the media, I see the same vicious cycle repeated, over and over again. I hear the sorority girl sobbing or ranting to her friend on the bus about how her boyfriend gave her a one-word response with a period in his text message (Oh, no, the dreaded period! The absolute horror!) and how this must mean that he’s no longer “into her” and that he’s most likely cheating, the guy silently (but visibly) heartbroken when his girlfriend chose to skip out on a date to hang out with her girl friends for the third time in a row, the couple on reality TV that seems completely shaken by the slightest of complications.

So, with that said, what exactly is love?

Well, according to St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, love is patient, kind, refrains from envy, humble, slow to anger, despises evil and celebrates truth, is protective, trusting, hopeful, keeps no record of wrongs, and always perseveres (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).

In a lot of ways, this definition is pretty simplistic and straight-forward, but if it is, how come it’s so darn hard to live out?

Answer: Because humans tend to be stupid, lazy, selfish, and petty, and when you’re dealing with two of those…Well, things get pretty complicated.

The good news is, though, is that when you’re able to avoid these instincts, this resulting application of love in a romantic relationship is a truly beautiful and blessed thing, and, speaking from experience, there is nothing in the world that will ever compare. It will supplement the joy and fulfillment already inherent in being a child of God and make life sweet and blissful beyond your wildest dreams.

That being said, I don’t know if y’all know this already, but relationships are HARD. With as much tear-jerking laughter, shameless flirtation, and tender moments I share with my sweet beloved, when I swear I can almost physically feel him with me, there is also tons of awkwardness (at least, in the beginning), stress, miscommunication, uncertainty, and faux pas, in general, to go around.

The key I’ve found to truly unlocking this God-given gift of a successful and loving marital vocation is to do a deep examination of oneself and try your best to discover aspects of and flaws in your personality/mentality that may hinder your ability to love in a way that adheres more closely to the biblical definition of love and honors both God and your beloved.

For instance, I know that I sometimes struggle to speak up and ask for what I want and need, and that’s something I definitely need to learn to curb, as it again, puts the pressure on my beloved to somehow read my mind. Fortunately, however, as both of us learn and grow, we’ve always seemed able to stay in sync with one another, despite some extremely stressful circumstances that have popped up from time to time.

If you, too, struggle with this specific issue in your relationship, realize that, no matter how kind or conscientious they may be, they absolutely cannot read your mind. If there are any concerns or conflicts, no matter how minor or moot they seem, they must be appropriately and lovingly communicated, and if time after time, conflicts, minor or major, cannot be resolved to the other’s selfishness or immaturity, this is not the relationship for you.

Others, I know, struggle more with short tempers, tendencies to hold grudges, or struggle with jealousy or cowardice—One of these may be your proverbial cross to bear, but I’ve also learned that all of these, even the more severe cases, can be overcome with time, tenacity, humility, prayer, professional help (if necessary), and patience, mostly on the part of your SO.

So, ultimately, what should you glean from what I’ve written here about that awesome yet curious four-letter word that we all seem to want for so badly in this life?

More than anything, I would hope, at least, that you treat love as not so much a feeling as it is a commitment—A commitment to always work through each of your flaws both individually and as a couple so that you not only bring joy and love to yourselves, but to build up and be an example for your community, and to be effective and loving parents and role models to your children in this respect so that you may glorify God. The truth of the matter is any relationship you initiate with anyone, especially of the romantic/marital variety, does not exist in a vacuum and is not solely dependent on your ever-changing attitudes or drive for instant gratification (whether of the sexual or wrathful nature). There will inevitably be times in your relationship where you’re truly vexed, beyond exasperated, or hopeless with the state of your relationship, either for interior or exterior reasons, to the point that the two of you may actually require outside, professional help to sort things out. In the end, however, love is the decision to always persevere and to fight, hand in hand.

I will conclude with the eternal words of Fyodor Dostoevsky, who had this to say on the matter in his final novel, The Brothers Karamazov:

“I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labour and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science. But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting farther from your goal instead of nearer to it — at that very moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you.”

And, with that, God bless you all, and I hope you have a wonderful Tuesday afternoon!

With love, your Internet pal,

Alayna ☩ 💐

{Original article}

#his delicate little flower 🌷#hdlf 🌷#hisdelicatelittleflower #hdlf #trad catholic #traditional catholic #catholicism #advice #relationships #love #courting not dating #catholic #catholic convert #traditionalism #traditional woman #relationship advice

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knight-intraining · 5 years

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Gwen's guide to a more positive outlook

Let me start by saying that if you think "must be nice to be neurotypical Karen" - you need this post!! I have bipolar disorder and anxiety and it took me a long time to get here. But you can do it! Even with a mental illness screaming in your head that everything sucks.

These steps are in an “easy to implement” to “hard to implement” order. That doesn’t mean that you can’t change the order or take on multiple steps at once. However, long-term change doesn’t happen overnight: it helps to take on challenges in phases or steps. Then once one thing is a habit, you move on to the next thing. If you take on too many steps at once, you might get overwhelmed and give up.

Step one: Commit to the goal! You have to want it or it won't work.

Step two: Take any medicines/attend therapy. You can't do everything single-handedly.

Step three: Stop all self-deprecation! It's hard to be positive when you think you're worthless. (Here’s a post I made about how to do this: https://rising-phoenix-21.tumblr.com/post/170320454891/gwens-guide-to-loving-yourself)

Step four: Challenge negative thoughts! Reply to things like "what if I die" with "that’s not going to happen". Something that helps me a lot is to say what is the worst thing that could happen, then what is the best thing that could happen, and finally what is most likely to happen.

Example: I have to go to an unfamiliar place and am very nervous about it. My anxiety is telling me everything that could go wrong and making it hard for me to actually go.

What is the worst that could happen? I do the wrong thing and everybody dies.

Okay, what is the best thing that could happen? I magically know everything to do and they think I'm the best person ever.

What is most likely to happen? Someone will be there to show me the ropes/tell me the rules and I can ask them any questions I have. I may make a mistake but they will be understanding because they know I'm new.

Other examples:

*remembers embarrassing thing and cringes forever* “I am the only person who remembers this, no one else does and therefore there is nothing to be embarrassed about”. Alternatively, "they are not going to remember that in (insert my opinion of how long it will take for them to forget) 30 seconds. *counts down from 30* see, they've already forgotten all about it and I can forget about it too" or "yes I made this mistake but I learned from it and it is in the past so I don't need to worry about it anymore".

*makes a mistake, worries everyone hates me for it* “It's okay, they know I'm new. This is a learning environment, everyone makes mistakes and they are expecting this”. Alternatively: “they never told me to do X and therefore there is no way I could have known and this is not my fault”.

Step five: Accept when something bad happens. You are going to feel bad about it and that is okay. Let yourself feel the negative emotion until it has run its course. Having a positive outlook does not mean you're happy 24/7 and never cry. However, recognize that this feeling is not going to last forever, you will feel better, and things will get better. Saying it out loud may help.

It’s easy to start wallowing in a negative emotion and/or relapse when something bad happens. This is where your support network comes in! They will help keep you accountable and on the right path. When you are in a bad place, it also helps to look back at good memories and mementos.

Step six: Start writing down 1 (or more) good thing/s that happened or something you're thankful for everyday. Aim for everyday but if you end up only doing this once a week that's okay too. This one seems small but is seriously so important!! When you force yourself to think about something good that happened on a bad day it makes it Way easier to see the good on a regular basis.

Step seven is similar: Enjoy life! Take pleasure in the little things! Yes, sometimes things suck but it's hard to remember that when you're singing along to your favorite song with the windows down and a soda in your hand. Or cuddling with your dog or swimming or doodling your favorite character. When you're having a good day/good moment, take a second and just breathe. Think about how amazing you feel in this moment and how awesome life is.

Then when something tries to tell you that it's all bad, you can look back on that moment, on how amazing you felt and know that IT IS A LIE.

Keep mementos of the good days and the fun you have like photos/ticket stubs/birthday cards, etc.These also help with the bad days.

Step eight: Give yourself things to look forward to. Something that really helps me is picturing physical things about my future. Like I’ll picture what my classroom is going to look like or imagine what kind of Mom I’m going to be or what my wedding is going to look like. Sometimes the future is a big scary void and filling that void with something as small as “I’m going to have a dog” makes the future something to look forward to instead of fear. Doing this on a smaller scale is also helpful, “next weekend I’m going to see a movie”. You may not know where you’re going to be in the next year, but you know you’re going to see that movie and you can look forward to it.

Step nine: Remove negative media from your life! Is that song about your life before your recovery? Pitch it! You're not in that place anymore. If you're recovering from self-harm, all songs talking about harming yourself have to go! If you're a recovering alcoholic, all songs about heavy drinking have got to go! Those songs just put you back into that mindset, they mimic the bad place you were in and you don't want to be there anymore!!

If you are not in recovery, get rid of songs that have a negative message- "life sucks", "there's no hope", "things are never getting better". Is there a song that makes you think of your ex and it makes you sad? Say goodbye to it!

That isn't to say you can't ever listen to "sad" songs or songs that make you cry. The key is to not listen to those on a Regular Basis. Because then you're just making yourself sad on a regular basis, and what good is that?

Unfollow triggering blogs! Utilize Tumblr's filtering system! Renovate your dash so it's full of positivity/cute animals/recovery and inspiration/good news and not just the bad! This applies to all social media, not just Tumblr. (Facebook’s unfollow button is your new best friend).

The same goes for TV/movies/books: if it is going to trigger you/make you feel bad/mimic a bad place you were in: get rid of it! Don't watch it!

This doesn’t mean you have to watch “family-friendly PG nothing bad ever happens” bullshit all the time. But you need to be in a good mental place for it. If you know you can handle it, watch it! But if it's going to just make you cry in a non-cathartic way, don't torture yourself.

And sometimes you consume media because you want catharsis you were robbed of in the moment and that is okay. As human beings, we tend to bury our emotions especially in traumatic situations. So re-visiting that place/that emotion in a safe way can be very good for recovery. The key is to not consume media that you know will upset you/ruin your day. And to not consume negative media 24/7.

Sometimes, this means that you don't watch the news, and that's okay! We were not made to or meant to consume negative events on such a large scale. You can only take in and deal with so much negative information! If you need to turn off the news, do it. If you need to take a break from social media, do it. Do what is best for your mental health.

Step ten: Surround yourself with positivity! Refill your music collection with upbeat songs that make you wanna dance, that make you excited, that make you happy, etc. Try to listen to them often and early in your day. Put up inspirational quotes! Follow inspiration blogs! Consume lighter media that makes you laugh/makes you feel good.

Step eleven: Recognize when you need to step away from a situation. If something bad comes up but you know mentally/emotionally you can't deal with it right then. Say "I can't deal with this right now, I will do it later" and walk away. Obviously, this isn't possible all the time. But that's why you should do it whenever you can! Giving yourself time to prepare and time to process is super important! It helps your mental health and prevents you from making mistakes. Both of which make it easier to have a positive outlook lol.

Step twelve: Reduce the conflict in your life. Conflict isn’t good for our mental health and it makes you feel bad. It also reinforces the idea that it’s “you against the world”, that there are no good people in the world, that no one understands you, etc. If you find yourself arguing with someone everyday, cut them out of your life-that is a toxic relationship. If you find yourself disagreeing with/getting angry at a blog, unfollow it. Anger is important and not necessarily a “bad” emotion but it also isn’t good to feel that way Every Single Day, it gets in the way of positive emotions.

Step thirteen: Surround yourself with positive people/build a support network. Make friends who are “full of light”, who are optimistic, and who make you feel good when they’re around. Building a support network is super important for when bad things happen: they are there to remind you of the good and to keep you on track in your recovery and in your new positive outlook.

Step fourteen: Remove negative people from your life. When I say "negative people" I mean someone toxic, someone who brings your mood down (on a regular basis), someone who can never see things in a positive way/everything is doom and gloom, and someone whose behavior triggers you(!!). This is a really tough one because, quite frankly, you don’t always get to choose who you interact with and breaking ties is hard.

If you HAVE to interact with this person: try to limit your time with them, keep your mind on positive things even if they're talking about negative stuff (you may even try to steer them in a positive direction), and cleanse your aura after they leave AKA if you feel "gross" after interacting with them, do whatever will get rid of that feeling, whether it be prayer or a crystal or a shower.

How to break ties with someone? What I usually do is ghost them, whether that is the best/healthiest method is up for debate. If they call you out or you don't want to ghost, just tell them "you're a very negative person and I just can’t be around that. I'm sorry but I have to do what's best for my mental health". If they can't/won't understand that, block them. That's their problem, not yours. I know this sounds selfish and rude but it's true: you have to do what's best for your mental health. You have to be “selfish” sometimes.

Step fifteen: Keep making goals to improve your life! Having a positive outlook is just one of many things that will make your life better. Improving your physical health will make you feel good, reading more books will make you feel good, reaching your goals makes you feel good! The better you feel, the easier it is to feel good about life.

Step sixteen: Repeat the above! You are forming a new habit here and re-training your brain. It isn't enough to just do this for one day or one week. You have to commit to having more positivity in your life. And when you're surrounded by bad news, it's easy to fall back on a hopeless outlook. When your brain is telling you that it's hopeless, it's easy to believe it. But one day, you will get to a place where it isn't as hard. One day, something bad will happen and it won't sting as much because you know that the pain won't last forever and that it’ll get better. This can and will become your new normal.

#life advice #recovery advice #self-harm mention #alcoholism mention #soda mention #death mention #recovery #positivity #positive thinking #advice #how to #how to guide

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prixmiumarchive · 6 years

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Don’t Hug Me I’m Confused

Disclaimer: The following post contains some personal critique of certain fandom patterns and habits that I personally find strange, don’t relate to, or don’t enjoy. However, this post really isn’t that deep in those areas, and so while I’m not talking about kink at all, just kind of consider this a sort of KINKTOMATO disclaimer. What you enjoy and how you enjoy it is not my business, and your art and cosplays are things that a) seem to be of high quality and b) I could not actually accomplish so kudos to you for doing it even if it’s not my thing in its expression. You do you, and I’ll do me, and I’m not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings. This is just a personal blog post / semi-review that I’m tagging in case anyone else who has watched dhmis wants to read it. This post may likely come across as pretty “anti-shipping,” but rest assured that I probably ship some weird stuff in other fandoms so I’m not judging you, or whatever.

Nursing a headache better and responding to a text, I was reminded of the existence of a weird web series on YouTube that, apparently, was released over the course of several years. The first installment of Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared was shown to me by a former friend sometime after its release many years ago now. Naturally, I was pretty unsettled by it at the time in a sort of nervous-laughter, later-haunted-nightmares sort of way. However, at the time and with its sole initial video being around, the way I processed the video and its purpose was quite different from the way I process it now. I had seen that there were a couple more videos over the years, but I had never actually managed to watch the little series to its sixth installment because at some point I got disturbed ever time and quit. However, in a state of resolve and slightly greater desensitization, I finally finished it up. And I’m strangely satisfied and intrigued, particularly after watching a couple of commentary videos about it.

Rather than rehashing someone else’s explanation, I’ll simply refer to The Film Theorists two videos on the subject. I think that this YouTube channel sometimes gets a lot of raised eyebrows and bad press for reaching really hard to get shock-value, click-bait-y ~dark theories~ out of benign or extremely popular media. I haven’t really consumed their other material, so I can’t speak to that, but I can say that the two videos on DHMIS are not reaching for even more darkness and edge. Rather, they seem to be well-researched, well-reasoned explanations for what is otherwise a strangely difficult work of art to process. I say “work of art” not terribly lightly nor terribly dogmatically because I really don’t know what else to make of something that intrigues, bothers, pleases, disturbs, and fascinates me that is intended to communicate something even if that something is the particular sense of unease I am describing.

As is my custom when I don’t really know what to do with feelings about a particular work of fiction, I opened a tab to AO3 to see if fanfiction exists for that “fandom” to see if a quantifiable fandom is actually there. To my surprise, DHMIS actually had over 100 fics. So, I scrolled through the first couple of pages to see what they tended to be about or whatever. I had no particular craving or desire to read fic about this at the moment; I just wanted to know what the environment was like. And what I found was really, really deeply not what I expected.

A major part of the fandom seems to be something called “p/adlock” shipping which I’m censoring so that I’m not picking on someone’s OTP. Again, disclaimer, not judging, simply commenting. It seems to be shipping the Sketch Pad from the first installment with the Clock from the second. I really don’t know where people came up with this or why it seems to be so passionate, but I am not here to judge. It just seems like it is strangely misaimed and sort of misses the central themes of whatever the hell is going on in DHMIS. Even if I’m not sure what is going on, I’m pretty sure that it is not a romantic love story, subtextually or otherwise. Of course, there’s shipping in everything. Before you get mad at me, let me also say that it reminds me of another fandom I’m involved in in which I am one of the weird maybe-missing-the-point shippers, so I’ll get back to that.

Perhaps one of the reasons that this is such an interesting experience for me is that I feel like I’m experiencing my discovery of this fandom much the way those who discover the Portal fandom and poke around not knowing what to expect must do. I came looking for commentary or elaboration on the universe that seems to have been established in these little shorts. Instead, I find shipping that I cannot really find the thread for at all. Now, of course, I would argue that I do find subtext and reasoning and so on in Portal fandom and “chelley” (Chell/Wheatley) shipping. I also find reasons to believe that Wheatley being in a humanoid or android form makes sense in some cases. I don’t see why there are humanoid forms of already anthropomorphic set pieces and characters in DHMIS. See the above videos for a theory I’ve pretty much bought into, I think, that these characters represent props or animations or such anyway while only Red Guy, Yellow Guy, and Duck are real characters/people/performers. (I realize they have names, maybe.)

Anyway, digressing a bit from the strange experience of seeing how a subset of fandom that is really transforming the original work (again - kudos even if not my thing, I think) being the majority when you don’t really get it from the other side of it, I also want to comment on how worth-it I found finally finishing DHMIS. It went from what felt like a strange, occasionally darkly humorous, occasionally dark-dark-dark exercise in internet meme-y nihilism to something that became so much more. Initially, watching the first couple of episodes, it felt like something that existed that sort of titillate and affirm that particular vein of teenage, edgy, oppositional defiance-y, XD-random, I wear black as it is the color of my soul, I have fantasy colored hair despite it not being goth because I like color secretly and because it bothers some conservative people, I’m angry at societal structures that have failed me and am determined to throw all the babies out with all the bathwater because I’m so angry frustration. Now, I still relate to a handful of those things. If my life allowed for it I would be a pink-hair-but-wearing-all-black kind of person some of the time. However, I find that the depth of that particular soft-laughter rage that comes with being a teenager with the experiences to develop it sort of off-putting as someone who has both been-there and has become a teacher in my adult life. I see myself in it, but I also see things that I hate both on their own merits and that I hate in the form of hating it for a person who has to go through it or go through the steps to have gotten there. In the end, though, I found that DHMIS was less late night Cartoon Network programming is the pinnacle of artistic expression and more some kind of play on nostalgia, capitalism, anxiety, power structures, creativity and its opponents, institutionalized violence, and even, maybe, the meat-packing and commercial food industries. In a way, watching it all the way through sort of felt like going through a fast-motion montage of going from being a sort of disturbed teenager to being an adult on the other side of it with a whole other set of frustrations and anxieties that can still be found in the same sort of imagery. It felt like growing up in a weird way.

Still in episodes I had seen before, I remarked to mentioned texting friend that Red Guy was my favorite when she indicated that she was watching a bit of it. I wasn’t even sure why, but in particular his reactions to the clock in the second episode really sold me. All of the characters had strange reactions to a lot of things, but his deadpan, monotone confusion, and the way in which he complies to this-might-as-well-happen sorts of circumstances until he cracks in the end and has some kind of epiphany really resonated with me. Then, I realized, it was because he was, in fact, that avatar of the adult in this situation, and that is its own kind of mind-blow because initially one does not really conceive of these characters as anything but ageless muppets. Which is its own layer of unsettling. In any case, I am really impressed with this little series. Whether or not the “film theory” is right, I feel more satisfied in the end. However, I would really recommend those videos because it totally flipped my perspective on the ending of DHMIS from “there’s no hope and not escape from this hell” or, possibly, “you might escape hell but you’re dooming someone else to replace you,” to something entirely and much more hopeful bout the drudgery of a creatively inclined adult trying to slog through the obstacles and soul-drains that our present societal pressures place on us. I really hope I figure it out in the end like Red Guy.

One final, mostly off-topic note: upon a glance, I think that maybe that film theories youtube channel is, perhaps, more genuine in its efforts to dissect internet memes than in the clickbait it produces for blockbuster movies. But then again, in a a world dictated by ad revenue, whatcha gonna do?

Given that our focuses on what we like about the series seem to be wildly different, I doubt that I’ll be hard-joining the DHMIS fandom for the most part. I enjoyed some of the content in the tag, and if you’re reading from outside it, you might check it out.

If you like or hard-relate to Red Guy and enjoy scifi (Doctor Who, The Expanse), other web series (Carmilla), or other common fandom stuff (superhero shows, DC/Marvel, select anime), you might consider messaging or following me. I’d love to talk about Red Guy with someone who kinda gets it, but again I’m not really interested in shipping in this fandom.

If you read this far, thanks and have a lovely day!

#dhmis #don't hug me i'm scared #long post /#conventional blogging tag #red guy

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reconditarmonia · 4 years

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Dear Trick or Treater

Hi! Thank you for writing for me! I’m reconditarmonia here and on AO3. I have anon messaging off, but mods can contact me with any questions.

General likes:

– Relationships that aren’t built on romance or attraction. They can be romantic or sexual as well, but my favorite ships are all ones where it would still be interesting or compelling if the romantic component never materialized.

– Loyalty kink! Trust, affectionate or loving use of titles, gestures of loyalty, replacing one’s situational or ethical judgment with someone else’s, risking oneself (physically or otherwise) for someone else, not doing so on their orders. Can be commander-subordinate or comrades-in-arms.

– Heists, or other stories where there’s a lot of planning and then we see how the plan goes.

– Femslash, complicated or intense relationships between women, and female-centric gen. Women doing “male” stuff (possibly while crossdressing).

– Stories whose emotional climax or resolution isn’t the sex scene, if there is one.

– Uniforms/costumes/clothing.

– Stories, history, and performance. What gets told and how, what doesn’t get told or written down, behavior in a society where everyone’s consuming media and aware of its tropes, how people create their personas and script their own lines.

Smut Likes: clothing, uniforms, sexual tension, breasts, manual sex, cunnilingus, grinding, informal d/s elements, intensity; stories whose resolution isn’t the sex scene. DNW "pussy."

General DNW: rape/dubcon, torture, other creative gore; unrequested AUs, including “same setting, different rules” AUs such as soulmates/soulbonds; PWP; food sex; embarrassment; focus on pregnancy; Christmas/Christian themes; focus on unrequested canon or non-canon ships; unrequested trans versions of characters.

I am requesting exclusively fic, but open to art treats!

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Fandom: Alternate Universe Works (Treat or Trick)

Character(s): Female Li Shang (Mulan 1998), Female Ishmael (Moby Dick), Female Captain Ahab (Moby Dick), Pokémon Trainer Harrowhark Nonagesimus

Female Shang - I would...just love it so much if you Monstrous Regiment-ed this canon up. Shang also being a woman would give her even more reasons to be a hardass (is she in disguise, and thinks that her regiment failing would invite suspicion on her? is she openly female and needs to prove that she’s as good as her father and the country need her to be? is she paranoid about other women in the army, or does she want to have a female regiment?) If you want to write F!Shang/Mulan, I’d also love to know how falling in love with a woman plays into Mulan’s whole arc - it’s certainly not what her family was preparing her for, but neither was being a soldier and saving China. What does seeing another woman dressed as a man (whether Shang is openly female or not, I imagine she’d wear men’s clothes), or a group of women dressed as men, make her think? What are Yao, Chien Po, and Ling like in an AU where they’re also female, if that’s what you choose to write?

I’d be happy for just about anything in this vein - Shang character study, Mulan/Shang romance/sex (this is a canon that is a Lot about bodies and clothes), gen shenanigans with the rest of the squad, both? During canon or post? I love loyalty kink and butch characters a lot.

Female Ishmael, Female Ahab - I’d love to know more about these female sailor(s) and what drives them. A female Ishmael might still decide to sign on to a ship whenever she gets the blues, but it’d be socially fairly different, mightn’t it? (Worldbuilding-wise, I’d be more interested in a world where sailing and whaling are still typically male things as in our world, even if you make them a little less exclusively male, than an egalitarian or matriarchal world; something that women might do, without necessarily disguising themselves as men, but a GNC thing to do.) Would her already diverging from the “expected” female path in this regard affect her reception of Queequeg as someone who’s an outsider to Nantucket society? And, if Queequeg is also female, the the intimacy she offers? What does she still find outlandish? (If you also write f!Queequeg, is her life a typical female life for her home culture, or not?)

As for Ahab - just imagine this fanatic, tragic, vengeful character as a woman - with the willpower not only to do all the things canonical male Ahab does but also in a society where women aren’t really supposed to sail or kill or lead! Is she the odd one out in an otherwise male crew, or are there more women in the crew by the time she’s captain?

Pokémon Trainer Harrow - It's a great idea!! I think she'd have a Duskull, but I'm very open to any choices you make in Pokemon-ing this universe up. Do different houses tend towards different types or no? What are their different cultures around Pokémon raising, training, and fighting? What is Harrow's relationship with her Pokémon like, singular or plural? (I don't need you to think through the implications of what Lyctorhood entails in this setting if you'd rather just write slice of life, and, you know, I was writing this and realized that that might make Harrow's Pokémon Gideon. Thanks, brain, I hate it. DNW Gideon as a Pokémon.)

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Fandom: Assassin's Creed (Treat only)

Character(s): Aveline de Grandpré

I'm close to finishing AC Liberation and I love Aveline a lot! I really like how she basically makes New Orleans into her own little fiefdom and does what she feels like doing. Not in a #girlpower way, but in the sense where she considers herself to be the best person to judge and decide in any situation and to deal with happenings on any level in her various personas, and where becoming a business magnate is actually a part of her character and plot in a way that it wasn't so much for earlier Assassins? I imagine Assassins from other places talking about New Orleans and going "oh yeah, Aveline de Grandpré runs that whole city from the shadows," and then you go there to talk to her and she pulls a Lexa (as in The 100) where she uses her slave disguise to eavesdrop on you while you wait to meet with this Assassin lady merchant.

I like her friendships with other characters too - Gérald being there as the loyal support guy, Élise and Roussillon being the people she can be at ease with (she seems so happy to see them - "Bonjour, smugglers!"). I'd be happy to see something set in New Orleans as she takes it over or after she takes it over, in the Bayou as she lives there in a very different way (where and how does she sleep when she's there?), or in Chichen Itza if you want to expand on her discovery of all the weird shit. [Edit: I've finished the game now and I also like the aspect of her mission with Connor that's about how sometimes Assassin "brother"s from other locations will show up where you, another Assassin, are because there's something they need to find or do, and you'll work together? I guess that's also the premise of AC Rev, but.]

I do ship her with Élise and would love to read that if you do too! Fighting together, whether in the Bayou or on a mission further afield that's just them; Élise visiting Aveline in New Orleans for some reason (what if they go to a fancy party together with Élise dressed as a man?); downtime fluff?

Fandom-Specific DNW: Aveline/men, even mentioned or out-of-focus.

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Fandom: Far From the Madding Crowd (Treat or Trick)

Character(s): Bathsheba Everdene

One thing that always sticks in my mind about this novel is the way Hardy calls Bathsheba “the young farmer” just as he refers to the men as farmers - which, just saying, is more than most people writing about this story can do - and so, that being the case, what I’m most interested in is something about Bathsheba as farmer. One day in the life or four seasons in the life or five plantings/harvests in the life, or pseudo-academic fic about a case study of a woman farmer in the Victorian era, or a conflict between the farm and nature that Bathsheba has to decide how to solve.

Feel free to bring in other characters if it suits what you’re trying to do, but what I’m really looking for is a focus on Bathsheba’s work, determination, and process of learning. (I like how Bathsheba’s relationship with Gabriel ends up playing out in canon, but I don’t want shipfic.) Other ideas: something like a merchant ship AU (as the first alternate setting that came to mind where it would be not exactly the done thing for her to captain her inherited ship and make commercial decisions herself - although I do have to point out that contrary to popular belief, there were a lot of women on shipboard in the age of sail, may this be useful - but also where nature and luck/fate are as influential as they are in the original setting), or something in which the land, superstition, and ritual are more overtly magical. I LOVE English folk magic and ritual shit.

I’ve requested both tricks and treats for this fandom, but would prefer that the outlook of the fic, including if you decide to incorporate non-canon magical/spooky/occult elements, be ultimately positive rather than the doom and gloom that canon leans toward at times. A seasonal treat would be right up the alley of this request.

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Fandom: Fidler Afn Dakh (Treat or Trick)

Character(s): The Fiddler

I would love to read about the Fiddler from the recent Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof, understanding him/her/them as a real person with a backstory, present and future rather than a symbol. They seem to be female (and their actor describes them as female) but wear men's clothes and are on the men's side at the wedding, and everyone seems cool with that? I'm 100% on board with any gender identity you decide you'd like to write them with. How did he/she/they come to be who they are, and what are their interpersonal relationships (platonic, familial, romantic, any gender) like? What might an encounter between them and the supernatural be or have been like? Have they always lived in Anatevka or do they wander from village to village?

Fandom-Specific DNW: antisemitism as the focus of the story. I've requested both tricks and treats, and I acknowledge that it'd be unreasonable to pretend that antisemitism doesn't exist in the world of the story, but I would prefer for any dark/scary elements to come from supernatural horror (I grew up with Singer and other Jewish folklore horror, give me as many dybbuks and demons and witches as you like) rather than the human capacity for racist violence.

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Fandom: Simoun (Treat only)

Character(s): Neviril

I've just completed a rewatch of this show, and it has reaffirmed for me that I love Neviril. She's a leader in both a military and a religious sense, respected by her squad and by the populace, but figuring out what that means to her is such a personal journey. I still love her scene in the hearing where she speaks aloud what no one has wanted to admit or talk about - that they're soldiers now, this is war, can they still call themselves priestessses? - but I was also struck on this rewatch by how Chor Tempest increasingly becomes a player in itself in the politicking (the bit in Episode 21 where the whole lot of them fly out against orders, because it's what they, with Neviril leading and giving voice to the group, think is what their role is about), and by the scenes of her blessing the people (when iirc she is needed elsewhere by the military governor for flight purposes) and Paraietta (after what Paraietta did to her).

I love the military aspects of this canon in general (and the associated tropes of loyalty and trust and bravery and positive/negative relationship to authority) and that definitely ties in to Neviril figuring out what her role is as the squad leader, but I'm also just here for that very process of figuring it out and defining it for herself.

So...what happens to her post-canon? What is the "new world" and her travel in it like? If she makes it back to the main world when war is brewing again, but her old cohort can't fly anymore, what does she see her role as being - a leader for peace, for war, something else? How do she and Aer interact with Paraietta, Rodoreamon, Floef, and/or Vyuraf?

Ship-wise, Aer/Neviril grew on me a lot! I appreciated Aer more as the determined bit-of-a-loose-cannon type than as the manic pixie this time, and noted Neviril's comments about how she was drawn to Aer's determination. But I'd also be up for a poly situation where she's involved with both Aer and Paraietta, who are friends, or, I guess, one where it's a three-way relationship, although I don't personally know what the Aer/Paraietta side would be like! (I do like how they work together in battle even when they're shown as having personal issues.)

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Fandom: Sleep No More (Treat or Trick)

Character(s): Bald Witch, Sexy Witch

One of my favorite things about Sleep No More was the idea of this world of darkness and magic that’s underlying or intertwined with the social world, rather than in a separate space - I loved seeing the Witches at the ball and, holy shit, Bald Witch pulling off her wig after the ball in her solo ritual thing! (I hadn’t realized it was a wig until that moment.) So -

how do either of these witches interact with the normal world (Paisley/the hotel/etc.) or deliberately carve out other spaces (like the apothecary shop)? For that matter, I love the apothecary shop and Bald Witch's scene in it A LOT, so more about that would be awesome.

How did the Witches find each other - was it before or after they were witches?

Are they immortal, and if so, what’s that like for either or both of them?

How much do they have a day-to-day life vs. witching all the time?

Their card game is super cool and I'd love to know more about the Witches and cards.

I was very struck on my last visit by Sexy Witch's dance for Hecate after the rave. The fan material seems to describe it as her having trouble coming down, but it felt to me like pleading with Hecate for more power, more magic.

If you want to ship them together, and/or with Hecate (or both) I’m very up for that as well. Some sexy prompts if you go in that direction -

ritual sex magic to make something happen or share power?

If they have non-witch personas and sleep together while they’re being normal people, is there still magic?

Sex in one of the play locations - the apothecary, the ballroom, the bar that’s the empty shell of the real bar?

Slow dancing nude, or another inverted version of something in the normal world?

Fandom-Specific DNW: f/m ships with requested characters

#dear author letters #sleep no more #simoun #gideon the ninth #assassin's creed #mulan #fiddler on the roof #far from the madding crowd #moby-dick

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