ㅤ ㅤ. 大 ㅤ 🦷 ◠ ⊹

ㅤ ㅤ. 大 ㅤ 🪕 🕸️ ⊹

Orson Welles. 1952.

Angstober Day 2

Crack in the Mirror

Spoiler: This is an excerpt from Fading

Anakin knew that talking to Obi-Wan would eventually go downhill. He knew that, but it still hurts. Every time it feels like they make progress, they always regress, and it hurts enough that Anakin has found it easiest to stop trying. He would have continued to do so, but after that night, he wanted to be open so desperately that he didn’t even… think about it. He did but he didn’t – he knew it’d happen, but Anakin trusted that Obi-Wan genuinely wanted to know and try to help. He doesn’t know why. It’s not as if he doesn’t already know he’s past helping right now.

Owen thankfully does have an oil bath for machines here, which Anakin is grateful for. His arm was beginning to bother him. Normally it can go longer, but the sand is getting into his mecho’s joints and it’s unpleasant, especially when it starts moving wrong or sending strange sensations down his arm.

He loathes how vulnerable he feels without his arm, which is why he rarely takes it off, except for maintenance.

He wishes there was someone he could talk to about this, but there’s no one. Certainly not Obi-Wan. He doesn’t understand, and he never will. At least he’s not being outright cruel like he was earlier, but it still hurts. It always does.

Obi-Wan has always been quite insensitive. That’s not going to change, and Anakin accepted that a long time ago, but sometimes, dealing with it is extremely difficult. Normally, he doesn’t have a problem yelling back, except he… can’t. Not right now. Not after Obi-Wan was so visibly scared of him.

He wants to cry, but this runs too deeply. For a brief, foolish moment, he’d let himself be vulnerable, and that’s not something he’ll repeat again.

Because truthfully, Anakin should have known better. He should have figured out what Palpatine was doing long before it became this serious. It’s not as if he didn’t wonder sometimes if the Chancellor was really genuinely interested in helping him, but that fades so fast because he just wanted someone and Obi-Wan was so difficult.

And he had just been so, so lonely, but he should have…

He has no idea how he could’ve thought Obi-Wan would be willing to… be more than what he always was. He’s still a Jedi.

Xdinary Heroes - Crack in the mirror

I love how Astarion quotes The Tell-Tale Heart every once in a while. It's a rarer line, and initially I thought it was out of place (Neil is very well versed in theater, so I assumed it was a riff from him), but since reading an analysis of the work I think it was pretty purposeful.

The piece is all about fear and paranoia, things we know Astarion is plagued by despite how he might act. Similarly, the narrator of the story also tries to convince the reader that they are not as troubled as they seem. In the end, the narrator is consumed by the beating of the heart of the old man he killed and dismembered, the sound growing louder and louder until in a fit of rage he reveals the body to the police to absolve himself from the persistent beating.

Except the police never heard the heart beat, because it wasn't the old man's heart at all. The narrator was consumed by the sound of his own heart beating more and more rapidly in his chest from fear. He was the owner of the thing that forced him to reveal his true nature, he is the owner of the tell-tale heart.

And what happens with Astarion after you romance him? He realizes over time that, while he tried to deny his feelings and was initially only interested in manipulating you for his own means, he actually has grown to care for you. You have done something to his heart that hasn't happened in centuries, you have made it feel as if it has started beating again.

Therefore, his tell-tale heart leads him to admit his transgressions, which were committed out of fear and paranoia for his safety.

So the line is actually very, very apt. His confession during Act 2 is his own version of "Villains! Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!" Except, of course, it is his own heart that he is unearthing for us (and it's not so hideous, after all).

Kpop song rec. (Kband)

Also just wanna come say xdinary heroes new album is fucking amazing and everyone should listen to them!!

some ever after high ponifications

she turns, makes direct eye contact with you, smiles,

heir of grief

Nothing living leaves the Burial Mounds.

wip tehee

I've now been laughing at the "fair count" (see this post by @lemoneyshipz; credit for the counting goes to Febbb__ from weibo) - as in which Tolkien characters have been described as fair in the book and how many times - for two days straight... buuut how about we, the fans, get our own opinions in too?

(I excluded the groups of people to get as many characters on this as Tumblr lets me)

((Still couldn't fit them all, so honorable mentions go to Thingol, Celegorm and Indis))

(((Edit for clarity: The selection of characters is based on the list as seen in the post I'm referring to. To my understanding it in turn is counting mentions in the Silmarillion (aka "the book" for us Silm fans). See also the tags)))

''Milano News'' for Vogue Italia (1999) Photography: Lee Jenkins

i just finished my first watch-through of dimension 20 fantasy high, and man—all i want to talk about is riz gukgak and his bloody hands.

riz and his bloody hands. his white-knuckle grip on control. little freakazoid insomniac wound too tight. “i’m a harsh guy,” he says, but he’s got so much of a heart in him that he leaps into hell to save his father and charges blindly off into the nightmare king’s forest to save the world. he’s a harsh guy, but his greatest fear in the world is being left behind by his friends. 

i love watching brennan and murph. because brennan is truly an extraordinary dm, and murph is THE plot-hound player. his characters move forward, ever forward, only ever onward. riz cannot sit still, he cannot lay fallow. the three days they’re aboard a ship in the open ocean, he wigs out and spends it spiraling below deck. he cannot relax. not even for a second, not even to sleep. because if he does--what? what will happen to him? what will happen to the teenage goblin kid with no father? 

riz and his bloody hands. 

and brennan knows murph well enough that he knows how to turn that into a character beat. he pits riz’s drive for knowledge against him. you love the truth. you seek it so much that you cut your hands upon the insides of crystals. what a metal and underrated line. because riz would destroy himself for the truth. he can’t handle anything less. he’s like one of those dogs that chews its own paws to shreds if it doesn’t have a job to do. it’s always the next mission and the next job and the next adventure. no time for slowing down because the world is perpetually ending and there’s only so much one little goblin can do on his own--even if he never sleeps. there’s no time for slowing down because if he has a moment - even a moment! - to breathe, to rest, what would he do with it? what does riz have, if it isn’t the mission? what does he offer the world, if it isn’t his brain and his bullets and his bloody hands? 

at the end of the day, riz gukgak is just an empty little kid in a room full of empty mirrors. he’s just the kid who sleeps clutching his sword. that’s why kalina preys on him the way that she does. she’s the queen of masks and reflections. she sees right through to the fear inside of riz--that he isn’t good enough, that he is nothing more than some kid playing detective who gets his friends hurt. she toys with him, but i imagine she also sees some of herself inside of him. they are both in their own ways, empty shells. 

and of course, the ironic truth is that riz is far from empty. truth-seeker, paranoid, whip-smart and frantic, riz tries so hard. he tries so hard that he dies for it. he’s the reason for their little team you know, he’s the instigator. he went after penny, and he went after the nightmare king, and he will keep going and going and going, tearing his hands open again and again and again until he gives out. the ironic truth is that riz has one hell of a heart on him, and it beats him bloody. it drives him forward, ever and onward. it will not let him rest, and so he will never feel how big it is. how much space it takes up inside him. how un-empty he truly is. 

all he has are his hands, and they do not stop bleeding.