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#i'm sensing a theme here
ingravinoveritas · 9 months
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Saw this posted on Facebook earlier and now I absolutely cannot unsee it...
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mayorwhisper · 11 months
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Sensing the green and yellow theme? Sorta?
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uwu <3
aw thank you!! i'm glad you think my stuff is fluffy
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annastrxng · 2 years
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how does your story end?
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in a betrayal.
you trusted, and now you must pay the price... your final word is a half-whispered question, "why?"
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rosepompadour · 5 months
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To make life a romance is the only thing worth doing.
Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness (1859)
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canisalbus · 7 months
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hey! do you consider yourself a furry? if so, do you enjoy being in the community? if not, what label do you use, and why? (been wanting to ask this for a while:))
Sure, I don't mind being called a furry. My art certainly qualifies as furry art and my characters are furry characters. But I've never been that connected or active in the furry fandom in general. There's a lot of core experiences that I'm missing: I don't have a fursona, I don't own a fursuit and I've never been to a furry con. My online circles are very furry-centric but I don't think any of my irl friends consider themselves furries, despite our shared tastes and interests.
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mister-brightside · 2 years
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good omens (2019) 1.03  //  the sandman (2022) 1.06
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sillyfiresong · 5 days
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Snakes are an interesting piece of symbolism in Mithrun's backstory. There's been a lot of debate about whether his dungeon beloved was a snake the whole time or not, but I kinda verge more toward the idea that she probably changed as his dungeon became more convoluted. The whole thing is a reflection of his inner world, so it would stand to reason that she would change along with that. His true feelings about her coming out so to speak.
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Many people have already pointed out how the world guide shows us Mithrun's true opinion of his beloved: she's untrustworthy. What's a symbol of untrustworthiness/deception? Snakes.
But I feel like it could go a bit further than him just seeing her as a "snake" and transforming her into one as he loses control of his dungeon.
"Untrustworthy" is a pretty strange opinion to have of someone you supposedly love and want to be with, but many have pointed out how he probably doesn't actually like her. He just doesn't think his brother should like her because he perceives his brother to be beneath him and, apparently, beneath her because she is attractive. He was jealous of his brother's desire for her and felt resentful that he had the nerve to like someone who was better than him in every way.
We already know that snakes have a pretty negative connotation in western culture, and definitely represent untrustworthiness because of th./e bi./ble, but I was reading a bit more about how snakes are viewed in Japan and came across some interesting stuff that made me think a bit more deeply about this topic. Lots of rambling ahead which I hope makes sense.
In Japan snakes have more diversity of representation than just "untrustworthy". They can be symbols of good fortune and protection, they can be healing, and can even be gods, but interestingly I found some stories about snakes turning into women to pursue relationships with men. Snakes in these stories could be symbolic of the "negative aspects of womanhood" such as jealousy and possessiveness, but weren't always straight up the bad guys. In this way they were kinda like kitsune. I feel like this might be a bit more reflective of Mithrun's beloved. She represents a conflict within Mithrun. Yes, she's pretty and desirable, but he wants her because his brother likes her and he's better than his brother so he should have her instead. She represents an ideal, but he doesn't trust her (though we don't know why, I think he's just a hater), and this is more about Mithrun himself than her. She's not really the bad guy.
This is particularly interesting in terms of an article I read about Japanese snake stories in Buddhism. In this context, snakes represented attachment to earthly desires, so the snake within was both an enemy but also strongly tied to the self and was something to overcome. Mithrun's snake wife definitely seems to be a site of internal and external conflict for him, and is a literal manifestation of his complex and deeply earthly desire.
There's also a lot of associations between snakes and jealousy in Japanese tales of snake wives (snakes sucking the blood of the wives of men they desired, women's hair turning into snakes when jealous of a love rival etc), but with Buddhist inner snakes in mind I feel like this could just be representative of Mithrun's own feelings. Rather than his beloved turning into a snake because she's jealous, he is manifesting her not just as someone he perceives as untrustworthy in nature, but as a symbol of his own jealousy. She's the object of it so she takes on the form of it.
When we see her in the mirror, the focus isn't on Mithrun's brother at all, it's very much focused on her, which is unexpected if we're meant to think he's jealous of his brother. His beloved is the source of his jealous feelings, so I feel like snake is very fitting form for her lower half because it combines jealousy and distrust, all while maintaining her beauty which is probably the main thing Mithrun liked about her and held above all else. It's shallow.
This is probably part of why his desire was so delicious to the demon. It was more dark and complicated and conflicted than it at first seemed, which is why it was tempting. It was more than just "I like her cause she's pretty but I don't trust her so she's a snake," and more like "she's pretty so she should be with me not my brother, but I don't trust her, but she's an ideal of beauty so I should have her instead because I'm better then my brother and I'm jealous of what her and my brother could hypothetically have, so she's excacerbating my flaw of seeing myself as superior to everyone else and having a low opinion of them all while being deeply insecure about my superiority when it's not outwardly acknowledged or rewarded."
(This train of thought does kinda make me wonder if the reason Mithrun didn't trust her was because the vision from the mirror had some basis in fact and he doesn't trust her because he's wondering what she sees in his brother and what she wanted out of him and why she didn't take an interest in the "superior" brother, but there's not a whole lot of evidence for that, plus he's not actually jealous of his brother so this is just an aside really, and he's probably just a hater...)
It's also interesting that the snake beloved bore witness to the devouring of the complicated and twisted desire that started this dungeon in the first place while sitting passively by. It's almost a betrayal and confirmation of Mithrun's feelings of distrust towards her even though she's just a construct of his mind. It's very ironic and very fitting.
Links to sources under the cut:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3628761?seq=7
https://www.jstor.org/stable/30233261?searchText=&searchUri=&ab_segments=&searchKey=&refreqid=fastly-default%3A2a992ebb09f7aa8fa8631e45df0873d5&seq=27
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Once, Always
(Edmund has an abundance of birthdays)
 .
“I say,” murmured Edmund sleepily as the fire burned low. “When do you suppose it is here? I mean—what time of year? Do you think it’s the beginning of September, the same as it was in England?”
“Summer,” said Lucy. “Certainly summer.”
Peter agreed. “I think it must be Highgrass, if I had to guess. Perhaps later. Greenroof?”
“If it’s Greenroof, then Edmund gets another birthday,” Lucy sighed. “Eleven or twelve, Ed?”
“Neither,” put in Susan. “A thousand, if you’re going to rationalize it that way. Now everyone hush, please, and get some sleep.”
.
Edmund’s birthday was the fifteenth day of Greenroof by the Narnian reckoning. Greenroof, late summer, when all the leaves were dark and broad. Narnian summers were long, but Greenroof was the last and best of the summer months. Greenroof was hunts through the dense foliage, blackberries heavy with juice, lazy afternoons, bonfires, wild romps, and the pleasant kind of sweat. Edmund’s birthday celebrations were always held on Dancing Lawn in the old days: the sort of long, laughter-bright nights that summer was made for.
The second time Edmund celebrated his eleventh birthday, it was just past three months since he and his siblings had returned home from the country. Their house was glass-strewn and battered, but still standing when they arrived home. By August it was beginning to feel really safe again, but sometimes Edmund still woke in the night to find his mother standing silent in the doorway, drinking in the sight of her two sons returned to her.
The professor sent one of Ivy’s famous spice cakes for Edmund’s birthday. It arrived tied in red string, which made Lucy reminisce fondly about dear Mr. Tumnus. Edmund’s siblings pooled their allowances to buy him the new Nero Wolfe detective novel, and his mother gave him a new cap and an electric torch.
“How do you feel?” his mother asked over dinner.
“I don’t feel any older, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “Eleven feels just the same as ten did yesterday.”
All four of them missed their birthdays the first year in Narnia. Too much else was going on at the time, and none of them was quite sure when their birthdays were supposed to be besides. The measurement of time was a thoroughly tangled issue.
The Narnian year had four hundred days even, divided into fourteen months of inconsistent lengths. Furthermore, the kingdom had only known winter for the last hundred years. The Narnians themselves were still remembering how the calendar worked in a world where the seasons changed. They didn’t have the words yet to explain it to their sovereigns.
“Eustace,” said Edmund, “your journal is wrong.”
“Give me that,” Eustace scowled at once. “I know it’s wrong, but there’s no need to rub my face in it. Aren’t I trying to make up for how I was?”
“No, no, that’s not what I meant. The month is wrong. You’ve got September written here, but time works differently in Narnia than it does in the Other Place. Haven’t you noticed that it’s summer, not autumn?”
“Oh.” Eustace shrugged. “I followed Occam’s Razor and assumed that the climate here was different rather than time itself.”
“Occam’s what?” This was Lucy.
“Occam’s Razor: the simplest solution to a problem is the most likely—never mind. Well, go on, what month is it?”
“Highgrass,” said Lucy.
“July,” said Edmund at the same moment. “More or less.”
 .
They worked it all out one afternoon as the second spring of their reign was ending. Peter and Susan wrote out the English calendar on one stack of parchment while Edmund and Lucy sat down with the Narnian calendar and penciled in seasonal markers as best they could manage.
“The first crocuses came up right at the end of Cleardome, yes?”
“Yes, I think so. And the snowdrops were in their full glory that month too.”
“How do you want to deal with leap year?”
“Just forget about it. Narnia doesn’t have anything similar, so I think twenty-eight days for February is fine for our purposes.”
“Magnolia in Laceveil, yes?”
“Laceveil is a good marker in general. We ought to set that as May and go from there.”
Birthdays were guesses, no matter how much counting they did. Yet as memories of England receded and Narnia’s world blossomed into everything they knew, those guesses solidified into fact. Edmund turned eleven for the first time on the fifteenth day of Greenroof. He was the first of his siblings to celebrate a proper birthday in Narnia.
The fourth time Edmund turned twelve, he received another electric torch to replace the one he’d lost. He laughed for half a minute, holding that gift in his hand.
“Really, you should have expected it,” said Susan primly.
"I did."
Their mother tsked and added something about keeping track of one’s belongings, but that was alright. His siblings understood.
Edmund flicked on the light and watched the beam land on the far wall across the living room. Bright at the edges and dark towards the center where the bulb was. He moved his wrist sideways and watched the spot of light follow.  
Edmund might have forgotten about his birthday aboard the Dawn Treader if Lucy hadn’t remembered. She conspired with the cook to have a spread of Edmund’s favorite foods at supper (such as could be managed at sea) and coerced Rynelf into playing jigs on his fiddle afterwards. While they were dancing, Caspian called for a cask of his best wine, and soon the ship’s whole company was making merry like only Narnians could.
“Didn’t you have a twelfth birthday the last time you were in Narnia?” Caspian asked curiously as the party was dying down.
“Yes,” Edmund replied, “and the time before that too. Confused yet?”
“Ed has all the luck,” Lucy pouted playfully. “We always seem to return to Narnia in the summer, so he gets all the extra birthdays.”
Caspian's face lit up. “How extraordinary! When’s yours then?”
“Cleardome. There’s a year and a half between Ed and me, and he never lets me forget it.”
“It’s really not as exciting as all that,” Edmund added. “We’re not living our lives backwards, or unstuck in time, or any such nonsense. It’s more like—our lives are folded in on themselves, you see? But never the same way twice.”
“I think it’s more like music than anything else,” Lucy said, a kind of fond wistfulness in her voice.
“Yes,” said Edmund. “I know what you mean.”
On the thirteenth of Greenroof, the Telmarines laid down their arms and surrendered to Old Narnia. The next day, messengers were sent forth across the land with news of the surrender and with terms for the Telmarines. Caspian’s coronation followed, and then Edmund woke and it was his birthday again.
Breakfast that morning was long and languid, for Peter and Susan knew that they must say farewell to Narnia, even if the younger ones did not. They lingered round the table with Caspian and Trumpkin and the rest, and presently Peter offered a toast.
“To my brother King Edmund, who is eleven and twelve and sixty-three and thirteen hundred years old today.”
Everyone raised their cups and repeated, “King Edmund.” Caspian nodded and added, “Long live the king,” with an almost ironic tilt to his head.
Naturally, Edmund nodded back. “And to you, King Caspian. Long may you reign.”
Another round of assent followed, and then Lucy cleared her throat. “But also,” she said, “To late summer and the rebirth of Our Narnia. And to the land, the sea, the hills, the trees, the sky, Cair Paravel-by-the-sea and Dancing Lawn and all the flowers that are still in bloom. And to the color green. To all of us here today, and to those who are gone. And to Aslan.”
“Here, here.”
There were tears in Susan’s eyes now. “Happy birthday,” she whispered, and squeezed Edmund’s hand tight. Edmund looked down at his plate, fiercely overcome with love for this place and these people. In a strict, chronological sense, it had been less than a month since his last birthday, but how did the saying go? Time was just a tangled string, or falling snow, or whatever else Aslan told it to be.
“Bother,” said Edmund, “I’ve left my new torch in Narnia.”
Everyone chuckled at this, but Susan said, “Wait a year. We’ll get you a new one for your next birthday.”
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chaos0pikachu · 1 year
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wish some folks understood that American queer history is not global queer history
every country is going to have it’s own individual queer history that, yes, may be impacted by things like western imperialism, and colonization but the assumption that like, other countries don’t have their own cultural history that ebbs and flows and is influenced by both internal and outside factors just like America and thus effects cultural exports is like, wild to me
the world is so vast and y’alls mindsets is so small
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wavesoutbeingtossed · 20 days
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I have thoughts about the TTPD speculation/two years/loneliness/sharing feelings through songs train but I'm putting them under a cut because. Yeah.
OK, so I'm giving a warning:
I'm talking about BTTWS, but NOT about the speculation/inspiration behind it. Just about the feelings in it and the Midnights of it all/the idea that sharing the difficult things brings comfort/companionship. So getting that out of the way so we can remove that part of the discourse out of it.
Regardless of whatever the inspiration/event behind BTTWS may be, whether it's about a loved one or personal, I've long felt that its inclusion on Midnights, an album about things that have kept her up at night, is significant in the feelings it portrays.
For instance, we can be fairly certain that Taylor wasn't actually turning in Scooter B. to the FBI and conspiring with his ex-wife to bring him down (or was she?) in Vigilante Shit, just as we can safely guess that she probably did actually pick up that pebble in Wicklow that reminded her of a peaceful time in Sweet Nothing. The line between fiction/reality, personal vs. narrative matters less on Midnights in this case than the feelings she was expressing in the songs, which are very personal and truthful. The revenge fantasy in Vigilante Shit is her working through her anger over having her masters stolen and how she's fought hard to have the last laugh over someone who is a sworn enemy. Sweet Nothing is her reflecting on the dichotomy of her (presumed) quiet home life she felt was safe and the noise of the outside world. (Now, we might speculate on why she was ruminating on this, but that's another story.)
So with that preamble out of the way, BTTWS's inclusion in the tracklist I feel is just as important, again regardless of the inspiration behind it or her personal connection to it. Even if it is a song about someone other than herself, including it as the only "not personal/not diaristic" song on an album as ostensibly self-reflective as Midnights would stick out if that were thecase, though obviously it's her album so she can do whatever she wants and could have her own reasons. (Just like she included Ronan on Red and Soon You'll Get Better on Lover about similar themes, it could just be a tribute to a loved one.) But given all the thematic arcs and parallels on Midnights, I do feel like it's there to include a specific set of feelings being processed, even if the origin on the feelings may or may not be her own. (I'm trying to be really sensitive in my word choices here, hope they make sense.)
BTTWS is a song about loss and grief, and specifically the fallout of an event outside of her/the narrator's control. The person in the song has nothing to turn to to deal with their pain: no faith to guide them, no wisdom to tell them everything will be alright. Throughout the song there is a pervasive sense of isolation: everything is over, they're living without something that was once theirs but suddenly was not. It captures the fog and confusion of living through a painful event without having any way to process. She even says from the start that, "no words appear before me in the aftermath," which for someone like Taylor who has stated over and over how writing is literally how she processes her life would be the ultimate reflection of the depths of her hurt.
(To be clear I do not think this is a song about a breakup whatsoever: IMO it clearly is not about a relationship dissolution of any kind. I just think that the feelings of grief and loneliness in the song may have felt relevant to whatever she was going through during the time the album was coalescing in 2021-22.)
Knowing what we know now about at the very least the period between 2021-2023, Taylor was going through a time of significant difficulty in her life behind the scenes, which is how The Tortured Poets Department came to be, right on the heels of her completing Midnights sometime in early 2022. She has said herself that making TTPD was a lifeline, that she had to keep writing to deal with whatever it was that she was experiencing and going through. And as I posted about earlier today, she's also said repeatedly on tour that not only is writing about her feelings how she processes her pain and loneliness, but that then sharing that music with fans brings her great comfort because it makes her feel less lonely to know people understand and relate to what she's going through.
And we know that she has self-edited her albums over the years (including Midnights) to protect herself and perhaps even the subjects of her songs, which we have seen with the inclusion of the vault/bonus tracks in the re-records and on Midnights. Obviously some of these reasons are logistical -- album was too long, cut songs sounded too much like others, maybe she or her producers felt the ones that were originally chosen were stronger, narrative or sonic cohesion, etc. -- but with what we've seen over the last few years, these songs also filled in the lines of the stories being told and reframed the narrative being told.
Nowhere is that clearer than with You're Losing Me, for example. It's pretty obvious why it was held back: presumably she wouldn't want to release a song about a relationship at its breaking point when she was still actively in the relationship. Yet as soon as the relationship ended, she released it, we can only assume because of her realization that sharing the music and having people respond to it validates her feelings and makes her feel embraced, as it were. Then with the announcement of TTPD and how it's been brewing for essentially the intervening period between when YLM was written and now, we can also surmise that these songs will be dealing with feelings she also felt the need to hold back for whatever reason at the time, but has now decided should be out there so she can feel more whole.
So coming back to BTTWS, it being included on Midnights the way that it was strikes me as a form of sharing feelings that may have been too difficult to process. Again, not implying I have any insight into what the origin of the song is about, or imposing my own beliefs onto her, or that she was sending some sort of secret message with its inclusion! But thematically, BTTWS deals with an intense loss and feeling completely unmoored and alone as a result, which is present in her other work. And that the dreams the narrator once held have gone up in smoke, leaving her reeling about what's to come next. She's cut off from the world because of the event, unable to speak about or grasp what has happened. Similar feelings are also explored in You're Losing Me for instance, and even Dear Reader (not to mention on past albums like evermore, this is my trying, arguably hoax, etc.). Just reading context clues from TTPD and her surprise song choices of late, I don't think it's outrageous to presume some of those emotions are going to be present on the new album as well.
So this is just a long-winded way of saying, I feel like the sense of loss, confusion and uncertainty about the future likely resonated with both what she had gone through in the past, and the story as a whole she was trying to tell on Midnights. And while the origin may or may not be personal or relevant to the new story she's going to tell, I also feel like these same kinds of themes are going to be present on TTPD because they're so important for her to share. (I could even mention that the response to BTTWS may even provide evidence that people sharing their experiences in general brings comfort to those going through it, but that may be veering too far into parasocial "why did Taylor do X" speculative territory.) She sings about these kinds of all-consuming losses so eloquently and mindfully that I know the new album is going to be an absolute gut punch.
(not being self-promotional but I delved a little deeper into the Midnights 3am tracks including this one a few months ago so it's why it's top of mind and why the connections and thematic parallels are so resonant to me lately.)
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ingravinoveritas · 1 year
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Michael Sheen randomly crashing David Tennant’s television appearances.
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janeburgesssnow · 2 years
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something something unus annus being about making the most of our short time while we’re still living something something we make so many decisions in our life but only a handful really matter something something iswm emphasizing the importance of not giving up and losing hope something something the universe is as it should be and we deserve to be here something something we can’t change the past but we can change our circumstances now for a better future because at the end of it all - life is ours to choose 
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mikesbasementbeets · 9 months
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just thinking about character arcs and how they might play into byler getting together... i alluded to this in my recent analysis, but mike's whole arc is heavily centered on his invisibility, both in regard to his queerness and also his generally being invalidated and dismissed by those around him, while his romantic arc with will (and one of the main ways in which will is a foil to el in their respective relationships with mike) is about being Seen and Understood and Validated.
on the other hand, will's arc centers around his lack of agency and his self-repression. yes, he's already confessed his feelings to mike, given him the painting, "ripped off the band-aid," etc, but he did that For Mike and El, and i don't think it's fair to say that means he's given up hope for himself, or even that the ball is in mike's court now (they're a team anyway. they're working together). will's arc is also about his resilience, his willingness to fight for what he wants and what he believes in. it's about re-claiming the agency that has always been taken from him, and standing fully in his truth, by his own volition.
putting these two arcs together? mike is going to finally be seen, truly, fully, for everything he is, by will. and will is going to understand. he's going to take the initiative, finally claim agency over his own sexuality and at the same time validate mike's, giving them both exactly what they've been striving for all along.
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gideonisms · 1 year
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I completely respect the opinion that the beginning of htn is a slog, one of my good friends irl feels that way and even fans of that book in particular also feel that way a lot of times, but all that said, I did not find it boring or difficult to push through. as someone who truly could not give a fuck about how a book is paced as long as I'm invested in the character interactions all the way through, it gave me what I wanted. It gave me interesting side characters, it delivered on character arcs from the first book, it expanded on the themes of the previous book perfectly, and the basic plot eventually did make sense. Plus it ends with an insane burst of energy and the messiest divorce in the universe
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Guys guys I have a joke
How is the final arc of BNHA like a vampire den
THERE'S NO FUCKING STAKES
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