I've only now noticed Eva Yan's scars on your drawings of her, is there any story or headcanon behind them?
keeping it real babygirl [gender neutral] the story is that this woman canonically kills herself, canonically contemplates suicide, quite explicitly mentioning the method she intents on using to you (with implications that she has, at the very least, thought about it/thought it through before), and lives with broken mirrors so she cannot (/doesn't have to) see her face like i just think She Is Mentally Unwell. like as a long-term, enduring, persistent thing, She Is Mentally Unwell and the plague is just worsening her condition, while it didn't cause it. the storey/headcanon is that she is mentally ill, openly and canonically has self-destructive tendencies, so. the scars are here because she lives with a lil something something in her mind which drives her to plenty of destructive acts in ways big and small. ywkim
I went to a local fabric store today that I haven't visited before and while they have more fabric to offer than any other store here I've been to so far, I'm not sure it'll be my favorite... because the owner was just. A Lot.
Like. I didn't ask for a lecture on how a 300€ sewing machine can't possibly do a good job and that especially new sewers need the better equipment and that starts at 600-700€. That's an insane amount of money! Especially for someone who is just picking up a new hobby and doesn't know whether they'll stick to it long-term! Even horseriding is cheaper to pick up, and that's a hobby that's notorious for being expensive to begin (and maintain).
And to then have the nerve to imply that me being happy with my machine comes from a place of unconsciously justifying my choices! As if I haven't seen experienced sewers consistenly do incredible stuff with machines cheaper than mine. As if the art could only ever be good if you use the most expensive, inaccessible tools. As if my machine (good girl) isn't fun to work with. (Side note: I've had her for six months now and already heard from two people that they'd love to take her if I ever upgrade, unprompted. But sure, she's no good 🙄)
If anyone read til here: you don't have to spend 600€ on a sewing machine. You don't even need 300€! While I dearly love mine, I know I'm in a privileged position to have been able to afford her. Sewing doesn't have to be this luxurious hobby *some people* are making it out to be. There's only a handful of stitches/functions/etc. that you really need, everything else is mostly just nice to have and therefore very optional.
interesting how the internet archive has the eagle of the ninth as a tv series from the seventies and as a radio program from 2010 and as the full text of the book in FRENCH... but not the original book :(
Got a paramount+ trial subscription. Just finished watching all of Strange New Worlds (review: solid star trek shenanigans, pretty much all bangers with the exception of the Spock-is-human episode which just suuuuuucked and the Klingon war trauma episode about which I have let's say Philosophical Reservations in that it could have been more Space M*A*S*H. not as gay as I was promised, in fact I would say disappointingly heterosexual. adore uhura, hemmer and la'an. cannot believe they gorned my boy 😢)
Off sick all week with COVID can't really do anything except lie around and watch TV.
so, reflecting on last night, and watching something a little triggering/hopeful:
exploring leon's trauma via my own sounds very pleasant. very fun.
huge trigger warning below:
thinking. leon's worst, maybe even worse than what was shown in vendetta or talked about via his suicidal ideation.
wondering how far he would canonically go to cope. would he, one night, smash a bottle after having chugged the whole thing? a mix of rage and dread in his snot-filled sobbing. maybe the glass is embedded in his palm now. maybe he sees the blood running down his fingers and pooling on the table. maybe he gets inspired.
shit, maybe he gets that rush of euphoria every time he gets banged up on a mission. a sick sense of relief. he knows it's wrong, it's bad, it is so unhealthy. but it's like him punishing himself and the bows doing it for him is what he deserves. he's so deserving of this pain and torture. it's what he deserves. it's right, it's just...
This is what this account needs. It needs me be cringe about a Danish medical horror office comedy from the 90s and making quick painterly fanart of it.
So my life is feeling like its on an upward swing since this is my final semester for my associates, I'm starting a new job real soon and also possibly have a really nice remote job if I hear back from a few places I recently applied to.
And it always terrifies me when good stuff starts happening.
Change is really hard for me especially when it feels like its all at once. With better pay comes the opportunity to leave my parent's house finally and move in with a girl who has lovingly stolen my heart. With my school behind me I can find better jobs even!
But at the same time, its just. So scary for me. What if I can't keep up my part of rent. What if my chronic pain or ADHD or other disabilities put a strain on someone I love to my core, and I end up making things worse because I get extremely emotional and will scream (at myself mostly) and panic during these high stress times (especially if money is involved)
I've had a 'safety net' of family members who barely tolerate the fake me I present myself as, and I know my mental health is going to be so much better when I'm not around them, but at the same time I need so much help sometimes. Family just happens to help in terms of shelter and food. It also doesn't help that the one other time I moved out it ended so so poorly that I'm still working through that trauma.
Hurting the love of my life in any way fucking terrifies me. I want nothing but the best for her always always always. I just know I can't always be at my best, its impossible to be. I will break at some point and probably scream and cry about how things aren't going nearly to plan and I'm so weak so often I don't know if I can pull myself together fast enough to not hurt myself or her with my untrue words.
What do you think eiffel was thinking about when he asked hera to destroy his and Pryce's memories during the finale? I was always so struck by his decision to self sacrifice but also (also!!) about the implications it has for either him intentionally inciting permanent harm on another person or that he doesnt consider permanent memory loss permanent harm?
i think what the show is trying to communicate about eiffel's decision is described best in hera's reasoning: "i don't need to beat you. no matter how much i want to, no matter how much you deserve it, it wouldn't change anything. what i need is to make sure that you're not going to hurt anyone else again. ever." it is enacting harm, but it's also preventative. how do you negotiate with people who have intentionally and systematically removed themselves from humanity, who don't even recognize your humanity? what's justified in preventing future harm? i think there is a meaningful difference in an action taken to protect others vs. one taken in retribution, even if retribution is justified.
i think there is also an angle from which you can consider his self-sacrifice another form of self-destruction. so much of eiffel's character arc comes back to the ways he tries to get away from himself, how much he doesn't want to be doug eiffel. all of the ways he fractures his identity, tells stories in the third person. how he distances himself, and how that's distanced him from the people he cares about, when all of the men in all of those stories are still doug eiffel. if you consider eiffel's memory loss a finality, then it reads as a fulfillment of that desire, and i just... don't think that's what the show is going for.
and then you have his survivor's guilt. "the driver's always fine." in boléro, he feels personally responsible for the people who died because of his unwillingness to harm anyone on purpose. i don't think that makes his choices wrong, and i think he's wrong to blame himself, but it's a factor worth considering. if on some level he might see harm as more justifiable if he is also the recipient of it.
i also think there's another perspective from which you could consider his decision a selfish one: he knows the implications this has for hera in particular, and the weight he's putting on her. she agrees to it, she understands, but even so. i think that is something they're going to have to work through at some point. eiffel may be making the call, but whatever harm is enacted, hera is the one pulling the trigger.
ultimately i think the approach that eiffel is still eiffel, or at least that he has the intent and capacity to be, makes the most sense thematically and tonally. i think seeing it that way serves as an continuation and final affirmation of what the show already says about identity, rather than introducing some new philosophical question. i think you can even make a case for restoring eiffel's memories post-canon as a natural extension of the show's exploration of self and his character arc in particular. i won't get too into that now because it's another discussion and i don't want to make this response unreadably long, but that is to say...
what was eiffel thinking? i don't feel like i can answer that conclusively. i'd be surprised if he could. it's brave, and self-sacrificing, it definitely saved them, and it was also selfish and self-destructive. i may not think eiffel's memory loss is necessarily final, but he did, in that moment, and that came with the full intent that the same would be true of pryce. it's complicated, and messy, and personally? i think pryce deserved worse. but it's not really about deserving either.
Why I won't put any impact play (or S/m) in Marc and Layla's D/s
Obviously, with the Marc system's past, it would be a very delicate thing to bring up and to do. Could it be done therapeutically? Eh, maybe for some other people but not for them I don't think (that I've mentioned before).
The main thing though for me, and it's of course very related to their past traumas, is that Marc is a masochist.
And not in a sexy way, but in a pathological way.
He doesn't self-harm (that we know), however he doesn't care about getting hurt at all and I would even say he wants to be hurt.
616!Marc not dodging hits but taking them all could be easily read that way, and the show gave us a few clues that MCU!Marc is the same. The way he ran into that wooden fence instead of just jumping over it, the way he shrugged off being impaled multiple times, the way he was hoping - looking to - get killed when he fought as Moon Knight but the super-healing got in the way.
But also, the way he jumped off of that castle in episode 1? Thinking about it, he could have found another way to escape the shooters. I know it was a very quick decision on his part to escape them, but just the fact that he didn't even think about the physical consequences of jumping from that high (and wasn't expecting Steven to wake up from it instead of himself) means that he didn't care about getting hurt at all.
So, does he have a complete disregard for his own physical safety both with and without the Moon Knight suit ?
Definitely.
Does it go to the point of him even looking to get hurt and being masochistic? Well that depends on the interpretation. With what we've got of their past though, I think it's a pretty valid interpretation, and it's my interpretation of Marc.
So I won't make them do any S/m, since it's pretty dangerous and ill-advised to indulge someone's pathological masochism within S/m play.
I might read some fics with that though, I'm sure some people wrote it well.
..just randomly remembered the time 5 years ago i told my at-the-time girlfriend that i thought i might have bpd and she screamed at me for self diagnosing (i literally just said "i think i want to talk to a professional cuz i might have it") and told me there was no way i could have it because i would have scars to prove it