comparing and contrasting them inside of my mind

DAY 75: onehat

obsessed with the absence of eddie in buck centric episodes. like i can't explain it very well so this is going to sound incoherent but bear with me here. episodes focused on buck's trauma are always so tightly tied to family, his biological family and the scars they left him with both physical and mental. buck begins and in another life are so heavy on the family of it all and it speaks fucking volumes that in both of these episodes eddie has one scene that sets him apart from everyone else. in buck begins it's the like five second exchange of "i had to do it/i know you did" and in in another life it's eddie being unable to look at buck in the hospital bed. and fuck i don't really know how to explain it without saying things i've said a hundred times before but it's carving eddie out of the family that hurt buck so badly and setting him in his own little category. it's eddie being family outside of the biological barely-a-family buckley family, but it's also eddie being family within the wider 118 family. it's a sanctuary of sorts. buck has the buckleys, buck has maddie as both his mother and sister, buck has bobby, he has hen and chim, he has eddie and the rest of the 118. but buck also has eddie and chris as an entirely separate entity. a family full of trauma (tsunamis and ladder trucks and bullets and lightning bolts) but a family that provides refuge from it rather than causes it. at first it seems odd for eddie to be so absent in those episodes when he's such a huge part of buck's life (and when buck plays such a big part in eddie centric episodes like eddie begins and fear-o-phobia) but it's eddie taking a step back and saying i know you aren't sure of where you fit in because you've struggled with family all your life but we're here, i'm here, whenever you're ready to come home we'll be waiting.

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I keep coming back to the fact that Eddie and Chris were playing boggle - both in Bucks loft and in the Diaz house in ep 1. Because boggle is about finding the words in a mass of letters - the answers are in plain sight- literally staring you straight in the face.

Eddie is the one who wins the game - because he is the one who needs to find the answers, not Chris - and it suggests he will in fact figure out what’s been in plain sight all along.

But I love the idea that Chris does have some of the same answers as Eddie. Not all of the same answers and he’ll perhaps have found some different words to Eddie, because they both ultimately want/need different things from their respective relationships with Buck, but that there is cross over in those wants and needs.

quotes from alex turner's favourite authors that make me want to put my face through a wall:

"although i have never been an actor in the strict sense of the word, i have nevertheless, in real life, always carried about with me a small folding theatre" - vladimir nabokov, despair

"there is a terrible emptiness in me, an indifference that hurts," - albert camus

"there is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself" - raymond chandler

"at eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air" - vladimir nabokov

"no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge" - joseph conrad

"everything i've ever let go of has claw marks on it" - david foster wallace

"we're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. how else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we've never even met?" - david foster wallace

"i turn over a new leaf every day, but the blots show through" - keith waterhouse

"the truth will set you free. but not until it's finished with you" - david foster wallace

"curiosity is insubordination in its purest form" - vladimir nabokov

"i'm me and nobody else; and whatever people think i am or say i am, that's what i'm not, because they don't know a bloody thing about me" - alan sillitoe

"we live as we dream; alone” - joseph conrad

"i liked, as i like still, to make words look self-conscious and foolish, to bind them by mock marriage of a pun, to turn them inside out, to come upon them unwares" - vladimir nabokov, despair

"whatever you get paid attention to for is never what you think is most important about yourself" - david foster wallace

"i continued to stir my tea long after it had done all it could with the milk” - vladimir nabokov, despair

"i remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind" - edgar allan poe

"all the information i have about myself is from forged documents" - vladimir nabokov, despair

"how odd i can have all this inside me and to you its just words" - david foster wallace

"you will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. you will never live if you're looking for the meaning of life" - albert camus

i like how we all collectively agreed that covid does not exist in any of our sims stories

[chemistry] it's not a word that actors [use]. but you must endeavor a little bit to try and fall in love, in whatever that capacity is. and andrew is a very easy person to fall in love with. he's kind, generous, talented. we shot the film at the perfect junction in our friendship where there was a lot we didn't know about each other, but there was mutual admiration and respect. and a similar sense of humor. (...) yeah, it felt fizzy when we were acting. especially with that first scene at the door -- it's so well-written. you feel like you're dancing through the scene, you can go in loads of different ways, and if i went one way, andrew would go another. if that's what chemistry is, i was aware it was happening.

-- paul on chemistry and whether ‘they (andrew & paul) knew instantly that their onscreen relationship was working’ in all of us strangers, screendaily.com (1/31/24)

Knives is such a hypocrite and a liar and he lies most of all to himself and i hate him but i also love it. Bro's so coked up on copium all the time.

Claims to be doing it all for the sake of Plants, then arguably takes away their agency and freedom way more than humans ever could. Claims to be doing it for his brother and literally ruins his brother's life in every possible turn. Claims humanity never learns from their mistakes and it literally takes dying for him to stop doubling down on his bullshit. the medical abuse done unto tesla horrified him so much and yet he is directly responsible to the same abuse being subjected to countless of children.

Given the chance, I would love to be his sleep paralysis demon. i do not think I could fix him, but I think I can drive him to early retirement from super villainy.

Walt’s fucking magpie tendency of collecting little mementos from his victims (continuing to cut the crusts off sandwiches the way Domingo liked it, the Eye from flight 515, Gale’s poetry book, the watch from Jesse) that he insists on keeping close to him is such freak behavior and i am OBSESSED with it.

sorry to be doing mcu throwback complaints again and EXTRA sorry for it to be about cacw and aou, sorry, i just am thinking again that if marvel had. in aou. committed to letting steve rogers see that captain america graffiti calling him a fascist with his own two eyes i would have forgiven many of their subsequent deeds and crimes

i know travis guiding them was 100% travis and not in character as chet bc he didn’t even have the voice going, but i also would like to imagine that chet did exactly that.

i like it generally bc he has moments like that where he drops the chaos when things get serious (i’ll never forget watching him and orym talk about will and realizing that oh god, under all those layers of whatever the fuck is going on with him, he cares so much).

but i really like it in this specific situation too bc i’m pretty sure imogen was the one to step up after his confession and immediately say they weren’t going to leave him, and i can totally see him avoiding the conversation in the moment but then stepping up to guide her and taking it really seriously out of appreciation.

You know, something something Arthur desperately wanted to see the good in magic at any opportunity he was given.

When Gwen was first accused, when he first met Morgause, when he wanted to save Uther using magic, when he saved the woman from being burnt in that small village, when he was given a choice by the Disir, when he was determined to save Gwen from Morgana's dark magic...

(Honourable mentions include when he saved Mordred and argued with Uther about the Druids being peaceful (they are magic adjacent after all) - and well, given the second honourable mention being his remorse for the raid on the Druid camp when he was young, it's understandable that it comes from some sort of trauma. And of course, the result of that remorse was the promise that he would do everything to prevent it ever happening again, and that he would treat the Druids with respect. Hell, even with Kara he was respectful, even though she committed actual literal treason in the form of an attempted assassination of Camelot's king)

Of course, at every opportunity, Arthur's view that there is good in magic, that not all sorcerers are evil, that perhaps his father was wrong, or that his father had lied, ends up being proven wrong, at least in his eyes.

Time and time again Arthur is shown to consider magic as a more neutral force, like almost as if he's desperate for it to be true. It isn't even necessarily his fault that the opinions about magic and sorcerers that Uther taught him becomes reinforced once again.

The fact that he can even think critically about magic at all is a miracle alone. Like this man who has only ever known sorcerers to use magic for evil purposes, to destroy Camelot, attempt to assassinate him, attempt to assassinate his father, to harm those he cares about - and yet he still he still falls back on, what if magic can be good, what if we're wrong, what if, what if, what if--

And it's only when magic itself reveals himself to Arthur that he can finally see that yes, magic can be good.

Because if Merlin is good, if Merlin is the same person even with magic, then magic is neutral, and sorcerers aren't inherently evil.

Arthur was always going to accept magic, that's the thing, that's hardcoded into his character, he just needed the right push, and that push was always going to be Merlin.

Because as Arthur dies in Merlin's arms, blanketed by magic itself, he accepts that even with all of Merlin's magic, his life cannot be saved, magic cannot save him.

But he accepts it, and accepts Merlin, and he dies having brought about all that Merlin ever dreamt of, truly dreamt of, that Arthur would see him for him, and accept him and his magic. And more than that, what Arthur truly ends up doing is embracing it.

Arthur for whatever reason, perhaps because he was born of magic, perhaps because his soulmate is magic itself, perhaps because he has a heart of gold, wanted to see the good in magic at any given opportunity that presented itself, even though with all that Uther taught him, he never should have seen it that way.

It's just, it's so fascinating, and it's so heartbreaking that when he finally knew, he died. But he'll return, and I'm sure then he can build something better with Merlin, really bring magic back to a time that needs it :)

man the dev notes w/ the stormshore tabernacle convo. whatever they're there for it's kind of remarkable how so much of the notes there for her are just textbook abuser stuff.

Mmm thinking about Liesel now. She’s a very calculating character clearly and she’s the one who most blatantly suggests that El isn’t quite a person. She admits to Aadhaya that the reason she has sex with El is because El is powerful enough that she could absolutely destroy the world, probably even without meaning to, and when someone is that powerful it’s important that she has people she cares for enough that they can pull her back from the ledge. It’s this really interesting in-between of acknowledging the personhood of El, of acknowledging her as someone with feelings and desires and someone who loves and cares, and also treating her as someone who needs to be managed, which would be way more insulting if it was anyone but Liesel. I’m not sure where I’m going with this, I just can’t stop wondering at how Liesel imagines El, if it’s all a means to an end for her and El is little more than a chess piece or if there is true acknowledgement of her as a person from the person who seems to have the greatest understanding of what exactly El is

still making excuses for oisin in my head btw just to keep you all updated