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goodluckclove · 1 month

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WIP Tag Game!

Whoa tagged again by the brilliant @ivaspinoza! Check her out if you're down for what I imagine to be some intense bloodsucking existentialism!

I'll do this for all of Songbird Elegies as a whole. I'm on book two right now - Blind Trust comes out June 20th!

Read below to hear some things about the origins of the series that I haven't actually said yet and probably won't say again.

1. What was the first part of your wip that you created?

Funny story! I hadn't written anything tangible for months since leaving my terrible copyrighting job. I was absolutely miserable. I ended up leaving my second job because of a medication problem and spent a week in bed detoxing off of Seroquel withdrawal - bad bad don't do that if you can help it. After that I fell into recovery and just had no idea what to do with my days.

The turning point was when I sent an email going fully no-contact with my across-the-board abusive parents. They did some awful things across the course of my life and I'm still spending a good chunk of time making up for their ridiculous medical neglect. I might need throat surgery because of them. Not great! But anyways, I sent that email and wrote the first 15 pages of Blind Trust later that day, sitting on the floor while my wife took a nap on the couch. It just came out. Wife said they liked it so I just kept going.

Three months and two data losses later and the first draft was done!

2. If your story was a TV show, what would the theme song/intro be?

I have so many Songbird Elegy playlists oh my God. It's hard to say, and the answer will change, but right now it's "Love Me, Normally" by Will Wood.

3. Who are your favourite characters you've made? Why?

They're all very important to me for different reasons. Scott is the one I tend to talk about the most because he captures a lot of mania and upbeat romanticism, qualities of myself that I value despite the obvious faults. Edgar is just as important, but they represent a lot of my current struggles and I'm doing a lot of healing and processing through them which is good but less - you know - fun?

Tenzin reminds me of my wife with her quiet stoicism. Katy reminds me of my older sister and everything she sacrificed to keep me and my siblings alive. She's more of a mother to me than my own mother. My sister is actually the first person to finish Blind Trust after I finished it.

4. What other pieces of media do you think would share a fan base for your story?

Disco Elysium maybe? Griffin and Sabine - has anyone else read that? The Witcher, but specifically the novels? Requiem for a Dream for later books. Tales of the City in terms of tone and character focus. Fleet Foxes and Hoizer and early Decemberists?

Good, warm soup. If you like a bowl of good, warm soup, you will enjoy Songbird Elegies.

5. What has been your biggest struggle with your wip?

Definitely Edgar's arc. Their experience with their metaphorical (or are they??) inner child and the abuse they've been working to escape and recover from has been hard to look at directly. Especially once I introduced Scott's mother, who's turned into a weird mix of the maternal figure I wish I had and the one I feel I could've been if I chose that path.

Yesterday I found myself writing how I wish it went when my wife met my parents, through Scott and Edgar meeting Scott's mom. The sharing of parental pride and affection despite potential embarrassment. It's a cute scene, but there's a lot of grief in there for me. I wonder if it'll show.

6. Are there any animals in your story? Talk about them!

Wilford Brimley is Katy's pet Persian cat. He is old and weird and a little fucked up. I had to edit his introduction in Blind Trust because it was six (small) paragraphs and Wife told me that was unreasonable (skill issue), but I can include some canon info:

He shoves his paw under the bathroom door while people are in the bathroom

He likes feet

Edgar sometimes shares little bits of cheese with him

Once he fell asleep in Edgar's lap but then peed in his lap and just kept sleeping in the piss

Edgar treat him like a weird cousin he has to make conversation with during holidays

Wilford thinks he's his brother and an equally fucked up cat

7. How do your characters get around? (ex: trains, horses, cars, dragons, etc.)

Cars mostly! Edgar has a shitty used car that's always close to breaking down. Katy has a newer car that's still used, but she takes very good care of it - I think it's a Fiat. I think Tenzin probably uses the car Scott's Dad left behind after he died, which is a vintage Cadillac convertible that Scott's Mom fixed up.

Scott is the only one without a license since he essentially has a magical dissociative disorder and hasn't yet felt safe behind the wheel. In Blind Trust he's taken every form of public transit to cross the country. I think when he was younger he used to skateboard to get around Bluerose.

8. What part of your wip are you working on rn?

I'm close to 40k into book two!

9. What aspects (tropes, maybe?) of your wip do you think will draw people in?

I have hopes that people will enjoy the tenderness of it. I'm like a reverse-whump ace writer, in that I've written a series that's aggressively pro-comfort and recovery. People start off in pretty sorry states and then make the difficult effort to put themselves and each other back together.

There's explicit ace representation in Scott and aroace rep in Katy (she doesn't know it yet though shhh). Edgar comes out as Agender and changes pronouns midway into the series, but still keeps presenting as androgynous/masc leaning. There's diversity in body types and gender identities in a way that feels warranted to me - Scott has Klinefelter's and grew up taking T, and he made a best friend that came out so she could take her E with him. Same goes with disabilities in prominent characters, though the main four focus on what I have personal experience in.

As a disabled queer writer I hope to make a series that tells a fantastical story about people like me that doesn't pander specifically to my market.

10. What are your hopes for your wip?

I hope people read it. I hope they like it. It'd be cool if I could talk to people about it. I've been pretty deep in the Songbird Elegy fandom for some time now haha.

On a more serious note I hope there's a market for non-sexualized romances that are still hyper intimate. I know I'm into it but I'm still not sure if other people are. I'd like to create more media about positive and fulfilling ace relationships, both romantic and platonic. I'm tired of people seeing that type of life as a loss. Any healthy companionship is not a loss.

I want people to read Songbird Elegies and think about the love in their lives and in themselves. All of it, in every way. Yeah.

I tag @ryns-ramblings! I wanna hear about your thing!

#writers on tumblr #writeblr #writing community #blind trust #writing #on writing #migration patterns #queer writers #agender #asexuality #songbird elegies #authors of tumblr

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abyssalcreator21 · 11 months

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Adulting Thoughts # 3

It has been a while since I wrote an entry on my blog. A lot of things had happened during the month and I had been for a social media detox for two straight weeks already. Time is just fast anyways but somehow it's just sucks to wait for too long for graduation. Still one month to go and I'm itching to get my diploma. Most of the time, I just play mobile games, watch movies with my girlfriend, or even sleep a lot ever since I'm done with my studies and a got a good grade from it. Now, I am waiting for two interviews that i have tried to apply on and wait for their response for an interview. I'm just keeping my contacts open, but Facebook, it has been two to three weeks already since I deactivated my account because of private reasons. I have been just this reserved person in my home that I don't have any updates in how are the people I knew from online are doing. Yeah, after two to three weeks, I've learned just in this little scope of time. First, trust only a few people that you want to be close with, and second, you don't have to publicize your life on social media, because once it backbites you, you'll get traumatized of going back. Being distressed to whatever shit you have experienced online. I get that right now because it had happened to me and honestly, it drives me now to be off-grid. I just instantly gone from being publicly present online to becoming a ghost in the social media scene. It takes for a while for me to recover from the karma I received from what I have done. Now, I'm better at least but somehow the humiliation has given me the wake-up call to leave the community I thought I am blending well already, but in a matter of seconds, it gets ruined by a simple mistake and honestly it leaves a bad taste in my mouth being talked all over a group chat and it leaves a permanent reminder in me that I don't have to be friendly with anyone. I could blend in but I need to be more vigilant to whom I wanted to be part of my inner circle. I'd still have my friends with me that constantly updates of how I am doing and we haven't bonded that much since they are also busy with their individual lives. Now, I'm just here at home waiting for updates about graduation. I'd still have a long way for self-improvement and to be honest, it's quite hard to adjust yet but I'm just working on it. As my uncle said, move on with my life and leave anything toxic behind. Well, I like it anyway that I am invisible again. I don't like to give a fuck anyway to other people's comments about me of what I have did. I know my mistakes, it's just draining to deal with it that I have to fix my reputation or build a redemption arc. Fuck it. I'll simply leave and never go back again. I'm fine anyways of protecting my peace now. I wanna maintain this after all for the rest of my life. Having my personal privacy being protected and never be present again in social media.

#creative writing #blogs

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rappaccini · 3 years

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Sorry i'll rephrase. What do you think an ideal Season 3 would look like for TUA if you were to write it?

well,

first of all, damage control, damage control, damage control.

season 2 shat the bed hard with basically everyone but five’s character arcs, so Perfect World Season 3 needs to do the legwork of bringing that shit back.

so aside from all this shit, in terms of character arcs.

luther

needs to regain his leadership role. give him his dignity back, and send him on an arc that disillusions him on reg’s shit for good. s3 needs to be The Luther Season, in terms of who gets the greatest, most impactful, transformative development.

diego

needs to let go of his ego. he needs to come to terms with his leadership complex and where it actually comes from, and how the only reason why he has this rivalry with diego is because they were pitted against each other by their father. he needs to come to terms with how he genuinely isn’t a good leader, and is better off as a number two.

allison

claire is dead. she should not exist in this timeline, and since there’s nothing allison can do to get her back, since this is a world with only one timeline (....k) and the changes to that timeline negated her own existence, there’s no way to go back and stop herself from stopping it.

ergo, claire died. she burned alive in the apocalypse and she’s not coming back.

let her actually mourn her, and reflect on how she wasn’t a good parent to her. on the selfish, shitty person she once was, and how much she’s grown from that. and on how now that she’s finally ready to be in claire’s life, she can’t ever again.

and since vanya is more or less the cause of claire’s death... have allison turn on her. she’s angry and sad and grief-stricken, and she needs someone to blame. so let her blame vanya for a while.

klaus

relapsed, is back on drugs and alcohol, and essentially just lost his life partner and then learned after the fact that said partner loved him so much that he wouldn’t go into the light just to be with him.

klaus needs to go on a fucking bender to end all benders. he needs to hit rock bottom, get angry and shitty, and then claw his way up out of it. probably by being the only one who can get through to new-ben.

five

spent two straight seasons sprinting around, panickedly trying to save the world all on his own. put him in a situation he can’t get out of, and watch him squirm. force him to stay put and put him in a place of vulnerability, so someone else can help him for a change. and have the man who’s worried that he’s just a weapon, who is exhausted by killing and wants to be done with it, and just saw his family die in front of him three times... actually be affected by that trauma.

ben

is now a completely different person... or possibly not, since blackman’s been a real invertebrate on that little story point. since killing ben off was fucking stupid, in Perfect World Season 3, that’ll be retconned with new-ben getting the memories of his elseworld counterpart. so over the course of the season, he becomes disillusioned with reginald and the sparrows, and comes to care for the umbrellas and develop feelings for klaus. and at season’s end, he makes the choice to either leave with them back to their og dimension (if the show’s going to retcon a multiverse) or simply desert the sparrows for them.

vanya

all of vanya’s memories are newly back. her personality is back and so is all that trauma and anger she’d suppressed. let her deal with it. let her vent her anger at the family, actually spend some fucking time on the dark side, and come to a sort of catharsis about who she is and what she wants from the family. let her be single for a season so she can detox from all her shitty romance and figure her shit out. and let her be an actual person instead of a season-long Very Special Episode about why straight people shouldn’t feel icky about queer people.

so, what season two didn’t do.

the sparrows

since we’d be running into Too Many Characters Syndrome, the most i’d want from them is for them to be character foils to the hargreeves. allison is the mirror of carla, so give one to everyone.

luther needs someone who’s going to force him to rise to the occasion and become the leader he never got to be. so he needs to see a one that inflames all those inadequacy issues in him.

diego needs to see a number two who is as ruthless as he thought he wanted to be, so he can realize he doesn’t want that.

allison needs to face off against carla, and deal with all the demons associated with her powers. specifically, make carla unrepentently manipulative and awful, to contrast allison’s guilt and desire to do better.

klaus needs to deal with someone just as self-destructive as he is, to understand the path he’s about to go down.

five needs to face off against someone as ambitious and flighty as him.

and vanya needs to deal with her own profound loneliness and intense repressed anger-- give her a sparrow with a similar level of incredible power, who never struggled with it or was mistreated for it, to be pissed at.

lila

tbh she can just not come back. just say ~oh, looks like changing the timeline into one where five never gets adopted by reginald means that five never joined the commission, so he never killed her parents, so she grew up in london a happy well-adjusted girl better off for having never known the hargreeves~ because honest to god that’s what should logically happen.

but okay if she does come back, make her a villain. it’s the only way she can function in the team. as a solo character she has no power, as a member of a team she’s redundant because someone can always do something better than her. and within the bounds of s3, she’s honestly the best candidate for a john perseus analog

john perseus, for non-comic readers, is a foil to the hargreeves who breaks the inmates of hotel oblivion out in a revenge quest. he is the abused only child of a same-sex parent who he idolizes despite being harmed by them, who is a corporate shill, who is full of hate and fear towards the umbrellas for getting his parent killed. see what i’m getting at? lila’s the genderbent version of him. so carry through with that.

or have her killed early on by the sparrows, like hazel was killed in s2. a way to establish them as a Big Threat that the family will want to defeat.

it sucks, but it’s a way to quickly and cleanly get this shit over with, and they’ve really written themselves into a corner with her, so... snip snip. if you’re so inclined.

as for the plot i want, well...

first off, we need to see the sparrow academy absolutely beat the umbrella academy’s ass. we need to see the sparrows be the perfectly-oiled machine that the umbrellas aren’t.

this is a problem bc s2 blew its load on a ‘look! the family fighting together as a team!’ sequence in the first five minutes when that sequence itself was not and still is not earned. but we’re gonna assume Perfect World Season 3 does what s2 did and totally ignores the season that came before it.

so, the hargs will be a dysfunctional, underwhelming team, while the sparrows will be perfect together.

add to that: we need to bring that vanya v umbrellas tension back. it was a bad idea to quickly shove that under the rug for hollow ~sibling moments~ so fuck you, it’s back.

namely: the umbrellas know how to fight. they’ve been in these situations before, so while they’re rusty and can’t work together worth shit, they generally get how it works.

vanya never has. even in 210 she mostly stays back out of the way, or just blindly blasts with her powers. she’s never done this before, and as a result, is a liability.

now, i’m gonna tangent to tinfoil hat the sparrows’ coat of arms.

aside from the sparrow and the crossed swords (so: their emblem and an indication that they’re more combative) and the latin phrase translating to ‘song in the dark,’ there are two relevant elements here that i’m gonna tinfoil hat the shit out of.

the first is an eye, shedding a bloody tear, with a cross symbol in the pupil (which is also a motif elsewhere in the crest).

now, that symbol appears in the comics in conjunction with the sparrows.

and it’s placement in the pupil of an eye, plus the presumed existence of carla (i’ll get to her), means that someone should be getting brainwashed. it just feels right.

so. that person who is brainwashed must be vanya.

it’s a perfect way to fix the little ‘uh oh vanya’s perfect at her powers now, is on great terms with the family, and can literally fix the plot in one second’ problem s2 gave us. and it’s a perfect way to let vanya actually deal with the angry, bitter emotions her newly-restored memories resurfaced in her. she hasn’t actually excised them yet. all that pain is still Right There and hasn’t been reconciled. time to do that.

specifically, in the middle of the chaotic ua versus sa smackdown, have vanya, who can’t risk using her power without hurting her family by mistake and therefore won’t do it, scramble out of the way, or even be parked somewhere in the house by the family, who are annoyed that she’s a liability.

and vanya, upset about being left out, worried about their safety and jealous that they get to be badasses while she’s being shelved, tries to rejoin the battle.

that’s where carla comes in.

first off, in the comics (above), there are seven sparrows, mostly female. four women, two men, and a cube with an indeterminate gender.

in the show, they kinda forgot that. two women, four men, one cube. thanks steve.

so. one of those female sparrows must be carla.

carla, the only sparrow we have a canon name for (except i guess in showverse there’s also ben?), is sent to recruit vanya in particular in the comics. she seems to have a power akin to allison’s, wherein she can influence reality with voice commands. however in her case, the trigger phrase is i don’t believe you, and she can only make the opposite of what someone else says come true (think of it like this: allison’s power is coercion through force of will, and carla’s is gaslighting).

so. say vanya stumbles out into the fight, and ends up starting a conversation with either carla or reginald. or both. a conversation wherein he says he wants her to join him.

(think: when he meets the siblings, she's the only one who's competent and not acting like a dumbass, and is insanely powerful. he'd want her on his side, if possible).

she says she won't, and then carla slips in and says "i don't believe you."

and vanya turns on the family, and defeats them.

i direct your attention again to the coat of arms. to the second relevant element: a lock. which i’m going to assume alludes to a prison. so, hotel oblivion. because hotel oblivion is the third arc in the series and it’s ridiculous to skip it.

so, the hargreeves siblings are sent to hotel oblivion, which, in showverse, will be placed on the moon, because s2 has reginald mention He Has Business On The Dark Side Of The Moon, and more importantly, it’s thematically relevant to luther’s arc that they be sent there. he needs to reenact his imprisonment for a second time, this time knowing that reginald sent him there to get rid of him.

(+ with covid concerns, a hotel set is much cheaper, with fewer extras, total control of who comes and goes, and is easier to clean).

add onto that: reginald keeps five around. because reginald knows how dangerously smart he is, and that he's the biggest threat.

and because what goes up must come down, and five needs to break. and the best way to do that is to be, say, drugged or given a shock collar or some shit to keep him in line and humbled, assuming he isn’t completely psychologically fucked over and convinced he has to join the sa.

now without an apocalypse to stop, and with a desire to avoid killing, he's quite vulnerable. take advantage of that. have reginald break him down with a conversation, play into his guilt, and try to turn him to the sparrows, because if five can be turned, he's an incredible asset.

and, with the others in hotel oblivion, there's blackmail: try and wiggle your way out of this one, and your family gets it.

so we have, say, five and vanya with the sparrows in varying degrees of captivity, with 1-4 trapped in hotel oblivion; it'd be a nice chance to see THEM be the ones to take the initiative and rescue five and vanya for a change.

so essentially we split the season into two bits:

1. the house, with five, vanya, ben and the sparrows.

i want to see, say, not-ben interacting with five and vanya, trying to turn them to his side, and them ending up convincing him to flip, as old-ben’s memories start to stir in him and he starts to lose faith in reginald and the sparrows.

and vanya reacting to being in a family that desperately wants her and adores her, and treats her as the Most Special, as she grapples with that trauma that's newly awakened: does she actually want to be with the umbrellas again after all this pain, or does she want to start fresh, with everything she’s ever wanted on a silver platter before her?

and five, finally in a situation where he genuinely cannot run off, having to dig his heels into the dirt and figure out what to do as all that ptsd hits.

and, vanya getting actual training. let her, you know... struggle to control her power, tua. it’s okay to let the women have flaws.

and, vanya and five, back in the place where all their childhood trauma occurred, rekindling that childhood codependency that helped them both survive it the first time around, while also dealing with the baggage of how much damage they inflicted on each other.

the crux of the arc: as vanya’s brainwashing wears off and she realizes that she does love her family and want to start over with them, and that the umbrellas’ way of life wasn’t all the fun and glamour she’d thought it was, five has to grapple with his worries about being a bad person, and ben starts to come back to himself.

2. hotel oblivion, with luther, diego, klaus and allison.

pair luther and diego off. make diego let go of his leadership obsession and embrace being a number two, as luther has his put to the test, and gets his mojo back as leader. have diego, who’s just let go of his anger, be there to guide luther through his own breakdown as the Moon Trauma combines with total disillusionment with reg and the realization of what hotel oblivion even is-- a fucked up prison that never should have existed.

pair klaus and allison off. aside from them having a great vibe, they have addictive personalities that they enable in one another, and they both just lost someone they love. send them on a wild fucking bender together, and have them prop each other up; klaus, being a literal medium, is the right person to help allison weather her loss. allison, being a fellow ‘addict’ who broke free of her compulsion before, is the right person to help klaus get over his addiction.

another thing i’m thinking of is: what happened to the versions of them from this timeline who were never adopted?

a) reginald had them killed because they’d have been Too Dangerous in his mind to be allowed to live.

b) reginald had them locked up in hotel oblivion. if it’s b, have the umbrellas literally meet their shadow selves in a metaphorical hell. so either the umbrellas defeat them, and symbolically conquer their worst fears about themselves. or, have them work together with them to experience some kind of catharsis. an acceptance and embrace of the worst parts of themselves.

and regardless, have the crux of the hotel arc be luther making the choice to set all the prisoners of hotel oblivion, their old bad guys, free, and lead them down to earth to save five and vanya from the sparrows.

if lila’s here, have her join the sparrows as ben defects. have her run the team into the ground because she’s hungry to use their powers and has no idea what the hell she’s getting herself into, but is so desperate for revenge that she doesn’t care. if not, no biggie.

the ending.

new-ben lives and joins the umbrella academy, probably after klaus gets through to him. sorry to lila, but she cannot replace him as number six. fuck right off with that.

i don’t really mind if the sparrows live or die. they’d probably die bc Too Many New Characters have been proven to fuck tua up. and if they die, we just take that foil allegory i mentioned way up this post, and have the hargreeves, who’ve grown and learned over the course of the season, be finally able to defeat the darker versions of themselves.

(oh, also, allison and luther stay a couple. ben and klaus get together. no romance for vanya because she needs to go through that arc she needed in s2 but didn’t get because of a fucking relationship)

#asks #tua s3 spec

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sunmaylight · 3 years

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TGCF Book 3 Reaction pt.5 - Adventures before Mt. Tonglu, the REDUX

*Sigh* Tumblr crashed at the worst timing. I have to do this all over again. Or at least make a quick abridge version.

I’m just going to try my best, *sigh*

Anyways. Lots of stuff happening before Mount Tonglu opens that it should deserve it’s own post or two considering that there are like five things happening in there or something and like over twenty Hualian moments highlighted in pastel pink. Can’t wait to continue from my last post to this. Cause the ending of that post of the Wind & Water Masters Arc has me realing at times.

QYZ and Xie Lian have go on a mission. They hav to find the Brocade Immortal Robe. But first a short break at Puqi shrine and Lang Ying.

Ch 129: Everywhere Xie Lian looks, he is reminded of Hua Cheng

- Me: Dang. Xie Lian has it bad. He is missing Hua Cheng like a housewife waiting for husband to get home.

Lang Ying: *Eats Xie Lian’s cooking like it’s nothing, helps around the house, basically doing all of the tasks Hua Cheng usually does.*

Xie Lian: I’m going to take a bath

Lang Ying: *Enters and sees a half naked Xie Lian. Runs away. Come back to take away QYZ and runs away again.*

- Me: Oh, so Hua Cheng did switch places with Lang Ying. ((My son! Hua Cheng, why?!))

Ch 130: QYZ’s backstory is revealed.

- Me: Why does that sound familiar? Is it because of the story from the Lantern Festival? Some reference to another book read?

QYZ’s story reveals that a Heavenly Official named Yin Yu was banished

- Me: *gasp* Wait. Is Yin Yu the banished Heavenly Official that Xie Lian saw working for Hua Cheng?

Golden Step-Litter appears to give Xie Lian a ride to somewhere. QYZ sees the Step-Litter like it’s the coolest thing he has ever seen. QYZ wants to ride it, but was pushed off. Xie Lian almost got pushed off, but ‘Lang Ying’ caught him.

- Me: Dang, cause I know who ‘Lang Ying’ is, it feels so sad when Xie Lian was going to call for ‘San Lang’, but it ended up as ‘San- Lang Ying’

QYZ is so chaotic. Does he have ADHD? I feel like he has ADHD and/or some levels of Autism. Though I don’t know cause I’m no expert.

QYZ does something reckless without thinking. Xie Lian, mother hens him and convinces him to stop

- Me: QYZ and Xie Lian reminds me of that one D:BH comic with QYZ as baby Connor trying to put everything in his mouth and Xie Lian is Hank, trying to stop him.

Yin Yu(?) does a good job, looks like he will pass out.

- Me: Yin Yu(?) looks like he needs a vacation and more pay.

The robes move and circle around the two Heavenly Officials

- Me: This reminds me of that one clothing commercial where the outfits were chasing this group of people. Once cornered, they changed the group of people’s outfits.

Xie Lian is the person who grabs the one cursed article of clothing from the donations box out of any other clothing.

- Me: *sob* book. Please stop reminding me of Xie Lian’s E Rank (Cursed) Luck. He needs that curse removed. Please.

Ace Attorney Xie Lian strikes again. Target: Ling Wen

QYZ has taken a liking towards Xie Lian. Like a puppy who follows you home after you give it some food and head pats. He behaves like a young boy from a shounen slice of life anime or a kid with ADHD.

- Me: QYZ, what a person

Xie Lian asks Lang Ying some casual questions. Makes it seem as though nothing is wrong.

- Me: gasp is this when Xie Lian will pull a question like “So, how have you enjoyed everything so far these past few days San Lang?” ‘Lang Ying’: “It could have been better if these Heavenly Officials left you alone Ge...ge....oh.”

Xie Lian corners ‘Lang Ying’ with calligraphy writing until the boy had no choice but to confess he is Hua Cheng

- Me: Now that is smart. Played Hua Cheng like a fiddle somewhat.

Ch 134: Xie Lian: After meeting you, I remember how to be happy again

- Me: QAQ

Xie Lian made homemade meatballs. QYZ eats one and passes out.

- Me: Oh god. Xie Lian. Do you know someone named Bianchi from KHR? I feel like if you two were to meet, you will be knowledgeable in Poison Cooking

Heaven’s Eye to Xie Lian: You! Your lips are tainted. You have kissed evil.

Xie Lian: *sweats* N-no. I haven’t.

Hua Cheng: *Looks at Xie Lian suspiciously*

- Me: ohohoh, Alright Xie Lian. You say that

Xie Lian lies to cover up his status, but his lies crash down on him and harm his reputation with Puqi village.

Puqi Shrine takes hits from two Heavenly Official’s fighting and 40-50 Cultivators striking down it’s door. Puqi shrine, collapse

- Me: Farewell Puqi Shrine. You have served Xie Lian so well.

Xie Lian: Stands straighter, and has a certain expression on his face

- Me: oh, will he finally snap now?

Xie Lian: Yells at the Cultivators. Then weaponizes his homemade meatballs into a poison that can only be detoxed by drinking 80 cups of water

- Me: Xie Lian, are you trying to kill them? You are basically joking that if they drink over a week’s worth of water, they will be ‘cured’. No, what is most likely going to happen is that they will die from too much water consumption.

Xie Lian: Reporting what happened about Ling Wen to Ling Wen.

Xie Lian: *realization*.....oh.

- Me: (QAQ) Now Xie Lian’s group of people he knows in Heaven shrinks again. The amount of people he was close too was really small, after SQX, I think Ling Wen was next. Now who will fill that gap?

Ch 136: Hua Cheng transformed into Hong Hong-Er’s age. Xie Lian: *pinches cheeks*

- Me: Aww. So cute.

Hua Cheng: With Mount Tonglu opening, He Xuan is hibernating

- Me: Black Water =?= Black Bear

Ch 137: Xie Lian crossdress again for safety

- Oh, now that outfit is better on Xie Lian than the last time he had to crossdress.

Random Food Stall owner, gives up on life after his stall is ruined

- Me: Cabbage guy: “MY CABBAGES!”

On the run, Xie Lian and Hua Cheng enters an inn run by Ghosts. They hide in the second floor and the group of Cultivators follow soon after.

- Jeez, I wonder who they could be.

The comedic skit of the Cultivators & Heaven’s Eye dodging from eating Ghost Food just because of their harsh criticism over the dirty dishes.

- Me: Will they fall for it, dang it, they did not.

Ghost lady: oh yeah. We have some suspicious guests on the second floor. Guests on the second floor: Why do I/we feel like we’ve been ratted out?

----

Okay. Going to stop here. Because I’m tired and still a bit salty that my og post was lost. However, I did go farther with this one than the og post. So that’s something at least.

Next time is more of the Inn, some Mount Tonglu entrance exam thing, and possibly a bit of Mount Tonglu...hopefully? Otherwise, I think I will split Mount Tonglu into three separate cause a lot happens in there, more than the Wind & Water Master’s arc.

#sunmay rambles #sunmay reads tgcf #sunmay reads tian guan cifu #sunmay reads hob #sunmay reads heaven official's blessing #tgcf #hob #tian guan ci fu #heaven official's blessing #hob spoiler #tgcf spoilers #tgcf spoiler #okay but #This really does have some sad moments in it that Xie Lian doesn't register because of how long he has been traveling #There are also some light hearted moments that I enjoy from here as well

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kneworder · 3 years

Text

idk if this is relevant at all but I’ve monologued about this in the tags of two (2) posts so it’s time I finally publish my old rage-and-sleep-deprivation-induced essay about how much I hate the Mark of Cain arc. MoC is a poorly written rehashing of the demon blood arc from season 4. The motivations and the methods are practically the same, yet the character buildup is absolutely not there for MoC.

When Sam drinks demon blood, it harkens back to season 2, when he discovered his demonic origins, or even season 1, when he first discovered their effects. The demon blood amplifies the caustic nature we saw in the first season in his relationship with his father. It makes him a slave to addiction, yes, but the addiction isn’t just to the blood itself. It’s also to the power it gives him, the ability to be stronger and more independent, a motivation he’s had since pre-canon. Sam’s need for demon blood goes beyond substance abuse, it falls in line with what he is – ‘the boy with the demon blood’ – and who he is – someone who wants to help people as best he can, someone who needs to be independent, someone who constantly feels powerless and takes any opportunity to change that. The motivation, the arc, fits the character, first and foremost.

Dean’s Mark of Cain arc is first and foremost a plot point. The Mark does not arise from any kind of early season motivation, it shows up because the show needed a solution to Abbadon. While Dean has been shown to contend with sadism throughout the show, especially after returning from hell in season three, that’s not why he chooses to take the Mark. Dean takes it on because he has no other choice: there is no other way to kill Abbadon. He keeps it because there is no way to get rid of the Mark of Cain. He doesn’t really choose to take it on at all, he’s just written into a corner and forced to do so.

When Sam drinks demon blood, it is a conscious choice. He could have continued without chasing after Lilith, or found another way to do so, but he chooses demon blood because it is easy, effective, and accessible. This gives Sam’s actions a more guilty tinge: he put himself in this situation, while Dean chose the Mark nobly. Sam wants to keep his power, while Dean only wants the Mark for as long as it takes to kill Abbadon.

These small differences mean the world: they turn Dean into a paragon of virtue, a noble hero, while they turn Sam human. Dean’s Mark arc is of him transforming into an unrecognizable monster while Sam’s demon blood arc amplifies what was already there, making the monster he’s becoming eerily familiar.

The motivation is similar: kill the big-bad. The story is almost identical: turn to addictive thing to kill bad thing, get overwhelmed by addictive thing. The key difference is character: the rehashed plot shows a similar story with none of the buildup, planting motivations in a character without tying them directly to their identity. I’m not saying an plot point has to be perfectly relevant to a character, but I am saying it’s much better written when it is.

Looking back from my present perspective (I haven’t seen season 9 in years but I still have a strong opinion), these two arcs are also extremely frustrating in their treatment of Sam. Demon blood, for all Dean’s insistence that it’s turning Sam into a monster, is extremely effective. How do you argue with the possession victims Sam is able to keep alive by taking out demons without the knife? And Dean wanted to kill Lilith too! Even if Sam was manipulated into using his powers to do it, he’s still achieving the goal they set out to reach! Why is it that causing the apocalypse by doing exactly what Dean also wanted to do, even if it’s through abhorrent methods, entirely Sam’s fault? They pin the apocalypse on him, yet seem to forget that everyone was down for breaking the final seal — it was just Sam who pulled the trigger.

The consequences that Dean faces — becoming a demon, bloodthirstiness, etc — are ultimately the most impactful to him and those around him. It’s an act of self-sacrifice. The consequences that Sam faces are impactful to the entire world. Thus, Dean is overcome by something he had no power to fight and is a tragic hero while Sam, undergoing an extremely similar arc, is the villain of that story.

idk y’all I don’t want to start a fight here, I just hate MoC so much and I miss early seasons Sam with every fiber of my being.

(also is anyone gonna explain to me why the MoC was their only option when Sam’s cool demon powers were Right There? they really went ‘oh letting Sam go back to that shit that basically turns him into a demon god for a time? no no no we need Dean to take on this IMPOSSIBLE TO GET RID OF BRAND that will LITERALLY TURN HIM EVIL’

like I’d understand if they said ‘demon blood detox + post cage Sam would literally destroy him’ or ‘Sam hasn’t even thought about his powers in years and they wouldn’t work against Abbadon’ but instead they just. gave Dean shitty DemonBloodLite and didn’t acknowledge that Sam was Right There)

#god this is INCOHERENT #me trying to patch together my past rational hatred for bad writing with my present extremely biased hatred for the MoC #please I don’t want to argue about this with anyone it’s just been living in my mind for so long I want it to pay rent #all the Sam stans on my dash are giving me the strength to put an end to my tag vagueing #supernatural #supernatural negativity #sam winchester #dean winchester #mark of cain #demon blood

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annecoulmanross · 4 years

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The premise: AMC’s The Terror (2018) is almost perfectly set up to be a structured as a classical Greek tragedy, or, ideally, a series of three tragedies.

Three requirements of a classical Greek tragedy:

The play is performed by only three actors and a chorus.

The three actors perform all of the dialogue roles between them.

All of the action of the play takes place on a single day (in the space of no more than twenty-four hours), and always in the same physical place.

Obviously this last requirement is the hardest to achieve with the events of the show sprawling over two years or more, but with a trilogy of three tragedies, you could narrow the action down to three key days: (1) Franklin’s death, (2) Carnevale, and (3) The day the mutineers lure the Tuunbaq and everyone but Crozier dies. I could focus on the structural elements that would allow for these three days of “action” but I’m more interested in the implications of the first two requirements: basically, can you stage a version of The Terror with only three actors? The answer is that – barring action sequences which would never be staged in a Greek tragedy anyway, because all true action happens off-stage – yes, yes you can. So, let’s talk about logistics.

Core Casting Divisions:

ACTOR 1 = Franklin (also: Goodsir, Blanky, Little, Bridgens, Tozer, etc.)

ACTOR 2 = Fitzjames (also: Lady Silence, Hickey, Jopson, Peglar, Stanley, etc.)

ACTOR 3 = Crozier (also: Collins, MacDonald, Hodgson, Gibson, etc.)

Beneath the cut: how this casting breaks down, scene by scene; and the implications of these casting divisions, complete with a lot of rambling thoughts about – among other things – gender, masculinity, and (amusingly) Rome.

(Also, I want to thank my dear friends, fellow terror-classicists, and everyone who has so patiently talked terror-meta and terror-thoughts with me, including, but in no way limited to, @kaserl, @catilinas, @rhavewellyarnbag, @paramaline, and @endofvanity – your wonderful thoughts about this show have been enormously helpful as I’ve played with the narrative mechanics here!)

Casting, Scene-by-Scene

A basic outlay of all major dialogue scenes in every episode (a “major dialogue scene” is a scene with more than one character, minus “fight scenes” because action never happens on stage in a Greek tragedy), with the roles of the three actors listed in 1-2-3 order, and an “x” to mark when an actor doesn’t appear in a scene.

01x01 – “Go for Broke”

Franklin – Fitzjames – Collins [Discussing the ice]

Blanky – x – Crozier [Crozier complains, part 1]

x – Jopson – Crozier [Crozier complains, part 2]

Strong – Hickey – Young [Young’s illness revealed]

Franklin – Fitzjames – Crozier [Fitzjames’ storytelling]

Goodsir – Stanley – Young [Treating Young’s illness]

Franklin – Fitzjames – Collins [Collins’s dive]

Goodsir – Stanley – Young [Young’s autopsy]

Franklin – Fitzjames – Crozier [Franklin’s decision]

Tozer – Hickey – Manson [Burying Young]

Franklin – Fitzjames – Gore [The pack has arrived]

(Notes: This is an incredibly cleanly written episode, and the casting is correspondingly clean. Franklin and Fitzjames almost always appear together, as do Goodsir and Stanley; both pairs are “leader and subordinate,” but the roles shift, with Actor 1 as Franklin and Goodsir, and Actor 2 as Fitzjames and Stanley. Actor 3, meanwhile, plays three characters with foresight: Crozier, who foretells the pack ice through his knowledge and by listening to Blanky; and Collins and Young, through their more supernatural visions.)

01x02 – “Gore”

Franklin – Fitzjames – Gregory [Checking the engine]

Bridgens – Peglar – x [“Here comes the lending library”]

Franklin – Fitzjames – Gore [Gore’s sledge party departs]

Goodsir – Peglar – Gore [Gore’s sledge party]

Franklin – Fitzjames – Crozier [“Repairing bonds”]

Irving – Hickey – Gibson [Irving’s discovery]

Franklin – Fitzjames – Hodgson [Hodgson’s sledge party returns]

Blanky – x – Crozier [Remembering Parry’s expedition]

Irving – Hickey – Crozier [A shared drink]

Goodsir – Lady Silence – Crozier [The death of Silence’s father]

Goodsir – Fitzjames – Crozier [Goodsir explains how Gore died]

Franklin – Fitzjames – Crozier [Franklin discusses how Gore died]

Blanky – Lady Silence – Crozier [Lady Silence’s warning]

(Notes: As the show adds complexity, so does the casting. Irving appears as a new role for Actor 1, paralleling Franklin in his religiosity; Gibson appears as a new role for Actor 3, paralleling Crozier in being a person with whom Hickey.... uh, flirts.)

01x03 – “The Ladder”

Hartnell – Morfin – Weekes [Preparing Lady Silence’s father, part 1]

Goodsir – Morfin – Weekes [Preparing Lady Silence’s father, part 2]

Hartnell – Lady Silence – Hodgson [Returning the totems to Lady Silence]

Goodsir – x – Des Voeux [“Burying” Lady Silence’s father]

Little – Jopson – Crozier [Little’s worries about the Inuit]

Irving – Hickey – Gibson [Gibson asks for Irving’s counsel]

Franklin – Fitzjames – Crozier [The sledge rescue party proposal]

Blanky – x – Crozier [Crozier’s mutiny plan]

Irving – Hickey – x [Irving’s warning]

x – Hickey – Gibson [The break-up]

(Note: The sequence in the hunting blind is nigh-impossible within this casting, since it features predominantly three separate characters all played by Actor 1 – Franklin, Goodsir, and Tozer. Imagined poetically, one could say that this is an omen of the violence so soon to come in the physical space of the hunting blind, since violence cannot be depicted on stage in a Greek tragedy. Conceived practically, one might argue that this is because the hunting blind is a hotbed of toxic masculinity, where the masculine Tozer baits the patriarchal Franklin into remaining with the marines, and teases Goodsir for his “feminine” caution.)

Franklin – Fitzjames – Crozier [The death of Franklin]

Chambers – Morfin – Weekes [“Silver swan”]

Blanky – Fitzjames – Crozier [“It’s technically not mutiny if I’m in charge”]

(Notes: This episode mainly functions to round out the first third of the show’s narrative, so the main parallels are familiar. We do, however, have a range of important sequences featuring the new-to-us characters Morfin and Weekes; we begin to get to know more of the men, rather than just officers. Morfin is played by Actor 2, which could be evidence to argue that Morfin was once lashed was for sodomy – cf. “Actor 2,” below for more.)

01x04 – “Punished as a Boy”

x – Jopson – Crozier [“You hear everything, Jopson”]

x – Fitzjames – Crozier [“Does not one bring one’s habits to Terror?”]

Goodsir – Stanley – MacDonald [Tending to Heather]

Tozer – Hickey – x [The idea to kidnap Lady Silence develops]

Little – Fitzjames – Crozier [The plan to “get” Lady Silence develops]

Hartnell – Hickey – Crozier [Questioning the kidnappers]

Johnson – Hickey – Crozier [The lashing]

x – Hickey – MacDonald [After the lashing]

Goodsir – Morfin – x [Morfin’s headaches]

(Note: The scene “Morfin’s headaches” is really interesting to me, because it causes overlap problems all over the place: Morfin MUST be played by Actor 2, because his death scene must have Goodsir (1) and Crozier (3) in it, but Actor 2 also plays Fitzjames and Stanley, both of whom are also in this scene; this is the scene in which Fitzjames and Stanley have their one significant conversation, in fact, which it hurt me desperately to lose. I think there’s something in this scene about thwarted connections – Morfin reaching out to Goodsir, Stanley reaching out to Fitzjames – and that may be why it all tangles up here, why the casting system breaks down and fails here, as it does.)

Irving – x – Crozier [Men shifting to Erebus]

Goodsir – Lady Silence – Des Voeux [Feeding Lady Silence]

(Note: Goodsir sure does have a lot of scenes with Des Voeux in these early episodes. I’d never noticed this, and I’m not sure what to make of it.)

01x05 – “First Shot a Winner Lads”

Little – Fitzjames – x [Sending Lady Silence to Terror]

Goodsir – Stanley – Des Voeux [Goodsir asks leave to go to Terror]

x – Fitzjames – Collins [The requisition of spirits]

Goodsir – Hickey – x [Hickey’s wounds]

Little – x – Crozier [“How fares the raft of the Medusa?”]

(Note: Little and Blanky almost never interact, so the fact that they are both Actor 1 rarely causes problems. Losing Blanky in this scene is tragic, though, BUT this does create an interesting parallel between Crozier’s failure at being a mentor for Little, and MacDonald’s greater success(?) at being a mentor for Goodsir, below, since both are Actor 1 as mentee & Actor 3 as mentor scenes. )

Goodsir – Hickey – x [“Does that really work with anyone?”]

Goodsir – x – MacDonald [Doctors bonding over teeth exploding]

x – Hickey – Gibson [The proposal]

Irving – Hickey – Manson [Storing Hornby’s body]

Goodsir – Lady Silence – Crozier [Interviewing Lady Silence]

Blanky – Fitzjames – Crozier [The punch]

Blanky – Jopson – Crozier [Blanky’s amputation]

(Note: Jopson is holding Blanky’s hand during the amputation. That’s my justification for having him here. I just like it, that’s all.)

Little – Jopson – Crozier [Crozier’s detox plan]

(Note: Obviously, there are additional important people in the “Crozier’s detox plan” scene, and one is loath to ignore Fitzjames, for example. But this is the beginning of Jopson’s core arc, so he takes priority, and Little receiving Crozier’s gun is weighty.)

01x06 – “A Mercy”

Irving – Fitzjames – MacDonald [The provisions remaining]

Blanky – Fitzjames – x [The Fury Beach™ Scene]

x – Jopson – Crozier [Tending to Crozier, with Jopson’s backstory]

Hartnell – Hickey – x [Hartnell’s new charter]

Little – Fitzjames – x [Carnevale as a “last hurrah” before the walk-out]

x – Stanley – Collins [“Flurried thoughts”]

Bridgens – Peglar – x [Xenophon’s Anabasis]

Goodsir – Stanley – x [Goodsir’s discovery re: the tinned goods]

x – Jopson – Crozier [Going to Carnevale]

(Note: We’ve just had seven (7!) entire 2-person scenes of either (a) Actors 1 and 2, or (b) Actors 2 and 3, bouncing back and forth – this would keep Actor 2 very, VERY busy. Actor 2 also plays no less that five (5!) different characters in here, almost their entire core repertoire of Fitzjames, Hickey, Jopson, Stanley, and Peglar, omitting only Lady Silence, who will also show up later in this episode. There’s a lot more to be said here, but I’ll just note that we start and end with scenes of Jopson caring for Crozier – a classical ring structure – with Stanley failing to care for Collins placed at the center.)

Blanky – Jopson – Crozier [Crozier arrives at Carnevale]

x – Hickey – Des Voeux [“Unless you want that ripped off?”]

Little – Fitzjames – Crozier [Crozier’s speech at Carnevale]

Goodsir – Lady Silence – Crozier [Lady Silence returns]

x – Stanley – Crozier [The fire begins]

x – Hickey – MacDonald [MacDonald’s death]

Goodsir – Fitzjames – Crozier [After Carnevale]

01x07 – “Horrible from Supper”

x – Fitzjames – Crozier [What the men have packed]

Tozer – Hickey – Gibson [The mutiny plot begins]

Goodsir – Morfin – Collins [Morfin stumbles]

Blanky – Jopson – Crozier [Goodbye to Terror]

Goodsir – x – Collins [“Terrible from supper”]

Goodsir – x – Crozier [Goodsir wants hunting parties]

Tozer – Morfin – Crozier [Finding Fairholme’s fate]

(Note: For casting reasons, Fitzjames doesn’t appear here, though he’s very much present in the show’s version of the discovery of Fairholme’s remains. One might derive some AU scenarios for this (what if Fitzjames didn’t know about the destruction of Fairholme’s rescue party?) or one might contemplate what it means for Fitzjames to be present or not, when, notably, the numbers of how many men have died that Fitzjames writes on the Victory Point Note addendum in the next episode ONLY tally if Fitzjames forgets – or purposely omits – Fairholme and the men of his sledge party.)

x – Fitzjames – Crozier [The Hand Touch™ Scene]

Little – x – Crozier [“The men deserve every gold thing there is.” ]

(Note: Crozier and Little will have to also discuss Tozer’s recommendation to arm the men as a past event, since Tozer can’t be in this scene with Little already there, when they’re both Actor 1; more on this in the next episode.)

Goodsir – Morfin – Crozier [Morfin’s death]

Goodsir – Lady Silence – x [Goodsir gets comfort-cuddles]

Hartnell – Jopson – Crozier [Hartnell is a good boy.jpeg and so is Jopson]

Little – Jopson – Crozier [Jopson’s promotion]

Tozer – Hickey – Hodgson [Bringing Hodgson into the mutiny]

Irving – Hickey – Koveyook [Asking for help]

01x08 – “Terror Camp Clear”

x – Fitzjames – Crozier [Victory Point Note addendum]

(Note: The scene where Crozier questions Hodgson poses some problems, since both are Actor 3. The details may simply have to be elided into other scenes. This episode has several such issues, including, tragically, Hickey and Jopson’s scenes (Actor 2), and, unfortunately, Little and Tozer’s scenes (Actor 1). What this does show us is some new dynamics in the overlaps – Hickey and Jopson are Crozier’s “prodigal son” and the obedient elder son, respectively; Little and Tozer are what happens when leadership goes wrong, in two very different ways.)

Goodsir – Lady Silence – Crozier [Discussing Irving’s mutilation]

Little – Fitzjames – Crozier [Leaving Little in charge]

Bridgens – Peglar – Collins [Bridgens the doctor]

Blanky – Hickey – Crozier [Interrogation at the scene of the crime]

Goodsir – Lady Silence – x [Mourning friends]

Tozer – x – Des Voeux [Noises in the fog]

Little – x – Hodgson [Hodgson’s worries about the Inuit]

Blanky – Fitzjames – Crozier [Realizing the camp is armed]

Goodsir – Lady Silence – Crozier [Sending Lady Silence away to safety]

x – Hickey – Gibson [Mutiny planning]

Little – Fitzjames – Crozier [Arresting Hickey]

Little – Hickey – Crozier [The hanging]

Diggle – Hickey – Gibson [The mutiny sledge leaves]

Tozer – x – Collins [Collins’ death]

(Note: Even before Goodsir is kidnapped by the mutineers, like Penelope ambushed by the suitors, this episode gives us none of the Goodsir – Fitzjames – Crozier dynamic that stabilized the end of Carnevale; Bridgens has, in many ways, already taken over for Goodsir in becoming the “doctor” for the crew, and he will bloom into having two vitally important and devastating Bridgens – Fitzjames – Crozier scenes in the next episode. For now, Goodsir has three major scenes with Lady Silence: the last they will ever have together.)

01x09 – “The C the C the Open C”

Bridgens – Fitzjames – Crozier ["Blank pages now”]

x – Fitzjames – Crozier [“More than god loves them,” part 2]

Tozer – Hickey – Hodgson [Hodgson joins the mutiny]

x – Fitzjames – Crozier [Fitzjames falls]

x – Hickey – Hodgson [“Veal Cutlets Tomata”]

Goodsir – Hickey – Gibson [“(Tr)eating” Gibson]

Little – Jopson – Crozier [Little proposes leaving the sick behind]

(Note: The last time we saw these three together, it was Jopson’s promotion, and the time before that, it was “Crozier’s detox plan,” and Jopson was promising “I got you” to his captain; now it’s the other way around. Little acts as a pivot around which circumstances turn, rather than an agent in and of himself in many ways. Like fellow Actor 1 character Franklin, Little is thrust into a position of leadership for which he isn’t truly ready, and then his choices are slowly cut off from him – but where Franklin’s choices are cut off by fate, and the ice, Little’s are largely cut off by the opposition of others: first his captain, in vetoing the plan to leave the sick behind, and then by the men, in voting to leave the captain in Hickey’s clutches.)

Inuit Leader – Lady Silence – x [Not enough food to share]

Bridgens – Fitzjames – Crozier [The end]

Little – Golding – Crozier [The funeral]

Blanky – x – Crozier [Forks]

Bridgens – Peglar – x [“Can we sleep?”]

Tozer – Hickey – Armitage [Making mutiny camp]

Goodsir – Hickey – Hodgson [Feeding mutiny camp]

(Note: So technically Tozer is visibly in this scene, and Hodgson’s not, but in a Greek tragedy he would be visibly on stage, so I’m calling that fair play.)

Goodsir – x – Hodgson [Hodgson’s Eucharist monologue]

Tozer – Hickey – x [Tozer’s plan to return to the ships]

Bridgens – Peglar – x [The C the C the open C]

Tozer – Pilkington – Armitage [Discontented mutineers]

x – Jopson – Crozier [Foley’s cow]

Little – Golding – Crozier [A false report]

Hartnell – x – Crozier [“Go be with your brother now”]

Little – x – Crozier [“We will live”]

01x10 – “We Are Gone”

x – Hickey – Crozier [A Wednesday]

Little – x – Le Vesconte [A vote]

(Note: For you Dundy fans, this is literally the first time I’ve found a place for him; I could perhaps have gone back and put in the short “benjo” scene, but alas, some things aren’t meant to be – the primary people listening to that announcement are Hickey (2) and Gibson (3) and Le Vesconte clearly can’t be Actor 1, since this, his star scene, is with Little (1). Dundy really does come out of nowhere, narratively speaking, even more so than Hodgson in many ways.)

Goodsir – x – Crozier [“This place is beautiful to me”]

x – Hickey – Crozier [“I forgive all of them”]

Diggle – x – Crozier [Escape plans]

Tozer – Hickey – Crozier [A doctor a day keeps the doctor… well]

Tozer – Hickey – Des Voeux [Next steps forward]

Tozer – Hickey – Crozier [“You could have just joined up”]

Little – Lady Silence – Crozier [Captains losing ship and crew]

Inuit Leader – Lady Silence – Crozier [“Silna”]

Inuit Leader – Translator – James Clark Ross [“Aglooka”]

(Note: Working chronologically such that James Clark Ross appears only at the end but not also at the beginning, as per the rules of Greek drama, our Actor 2 ends the story in the role of the Translator. Something very poetic about that.)

Implications of the Casting System

Basically, my argument here is that, in a pinch, you can retell the narrative of AMC’s The Terror (2018) using only three actors, with relatively minimal problems of overlap, and that’s FASCINATING.

In part, these core casting divisions (Actors 1, 2, and 3) are purely pragmatic – we have scenes that require, e.g., Franklin and Fitzjames and Crozier to all make important statements, so those three have to be played by different actors. And it fractals out from there – e.g., Blanky and Crozier have numerous significant scenes, so they can’t be the same actor, and you can’t lose the “Sir John Ross Never Knew How Close He Came” Fury Beach scene, so Blanky and Fitzjames can’t be the same actor, which means Blanky and Franklin MUST be. But sometimes these spiraling casting necessities make for very cool accidental overlaps as a result of the pragmatic necessities of so small a cast.

(Also, for the classicists in the room, I first mapped this out while watching a production of the Bacchae, so that tells you something about my headspace.)

So, interesting things about what parallels these actors might play out:

– Actor 1 predominantly plays very masculine men in very traditional masculine roles (Franklin, the paternal leader; Blanky, so rugged and grounded in himself; Little, the stoic with depressive tendencies who’s bottling up his emotions; Tozer, who is, um, Tozer). The exception in many ways is Goodsir. The thing is, Goodsir is one of most feminized men in this show, given his role as a medical care provider, his warm softness, his initial apparent lack of physical courage (it’s an abundance of reasonable caution, Tozer!), and his Penelope-like role in later the Odyssey narrative. But Goodsir has to be played by a different actor than most of the other characters in this show with a dubious relationship to Victorian British masculinity (Actor 2, see below), because he shares scenes with them! Goodsir and Hickey MUST be played by different actors (not to mention Lady Silence). So here we are, with Goodsir amongst the “manly men.” Even Bridgens is fairly traditionally masculine, if only in his physical appearance and his classical education.

Other interesting parallels: If I had to give a real, classical answer to the “why is Goodsir with this bunch” question, I think it has to do with the shift from the Franklin & Fitzjames & Crozier “First Triumvirate” of the early episodes (brief Roman digression, but the Roman “First Triumvirate” would be Franklin = Pompey, Fitzjames = Crassus (well… Cicero), Crozier = Caesar? …hilarious) to the Goodsir & Hickey & Crozier “Second Triumvirate” of the later episodes (Goodsir = Lepidus (I’m SORRY), Hickey = Antony, Crozier = Augustus). Basically, Goodsir has to take Sir John’s place as the representative of (or spokesperson for) the brittle British empire and its hapless inadequacies, once Franklin is gone (more on this is “Actor 2.”)

Also, you know, re: Blanky and Sir John, both men lose a leg. Do with that what you will. (“Good one leg man” and “Bad one leg man” indeed.)

– Actor 2 predominantly plays figures whose masculinity is either queered, problematized, or non-existent. (Fitzjames, who crossdresses, who carries his legacy like a woman’s beauty – easily lost over time; Lady Silence, who is rarely if ever treated like a woman within the narrative, but, in fact, is one; Hickey, whose queerness and violence are intertwined; and Jopson, whose life is defined by dedication to a career that places him in feminized roles.) Peglar, despite his sexuality, is one of the more traditionally masculine characters this actor plays, but what can I say, Peglar is fragments, and fragments, as we know, are gay-coded. Stanley is also, on first glance, a more masculine outsider, but the gender binary of live men and dead men prevails in this show, and Stanley’s been dead inside since long before he ever set foot on Erebus. This is also where one might argue that the flogging to which Morfin alludes is a punishment for sodomy, and that mentioning it to Goodsir is a specific attempt to find a kindred soul, and/or an attempt to flirt.

Other interesting parallels: Fitzjames and his masks, both literal and metaphorical, and how those masks are desecrated by Hickey along with Fitzjames’ body and boots; Hickey and Jopson as the opposite ends of the spectrum for father/son relationships with Crozier (I know this means we can’t have that Hickey & Jopson scene – I can’t account for it, I’m sorry too!). But back to Fitzjames and Hickey, this parallel also makes interesting sense re: the two “triumvirates” in show (Franklin & Fitzjames & Crozier and later Hickey & Goodsir & Crozier) because, in contrast to Franklin and Goodsir who are representatives of the British empire, Fitzjames and Hickey are places where the British empire is most visibly broken, Fitzjames because of the lies he’s had to tell about his origins, and Hickey because he’s the eternal outsider, literally trapped outside the tent. (Well, and the lies Hickey’s also had to tell about his origins! Though that’s his own damn fault in many ways.) Also, Fitzjames is technically “Crassus” in his triumvirate, and he does play on tropes of wealth and privilege and inane military campaigns in the east, but he’s mostly, actually Cicero, mutilated by Hickey/Antony, who also steals his mask – aka boots/severed head – to prove his cruelty and co-opt power.

This actor has to do A LOT of work, as a friend of mine once said. But also they play all three of my favorite characters, so I adore them.

– Actor 3 predominantly plays Crozier. (Crozier is the main character of this narrative, we can’t avoid that; he’s part of both triumvirates, and a vast number of the significant scenes include him, so his actor is stuck playing just Crozier much of the time.) Apart from that, however, I love that one of the natural overlaps is for this same actor to play Collins, whose connection with dreams and visions parallels so interestingly with Crozier’s foresight and foreknowledge.

Note: Because of the tragic structural limitation of “one setting only.” I’ve not included any of the characters back in England, apart from James Clark Ross, since he does eventually make his way out to the Arctic. If I were to include the contemporary England scenes (omitting the flashback scenes), it would have basically this set up:

ACTOR 1 (overlaps with Franklin) = Lady Jane, Barrow Jr.

ACTOR 2 (overlaps with Fitzjames) = Sophia Cracroft

ACTOR 3 (overlaps with Crozier) = John Ross, James Clark Ross, Dickens

Actor 3 is potentially the most interesting of these, because Crozier doubles with James Clark Ross re: life experience (Antarctic hand tremors!) and with John Ross re: being a harbinger of things to come. Actor 1 is intriguing also, though – less, I think, for doubling Lady Jane with her husband, which I do ultimately like quite a lot, but also for the other parallels offered, e.g. Lady Jane and Goodsir. (Did you know Lady Jane once dissected a giant squid? Goodsir would have loved it!)

This has been your “a Terror-obsessed classical scholar tries to make a tv show into a Greek tragedy” hour – thank you for joining me!

#look I know this is insane #but it was a lot of fun #the terror #the terror amc #terrorposting

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icariahq · 3 years

Text

Thanks for applying Lauren! We look forward to seeing Noreen around the island. Make sure to send your blog in within the next 24 hours or reach out to us if you need an extension. Aimee Carrero is now taken.

BASE APP

( AIMEE CARRERO, CISFEMALE, SHE/HER ) ⌇ have you seen NOREEN GOMEZ around icaria? they are the 26 year old child of ZEUS. they remind me of the sound of the human version of coffee, lightning on a misty night, multilingual insults, and late night talks around the neighborhood. They’ve been on the island for 8 YEARS.

OOC INFO:

NAME / PRONOUNS | AGE | TIMEZONE

It me. Lucifer / She/Her | 30 | EST

ROLEPLAYING EXPERIENCE

To damn long

IC INFO:

Please know that all of this is to help you get to know your own character better – and to allow for easier plotting with other members!

WHO ARE YOU BRINGING TO THE ISLE?

FACECLAIM: Aimee Carrero NAME: Noreen Gomez AGE: 26 BIRTHDAY: January 31, 1994 OCCUPATION: N/A for the moment HOMETOWN: Detroit, MI PETS: N/A… for now POWERS:

She can see and sense the electricity around her, from there she pull the electricity and turn it into small blasts of electricity she can throw at people.

BIOGRAPHY: TWs for: Prostitution, death, drugs, addiction, child neglect

Marita Gomez was not a woman you could call kind, but damn was she beautiful. She had floated through life using her looks to get what she wanted, and while that got her money and attention it didn’t always serve to put her in a good place or have her care about anyone beyond herself. By the time she was 18, she was one of the favorites who worked the street and pulled in money for her pimp. Sometimes she’d sleep with the clients, sometimes she’d lead them to those who could get them other black market items, she never really cared so long as she got her next hit and got her money in hand. But she was always the go-to if the cops showed up, petite little Marita could switch between looking as innocent as a lamb and as mouth-watering delicious as a stake to a starving man.

It was that beauty that caught the King of the Gods’ attention. He swooped down from the heavens and took on the form of a human. Marita didn’t care, didn’t want to even know his name, he was just another client. Another fuck to get the drugs she wanted and the money she desired for the clothes she needed. The two had one night of passionate lovemaking before Zeus fucked off back to Mount Olympus and left a now, unknowingly pregnant, Marita. It only took two months before she was showing, three before her clientele started to change to those with a fetish for pregnancy; and by the time she had had her baby? She had grown a following of – eclectic men.

Noreen Gomez was born addicted to coke and in a situation, no kid should be in. Until she was 5 Noreen barely had any contact with those outside of the “family” her mother had cultivated. People flitted in and out of their house, watching her grow while her mom was at work. Sometimes it was the teens from down the street who watched the baby for a small hit when Martia returned home, sometimes it was for a bit – handsier of an exchange. Other times it would be the other sex workers who would occasionally – coo and aww over the baby and other times – forget she existed until she cried for milk or a change. At 5 – well everyone assumed the child was old enough to take care of herself, they stopped caring as much. She was left home alone to make herself food, bathe and change herself and to try and keep the house – somewhat clean. That was something her mom started to expect of her when Noreen was able to walk and remember things.

As a young kid, she worried constantly about where her next meal would come from if they had water, power, all the things kids should never think about. So when the power was shut off one day and she was home alone – it was dark out and she was terrified. Little six-year-old Noreen let out a cry that – well, she wouldn’t know for years why it worked, but the power was suddenly back on, the lights and tv flicked back to life. She never questioned it, and neither did her mother when the electricity bill stopped coming but the power… somehow stayed on.

She started school not long after and while the teachers raised eyebrows and tossed worried looks her way – no one called CPS, no one ever came to check on the obviously neglected Noreen. She learned very early on that adults were trash, and the only people who really cared were the other kids. That was the one time she got any sort of good in her life – when she slept over at a friend’s house and could relax, and just … be a kid.

By 10 Noreen understood how the streets operated, she understood how to get and take without getting in trouble, without getting adults to look at you twice. She understood how to run a con, how to get a bit of extra cash. Her protection? Well, it seemed like she was always a bit electrified. A bit energetic and too quick. You touched her when she wasn’t expecting it? You’d get a nice little shock. No one really questioned it – static electricity but stronger. So she generally felt safe. Most of the time.

She had just scammed a man out of twice the amount of money the product she had was worth when she ran face-first into Jarvis. He had been shocked, both literally and physically, by a 10-year-old who seemed to have a giant wad of cash she was trying to stuff into her non-existent bra. There was a quick exchange of words and meeting of his “kids” before she understood that she could make more and not have to worry so much if she worked for him. It’s not like her mother would care – it’s not like her mother took care of her. So she agreed and was welcomed into the fold.

By 12 more children had joined Jarvis’ little crusade and Noreen had become known as Spark or Spitfire – mostly because of the static shocks or the words that came out of her mouth. A mixture of Spanish and English and 90% of it cursing your existence. But despite that she became a bit of a mother hen to the other kids, looking out for them and making sure they had food or a place to sleep. It’s not like her own mother cared; So Noreen took in the kids, and they slept on the pull-out couch. They were always out by 9 am (when her mother woke up and usually would start bitching), but came back each night to sleep or just have someone to talk to.

A school friend, one not involved in the life she lived on the streets, had invited her over for a slumber party… turns out it was a surprise birthday party. But the sudden kids jumping out and yelling surprise scared Noreen enough that every light in the house arced and blew out. Before they could finish the word the city block had lost power and it was spreading. Noreen knew it was her; she could feel the sparks arcing from her fingertips to the light switch mere inches from her hand, she could see the electricity in the air. No one else seemed to notice – most just screamed because the power went out but it quickly turned into laughter and lightning candles as they got cake and settled down. But Noreen… Noreen couldn’t stop looking around, it wasn’t just that some friends had decided to do something so nice for her, but the fact that she could register where all the electricity in the room was by sight and sound. She could hear it humming in the walls, she could see it connecting switches and lights.

This fascination carried over into school and when she was in science class doing experiments with her lab partner it all went just a bit sideways as she tried to manipulate the electricity in her experiment… and she somehow got electrocuted, except it was bad enough she ended up at the hospital. There she was alone, there the doctors looked her over, ran a battery of tests, and realized – this poor teen was on drugs, electrocuted and no one was coming to get her. They confined her to the hospital. They called every number they could and it wasn’t until the fifth call that a woman picked up the phone. She claimed to be Noreen’s mother, that Noreen had been living with her aunt for the past year while she was away on assignment in Greece. She had “no idea” about any of this and hadn’t heard from either in a month. She had “been trying to reach them and would be on the first flight out.”

Noreen told them she was lying, that her mother was not some weird jet setter that lived in another country but a bitch of a lady who lived in the slums. Still; they kept her they started to help her detox and get clean of all the drugs in her system. Two days in she was experiencing severe withdrawals and angry as hell. That was the day her “mother” showed up. She was a beautiful woman, sure, and they looked sort of alike, but not really. But somehow… she had all the paperwork, she knew too much to not be her mom. Noreen felt like her head was in a fog, nothing made sense anymore. She was required to stay another three days before her “mom” could take her.

But the minute she could the two were on a plane back to Greece. The plane ride was agony and they didn’t really talk. Noreen wasn’t sure what was happening or why or who this woman was but she – also couldn’t get the questions out. So when they finally landed in Greece and she was brought to a temple she was needless to say… very confused. The next five weeks were spent in Hera’s temple with the priestesses. They cared for her and helped her get clean, they taught her meditation and how to calm herself, they took her to the doctor and got her any help they could… and within three months of that faithful day back in Detroit, she was clean. She had cravings, sure, but she now knew ways to deal with it.

Noreen found out that the woman who had got her was in fact not her mother, but apparently her father’s wife. Hera. This was her temple. She was a Greek goddess and Noreen was the daughter of Zeus – making her a demi-god. She chalked up this weird story to withdrawal and tried to ignore it. But she realized very quickly there was no ignoring this. It made sense with the shocks her whole life, the fact she could see electricity running through the walls, see it everywhere. Hera told her she was welcome to stay so long as she helped around the temple.

So she did. She helped clean, she learned the ways and she started back up schooling. It didn’t take long for her to make friends. Scout and Lachlan. They became the three musketeers telling one another almost everything… though even to this day she’s still not told everyone her full past. It just hurts too much to think about. But those two – they know more than anyone else. It was this level of trust that started to make Noreen open to the idea of feelings. There was Scout… her best friend who was just so damn pretty. She would watch her when the other wasn’t paying attention and just sigh. Hoping that one day – they could be more.

But as time passed and the other never really showed much interest Noreen resigned herself to looking outside of their friend group for comfort and love. – well until the day that Scout decided she needed to have a conversation with her and – just kissed her. Needless to say, Noreen was on cloud nine and the two began dating. For years the two were happily in love, and Noreen was certain that they would one day get married.

Hell, she had a ring picked out and everything! She was ready to go. But she knew better than to propose before Scout finished law school. She would not distract her girlfriend from that endeavor with a wedding. But Scout got more and more absorbed and slowly started fading from the relationship. She stopped wanting to go out, stopped really – even paying attention to Noreen. And after years and years of being ignored by her mother to have Scout, the one person she loved more than anything she blew up. The two argued and shouted and – Noreen stormed out. She just needed some air. Needed a moment to refocus and figure it out… and she would get it.

Five years of thinking and air. For that night was the first kidnapping. The night that Nyx herself snatched her off the street and put her in the meadows. She was terrified, confused, and utterly unsure of what the fuck was happening. Nyx appeared with her son Weston, and they explained that they had a plan to get Zeus’s attention, that they were sorry they had to take her and she would be back once they got to talk to the man. Noreen tried to tell them that Zeus didn’t care about her, that she had only met him a couple of times, and that he was a trash god. They agreed on that part but they thought – he’d realize that one of his own was taken, that Hera was throwing a hissy fit at Noreen’s vanishment and would do something. But they underestimate the god’s willingness to care about anything other than the next lay he was going to get.

So she’s been in purgatory for five years. Honestly? She hasn’t really noticed the passage of time. It’s like she’s told people, “Time has no meaning here, 1 minute here could be an hour back on earth, 1 day a year. Or it could be 1 minute is 5 years. There are days where I felt like I’ve been here for centuries and days where it felt like five seconds. In the end, I’m here and I like it.” Instead, Noreen dedicated herself to learning how to do all manner of things, she can happily say she’s a much more well-rounded person than she had been in her teens or the last time she saw and felt the earth beneath her feet.

Being back on earth, away from the meadows is going to be a huge transition for her. But she’s ready to see what the fuck life has in store – and to kick her father’s ass.

ANYTHING ELSE:

CHAOS.

#icaria: accepted #submission

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icariamusing · 3 years

Photo

CHARACTER BASICS

FACECLAIM: Liz Gillies

NAME: Noreen Gomez

AGE: 26

BIRTHDAY: January 31, 1994

OCCUPATION: N/A for the moment

HOMETOWN: Detroit, MI

PETS: N/A… for now

POWERS

She can see and sense the electricity around her, from there she pull the electricity and turn it into small blasts of electricity she can throw at people.

BIOGRAPHY

TWs for: Prostitution, death, drugs, addiction, child neglect

This fascination carried over into school, she was 14, and when she was in science class doing experiments with her lab partner it all went just a bit sideways as she tried to manipulate the electricity in her experiment… and she somehow got electrocuted, except it was bad enough she ended up at the hospital. There she was alone, there the doctors looked her over, ran a battery of tests, and realized – this poor teen was on drugs, electrocuted and no one was coming to get her. They confined her to the hospital. They called every number they could and it wasn’t until the fifth call that a woman picked up the phone. She claimed to be Noreen’s mother, that Noreen had been living with her aunt for the past year while she was away on assignment in Greece. She had “no idea” about any of this and hadn’t heard from either in a month. She had “been trying to reach them and would be on the first flight out.”

Being back on earth, away from the meadows is going to be a huge transition for her. But she’s ready to see what the fuck life has in store – and to kick her father’s ass.

LAUREN | SHE/HER | 30 | EST

#zeus

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miracle-sham · 4 years

Text

Au Update:

———

Near the end of the September, I made a post detailing six Miraculous Aus, four of which were Maribat.

Due to A. Health issues, B. Education Issues, C. How I write, and D. My tendency to overwork myself, I've not been able to actually get much writing done that I can share yet.

So I thought I'd do a little—not recap per se as I've not put out enough content to warrant a recap but you get my gist, a review or a summarisation if you will—regarding my current place on working on all the Aus. To show that I've not forgotten or abandoned these Aus, I'm just taking my time working on them.

Also I'd like to quickly mention that as I've been working on the Aus, There's inevitably been some big changes however whether these changes will be permanent is yet to be seen.

TL;DR:

I put a couple of Aus on Hiatus (BaDoL, CaToL, SMtSoMS), I made a couple of ship changes to some Aus (ITGatHiF, SCAB), I made a lot of major and/or minor plot changes to all existing Aus, and I made a ton of new Aus (8 Maribat, 1 Pure ML).

(Quick note, the reason for the bold was because I'm writing this whilst super tired so having keywords/phrases highlighted (or in the case of the lists, with alternatively highlighted) to break up the text makes it easier for me to read what I've written when going over it.)

———

Anyway, on with the show: (see below)

Currently, I have 12 Aus planned/being worked on. (Discounting the three Pure ML Aus)

Bleed a Drop of Luck (BaDoL), May This Spirit Protect You (MTSPY), Ink That Glows and the Hearts it Froze (ITGatHiF), Street Cat—Alley Bat (SCAB), Birds Who Fly on Wings Made to Glide (BWFoWMtG), Burdened are Those With Mantles of Gold (BaTWMoG), Drain a Bead of Luck (DaBoL), Fight for You Cannot be With Them (FfYCbWT), Marigolds and Yarrow (Grief and Healing) (MaY (GaH)), Bear the World Until Your Heart Bleeds Out (BtWUYHBO), Tie Our Souls Together With Strings of Fate (TOSTWSoF), Lose Your Life and Lose Your Love (LYLaLYL).

The only one even close to being finalised enough to start writing up the first drafts is Street Cat—Alley Bat, and even then it took me about a month and a half to come up with enough concept ideas to make a cohesive plot outline for the entire story (although I say this but the final arc has yet to be fully plotted).

Most of these Aus are still in the Initial Concept part of the process—around the same place as the first four Aus where when I made the post.

Aus currently in the Initial Concept part are: DaBoL, FfYCbWT, MaY (GaH), BtWUYHBO, TOSTWSoF.

———

In regards to BaDoL, I've taken a hiatus with working on this Au due to plot issues (didn't like the way it was turning out) and so until I can figure those issues out, I'm not going to actively focus on it.

(The hiatus and reason for hiatus is also applicable to CaToL and SMtSoMS.)

MTSPY's biggest change is that I've altered the plot from being Enemies to Friends to Lovers to more of a Love-Hate Friendship relationship that's primarily platonic with possibly romantic undertones sort of deal. Because calling them enemies wasn't exactly accurate as they're both heroes and therefore on the same side and the way I've got the current plot mapped out in skeleton, calling them lovers was also fairly inaccurate. As by the end of the plot, Marinette and Damian are only just coming to terms with being soulmates so they wouldn't be diving immediately into a relationship of any sort that's not platonic.

ITGatHiF got the most amount of big changes. See I was really struggling to come up with concept ideas for this using Daminette and so I decided to change the main ship to MariTim/Timinette/Timari. I've always switched a lot of the original plot around so whilst the skeleton plot is roughly the same, the fleshed out ideas are certainly not roughly the same anymore. The original Daminette plot was a lot more unnecessarily angsty and far too convoluted, whereas the new MariTim plot is a lot simpler and way more fluffy—which is good because as much as I like angst, this Au is much more fluffy shenanigans in concept.

SCAB underwent the most and the least changes objectively as it was mostly minor plot changes with most of the biggest plot changes being in the final two arcs. When I originally made the Au post, I accidentally called it a Daminette Au (which I quickly edited) but at the time I hadn't actually decided on the ship. After careful deliberation, the chosen ship is now MariTim/Timinette/Timari.

———

Onto the new Aus:

Birds Who Fly on Wings Made to Glide (BWFoWMtG): Marinette is an award winning gymnast for the under 16s internationals, and Parisian hero; known as Ladybird and Ladybug respectively. When a gymnastics competition in Gotham goes awry, she must team up with local billionaire ward and fellow gymnast, Richard "Dick" Grayson, and local Vigilante teen, Robin, in order to stop the situation from worsening. Unfortunately for them, the situation seems to keep spiralling out of control and the two find themselves in over their heads. (Multichap, predominantly fluffy, gymnast Au.)

Burdened are Those With Mantles of Gold (BaTWMoG): As the newest holder of the Ladybug Miraculous, Marinette has big boots to fill, and she's not quite sure she's good enough. In order to stop Marinette from following the fate of her Predecessor, Her mentor/partner Félix brings her to Gotham; for training, in hopes that the threat of the dangerous city and it's vigilante protectors will be enough to dissuade the people after Marinette. (Multichap, Legacy Au, predominantly angsty.)

Drain a Bead of Luck (DaBoL): After the assassination of her parents, and her own near death, Marinette is kidnapped and raised by the League of Assassins to become the perfect Bodyguard for the Demon's heir. However when the Demon's Head denounces the current heir and takes interest in a new heir, Marinette finds herself assigned to the new heir alongside three other assassins with the orders to keep him alive.** _(Oneshot** (may become Multichap if enough people enjoy it), Assassin au, not particularly angsty or fluffy.)_

Fight for You Cannot be With Them (FfYCbWT): After a mental breakdown, Marinette is sent on an indefinite hero hiatus holiday to Gotham, America in order to detox from the emotional manipulation of Hawkmoth and her classmates. What she didn't expect from this trip, was to find both her soulmate and soulnemesis. Especially considering one of her soulbonds was severed, meaning one of the two was supposed to be dead. (Multichap, Soulmates/Soulnemesis, Enemies to Lovers, Identity Shenanigans, predominantly angsty.)

Marigolds and Yarrow (Grief and Healing) (MaY (GaH)): “It won't kill you to come to Lila's bachelorette party,” Alya said. Little did any of them know, going would indeed kill Marinette but it's not like death would be enough to keep Marinette down; after all, Kwamis aren't exactly known for making bright decisions when their holders are in danger. (Multichap, angsty, salty, fluffy, hurt/comfort.)

Bear the World Until Your Heart Bleeds Out (BtWUYHBO): The situation in Paris has been steadily worsening. With no Miraculous to undo Hawkmoth's akuma attacks, the crime rate has been rising dangerously quickly. The city is barely standing and all that's stopping it from collapsing into all out chaos are the efforts of the city's two young and pitifully untrained vigilantes who are barely scraping by. This of course, has caught the attention of the Justice League who have decided to intervene. (Oneshot (may become Multichap if enough people enjoy it), No Powers/Vigilante Au, kinda dark and angsty in the beginning but gets lighter and fluffier nearer the end, hurt/comfort.)

Tie Our Souls Together With Strings of Fate (TOSTWSoF): When a team-up, against a mysterious magic user villain, between the Parisian heroes and Gothamite vigilantes goes wrong, Red Robin and Ladybug find themselves tied together—in more ways than one—and accidentally expose their secret identities to eachother whilst dealing with a myriad of side effects from getting hit by the villain's spells. (Oneshot, Soulmate Au (sort of), fluffy, hurt/comfort.)

Lose Your Life and Lose Your Love (LYLaLYL): Marinette's fifteen when her Soulmate dies, nearly dying herself due to the nature of how her Soulmate died. Saddled with both surviving Soul Familiars, she can't do anything but continue life as it was. Eventually Hawkmoth is defeated but Marinette finds she's struggling to adapt to civilian life in Paris and so decides to move to Gotham to re-establish her life and moonlight as a vigilante unconnected to her previous hero identity. If only coping with her trauma and adjusting to her new life was as easy as media always portrays it to be. (Oneshot (may become Multichap if enough people enjoy it), Soulmate Au, Soulfamiliar Au, angsty, hurt/comfort, fluffy.)

———

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autoplaysdigimon · 4 years

Text

Hey y'all, just wanted to post a quick update about what's happening.

So I've mentioned before the logistical problems I'm having with writing updates, but the individual games that I'm doing themselves have their own damn problems:

Dawn and Dusk are just so damn awkward to do both at once! There's no easy way to set up the two folders of images to be visible at the same time, the text is too small to read even on the largest folder size and I didn't necessarily do the same things at the same time for each game, making it extra difficult to sync up. (At least it's the only time I have to do two games at once NO WAIT IT ISN'T I get to do this twice more! One time with THREE GAMES AT ONCE!!! why do I do this to myself lmao)

Digimon World 2 has that weird mix up with the video order, and I can't figure out if the ones I need are missing or just in the wrong order or what the heck. Being that it's a game that I'm far less familiar with than, say, Digimon World 1 was, I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out exactly what is missing.

It doesn't help that both Digimon World 2 and Dawn/Dusk were games that dragged out for SO LONG near the end of my actually playing them (both my fault to be fair, DW2 I didn't get the hang of efficient DNA Digivolving and Dawn/Dusk I got carried away in leaving them to grind on the Farm Islands), so in my brain I've already spent far too long on them already. They're pretty sparse on actual content in the videos, a staple of the RPG genre, to be fair.

Even the anime is giving me trouble! The setup it requires disrupts my usual workspace - I have to change the TV away from the usual podcasts and let's plays that I usually have in the background of my working, which mucks up my layout with all the folders and everything, and I need to switch frequently between actively watching it and having background music on while I caption and write. Hell, having to go back and forth between the show and photoshop when I have to caption a long line is an ordeal in itself. Plus... and this is entirely an opinion based problem, but I get the same arc fatigue from the Dark Masters arc that I did from the two games. It's a great arc, I enjoy a lot of it, but I'm also sitting there going "okay that's great but be over soon! It's time for 02! It's so clooooose!!" I'm aware that this is very much a Me Problem. Also, if I don't go back to it at all, then Piximon will be fine forever! :(

Even the games I'm currently playing are being bastards! The one that I've already talked about in the previous post, which I referred to as Adventuring with Giant Lizards, is giving me serious end game fatigue also of my own doing as I finish up sidequests and the like. This isn't entirely arbitrary, I ended up having to do some major grinding anyway. I'm actually very close to being able to fight the final boss I think, so hopefully I can get that finished soon. I recently finished the game that will come after Monster Racers, lets call it Super Mafia Bros, but the sequel is giving me a hard time right now. Soooooo all of that to say that video games are making me sad.

Monster Racers is being good... for now. Once I get to the part where I had to grind a lot it'll be hell, but for now it's a dream. The fact that it's the only one that isn't giving me problems kinda sucks though. Like, one day out of seven the blog doesn't feel like a burden! Hooray?

I really can't keep leaving the games I'm posting for so long between updates, it means I spend half of the time I'm updating trying to figure out what has happened already and then not making any progress. But it's also very difficult to actually get into the headspace for it at the moment, as well. So I'm thinking two possible solutions, both of which I can use at once. One, I remove the obligation to post every day and the schedule from the header - I'm not posting daily anyway and the header looks terrible. Two, I shelve one of the two Digimon games, probably DW2, and come back to it later. When I finish the game that was meant to replace whichever of these two games finished first, I start posting that, and come back to the shelved game later. Part of me is wondering if I've just started to get sick of Digimon all the time! Maybe it'd be nice to have a detox of it for a while.

I did even wonder about doing a different show for a bit, even maybe one or two episodes of something not on the list. Contenders include the original 1965 series Get Smart, and that one episode of The Simpsons that I harvested screenshots from for that one post about Tim that I have on hand anyway. Get Smart would be kinda fun for a bit maybe, it's very repetitive so it'd get old after a while but it might be fun and it's very ripe for mockery, as well as being a huge shift away from Digimon. Plus I could turn on the subtitles and harvest those too, so I wouldn't have to caption it manually!

I mean.... I should probably talk about the elephant in the room, which is that the anime posts are the ones that people generally like more. I get a few new followers after the weekend posts, and maybe one or two occasionally during the week. If I were desperate for followers, I'd switch to mainly anime posts and have the games be a side thing... but the games are the fun part for me, so I'm not gonna do that. Sorry to anyone who followed for the anime posts! (ALSO I recently passed 300 followers so yay! Thanks! Sorry there's been no fucking content!)

Oh, as long as I'm talking schedules and future games, I should mention another game on the list. I've already told at least one person this anyway, so might as well. Wayyyy down on the list is Undertale. Of course I would. But not for a long-ass time, so hey. There's another (indie) game that I have on the list that is supposed to get a major update later this year, so I've recorded a whole bunch of what it looks like now so that I can do some comparisons when I get to that one, but that thing is even further down the list than Undertale is, so uh. Don't wait up for that one for a while.

Alright, so that was good to get off my chest. Don't get me wrong, I still love doing this and I love you all and I'm not planning on quitting this dumbass hobby of mine any time soon. You all must suffer with me. But it's a lot of effort at the best of times and it's nice to vent sometimes, especially if I think I'm gonna change some things. Thanks guys! :D

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snarkysims · 4 years

Photo

Narrated by Circe Singleton

I don’t know what hitting rock bottom is supposed to feel like, but fighting over a guy in front of half your apartment complex has to be pretty close. Especially when said guy barely knows you exist. Jonathan doesn’t even notice me smile at him. Instead, he makes a beeline for his precious Jerilene. They think they are so stinking cute, with their matching initials and all. Big deal. Logan and Lakshmi already had the market cornered on that.

Honestly, Circe, what are you doing with your life? Once again, I find myself fighting over a guy who doesn’t want me. Fighting Jerilene over Jonathan is worse than fighting Alanna over Diontray. At least Diontray led me to believe that I had a chance with him. He had no problems woohooing with me behind Alanna’s back. When Alanna confronted us, I was sure he would dump her and confess his love for me. But no, he went chasing after her instead. Even after that humiliation, I held out hope that Diontray would come back to me. When it became apparent Diontray wasn’t coming back and that Jonathan was glued to Jerilene, I started dating Mark.

But I never gave up on Diontray. Even though Mark and I had been together for months, the smallest bit of attention from Diontray at my Graduation party had me back in his arms. I thought this time, this time, he’d finally choose me. Nope. He ran right back to Alanna, Again. And now I’m a two-time cheater.

Mark. Just the thought of his name makes me wince. He could have been devoted to me if I had given him a chance, but the truth is he’s just not exciting. All he’s looking for is someone to birth his hundreds of babies while he plays cops and robbers all day. I’m not about that life. Don’t get me wrong. I do want kids. One or two, three is pushing it, but I know myself well enough to know I don’t want to stay at home with them all day! I want my bakery as much as I want kids. My bakery is practically my kid right now.

I was Mark’s first. Trust me, that boy has a lot to learn, and I don’t have the patience to teach him. I was relieved when he broke up with me. No one knows I cheated on him, so he came off as the bad guy in front of everyone. I felt bad about that until he hooked up with Megan a minute later. She’s welcome to him. Apparently, he’s had a thing for her for a long time, but he never made a move. He was still messed up from Shonice, which obviously I can relate to given how messed up I was from Diontray. I guess I was his Shonice detox diet so that he could be fresh for Megan. I suppose that’s fair given that I did cheat on him. Still, it stings to see how smitten he is with Megan. He never looked at me the way he looks at her. It’s the same way Jonathan looks at Jerilene, and the same way Diontray looks at a mirror.

I’m not going to pine over these stupid boys anymore. I’m seeing AJ now, and he’s a real man. In fact, he might be a bit out of my league. He’s way more experienced in the world than I am, being that he’s nearly thirty while I’m only twenty-one. He is so unconventional that I figured he must have some out there job like Medium or Exorcist. He surprised me when he revealed that he is an OB/Gyn Resident at Sapphire Springs General. He’s been stirring things up with the attending doctors by infusing some Eastern practices into his clinical routine, but he says they all seem impressed with him.

We’ve bonded over our love for baked goods. I blew him away with my cupcakes, and his cheesecake is to die for. It’s almost better than woohoo. Almost. AJ is an amazing baker, but damn, that man’s woohoo skills are on another level. He absolutely needs no teaching.

But can you build a relationship on cheesecake and good times in the sack? I don’t get most of the things he talks about. He’s also quite passive which sometimes makes him hard to read. He didn’t say anything when I cursed out Everson in front of him. Not a frown, not a smile, nothing. His passivity doesn’t appear to come from weakness, though. He seems to have a great deal of inner strength, discipline, and self-control. Watcher knows, I could stand to learn some self-control!

I honestly didn’t expect AJ to ask me out again after the Everson incident. I thought for sure I had scared him way, but he did ask me out again. We’ve gone out on several more dates since then. On our most recent date, he told me he is planning a trip to Takemizu next summer to study acupressure as a means for aiding fertility. My eyes kinda glazed over when he went into the theories behind it, but my ears perked up when he mentioned he would enjoy having me as a travel companion. If we are still seeing each other by then, I will certainly take him up on his offer. It makes me happy to know that he assumes we will still be seeing each other.

AJ didn’t go to college with me, and he doesn’t know any of my classmates, so he is a clean slate, a chance to start over, an opportunity to avoid repeating past mistakes. And as far as I know, I don’t have any competitors for his affection. But if one does show up, maybe I’ll try buying her off instead of fighting her.

AJ is straightforward in telling me how much he enjoys my company. He’s also impressed with my bakery. I believe he is sincere when he compliments me. I don’t think he has a player bone is his body. I’m trying not to get ahead of myself, but I think he has potential. I should look up some stuff about acupressure on the Web, so I can halfway hold a conversation with him on our next date.

Next date. I’m so excited there will be a next date with him. With my bakery getting off the ground and this blossoming relationship with AJ, I’m starting to feel something I haven’t felt in a long time.

Alive.

***

This whole arc about Circe and Jerilene’s fight was born from those first two pictures where Circe was thinking about Jonathan. It was perfect that the people she fought with the most (Jerilene, Everson, and Patty) were connected to him.

Diontray really messed with her head, and she was spiraling out of control. Often the thing that pushes us over the edge is something minor, so seeing a happy J&J was the catalyst for her.

I decided to make AJ an OB because I’d like to have some births at a playable hospital. I wish I had made Jonathan an OB instead of a dentist, but he’s committed to dentistry now, so AJ can fulfill the OB role. AJ will become a playable NPC and will move up to playable status if he and Circe get serious. And I really do hope they get serious.

Jack is going to become a playable outright. Unless some other blond dude sweeps Ashanti off her feet, he and Ashanti are end game. He’ll take Jerilene’s place in the Boyd/Vance apartment. We’ll say Mark invited him to move in after having gotten to know him on the police force.

Since Jack and AJ are already established in their careers, I’m making them older than my Gen 1 Sims who are all 21 or 22 right now. Jack has a memory of going to college, and I’m thinking he’s been on the police force for a few years, so I’m placing his age at 26.

AJ is a Resident, which means he would have already completed four years of Undergrad and four years of med school, so I’m placing his age at 28. His being 28 in the year 2003 means he was born the same year I was. ;)

Finally, Circe should have put up some curtains before she got down with AJ in the kitchen! On second thought, she’d probably want Diontray and Mark to see.

#ts2 gameplay #sapphire springs #summer 2003 #singleton #parry #evans #fleming #xavier

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alchemic-elric · 5 years

Text

Verse: Together We will Survive

This verse contains adult themes such as: abuse, abduction, drug abuse, diseases, PTSD, sexual themes and implications, Sexual themes and implications involving a minor, body horror, racism, night terrors, overdose, medical complications, Blood / violence, and Character Death

tw; creepy doctor is the over-arcing tag for this verse for heavily triggering things.

The excessively trigger heavy ones will be marked with ** / and some triggers are *

|| = the thread is on going

Thread #1 v; start of it all - Riza gets poisoned by a mysterious attacker - Ed disarms the man but he gets away - Ed tries to save her but he can only do so much so he runs to the hospital and orders her to talk to keep her awake - in her delirious state she tells him about the tattoo - she survives.

w/ @scentedbygunpowder

|| Thread #2 ** - v; trapped in a madhouse - Some time later after Riza is assaulted, Edward and Riza - out on mission - are attacked without warning by a group of men. Both of them are taken down, rendered unconscious and captured. Edward wakes - arms bound behind his back - to the sight of what seems to be a run down hospital and a doctor doing something to the Lieutenant. So he screams threats at him and attempts to defend her - this gets him to back off but earns the doctor’s attention and fascination for his trouble.

Edward is taken to another part of the hospital, and when he attempts to escape, he’s put under. While unconscious his automail is destroyed by said doctor, who also has been experimenting on him with a mixture of drugs and medications. Mean while, Hawkeye breaks free and arms herself to come to his rescue. When she finds them, she kills the man that’s been experimenting on Edward and rushes as quickly as she can to take Edward to the hospital.

While in the hospital, Hawkeye and Edward as assigned to the same room so they can be watched easier and because of things the Crazy Doctor said to Edward he’s on high alert and can only be around certain people. Roy and Al end up at the hospital and get quarantined there because Hawkeye was contaminated with multiple illnesses. The two then start to fight for their lives as Hawkeye has to recover from the mix of diseases in her system and Edward has to go through a heavy detox to rid his body of mixing substances.

Hawkeye has several siezures and almost dies - Edward falls to overdose and nearly dies as well. His overdose leaves him with a respiratory arrhythmia that is permanent. He’s put on medical leave / temporary off duty for a month after being discharged from a very long hospital stay.

w/ @scentedbygunpowder

|| Thread #3 * - w/ Al - Post hospital - v; Brother Oh My Brother- Al and Ed have a conversation about the events of the previous thread during his mandatory month off as declared by Mustang. Al is feeling very guilty about his lack of involvement in protecting his brother and Ed is trying to come to terms with everything that happened to him. When a registered nurse shows up to check on Edward’s condition unannounced, things go south when Al gets insanely protective.

w/ @valiant-noble-soul

~~Time Skip ~~

|| Thread #4 (broken up in small parts) - v; forever at your side- Now 20 years old, and After being summoned by his best friend, Edward heads to Xing with his brother at the request of the new Emperor, Ling Yao. During Edward’s month long stay in Xing however there is an attempt on Ling’s life and the balance of the palace is thrown into chaos when Lan Fan is killed in the attack.

Now unable to function in his grief, Ling goes silent and needs someone to turn to. Edward can’t bring himself to leave the other in his time of crisis so he stays in Xing to care for him, never leaving his side. Edward is willing to do anything and give anything to help Ling get through his grief - even if that means silencing his own growing feelings towards the royal.

w/ @citrinexdreams

|| Thread #5 - v, A bit of Brotherly Advice - Three months into their stay in Xing - Al is trying to keep things above water with Mei’s help while Ed tries to continue to console the grieving Emperor. However late one night, Edward can keep it to himself no longer so he sneaks out of now - his and Ling’s shared room to wake his brother for a bit of advice and a midnight confession.

w/ @valiant-noble-soul

|| Thread #6 ** - v; my nightmares made real- Four months have passed since the brothers have traveled to Xing and Lan Fan’s passing - as a show of good faith Amestris offers to hold a celebration dinner in the name of the New Emperor - so the Elrics return home with Ling in their company. Due to Alphonse’s encouragement, Edward takes Ling out into Central before the dinner to spend some time with him and to possibly confess his feelings but they are both ambushed before anything can happen and when they wake they are in an eerily similar place to the abandoned hospital that Edward was taken to when he was 16.

His captors seem to know him this time, personally and they waste little time injecting him a substance that leaves him dizzy and uncoordinated. Finding out Ling is there with him when he wakes up in a cell next to his, he begs the Xingese noble to escape and go get help from the others. Ling however, refuses, and causes a fight with their captor. Edward is taken in Ling’s place and rendered unconscious - the man declaring that ‘Edward was going to have to be punished for Ling’s actions’. Ling vows to save his friend.

Mustang and Co. scramble to figure out what’s going on when the two never arrive to the celebration dinner and an MP turns up a discarded State Alchemist pocket watch. Al knows it’s his brother’s instantly from the craving inside. So the team and Ling’s bodyguards spring into action in attempt to save the two young men before it’s too late.

While trapped, Ling discovered there’s some fowl play going on which an underground ring of doctors - and that the man who has Edward is actually the first doctor’s younger brother. Apparently this underground ring of doctors is dedicated to ‘improving humanity’ but their true objectives still remain unclear. But in learning this information, Ling is shot for his trouble. While on the flip side Edward is subjected to a man who is ‘obsessed with his beauty’ and upon seeing that he no longer has an automail arm promises to “make him better”.

Mustang and Hawkeye storm the building with Al in tow - and it takes a whole group effort to get them out. It seems in the mess, Ling was shot a second time, and Edward made a deal with truth to save him own life but not before he lost his arm to an automail enthusiast - so with the two in critical condition and on their way to the hospital - will they survive?

Both doctors in question fled the scene, managing to survive with their lives - what are their plans and will we see them again? (Threads still running we will see)

w/ @citrinexdreams || @scentedbygunpowder

#v; together we will survive #verse timeline #tw; creepy doctor #{{ You're My Best Friend || Citrinexdreams }}#{{ I'm your Little Bird || Scentedbygunpowder }}#{{ I'd be lost without you || Valiant-Noble-Soul}}

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furtho · 5 years

Text

Playlist 2018

Music posted on furtho.tumblr.com during 2018 (Spotify playlist here):

Aaah...!’s Slip Away, thrilling early 80s synth, complete with echoes of Blancmange

Aeron’s The Breeze At Dawn, towering ambient drone

Alaskan Tapes ft Chantal’s Waiting, echoing ambient with contextualising field recording

Andrea Polli’s Walking On Taylor Glacier, gripping field recording

Arc En Ogive’s Visée, Nintendo-friendly francophone bleep pop

Arizon’s Break Free (ft Jkrs), infectious cut and paste experimentation

Arto’s Betty Boop, jagged, Normal-esque electropop

Bedroom’s Nothing Lasts, resigned indie sadness... with a twist

Bicep’s Metro, captivating electronic dance music

Binbag Wisdom’s Hospitality, groovalicious acoustic rap

Boris Dzaneck’s Dance, shouty-but-catchy minimal synth

Boy Pablo’s Everytime, ultra-charming Youtube sensation indie

Cariño’s Momento Inadecuado </3, treble-friendly tweepop

CARW’s Lanterns, shining, big-voiced modern synthpop

Cheap Fantasy’s Life Of Glass, listless-yet-exciting dreampop

Cigarettes After Sex’s K, whispered ambient rock, surely with a nod to Bizarre Love Triangle?

Cornelius’ Drop, super-tight acoustic groove from Japanese indie king

Corridor’s Le Grand Écart, urgent new wave pop, with some unexpectedly languid experimentation at the end

Deerful’s N1C, minimal synthpop tune packing an emotional punch

Die Doraus & Die Marinas’ Fred Vom Jupiter, homemade early 80s synth

Doric’s The Suspect, Casiopoppy minimal synth from Greece

Dronjo Kept By 4′s Lemonn, noisy indie rock ‘n’ roll

Eddie The Wheel’s Leave Behind, hypnotic motorik electro-indie

Eliane Radigue’s L’Isle Re-sonante, longform minimal ambient experimentalism

epic45′s We Were Never Here, delicious post-rock musings on the old photo album of life

Filipinki’s Walentyna Twist, Polish girl group hymn to cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova

Finnmark!’s Transpennine Express, catchily low key indiepop

Fire Engines’ Get Up And Use Me, angular post-punk classic

Foreign Architects’ Talk To A Scientist, big-chorused indie rock

Fountains Of Wayne’s Maureen, powerpop tale of lust and love

Fritz’s Summer Holiday, teenage indiepop

Furniture’s Why Are We In Love?, heartfelt will-they-won’t-they post-punk experimentalism

Galatée’s Une Danse Bête, glossy-but-sad modern synthpop

Gingerlys’ Turtledoves, sweetly uptempo indie

Girl In Red’s Forget Her, heartbreak, heartbreak, heartbreak...

Graham Dunning’s Way Too Much Time, glitchy mechanical techno experimentation

Greg Gorlen’s Moldflowers 01, tape-decayed ambient loops

Gulp’s Claudia, laidback St Etienne-ish 60s-style pop

Happy Spendy’s Flex, beautiful, tiny electro

Haruo Okada & Fabio Perletta’s Kaiko, dreamy long-form field recording

Heligoland’s Orion, laidback, sweet-voiced post-rock

Herlights’ She, big booming shoegaze

Hibou’s Sunder, super-catchy frantic dreampop

Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Clouds, stunning, delicate Eno-influenced ambient

Human Puppets’ A Night To Remember, urgent-but-resigned synthpop minimalism

Intertwine’s Let Go, laidback modern synthpop

IT & My Computer’s Trouver Quelqu’un, infernally catchy homemade electropop

Ivy’s No Guarantee, up-tempo catchy acoustic strum

Jake Lowe’s Sarah, modern classical romanticism

Jarub’s Boing De Guayaba, hazy, subaqua dreampop

Joe McBride’s pOlychAEte, Suction Records-esque minimal electronics

Joep Beving’s Ab Ovo, rippling modern classical piano

Kana Nishino’s Pa, uber-catchy J-pop sensation

Kinder Meccano’s Before You, wonky electronic experimentalism, complete with great video

Klangriket & Sjors Mans’s Leidseplein, restrained ambi-classical

Kompakt Kat’s Svetlana Orlova, bedroom ambient homage to Soviet screen legend

KSDS’s Gimli’s Dream, pounding hauntological experimentation

Lake Ruth & Listening Center’s To Recife, weightless baroque pop

League Of Nations’ Thin Ice Door, rickety homemade electropop

Leisure Walks’ What Am I Going To Do, languid lo-fi indie

Lilacs’ Solitary, lo-fi trebly Japanese dreampop

Marbled Eye’s Leisure, trashy post-punk from Oakland

Maria’s I Remember What It Was To Feel, noisy indiepop that occasionally strays onto a fourth chord

Massage’s Lydia, pleasingly ramshackle indie

Melenas’ Cartel De Neón, grungily twee indie

Mich Cota’s Why Try 2 Love, ecstatic waves of electronics

Michael Cutting’s Smoke, glitchy tape experimentation

Mikado’s Par Hasard, breathy Francophone homemade synthpop

Mitra Mitra’s Snakes, hisssssy minimal electro

Mitski’s Nobody, utter isolation dressed up as sugar-sweet pop

Motorama’s By Your Side, delicious Russian indie romanticism

My Life Story’s I Love You Like Gala, stunning, sprawling, emotive ballad

Nation Of Language’s On Division Street, swooping, echoing synthpop

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ Into My Arms, swoonsome Gothic ballad

OMD’s 4-Neu, atmospheric paean to German legends

Only Satellites’ Low In The Sky, haunting electronic pop

Oppenheimer Analysis’ Men In White Coats, ecstatic Cold War-era synthpop

Otto A Totland’s Vates, characteristically elegant modern piano

Our Girl’s I Really Like It, sweet indie rock with a blissed-out noise-pop finish

Pet Shop Boys & Dusty Springfield’s What Have I Done To Deserve This? (extended mix), classic 80s chart hit

Pia Fraus’ Mute The Birds (Ulrich Schnauss remix), big-as-the-skies ambient remix of Estonian indie types

Ping Pong Club’s Venetian Blinds (The Countless Kisses remix), warmly infectious synth reworking of indie tune

Planningtorock’s Beulah Loves Dancing, super catchy pop house shot through with kindness and love

Plant Cell’s Cyan, shattering shoegaze noise

Proserpine’s Lost Fragment, acoustic ambient soundscape

Quando Quango’s Go Exciting (12″ mix), infectiously angular post-punk rhythms

Quiet Evenings’ Quiver, restrained ambient drone

Radio Europa’s Post Update, quietly angry electro-experimentalism from Wales

R Beny’s Fernwood, glittering, bokeh-style ambient

Renge’s To The Girl Standing In The Edge Of A Summer, uber sweet Japanese indie folk

Rework’s October Love Song, affecting minimal synth cover of Chris & Cosey’s cult classic

Roedelius’ The Diary Of The Unforgotten, looping pastoral experimentation

Sachiko Kanenobu’s Look Up, The Sky Is Beautiful, legendary Japanese folk singer/songwriter

Salad Boys' Exaltation, infectious Flying Nun-esque indie jangle

Sauna Youth’s Percentages, in-and-out, no messing about thrashy punk

Say Sue Me’s Good For Some Reason, fuzzed up guitar pop from South Korea

Scritti Politti’s Oh Patti (extended version), gorgeous 1980s gloss-pop

Sharesprings’ Pocketguides, incomprehensible but super-catchy Indonesian janglepop

Shinichi Atobe’s Regret, minimal pulsing house

Simmer’s Juno, bright harmonies lighting up melancholy indie

Sinerider’s Farmland, warmly degraded ambient loops

Sink Ya Teeth’s If You See Me, minimal, super-catchy electronic dance tune

Smokescreens’ Used To Yesterday, Flying Nun-style jangle

Snowbirds’ Love Will Come My Way, trebled-as-fuck indie fuzzpop

Solid Space’s Spectrum Is Green, two-note DIY synthpop

Space’s Magic Fly, extraordinary footage of the futuristic disco classic performed on Italian TV

Spanky Wilson’s Sunshine Of Your Love, irresistible funk brass and drums, topped with livewire vocal

Stephen’s Shore’s Let’s Go Home, sweet-voiced indie jangle

Store Front’s Go For Broke, urgent indie rock

Sunset Graves’ Gruesome, wonky-but-focused techno experimentalism

Swoop And Cross’ St No, shining, elegant modern electronics & piano

Sympathy Nervous’ Polaroid, twitching homemade minimal synth

System’s Stille, lovely chiming minimal electronics

Ta Toy Boy’s This Town, superior slice of modern Greek indie

.tape.’s Dream Machine Lullaby (I Am Robot & Proud remix), infectiously bleepy electropop

Taylor Deupree’s The Lost See, quietly rippling ambient piano

Teleman’s Cactus (Boxed In remix), dancefloor-friendly electropop reworking

Tennis Club’s Vodkas, from the lo-fi rockabilly end of indie jangle

The Bats’ Give In To The Sands, epically understated folk ballad

The Beths’ Happy Unhappy, fuzzed up indie

The Blow’s Parentheses, super catchy pop tune about love and mutual support

The Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness’ Nervous Man, deeply soppy janglepop, obviously

The Caraway’s The Rainy Day, exuberant indie jangle from Japan

The Catherines’ Every Time You Say It’s Okay I Know It Is Okay, Merseybeat-inspired guitar pop

The Clean’s Beatnik, three-chord post-punk pop

The Cosmopolitans’ (How To Keep Your) Husband Happy, withering post-punk

The Cure’s Friday I’m In Love, classic janglepop hit

The Dadacomputer’s Computer Bank, extraordinary pulsing synth experimentalism

The Detox Twins’ I’m Not Available, bleepy minimal synth

The Ears On The Trees’ Daily Routine, slowly looping ambient

The Essex Green’s Don’t Leave It In Our Hands, exhilarating, urgent indie

The Flamin’ Groovies’ You Tore Me Down, sweet jangly Merseybeat

The Heartwood Institute’s Hvin-Lettir, beautiful hauntological electronics

The Jellies’ The Conversation, one-off slice of dub from 1981

The Keep Left Signs’ You’re The One, Rickenbacker-driven harmony-packed indie jangle

The Mourning After’s Never The Same, shiny Swedish synthpop

The Sweetest Touch’s Crystal Shades, saccharine dreampop from Indonesia

The Unwanted’s Another Tragedy In A German Sleeping Room, lost gem from Germany’s indie scene of 1992

The Wake’s Uniform (live at the Hacienda, Manchester), gloomily poignant post-punk

Tight Knit’s Too Hot, fuzzed up, lo-fi indie

Tiny Ruins’ Me In The Museum, You In The Winter Gardens, heartbreaking folk ballad

Toshimaru Nakamura’s NIMB 53, minimal electronic experimentation

Vashti Bunyan’s Across The Water, spellbinding acoustic ballad

Wall Of Voodoo’s Call Of The West, stunning post-punk American story-telling

White Lies’ Time To Give, portentous, melodramatic indie rock

яблоня‘s мысли, minimal lo-fi indie synthpop from Russia

Yorick van Norden’s Door Into Summer, cover of The Monkees’ country pop classic

Your Favourite Colour’s Former Life, charmingly low-key but catchy indiepop

Youthcomics’ Youth In Our Backyards, invigorating high-tech indie jangle

****************

The playlist for 2017 is here. The playlist for 2016 is here. The playlist for 2015 is here. The playlist for 2014 is here. The playlist for 2013 is here.

#folk #ambient #indie #indiepop #acoustic #experimental

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hippychick006 · 5 years

Text

SPN Analysis - Season 4

SPN Analysis – Season 4

In relation to This Post, I’ve finally completed Season 4. I also made separate posts on each episode of Season 4 and it’s clear that although there are a couple of weaker episodes, there were no outright clunkers, and the majority of the individual episodes were very good. So why don’t I love the season overall?

1) For me (as you’ll see in the analysis), it was the start of the myth arc outweighing and overpowering the original MOTW concept – road tripping, investigating urban myths and legends. If I was to top 20 all Supernatural episodes, I’d be surprised if at least 90% of them weren’t MOTW format with a nod to the myth arc. Classic supernatural for me, will always be seasons 1-3 and those are my favourite seasons with season 1-3 style episodes like Baby, Regarding Dean and Red Meat joining them. Just personal preference and what drew me in to the show in the first place. This is the biggest reason why I’m struggling with Dabb, but we’ll come onto his seasons later.

2) What I struggled with more than this though, was the overall myth arc of Season 4 and where we ended up. I don’t mind brother angst, I don’t mind Sam going dark side, I don’t mind him drinking demon blood and being ultimately wrong in killing Lilith as the last seal (since Dean unknowingly broke the first seal). What I don’t like is what Season 4 led to, which is the narrative that Sam is constantly blamed by everyone for starting the apocalypse. I don’t like that Heaven’s betrayal was softened by Castiel’s last minute defection which unbalances the season (at least for me) and Sam’s character comes off even worse than it should because of it.

Any detailed notes explaining reasoning, I’ve put under the cut so as not to take up your dash.

Monster of the Week v Myth arc Episodes: 13 MOTW v 9 Myth arc.

4.01 (Lazarus Rising), 4.03 (In the Beginning), 4.09 (I know what you did last Summer), 4.10 (Heaven and Hell) 4.16 (On the head of a pin), 4.18 (Monster at the end of this book), 14.20 (The Rapture). 4.21 (When the levee breaks) and 4.22 (Lucifer rising) were Myth arc. A few were debatable including 4.17 (It’s a terrible life), but since Zachariah says that Sam and Dean were in their real world (with only their memories changed) and that it was a real case, a real haunting with real people affected, I put it under MOTW. Some of the other cases were stopping the breaking of one of the seals which relates directly to the overall myth arc but were enough of a case to put it in the MOTW category rather than myth arc – e.g. 4.02 (Are you there, God, it’s me Dean Winchester).

Wannabe Hunters: 0 (See Note 1)

Ship Pandering: 0 (See Note 2)

Fan Pandering: 0 (See Note 3)

Someone is called “Family”: 2 (See Note 4)

Death having no meaning: 0 (See Note 5)

Sidekick status Updates: 0

I specifically checked on Bobby and there are no mentions of what he’s up to unless he actually appears in the episode. Castiel is not mentioned unless he’s in the episode.

Sam or Dean dumbed down: 2 (See Note 6)

Retcon

Bobby’s narrative changing over time to be that of a father figure

Mary being a hunter and making a deal

One more point I’m going to make on Season 4 is that whenever anyone complains about Season 14 being Sam and/or Dean light or that they aren’t hunting together, or that they are focusing on something that isn’t Sam or Dean (e.g. the Nick storyline), we’ve been told that the show has done this before. And I agree, to a very minor degree they have. Season 4 is an example of this, the brothers were sometimes separated, either working on their own or with other people but re-watching just hits home the difference. If you have decent writing, coupled with decent characters with backstory you get invested in, and decent actors that portray them, you don’t notice because you are completely drawn in to the story. That contrasts sharply with Dabb era where at least 2 out of the 3 (and sometimes all 3 elements) are missing.

Season 1, Season 2 and Season 3 if you missed them are here.

Note 1: Wannabe Hunters

4.17 (It’s a terrible life). The ghost facers are back and appear to have moved on from being paranormal investigators to ghost hunters. They’ve produced an instructional video which newbie hunters Dean Smith and Sam Wesson find extremely useful in their first ghost hunt. The whole dialogue (for me at least) is funny and we were never meant to take the ghost facers seriously. They are just there for comic relief and it’s very much played as two idiots that accidently stumbled into the supernatural world and are very lucky they haven’t been killed yet. They are there to show that people that don’t know what they are doing should not be anywhere near a hunt. They aren’t ever shown to be better than the Winchesters - even in the instructional video, they keep saying they learned things from the douchebag Winchesters, so still score of 0 for wannabe hunters.

Note 2 Ship Pandering

I decided to do a full re-watch specifically for the purpose of watching Cas and Dean scenes through shipper eyes and I’m not seeing or hearing anything I would call ship pandering. They aren’t even friendly with one another. There were no lines of dialogue you could call ship pandering, nor moments between them that were deliberately put in to feed shippers. I don’t see anything for any ship that’s been put in there to deliberately pander.

Note 3: Fan Pandering

There was no fan pandering of characters (e.g. Cass is pretty). It’s not clear whether there were any amendments to the original role of characters following fan reaction to them. On rewatch, I’m actually inclined to say not, but if anyone has any evidence saying otherwise, I’d love to hear it.

In terms of Castiel, he was in the first three episodes, all of which would have completed filming before the first of them aired. By the time the first episode aired, scripts for later episodes would already have been in progress, so I’m inclined to assume his next appearances in 7, 9 and 10 were already planned. Which makes sense as his role throughout the season was to act as a conduit between Dean and Heaven, a single point of contact that tells Dean about the breaking of the seals and Dean’s purpose.

Anna does not appear until 4.09 and she disappears at the end of 4.10. Both episodes would have been completed before either episode aired. So again, Anna disappearing is not anything to do with fan reaction. It was planned. Neither she nor Castiel appear again after 4.10 until 4.15. On rewatch, Anna’s purpose appears more than anything else, to be to drive Castiel’s defection.

The only thing I’m not clear on is whether Castiel was supposed to die in 4.22 and not come back in 5.01, because that would actually have been an amazing sacrifice. I’ll come back to this after Season 5.

Note 4: Someone is called “family”

There are 2 instances of the retconning of Bobby to be more than he was originally written:

4.01 (Lazarus rising). Dean to Bobby trying to convince him he’s not a demon. “You’re about the closest thing I have to a father.”

4.21 (when the levee breaks). Continues the changing of Bobby narrative when he says to Dean during Sam’s detox in the panic room, “Look, I know you hate me for suggesting it, I hate me for suggesting it. I love that boy like a son.

Note 5: Death having no meaning

In 4.02 (Are you there, God, it’s me Dean Winchester), Henriksen, Meg and Ronald Resnik all return. They appear as spirits as part of the breaking of the 66 seals, so not alive, still dead and it was a clever way to see them again without cheapening death. Particularly Ronald, because no doubt he’d be a “fan favourite” with the writers now and someone the Winchesters go to for advice on hunting.

In 4.03 (In the Beginning), Dean is sent back in time and he meets his young parents before they were married. Still dead in Dean’s timeline.

In 4.08 Sam dies briefly due to a wish, which is reversed minutes later.

In 4.21 Mary and Alastair appear, but they are all hallucinations in Sam’s mind when he’s going through blood detox. Still dead as doorknobs.

If I’ve missed any, let me know.

Note 6: Sam and Dean are dumbed down

Okay, not counting putting salt down in rooms with windows:

4:12 - They turn their back on a magician who is tied up to have a conversation and unsurprisingly, the magician escapes the ropes and disappears. I have no issue that he’s capable of slipping the ropes, given the kind of act he has. I do have an issue with Sam and Dean taking their eyes off him. In Dean’s words: “Guess we should have seen that one coming.” Also, they didn’t search the room for him.

4.20 – They should probably have tested Amelia for being a demon prior to letting her go with her daughter. I was going to let it slide, but nope.

#spn analysis #spn critical

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thenightisland · 6 years

Text

unsolicited lengthy updates from the ghost that runs this blog

i couldn’t believe i hadn’t done one of these in 2018 since in 2017 so much was happening that i had to like five or six of them so let’s see what we have here

mm - second in command nurse/one of my best friends, the one who’s always cursed with constantly cheating death and people dying on her etc ch - staff nurse/one of my best friends, human version of pink champagne, pregnant rc - the techs’ version of a charge nurse/one of my best friends cb - the thriller novelist who inexplicably works with us, the one who nearly got killed on the unit last year there are others that’ll come up but i guess those are the main players

2017 was awful right up to the end. about an hour into 2018 things started looking much more promising, mostly from a personal life standpoint. which was the least it could do after 2017 ruined my christmas.

few weeks into the year cb finally came back. he’d been out five months. no one understood why he came back when he had so many other career options at his fingertips, and we certainly didn’t understand why he came back to the shift it happened on. and even more so i didn’t understand why he talked to me about writing, when he wouldn’t even admit he was a writer out loud to anyone else and certainly didn’t talk at length about it with anyone. he still wouldn’t talk about it, to anyone else.

rc nearly put himself into DTs at the beginning of the year, despite, you know, working in psych and knowing what that does to a person. which sometimes i wonder if that was his intention, to do lasting damage, bc that shit can kill you. he got through all of that ofc, and had done really well until these last few weeks, more on /why/ later

our hospital has a weird tendency to create odd romantic relationships that i swear are things forged out of a mash unit type of daily trauma. so mm is currently in a will they or won’t they arc - leaning toward will - with a guy who works up there. one of my med nurses who went 7-3 is most definitely with one of my techs which we all knew would happen. ch is engaged to a social worker who worked at our hospital at the time. our director married a tech. a house sup has a kid with a tech. the detox charge nurse met his wife when she was a tech and they both worked our unit. etc. i guess it’s bc we deal with such intense things every day and you literally do save each other’s lives. we always joke hospital relationships are an inevitability. that being said my situations with rc and cb should have been expected and yet here i am, the former esp, as we’ve been the hospital’s most popular pairing for ages.

i spend a lot of my time now breaking behavior cases rather than treating psych pts. behavior cases are people who aren’t psychotic, they’re just violent opportunistic assholes who have figured out how to go to a psych hospital instead of jail. treating psych pts is tiring but rewarding. breaking behavior cases makes you feel almost sociopathic bc you /do/ you have to break them. psychologically, i mean. physically all we really have to work with is a shot and a few hours in seclusion. so you end up doing these hannibal lecter style speeches and trying to come up with threats that sound convincing that you know you can’t follow through on but you have to make them believe you can. they keep taking these “pts” so i spend 90% of my time now breaking those cases so that they don’t keep hurting staff and my real pts. one such behavior case was responsible for rc getting attacked. it really is a matter of 98% mind games and movie villain speeches, since this large violent not at all psychotic “pt” no longer messes with me or any of my people after our discussion about his behavior.

my nursing friend who died unexpectedly last year. her sister was bipolar, which i found out in nursing school, bc over easter weekend i helped my friend get her through a psychotic manic break. i didn’t remember her and she didn’t remember me considering the circumstances of our one meeting. so this past spring i’m prepping a pt to transfer to another unit, and it isn’t until then that i realize the sister had been on my unit all week. part of her paperwork said “off meds, having difficulty coping with upcoming anniversary of sister’s sudden death.” it was like seeing a ghost.

my friend’s mother died. we all adored her mom. she was an artist and a very accomplished one. we had to watch what became a ten year decline.

one of my high school teachers died after dealing with cancer for two years and while i wasn’t fond of her and didn’t mourn her, a death is still a death

cb was a night shift weekender, primarily. in march, found out why when i was on 11-7 he’d pick up shifts. and why he started picking up 3-11s when i switched to 3-11. and why he came back to the shift he got hurt on. why he came back at all. why he was finally actually /talking/ to someone about his life and background before he gone girled himself, and why that person was me. took mm pointing all of it out to realize i was the common denominator but i was always bad at math.

i went to an island in south carolina for a few weeks in april and dreaded coming home since the vacation curse is 4/4. but nothing happened. thank god. i doubt i could have handled a fifth round.

my nursing class had another member die unexpectedly this year too. last year this guy was the one to post in our fb group that my friend/our classmate had died. idk if this is a the ring sort of deal, but now he’s dead, so the girl who posted about /his/ death should probably watch out in 2019. we have an awfully high mortality rate for a class that had like 22 people in it. much like the teacher, i wasn’t esp fond of him, but it is a bit creepy to watch a classmate die each year.

sometime in may is when the hospital started going to hell, i think. i have vague memories of regulatory agencies being around all the time and some of the doctors and assessors literally living there, pt rooms on one of the nicer units converted into bedrooms for them because yes it was that bad. one woman didn’t see her son for two weeks. it kept escalating to a point that our unit was constantly having meetings with the ceo bc things were that fucked up. they were taking behavior cases they should never have taken. there were so many employee injuries in 2018, and we all just kind of revolted when one such behavior case decked a med nurse in the face just bc he could [you know, the person with no psych history who had tried to murder his little sister prior to admission] that pt was supposed to be d/c’d to jail in two weeks. we had him almost two months. the unit looked like a tenement from the boarded up broken windows. we fought and fought and fought for unit safety and the staffing required to accomplish that. everyone was so goddamn exhausted that we started holding admission paperwork hostage like no it’ll get done when you give me the staff to fucking do it but two nurses in this nurses station with 80 volatile pts is not enough, and guess what four techs for that many pts isn’t enough either. i mean it was just every day fighting. i remember sitting on my tailgate drinking tequila one night with ch and us in tears bc our home was falling apart. and the day rc just said i don’t know how much longer i can keep doing this, sounded defeated, which he’s never defeated. there was a night me mm rc and cb just stood in the nurses station exhausted and saying we’ve got to get out of here. but we kept coming back, fighting for every last bit of progress we could.

i’d been texting cb one weekend while he was at work, which was the only reason i had my phone on me which meant i saw the message from mm that said “what would 30mg of klonopin do to me” which was how i ended up with one of my best friends on my couch on a saturday night sobbing bc she had come close enough to killing herself that she had the already half empty bottle of vodka in one hand and the bottle of pills in the other. so i had to crisis suicide intervention my fellow psych nurse friend. so i guess good thing i was talking to cb about neruda and auden poetry bc i hate to think what would have happened that night if i hadn’t bothered to keep my phone on me like i do a lot.

and then about a month and a half ago it all came to a head. the dangerous understaffing reached its peak. four techs for eighty pts, which meant two techs for /47/ male pts, a unit of behavior cases, four or five pts who were on 1:1 obs, three admissions untouched, six more pending, and me alone in the nurses station bc i had to put my one other nurse /and/ the secretary on 1:1s that i didn’t have coverage for. i told them it wasn’t safe. i told them i was sick of having this argument every week. i told them that the last time i had to go to two techs on that male hall the week before that staff got hurt. well, three of my four techs were guys, who were stuck on the floor in a hold with a male pt and barely able to keep him contained like having to actively fight and i had to be out there for paperwork/supervisory purposes. that left my remaining one hall tech trying to contain the rest of the unit, since the others were stuck on 1:1s which effectively trap you. so an opportunist female behavior case came up from behind and started beating me in the head over and over and dragged me across the floor by my hair, got a lot out too i had hair coming out for /days/. so my one hall tech is trying to pry this bitch off of me and the staff on the 1:1s are dragging their respective pts up there to the middle of it so they could help bc my guys were still in a losing battle with the male pt. from there i remember mostly being in a blind rage and at some point admin et al came to the unit. and i know i yelled at them a lot and told them they’d better be glad i wasn’t handing them my keys and leaving. and our sweet grandma house sup told the ceo and nurse exec they could be house sup the rest of the night bc she was taking me to the er. our director had to be me the rest of the night. rc wouldn’t even /speak/ to her apparently. one of the social workers was telling her boss that if i left then she was leaving. everything was in an uproar. my nurse who had been stuck on the 1:1 was in the nurses station /sobbing/. the female tech told our director “i hope you know we’re staying for karen, not you.” cb was freaking out bc i texted him from the er and then was taken back for a ct and so didn’t answer and he had called ch terrified bc i wasn’t answering [i think the whole thing probably brought back bad memories for him, obv]. rc didn’t sleep for several days bc he was blaming himself and i had to keep telling him /the only way any of this could have been prevented was by them staffing us appropriately/ bc that’s the truth but he was still so fucking miserable and told mm “if this makes her quit they aren’t getting a two weeks notice from me i’m walking out with her”. in the wake of all this, the unit has continued in the same fashion of fighting for basic necessities every day, and mm is struggling running it in my absence with her already fragile mental health. everyone is kind of terrified about something happening to ch since she’s pregnant. mm is having full panic attack rage breakdowns at our director. when they had the admin meeting with everyone else who was there when i got attacked admin asked my team “how could y’all have prevented this” at which point all of them started yelling at them, and then admin wanted to know why no one called a code when i got attacked at which point rc straight up just yelled at the ceo /because there was no one to fucking call it/. the nurse exec, who always liked me and was one of the few admin people with a conscience, quit in the wake of me getting hurt, because of the whole thing. and rc has been drinking himself to sleep off and on.

so now we’re at this crossroads, mm ch rc and i. unsure whether to stay or go. and if so, where? our job is like a war zone idk how to be a civilian anymore, but the four of us have been talking like this place is killing us if this job was a boy/girlfriend we’d call this abusive and end it. if the four of us leave that guarantees the total collapse of what little of the unit will be left. it’s already struggling just with /me/ out [i’ve been out because of the head injury which those aren’t fun], let alone the four of us who have always kind of held the unit together.

so what the hell are we supposed to do?

in theory 2018 didn’t feel as stressful as 2017 but on paper??? on paper it still looks pretty terrible???????????????

#time to pull out that awful tag:#karen's adventures in trying to sort her life out #this year has gone by really quickly

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