#(The first passage particularly struck me) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

astrophileous · 8 months

Text

Thunderstorm

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Gender Neutral Reader

Synopsis: Spencer Reid was never a fan of thunderstorms. On one particular night, he woke up to one.

Warning(s): established relationship, mentions and/or depictions of gun violence/injury, protective spencer, parent-child relationships, I think that's it (?) this one is really just fluff wrapped in more fluff 🥰

Word Count: 2400-ish

Author's Note: HELLO! I'm finally back from the dead (yayyy)!! To celebrate, and as we all wait for me to finish rewriting the remaining chapters of love bugs, I'm posting this fic here for you all to enjoy :) I think it's the fluffiest piece I've ever written (srsly, not even a drop of angst!) so I hope you will enjoy! Let me know what you think okkk, don't forget to LIKE+COMMENT+REBLOG if you like this one xx btw I'm pretty sure this can be read as gender neutral reader since I'm positive I didn't use any gender-conforming words, but pls lmk if I'm wrong!

Criminal Minds Masterlist

Spencer hated thunderstorms.

He had many memories of them, not particularly good ones. Most of them involved him being on the field during yet another atrocious case, gun and flashlight in hand, trekking after muddy footsteps that belonged to an UnSub he was chasing.

He had been shot, once, during a thunderstorm. The bullet lodged itself against his bulletproof vest before the perpetrator had received a retaliation shot from Derek's gun. The vest had saved his life that night. The nasty bruise decorating his torso for the following week, though, served as a sufficient reminder in Spencer's mind.

Thunderstorms were a natural enemy whenever he was on the field. Unfortunately for him, the rivalry seemed to continue past the doorstep of his home, too.

Back when sleep was a luxury that he had to scour and cherish, thunderstorms would be the antagonist that kept the two even further apart. The sound of heavy rain against windows was a line of needles prickling into his circadian rhythm, erasing any possibilities of sleep if he was even lucky enough to have them in the first place.

On those nights, Spencer would sit against the headboard with a book in his lap, hoping that the passage detailing the fall of Joseon Dynasty in Korean Peninsula--or the rise or Majapahit Empire in the island of Java, whichever had caught his interest more at that specific moment in time--would be enough distraction to take his mind off the disaster wreaking havoc outside of his apartment.

Thanks to years of therapy, Spencer now had found it easier to chase sleep whenever he needed it. Still, its sweet relief stood no chance against the chaos brought by a raging thunderstorm.

This time, too, was no different.

Spencer had been dreaming. A land of reverie where his tongue had tasted honey, where his nose had recognized the hint of mint and juniper berry before the image was rattled by a high-pitched shriek in the sky.

When Spencer opened his eyes, the bedroom was enveloped in a near state of total darkness.

The sharp cry he heard had come from a lightning that struck momentarily before he woke up. Five seconds later, another one struck again, sending a jolt of adrenaline through Spencer's body as he waited for the imminent thunder to shatter the atmosphere.

Spencer shut his eyes in an attempt to get his racing heart back under control. Once he opened them again, the remnants of sleep had washed away from his pupils, allowing him to take in the empty bed, the chill bedroom, and the opened door right across from where he was sitting.

Frowning, Spencer thought back to a few hours prior. How he had promptly retired to the bedroom after coming home from work. He remembered clearly--courtesy of his eidetic memory--having slammed the door shut before he got ready for bed.

A creak in the floorboards outside his bedroom door compelled Spencer to reach into the bedside drawer, fingers inching nearer to where the secret holster of his gun was located.

Before his hand could wrap around the weapon, the bedroom door was pushed ajar, revealing a familiar figure standing in the doorway, outline cast by a hazy kind of luminance.

Spencer breathed out a sigh of relief. "I thought you were an intruder."

You raised an eyebrow at his statement. A playful smile sweetened by the gentle glow radiating off the flickering candle in your hand.

"It's just me," you assured him, finally stepping into the threshold and placing the candle on top of the dresser.

"I can see that." He watched you approaching, gaze never straying even when you picked up the comforter a tiny bit to slip back into bed. "Where did you go?"

"Went down to check the breaker. Power's out completely, by the way. Looks like the storm took out the whole block."

He made a disapproving face at your response. "You were in the basement? Alone?"

Your forehead furrowed at the tone of Spencer's voice. It wasn't until you glimpsed the telltale sign of worry in his eyes that your shoulders eventually deflated. "I'm okay, Spencer."

"Why didn't you wake me?"

"Because," you began, an amused smile threatening to split your face into two, "it's a three flights of stairs walk from our bedroom, darling. I think I can manage it just fine."

"But--"

"Besides," you cut him off, silencing him with a gentle palm pressing on his cheek. Spencer instantly melted at the contact. "I know how you get during nights like this. I wanted to let you have as much sleep as you could before the storm eventually wakes you up."

His hand circled around your wrist, then, bringing it upwards so that he could leave tiny kisses on your palm before he entwined his fingers with yours. "You still should've woken me up."

"Spence--"

"I know, I know. You could've done it yourself, I don't doubt it. I just--" he paused, swallowing a lump before continuing, "--I could've just waited here. In the bedroom. But in case anything happened, I would've been there for you."

The admission was quiet within the four walls of your bedroom. You knew that Spencer's plea had nothing to do with a toxic need to be controlling. Instead, it had stemmed from the vulnerability within. A naked truth that nestled in the deepest corners of Spencer Reid's soul.

The years that you had spent together allowed you to understand Spencer at a level nobody else could. They allowed you to understand that this silly request was nothing more than a fruit of his vigilant bones, forged consistently throughout his years in law enforcement. Spencer Reid, underneath his soft eyes and tender touches, had witnessed all of the gruesome layers of the world, lost far more things than anyone ever should.

It was only logical, now that Spencer had you in his life--a miraculous reprieve to his otherwise ghastly world--he would spend every waking moment to do everything in his power to make sure you were safe.

Always.

With this knowledge in mind, you couldn't, in good conscience, bring yourself to deny Spencer's plea, no matter how foolish it might seem.

What you did, instead, was shifting yourself closer to his body, seeking permission with your eyes before you leaned forward for a quick kiss.

"I'm sorry, darling," you offered sincerely. "I'll keep that in mind for next time, yeah? How does that sound?"

The relief was blinding as it washed over Spencer's whole being. "Thank you," he muttered before kissing your knuckles. "And I'm sorry, too, for being like this."

You shook your head firmly. Not because you didn't accept his apology, but because you didn't need one. Spencer didn't have anything to apologize for.

When you told him as much, Spencer's only reply was to press his lips to yours.

You were rendered pliant underneath his ministrations, your body molding into his as if you were two fabrics cut from the same cloth. Spencer poured all of his emotions into the kiss. Wishing--begging--that you could taste just how consuming the love he harbored for you was. The same way he could taste your heart beneath the hint of honey on your lips.

Once breathing became a chore, Spencer took the heavy decision to pull away, settling for resting his forehead on top of yours instead.

"Do you wanna go back to sleep?" you whispered.

Spencer wanted to nod, feeling a huge load pressing on every inch of muscle in his body. But before he could take you up on the offer, a distant sound between the roaring of thunders caught his attention, stopping his words right in their tracks.

"Did you hear that?" Spencer asked.

"Hear what?" You frowned. "The thunder?"

"No." He rushed to get up from the bed, gaze apologetic as he looked at you from the doorway. "Stay here? I'll be back soon."

Soft footsteps trudged along the landing of your two story house, leading Spencer towards another door located right by the stairs. He knocked slowly on the wooden door, twice, before pushing it open with a gentle nudge of his hip.

The room he entered was smaller than the room he shared with you. During the days, the windows on the far end of the wall would offer a mesmerizing view of the creek that ran along the backside of the neighborhood. During nights like this, however, they merely provided another harsh peek at the tantrum that mother nature was throwing against the world.

Although the room was swallowed in darkness, Spencer could still make out the silhouettes inside. From the haphazardly scattered toys on the floor, the colorful drawings taped on the walls, even to the lavender-colored furniture that seemed to fill every available corner in the entire space.

Amongst them all, the one silhouette that managed to pull at Spencer's heartstrings was the one curled up on the center of the bed. A usually joyous sunshine, reduced to a whimpering ball under a cotton unicorn-themed blanket.

"Princess."

Spencer tugged the blanket down, revealing misty eyes and pouting lips on a face he held dearly. A sob managed to wreck itself out of the little girl's chest, plummeting Spencer's heart further down the abyss of no end.

"Oh, sweetheart."

He gathered the 4-year-old in his arms, feeling her immediately hugging his neck. Her body was still shivering with tiny whimpers and sobs, all of which Spencer tried to subside gently by constant strokes down her back.

"It's okay. You're okay," he shushed quietly, rocking his body to a phantom tune while she clung to his chest. "Do you wanna tell me what's going on?"

The girl sniffled aloud before lifting her head, her tiny hands rubbing rigorously on the tear stains around her eyes.

"The-the thunders," she murmured. "It was so loud. I woke up and everything was d-dark. Daddy, I'm scared!"

She threw her arms around his neck again, crying softly into the collar of his sleeping shirt. Spencer tightened his embrace around his daughter, heart breaking into pieces with every tear shed from her innocent eyes.

"Sshh, it's alright, princess. Everything's alright. Daddy's here now," Spencer cooed. "Do you wanna sleep with us tonight? Hm?"

His daughter started to nod frantically. "Don't forget Mr. Elphie, Daddy."

Chuckling, Spencer quickly grabbed the elephant stuffed animal lying next to her pillow. "Of course not. Mr. Elphie is coming with us, isn't he?"

Spencer began to retreat back in the direction of your bedroom, all the while conversing with his little girl to keep her mind off the storm that was still raging wildly outside.

You were checking something on your phone by the time Spencer finally returned. Immediately, you tossed the device aside once you saw him, eyes widening in concern when you saw your daughter's limbs entangled around Spencer's form.

"What happened?" you asked.

Spencer headed for the bed, slowly putting down the little girl who instantly cuddled your side after he had tucked her under the duvet.

"The thunders are scary," your daughter mumbled into the fabric of your shirt.

Your eyes flicked towards Spencer, who gave a single nod of confirmation before settling back on his side of the bed.

"Oh, honey. I'm so sorry." You brushed back the hair from her face, taking in the sight of your favorite pair of eyes that seemed to have lost their usual sparkles in the wake of her tears. "What do you wanna do, hun? Should I tell you a story? Play a little music?"

"I wanna sleep here with you and Daddy," she said in a shaky voice. "Is that okay?"

Kissing the crown of her head, you answered, "Of course it's okay, sunshine. Come here."

Your daughter fell back into your awaiting arms. Her small frame fitting so easily into the front side of your body. You watched as her tiny fingers clutched Mr. Elphie tighter, breath evening out while her face burrowed even deeper into your chest.

It felt as if hours had passed before you could find the will to rip your gaze away. In all honesty, you could probably have spent an entire eternity staring at the little miracle in your arms had the universe given you the chance. When you lifted your head, your eyes automatically locked with Spencer's, who looked as if he, too, had been entranced by the sight in front of him.

"She's incredible," Spencer confessed into the night, voice fragile with the weight of awe it seemed to carry. "I can't believe she's ours."

You extended your hand towards him, smiling brightly once Spencer secured it in his own.

"Seems like the apple doesn't fall far from the tree," you mused, eyes glinting mischievously from the knowledge that your daughter--just like her beloved Daddy--also had a fear of thunderstorms. "Like father like daughter, huh?"

Spencer rolled his eyes. "I'm not scared of thunderstorms. I'm just... not fond of them"

"Uh-huh."

"Shut up." He bit your knuckles playfully, seemingly pleased with himself when he managed to elicit a laugh out of your chest. "Go get some sleep. You have an early day tomorrow."

"Speak for yourself, Mister." You settled your head back on the pillow, Spencer mirroring your position without breaking his hold around your hand. "Where are you going again?"

"Florida. Miami."

"Damn," you muttered, temporarily panicking about your terrible choice of words before calming back down once you saw your daughter sleeping soundly. "I bet it's nice there this time of year."

"It's Miami. The weather barely changes there all year-round."

"Exactly my point."

"Besides," Spencer added, squeezing your hand once, "it's not a vacation. It doesn't matter where I'm going, I'll only be seeing dead bodies all day long."

"Okay. I really don't need to start seeing corpses in my head right before going to sleep, so thanks for that."

"You started it."

"I most certainly did not." You scoffed. "I'm not liking this conversation. Now, can we please go to sleep?"

Spencer had a retort ready on the tip of his tongue. But once he saw how peaceful you looked with your eyes closed, entangled as one with your daughter, he decided against it.

At last, he opted to shuffle closer on the bed until he could wrap his arm around the two of you, letting the scent of mint from your shampoo and juniper berry from your daughter's body wash to wrap around his whole being.

Spencer was still not a fan of thunderstorms.

But on nights like this, he had to begrudgingly admit that maybe, maybe, they weren't really that bad after all.

685 notes · View notes

she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 10 months

Text

Ok y’all it’s time for a grishaverse world-building rant (mainly linked to soc/ck) and there’s a good chance this is gonna turn into a long and rambling post but bare with me.

*CONSISTENT GRISHAVERSE SPOILERS AHEAD*

In the Netflix show, why did they replace Alby’s lion toy with a toy train? I wanna talk about the absence of the lion, but also of all things why did they choose a train?

The train really stuck out to me when watching season 2 and at first I wasn’t my sure why, and just struck it up to the fact that I was expecting a plush lion. I think it’s absolutely notable that they exchanged the lion for a different toy, because the TV show didn’t give us as much opportunity for the foreshadowing surrounding Alby Rollins’ existence as we had in the book, since Van Eck is the key to a lot of the passages that foreshadow Rollins having a child. The fact that Kaz was able to present the lion was what served as “proof” for his attack on Alby, and is one of the best scenes showcasing Kaz’s incredible intellect. Since Kaz had never seen Alby, in fact had no concrete evidence of his existence whatsoever, he based the entire presence of the toy lion on Pekka’s pride in his gang, the Dime Lions. But since the show doesn’t have the opportunity to explain the gang culture of Ketterdam in as much detail as the books, which is obviously understandable and it’s the kind of thing I would expect to be lost in the transition from source to adaptation, they can’t make the assumption that the audience will associate the lion with the Dime Lions, particularly since they haven’t explored the gang tattoos (as a side note the meanings behind the tattoos are just *chefs kiss* but anyway-) So unless they were making specific effort to try and include more references to the lions earlier on, it makes sense to change the toy. It also leaves open the option for later in the show (fingers crossed, I’m praying for good news right now) to bring the lion in for different schemes and to create more anticipation and build up for the absolutely iconic Inej move of replacing the lion with a crow in the last chapter of Crooked Kingdom. So I understand the choice to change the type of toy that Kaz takes from Alby, especially since we already know that it’s Alby being used as the threat in this scene and in the books we didn’t, but of all the options why would they choose a toy train? My best guess is that it’s a nod to the Conductor and the train across the fold in season one, but it kind of annoys me because, other than the train that was added for the show and the tank in ck that is explained as amongst the first of its kind, THERE ARE NO MECHANICAL VEHICLES IN THIS UNIVERSE YET. None!!

We have to remember that the development of a constructed world is based on its needs and it’s understanding of it’s resources, not on mimicking the development of our own world; so although some people are probably thinking ‘well they recently developed flying vehicles, it makes sense for trains to exist before that’ I would genuinely argue that in this world it makes no sense whatsoever. We know from explanations in soc and ck (in Retvenko’s chapter mostly, but also in Joost’s and a few other references) that there has been no need to develop engines for boats because the winds can be calmed or summoned by Squallers; they fill the sails or fend off storms to keep the ships moving, there is no need for development thus far because grisha possess the natural resources to maintain the power they need. But in Ravka the presence of the shadow fold meant it became necessary to develop other options, so progress came about and Nikolai developed the Hummingbird. But it’s very important to note that (to my understanding at least, if you happen to know I’m wrong please feel free to correct me) the Hummingbird is still entirely dependent on Squaller power to maintain its flight, because development is always based on the previous model. Similarly, the tanks being the first motorised vehicles we’re introduced to makes perfect sense in the world we’ve come to know and understand, especially since we’re learning from the perspective of mostly Kerch-born or Kerch-living characters. Jesper tells us that there are very few carriages on the streets of Ketterdam, that horses are a luxury because the space to keep them is a luxury, not because they open up further modes of transportation - this is also emphasised by the knowledge that one of the greatest signs of prosperity in Ketterdam is a house with its own dock. This is because canals are the main way of moving, and since the boats and their squallers are a time-proven method of travel there’s no current need to develop engine mechanisms for boats, and cars aren’t needed because no-one would use them to travel. I’d also like to add that I realise not everyone has access to Squaller power, but the rich of Ketterdam do and they live in an incredibly classist society. In the Barrel, most of the boats are moved by rowing and/or punting, as is made clear at the end of soc when the crew row to meet Van Eck and he is brought by Squallers, and the theme is continued throughout ck.

The most likely place for cars to crop up first, based on what we’ve seen of the different countries, is probably Ravka; the country is a hub of innovation and the fabrikators there are the most free to practice their craft. However, Ravka is also a country that has been at war since it was founded, there is no room for any type of development that does not further their chances of survival against Fjerda, Shu Han, or their own civil war. Other places we might have expected to see motorisation pop up faster could be the farming provinces of Kerch and Novyi Zem, since they could be utilised for tractors and ploughs. But most innovation in Kerch is centralised around Ketterdam, where the engines are currently unecessary, and although I don’t know enough about Novyi Zem to argue either way the auction in Crooked Kingdom may imply that their government’s budget is lower those of Kerch, Fjerda, and Shu Han. (But again, we don’t have bundles of information about the Zemeni government so I’m not super confident there). We do, however, know that Jesper was the only one other than Matthias who already knew what a tank was when they got to Fjerda, and so it’s fair to predict that there’s been at least some development in that area in Novyi Zem, or at least enough interest for news of them to reach the gunsmith Jesper worked with. But let’s assume that the invention did come from Fjerda itself, at least for the time being. This makes perfect sense!! It was mostly likely developed, unbeknownst to Matthias, by the parem-drugged fabrikators being held at the Ice Court. Now that they have access to this power, Fjerda achieves all of the same tickboxes to be the initial place of engine development as Ravka does. Of course, Fjerda is also at war or under threat of it, but I think it’s important to remember that the Fjerdan government doesn’t really see war with Ravka as a threat at all. They see it more as an opportunity to prove themselves, to properly cement their position in the world economy and as a global power, which we know Kerch - or at least the general population of the country, if not the government - does not currently see it as. So it makes sense that their developmental focus would not be on ease of travel for the majority of its people by developing cars or flight machines, but on engines that can be used for dominance: tanks.

I’m hoping I’ve kind of got my point across here even if in a slightly convoluted way, but I want to add Inej’s quote from the scene with the tank to really cement the idea that this was development on a scale they had never experienced before: “They were moving - and not a horse in sight!” Someone who has seen a train at any point in her life, or who has any understanding that trains exist and work, is not going to be absolutely blown away by the concept of moving without the aid of horses. So why pick a train??? I don’t know, I’m clearly thinking far too much into it but I just… I dunno, it bothered me, there were so many other things to choose. I didn’t really mind the train in season one because it was set up like a one-of-a-kind contraption, but the idea of there being toy replicas of steam trains implies a very different level of development in a world clearly implied to be pre- its industrial revolutions.

Anyway, thanks for reading my mad ramblings! I have SO MANY thoughts about world building and structure in the Grishaverse, and world building as a browser topic as well, so if you want to hear anything more please let me know!

#grishaverse #leigh bardugo #six of crows #crooked kingdom #inej ghafa #kaz brekker #nina zenik #jesper fahey #matthias helvar #wylan van eck #world building #kanej #wesper #helnik #soc analyst #book analysis #fantasy books

182 notes · View notes

thepythakorean · 3 months

Text

parallels between the boy and the heron and this painting, plus general analysis

Arnold Bocklin, Island of the Dead. 1880

i want to preface this by saying i am by no means an art history nerd, i just happen to know some stuff about the background of this painting in particular.

as soon as mahito is sucked into the tower floor he is standing at the shore of an island surrounded by an endless ocean. he is dwarfed by a large set of golden gates that say something like "those who seek my knowledge shall perish" and an even taller forest of cypress trees. these features all frame a white dolmen (primitive tomb usually made of giant rocks stacked like below) that beckons to him.

this scene immediately struck me since it has so many of the visual elements of the painting. mahito is even framed in the foreground to be so very small approaching these giant, daunting structures just like the boat heading for the island in the painting. besides the tombs, the cypress trees are also traditionally associated with mourning and death at least in europe/the mediterranean. other ghibli movies have lavish european aesthetics tied to characters (howl, yubaba, etc.) but it feels particularly intimate here given that mahito's great granduncle, the creator and ruler of this world, is apparently european and can only pass on his role to a direct descendant. (btw not saying the gaudy european decor signature of howl and yubaba aren't important to their characterization, it def is! i'm just saying it stood out to me in this movie especially.) the cliffs full of stone entrance passageways are prominent later in the movie as himi takes mahito through the parakeet's domain, and interestingly, in the delivery room where natsuko is, there is another dolmen behind her (can't find pics since the movie hasn't been uploaded yet urgh).

the backstory to the painting continues to parallel to the events of the story! so there's 5 versions of this painting. the first three versions were painted in a cemetery close to bocklin's residence which was also full of white headstones and sculptures, and cypress trees. one of his infant children, one of many children he lost, was buried there. the one i posted above is the first/second-- while bocklin was working on the first, a the soon-to-be wife of a politician visited his studio, saw the wip, and commissioned her own version with the added white figure and coffin to commemorate her first husband who had just died of diphtheria. already somewhat similar to how mahito's mother died in the hospital fire (well. she died from the fire but presumably she was there because she was sick) and when his father shortly remarried. these were also added to the initial wip and stuck in later versions of the painting. bocklin later wrote to her, "you will be able to dream yourself into the world of dark shadows". the movie is also very dreamlike-- it's a fantasy world filled with strange creatures, alternate versions of people he knows, and passages that seem to alter the fabric of time and space. people also seem to forget about it as soon as they leave even after spending long periods of time in it like a dream. the painting is also very dreamlike, but why? the warm lighting, maybe not in the version i posted but in a couple others, may explain it, but the island itself resembles the curtains and stage of a theater (referencing the audio clip below the description). even if it doesn't look EXACTLY like that to you, it's definitely a too-perfect little scene in a nebulous expanse of space. this theatrical quality is also shown in the movie by the parakeet uprising side plot as well as the scene when himi and mahito collapse in front of the delivery room-- the curtain falls directly in front of the viewer over them as though a stageplay just ended. oh and a friend mentioned to me how this is a classic hero's journey plot and mirrors orpheus in the underworld. island of the dead has also directly inspired NUMEROUS other works of art, including other paintings, stage productions, and symphonic poems. apparently the painting was so popular many people in berlin hung prints of it in their homes (i do too)! as i stated above though, a lot of the visual elements in the painting were already traditional symbols relating to death so i don't want to 100% conclude that miyazaki was directly inspired by this painting, he may have just also resonated with those symbols independent of bocklin which i still think is awesome.

the first time we see himi also reminded me of the painting. she's wearing a white dress and standing at the bow of a small wooden boat, and though her intentions are to save the warawara from the pelicans, she inevitably kills some of them too. visually and thematically she's like the white figure at the front of the rowboat in the painting. she acts as a guide for mahito (analogous to the rower? he traveled to this world of his own volition but needed a guide) for a good part of the movie and is a collage of life and death. she is a younger but kind of omniscient version of his dead mother; she's known all along she is mahito's mother but is about to be born into the world by the end of the movie and accepts her fate happily. she can control fire which envelops her like how she died in the real world, but is harmless to the touch unless she directs it as a weapon, and as we see with the warawara and pelicans it helps creation but also destroys much like fire's role in the natural world. natsuko, though a separate person from himi, is still connected as a sibling, and we see her wandering into the forest at the beginning of the movie while wearing white like himi, back turned to mahito, and that is what prompts him to first enter the tower. the strange nature of her character that doesn't adhere to a proper time or space parallels the way the white figure completely stands out in the painting, at least the ones with darker lighting. another crazy parallel surrounding fire and wwii between the painting and the movie is that the fourth version of this painting was destroyed during wwii due to bombing, again like how mahito's mother's hospital was presumably set on fire by bombing during the war.

the looming effects of war alluded to throughout the movie eventually tie into its resolution, when mahito accepts his new family that he initially rejected, his own imperfect being, and the fact that one must seek out love to be happy in this bitch of a world. his great granduncle is confused as to why mahito wouldn't want to recreate his own world like him. why would you want to return to the world that killed your mother and rejects you as a person? the world that forces your people to die in war and will eventually drop the deadliest weapon mankind has ever seen even a century from now onto your home? you can make everything perfect here! he's created something of a "paradise" himself, full of lush tropical plants, parakeets, and strange insects (some of them looked like the bugs from nausicaa, another fantastical world of lush nature which is also threatened by war. interesting), almost like a garden of eden, and it so happens to be at the very top of the tower. funnily enough, bocklin also painted this several years later:

Arnold Bocklin, Island of Life. 1888

i don't know much about this one so idk if it's an explicit companion piece to the island of the dead but it certainly looks like it. the similarities are now less apparent to the movie if there are any, it's much less lush but there are exotic plants and uh birds and stuff. this is definitely more likely a case of shared inspiration from the symbols themselves rather than movie directly looking at the painting. anyway clearly the promise of a perfect paradise isn't real, as this is interrupted by a war of his own unwitting creation, the uprising of the parakeets he wanted to breed in a paradise that literally bring about the end of the world. no world will ever be perfect when left long enough to its own devices. life finds a way! plus, this world was created through so much death (the construction workers in hazardous conditions, the way the tower keeps spiriting people away. btw in the english sub mahito's dad calls the whole ordeal a "disappearance" but he says "kamikakushi" in japanese which means "hidden by god" in reference to people who mysteriously disappeared as if from supernatural circumstances and yes that's the word they used in the japanese title of spirited away!!!) and is on the verge of collapsing from reality every three days just because of some building blocks?? the real world may be on fire but it'll go out/burn less badly someday, and at least it won't completely disappear in a snap, not in an easily imagined timescale for a human anyway. it's up to you to make the best of it, and this is what mahito decides. there are also visual allusions to other ghibli movies about the constantly present threat or consequences of war. the only other landmark aside from the island mahito lands on is a line of ships which kiriko later tells him are all fake. it immediately reminded me of the stream of planes in porco rosso which were the souls of dead fighter pilots moving on. the shadow people in the swamp were also reminiscent of those in the train in spirited away, which are never explained to my knowledge but the given that spirited away's characters are largely spirits and the way souls are so similarly designed in this movie makes me feel that they were also souls of people in spirited away.

through this imagined otherworld, there is also the blurring of lines between life and death, reality and imagination. himi plus her dyad with natsuko (they're sisters AND they look exactly the same AND both are mother figures to mahito) are great examples of this. mahito's mother is gone, he knew this and set foot into the world anyway. he rejected natsuko as his new mother but in going through the struggles of the tower he comes to accept familial love for her and even keeps confusing "natsuko" and "mom" while reaching out to her in the delivery room. a family is made up of different people but inevitably you will see each other in each person. in the delivery room scene we see the paper hanging from the ceiling lash out to attack and stick to mahito like tape, it even leaves red marks on him. this is one of the best scenes in the movie to me because of its visual contrast to him rushing to save his mother in the fire. in the fire scene, the real world around him is blurred and distorted and at times so is mahito and especially his mother. the fire doesn't seem to burn him or his clothes (i could be remembering that wrong tho) and the scene cuts off before it shows him possibly going in further. in the delivery room, everything is drawn with clean lineart, no stylization. there is no mistaking the reality of this situation even though this world is conjured, the dawning realization upon mahito that this person is his mother is so visceral that he actively fights through the paper literally snapping its jaws and natsuko spitting her hatred towards him. when mahito is ready to leave the tower, himi leaves through a separate door to be born as his mother sometime in the past though she is not a warawara and knows what has happened/will happen, an exception that further demonstrates the nonlinear nature of time and space in the movie.

after coming out of the tower, the heron tells mahito he should forget everything that happened in there. even his grandmother seemed to have forgotten the whole year she spent in there (it seems like tower time reflects irl time judging by the events of the movie). anything that comes out doesn't just disappear, it transforms into a real-life counterpart as we saw with the pelicans leaving as they were (presumably minus the ability to speak) and the parakeets going from big bloodthirsty things to regular parakeets. so mahito can't just forget, especially because he comes out changed from his experiences in there, not just himself personally but also his changed relationships with natsuko and the heron, and also his little souvenirs. then the movie abruptly ends with mahito narrating that they left for tokyo again shortly after the war ended. i like to think that this was a hopeful ending where mahito maintained that character development and was able to welcome natsuko and his new sibling into his family while being able to seek more friends and family in the future. i've seen other analyses talking about how this movie was semi-autobiographical for miyazaki and i can see it, how events early in his life shaped his personality and how he had to fight to find beauty in a world that otherwise treated him poorly, so i'm glad he ended the movie on that note, although in less words. pretty similar to how spirited away ended, although there was arguably more loss involved, but still hopeful, and that's what i find so powerful about this movie. and like this movie, spirited away involves a dyad between yubaba and zeniba as a device for the hardships and beauty of life, how they're not so discreet at times. as a last kindasorta tie-in to bocklin's work, i'll point again to the island of life which was created after the island of the dead, plus a composition directly inspired by the island of the dead, a symphonic poem with the same title written by sergei rachmaninoff. the last time i listened to this was in high school and it's like. 20 minutes long so i'm too impatient to give it a relisten now but from my vague recollection plus some quick searches it's a very somber piece that escalates into emotional climaxes yet still contains warmer tones, and goes back to the same "rowing" motif at the end. it weaves together evocations of life and death in one piece, also illustrating how the two really are so closely connected.

tl;dr, this was me the entire movie because miyazaki SEEMS to be heavily inspired by this one symbolist painting i happen to like a lot:

also also here's a self portrait of bocklin:

yes, all of his paintings are that cool.

#i'm so excited about this painting!!#there's so many freaking similarities in not just the painting itself but its conception #the boy and the heron #kimitachi wa do ikiru ka #how do you live #studio ghibli #hiyao miyazaki #arnold bocklin #island of the dead #isle of the dead #tweet

62 notes · View notes

fangirleaconmigo · 2 years

Text

Ok let's play a game called:

I Can't Believe It's Not Fanon.

Otherwise known as...

Witcher facts that sound like Geraskier fic writers made them up, but that are, in fact, book canon.

PART ONE:

We've all read the fics where bad guys kidnap Jaskier in order to get to get to Geralt. These bad guys always regret it when Geralt slaughters every single one of them.

Well, good news! In Season of Storms, starting on page 310, this very thing happens.

(TW: Violence and gore)

Geralt is attending a royal wedding and once again, powerful people are trying to get him to do something he doesn't want to do. He enters a room to find:

Dandelion was as white as a sheet and clearly terrified...He was sitting on a chair with a high backrest. Behind the chair stood a skinny character with hair combed and plaited into a queue. The character was holding a misericorde with a long, narrow, four-sided blade. The blade was pressed against the poet's neck, below his jaw, slanting upwards.

"No funny business," warned Ropp. No funny business witcher. One false move, even one twitch, and Mr Samsa will stick the minstrel like a hog. He won't hesitate."

So, these particular assholes have accurately surmised that Geralt's weakness is Dandelion. There were any number of people they could have kidnapped, but they chose the poet. Of course, they underestimate Geralt, like so many people do.

Geralt tries to warn them that this is a very very bad move.

"You're making a mistake, Ropp."

They don't listen to him. They keep going, making increasingly florid violent threats to Dandelion's safety.

"Now," said the captain..."Now you will confirm that you've understood the task and will execute it. Should you not, before I count to ten under my breath, Mr Samsa will rupture the minstrel's right eardrum...if the desired result does not ensure, Mr Samsa stabs the other ear. And will then gouge out the poet's eye. And so on, to the bitter end, which is a jab to the brain. I'm starting to count, witcher."

What does Dandelion do? Well, he's terrified but he tries to be brave.

"Don't listen to him Geralt!" Dandelion somehow managed to make a sound from his constricted throat. "They won't dare to touch me! I'm famous!"

This is hilarious and very, very Dandelion. But also, it's not entirely unreasonable. Dandelion's fame often protects him, and sometimes it protects Geralt too. However, it doesn’t seem to be doing either at the moment.

Geralt says to Mister Samsa:

"First, move that dagger away from the poet's ear."

Mister Samsa seems to think that they have succeeded and Geralt is negotiating with him, so he complies. (this guy makes one bad decision after another)

"Ha," snorted Mister Samsa, lifting the misericorde high over his head. "Is that better?"

Geralt simply answers:

"Better."

Then without another word, Geralt kills them all, violent and bloody. It is a descriptive, vividly gory passage. He slices carotid arteries and groins. One man's neck spews blood onto the chandelier and ceiling. But I find what Geralt does to Mister Samsa to be particularly significant and satisfying.

The Witcher jerked the sword from the scabbard before Ropp fell, and with one fluid movement coming out of a short spin, hacked off Samsa's raised hand. Samsa yelled and dropped to his knees.

So Geralt’s actions say...you use your hand to hold a blade to *my* poet's neck, and I will chop that motherfucker off. Let's see you do that again without a hand, you piece of shit.

It's a gory passage. I'll skip to the end. The royal instigator comes into the room to investigate and asks Geralt about the one man he has left (sort of, temporarily) alive.

The instigator examined the captain, who was lying, stretched out in a pool of urine, salivating copiously, and trembling incessantly.

"What's wrong with him?"

"Shards of nasal bones in the brain. And probably several splinters in his eyeballs."

"You struck him too hard."

"That was my intention," said Geralt, wiping the sword blade with a napkin taken from the table. "Dandelion, how are you? Everything in order? Can you stand?"

I find that pretty hot. Geralt has corpses and blood all around him, and he's being asked questions by the authorities. They could arrest him. They could lock him up. They could execute him. Geralt does not give a single solitary fuck. He is going, you're goddamn right I did that. He is casually wiping his sword blade with a napkin and asking Dandelion if he's alright. He has accomplished the important thing (saving Dandelion) and doesn't care about anything else.

Dandelion is freed and vomiting all over the floor. (Poor guy. He doesn't have a stomach for violence and gore. Joey portrays this well in the show.) He answers, babbling:

..."For fuck's sake, I've never been so afraid. I felt like the insides were falling out my arse. And that everything would drop out of me, teeth included.

God I love that part. Hilarious and very relatable. I'm sure if someone kidnapped me and put a knife to my throat, I would feel the same. (Dandelion is always the human/the reader stand in.) But the next part is so sweet.

But when I saw you I knew you'd save me. I mean, I didn't. But I was counting strongly on it. How much sodding blood there is! How it stinks in here! I think I'm going to puke again."

He knew Geralt would save him. When he saw him, he knew. *sob*

Then, Dandelion's cousin (the royal instigator is Dandelion's cousin) says he is going to take Geralt to the king to resolve this, and for Julian (Dandelion) to stay there. (People who knew Jaskier as a kid call him Julian.) Dandelion refuses.

"Fuck that. I'm not staying here for a moment. I prefer sticking close to Geralt."

I don't blame you, buddy. Who else is going to slaughter a bunch of people for you?

--fin---

Ok, I have a lot more of these fic sounding witcher facts, like:

A shape shifter reads Geralt's mind, then turns into Jaskier because he knows that’s the best way to protect himself.

Geralt and Jaskier share beds.

Geralt and Jaskier share clothes.

Geralt travels with Jaskier for years but has no idea that he is a viscount. When he does find out, it is in public, from a third party, and yes it is hilarious. (Bonus. Ciri finds out this way as well)

Geralt may play it cool to his face, but he thinks Jaskier has a gorgeous voice.

Jaskier has a voice so beautiful, it can calm a monster.

Geralt drops everything to protect Jaskier, every time, even in the middle of battles when there are other people around to protect.

Geralt can smell lust

They also share a kiss in a few of the translations, but not all. It's a very "y yo también" situation.

If people like this post, I can make it a series, pulling book passages for each of the others. Let me know!

#the witcher #geraskier #geralt of rivia #jaskier #gerlion #the witcher books #canon or fanon #i can’t believe it’s not fanon

3K notes · View notes

wingedshadowfan · 5 months

Text

the 'breaking expensive glassware' scene in ninth house is so important for darlington's character (it's essentially an extension of 'the moths' scene)

first of all. he's a man of knowledge and preparedness. he believes he knows all there is to know and that makes him prepared for it. alex easily challenges that belief, breaks his rules.

“It wasn’t the ritual.” “Was it the blood?” “No. One of them grabbed me. You didn’t say that was going to happen. I—” Darlington couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’re saying one of them touched you?” “More than one. I—” “That isn’t possible. I mean …” He set down his wine, ran his hands through his hair. “Rarely. So rarely. Sometimes in the presence of blood or if the spirit is particularly moved. That’s why true hauntings are so rare.” Her voice was hard, distant. “It’s possible.” Maybe. Unless she was lying.

his very obvious disbelief and distrust toward her is understandable - not only is what she's saying so incredibly unlikely, but he's also read her file. he has some surface level knowledge of her life and the state she was in when sandow recruited her. she's an uneducated, untrained, unprepared, a juvenile, an addict with no prospects (he never stops to consider how she got to that point, deems it irrelevant) who somehow wound up the only survivor at a murder scene. what incentive does he have to trust her?

His Dante, the girl he would gift with the keys to a secret world, was a criminal, a drug user, a dropout who cared about none of the things he did.

she was fortunate enough to be born with what he considers a gift - the ability to see grays - something lethe took notice of and rewarded generously. that's the only reason she's here. she has no other redeeming qualities to him, unlike each of the thousands of lethe house candidates he was supposed to review and pick from, that opportunity, that honor ripped away from him. this would've never happened, if not for her.

“You need to be ready next time. You weren’t prepared—” “And whose fault is that?” Darlington sat up straighter. “I beg your pardon? I gave you two weeks to get up to speed. I sent you specific passages to read to keep it manageable.”

she doesn't mean him in particular, but he predictably misunderstands (and i'll explain why). he's confident he did the right thing, that he did enough. he readily gave her what was most dear to him in a silver platter - his knowledge, the key to this world of mystery. partially he did it for lethe, partially he did it because he felt for her (referencing he moth scene here). he doesn't take lightly to being accused of being wrong, of having done the wrong thing. especially by a seemingly ungrateful newcomer throwing a temper tantrum after fucking up and possibly even lying about why.

“And what about all of the years before that?” Alex stood and shoved her chair back. She paced into the breakfast room, her black hair reflecting the lamplight, energy sparking off her. The house gave a warning groan. She wasn’t sad or ashamed or worried. She was mad. “Where were you?” she demanded. “All you wise men of Lethe with your spells and your chalk and your books? Where were you when the dead were following me home? When they were barging into my classrooms? My bedroom? My damn bathtub? Sandow said you had been tracking me for years, since I was a kid. One of you couldn’t have told me how to get rid of them? That all it would take was a few magic words to send them away?”

“They’re harmless. It’s only the rituals that—”

Alex grabbed Darlington’s glass and threw it hard against the wall, sending glass and red wine flying. “They are not harmless. You talk as if you know, like you’re some kind of expert.” She struck her hands against the table, leaning toward him. “You have no idea what they can do.”

“Are you done or would you like another glass to break?”

his distrust also very reasonably drives her mad. she's sick of not being believed, not being trusted her whole life - even here at lethe, where magic is a widely accepted fact, people like him, who've never had to live a day in her life, with her ability, still think they know better. she's supposed to be safe, understood, helped here. she isn't. she's only being used for lethe's agenda. and darlington? he perpetuates that fact. he's her mentor, for fuck's sake. she'd barely began to trust him when he showed her magic, when he taught her to protect herself. she must've misjudged him. he did all that for lethe, not for her, just like how he covered up the almost butchered ritual from scroll and key.

“Why didn’t you help me?” said Alex, her voice nearly a growl.

“I did. You were about to be buried under a sea of Grays, if you recall.”

“Not you.” Alex waved her arm, indicating the house. “Sandow. Lethe. Someone.” She covered her face with her hands. “Take courage. No one is immortal. Do you know what it would have meant to me to know those words when I was a kid? It would have taken so little to change everything. But no one bothered. Not until I could be useful to you.”

this is why he misunderstands. she doesn't challenge him directly, she attacks lethe, but he's taken it upon himself to assert lethe's authority, to protect its credibility and integrity from such accusations. he's embodied lethe. it's a part of who he is now. he considers himself an extension of it, its golden boy, its gentleman. so this criticism, he takes personally. but it's not about him.

Darlington did not like to think he had behaved badly. He did not like to think that Lethe had behaved badly. We are the shepherds. And yet they’d left Alex to face the wolves. She was right. They hadn’t cared. She’d been someone for Lethe to study and observe from afar.

He’d told himself he was giving her a chance, being fair to this girl who had washed up on his shore. But he’d let himself think of her as someone who had made all of the wrong choices and stumbled down the wrong path. It hadn’t occurred to him that she was being chased.

he's not a fool. he pieces it all together. he realizes she's right, she isn't lying. his blind trust in lethe prevented him from seeing it all before. her records start making sense. her anger now and her fear earlier start making sense. but that doesn't mean he's equipped to help her, to comfort her, to deal with the weight of what it all means. i imagine her sudden depth and pain must've scared him. he was raised by his grandpa who thought the solution to everything was alcohol, ice and manners. only thing darlington seems to have added to that list is breaking things. and alex seems to already be well versed in that.

After a long moment, he said, “Would it help to break something else?” She was breathing hard. “Maybe.” Darlington rose and opened a cupboard, then another, and another, revealing shelf after shelf of Lenox, Waterford, Limoges—glassware, plates, pitchers, platters, butter dishes, gravy boats, thousands of dollars’ worth of crystal and china. He took down a glass, filled it with wine, and handed it to Alex. “Where would you like to start?”

#ninth house #ninth house spoilers #hell bent #leigh bardugo books #leigh bardugo #alex stern series #alex stern #galaxy stern #darlington #daniel tabor arlington v #daniel arlington #golden boy of lethe #gentleman of lethe #gentleman demon

61 notes · View notes

wizzard890 · 1 year

Note

what got you so into the french revolution?

When I was in school for medieval art history, I did a lot of work on saints and their martyrdoms, particularly how the viewers of art depicting suffering imagined suffering, and how the agony/eroticism of those feelings induced a sort of memetic spiritual euphoria. Which means that I spent a ton of time looking at images of executions. I've seen them all: beheadings and sexymen shot full of arrows, saints barbecued or flayed or eaten by wild animals, criminals broken on the wheel -- all the classics. Or at least, I thought I had, until I encountered this triptych in my senior year of college:

This, by Belgian artist Antoine Wiertz, is The Visions of a Guillotined Head, painted in the late 1840s. Wiertz was a symbolist, and spent a great portion of his career drawn to the macabre, never more notably than on the occasion that inspired this painting.

In February 1848, two notable French criminals were due to be executed by the state. The guillotine was of course still in use as a method of capital punishment (and would be until the 1970s), and Wiertz was curious as to what a so-swiftly severed head felt and saw. He wasn't the first; since the guillotine's invention there had been legends of heads that blinked and blushed and tried to speak after separation. Luckily, Wiertz had a friend who was a hypnotist (as you do). Timed to the moment of the execution, he had his hypnotist pal put his soul "into rapport" with the dead criminal, and claimed that he entered the head itself as it fell.

He later recalled his experiences at some length in writing, but since we're talking about me, here is the important passage, dictated as he "felt" the horror of execution:

A horrible buzzing noise, the sound of the blade descending. The victim believes that he has been struck by lightning, not the axe. Astonishingly, the head lies under the scaffold and yet still believes it is above, still believes itself to be part of the body, and still waits for the blow that will cut it off. Horrible choking! No way to breathe. The asphyxia is appalling. It comes from an inhuman, supernatural hand, weighing down like a mountain on the head and neck. A cloud of fire passes before his eyes. Everything is red and glitters.

Now comes the moment when the executed man thinks he is stretching his cramped, trembling hands towards the dying head. It is the same instinct that drives us to press a hand against a gaping wound. And it occurs with the dreadful intention of setting the head back on the trunk, to preserve a little blood, a little life.

This fucked me up so bad.

I am well aware that consciousness after having your spinal cord severed is a done deal. I was aware of this in college. But there was something about this artist's act of imaginative empathy that compelled me, for the first time, to think about the guillotine in particular. About the mechanical wait, not being pushed off a drop or axed while kneeling, about being slid through on a board, of seeing the basket beneath you, already full of heads. Maybe even heads you know.

I imagined it so hard that I made myself sick and couldn't go to class for two days.

The reason I studied what I studied wasn't because I was ghoulish. In fact, I'm a little squeamish. It was because in the experience of pain, we are all deeply individualized, but entirely, helplessly human.

I laid in bed and thought about the small number of humans who I, an educated layman, knew had been guillotined: Marie Antoinette, obviously; Louis XVI; and (in what felt like black historical irony, given what I knew of his day job) Maximilian Robespierre.

It felt intrusive to have intimately imagined their last, most private moments, without really having any idea about them at all. Better to start at the end and work backwards, I thought. So I started reading.

Robespierre, decapitated by guillotine when he was thirty-six. That's the manner of death. How did he meet his death? In terrible pain, I learned. Why? Because he'd had half his jaw blown off the night before. Jesus, why? Because he'd (maybe probably) shot himself. Why?

It turns out, if you keep doing that, a piece at a time, for years, you can learn a lot about someone's life. And, relatedly, in long and branching paths, you can find your way into every nook and cranny of what burned through France at the end of the 18th century.

#aren't you glad you asked #hey emily why were you so obsessed with executions and the horror of suspended pain in the first place?#well yes you see I was raised evangelical and read foxe's book of martyrs at the tender age of eight and it drilled a channel into my brain #hey emily did something happen to you in college that made you hyperfocus on the gossamer threads between life and death?#would you look at the time!!!!#anyway this was probably not the answer you expected but it is what it is #I have seen the past and I foresee the future

94 notes · View notes

karamazovposting · 28 days

Text

On Ivan and bipolar disorder (part three)

This is my favorite part of this whole thing. I haven't written it yet, that's literally the opening line, but here I'll be talking about one of the most interesting (to me) aspects of Ivan's character: how the other characters perceive him; I already know I'll be having a blast writing this. Internal vs external perception is probably my favorite topic when it comes to character study, so I was thinking of doing something similar for Dmitri as well in the future because I noticed some things that I want to talk about. I'll think about it.

For once I don't have to make an introduction where I explain what I'll be going over in this because there's none to be made, so let's start from the beginning. The first time we see Ivan is when they're all waiting for Dmitri at the beginning of the book, and what does he do? He takes the piss out of everyone, of course. And I think that in everything that happens there and in the following passages (I was particularly struck by Father Zosima's words about him, which I've already mentioned in here) we pretty much have the key to Ivan's character, and he doesn't even give it to us himself (very fitting indeed). The first thing we find out is that Alyosha is afraid Ivan will be condescending towards the monks and while Ivan technically isn't, he still adopts a subtly mocking tone with them, which checks out considering that Miusov says Ivan feigns arrogance to mask his own insecurity. Also it's very telling that Ivan's demeanor changes when it comes to Zosima, I feel like he actually does respect him and to some extent appreciates his words. Funnily enough I've found myself in a similar situation in the past (atheist surrounded by nuns, my family was there, they told me some things I appreciated; I wasn't making fun of anyone though I swear) so I get it.

Speaking of words, there are many used for him in those chapters, and there are even more as the novel goes on, brushstroke after brushstroke painting a rather confusing and contradictory picture of this young man: he's bright yet insecure and "a tomb", he's weird and a misunderstood outcast in his own family yet he's charming (said by multiple characters in multiple occasions, I think it's the word that's used the most to describe him) and refined, yet again eccentric. He's paradoxical and a riddle (another word used multiple times), and his own father fears him more than he fears the son who almost beat him to death and at first I couldn't understand why, considering everyone else's opinion of Ivan and the fact that Ivan actually helped get Dmitri off of their father when he was beating him, but then I went back to Book Two and stumbled upon a line that managed to completely go over my head in the past (how could that happen? God, the horror!) that does explain a lot and looking back now, to me feels like one of the most important lines (about Ivan) of the whole novel:

What seemed to [Aleksej] strangest of all was that his brother Ivan, [...] who alone had such influence on his father that he could have stopped him [...]

I don't think I need to explain why I think this line (that you can find in The old buffoon for context) is crucial so I won't say much about it, but it also explains why Ivan's presence in the Karamazov household is seen as a guarantee for quiet and order (as stated during Dmitri's trial, and we also see it in the fact that both Dmitri and Pavel had in mind to murder Fyodor only if Ivan had been out of the picture, though for different reasons), and honestly it surprised me: I mean, Ivan's influence over other people plays a very important role in the story, but him having influence over his father? Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov? Wow. Also I have something else to say about the quiet and order thing but it belongs in part four.

The rest of that line is also interesting in my opinion:

[...] [Ivan] sat now quite unmoved, with downcast eyes, apparently waiting with interest to see how it would end, as though he had nothing to do with it.

This, maybe trivial, line never really left my head, which means it must mean something to me. Maybe because that behaviour fits Ivan's character so well and I always like when he gets to act like a normal, unbothered, and even childish at times, twenty-three year old (he's not even angry there, what a rare occurrence) and because according to how the other characters speak of him, it feels unexpected (and turned out to be useful for this post).

Back to how others speak of him, someone (Fyodor I think) goes as far as saying that maybe Ivan deliberately seeks torment, which honestly feels a little too familiar to me and that's why that's another line I can't seem to get out of my head; when people have such a high opinion of you they do tend to blame your own struggle on you, at least in my experience, as it's their only way of rationalizing it. You should be better than that, you should be smarter than that. But you're not, so maybe you actually want it; why would such a brilliant person be like that otherwise? You're not allowed to be "weak" and I think Ivan is a perfect example of this as he has internalized this concept, but I'll go over it in part four.

But what does all this have to do with bipolar disorder? I'm getting there, but you'll have to bear with me because this whole thing gets quite intricated at this point and I have to be as clear as I can (and I can't, ever), so let's take a seemingly nonsensical step back to see the bigger picture.

None of the brothers are stupid: Dmitri is naive, impulsive and uneducated, sure, but the narrator does describe him as a fairly intelligent man in spite of it, Pavel was basically a child prodigy and a very smart young adult (and maybe I should talk about it sometime because everyone in the novel considers him to be capable but stupid and there's only one person who explicitly recognizes his intelligence in a genuine way apart from the narrator, guess who), and Aleksej, while also uneducated, isn't stupid either. But there is a particular emphasis put on Ivan's intelligence and it's hard to find a paragraph where he is present or where someone else is talking about him that doesn't mention it. Ivan is bright, Ivan is educated, Ivan is an academic. It's pretty much the first thing the other characters think of when thinking about him, it's almost some sort of morbid fixation. And it's not a positive thing either as it does nothing but feed into his insecurities and Pavel even uses it against him by telling him how intelligent he is over and over until he officially loses it. Ivan is smart to the point of being charming and admired, but that turns out to be a double-edged sword (of course) because everyone puts him on a pedestral and higher the pedestral, deadlier the fall, as we see in the second half of the novel. In my opinion the only one who seems to view him as a human being and not as some sort of ghost or higher, detached entity (apart from Zosima) is Alyosha; Dmitri considers Ivan to be better than everyone else including himself, Smerdyakov is...well, Smerdyakov, his father's attitude towards him is basically I don't understand what's up with him and I don't really care (in addition to what I said a few paragraphs ago) and even Katya is charmed by him more than she loves him, at least at first. Everyone else doesn't even really know him and that's partially his own fault, but I can't blame him.

Why do I consider this bipolar coding? To make it short, intelligent people are often considered charismatic and many psychiatric studies suggest that there's a link between bipolar disorder and high intelligence (which to me personally kind of feels like a consolation prize, like nature saying hey, you'll hate being alive but at least you're not an idiot!, thanks a lot I guess) and it's also worth mentioning that bipolar disorder is linked to creativity as well since Ivan has come up with multiple poems over the years, which means he must be a creative person to a certain degree. I haven't been citing my sources because this is not an academic paper and I'm just some guy on Tumblr who doesn't even study psychiatry and just happens to be basically cursed, but there's a book about this topic that I want to mention: Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament by American psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison; I've also read her (very relatable) autobiography and I'm a big fan of hers since she knows what she's talking about even more than the average psychiatrist because she has bipolar disorder herself. For anecdotal evidence, I keep a mental list of historical figures and artists (including contemporaries/celebrities who are still alive) diagnosed with bipolar disorder (so if you ever want to know if someone has/had it hit me up I guess) that I won't include here for obvious reasons, but let me just say that the doctors who did the aforementioned studies do seem to have a point (and I'm an artist myself). I want to make clear that I'm not trying to play into the overused, boring, inaccurate, and generally uncomfortable (for me at least) mentally ill tormented genius trope/stereotype and that it's obviously not what Dostoevsky was going for either; it's just that I've personally had people fixate on my intellect my whole life (not to mention the general weird fascination the average person has for mental illness and mentally ill people as well) and seeing Ivan go through that same experience combined with the studies I just mentioned made this association inevitable for me. Also people seem to find you more fun and charming when you're manic/hypomanic (only when you're the "right" kind of manic/hypomanic of course, when you're experiencing dysphoric mania/hypomania people just become ableist because that's the "wrong" kind of mania/hypomania, duh) which is...uhm...I don't really know how to feel about it honestly, but it's a fact so I'm mentioning it.

But what came first, Ivan's self-isolation or people's misunderstanding of him as a person? Is it the former that caused the latter or the other way around? To me this feels like having to talk about the good old chicken and egg dilemma and I still haven't figured it out in relation to myself, so I guess this will remain unanswered for now (or forever). But what I do know is that bipolar disorder is a lonely experience, no matter how hard someone tries to not make it lonely; people just don't get it even if you explain yourself a thousand times over and over. It doesn't mean you don't have relationships with others, it just means you know you have to keep some things to yourself sometimes and you get used to it, which seems to be Ivan's case too; to me the best example of it is when he's just about to tell Alyosha about the devil but stops himself from doing so and decides to push him away instead. In my opinion it's also connected to his inability to show "weakness" that I already mentioned and that is often one of the core experiences of living with bipolar disorder, but I won't go over that now. I'll just say the problem when it comes to Ivan is that everyone (the readers, the other characters, even himself) gets tangled in a net of performance; living with bipolar disorder feels like having to constantly keep up a certain kind of act (that I wouldn't even know how to explain) in front of others due to the stigma, and I'm pretty sure that's the case with every neurodivergence and invisible disability (bipolar disorder is in fact a disability and I'm legally disabled, that's why I mentioned ableism earlier). Ivan knows what people think and expect of him (we've seen it in his first real interaction with Alyosha and I've already talked about it in part two) and we see few moments when he goes mask off, and apart from those moments his facial expressions are always described as being forced or "off" in some other way. One thing that struck me is the significant contrast between what Mrs. Khokhlakova in particular says about him and how we actually see him behave when he doesn't bother with his forced coldness and collectedness (usually by himself or around his family): she talks about how refined and chivalrious he is multiple times because that's the side of him she sees (and almost everyone else sees), yet he's the character who swears the most (I don't know if "swearing" is the right term as in the novel there are no actual curse words in the modern sense but he doesn't really speak kindly does he); his language is even worse than Dmitri's. I'm not saying that being polite in public/formal settings and swearing like a sailor in private/informal settings is something unusual because I'm also like that (as I'm afraid you might have noticed, sorry for all the swearing!), I just wanted to point that out because to me it seems important in general and relevant for this post.

This doesn't mean I think of Ivan as a fake person because I would have to have that same opinion of myself and I don't, it's quite hard to explain if you haven't lived the bipolar experience first-hand or don't really know what masking is and I hope you'll understand what I'm trying to say here; it's just that he hides and polishes some parts of himself due to a combination of childhood emotional neglect, mental illness, and a personality that's difficult on its own (but really, when you have a disorder like this one it's quite hard to tell what's personality and what's mental illness, especially because at times they're one and the same; it shapes you and sometimes you can't even do anything about it and to me it's no surprise Ivan's sense of self is as warped as it is), all factors that contribute to his partially self-inflicted isolation. I mean, he does say himself to Alyosha that at first he kept him at a distance on purpose and you can also find a glimpse of that in his own philosophy: he openly says that he loves humanity but dislikes humans. He can only show affection from afar and I think that also reflects in the situation with Pavel and in Ivan's own guilt: I don't think Ivan lacks empathy (quite the opposite), he just doesn't have the tools to do anything with it. Could he really have done something? He says he would have if Pavel had explicitly told him to stay in their father's house (here the conversation shifts on the physical aspect of things as Ivan now feels guilty for also being physically distant from his family and not only emotionally), but Ivan's words are never really reliable. How can we expect someone who's incapable of getting close to people to help them? Even when trying to help Dmitri escape prison he's still rough with him. There's a reason why his thing with Katya is a mess as well and he refuses to admit that he loves her (he even says to Alyosha that he doesn't like her and he's with her only to prevent a catastrophe at Mitya's trial, which are later stated to be lies by the narrator): he always tries to convert his feelings into reason, otherwise his whole façade crumbles.

I also want to mention Ippolit Kirillovič's words about him at the trial because they seem very important to me, but only very briefly because first, many things he says have already been talked about in my other posts and second, it seems a little unfair to leave the other members of the family out because Ippolit Kirillovič says many interesting things about all of them; maybe I'll make a post about that in the future. Basically, Ippolit Kirillovič doesn't particularly like Ivan because he got the better of him in a couple public arguments they had in the past (very funny to me by the way), but he still prefaces his criticism of him by talking about his positive qualities (once again, his vigorous intellect and brilliant education) and saying he was welcome in their community (but not in the same way Dmitri was). This is yet another case of me not knowing where I'm going with this, but this particular instance stood out to me so it was worth mentioning; I think it summarizes the other characters' attitude towards Ivan quite well, but I can't really explain it.

Another thing that I noticed is that no one ever calls him by a nickname, not even Alyosha. I wrote a post about the use of names and nicknames in The Brothers Karamazov months ago but I hated the way it turned out because I felt like I wasn't making any sense so I decided to throw the whole thing away and I don't even know if I should try writing it again. Anyway, it's very interesting to me that pretty much everyone is referred to by a nickname (even Rakitin of all people) except for Ivan; not even Alyosha calls him anything other than his name (and if I remember correctly not even Katya, who talks to Ivan using the informal you, does). Actually, there are a couple instances where this does happen and that drives me even more insane because the first one happens at the beginning of the novel, when his father calls him Vanya a few times only to never do it again (and honestly Ivan didn't seem to like that either), and the second one is Rakitin mockingly referring to him as Vanechka when talking about him to Aleksej (because of course he'd never call Ivan that to his face and I also have a feeling he'd get decked if he tried). I don't really know where I'm going with this (again) but I wanted to throw it in anyway because it always stood out to me considering the only main characters that are never referred to like that are Fyodor, Ivan, and Smerdyakov and well, there seem to be implications here. In the aforementioned deleted post I wrote about this topic I mentioned sense of belonging (Mitya belongs there after all) and affection/connection (everyone loves Alyosha) in opposition to being excluded (Smerdyakov is not a legitimate son) and being unable to connect with others (Ivan is an outcast due to the multiple reasons I went over in the previous paragraphs). Maybe I really should try writing it again.

Well, I think I'm done for now. I found it a little hard to separate the themes of part three from the ones of part four, because the latter will focus on Ivan's self-perception (among what happens from Book Eleven to the epilogue and other, more "medical", things) but we see how he perceives himself through the devil but the devil is not an actual real person in the book so I couldn't really include that here and in my mind the themes of these two parts kind of blended together so I had to to figure out where to break them apart.

This took longer than usual (which bothers me but oh well) because I had to take a break from pretty much everything (which is why lately many posts have been queued) for a while due to the February-March period always being whacky for me bipolar-wise, mostly because of the seasonal change (something that plays a huge role in this shitshow of a disorder and something I'll go over in part four because surprise surprise) that always makes me mentally and physically tired. All of this, which can be summarized with bipolar disorder bipolar disordering, to say that I hope this part isn't as messy as it seems to me and that I hope you can't tell I wrote it during a time I wasn't getting enough sleep (I swear I did my best given the circumstances), and if I "disappear" or interact less from time to time it's usually because of this kind of stuff. I'm still not getting enough sleep by the way so I might take a break from serious posts again, I love that daylight savings time happens during one of the worst seasonal changes of the whole year for me every year and it doesn't mess with my disorder at all.

It sure didn't help that I chose to make part three more complicated than the others thinking it wouldn't go in a completely different direction than I had originally planned and wouldn't therefore have to reorganize my thoughts during a period I simply couldn't do so; I will obviously be punished for my hubris. But until then I'll be working on part four (and some other unfinished stuff I have in my drafts and have no idea when I'll post), which will be the last part of my bipolar Ivan Karamazov essay.

#I really hope you get what I mean sometimes I feel like I'm talking nonsense #also this is very long and I went a little on a tangent at some point but I mean y'all read Dostoevsky so you're used to it #and I've just noticed how often I use parenthesis I'm so sorry but I have a lot of thoughts #and I want to clarify that the part about hating being alive is a joke I'm okay now my humor is just a little uhm...questionable #the brothers karamazov #ivan karamazov #bipolar ivan karamazov agenda #thoughts #mine

14 notes · View notes

eenkleinleven · 10 months

Note

Sth ive always wondered about a little life is how Jude was so extremely traumatised but still had good enough social skills to make so many lasting friendships. Like I know not all traumatized people are the same and it is possible for someone to be as severely traumatized as Jude was and still have some social skills, but I think it must be unusual, right? Like I'm just wondering where he learned social cues and how to interact with people his own age and how to behave in relationships and all that. And how he managed to be so different from the people around him - not revealing anything about his past, wearing long-sleeved shirts to the beach - and still got people to accept him easily and not question all these things a lot. It's something I've always wondered. What are your thoughts on this?

It's not something I ever thought about specifically, no. Or, rather, it wasn't something that struck me as particularly unusual or noteworthy. I'll do my best to articulate why.

Hanya discussed, in one interview, why she chose the narrative structure that she did for the book. She initially considered having the book in three parts, with the first two describing two alternative life paths for Jude—one where he was able to overcome his past, for the lack of a better word, and one where he wasn’t—and the third part describing what had happened to him. But she explained why she ultimately disposed of that format, saying:

“I think it establishes this binary that someone who cant function in society is somehow a failure and someone who can is a success, and that's simply not true. I think that's too reductive of a way of thinking about a person.”

I feel like that quote is important to keep in mind when talking about Jude as a character.

Regarding social skills:

I feel that it's worth noting that Jude wasn't unsocialized. I don't think his socialization through age 16 was normal by any means. There is no easy way to say this: people can be sexually abused as children and still be socially and professionally normal as adults. I personally know people who fall into that category, which is partly why it didn’t strike me as strange.

Going into greater detail, however, as to how he was able to learn social skills, there’s a few things that come to mind.

Ana seems to have given him a huge amount of support without which he may not have been able to really interact with others.

Plenty of passages in the book describe him having to learn how to interact with his peers, too.

My impression was that Jude made a concerted effort to learn about how to comport himself, an effort made easier by the fact that he kept quiet when it came to his personal life.

Regarding how he was able to maintain friendships while divulging so little about himself:

People did ask Jude about himself. Fairly often, actually, particularly in the earlier portions of the book. I mean, substantial portions of The Postman—including but not limited to this section touch on the matter outright.

But, really, I think it’s that his friends accepted him for who he was. So, for all of his differences, that was who they knew him to be, and they liked him.

I think, too, that after a certain point, his friends understood that Jude had some good reason for not sharing more about himself. It didn’t impact his ability to be a good friend otherwise, so it seems reasonable to me that they chose not to pry. If they had an issue with him being private, or different in any particular way, they could have simply remained acquaintances.

I hope this makes sense--I had some difficulty in organizing my thoughts here, so if you'd like me to clarify about anything, please feel free to ask.

#a little life

34 notes · View notes

ihaveatheoryonthat · 2 months

Text

A small handful of songs I associate with A Glint, a Spark. (Spoilers for both that fic and Memory, Heavy in My Heart.)

youtube

Arms Outstretched - Griffin McElroy

As I alluded to in the MHIMH playlist, Arms Outstretched was the song I had all but set AGAS to, for the animatic in my head. The progression of it from being kind of downtrodden, to this moment of hope, and then a happy epilogue was pretty perfect, both for the idea I actually went with, and the one I may still write.

Chapters 1 & 2

youtube

Place to Start - Mike Shinoda

Do I even have a decision? Feeling like I'm living in a story already written. Am I part of a vision made by somebody else? / Am I out of conviction with no wind in the sail, too focused on the end and simply ready to fail?

Cause I'm tired of feeling like I can't control this; tired of feeling like every next step's hopeless. Tired of feeling like what I build might break apart, I don't want to know the end, all I want is a place to start.

I don't have a ton to elaborate on with the lyrics. The first part just meshes really nicely with the theme of being unable to influence events that have already happened, and having to take them as they come. The second part resonates particularly well with the first chapter, in my opinion. I also like having a song from the same artist in both halves of the main story, and the contrasting tones.

Chapters 3-9:

youtube

The Heart of a Graveyard - Demon Hunter

Tell me that your final home is not a shot in the dark; tell me that your hopes and dreams don't end in the heart of a graveyard.

Tonally, it doesn't fit perfectly with the rest of this list, but the subject matter is pretty on the mark. There's a sense of preparing for the worst while still hoping for the best that I like, particularly in this context.

Chapter 10:

youtube

Final Battle: Malladus (From "The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks") - The Noble Demon

(The portion up to 0:46 is an intro, and not the most relevant to this list; the actual battle theme starts warming up after that.) A friend unintentionally reminded me that I love this track, and since that conversation happened smack at the climax of MHIMH, I naturally connected the dots. This would correspond to the recorded battle with Arceus, because the track for it in canon PLA just does not fit this version. I chose this remix in particular because it really emphasized the woodwind notes in parts-- which made sense re: the Azure Flute-- and because it has that underlying, train-chugging percussion. It's always struck me as a very triumphant battle theme, which fit beautifully.

Chapter 11:

youtube

Welcome to the World of Pokemon - Super Pokemon Mystery Dungeon

It's wondrous and mysterious, but gentle and a bit low-key at the same time, which I think makes it work very well for the build up this chapter, and most of the time spent in the Hall of Origin.

youtube

Mysterious Rainbow Girl - Wandersong

The same goes for this track; I was pretty torn as to which one I liked better, so I ended up keeping both for a little bit of variation.

Chapter 12:

youtube

On the Beach at Dusk - Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time, Darkness & Sky

I had this one set aside specifically for the scene at the top of Dragonspiral Tower, where the reality of the situation is beginning to sink in. If you're familiar with Explorers, there... might be something of a parallel to be read into the situations they 'play' over.

Misc:

youtube

The yet untitled song from The Dreadful Demise of the Dinosaurs - Puppet History

A lonely life among the stars, my destination veiled and far away, but I knew one day we'd find each other. Then in the dark, a glint, a spark, the greens and blues, be still my heart-- and once I hit, that's it, I'm here forever.

While I'm here, I should probably include the fic's namesake. It's really only the one verse (~0:25-0:47), because this song has a very specific subject matter and thesis, but that one passage really stuck with me in this context. The first half definitely resonates most strongly with chapter 11, but I was also aiming to match the second to 12-- specifically "the greens and blues, be still my heart" to the scene on Dragonspiral, and to end with the promise of "I'm here forever"

#submas #pokemon #ihaveatheoryonthat pkmn #not writing #agas

7 notes · View notes

abarbaricyalp · 5 months

Note

Hi! For the writers AO3 wrapped: #29?

A great question that I thought about for so long, I lost the original post. Also hi!!!!!!

#29 was roughly "what is your favorite line or passage that you wrote this year" (I hope 😄)

There were lots of vibes or character design things I really liked. I liked the music from Waltz of the Bees, and I really liked Valentine from That Time in Valentine, particularly his introductory scene.

I think as far as a real passage, though, maybe the post-shower confrontation in Tell It To The Bees (and the birds).

Bucky's brain stopped working when Sam opened the door. Because Sam wasn't dressed for a coffeeshop and chess date. He wasn't dressed like he'd been out all night and was sleeping off a hangover. He wasn't dressed at all. He was standing in the doorway with a dark navy towel wrapped low on his hips, water trickling down his broad, bare chest and long legs. Droplets were even clinging to his absurd eyelashes.

Bucky blinked like an idiot, completely struck mute. Which was fine because his mouth was too dry to form sounds anyway. And also watering so much he'd probably drool if he opened his jaw. Both couldn't possibly be true and yet.

Sam raised an eyebrow at him, which only sent Bucky's heart into overdrive. It was going to punch through his chest and flop around on the floor, much like Bucky wanted to do at that moment. "Do you need something, 203? Gonna blame me for your hot water not working again?"

Bucky forcefully threw the net at Sam, hard enough that he heard it connect with Sam's chest. It was stupid, because now Sam just looked like some statue of a sailor. The kind you'd find in the middle of a ship wreckage, the kind that would make a merman nostalgic for the shore, the kind that made all those old stories of the Brooklyn docks make so much more sense.

I had so much fun writing that image and I like that it kind of leads into the emotional beats of the story, despite being kind of silly at first

Thanks so much for asking!

#i answer things #sambucky #writing

7 notes · View notes

the-wip-project · 4 months

Text

SloMo WriNo: 2024 is Here! Time to get started!

The new year is here! (Or it will be very soon, depending where you live.)

Are you ready to start writing?

If you are, that’s great!

But again, it’s a lot of pressure to hit the ground running, especially if you’re not used to writing on a daily basis.

So for your first assignment I have something else for you to do.

Read.

That’s it. Go read a book.

Whatever genre you’re writing in, I want you to pick up something really good and spend the next few days reading it.

It can be a foundational classic, something new you’ve been hearing a positive buzz about, or even, (or perhaps especially) the book that inspired you to start writing. Even better, all three. Go to the library or book store, and get yourself a selection.

Now this is a writing assignment, so I don’t want you to just read for pleasure. (although if you’re not enjoying the book you chose, feel free to DNF and pick something else!)

We’re reading for inspiration.

So here’s the homework aspect.

Take notes. Note how the story opens, how the plot moves, how the climax is handled. What inspires you? What makes you wish you could write like that? If you find a passage that’s particularly good, transcribe it. (yeah, you heard me, copy it off, word for word.) If you always get stuck on a certain section of your own work, pay special attention to how it’s handled in the book.

And also… think about what’s missing. What is cliche or boring? What would you subvert? This is especially important if you’re still looking for a concept for your own work. Think about what you’d like to see in this type of story, and how you’d execute it.

I started writing my Carpentry mystery series because I felt frustrated that the women in remodeling mysteries never got to build anything, and are instead always the decorator. So I wrote a story with a woman carpenter.

You may find yourself struck with a similar ‘obvious’ concept. Something simple that you wish for can be all the inspiration that you need to get started writing something fresh. So pay attention to your own responses, and the ideas that it gives you.

Please feel free to let me know what ideas you get.

But most of all, have fun and enjoy reading your chosen book!

—Maree

Subscribe to my substack to make sure you don't miss a post, chat with me on the WIP Project discord, and tag any posts you make about the challenge with #slomowrino if you want me to see them!

#slomowrino #reading for inspiration #writing advice #low pressure writing goals

6 notes · View notes

raiquen · 1 month

Text

Book Review: Azul..., Cuentos and Poemas en prosa, Rubén Darío

My Review in a Tweet:

Such a small book, and yet filled with wonders, rich in intertextuality that I doubt exists nowadays: it shines in his works a dedication to cultivate his knowledge of the contemporary literature and all that came before that I wish I could emulate.

My Full Review:

These poems and short stories decorate this books like the things that fills the house of someone who traveled.

And yet, at the moment of the first draft of the book and according to his friend Juan Valera, Ruben Darío had never left Nicaragua, his writing has elements of a hundred other poets and styles while making them their own, from places he never visited and times he never lived in.

Despite that, the collection of intrincancies and small tokens of the world make this book a very interesting but complex reading: you soon begin to feel too ignorant to really appreciate it, but I decided to view it as pulling the curtain to peek at a world that I felt was lost, one of true dedication to the culture and art as an inmportant facet of human experience.

Even more so today than ever before, when there seems to be an active anti-intellectualism stance when contemplating art, it is important to push ourselves to go beyond what we can fuly comprehend, to dive deeper into genres and authors that we deem too old or too far removed from our daily experience.

In terms of the quality of the writing, I can't really judge it, but I did enjoy it. Some passages of the poems struck me as particularly beautiful or mordant, depending on the tone. Some short stories were inscrutable, others were so simple and brilliant.

I'll add some fragments that I really liked, all from different poems or short stories. If I tried to translate them myself, I wouldn't do them justice, so I'll leave them in Spanish, as a small treasure for those followers that speak it, or a small challenge for those who wish to translate them by themselves.

Again, I won't score poetry, not even that in prose.

My Other 2024 Readings.

#rubén darío #ruben dario #poetry #nicaragua #readings #book recs #book review #my 2024 readings #my readings

4 notes · View notes

coruscantiscribbler · 1 year

Note

Both Sides Now

I have always thought that Star Wars had an identity crises: they claimed to be targeting a youngish crowd, but they lassoed adults in droves. When they specifically cater to children, the adults go on a rampage. When they finally gift us adults with our first really mature program, Andor, a particularly vocal cross-section was up in arms because they were bored by lack of visual stimulation. It seems that the franchise cannot win.

But Andor did win, and win big it did.

My guest @coruscantiscribbler wrote an essay, There Is Nothing Slow Or Boring About Andor illustrating just this point: Star Wars can produce top notch quality content. While not the rollicking good time delivered by, A New Hope or the angst-laden (but guaranteed to be resolved) Empire Strikes Back, nonetheless, it carves out a genre all to its self.

Scribbs! welcome back to the Asker’s Studio™️, my most frequent and favored guest. You make a lot of concrete points about what Andor is and is not, and what many folks unfortunately missed as they watched. The main point that you make is that both Syril & Andor go through profound changes (to the point of exchanging roles) In Andor, you make this observation:

Cassian had only the desire to get through the next day with enough money for a drink and a boink. But by the time of Rogue One Andor knows not only who he is, but what he is fighting for, and he has gone to serving a higher purpose.

When I read this passage, a distinct arc in the series came to mind: the time in which Andor spends in prison. While others may have felt that Andor was introduced to cooperation in the first arc - when he worked with the rebels to steal the credits - I feel that the real test came when he had to devise an escape plan that required the help of others. I believe that it was the first time Andor really had to break from his self-serving isolation and truly work as a team.

Am I alone in thinking that the prison arc was transformative to Andor, or was this part of your evolutionary observation of Andor? I ask this because most people who did not like the show that of this arc as particularly slow.

For Syril, we can see that the further he gets from the structured environment (that he is initially working under), the more he is stretched beyond his capacity. Eventually, when it all caves, we see the signs of a psychotic break. As we move towards the end of the season, there is a possibility that in saving Diedre, Syril might be redeemed. He might once again have purpose - one that lines up perfectly with his singular obsession with Andor.

Are we are going to find both men firmly ensconced in organizations that ultimately take advantage of both of their skill sets, so that when they next meet, each will have the power of many behind them?

Are we to be pulling the lens back and observing the two entities - Rebels and Imperials - fighting it out, or will we continue to focus more on character-driven development? What would you like to see?

I was moved by the show, but strangely, as a sometimes fic writer, I was not inspired to write anything regarding the content. I began to wonder if my impetus to write was mostly due to frustration by what was lacking, therefore, I set out to improve it with fic. With Andor, everything was as it should be, thus, I had no improvement, no fic.

Have you given any thought to this concept of fic inspired by Andor?

Finally, I wish for you to go where you want with this discussion. My questions seem shallow to me after reading your essay, yet, I wish to delve deeper into the topic of Andor, so please feel free to go in any direction you desire!

Thank you so much for taking the time for this thoughtful and insightful ask. I didn't address the prison episodes because it seemed that many of the people who had given up on Andor cited those first couple of episodes as the reason for their disinterest.

What struck about the prison sequence was how it shone a light on how Cassian Andor is not really a leader. He stays in the background and the shadows and he inspires and pushes others to find their courage and to start to believe and ultimately their voice. He does it with Kino. He does it with Jen in Rogue One. It is Jen who makes the passionate speech to the Rebel council, not Andor. It is Kino who inspires the prisoners to push forward despite the blasters in the hands of the Imperial guards.

This is one of the major reasons I selected Andor as the rebel who recruited Kallus, because that is Cassian's gift and his power. Also based on what I had seen in Andor I realized that the Rebellion would have informants among the joy houses and the bars to tell them when an Imperial was getting shaky.

My prediction is that Syril will become an ISB agent as a reward for helping Dedra so that he has more agency to go after Cassian because this does seem to be a duel between these two young men. It is Dedra and Luthen who will be foils for each other. There has been some confusion over who Axis actually is -- it's not Andor, it's Luthen and that's who Dedra is focused on. Cassian is just a tool to reach the true rebel leader.

I think in season two we will start to see the broader Rebellion taking shape, but great story telling isn't about the spectacle, the massive battle. It's the little falling pebbles ie the characters and their choices, that make for true drama not the avalanche itself. I think is often lost on studios and producers especially in feature films. I don't need twenty minutes of a special effects battle, I need the quiet moments where the real choices are made.

I haven't been inspired to write about Luthen or Dedra or Mon Mothma except as they impinge on the fic I'm writing, but I have been inspired to use the fully fleshed out world that Gilroy presented as regards Coruscant and I've tried to bring that sense of a fully realized world to life. I got really, really tired of dusty planets with marketplaces that looked like something out of the 12th century. I wanted to see not only the glitter of Coruscant, but also the Minneapolis of the Star Wars universe.

There is a reason people are quiet in the face of fascism and it's not just fear, it's also about comfort. "Well, I know the government arrested my neighbor but he was (fill in the blank of whatever scapegoat) and I'm not that person, and I have my job and my kids and my spouse to consider, and if you just comply and follow the law you'l be fine, and things are better than the chaos of the Clone Wars", and so the justifications continue.

#Cassian Andor #fascism #syril karn #dedra meero #Luthen #Mon Mothma

15 notes · View notes

sebastianinjapan · 11 months

Text

June 10 - Kinkakuji and Daitokuji

First night in Kyoto was nice. The futons are significantly better here, so I got a much more comfy sleep. The room is quite small compared to our last hotel but it’s basically just a hovel that I use to store my items and body at night. While the hustle and bustle of Tokyo is hard to replicate, Kyoto is still quite a busy place with transit constantly packed aswell as restaurants. Todays excursions took us to two culturally significant locations the first being the Golden Temple (reconstructed after an arson attack) and the Daisen-In which is a zen garden of high renown. The Golden Temple was nice but the location was more-so a tourist destination so it felt more commodified than previous temple/shrines we have visited. The temple itself, covered completely in gold leaf is inaccessible so we had to look at it from across a small lake. Out of the two locations the Daisen-In was for sure my favorite. Luckily for us a tour guide was there when we arrived and she spoke English. She proceeded to give us in-depth explanations of the significance of the garden aswell as various zen words. She even took us to a room which is usually barred off, which was the quarters of the monk Takuan!! Personally this was a real treat for me as this monk is depicted in my favorite manga Vagabond, and it felt so special to be in the place that he resided in. A specific zen word written by the previous temple head really spoke to me so I purchased a print of it and the very man who wrote it was present!!! He even signed it. What a lucky day.

Feeling at ease I walked the entire distance back to the hotel which was about 4 miles. I soaked in the city of Kyoto on my walk, catching an early glimpse of the Kyoto National Garden which we will visit as a class in a later date.

Academic Reflection

For our reading in the Golden Temple, we read a short excerpt by the famous Japanese author Mishima. These short passages spoke volumes to me, and had a deep emotional impact when I read it. The prose of Mishima was unlike anything I’ve read in recent time, and particularly his musing on the impertinence of life and the path one goes down really struck me. Conflicting with the reading the temple was quite beautiful, but the temple I saw today is a rebuilt version of it after it was burned down. The building itself stood the test of time, avoiding destruction from many years of war which is rare for buildings in Japan as I’ve come to learn. The arsonist is the protagonist of the novel, providing a interesting psychological breakdown of how one reaches absolute dissolution of one’s being.

Our readings pertaining the Zen Buddhism and the gardens they meditate by provided a deeper insight on the very alien practices (alien for a Westerner). The readings described the garden we visited with perfect detail (I was even able to name rocks when our tour guide asked us to guess), and being there after reading on the importance of this location filled me with a strange feeling. Like I was witnessing something wonderful. I’m not really sure how to describe it, maybe the Zen dry garden played its own effects out on me. I think as time passes and I’ve had time to reflect on the experience, I may learn something about myself. It is to early to tell.

2 notes · View notes

djservo · 2 years

Note

hiii it’s that time again! september wrap up and october tbr? do you go in for a particular vibe in the autumn/winter 🙇🏽‍♀️

IMO 🫂☕️📖 idk what came over me last month (especially since i was out of town/had nonstop plans for the past 2 weeks) but i got thru a lot more than i thought i would so i'm gonna put it undercut 💆‍♀️

black hole by charles burns

LOVED!! really cool body horror/concept - i really wanna try n incorporate a graphic novel every month bc i've enjoyed myself each time 🃏 u already know that i watched it follows the night of finishing this & it was simply the perfect wine n cheese pairing 🍷🧀

shoplifting from american apparel by tao lin

stupid and soulless LOL i went down the rabbit hole of alt-lit (like Theoretically) awhile ago & i guess this was my first real dip into it & it sucked ass but what else did i expect from a genre chock-full of pretentious pseudo-intellectual assholes from peak blogging era 🙄 IF i'm brave enough to sit thru sterile & self-important ramblings of alt-lit again, i'm sticking solely to women writers only ❌☝️

a carnival of snackery by david sedaris

his entries about identity/politics/the pandemic come off a little out-of-touch in a way i'm sure would put someone off completely if it was their first sedaris, but i was still struck by unexpected tenderness/introspection amongst the occasionally glib and smart ass sections - though admittedly, all of which are what got me to love & become a loyal reader of sedaris in the first place

happy go-lucky by david sedaris

i listened to an audiobook of this bc i'd never done that for his essays before & im so glad i did!! it's such a different & even more fulfilling experience to hear his voice/inflections/impressions and generally with essays/memoirs it feels more intimate, kinda like a friend recounting thoughts n memories to you. i need to revisit past essays, but i have an inkling that he's getting a little softer in age - particularly with how he talks about his partner (hugh) like i literally had to go back in book and reread an essay because i couldn't believe he'd gotten so sappy with no punchline 🥲

crush by richard siken

quintessential tumblr poetry moment... don't know what i could possibly say/add about this as it's already been beaten and gutted to death for years on here, but it definitely holds up beyond the more popular n quoted passages interspersed with like. gifs from supernatural or whatever else LOL

high school by tegan & sara quin

so cleverly done with each chapter alternating between them - for some moments i did wish i could've read the other twin's perspective, but i understand it'd probably be too repetitive. clea duvall is the perfect fit to direct this so i'm excited to see how things translate in the show!

the agony of eros by byung-chul han

i devour any ponderings on eros/desire/love/etc so this + a lover's discourse + symposium + a blunt... yeah

sigh, gone by phuc tran

probably wouldn't have finished this if i hadn't switched to the audiobook like halfway thru. kinda uncompelling and pretentious, maybe bc i didn't know of/necessarily care abt the author enough to justify delving into a memoir. i did love/resonate with the bit about his attempts to relate to immigrant parents, i just wish he'd reflected more on his own assimilation / muddled cultural ties rather than straining to connect everything to classic literature (which is kind of ironic now that i think abt it)

never be alone again by lina abascal

laughable... could've (should've) easily been a vice article or better yet a vice documentary (that way the interviews/references would've actually flowed nicely) but instead there are these clunky kitschy buzzfeed ass 'your bloghouse song according to your zodiac sign XD' chapters in between.... but whatever i had fun & gave it to a coworker who's equally & damnably nostalgic for this era 😐

natural causes by barbara ehrenreich

listened to the audiobook - morbid but necessary food for thought abt the wellness industry, moreso how 'wellness' has become so misconstrued to the point of infiltrating our basic understandings of life & death. healthcare myths we've been brainwashed to believe/never question, examinations of intrusive procedures/"cures" that do more harm than good - a little all-over-the-place, but listening to it made it absorb easier i think

corpus christi by terrence mcnally

learned about this play semi-recently thru a documentary (same name) about a theater putting on this play & the actors' experiences with religion/sexuality, THEN coincidentally came across david sedaris mentioning terrence mcnally in a carnival of snackery which was obvi a sign 📡 beautiful & heartbreaking in the way any/all religion&sexuality intersections hit - would love to see this live

+ 3 more since then but i'll save those for our october round-up (bc this is already so annoyingly long) :-)

i'd like to think i'm more drawn to fiction as the weather gets colder n i want something cozy, but i have a few theory books i really wanna sink my teeth into so we'll see how these last few months go 🤨

at the moment i'm reading the strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde by robert louis stevenson & also checked out bath haus by pj vernon and the cabin at the end of the world by paul g tremblay (my sister and i saw barbarian in theaters & they showed this trailer & we were like 'omg let's read this together??' despite both of us not being big readers of horror or caring much about m. night shyamalan movies anymore LOL but i'm excited!) - so i suppose i'm doing a horror thing BUT it's also filipinx american history month so i'd like to incorporate that too! i finished up a jessica hagedorn book on my recent trip back home and i'm gonna try to squeeze in another, but i'll be out of town again the end of this month (🛌💤) so to switch up the tone i think i'm gonna take along global divas: filipino gay men in the diaspora by martin f. manalansan iv 🧳📚

#i feel like i watched a lot of movies this month too & i simply don't know how i made the time!!#this was such a bitch to type out on my phone my God don't let me do that again #asks #c speak #cheesehair #reads

6 notes · View notes