I am drowning, there is no sign of land,
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Thinking about the sniper duo
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a while ago i saw a post by @sideblogdotjpeg about how the cycles in c3 seem a lot more personal/familial. and i kind of went insane in the tags at the time and i’ve been thinking about it a lot since because like…
you have the heroic cycles that the band of boobs parallel/break on this large scale. the idea of these broken trios of adventurers is there throughout the campaign, but they really start to engage with it towards the end— with the divine hearts, and thiala, and the wheel of suffering/wheel of joy idea. the thing hardwon says as he takes the divine heart, that no matter what anybody chooses from then on it’s with love in their hearts, i feel is very relevant to how they break the cycle. they love each other, and they choose over and over to hold each other tighter rather than be driven apart.
and on the other hand, you have duck team’s refusal of fate vs their family’s resignation to it. look at swag working with mothership, oliana’s contrition, and the stuff that is currently ongoing with gowan. you know— sol is a version of swag who fully rejected mothership and found his friends instead. callie refused to be a part of her family’s business, and her love for the wild and the serpents is giving the world a chance. calder, when he makes the deal with ultrus, telling callie and sol that he trusts them to save him. and now calder is refusing to sit back and let gowan handle things in the ice knife.
it's not that duck team aren't trying to save the world. they are. and it's not that the boobs didn't have a personal connection to the cycles they were breaking. they did. but it's like... well... how do i put this into words. right--
the song melora's boon plays when the boobs arrive at the heart of the world and speak to melora. when she talks to beverly about duty, shows him the places he faltered and how at the last second, he gets back up. (later, when they face thiala, bev doesn't go unconscious once. at one point, he's the only one standing.)
for sol, this is the song that plays when he expresses his fear of going down again. when he admits to callie that he's scared of the day that she and calder are down and he's the one that needs to stand up alone. when callie says she's not afraid of that day, and sol finds himself empowered by the mushroom in his chest. the moment that sets up sol's long death monk ability, where he's able to refuse to go down and keep on fighting.
melora’s boon is also the song that plays for moonshine’s boon at the heart of the world. there are actually two songs in this scene, hardwon’s is different, and the transition back happens when melora says there’s a part of herself that moonshine hasn’t embraced. when she speaks to moonshine leading her people to a better future like an alpha wolf leading her pack.
for callie, it plays when she tells hardwon and sol that she’s a liability and she needs to change— to embrace winter— in order to get calder back, even as they reassure her that she doesn’t. it also plays when callie asks the others to help her protect honeysuckle while he’s weakened. when they promise to lead honeysuckle home and free him from his connections to gromdal.
the writing on the wall plays when the boobs reach the court of gods. there's the wall of prayers there, and they hear the prayers of the people of bahumia, reaching out to them. prayers of protection-- for and by them. prayers that put the future of bahumia in their hands.
for callie, this is the song that plays when she sees aryox's carving of her reaching the cave. when she realizes her mother acted the way she did because she could see what was coming in the future. when she realizes her mother was leaving the world in her hands.
the songs that the boobs first encounter at the end— when they’re basically demigods stepping up to face thiala— return for duck team in these personal moments. when sol finds the strength to refuse death. when callie talks about embracing winter, her mother’s season, something she eventually finds strength in, to save her friend. when callie asks the others to help honeysuckle, one of the serpents that she’s promised to protect partially due to the harm her family caused to the wild. and when callie realizes her mother saw the future and acted as she did because of it, pushing callie to walk the path she’s walking now.
anyway. this was a post about naddpod music.
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the chapter songs in Alan Wake 2,, flawless
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Veth and Fjord make a really entertaining duo because of the way that they butt heads and argue most of the time, but I’m also so interested in all the compelling ways that they are very similar people. Obviously, their personalities are fairly different on the surface level, but many of their underlying issues are the same, as they were formed by bizarrely similar backstories. They were both severely bullied in their childhoods, causing serious self-worth/self-esteem issues that have lasted their whole lives, and they specifically both grew up being told they were ugly and strange by the kids (and adults) around them. They then escaped those damaging environments in the best ways they could—Fjord by ending up on the Tide’s Breath, coming into his own under Vandran's guidance, and Veth by marrying Yeza and having Luc, presumably establishing her own household and getting her out of her childhood home, where her brothers were a main source of the bullying she suffered from. Both instances have them reaching for independence from those who had harmed them, struggling to step into a semblance of better futures, though neither quite manage it in its entirety.
Then tragedy to strikes them both (Sabian’s betrayal; the goblin incursion). And though the circumstances of these tragedies were quite different, they both end the same way: water in their lungs. Both of them utterly changed in the act of drowning, neither of them in control of the outcome. They both become something new and other, something more dangerous than they once were. For Fjord, this is something of a gift, an opportunity to remake himself as he searches for answers. Veth, in a roundabout way, wants the same thing he does. But she doesn't want to remake herself into something new--she wants to remake herself into what she used to be.
This renders Veth and Fjord as something of mirrors to each other. Two people who should not have so much in common, but can see those similarities in the other anyway. Their backgrounds leave them with such similar issues that it's practically inevitable that they butt heads and argue and don't get along half the time, even though they do care about each other. We're talking about two people raised on self-hatred--they probably have some mixed feelings about seeing so much of themselves in each other. And I just think the way their stories are so symmetrical really deepens both of their narratives once you zoom out enough to see the way that their lives reflect each others'
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longing for the sunshine, even if my wings may melt away
id: a digital drawing of mirage and gabriel from ultrakill. they’re shown running in green fields over a blue sky. mirage is closer to the viewer and she’s looking up, her legs are cut off by the frame. gabriel is fully visible, behind mirage and holding her hand, looking up into the sky as well. end id
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Seeing people clutch pearls over Arya having killed people is so funny cause the list is literally rapist, murderer, torturer, criminal, some combination of the bunch...and all people who Arya has personally witnessed, or directly heard about, committing these acts. Like, contrary to popular belief, she is not just a mindless killing machine.
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btw about Neil Gaiman I periodically agree with the 'Neil Gaiman is annoying' stuff bc I feel like both he and Amanda Palmer seem like people who I would go insane stuck in a room with bc we have very different ideas about art and suchlike. and I also do think that the career trajectory he's on lately is cynically redoing his greatest hits and pretending that was the dream all along when it clearly was not. which is at best meh.
having said which
as far as I can tell by far the most common complaint about Neil Gaiman is "Snow, Glass, Apples is problematic/gross/it's got incest and rape and frames the child as the aggressor"
which strikes me as a weird complaint to pull out of a 40 year body of work tbh when that short story is pretty clearly coming from a place of 'how far can I push this'. like you don't have to like the story. I don't really like the story. but it is. a horror story.
like and this is the thing with particularly 90s alt horror right? a lot of the interest is in transgression and sitting in the worst possible perspective and seeing what happens if you pull those strings. like I really like Clive Barker for example but there's a good chunk of his short stories that I'm like I'm not picking up what you're putting down Clive this seems Kinda Off. but that willingness to write some trite or Bad Message horror fiction that doesn't land is imo a side effect of being willing to try writing uncomfortable and unpleasant fiction at all. which is what horror is for, among other things, it's for creating discomfort as a form of catharsis or engagement.
like I am not a huge fan of the type of sex-horror that pops up in a lot of Gaiman's work and other contemporary horror writers - to me I don't find it upsetting or horny it just ends up feeling kind of edgy and tryhard - but I'm also a bit like. it does seem like a lot of people's beef with Neil Gaiman is that In The 90s He Was A Horror Writer
and this approach to Problematic Horror in Snow, Glass, Apples I find kind of microcosmic of how The Discourse often approaches art in this kind of 1:1 way. if you write a story which seems to line up with rape apologia it can only be because you agree with it. if you write a story about transphobia you're a transphobe. if you write a story that makes me genuinely uncomfortable you're attacking me.
but artwork, especially art like horror that's not necessarily trying to provoke enjoyment as its main response, is necessarily hit and miss. and if what you're shooting for is discomfort then whether it works, falls flat or goes too far incredibly depends on your audience. and making good art - as in art that makes its audience think, art that opens the audience up to discomfort and catharsis and sticks with them and changes them - requires the space to experiment and tbh the space to fuck up. like they aren't all going to be winners and they certainly aren't all going to work for you as a singular audience.
personally I don't see the appeal of Snow, Glass, Apples, less cause it's nasty and more cause it's hack. ooh an edgy monstrous version of a fairy tale where there's lots of rape and cannibalism? you're soooo original Neil. but like. that's fine. I don't really vibe with like 70% of Neil Gaiman stuff I've read but I still like Neil Gaiman because the stuff that works for me really works for me.
idk I think there's a lot of folk on this website who shouldn't interact with horror cause they clearly aren't interested in being horrified. that's not everyone who dislikes Snow, Glass, Apples, but it's a real undercurrent to a lot of the criticism and tbh this kinda vibe is shit for art. making standout art What Is Good also requires being ready to make art which stands out for the wrong reasons. sometimes they'll be the same art to different people.
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Will yall laugh at me if i say this Tender Moment is genuinely making me tear up
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I think we're all entitled to one of these <3
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i just came across ai covers on youtube and people are requesting songs in the comments instead of getting enraged and i am further losing hope in humanity and turning to misanthropy
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Cursed idea
TAZ Balance: the Musical
When does it start? When does it end? Who the fuck knows.
All I know it starts and ends with Voidfish (Plural). EGGBABE
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The nature of time is that (culturally) Christian Euro/Anglo colonial consumers (hereafter white ‘people’) fetishize the idea of being ‘close to nature’ or ‘primitive’ or ‘savage’ and latch on to the idea that there are groups of people in the world who are somehow bestial or who have some kind of special powers from holding animist beliefs/beliefs that acknowledge the body as opposed to the Christian belief that the body is a kind of useless appendage to a person. We see this across decades from the 19thC to today in the racist fetishization of indigenous people across the globe, particularly residents of the Americas, Australasia, and southern/eastern Africa.
White consumers use a warped conception of other cultures to live out the fantasies that the Christian soul/body stuff engenders. You keep getting told that your emotions and physical sensations are the devil’s work? You want to get in touch with those physical sensations, but you don’t want it to interfere with your worldview? Simply project them on to a convenient group of people with slightly different conventions from you. Imagine how cool it would be to be 100% physical sensation (especially those pesky violent and/or sexual urges) and no mental burden, then unleash that in a way that causes millions of deaths worldwide via the dehumanization of entire nations of people just trying to live their lives. White consumers love a Proud Warrior Race Guy.
Flash forward to the 2010s, it’s generally considered impolite to spread the same propaganda that justified the genocide and dispossession of many different groups of people. However white culture hasn’t changed that much and normal human activities still need to be explained away to maintain the veneer of white intellectualism that has been used to justify white violence for years and years. You can’t just stomp around and clap your hands and dance badly, you’ve got to project it somewhere else.
But wait! There’s a community of people considered ‘tribal’ and ‘savage’, considered violent and bestial, who were never colonized! It’s…the Norse. Fetishizing early medieval North Sea raiders can’t be cultural appropriation, see, they’re white! It’s not offensive to replace an entire culture with white (male) ideas of what’s cool if that culture is totally unassociated with colonizer stereotypes and is in fact a culture of colonizers!
And that’s my theory on why there are so many Norse-inspired folk bands/video games/tv shows/memes/literally anything in the 2010s. VSaga not counted because that manga has been running since 2003 and is actually well-researched and comes out of a culture with a similar but distinct tradition of racism. The Euro storytelling tendencies of needing some kind of violent avatar have taken on ye anciente Norseman now that people care a little bit about the gallons of blood used to sketch other ethnic stereotypes. Done and dusted. Except the other side is that the fetishization of early medieval Norse culture is literally just white supremacist 101 and a lot of artists don’t step around that nearly as carefully as they should
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i could draw anything but i decided to draw this. carlo and rocco in 1932 aka my headache
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Why don't you stay?
When I think about Kim and Chay I cannot imagine any other possible ending than what the show gave us.
I know this will be an unpopular opinion but it is essentially so poetically beautiful and KP does like to play like this.
Their story starts and ends (temporarily) with a song. With Chay listening to Wik at the beginning and to Kim at the end using his song to get his feelings across.
And I know for a lot of people what Kim does is not enough.
What is the use of writing a song? Should he not be direct and confront Chay and tell him what he feels exactly? Should he not tell how sorry he is and apologize?
But that wouldn't be Kim, being direct and talking about his emotions is not his style.
But a song is perfect because Chay will understand, the point will get across.
Because Chay knows Wik and Kim, deep within his soul, all of it, the good and the bad. Because he saw the videos, he knows the songs, he remembers all of it.
And a conversation would not have the same effect.
Because you see, Chay knows about writing songs, he knows how hard a thing it is to do. He knows you can't write your heart out if you don't feel enough love that it's impossible to contain.
Because being inspired by someone, being creative because of someone is something he understands, he understands how the words won't come if your feelings are not enough and just how much it takes to bare yourself for the world to see.
Because in the end, what Kim is really doing is this: screaming out his love for the world to see.
And in the end what Chay sees is this, the spark he ignited in Kim produced this
A song just for him
An act of creation
A gift of inspiration
A labour of love
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i have not listened to hamilton in like a week why is he STILL HERE
read the tags if you want to see me talk about musicals for a little TOO long
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