#Our Dark Matter Is Mysterious (trope)

[inspectorspacetimerevisited]

What would happen if the BOOTH entered a dark matter cluster

and how would the Inspector deal with whatever might exist inside the dark matter?

#Inspector Spacetime #story ideas #episode ideas #Our Dark Matter Is Mysterious (trope) #Our Dark Matter Is Mysterious #dark matter #what would happen if #what if #BOOTH #DARSIT #X 7 Dimensioniser #X 7 #entered a dark matter cluster #dark matter cluster #how would the Inspector #the Inspector (character) #deal with whatever #might exist inside it #inside dark matter

[aethon-recs]

2024 Update to Tomarrymort Longfic Recs — 8 additional fics

I wanted to add 8 lovely new longfics that have been published since the last time I put together this rec list — 6 more for the Intermediate reads list and 2 more for Advanced. Hopefully you’ll find something within these additional 950k words of absolutely brilliant Tomarrymort fic to sink your teeth into and enjoy:

Longfic rec list collection:

Tomarrymort Beginner reads are the fics I would use to introduce someone to the ship and help them get a baseline for the variety, themes, and tropes that best represent our ship;

Intermediate reads are for readers that are already familiar/sold on the ship, and are looking for fics that explore interesting new facets of the Tomarrymort dynamic; 

Advanced reads comprise challenging works of some nature, whether the writing features more complex subject matter and/or pushes the boundaries of what’s possible in a piece of fanfic.

Please enjoy these 8 additions to the list, all of which are either completed or still updating as of 2024!

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Intermediate Longfic Recs

A Light That Never Goes Out by @kippipies (M, 80k, WIP)

Setting: Non-Magical AU Premise: If Harry is the target of a dangerous crime lord called Voldemort and his gang of Death Eaters in a modern mafia AU. Why I rec it: This is a delightful, high-energy caper of a fic in which Harry is a scrappy low-time criminal who accidentally crosses crime boss Voldemort. Naturally, Voldemort sets his sights on getting revenge, but Harry slips through his fingers at the last minute each time. The action scenes in this fic are incredibly dynamic and super fun — I felt like I was watching an action movie at each confrontation between Harry and Voldemort.

And the Living Will Envy the Dead by @k-s-morgan (M, 81k, WIP)

Setting: Time Travel (1940s) Premise: If Harry were flung back in time to Tom’s sixth year and almost immediately reveals he is Tom’s horcrux, setting off a chain reaction of obsession and control.  Why I rec it: An intricately crafted character study of Tom and how he gained control over the rest of Slytherin House by the time Harry meets him at the start of sixth year. Harry’s arrival throws Tom’s plans off-kilter, especially once Harry reveals he was Tom’s horcrux in another timeline. This leads Tom to believe the other version of him had somehow loved Harry, and shows him that it’s possible to form such a connection with Harry here if he wants, despite how dark, cruel, and violent he turned out and how little he cares for others. 

By Any Means by @corpium (E, 74k, WIP)

Setting: Alternate Universe Premise: If Harry has a younger brother Evan who is the Boy-Who-Lived, yet Harry’s overprotective actions towards Evan end up attracting the attention of Voldemort directly onto himself. Why I rec it: This is a really engaging and fast-paced adaptation of canon events if Harry were born 2 years earlier and his younger brother were the one that the prophecy applied to. The relationship between Harry and Evan is really sweet, as they share the burden of growing up at the Dursleys and all the adventures that Harry underwent in canon. There’s also such a fascinating exploration of magic as Harry gradually becomes more powerful as a result of all the trials that he’s put through, eventually becoming powerful enough to attract the attention of Voldemort. 

Pledged by @moontearpensfic (E, 118k, WIP)

Setting: Alternate Universe Premise: If Harry and Tom are best friends that enter together into a Hunger Games-crossed-with-Triwizard Tournament in their seventh year.  Why I rec it: This fic depicts co-dependency to such an intense degree between Harry and Tom. Not only are they inseparable best friends throughout their time at Hogwarts, they also perform a cooperative magic ritual that binds their magic to each other permanently, and allows them to share thoughts and feelings with each other across a mental link. There’s also an intriguing mystery at the heart of this story, as Harry and Tom try to figure out the origins of the Triwizard-style tournament that they enter into in their seventh year. 

Revolution of Configured Stars by @tollingreminiscentbells (E, 153k, WIP)

Setting: Voldemort Wins AU Premise: If Harry was raised in a pureblood family in a universe where Voldemort wins, and ends up attracting the attention of Voldemort in his seventh year at Hogwarts.  Why I rec it: This is such an intricate, incredibly thoughtful depiction of a society where Voldemort won and Harry was raised as a ward of a pureblood family. By the time it’s Harry’s seventh year, he’s a budding Arithmancy scholar who wants to explore whether it’s possible to choose the optimal timeline via arithmantic calculations, which catches the attention of Voldemort. Voldemort and Harry’s relationship unfolds in such a steamy way, and they truly feel like equals who hold each other in high regard, as Voldemort reveals that they have been inextricably linked by fate, whether or not he ended up trying to kill Harry as a baby in this particular timeline. 

the stars, my destination by @milkandmoon-ao3 (M, 15k, WIP)

Setting: Time Travel (Marauders Era) Premise: If Harry is sent back in time as an infant and adopted into the Potter family, growing up and attending Hogwarts alongside James.  Why I rec it: There is a dearth of Harrymort fics set in Marauders Era so it is such a delight to read about Harry’s friendships and rivalries with Marauders Era characters, like being best friends with Regulus and Quidditch rivals with James. As Harry starts his sixth year, the First Wizarding War heats up in the background and begins spilling into their life at Hogwarts as many of their classmates are recruited to fight on either side of it. All the while that he has to keep secret the strange mental connection that he’s had with the Dark Lord all his life. 

*

Advanced Longfic Recs

Hearthstone Abbey (Series) by @ramabear (E, 152k, WIP series)

Setting: Soulmate AU Premise: If second year Harry is plucked away from his canon universe by Voldemort from another universe who is his soulmate. Why I rec it: I wholly melted at all the ways Voldemort takes care of Harry in this fic, better treatment than Harry’s ever gotten in his entire life, and Harry is so lovable and adorable in turn. Voldemort has established himself as a religious figurehead/cult leader in the alternate universe, and it was very interesting to read about his alternate path to power. The soft grooming in this fic was so so delicious, ramping up in intensity as the fic progresses; Voldemort completely dotes on Harry and their dynamic is so sweet and tender, a very nice counterbalance to the sinister and predatory tones that underlie their relationship.

if we were lovers by @reggieblk (E, 277k, complete)

Setting: Non-Magical AU Premise: If Harry and Tom meet in a prestigious drama programme and fall for each other against a backdrop of high stakes threatre productions.  Why I rec it: The character work is so rich and detailed in this coming-of-age story in a modern AU setting. It’s clear there was so much thought that went into all the character interactions here, not only between Harry and Tom, but also the ensemble cast of characters who inject so much heart and humor into this story as well. I love the way that @reggieblk cleverly weaves in elements from Shakespeare’s plays and uses the theatre backdrop to depict how the love story between Harry and Tom unfolds — their developing relationship feels, at the same time, both very immersive and cozy, as well as highly fraught with tension. (As a bonus, there is an absolutely amazing original play in the interlude chapter that was written specifically for this fic!)

*

#tomarrymort #tomarry #harrymort #aethon recs #tomarry recs #tomarrymort recs #harrymort recs #hp fic recs #longfic recs #ao3 recs #fanfic recs #tom riddle #voldemort #harry potter

[pinktom]

What do you think pink about tomarry content creators getting abusive tomione asks suddenly? First obsidian, then I saw one more account getting and now seminar arts. Is it only one person doing all this?

Btw my jaw dropped with your no filter answer where you said that whenever harry comes the chemistry between to marry best tomione 🤣. I would love to hear more of your no filter thoughts

I have no doubt those asks were sent by trolls. I, however, am simply a hater—I see an opportunity to hate, justified or not, I pounce. x]

In ascending order, here are the reasons I think Tomione sucks.

PS: If you know this post is gonna piss you off and press "Keep Reading" anyway - that is entirely on you. Send me anon hate and I'll assume you're a masochist who wants me to spank your pert, round hinie and call you a naughty, naughty girl.

“Book nerd loves book nerd uwu” trope does not fit Tom Riddle, and I find it obnoxious.

Like I touched on when I was first sipping on that haterade, Tom Riddle values usefulness. By this logic, you could easily contrive up a scenario in which he wants to use Hermione’s skills for whatever reason. 

However, the route that is usually taken in Tomione is that Tom is … impressed … by her intellect. A woman… who is… smart? He’s intrigued. 😏 He’s never once met a smart woman in his life before. And certainly not one so independent and feisty. She doesn’t swoon over him like the other girls do (eye roll).

I never got the impression anywhere in canon that Tom Riddle cared much about intellectual pursuits beyond those which were immediately useful to his goals, so for the very basis of a relationship to be his interest in her brains – to me, it’s tedious and off-base.

And also icky honestly lkjdflkj. Hermione’s two crushes are on a couple of stinky smelly boys (Krum, Ron), where the hell do you go off acting like she wants some mysterious, twisted dark boy? I’m offended. 

Absolutely zero chemistry; once Harry steps in, it’s game over

Because these characters lack any common ground, shared values, or compelling circumstances that tether them together, there is zero chemistry. You can try to fabricate those things with a little bit of crack!cocaine, but then you’re forced to contrive a lot of additional personality traits and circumstances that diverge them from their canon selves. (Which yes, you can do, but it only works if you’re gonna do something really interesting.)

As much as people like to har har about how canon doesn’t matter, here’s the truth: yes, it does. Our communities only exist because we’re referencing shared source material. However much you can bend characters around, everyone knows each character has an essence that just “feels like them” on a deeper human level. 

As such, we all know Tom Riddle and Harry Potter are intrinsically connected to each other. In Tomione this presents a conundrum. I could cite dozens of fics, but I’ll stick to two very well-written ones I enjoyed.

In one of them, Tom was a criminal and Harry was a detective on his tail; no matter how many times Tom fingered Hermione, he was always more entangled with Harry, because the stakes and intensity between them were so much grander. Same thing with the other fic but amplified by the Horcrux bond. At their very first encounter, when Tom and Harry laid eyes on each other, they both immediately felt an arresting connection, with distrust and intrigue. Hermione instantly paled in comparison in both stories.

It’s just like the moment Harry steps into the frame, you see how transparent and superficial the “commonalities” between Tom and Hermione ever are. Books and cleverness - oh but Harry, there are more important things! Like being spiritually linked! And sharing unique and intimate traumas in common! 

Heterosexual Tom is truly disgusting to read about

Look–it’s a matter of taste. We’re all products of our environments. For me, no amount of feminism or fantasy can overrule everything I’ve seen and experienced in my life. ( ಠ_ಠ )

I don’t enjoy reading about women in relationships with men who are controlling, violent, and selfish. Even the way Voldemort treats Bellatrix in canon always makes me wince, because I see it like this … here’s this girl who grew up proud; who was beautiful, rich, extremely gifted and powerful; and she turns into this horrible sniveling creature. Say it ain't so! I wish she'd killed him when he broke her ass out of Azkaban.

But back on the topic of Tomione specifically — I think there’s another layer to it, which is the greasy self-insertion aspect which makes me uncomfortably aware of how much the author’s ginie is tingling at the idea of Tom Riddle lifting a brow and saying, “Is that so, Miss Granger?” while she scowls and tells him to fuck off !!!

It’s of course not the self-insertion in itself that’s icky. It’s more just that the type of person who wants to self-insert into that particular heterosexual scenario is, uhh, too basic for me and my big powerful fujo brain.

And I guess that's gets me to the very core of why I find Tomione basic, trifling, and underwhelming. 

Tom Riddle is allowed no faults whatsoever in Tomione

Oh, sure. He’s controlling. He’s mean. He grabs her wrist and says, “What were you doing talking to Malfoy?” 😠

But so... ? Tom Riddle is a deeply embarrassing, mentally unwell trainwreck of a person. He's so much grosser than that. Yet you do not get that feeling at all in most Tomione fics. His worst character traits are often there but they’re made to seem sexy and flattering at all times.

I’m not saying your run-of-the-mill Tomarry fic doesn’t suffer this fatal flaw too—but when it comes down to it, Tomione doesn’t allow for his unsexy fallibility, period. Because the sexiness of the ship really depends on heteronormative romantic tropes and fantasies, which tend to be quite rigid and narrow. 

And I understand and empathize with why this is; just look at Reddit, so many women in heterosexual relationships already must put up with mortifying, embarrassing, and unhygienic things (y’all know which posts I mean 🙁). 

That’s just not what I’m here for. I love Tom Riddle because he’s a superficial narcissistic lunatic with no self-awareness and emotionally stunted outlook.

I don’t want to hear how he terrified the orphans if I’m not gonna hear about how he pissed the bed and got his bare ass whipped by a mean, toothless matron for chatting in sermon. I don’t care to see him bossing around those wimps at Hogwarts if there’s not at least one student who looks at “ENEMIES OF THE HEIR BEWARE” written in blood and feels tummy-churning secondhand embarrassment.

#tom #server #asks #offensive content #anti tomione #shipping wars

[lavienjin]

hide away | pjm

title: hide away

author: lavienjin

p: jimin x f!reader

wc: 1.4k

genre/au/rating: 18+ | pwp, f2l? | smut drabble

warnings/tropes: pwp, fingering (f!receiving), one orgasm (wow!), secret lovers

a/n: hi i'm back (sort of)! more fics soon? idk how to write on tumblr anymore tbh lmfao

m.list | ao3

"We heard a disturbance."

You tighten your grip on your nightgown closer to your chest. You flash your bodyguard the most dazzling smile.

"Nonsense! I just… stubbed my foot on the edge of the bed. That's probably what you've heard." The lies come easily to you now. You don't have to think so hard.

"Are you sure?" The bodyguard asks as he tries to peer into the darkness of your chambers.

You squeeze him away from the doorframe. "Yep," you grunt, as you try to shove the six-foot tall man away from the door. "Nothing to see here. Just me. Alone in my room."

Suspicion crosses his eyebrows as he looks down and searches your face, but after a tense second, he sighs; defeated. You can't help but feel a pang of pity. This one is clearly new and just trying to do his job. You wonder when your father fired the other one, but you can't bring yourself to care.

Not when there's someone waiting for you, hidden in the shadows of your room.

"All right. I'll be standing outside if you need anything."

"Certainly," you say, trying not to sound too relieved. "Good night then."

As soon as the door closes, Jimin reappears on your bed, shirtless except for the handsome smirk that decorates his porcelain face. You wasted no time before diving back in to continue where you left off, and he wasted none either as he swallows your faint giggles in a heated kiss.

"That was close," your mystery companion whispered in between breaths, before diving back into your neck, leaving faint trails of his visits behind.

"Ooh," you moan. "Y-Yeah," is your faint reply to his keen observation.

Your paramour perks up just before reaching the tops of your breasts. He trails a slender finger between the mounds, a feline smirk dancing upon his lips. "My, how strange it was to hear my good girl lie."

You pout, resisting the trembling of your legs as he swipes a thumb over your clothed nipple. "Would you rather get kicked out?"

A soft laughter. "No," he whispers, followed by deft hands unfurling your nightgown to reveal your chest. "And I definitely don't want the princess of our college to have an increase in bodyguards. It's hard enough for me to climb into your room without being noticed."

You prop yourself up, suddenly curious. "You've never told me how it is you manage to get up here unnoticed."

His hand stops just above the waistband of your panties. Jimin's pointer finger draws circles on your skin; his telltale smirk reappearing, and this time accompanied by a quirk of his brow. "Do you want me to spend the rest of my night recounting my every dashing move or would you rather be satisfied?"

"Oh?" It's your turn with the smirk and quirk brow combo. "I thought the great Jimin is able to multitask?"

Jimin sighs, playfully rolling his eyes, before tugging your panties away, revealing the soft wetness underneath. His pointer and middle fingers draw circles around your folds, and as you begin to get lost in the sensation, he starts to speak: "Your father's guards are on rotation and there's always a minute or two gap where no one is watching the house."

"Hmmm…" you answer distractedly, falling back down on the pillows.

He continues despite your clearly ambivalent response. 

"All I have to do is clear the gate and climb up onto the roof by the trellis from the gardens. From there it's a matter of lying low and making sure the guards don't see me as I walk on top of the roof." Jimin talks so methodically as though he didn't just sink his pointer finger into your heat, teasing the entrance with shallow thrusts. 

Moans tumble out past your lips, which are quickly stuffed back into your throat as he presses his other hand over your mouth.

With half-lidded eyes, you watch his bemused expression. "Are you listening to me, baby?" he asks, a slight mock in his tone as he removes his hand.

You smile, eyes closing in ecstasy. "Uh-huh, guards, garden, roof… whatever." The last word comes out in a sigh, especially as Jimin joins his middle finger inside, this time moving deep and slow.

"Distracted baby," Jimin murmurs, shifting his stance so he sits on the bed. He pulls you in closer so that your ass lies on his lap.

You try to keep your moans in as he gradually moves faster, but it isn't long before the room is filled with your breathy "Jimin, Jimin, Jimin", accompanied by the sound of wetness as he begins to tug at the strings of your orgasm.

"Oh, baby," he mumbles, face straining slightly with effort, though his movements refuse to falter. "Gorgeous little thing."

"Haaa… please…" you cry as quietly as you could. "Need to cum…"

"Keep your eyes on me as you do."

You snap your eyes open as you feel the pull of your orgasm; that familiar tautness, like a coil about to break. "Gonna–"

Jimin adds a thumb to your pleasure, pushing tight circles on your clit. 

"Jimin– I'm close… I'm– ah!" You struggle to keep your eyes open as your orgasm shakes your body; overwhelmed by the seemingly never-ending waves of bliss.

You may have caught a glimpse of his irritating victory smirk, but you can't really focus any longer. Did you call his name? You can't be sure.

When you come to, his plush lips are on yours, capturing whatever residual moans that try to escape before it alerts the bodyguard outside.

He kisses your forehead as you begin to relax, and Jimin shifts your bodies so you lie on top of his chest.

Jimin settles into your bed, eyes closed as he pulls you into his arms. "Good?"

"Very," you mumble, eyes drooping close. No. You can't sleep yet. You've been dying to ask. "Jimin?"

He opens an eye to look at you. "Hm?"

Nervousness overcomes you. You look away when you ask, "When are we going to… y'know…" 

"Fuck?" he finishes your question after a few seconds of pause, with a smirk as you curl even deeper into his chest, avoiding his gaze altogether. "When you're ready," comes his soft voice and yet another kiss on the forehead.

"When will that be?" you mumble into his skin.

His reply comes swiftly. "When you can say the word 'fuck' without blushing."

"I can say it!" you grumble.

"Oh?" Jimin sits you up before he leans on his hand. He juts his chin towards you, as though giving you permission. "Okay then, Ms. Goody Two Shoes, let's hear it."

"F-" The word seems stuck in your throat. It's a simple word. Why do you find it so difficult to say? Jimin can say it just fine when he lets you please him. Oh god, he moans so nicely whenever you manage to take all of him into your mouth, and when he calls your name? Oh–

"There it is," Jimin sighs, breaking through your sinful thoughts. "You're not ready, darling." He scoops you back into his embrace. "I promise the wait will be worth it though. Now sleep. We have classes tomorrow, y'know."

Grumbling under your breath over the fact that you can't say that fu– darn word, you close your eyes. It turns out, sleep comes readily to you.

When you wake up the next morning, the only evidence that last night; and all the other nights that come before it, wasn't a dream lies in a note that rests where Jimin's warm body once laid. It's a normal occurrence; part of your deal, though you can't help but feel disappointed. It doesn't stop you from scouring the note, etching every swoop of cursive letter into your brain before you plop it into your nightstand drawer, where dozens of other identical looking notes lie.

When your maids come to help you get ready that morning, they're left wondering what's gotten you all giggly, but you keep the secret inside, not daring to breathe it to a single soul, just in case the illusion falls apart.

"One day I'll wake up next to you and I never have to leave in the dead at night. It's freezing. You're welcome. 

P.S. You look beautiful when you sleep, even if you drool on my chest. 

-J" 

saturn notes: holy fuck. i haven't written anything since february? not apologising! life has been busy with me starting a new job, meeting my friends + partner over the summer, etc. etc. tbh, i was a bit burnt out on writing and just needed a break. this is the first time i finished something in forever, so i hope you enjoy the messy, messy drabble. i got one collab to do and i'll feel free when i finish that! thanks for your patience 💗

will this be turned into a story? who knows~

#btswritingcafe #jimin x reader #bts x reader #bts smut #jimin smut #park jimin smut #park jimin x reader #park jimin drabbles #jimin drabbles #bts drabbles #bts stories

[donutwatches]

MHA 2.20 - Listen Up!! A Tale from the Past - part 2

Sorry for the big gap in posting, I have been SICK sick. Anyway here is the rest of episode 20.

He looks like a business man. Needs tailoring in the shoulders. Big bad villain points thus far, mysteriousness: 10 points, intimidation: 7 points, fashion sense: it's a 0 from me.

Why do I feel like I am learning so much lore, but only have more questions?

Wait, it is hard to tell in black and white, but that is totally All Might in a pool of blood hunched over Big Bad's 'dead' body, right?

I would pay money to see that fight. I must have been gritty as hell. SHOW ME THE GORE!

This seems like something Deku should have been informed of BEFORE he was given the quirk. I suppose All Might thought Big Bad was dead, but still.

Well crap. I guess fighting terrifying villains was going to come with the territory no matter what, but All Might having kept our little Green Bean in the dark about the history of his new quirk feels like a big mistake.

Sweet brave kiddo. It is a good thing that All Might turned out to be a good person. Imagine if he wasn't? With a kid looking up to him so blindly he could have manipulated him so badly.

This statement from Deku is ominously naive. Deku is def going to face dark times and hardship that will test his commitment. I know it is going to be hard to watch him fight through it.

TELL HIM WHAT ALL MIGHT! IF YOU ARE HIDING MORE ESSENTIAL INFO AT THIS POINT I SWEAR TO THE ANIME GOD-

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! NO DEATH FLAGS ALLOWED!

The show is basically telling us he is going to die upfront. I am going to hope it is reverse psychology, and that somehow All Might will escape the mentor death trope. *Praying*

What the hell? Is his head a cabbage? That is wild.

Click here for episode 21

#mha #bnha #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #izuku midoriya #anime #all might #deku #midoryia #yagi toshinori #ofa #afo

[emmalovesfitzloved]

Tell me a few things you love about Wessa!

Ahhh another ask from my fav Shadowhunter blogger! Wohoo! These are the first two things that comes to my head. But there are MORE ;)

Their dark academia aesthetic

The Dark academia aesthetic of their relationship. Now while this may come across as superficial, its more then just "loving books". It's the chaise and adventure they find in books that they then live by in their real lives. How they challenge each other in a conversation and insider jokes they share tethered in the novels they consume. Let the other rant about their favourite things and celebrate novels that invite the reader into more journeys beyond just their own. And the way they talk about characters, morals and plots as experiences and people they know almost intimately. How their choice of words matters, and they are economical about their feelings. Dark over light academia bc London is a dank dark city ahaha. And they feel well deep rather than feather light.

Their timeless love

Somewhat still related to novels, but I feel like what Cassandra Clare did with Wessa was the melting pot of all our favourite literary tropes/heroines in classical literature. Which gives it a sense of timelessness and makes them feel like they are 'endgame'.

I wrote previously that Tessa is the perfect blend between Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet. She retains Jane Eyre’s contemplativeness, slight shyness, physical features, dry sarcasm and strong sense of self-actualisation. But also Elizabeth’s wildness, snappiness, boldness, passionate love and will for happiness, all without the arrogance that came with Austen’s heroine.

Meanwhile Will's darker side reminds me of Mr. Darcy in how he pushes those he loves away. John Thornton from North and South who is set in his ways slightly stalkerish (i'm a sucker for the stalker trope sorry not sorry) Will retains the mystery of Edward Rochester, where there is more depth to him that meets the eye and heck even Tessa says at one point that his mood swings remind him of the treacherous Heathcliff. Most of all he reminds me of Alexander from The Bronze Horseman (which only came out in the 90's but technically it came out before TID and is already considered a classic). Alexander and Will overlap in how they sacrifice their love and longing for a greater peace (War and to not upset a family) all for the love of their other one. They are deeply flawed and challenge the reader on their tolerance for forgiveness .

“I love you. I’m blind for you, wild for you. Sick with you. I told you that our first night together when I asked you to marry me, I am telling you now. Everything that’s happened to us, everything, is because I crossed the street for you. I worship you. You know that through and through…” (The Bronze Horseman)

“Alexander, you broke my heart. But for carrying me on your back, for pulling my dying sled, for giving me your last bread, for the body you destroyed for me, for the son you have given me, for the twenty-nine days we lived like Red Birds of Paradise, for all our Naples sands and Napa wines, for all the days you have been my first and last breath, for Orbeli- I will forgive you. ” (The Summer Garden).

And you find you can, because their love and longing for their partner is almost holy and like a religion to them. Those we love the most, hurt us the most, but in turn, they are also those who deserve the most grace and Mercy. If not for them, then for who?

"You are not the last dream of my soul. You are the first dream, the only dream I ever was unable to stop myself from dreaming. You are the first dream of my soul, and from that dream I hope will come all other dreams, a lifetime’s worth." (Clockwork Prince).

This, coupled with the stakes of their relationship then as a unite (and also separately) echos a timber that reminds me of the setting we find in 19th century Russian literature (but with an HEA tysm CC my heart can't take it). This tragic longing we see in Anna Karenina where any choice Tessa makes she looses something in the same breath. The high apocalyptic war torn feel of War and Peace alongside the feeling of doom you get right at Chapter 1 in Clockwork Angel like we did in Crime and Punishment, when Raskolnikov kills a man, and it's all downhill from there.

Conclusion

CC wrote these two with the aim that they remain true to the history of their time, but blended it in with fresh modern air for us to be able to relate to and TRULY succeed. Who knew a historical romance about two book lovers could escalate so highly in the ranks? Now while they are so high up in the ranks of GOAT-ed couples in literature, they aren't without their flaws. Mainly not bc of the narrative or the character's choices but more to do with CC's discontinuation of their story linearly past TID. But that's a different ask for another time and tbh, that's where I seek out lovely fanfictions like the ones you create in order to fill in the blind spots CC didn't fill.

Thank you for this ask! I hope this was worth the read ILY @ibrushmyteeth-donttellanyone♡

Artistic Credit: Cassandra Jean

#ask #Wessa #Essay #essay on wessa #TID #The Infernal Devices #Shadowhunters Essay #Cassandra Clare #I WANT MORE WESSA

[imjustabeanie]

Here’s the infir for our trade:

My style has a rockstar gf vibe. Sometimes softer colours too. I'm hourglass shaped and almost curvy, but I spend lots of time training (MMA) so instead im lowkey athletic with some muscle. I've got dark gray almond shaped eyes and medium lengst wavy blonde wolfcut with (renee rapp-style) bangs. Ironically (for Hazbin) I often hear that I look Angel-like? Like, even from strangers on the street?? That or that I’m intimidating. Ngl, that strokes my ego a bit (as all the other times I had strangers compliment me, tho I try to be neutral abt it bc ofc I’m pretty), but idk what really makes me come across that way. Got some casual makeup on usually. I’ve got some scars and bruises from training, don’t mind most, not too fond of my scar from a sword fight (long story), bc it’s big (and I hate that somebody might think that I lost it; my ego >>> my body - with injuries like that). Also, got a hidden tattoo. Yeah yeah, my youth group (idk how to actually say it in eng) doesn’t allow it, I’ve got my rep but give me some sweet hypocrisy as a treat (/hj), I think the tattoo looks awesome (yeah, it was diy). I’m social & extroverted. I write songs and am in a band. Other than that I like to tease ppl if given the opportunity; others say I’m flirty - bold with it at that. I’m ambitious too. I don't take shit from ppl, im far from meek. I have npd (if you want to look it up without reading scientific papers, go on tumblr, bc the rest of the internet is filled with ‘demonic narcissism’ bullshit) and it influences the way I am. I care lots about my image, don’t have a ton of empathy etc. I don’t kick puppies, but it‘s noticeable how I lack in this department. Sometimes people say I’m ’too nice to have it’ cause i do well with kids and do all the youth group volunteering. Kinda skeptical of serious romance cause I had lots of it & I don’t mix well with a lot of people. Maybe I could do something serious for once if I had the right person. I try to be responsible and respectful but I have no issue finding my place at a wild party or something. I can be soft-er if I want, like with children or ppl I’m close with (I've got many friend groups but struggle to make meaningful connections). Usually I just stay my analytical, laid-back self and say my silly little comments every once in a while. Heard I’m pretty funny if I want to be. My love language is acts of service. I like small things and I do them a lot. I can do praise too, but I don't care for it in return. Like, you can be an asshole (up to a limit, I know my worth) and it’s cool with me if I see you have your ways of caring like putting on a song I like in the car. Unrelated but some say I’m kinda closed off and ‘mysterious’ or wtv . Hate it when people push me to open up and be emotional; love music and I unironically had a few guys play songs AT me and I actually like that too, tho I get why ppl clown on it; despise the ‘I can fix them’ trope, it just feels wrong; obvi love my band, we are awesome; Deal breakers r: boring ppl, too romantic or sentimental, ppl who can't be casual with me, ppl who only approach me bc of my looks (yeah they are important, but my personality’s too good to ignore in the long run, come on), for Hazbin - no Val. I like ppl who are more negative than me and aren't afraid to shittalk everything. Just saying whatever, not caring if they offend ppl (up to a point, some issues aren’t debatable ik). I like to join in sometimes. They have to be at least a little funny. And determined abt their goals, like a lot, no matter what it is. Don't really care for morality (to a certain point, again) if you're charismatic and fun to be around, I’m along for the ride and happy to support whatever you get yourself into. Like, my perfect dynamic is usually when the other person says the wildest shit and I just go like ‘yeah, go baby’. Ppl try to argue? I pull out the ‘who?… who cares?’ card.

1/2, just a few sentences got cut

-★🎶

Hellooooo! Here's my part of the trade!

Your match for hazbin hotel is.....Velvette! With Adam as a close runner up lol

Okay so as I said in messages, Velvet would be a perfect match for you (with adam as your very close runner up). You said you don’t like sentimental or boring people but you like them ambitious and audacious. Tell me how it’s not our dear Velvette. Now okay, given her little screentime there’s a chance she approached you first for your looks but put her in her place and there you go. A nice enemies to lovers’ story. Who asked the other one first? Her. She was pushed to the edge by the other V’s teasing.

Something that fits you both in the relationship is that you don’t expect the lovey dovey atmosphere. It’s more like…that’s my demon, fuck off. She likes that you retaliate and doesn’t get hurt easily because she won’t have to watch her words. It’s not uncommon to find both of you bickering but if anyone dared to try and side with one of you they’d get hurt. Velvette love language is probably gifts and fancy dates. She likes it when you do small things for her and will show it off by saying find a better lover than mine or something similar. Your relationship will be public but the amount of photoshoots you two do together depends on you, she won’t force you into an influencer life.

Now Velvette likes your style and you two give me the same vibes. But you know what she likes more? Matching outfits with you. She will probably offer to do your make up for you if you let her. As for the tattoos, if the relationship gets serious then she will get one for you. In private, she does fuss over the bruises you get during training and even proposes to….take care of your opponents. If you do any matches she will clear her schedule and assist.

Besides her brutal honesty, Velvette is the best critique you could ask for. She will help out your band as much as she can. Leave the costumes and decorations to her lol. Now onto some personal headcanons, I think that Velvette would enjoy a lover that’s stronger than her (physically. In termof powers idk) but wouldn’t abuse it. Someone who’d pick her up and spin, her around or just someone with who she can get lost in their arms in private. A lover who won’t judge her and accept her with all her flaws. I also think she’s the type that enjoys late car rides with full on music to destress. But for all of this to happen and for her to let her real walls down the relationship would have to become serious. You’re both in it for fun and it’s easy to get backstabbed in hell after all.

Hope you like it. I tried to include everything

#matchups #match ups #hazbin hotel

[megnificent-reads]

Full Measures, Rebecca Yarros - ⅗ ☆

I actually liked Fourth Wing. Anti-booktok folks, please put your guns down, I like simplicity. Iron Flame wasn’t great, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about. 

Because I liked Fourth Wing and I was bored, I decided to see what else Rebecca Yarros had going on. I read the blurb for the third book in her Flight & Glory series and thought it was interesting, so I started on book one. The book one blurb was definitely less interesting but - gotta start on one. 

It was actually pretty cute at the beginning! I’m used to reading slow-burn, and this was not that, which was exciting! The dogpiling of shit happening to December (dead dad, not only cheated on but with your best friend, etc.) was like watching a train wreck and I loved it. Unfortunately, I mostly made this blog to complain, so that’s probably the extent compliments you’re gonna get out of me. 

Josh Walker and his mouth watering rear

If I had fully processed that our love interest was a hockey player, I might not have read this. I’m sick of hockey boyfriends and I’ve never even read one before this. (No TikTok, I’m not fucking reading Icebreaker. I’ll get my sports erotica via ao3 AUs). 

He was cute for a bit, for sure. That was until December told him she actually did not want him around, at which point he followed her in a sort of “you’ll love me eventually” type of way. I’m not normally one to be that picky about this sort of thing, but it was starting to annoy me. Literally running after her when she’s trying to get to her car was weird - especially when her main issue was that she wanted him not in her business. I get it’s him proving he wants her, but at a certain point you think - if he really liked her he’d respect her boundaries, right?

Once we get past that, we get to the Drama. 

The blurb for this book mentions it - our (college age hockey coach) has a ~dark secret~. He was injured and couldn’t play hockey, he mysteriously disappears every weekend. 

Dark secret is the military, btw. 

I get it’s dramatic because her dad died in the military so she resents it now, yada yada. I didn’t really care though? I don’t know, maybe I’m expecting too much out of these simplistic romance novels, but I just wasn’t attached enough to either of them for this to really matter to me at all. I wasn’t interested to see the story progress beyond them finally dating, so I didn’t care about this either. 

I for most part just didn’t care about Josh Walker, which made the read pretty difficult near the end. 

Sidebar, I love how you can tell what authors like in men by what their characters pay attention to. December is constantly thinking about Josh’s ass. It’s mouth-watering. It’s magnificent. It’s perfectly round. Fuck this guys built hockey-arms, let me see that ass, Josh!

Discovering how Yarros really feels about women

I didn’t really encounter this in Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, so seeing the not-so-subtle misogyny every few chapters was… uncomfortable. 

Yarros uses the term “leggy brunette” three times to describe two different women. These women have a grand total of zero other attributes.

She also creates these two hockey groupies, which I guess is a thing. They are, of course, blonde women with huge boobs, that want nothing more than to fuck Josh Walker and his roomate, Jagger. I hate that name by the way. I know it’s a regular real-life name but like, I get it. He’s a frat dude.

Of course, nothing will stand in the way of our (not tomboyish, not nerdy or weird, but instead very average) ginger woman.

Rebecca Yarros does color her hair blonde, so idk what that’s about. I know the ditzy blonde girl trope is a thing, and this did come out in 2014, but I think the trope was tired even that long ago. 

Conclusion

A word to describe Full Measures would be: alright. Not great, not terrible, just alright. I’m sure this is more interesting for those in military families, but just not for me. I’ll just hope the rest of the Fourth Wing series is better than Iron Flame. 

#book review #books #bookblr #rebecca yarros #three stars

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder Review

Quick question, Russel T. Davies: where the fuck did THIS come from? I only ask because this is a genuinely brilliant, exciting, well-written episode of Doctor Who that feels like the best of your original run, whereas- no offence- The Star Beast was a confused, underwhelming mess. Seriously, if I was a teacher who had to grade both pieces of work, I’d assume you’d gotten illegal help with one of them. I mean, seriously Russ: what did you do between writing Exhibit A (the mess) and Exhibit B (the fucking masterpiece)? Did you just neck a fuckload of hallucinogens? Did you finally get laid? Did you allow yourself to be beaten over the head with a big, rubber hammer? Whatever it was that made the difference, please, please keep doing it.

And now to address my actual readers: Wild Blue Yonder is very, very good and I recommend you watch it with a fucking colostomy bag in, because it is shit-yourself scary. The Doctor and Donna get stranded on a spaceship at the literal edge of the universe (she spilled some tea on the TARDIS console, because of course she fucking did) and there are things aboard from the darkness beyond that edge. Lacking shape or form or mass- being entities of pure, malignant consciousness in fact- they assume the forms of Donna and the Doctor and proceed, forthwith, to fuck with them in the most unsettling and horrific manner possible. It’s creepy as fuck to see the copied bodies of our leads distort and warp in horrendous, Kronenberg-ish ways as the entities from the dark beyond existence seek to elicit their fear, but the real-headfuck comes from their refusal to give up the pretence, remaining in-character even while waxing loquacious on their evil plans (which I won’t spoil). There’s an element of psychological warfare- even torture- at play here, as they gradually tease out bits of buried darkness and it’s deeply, deeply affecting. It’s strikes a delicate balance, being the kind of thing that you can get away with on prime-time TV without pulling its punches one fucking iota.

Of course, this being a Doctor Who episode, the horror is tempered with humour and quite a bit of silliness. There’s a line about how someone “Got a very old robot out of storage to walk, very slowly, down a very long corridor” that, in context is giggle-worthy (particularly with the additional knowledge that the Doctor has named the robot ‘Jimbo’) and a bit where the leads meet Isaac Newton and then discuss how hot was (with the Doctor being surprised to realise that recent experiences have turned him just a tiny bit gay).

The Doctor also gets to be the Doctor in this episode- running around, solving mysteries and finding ways to fight monsters. Not fucking victims of a ‘psychedelic sun’ or insect blokes who eventually turn out to be good guys: actual, no-holes-barred, proper Doctor Who monsters! I won’t spoil the solution he eventually hits on, but it’s bombastic and clever and entertaining in a way that literally nothing in The Star Beast was.

Oh, and no spoilers, but the final scene nearly made me cry. In a good way.

Obviously, I have gripes. Well, one gripe. Namely: Sir Isaac ‘Mr. Gravity’, Fuck You Newton was not a mixed-race individual and while colour-blind casting is fine (great, actually) for fictional characters, you can’t just race-swap actual people who actually lived and had identities of their own. The past isn’t just a big dustbin of fun characters and events to be pilfered for content: it’s a series of lives and experiences lived by real, sentient people who, if they had any say in the matter, would probably like to be accurately represented after their deaths. Even in an upbeat work of fiction, the past ought to be treated with a modicum of tact and delicacy; its tropes and ways of being preserved with all their flaws rather than suborned to suit modern audiences. Irreverence is fine: wild inaccuracy isn’t. I’d also like to point out that, if they wanted a non-white physicist in the episode, there are fucking loads of real ones who just aren’t taught in the Western scientific canon. This could have been a good time to introduce wider audiences to, say, Robert Bragg or Arthur B.C. Walker, Jr (who is the only reason we today can observe the sun’s corona accurately enough to get a sense of what it’s fucking doing, by the way). I mean, surely drawing attention to real non-white scientists is much more meaningful than pretending a dude with skin like fucking Savlon wasn’t Caucasian. It’s less attention-grabbing, of course, and it doesn’t virtue-signal as hard, but it’s more meaningfully progressive and actually serves to enlighten and inform viewers.

Okay, that’s out my system now. I would like to stress that I’ve only devoted so much time to that because it’s important to clarify where my objection comes from, lest some cretin completely miss the point and set up a chant of ‘bigot’ (probably misspelled as bigfoot because of the autocorrect on their cunting smartphone) right outside my blog. I often find that the people who object to these false representations publicly are just bigots because decent, progressive people are too bloody scared to point out the real flaws. It’s therefore important, as a progressive, anti-racist person, to raise objections that are actually sane, lest our entire cultural debate descend into a slap-fight between hateful, ill-read fascist micrococks and sanctimonious, reality-denying nutbars. All that being said, not-really-Isaac-Newton is only in Wild Blue Yonder for, like, three minutes, so in terms of the episode itself, it really is a teeny-tiny gripe and shouldn’t in any way ruin anyone’s enjoyment thereof. (EDIT: I actually considered deleting this whole bit, but that felt obscurely like cowardice, so I settled for a rewrite that shortened my original rant considerably).

A more immediately relevant discussion might be why Wild Blue Yonder worked where The Star Beast failed. And no, I don’t think it’s just that Our Russ got laid between script-writing sessions. Have you seen his face nowadays? He looks like a potato receiving an unexpected suppository. Nobody’s into that. No, I suspect the reason Wild Blue Yonder works is the tight focus and small scale. Essentially, its four characters- the protagonists plus two antagonists- on a spaceship, trying to out-think each other. There’s mystery, conflict and an interesting setting to provide context, and that’s all any story really needs. I often find that mistakes and poor writing creep into telly shows and films in proportion to the amount of superfluous shit they give themselves to juggle. I think there needs to be a term for that, so I’m going to coin one: ‘Concept Bloat’. The more extra characters and ideas and elements an individual episode of a TV show has, the more likely one of them is to go wrong, and when one thing goes wrong, a lot of other less-than-optimal stuff is allowed to slide by unchallenged because it looks fine next to the thing that actually went properly, fully wrong. The Star Beast is actually a perfect study of how this happens. The ‘Roth Warriors’ (I have no idea if I’m spelling that correctly, nor do I care) looked rubbish, but their rubbishness was less obvious than it should have been compared to the overall look of the episode’s fictitious London. Meanwhile, the plastic-y version of London probably seemed acceptable in the context of a plot where reversing a star-ship engine can magically heal streets. The magically-healing streets probably seemed fine because they were sharing plot-space with a wheelchair containing a hidden rocket-launcher (to clarify, I have no problem with a wheelchair that can shoot rockets- I just don’t think there’s any way you could make it look like a regular wheelchair). The sheer absurdity of this might well have gone unnoticed because, next to phrases like ‘Male Presenting Time Lord’, stupid tech probably seemed fine. And phrases like ‘Male Presenting Time Lord’ probably seemed acceptable when spoken two minutes after an encounter with a crappy-looking Roth Warrior, bringing us full circle. With a more streamlined set of ideas, it would have been easier to prune out the bad ones, or retool them until they worked. Each individual nugget of crap, however, allowed the crap on either side of it to pass unnoticed and what you ended up with was, well, The Star Beast. In contrast, Wild Blue Yonder is as tight as an XS rubber gimp suit and genuinely brilliant. It does more with less because there was time to hone and polish the less.

So what does this say about the future of the show? In my last review, I implied that the best thing that could happen to Who would be cancellation- a chance for the show to end on a satisfying note rather than change into something it was never designed to be. As much as I love Who, I’ve arrived at that the conclusion that quality alone isn’t the issue. Even if every episode of the next few series ends up being as good as Wild Blue Yonder, it still can’t go on indefinitely- not with any integrity. The best stories in the world are still only truly satisfying in the moment you close the book, having experienced the full, majestic sweep of the narrative and understood what it was saying creatively and philosophically. TV shows aren’t exactly the same, since they’re less singular efforts and don’t have a single story to tell, but even they eventually have to shit or get off the pot, which means actually ending at some point. So yes, I’m glad showrunner RTD has hit his stride with Wild Blue Yonder, but trying to bottle lightning is never going to work reliably and it doesn’t change the fact that, sooner or later, something is going to have to give. So yeah: I’m still at ‘Let Gatwa have his time and then call an end to it’. One good episode- one really fucking good episode- isn’t enough to fix the show’s underlying problem. I mean, it can be a hiatus rather than fullblown cancellation, but Who still needs some kind of break. Sorry.

#doctor who #DW #Tardis #Wild Blue Yonder #The Doctor #10th doctor #14th doctor #secret diary of a fat admirer #secret diary of an fa

[a-book-scarfing-goblin]

Author Appreciation/Study:

-Chan Ho-Kei

*This post is in regard to his only two books published in English ( The Borrowed and Second Sister). I will talk about them separately then his writing as whole*

The Borrowed:

The Borrowed is a crime fiction novel set in Hong Kong. It consists of six cases (six short stories) in reverse chronological order following one detective. As an avid mystery fan I honestly didn’t expect much; The more I read more mystery novels the more likely they are to become less entertaining because formats and tropes are easier to see. I was expecting a run-of-the-mill police procedural to be honest but as I tasted the first story, that was more armchair detective-esque, I thought “Oh? You’re serious.”.

The plot/mystery in all six stories was rather well written besides maybe the last one. The last story still had a good but predictable reveal unfortunately everything leading up that felt a little boring. The characters were just okay but I do want to talk about our lead detective Kwan Chun-Dok. I rarely see a “genius detective” done well. They usually feel so disjointed by either jumping to conclusions in a foolhardy manner based on intuition or not seeing through things the reader can easily deduce. Kwan Chun-Dok is one of the best genius detectives I have seen in awhile. He is always one step ahead, pulling the strings, or completely aware and it is believable. 

The weaker parts were the setting and the overall message but the ladder was partially my fault. So let’s start with the former. Setting, this novel goes in reverse chronological order form 2013 to1967 and unfortunately if I wasn”t told this I hardly would have realized. Some of the events, like the Leftist Riots, were an important part of the story but some events, like the SARS epidemic, was mentioned only in passing and almost felt forced. Now for the overall message, I was expecting a more riveting tale of corruption and social power shifts especially because the reviews all over the cover ( I know, rookie mistake ) but I think the portrayal of a city’s shift through time was just average. 

Second Sister:

Second Sister is a crime fiction novel set in Hong Kong. Nga-Yee who grew up in poverty finally loses everything when her younger sister commits suicide. Nga-Yee suspects her younger sister was coerced into taking her life so she enlists the help of an enigmatic detective/hacker to find the person responsible for her sister's death. The synopsis on the back of the book is a little misleading, it makes the book seem like it will cover a lot more ground than it actually does. 

The plot/mystery in this story was a little more flimsy but it is one against six. This was far less of a whodunnit type mystery and focused much more on getting to the heart of the matter and I think Chan Ho-Kei was able to do exactly that. I wasn’t sure of his character writing but now I am. I think just about every character in this book was well written, the main characters at least. Everyone’s heart and motives were exposed and he handled the topic of suicide with care and sympathy. 

The main weaker points in this were once again setting but also over explaining. There were plenty of tricks and traps used by the hacker coupled with Nga-Yee not being tech savvy which led to things being explained multiple times over which was tedious.

Overall:

Although he doesn’t always paint a pretty picture or suck you into the setting, Chan Ho-Kei’s mystery writing and ability to misdirect is quite admirable. He seems to know the complexities of crime and the human heart. Knowing he was inspired by honkaku/shin-honkaku and shakai mysteries from Japan, I think he does a good job at blending the two and will be eagerly awaiting another translation.

His work will pair best with most black or dark teas :)

#bookish #booklr #books #bookworm #book thoughts #books and reading #bookblr #literature #reading #bibliophile #book review #book recommendations #book reviews #author appreciation

[franki-lew-yo]

The General is also Elktaur.

He is Elktaur as much as Nowhere King is. Elktaur is a bad person who’s flaws are equally divided between his two parts.

Here. I wrote a thing out months ago and have been editing it bit by bit over the course of these months to distract myself from my SSI sitch and now to get me thru our national health crisis (in my country). Read it before I eat your cat.

((content warning: horror gifs and, ab*sive relationships and self harm talk))

Part of the reason I love this story +character is because it’s such a new take on the "corrupted-now''/''meevil"-villain trope AND the "love was my motivator"-villain backstory! Usually the idea behind these kinds of tragic villains is there's a 'good side and a 'bad side' and the bad side overcomes but because their love for this ONE person is their only redeeming feature that then 'redeems' them at the last moment before death. Elktaur, and by extension his two halves, is not this.

According to Megan Dong's interview with Vortexcentral, the reason the General 'turned' on the elk is because the General’s what happens when power and privilege corrupt a person’s influence, i.e. the General got everything he wanted when he was Elktaur and is terrified of losing it or “going back”, now that he feels he is his 'best self'. - he is Arial+Aladdin but if they took a VERY dark turn - The General is the side of the Elktaur that hated being a centaur; not hated centaurs, but hated himself and valued human life more; he’s the side that outwardly dreams of glory and being a hero, and tbf, probably thinks he does care about people. The way he says “sorry kid” after stabbing Rider and tries to appeal to Mystery Woman doesn’t sound like some halfhearted, backhanded Rick Sanchez-style neg to me. They sound like the words of someone who earnestly believes they have no choice other than to do what they did. They sound like someone who believes their own lies. From everything that's shown in the show, the ''poison you [General] fed me [Woman]'' that Mysterious Woman's talking about were NOT words of gaslighting or emotional abuse, but they were still lies; they were hollow words. It doesn’t matter how many times he says he’s sowwy and how much he thinks he cares for her and the people under his command: he does not. He doesn't actually care cuz he's not willing to take the sacrifice that would actually save his people or admit even wrongdoing. Horse even outright calls him out as such, to his wife -

"He doesn’t love you. THAT is not what love looks like!"- Horse

As the General, Elktaur entrapped Mysterious Woman in a marriage and lived life as someone he wasn't. This isn’t a Rose Quartz trying to tell Greg abt her past as an abusive monarch and him telling her it doesn’t matter now; the General was ALL about living with Mysterious Woman as the human he was determined to be. He didn’t trust her. He didn’t really respect her or any of the humans who’d he’d come to rule. He wanted her love as he wanted every other vague concept of respect and was determined to keep it, but in the fullest sense, he did not truly love her back. Nowhere King is the half that earnestly loves Mysterious Woman and I think a lot of fans already know/feel that. The problem is they (and me in the past hey I'm not perfect but I'm trying to fix this) treat it like General’s inability to love is the ONLY problem and that Nowhere King’s love is ''pure'' because it’s 'honest'.

Nowhere King (and Elktaur)'s love is Not pure just because he at one point, values her. Nowhere King is possessive. “She was meant to be mine”. He’s a self-AWARE possessive bastard who wants to end the pain and I think wants her to be happy and free of him, BUT-- never forget it's the NWK’s side who outright negs Mysterious Woman for HIS failure as Elktaur:

“ You made me what I am, but it’s okay. I forgive you.” - Nowhere King, decoded meaning thru links

Much in the same way General doesn't think he's hurting others but is, I don't think NWK wants to hurt her by saying that but at this point in time he's a monster who can ONLY commit suffering, so he does, even to the one person he doesn't want to hurt. That's all he is now.

There's also the bit where -you know- when NWK can’t have her, when she tells him to get over her because his obsession with her got him into this mess; HE DOESN'T and opts to torturing humans by turning them into minotaurs and then trying to destroy EVERYTHING that isn’t her. Love not only doesn't always redeem someone it can make someone more dangerous. >> The General doesn’t care about MW to the point that when they’re separated he seems more annoyed and he tries to soften her pain by just telling her more of what she wants to hear; the Nowhere King is obsessed with her to the point of putting the weight of ending the war all on her shoulders because of his mistakes. -This, by the by, is why I structured my playlists in chronological order rather than out of sequence as Horse sees it in the show. When you see the whole story from point a to point b makes you see firsthand how Elktaur is lying to the woman he loves and slipping more bit by bit into becoming a complete monster-

The General is unselfaware, prideful, self loathing, determined to save the world while not actually CARING ABOUT ppl he hurts. He's a narcissist; The Nowhere King is self aware, cares for only ONE person, but makes her and everyone else miserable and wants to destroy everything if he can't have his way = He's a Bojack Horseman. These people are what the Elktaur, now separated, became. 

A bit I know some critics are gonna throw back at me is the part where MW says “you locked him up in the dungeon, did you think it’d have no effect?”, which, to some people, is confirmation that ALL the problems of the show happened because the General locked up and abused the Nowhere King- that if he hadn’t done that then the Nowhere King wouldn’t have become so possessive, cruel, and hateful. I object to that take. It’s not what the General did at that moment but what Nowhere King points out was the mistake Elktaur made earlier:

"We [Elktaur] made a mistake, WE [Elktaur] have to undo it!"- Nowhere King who is also Elktaur but only half of him-flonking christ- YOU GET IT

The moment when Elktaur decided to change himself at all was his first step toward evilll. He was not his worst parts yet, but he was acting upon his worst instincts the character sings about in ''Ghosts''/''Elktour Suite part 5'' - he let in his ghosts because he didn’t know any other way or any life without them; by the time the General was accustomed to living his new life as a human, he (General) probably saw the elk as the ghosts that were wearing him down while the elk, now alone, recognized that he was always better than those ghosts.

Elktaur wasn’t a bad person, or at least he was no better than Horse was shaping up to be in ep 2 and 8 of season 1 - ONCE. It's as understandable as it is selfish but what Elktaur wanted was respect: he appreciated human stuff and human culture even though he didn’t like humans themselves. He wanted understanding when humans wouldn't understand him and none of his own kind 'knew him' Jack Skellington-style. He was smitten by and then hooked on Mysterious PrincessWoman when she did the thing he always wanted and NOTICED him, and she knew her magic. Lord knows how much of a simp he'd be had he really gotten to know her - the tragedy in the actual story is he didn't. He let the ghosts in. He was too wrapped up in his own self loathing and inferiority complex that for this one moment, he made what would be the biggest mistake of his life. Not just his life, EVERYONE's lives. Anyway

this is why Elktaur 100% deserved to die and why his death was actually a HAPPY ENDING for the character.

We don't see the final look on his face when Mystery Woman stabs down but we do see him reach for the shadow of his antlers. He’s finally back together, his pain’s finally over, he wouldn’t hurt her anymore- he prolly still didn't want to die but he even says he has peace. Best of all, he got to hear what the General needed to hear and what the Nowhere King had longed to hear for so many years:

''Don't you know I would have loved you the way you were?'' - Mysterious Woman

-------------------------------------------

A lot of my sizzling hot Nowhere King (I refer the whole character; elktaur, elk/nwk, and the General as that cuz that's how I knew him for months before the finale +makes it easier) takes are rooted in my amateur horror junkieness

Already made this point but Nowhere King is a reversed-Seth Brundle: Brundlefly is horrifying because he's conflicted about, but still absolutely willing to do, what he almost does to Veronica- you can't completely blame the fly part of him any more than you can't completely blame Seth. Just as Brundlefly as a whole isn't blameless for what either side of him did, neither Elktaur's sides can't be the 'good' or 'bad' side and can't really be forgiven for either's actions - they are one in the same. NWK in particular reminds me of Frankenstein's monster from the book:

'' I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other. I may be a Hogwarts Student, but I'm also a satanist '' - The Wretch, 4 real

Maybe another reason I'm protective of my General boi getting the diss is because General reminds me of Adelaide from Us. ((major Us spoilers incoming)). There's so many ways to view Us, but me personally I just can't see Adelaide as wholey evil +uncaring like Red (the REAL Adelaide) says she is. She had a very sympathetic motiv to switch herself out as a child, given what tethered are, but also given what tethered are, knew nothing BUT that reality and how to behave. By the time she was an adult she'd realized how to love others and talk she'd realized the gravity of what she'd done as a child, buried that reality until she believed she WAS the real Adelaide at heart, and in the end she would do anything to protect the family she had and had 'earned' but was still responsible for the Tetheredpocalypse and everyone who wasn't her fam dying.

Final thoughts/TL:DR --

-In "Once Shattered Now Whole" NWK's not just reliving the memory of him cucking himself, he's remembering witnessing in real time him LYING to the woman he loves and being unable to do anything about it.

Dying with regrets IS NOT the same as a 'last minute redemption arc'- ohmayhawd get off TvTropes whydon't you?

Nowhere King/Elktaur is a war criminal and an emotional abuser but I draw the line at the insistence he doesn't genuinely love Mystery Woman. He does; genuine love doesn't make you a good person or your actions hurt any less. Want a familial example of this with a better ending and an antagonist who isn't a villain? See Encanto.

I wonder how much less hate there'd be for General if he were also voiced by Brian Stokes Mitchell. Mitchell can do a younger voice and has range- I think the inference that General is a completely different person is swayed by him having a different VA.

Yes I watched all of Centaurworld again to proof read this and wholy moley is General so much more interesting when you realize he's Elktaur AND I love all the hints to his true nature. ((when he arrives back in the camp in S2 ep 6 it first appears as though a centaur is approaching: "I know my enemies better than I do my Allies": him playfully pretending to not be who he is when he first meets Rider feels very Elktaurish to me: I HAVE MORE...))

Elktaur is the ACTUAL king of the tumblr sexymans and NOT Onceler cuz he's multiple characters at once and actually well written. Lorax 2012 could maybe be saved if Lorax DeVito had killed Oncie with his own ax but you can't have everything,can you...

#centaurworld #centaurworld nowhere king #centaurworld general #centaurworld elktaur #centaurworld season 2 #nowhere king #the general #franki's features

[cat-denied]

i think the best fire emblem game names are the jugdral ones, i.e. Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War and Fire Emblem: Thracia 776. let’s break this down.

1. Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War

this one rules firstly because it’s really long and weird. in a series with game names that evoke fantasy tropes and magic (like “blazing blade” and “shadow dragon” and “sacred stones”, or even something like “path of radiance,” or “mystery of the emblem,” which could be a nancy drew novel title), this game name easily stands out the most in the list. like okay, fantasy, fantasy, mystery, magic, artefacts...Genealogy. you know what i associate genealogy with?? my mom looking at ancestry dot com for fun and trying to collate our family history a few years back. i do NOT associate it with magic boys with swords and tragedy and pseudo-medieval political machinations. too bad that’s what you get!

secondly? it’s fully accurate. i mean i know game names are usually relevant to their games (because otherwise whats the fuckin point) but like. “shadow dragon and the blade of light” specifically calls out 1 character (the shadow dragon) and 1 magic artifact (the blade of light). three houses is about 3 houses but you only pick one of them and the only relevance it has to the story is “you pick between 3 groups” and “there are 3 groups in the game that fight each other.” big deal. that’s also true of, like, arguments i have with my family over what game we want to play at thanksgiving.

genealogy of the holy war? you cannot escape the fact that this game is a genealogy of a holy war. 100% of the game is dedicated to being a genealogy of a holy war. (if you’re not familiar: the first half of the game follows a dude named Sigurd as he gets embroiled in political conspiracy as a scapegoat by an evil cult that’s manipulating the government. the second half follows his son (and the kids of all his friends from the first generation) some ~20 years later as they go and fight the evil cult that’s now fully taken over the government.) you wield weapons blessed by your gods and use them to defeat a cult that wields dark magic and a weapon blessed by their (evil) god. this war is really fuckin holy. and hey two generations (AND the pairings in the first generation alter the stats of kids in the second) where it matters who your parents are - thats a genealogy baby! we did it! that’s the name of the game! and it’s Everywhere.

2. Fire Emblem: Thracia 776

what the fuck. what the fuck is this. “thracia”?? that isn’t a real word. all the other fire emblem titles are real words. why is 776 there?? is it seven hundred seventy six?? is it 7:76, the worst time of the day?? is it like 7.76?? it’s the fifth game in the series!! not the 776th one!! no other fire emblem games have numbers in the titles!! what the fuck is going on!?!?

10/10. no notes.

#fire emblem #fire emblem genealogy of the holy war #fire emblem thracia 776 #roadtriptalks #fire emblem jugdral #jugdral #i seriously do love this shit

[firespirited]

Station Eleven

I very nearly tapped out - at the end of episode 1, I was dissociating heavily, remembering [redacted paragraphs on paragraphs of stream of consciousness trauma-dumping].

So you know by now that I was burned out on the post apocalyptic genre by my teens due to the ableism, misogyny and really bungled racial metaphors... but reviewers that I trust said this was different. Even so, I was going to drop this... but... uh since I was mentally spiralling thought maybe I could break it by pressing "next" and getting engrossed in whatever comes up... and boom: there was a disabled person front and center, not a skilled killer or doctor or anything superskilled, a disabled actor playing a disabled actor thriving in the future. If that had been in episode 1, it would have had me at hello. If there hadn't been an episode 2 on my hard drive, I was going to watch Dark City.

It's a hard sell, ten hours of people working through the wreckage of a pandemic with multiple timelines and puzzle pieces? But it's done in a way that keeps you hooked and not with cliffhangers and 'this is going somewhere eventually' mystery boxes.

I'm not going to lie, I was ready to drop it again by the middle, the type of person these kids had become due to their circumstances was reverting to the classic imaginary dystopia "primal state" (once supposed to critique the present state of affairs but has become a lazy trope). And then in episode 7, they turn that on its head. Our protag finds a way to forgive the child she was and we realize there is going to be real growth. Not just compounded trauma: healthy dealing with past, present and future fears.

The final episodes were amazing. And worth the 6 first hours which are not a slog because the pacing's good but still quite the emotional toil. You will probably cry at least 10–20 minutes of the finale if not a full 30-40 like me.

Miranda's arc and art is the backbone and heart of this show, she's already seen the end of her world, a pandemic is just the latest mess. That resonated with me and I suspect will for many of you, the ones for whom the pandemic was a huge deal but also at least your third time on the merry-go-round of human apathy to outright cruelty, getting your heart broken by losing people you trusted and facing bureaucracies designed to break you. I relied not just on art but seeing people who'd already felt like their world had ended before and gone through it who took this seriously with compassion not individualism guiding their actions and words. "Little apocalypses" like betrayal or poverty or a body falling apart.

And that's the story really, the art of people who've felt the world collapse and managed to put that into words and metaphors, it carries us. Shakespeare is used to heal multiple people's emotional wounds in this story but so does Miranda and her graphic novel.

This is the part where you go to YOURNAME.tumblr.com/archive/2020/12/ and look to see if you talked about any media that helped you during lockdown.

I recommend Station Eleven if you're looking for a twist on the dystopia genre, if you're ready to do a little exorcism on things you might not have dealt with yet (because it's ongoing *shakes fist*) and like stories written by women about women that also have a wide diversity of scope. A post apocalypse with no rape threats, no coercive pregnancies, no religious compounds with harems, no selling sex for food or shelter.

If you'd like to imagine TLOU's Ellie finds family with a travelling music and theatre group, deals with her attachment issues, is friends with her ex-girlfriends, learns enough emotional maturity to help others in crisis. This might be for you.

As always check doesthedogdie as there is violence, there is pandemic imagery, there is emotional violence and mental illness, there is a cult of traumatized children and teens who've grown up without parents and ethical frameworks and they're completely unfazed by death: that's some tough subject matter.

#saf #movie reviews #and also tv #station eleven #long post

[moviemunchies]

So that was a downer. Which I suppose you might have expected, given the subject matter and the team behind it (same director and star as Hostiles)...

The detective Augustus Landor is called to investigate a murder at West Point Military Academy–one of the cadets has been hanged and had his heart cut out. It’s a bit freaky! Landor’s investigation leads him to cross paths with another cadet, Edgar Allan Poe, who wants to help figure out who did it, using his own unorthodox point of view to help solve the mystery. But the heads of West Point keep applying more pressure as the case goes on and more bodies turn up.

A historical murder mystery can be difficult to get right; you can’t just have a CSI story set in a historical period and hope that’s enough. You need some kind of additional hook, like being set in a monastery during a massive ecclesiastical dispute, or involving Aztec mythological figures or something. This one has the idea (and that credit goes to the author of the book this movie was based on) to include Edgar Allan Poe in the investigation.

There’s a nice little game to play with this movie, where you try to see how many allusions to Poe’s stories you can find. There’s the obvious thing about Poe being one of America’s first serious mystery writers with his Dupin stories. But there are plenty of others there too. 

Edgar Allen Poe was not, thankfully, an annoying gimmick addition as he could have been. He was a likable, fully-realized character who contributes both the story and characterization of our lead, Landor. He’s fun. I mean he’s also a bit of a weirdo, which is kind of how he has to be. He never quite reaches the level of dorkability as the version you’ll see in Poe Party_/Tell Tale Vlog, but it’s still entertaining.

Also, he’s played by Dudley Dursley which is a bit weird when I realized that.]

Don’t let that make you think that it’s a fun movie overall. It’s a pretty dark movie, throughout its run. It is, after all, about catching a murderer who has cut the heart out of the victim’s chest. Even scenes that aren’t about the murder are very somber in tone, because of the dark colors of the design, the ever-present snow, and the setting being the military academy West Point. You could simply look at stills of this film to know the kind of movie you’re getting into. Normally, I’d be bothered by the melancholy hues and overwhelming atmosphere, but this is a movie it really fits in.

Still, that doesn’t make it a good time to watch. Which is fine–not every film needs to be a popcorn flick. It’s also not a film that I’d put on lightly. Unless you’re someone who will take great fun out of trying to figure out the mystery as the characters do in the film, make sure you’re in the right mood for this movie before you put it on.

There is a frustrating bit of grimdark Plot that rears its head when we get to the end (I’m not going to spoil it for you, because it’s an important part of character motivations). It’s not out of nowhere; while I didn’t predict it, I suspect quite a few viewers might as the story goes on. That doesn’t change that it’s a trope I’m tired of seeing. I suspect it’s also in the original novel that the story’s based on (I’d have to check out this book to be sure), and I don’t know how the story as intended would ever work without it. That doesn’t make me like this Plot element though, and I know more than one critic was completely turned off from the movie by it.

The Pale Blue Eye is a well-made and very memorable movie, and I think it’s worth watching if you find interest in the premise, or like dark murder mysteries in historical settings. I can’t say how or if fans of the book will enjoy it. I don’t think I could stand watching this movie if I was already in a bad mood though, and that ending spoils some of the enjoyment I had of the movie.

#The Pale Blue Eye #Movie Munchies #Edgar Allan Poe

[postalvalhalla]

Nine Sack Master

I’ve been reading a martial arts manhwa (or manhua, can’t tell) called “The Strongest Male Lead in History”.  This promised to be one of those stories where the hero was unstoppable and possibly arrogant and boring to read about, but that’s not the case.  Our hero is quite powerful, and his power is still growing, but he’s a kind of idiot-savant who has no idea how powerful he actually is.  Also, he’s kind of “all power, no technique” as he’s only been studying martial arts for a few months and hasn’t been taught anything yet.  He can punch like -- well, like Saitama in One Punch Man, to be honest.  But he doesn’t know most of the special tricks that everyone else knows.  He’s still convinced he’s a hopeless case who is *this* close to being kicked out of the sect.

So that’s entertaining.  But one of the things that I’ve enjoyed the most is just the weird world of Asian martial arts storytelling.  I feel like I’m reading science fiction for the very first time and don’t understand most of the conventions or tropes -- I mean, I’ve read a lot of Japanese martial arts manga, but this Chinese/Korean stuff is different.

First there’s “cultivation”.  I didn’t know what this was, but it was clear that the characters would meditate and increase their spiritual power -- the blue glowy stuff that allows them to do extraordinary things that no normal martial artist could do.  At first I thought this was just this one storyteller’s gimmick, but then I noticed another story that was titled something like, “The Greatest Cultivator’s Journey” or somesuch.  So I Googled the term, and found that it’s basically what the story claims:  it’s like a wizard meditating to regain mana, only, you know, it’s not magic, it’s MARTIAL ARTS.  But it’s still not real, just in case that wasn’t clear.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  There’s the whole power structure -- or lack thereof, because there’s never any context given for anything.  Our hero can cultivate up to 9 levels, and then 30, and then... well at some point he’s over 3,000.  He’s on the level of a top student, then a master, then a grand master, then he’s as strong as a Martial Arts General, then he has a Spiritual Body, whatever that means.  It’s the “Over 9000″ meme in spades -- there’s always a higher level he can achieve, and it’s never put into context.  I think after Spiritual Body there was a Solid Gold Spiritual Body or some crap of that sort.  All it means is he’s stronger than before.

In the most recent chapter we meet members of the Beggar Sect, because in a martial arts story there are a million different sects that teach different styles, all of them dangerous.  One of these Beggar Sect monks is a “Nine Sack Master”.  No context what that means -- apparently it’s something big, but you’re left to assume that a Nine Sack Master is much better than one with  three sacks.  Are there Ten Sack Masters?  Is there something better than a sack master, such as a baggage master or a satchel or haversack master?  Maybe a Strongbox Master is the top level?

Also, I just want to note that no matter how obscure a particular skill is or how far the hero ascends into the stratosphere, the elite of the elite, where there can hardly be anyone who can touch him -- the world is CRAWLING with martial artists who appear to be as strong or stronger.  Because of course it is, our hero has to fight someone doesn’t he?  There are hidden cults and secret sects and all manner of dark and mysterious and evil groups chock-full of badass martial artists who can do most of the things he can, or match him in almost every way.

Anyway, it’s been entertaining so far and there are tons of chapters so I’ve been having fun.  ^_^  But I still want to know what a Nine Sack Master really is.

#manga manhwa manhua

[hydralisk98]

Becoming the Blackhand of History (/?)

From the Book into a shareware multimedia franchise as the baseline?

Key constraints for the project

(try) Sticking to using only GLOSS software

Multilingual by default (Taking Portal 2 & Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty as examples)

Fiction "setting" set as my speculative constructed world ( QGIS + OSM "geofiction" workload in a open "source control" repository?)

Deriving from history and diverging where relevant into original paracosm, iterating from a few prototyping (bottom-up) microcosms

Motifs & musical leitmotifs

Sensory details, stylistic devices, lexical word banks, synonyms...

Traditions, festivals, rituals, art movements, art forms, magicks...

Adding many more MegaOCEAN personalities & agentive relationships

History, timeline of major events, conflicts, civilizations, politics, religions, cultures, myths, legends, stories, lore...

Everything around aliens, the divine & the supernatural...

Technological innovations, artifacts, souvenirs, archaeologies, materials, mysteries, discoveries, knowledge, philosophies...

Expressing my worldview, showcasing my autism meta-patterns and special interests

Cycle-of-Life + Coming-of-Age through history...

Featuring many time travel events, body form transformations & other magickal mechanisms

Featuring alternate technologies that actually do function / work even outside the bounds of the medium (aka not the typical futurism "Neuromancer" alienating trope)

Worldview of Curiosity, Knowledge, Mind over Matter, Empathy and Introspection from historical philosophies

Nuances, nuances everywhere.

Wholesome / Heartwarming... as empowered positivity themes

Manifestation + cartoon screenwriting purposes

Kate (INTJ, ASD+ADD human female, spiritualist university graduate in history)

Valenz (ENFP, synthetic-tier clade of android female, social assistant & vigilante)

Nil (second person perspective / camera point-of-view) for shifting purposes

Shoshona (Valenz's black angora housecat)

Van Hexcrawl across the realms?

Pinterest Inspiration Boards

Illustrations?

Playlists?

Soundscapes?

OST?

Systemic change theming around a dark society brightening up as the narrative undergoes through time

Connection to the far far away future & retro-futures we were promised to...

Rivalries?

Morphological Freedoms

Magickal Liberty

Instrumental Clades (Instrument, Robotic, Droid, Synthetic...)

True Polymorph & Time Travel

Character Reference Sheets (on Index Cards?)

Modular Story Beats

Themes

Morales

Intrigues

Book Outline

References, Inspos & other Inspiring media pieces.

Stuff;

#16^12 #maskoch #maskutchew