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mymanyfandomramblings · 6 months

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One thing I don't really see anyone talking about with regards to Gravity Falls is the parallel's between Ford's apprenticeship and Mabeland. Many, many times, the question has been raised 'should Dipper have accepted Ford's apprenticeship', but no-one ever argues 'should Mabel have stayed in Mabeland', for obvious reasons, the show portrays one as a no-brainer and the other as a complex decision. But I think the two situations parallel one another nicely.

For Dipper, taking Ford's apprenticeship is definitely the more attractive option. He doesn't appear to have a lot of friends in Piedmont, has been historically bullied and may still be, and Dipper generally doesn't want to deal with the trials of growing up. Ford meanwhile, basically treats Dipper like an equal, not like a kid, encourages Dipper, and allows Dipper to pursue his interests to the fullest. However, to take the apprenticeship, Dipper will be cloistering himself in an environment in which he never has to do the things he's scared of, he avoids confronting the realities that he doesn't want to deal with, and he'll miss out on going through life with his sister.

For Mabel, staying in Mabeland is the more attractive option. There's an apocalypse raging outside, her brother is growing away from her, she's going to have to leave friends that it's implied are the best she's ever had, and we know that she too, has been bullied in the past, and may still be, and Wendy's well and truly terrified her about the concept of growing up. In Mabeland however, Mabel can continue to live in a charmed reality, surrounded by the things she's interested in and in an environment where she's constantly being enabled, and any dissenters are ejected. However, to remain in Mabeland, Mabel is cloistering herself in an environment where she never has to do the things she's scared of, she avoids confronting the realities she doesn't want to deal with, and she's pushed away one of the most important parts of her life: her brother.

During Dipper's trial, we as viewers see Mabel's change of heart as Dipper shows her that despite the trials the real world has thrown at both of them, that they've always had each others backs, and Dipper realises that too (there was a really good essay on this a while back by @cryoalliums ). Even though they're both scared, and both wanting to avoid the reality of adolescence and high school and unpredictability, they both realise through Dipper's trial that by burying themselves in their respective fantasies, they'll lose the one person who's always had their back: each other. Whether or not it's bullies or a giant robot, the twins have always had each other as a support system, and an ally, and they both realise during the trial that they'd rather fight by one another's side than hide from their problems.

So sure, Dipper could have taken the apprenticeship. He could have chosen to take the tailor-made, one-on-one advanced education that allowed him to pursue his interests to the fullest. But Mabel could also have chosen to stay in the world surrounded by her interests, where she was safe from the things she wanted to avoid. I think it's interesting that these two situations are so paralleled, and yet it's rarely discussed.

#apologies to anyone who saw this on reddit already #gravity falls #gravity falls meta #character analysis #dipper pines #mabel pines #my ramblings

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organizationhimself · 1 year

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just kinda having some thinky thoughts about how dark road totally rewired eraqus's character and what a phenomenal job they did.

like here's your problem you have. you need to take this cloistered old man who raised his students in the jedi way, somehow put up with Old Man Villainy being That Way presumably on the regular, lost every last iota of his shit and turned on the Apocalypse Child he adopted as well as his surrogate son who was infested with The Evil (which the series has long established as not necessarily being good or bad without context) to say nothing of the headtrip he gave his direct heir, and you need to reduce him to a version of himself as a child that is. like. fun. someone who has a genuine friendship with xehanort and is regarded by xehanort as someone who is a "sly fox," i.e. not the sort of buffoon who tests for mastery of the keyblade by child-proofing some orbs of light.

where do you even begin?

YOU TRAUMATIZE THE UNGODLY HELL OUT OF HI--okay i'm getting ahead of myself, let's start with principles.

because eraqus is principled. he believes really firmly in the light in a way that's nearly sora-adjacent in its intensity, but the thing is that sora has this flexibility that eraqus was simply not raised to appreciate. yes, nomura, we understand you like the bright sunshine one and the wry brooding one, you did it with sora and riku, god knows what you did to axel's spine to fit him into the sunshine kid's mold next to isa as brooding anti-crybaby, and now we're doing the same thing to eraqus. ok. i love it when you're optimistic, let's do it.

so first we need confidence. easy; he's a smug little rich kid. worked for riku didn't it? (source: kh1 manga, and the fact that you cannot convince me anyone can maintain a kid with that build on a budget) but we also need to see how dark road changed him as a person. let's contrast his uptight stick-up-his-ass future with a present day class clown who doesn't take things seriously; a headstrong fighter who jokes that he'll just run away. and hey speaking of emotional damage, let's start easing into the inevitable terrible, horrific, unspeakable traumas we're going to visit on this defenseless creature with a little one as a treat:

HIT HIM RIGHT IN THE GRANDPA.

and there you go! we now have a source for eraqus's rejection of the darkness that is not simply a function of his career as a jedi keyblade master, but has an actual personal experience he can point back to in order to say "hey, darkness is the pits!! here is why." it sets the stage early for him to be already butting heads with xehanort, who takes a much more flexible look at the worlds and the way they work and is more willing to view things from the perspective that he is not an authority on the moral peculiarities of whatever world he is currently inhabiting.

xehanort is also a child of destiny [citation needed]. an isolated visitant who was born for finer things but never slept a day in his life without waking up with sand in his mouth until he reached out and took his fate in his bare hands and let it drag him all the way to scala.

where he met the blueblooded child of a keybearing legacy thousands of years in the making, just like his.

and suddenly what you have are unwitting equals. we're ready to set them both up at the chess board; eraqus's legacy is plain, he moves first and he makes no apologies for it because it's his birthright. but xehanort's half of the board is still buried in shadow, implied but never stated, never surrendered to eraqus's probing questions or revealed by his moves, but already aimed at a clash with destiny, fated, inevitable.

shall we say, already written.

and this is brilliant!! now we have a source for our "sly fox," a reason for xehanort to be extremely familiar with the way eraqus thinks (and not to star wars on main but the obi-wan kenobi series did something really similar to this narratively by using anakin and obi-wan's familiarity with each others' fighting styles to predict the actions they would take in a situation, and i will actually never be over it in my life, absolutely stealing it for a xehaqus fic sometime, just shamelessly mugging ewan mcgregor in the street for that solid gold good shit). not only that, but we also have an explanation for xehanort's motivations as described by kh3. he is not looking at the fight from the perspective of one of the pawns; he is looking at the fight as a player, deciding which pawn gets taken. selecting which rook to sacrifice in exchange for the queen.

and eraqus is opposite him, doing the exact same thing (sort of, kh3 was a little cerebral with that), but there's an important difference here that we'll come back to later on.

so, okay. we have a vague outline in the shape of a sunshine kid now. he has confidence tied to his role in society, his legacy gives him perspective, his trauma ensures that he will one day calcify against the darkness with such emphasis that he will unwittingly pad the therapy bills of an entire generation. so far so good.

but uh, yeah, his kids? he fights them? like okay, axel has his differences with his kids too but he's not trying to kill them (mostly). eraqus really definitely for real is, and ven is defenseless. so that'ssss...hard to square with the sunshine kid we're building, nomura, how do we explain that? we really can't handwave it as amnesia this time, we're not working with ansem the wise here.

(BALDR. BALDR IS HOW--

ok but wait wait wait, before we even get to baldr, there's something we can do:

make eraqus impulsive.

and i mean impulsive. make eraqus spoil for a fight with so much unmitigated howler monkey energy that he will fight his friends just to vent. (this isn't even a unique thing, riku and xion and even sora do it all the time, and we're not here to talk about ven's crimes against miners but it's clear that violence is a spoken language in kh.) eraqus is fluent, so we're making it so that all of eraqus's intensity and passion can be focused on a single point if xehanort pushes exactly the right switches in his head.

and then, y'know, yeah. make baldr slaughter all of his classmates, several of them right in front of him, because of unchecked darkness and baldr's own inability to see past his own grief and resentment for long enough to understand that all he's really doing is inflicting his own suffering on other people in a murderstorm of nihilism and bitterness. unrelenting trauma conga line, check.

and now we have almost all the elements. eraqus's principles can't allow him to accept darkness, both because his grandfather was lost to it and because it left him (by all accounts a bourgeois slacker at the bottom of his class, someone vidar doesn't even consider as a candidate for one of the lights despite what baldr has to say about eraqus as a light source) one of the only survivors of an event that completely resculpted his life and community. time to pack him off to the jedi temple land of departure to be least okayest teacher of the year, right?

well...no. we need eraqus to wait.

because he doesn't take on students. and doesn't, and doesn't, for decades. first he fights xehanort, and as we have established he is spoiling for that fight (white moves first!). and then when xehanort finally visits him to drop off that half-dead kid he found (ven was like that already shhh), he's kind of like politely like "oh, you have apprentices. they seem...bright," like he's congratulating eraqus on finally reaching a life stage that eraqus should have hit approximately 50 years ago, and eraqus is like "yeah yeah whatever shut up anyway YOU'VE got one too now right." (yen sid talks about the role of "seeker" like it's a different thing from "keyblade master" so that's where i'm extrapolating this distinction from, but regardless i don't think anyone ever seriously expected xehanort to take on students.)

my point here is that eraqus waited until the last possible opportunity to take on students. to carry on the legacy that was so important to him as a child, and to re-experience the closest thing to the camaraderie he had as a keybearer-in-training that he could ever have back. that is how impactful baldr's actions were for eraqus.

i'm veering completely into speculation now but i think eraqus was terrified. how could he not be? his class wasn't even taking the mark of mastery and still got decimated by it. how could he risk going through that again, but from odin's perspective this time? what guarantee would he ever have to avoid the same tragedy his master had failed to prevent?

so, NOW we know why eraqus's mark of mastery was a handful of light pinatas and a duel. (i like to think xehanort felt a certain level of professional embarrassment for him and wanted to make it just a little more like a real challenge.)

(this is a sidebar and i'm going to talk about my other blorbo for a second but terra has a beautiful dream of being a sly manipulator. that's why he doesn't worry about investing himself in villain schemes, because he assumes he'll see the snare coming before he gets his head caught in it, but it's never coming from directly in front of him like he expects. so this is a dream that will never come true, but he has it, and i think given what we knew about eraqus as early as blank points, its only possible source is a master who was strict and exacting, but--very occasionally--also a sly fox who secretly delighted in his students' nascent abilities to surprise and outwit him.)

back to the trauma, we also have, obviously, the explanation for eraqus's attitude towards terra, and later ven. terra is a tragedy in slow motion that eraqus has seen happen before. baldr was unable to control his darkness; it overwhelmed him, and eraqus does not have the context that xehanort does, that baldr was in some ways a product of his own darkness-shunning society. even if eraqus does have that context, i can't really see him agreeing with it--and even if he at one point agreed with it, he would have gotten that context from the same guy who last showed up at his house talking about kicking off the apocalypse for the vine.

so like. eraqus has never seen any damn thing in his whole life that doesn't confirm his bias against the darkness. does that make him innocent of parenting Incorrectly? no, he is a Bad Dad. does it explain his hopelessly unsuccessful parenting strategies? yes, it does.

what it reinforces is also that eraqus didn't want to have to fight terra and ven. the original bbs is honestly not very good about establishing this: he cries one Sad Tear. yawn. still child abuse, asshole! the stakes in bbs are also not very well established, because there's approximately six people in it and some of them are just the same guy over again, so we don't really have a sense that terra being taken over by the darkness is like...gonna mean something to eraqus that is sincerely worth the personal cost of killing him. since we're clearly no longer worried about ven, there aren't other students to protect (besides aqua, but she's a really hard sell on the "needs to be protected from terra with so much urgency he must not live another moment" front). there is no immediacy to ven's status as Apocalypse Child; if anything vanitas seems like the obviously more important threat, and maybe eraqus should be less concerned about weeding out students and more focused on vetting friends like Old Man So Clearly The Villain My Guy. bbs eraqus is just genuinely hard to like as a character.

but now we have dark road context.

and white moves first.

eraqus is not seeing terra or ven in that moment, he's seeing baldr. he's seeing the summoning of kingdom hearts that almost was, and he is gripped by meticulously prearranged, bone-deep, irrational, traumatized, unbridled impulse. the emotion must vent. the thing he was powerless to stop has returned to haunt him and he must resist it. he knows what will happen if terra strikes him down here and heads back out into the worlds in search of other hearts, other lights. he knows.

but terra resists, using the full spectrum of his strength without remorse, and it is only when eraqus's keyblade is ready to fall from his hand that he realizes the truth:

My own heart is darkness.

and when this happened in the original birth by sleep all i could think was yeah star wars dad!! nailed it your heart IS darkness you fuckin dillweed, about time!! what took you so long!!

but after dark road, this context is completely changed. eraqus is not just realizing that he fucked up.

he is realizing that he fucked up the exact same way baldr fucked up.

that he let his own grief and suffering cloud his judgment and guide his blade to strike out at his loved ones. that instead of finding a way to live with what's already happened to ven, what was long ago fated for terra, he turned his resentment outward and gave that darkness leave to consume them both whole.

but unlike baldr, eraqus regrets it.

it is that moment that xehanort cuts him down anyway, not because eraqus can't be saved the way baldr couldn't but because xehanort is cleaving away the last of his own attachments to the world so he can follow through with the rest of his plans, and i am SO NORMAL ABOUT THI

but okay anyway. eraqus has exactly one move left.

he can't see the board. unlike xehanort, he has no extra pieces of himself he can just bandy about; the warriors of light must assemble without any of his direct input, chasing the echoes of eraqus's students and pushing and pulling in reaction to xehanort's steady advance through the center. he has only one chance. he can't afford to waste it.

the kings are meeting in the middle of the board. the stalemate will come any moment, when they're both out of moves and out of time, leaving the fate of the worlds undecided.

and it is at this moment that eraqus pulls the same penultimate move that xehanort himself used on baldr, confronting him with the first victim his darkness ever struck down. eraqus almost doesn't have to say anything, at all, because xehanort has to know what it means. has to know what it says.

xehanort resists. the world is too far gone. too many horrible things can happen in it; it must be reset. not purged and filled with darkness, like baldr wanted, but returned to a state that can never mutate into the conditions that made baldr exist in the first place. that doomed all their classmates to die. it's too late.

For us, perhaps...but not for them.

and now we go back to the distinction.

the thing that makes xehanort's chess game different from eraqus's is that, for xehanort, it's only chess. the pieces he's moving have ceased to exist in his mind as individuals. they are pawns on a line of white and black squares, and they may weave away from his will here or there but they cannot be swayed from their march.

eraqus never forgets.

and it's actually eraqus's capacity for forgiveness that i haven't even touched on yet. this isn't a word i ever expected to associate with him, but eraqus spends dark road forgiving. five minutes after any altercation he's already forgotten about it. name-calling. arguments. rejection. opposition. full-on fighting.

murders.

when xehanort kills baldr, eraqus is still calling out for him to stop. when xehanort later strikes out at him with darkness (the thing eraqus is scared of the most!!), permanently disfiguring him, eraqus has already forgiven him before seeing him the next time in person.

he does not forget that baldr is a person in spite of his darkness, and eraqus doesn't want him to be killed for it. that terra is a person in spite of his darkness, and eraqus doesn't want to see it consume him. that ven is a person in spite of the darkness that was cleaved from him, and eraqus doesn't want to see it return.

(if you think about it the real tragedy is that we were robbed of him looking aqua in the eye and telling her that she isn't tainted forever, that it did not take her, and even if it had, that will always, always matter less than her finding her way back. i refuse to believe terra was not already made aware of these facts.)

but he also does not forget that xehanort is not a faceless player in the skies, impossible to convince of the significance of a pawn; he remembers that xehanort, too, is still a person.

this point is important because eraqus's last move is not a checkmate (I KNOW HE SAYS CHECKMATE but it is not checkmate), but it is calculated to produce something else: a concession. he doesn't need the board to support his win or xehanort's loss; he needs the player on the other side to put down the pieces and follow his beacon out of the dark.

and that is how nomura shows us our sunshine kid at last, fully formed, as he takes xehanort's burdens from him and spirits them both well beyond the reach of the board.

anyway yeah microwaving him in my brain along with axel (and also roxas and terra because if i don't collect all my blorbos AND their hot mess dads i'll never fill out my pokedex).

#eraqus #xehanort #kingdom hearts dark road #khdr #xehaqus #i would apologize for the length if i were sorry

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thegothicera · 5 months

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St. Michael and the Dragon in the “Cloisters Apocalypse”, French, ca. 1330

#gothic #medieval #dragons #angels

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maggot-monger · 1 year

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lucifer gender symbolism essay part 3: the dead nun

masterpost

remember how lucifer’s very first appearance was as a dead nun in lucifer rising?? it wasn’t a vessel situation, but the first time we hear lucifer speak directly, it is through a dead catholic nun, to azazel, at the end of s4. and that is how we are INTRODUCED to lucifer as an actual real, speaking character who isn’t just a distant mythic concept. this adds to the atmosphere of the scene and makes lucifer and azazel seem scarier, but by putting lucifer's voice in the nun's mouth it also kind of situates lucifer as being like the nun in some ways.

in his first appearance, the devil is a brutalized woman of god!

it’s appropriate, given lucifer’s firm stance that he fell because he loved god too much. lucifer is rebellious, but not for the sake of rebelling — he’s doing an apocalypse for revenge, but also seems to think he’s legitimately trying to protect what he sees as his father’s best creation. there is a lot going on with why lucifer fell, but one of them is for overstepping what angels were supposed to do by having an opinion that contradicted The Father’s. but fundamentally, lucifer sees himself as loving god — loving god too much — being devoted to god and god’s creations, to the point that he felt disobedience was a better way to show devotion than obedience (if this sounds strange i would direct you to the first and second bullet points on this post, which might or might not make things clearer)

so, it’s fitting that he would be introduced as a nun. it primes us to think of lucifer as a religious figure, sacrificed on the altar of her piety — the scene is disturbing, the religious imagery seems twisted and warped and corrupted, but nonetheless, the voice does come from a nun’s mouth. lucifer did not kill that nun; lucifer is speaking as that nun. the disturbing religiosity of the image is about corruption maybe, but what is really going on there is lucifer as a woman who pledged her life to god and who has now been bloodily killed specifically because she is a woman who pledged her life to god. and that is, in a sense, exactly what lucifer is: an embodiment of piety, broken.

it seems relevant that it's a nun rather than a priest too...partially this comes back to supernatural's thing about women and innocence: a dead nun devil is creepier than a dead priest devil because women have more in-show purity symbolism baggage than men do, so it's more dramatic and creepy when they're killed or corrupted. lucifer, having once been god's favorite, had the furthest to fall, so it's creepier for him to end up the devil than it would have been for pretty much any other angel.

beyond spn standard gender stuff, nuns and priests have different roles in catholism: depending on the order/region/etc, nuns might be cloistered (no contact with the outside world) or work in caretaking roles or similar doing acts of service. priests, on the other hand, have an explicit leadership role: they preach to their communities; they are thought leaders; they are called "father" for a reason. (some nuns are community leaders as well of course but that's not the job description for them the same way it is for priests). in lucifer rising, lucifer is not using the voice a leader, but is instead using the voice either of someone cut off from the outside world (true, certainly in the cage and more symbolically pre-fall), or of someone who is supposed to concern herself with doing good works than with interpreting god's word for a congregation. showing lucifer as a nun subverts expectations both of nuns and of lucifer, and puts an interesting spin on the character by giving us some possible insight into what he was supposed to be — and, maybe, how he still thinks of himself.

there’s also something to the fact that women can’t reach the same positions within the hierarchy of the catholic church that men can. they can be nuns; they can’t be cardinals etc. this is a bit messy because lucifer used to be one of the highest ranking angels, but nonetheless…maybe something about the incorrectness of the demons deifying lucifer. lucifer doesn’t give the impression of wanting to be in charge of the demons, he doesn’t seem to want to rule hell as a kind of god or pope figure. he leans into it because it’s tactically useful, but that’s not something he’s all that into. what lucifer is, according to lucifer, is someone who loves god and serves god’s best interests. lucifer's hubris is from lucifer thinking he knew better than god what was in god’s best interests. this is kind of getting away from me but you see the general outlines of this, yeah? maybe? anyway

part 2: gender in supernatural part 4: women in white

#spn #spnluciferweek #lucifer #spn thots #meta

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wikimediauncommons · 1 month

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file: Cloisters Apocalypse - Met 68.174 f9v (Fifth Seal- The Martyrs) crop.jpeg

#art #religious #amusing #mod 2 favs

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catholic-character-tournament · 11 months

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Round 1 - Resurrect Bracket (Losers Bracket) Side A

ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to [make it to the finals]

Propaganda below ⬇️

Saint Citrina Rocks (Dimension 20’s A Crown of Candy)

there’s nothing better that i can do for this character’s chance to win than to say that one of her titles, in canon, is “Cloistered Scholar of the Immaculate Confection” and if that ain’t a great pun I don’t know what is

I never finished acoc but if the fandom is actually right, shout out to gay lemon saint and martyr.

Popular headcanon says she fucked the broccoli Pope <3 (or at least that they had an intense romantic relationship which might’ve avoided premarital relations due to their religious ties).

OKAY so Citrina Rocks is basically the token Jesus freak (affectionate) of her very atheist maybe-a-touch-pagan family. She’s a saint of the church that’s actively fighting against her brother (the king of Candia, her home kingdom and yes the entire place and all the people are Just Candy) and his family. She was ordered to be murdered by a bishop of the church she was essentially canonically in homoerotic love with and she is made of lemon flavored hard candy. i love her SO MUCH

Hellboy Propaganda

He is literally the beast of the apocalypse. He was forcibly assigned catholic at birth, he deserves this. Now i know the rules said no demons, and that is fair. But here is my propaganda: he is a half-demon AND he absolutely does not want to end the world. He just wants to hang out and beat up monsters and work his job. But catholic guilt and apocalypse stuff always gets in the way. The comic books contain a ridiculous amount of religious imagery, the author was raised catholic, and passages from the bible are occasionally quoted. Hellboy is also portrayed as a messianic figure in conjunction with being an apocalyptic one. He uh, kind of becomes the savior of the new world and its like a whole thing. Catholic imagery appears frequently. Statues of the virgin mary, churches, etc. he also wears a literal cross on his belt, what can i say.

Okay here’s my rant. Hi, hello, propaganda. The last ten issues of the comic literally feature Hellboy going to hell and killing satan. He kills satan, fucks around in hell for a bit, and then blows everything up and its godamn tragic. Forcibly assigned catholic at birth. A bro did not ask for this it just happened. His mom was a witch but tried to become catholic after she died. Kind of a banger move. It didn’t work out for her but she gets points for trying. He tried real hard to save the world and it kind of worked but he did still die and go to hell. But not because he did anything bad, it was just kind of unavoidable. Again, he did blow the place the fuck up when he was done so. Respect.

Lapsed Catholic who is literally a half demon and also the rightful King of England that’s right he’s descended from King Arthur on his mother’s side.

#saint citrina rocks #citrina rocks #d20 a crown of candy #a crown of candy #hellboy #cct polls #tumblr tournament #tumblr bracket #tumblr polls

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ladyantiheroine · 1 year

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That Current In Your Heart

Summary: R hasn’t felt alive in a long time. Until a young witch finds her way into his hiding place.

Pairing: R x witch!reader

Requested by @kpopgirlbtssvt

Also tagging:��@ninebluehearts

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You never expected the apocalypse to be uneventful. For the rest of humanity, it certainly was. Just a few years after the virus took hold, building had been left in ruins and what remained of human life cloistered itself away in various compounds throughout the world. But only a select number of the human population had the powers you did. Your magic guarded you more than any bullet-proof vest could. As you wandered the airport, you strolled easily knowing the various corpses around you wouldn’t hurt you. Your magic masked the scent of your supple, living human flesh and they stumbled right past you, moaning and groaning against their slowly decaying forms. Not that you minded. You were a solitary witch. You were used to slipping by undetected by most people. In a funny way, the apocalypse did little to change your day-to-day life. Except now there was no work, no recreation, just a long landscape to wonder for resources. Until, you met him. As you wandered the airport lot, you noticed one of the airplane’s doors was slightly open. This was strange. No one had properly used this airport in so long. It’s not like people were packing their bags to fly away on vacation in the middle of the end times. Curiosity was something you were never good at resisting, and wandering aimlessly was getting awfully boring. So you climbed the steps up to the airplane door and stepped inside. Your eyes trailed down the long aisle, over rows of seats, and no one was in sight. However, it was clear someone had been there. The place was scattered with trinkets that one wouldn’t expect to find in an airplane. Books. Knick-Knacks. DVDs. Clothes. An assortment of things lying around like you would find in someone’s bedroom. Interestingly, no food or bottled water. Whoever lived here did so casually, as if the world outside wasn’t a crumbling wasteland. You raised an eyebrow scanning over the assortment. Your eyes landed on a box of vinyls. Your fingers brushed the dust collection and you started sifting through them. Whoever this strange survivor was, they certainly had good taste. Right next to the box was a record player and for a moment you considered giving the box a listen. It had been so long since you properly listened to some music… Then, right behind you, there was a low, guttural moan. The hair on the back of your neck stood straight and you spun around. A corpse had wandered into the plane. You left the door open behind you.

“Idiot,” you grumbled to yourself out loud. The zombie appeared to be a young man, late teens or possibly early twenties, though it was difficult to tell with all the mold and rot. He was dressed in the dirty, tattered remains of blue jeans, a t-shirt and a red hoodie. His eyes were wide and pale blue, and he looked just as alarmed as you. You stumbled towards you. You lifted your hands in defense.

“Back off,” you said. But before he had a chance to do so, a shot of adrenaline shot through you and sent a magic force through your hands. It sent the corpse flying backward and landing on the aisle floor at the front of the cabin. He let out a loud, pained groan when he hit the ground. Strange. Since when could a corpse feel pain? You took tentative steps towards him, looking down at him with your hands still up. “I’ve got more power than that came from,” you said. “Get your rotten teeth anywhere close to me, and I can do it again.” He looked up at you with an unreadable expression. It was hard to tell what went through the head of a corpse if anything at all. But he didn’t get up, didn’t attempt to fight back. He just looked up at him, unblinking. Then, to your surprise, he lifted his hands in surrender. “Not….gonna…hurt you…” he moaned. Now it was your turn to stare. Up until this point, all you ever heard from corpses was unintelligible moans. But this one…could speak. Broken words, sure, but he could speak. And moreover, he was begging for mercy. Despite your survival instincts and the power still buzzing in your fingers, you gently dropped your hands. The corpse lifted a shaking hand and pointed it at you. “How…” he said. “How did you…” You looked down at your hands, then up at him. “I’m a witch,” you said. There was a time you wouldn’t have been so blunt. But it was the zombie apocalypse. People were more willing to believe magical things now. “I pushed you away with my power.” His eyes widened further. But not with fear, not quite. Instead with…awe. “I would leave if I were you,” you said. “Whoever lives here…they probaby don’t want either of us.” The corpse paused, then slowly lifted himself to his feet. He pointed to himself. “I…I live here…” You raised an eyebrow. But the more you thought about it, the more it made sense. A human survivor would be hoarding food, water and medical supplies. Not non-essential things like vinyls and snowglobes. That means he collected all these things. Which means he had a thinking mind, a feeling heart. Things corpses weren’t supposed to have. “Oh,” you said, suddenly embarrassed. “I…I’m sorry…” The corpse didn’t seem offended. He stepped forward, and you didn’t bother putting up your invisible shield you’d been using to walk amongst the other corpses. You just stood there as he stood before you. “Your…name…” the corpse said. “I…” you hesitated. This was all new information. Corpses were not mindless. They could speak and think and gather. Your curiosity couldn’t resist. “I’m Y/N.” “Y/N,” he said, his moldy tongue caressing the word. His mouth quirked up in an attempt at a friendly smile and he pointed at himself. “R…” “R?” you said. “R as in…Robert? Ricardo? Richard?” He shook his head. “Can’t…remember…” he said. R. At least it was easy to remember. “Well,” you said. “Nice to meet you, R. Sorry for…breaking into your home.” He shrugged.

“How…did you…” He gestured out the window, where more corpses were roaming around oblivious. “It’s a spell,” you said. “Developed it in the early days of the virus. It keeps me invisible to them.” You shrugged. “Well, until you.” You shoved your hands into your pockets. “Unfortunately, spells like that need time to charge,” you said. “I came to this airport hoping for a place to power up before I head back out.” “Where…” You shrugged. “I dunno,” you said. “To be honest, I didn’t have much of a home before the end times. I’m a bit of a wanderer.” R was quiet for a moment, looking at you in an expression you couldn’t quite read. It was his turn to shyly put his hands in his hoodie pockets. “Do…you…” He lifted his eyes bashfully to yours. “Want to…stay here…?” You couldn’t believe this. A corpse was offering you shelter? Protection? It went against everything you knew about corpses. Maybe it was a trick to get you alone, trapped, so he could eat you. But he’d seen your magical powers. He knew he couldn’t touch you unless you allowed it. Plus, nowhere else in the airport was safe. And as soon as your spell ran out, it could be days before you could safely walk amongst the dead again. You walked past R towards the plane door, slid it shut, and turned back towards him. You gave him a small smile. “You’ve got a deal, Mr. R,” you said.

Against all expectations, you were living with a corpse. You always expected to find one spot to settle down at eventually. One couldn’t wande the earth forever. You would have to find a survivor’s compound and a community to rely on eventually. Instead, you found yourself living in an airplane with a verbally-challenged corpse and a steady stream of airplane food to fill your stomach. He was also kind enough to bring you materials from the outside that you needed for spells and potions, particularly ones you’d need to recharge your protection spell. But most of the time, the two fo you hung out. If it wasn’t for his stunted voice, you would have forgotten he was a corpse at all. There seems to be some…flicker in him. Something that sent a buzz in your own skin. “Nice collection,” you said, sifting through his vinyls. You were both seated on the floor, going through the records between you. You pulled one out. “Bruce Springsteen?” R nodded. “Do you play them sometimes?” He nodded again. “Makes me feel…” he spun his fingers in a record motion. “...alive.” Something sunk in your stomach. You put the record back in the box and pushed it aside. “R,” you said. “Do you…miss being alive?” R was quiet for a long moment. His eyes lingered on your hands. “Some…times…” he said. “I know it seems like a silly question,” you said. “But…there’s a freedom to it, yeah? No one expects anything from you. You don’t have to work. You get to…exist.” R shrugged. There was a tension hanging in the room. Something buzzed in your fingers. It had been there ever since you started living with R, like his mere presence had awakened something in your power. You crossed her legs on the floor. “You know, R,” she said. “My brand of magic is based on nature. His eyes brightened and he leaned slightly forward. “Reallly…” he said. You grinned. R had asked you endless questions about your magic since you sent him flying to the floor that first day. It fascinated him, and he drank up any knowledge you shared with him. You nodded. “I connect with the life force that flows through all things,” you said. “The plants, the animals, the birds…everything has a bit of life in it.” Your pursed your lips, then leaned forward. “Maybe…” you said, leaning forward. “Maybe I can help?” R gazed at your with those pale blue eyes. You moved closer to him, careful, your hands nearly vibrating. “Maybe if I reach inside you…” you said. “I can…make your feel alive again?” R was quiet, and you were about to pull back, but then he reached for the record box. He took out the Bruce Springsteen record and sent it spinning on the record player. The upbeat rhythm of “Hungry Heart” sprung through the air. He turned his gaze back to you as the music rang throughout the plane. “Do it,” he said, as clear and crisp as you’d ever heard him speak. You gave him a soft smile. You moved close to him, close enough that he could feel the breath from your lips. You pressed your hand to his chest. Cold flesh, no rhythm in his ribcage. You closed your eyes and took a deep breath. You concentrated all your energy, all your magic, into your palm, your fingertips. You felt it run down your arm like blood in veins. You whispered a spell, the words soft on your lips. Then, you felt it. Faint, tremor, but very much there. It ran from your hand into his chest like an electric current. A heartbeat. The sensation must have startled R, because he flinched. His eyes widened and he looked at you. “Heart…” he said. You smiled and nodded. “Yeah,” you said. “I felt it too.” You pressed your hand tighter against his chest. Eventually, the faint tremor grew to a steady rhythm. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough. R’s face bloomed with a smile as he felt his body sparkle back to life. “Y/N…” he said. “You…you made me…” Then, his eyes widened and he went very still. His heart still beat but he didn’t move. “R?” you said. Concerned, you moved your hand away. “R, are you okay?” He dropped his eyes back down to yours. “I…had…” he tried to gather his words. “I remember…” “Remember what?” “I was…alive…” Now it was your turn to widen your eyes. “You remember your life before you died?” you said. “That’s…that’s amazing. Do you remember your name?” He sadly shook his head. “No,” he said. “But…” R’s eyes gazed off into the distance. “I was…a pilot…” he said. “First flight…never went off…”

Your heart sank deep in your chest. “I’m so sorry, R,” you said. “I guess that explains why you live at the airport. You never got to take that first flight.” R shrugged then roll his eyes back to yours. Then, suddenly, he took your hands in his. You didn’t even have to touch his chest to know his heart was racing. You could feel the pulse in his fingers, that current that ran between both of your, powered by magic. Then, he leaned forward and kissed you. It was sudden. You expected repulsion, the feeling of cold, rotten lips. But all you could think of was how gentle his touch was. You leaned into the kiss, letting your warm blush heat his cold mouth. Your lips came apart, and you pressed your forehead against his. The world suddenly felt more alive. Sunlight streaked through the windows. You could hear the heartbeat of every creature, every plant, and every bird, that lived in spite of the wasteland. “I guess I won’t be leaving soon,” you said. “Need the magic to help you remember that darn anime of yours.” R chuckled and pulled you into his arms. You two lay on the floor together, Bruce Springsteen floating through the air, two beating hearts strung together by the same magic current.

#warm bodies #r atvist #fanfic #isaac marion

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hallowgracie · 2 months

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The werewolves are another of the prominent races in Vertumnus, but they are not so populous as the witches or as cloistered as the elves. While they certainly have their tight-knit communities and packs, they prefer to live in the suburbs and rural villages, away from the cities. They are tied to nature as the elves are—but the elves dislike them for their ties are not to the sun and the spring, but to the moon and the winter winds.

Therefore, they frequently disagree with the elves on how to protect the balance of nature, and what that even means. It is their belief that the sickness of the world started much earlier than the Mage Wars, citing the lack of a winter, the last one being recorded in myth and legend, and a few freak accidents.

They also believe that the apocalypse will be heralded by a figure of legend, Fenrir. A werewolf with a dark strength and command of the northern winds, this big bad wolf will usher in the next age when his visage is spotted in the lights in the sky found at the furthest point north.

The shape of the wolf has been seen in the northern lights seventeen years ago. Fenrir lives again.

#werewolf #werewolves #fantasy #fantasy world #fantasy worldbuilding #worldbuilding #writeblr #wip #my projects #house of apocalypse

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coldcanyon · 2 months

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settled on a first tattoo i think from the Cloisters Apocalypse manuscript......just need to find some1 who will do them justice.....

#i think bird lady on right bicep and animal friends frolicking on forearm.....in the original blue and red

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fatehbaz · 2 years

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St Louis is where storms collide.

Without the moderating effect of a coastline or major mountain range, cold air sweeps unopposed down from the Arctic to meet a warm, humid front marching north from the Gulf of Mexico. The two finally lock in combat over the Mississippi flatlands, emptying their arsenals to barrage the area with blizzards, thunderstorms, and tornados. In recent years, growing climate chaos has only intensified this ambient war, each “extreme weather event” more volatile and less predictable. And as the air currents grapple over the middleAmerican sky, the storm-swollen Mississippi grinds forward below. Once-uncommon “freak floods” are now standard, the levees overcome every few years and large chunks of St Louis and its surrounding suburbs washed away by the intractable inertia of a river bound to outlive any city.

The result is another slow apocalypse.

In January 2016, people from the surrounding suburbs poured into Red Cross shelters, unable to return to homes torn apart by the rising water. But even with such disasters gradually becoming the new, more violent equilibrium, federal aid is perpetually insufficient. [...] Politics in these conditions can only appear apolitical, as all functional organizing is given political significance when confronted with devastation of such scale: Baptists and Mennonites organizing supply caravans through the wreckage of long-decayed postwar suburbs, the crosses emblazoned on their white vans floating above silt-clogged cul-de-sacs.

Such stories of environmental destruction are, however, only one dimension of a much-deeper global economic catastrophe that takes different forms in different regions.

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In many ways, St Louis is a city without a region, stuck between the Midwest, the South, and the Great Plains -- and as such it seems to act as a sort of vaguely generalizable image of a mythic middle America slowly being lost. Economically, it’s an intersection between Rust Belt and Corn Belt, only barely outside the new sunbelt yet falling short of its river-port counterparts. It was one of the many cities left behind by the wave of deindustrialization. After its postwar heyday, the entire metro area saw massive population loss, at first concentrated downtown but soon spreading out to neighboring suburbs as well. This process only deepened long-standing racial divides. Meanwhile, attempts to resuscitate the city by focusing on capital-intensive manufacturing and biotech have only ensured a further cloistering of wealth and a hardening of racial divides between neighborhoods.

Today postwar houses and small clusters of low-rise apartment complexes are sprinkled out across the humid floodplain. When the river overspills its levees, entire suburban cities can be washed away, as was the case in the small, predominantly white working-class suburb of West Alton in 2016. Wedged between the Missouri and Mississippi, just before their confluence north of St Louis proper, the entire city was evacuated, with a quarter to a third of the population expected never to return. [...]

There are small islands of gentrification within the city proper, as well as the remains of more affluent suburbs, largely west of the city -- the foremost of these being small municipalities like Town and Country, a largely white golf course suburb that boasts the highest median income of any city in Missouri. These richer locales are buffered by a spectrum of poorer ones [...].

In St Louis, these divergent dynamics are colliding, and the city is being reshaped according to this economic battle, itself only an echo of that greater chaos foreboded by warring storms.

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Phil Neel. Hinterland: America’s New Landscape of Class and Conflict. 2018.

#today 100 year rainfall record in St Louis with major flash flooding in streets just as worker strikes begin at all 3 Boeing plants in St Lo

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tomionefinds · 1 year

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hi! do you have any fics where its takes place during an apocalypse like twd kinda apocalypse?

Hey Anon, Not sure if you just sent in another similar ask about specifically Zombie Apocalypse AUs; in any case gonna kind of string these two together.

I'll answer this one with some post-apocalyptic/dystopian setting fics, and then list some specific zombie ones on the other ask. So keep eyes peeled if that wasn't you.

Shout out to Untenable by saintcorvus; that's actually a gift to me from an exchange! -JD

Untenable by saintcorvus T+ | One Shot | 3k Prompt: Sci-fi/Dystopian AU where Tom and Hermione lead two different tribes. Heavily inspired by a lot of Dystopian books that I've read. Some direct usage of themes from The 100.

the price of water by peppershark E/Ma | WIP | 14k After a mishap in the Room of Hidden Things, Hermione finds herself in a barren, post-apocalyptic future where witches are all but extinct. The rare females are prized by desert traders and cloistered under the paternalistic care of the few men evolved for ultimate power. One omega has heard about a special little alpha witch in possession of a power lost to wizarding-kind for centuries. Tom Riddle is going to find her, and claim her. If she won’t give up her secrets, he’ll just have to fuck them out of her.

my (edge) lord by tomioness T+ | WIP | 7k After a fatal virus killed every person older than 21, the world is thrown into absolute chaos. Children and teenagers can only survive by coming together. Gangs of older survivors terrorize them by taking all reserves under control. Hermione, Head of the Mudbloods, puts all her efforts into taking care of her tribe. But everything seems at risk when the self proclaimed Lord of the Death Eater gang takes an interest in her and uses her love for her community to bend her to his will.

A Clockwork Black by ChloeGevaux E/Ma | WIP | 19k No man can describe it to you until you've felt it for yourself. The cry in the dark; the mortal call for meaning - oh, God, please give us some meaning - in this short, sharp life. Does he answer? That absentee father figure... does he answer your prayers? When you hear the crunch of gravel outside as the car pulls up, when you frown in confusion because - wait, but it's too soon for my husband to be home from work - and when you look up, stunned, as the doorbell rings just as the front door itself is kicked in and kicked open- No. The only one who will answer your prayers is me. And then you'll wish you'd never said them. Tomione. 'A Clockwork Orange' inspired AU.

The Heir From District 2 by PenelopeGrace Series: Tomione Hunger Games AU [1] E/Ma | Complete | 16k They thought he would win. Hunger Games AU + District 2!Tom Riddle + District 12!Hermione Granger

Ad Infinitum by Speechwriter T | WIP | 74k As he forges inexorably toward the end of time, he may come to wonder if this is a world worth ruling. Science fantasy.

Behind Death by elude T | WIP | 2k post-apocalypse world In a last ditch attempt to right the wrong, Hermione goes back into the past. But, time refuses to be tamed. Tom/Hermione

Black Mambo by Nekositting M | One Shot | 6k She sprung from where her legs had been rooted on the floor, running to the door at the end of the room. She pounded on its surface, blood rushing up to her ears. The door refused to move. “Open the god damn door,” she shouted, hysteria making her words crack at the end, but still, the guard outside refused to open the door for her. Was he even still out there? “They won’t come for you, you know.”

Entropy by Mechanical_Orange M | WIP | 21k There are holes in the universe and holes in their hearts, but time can heal all wounds. In 1998 Hermione begins her seventh year at Hogwarts. In 1944, Tom Riddle does the same.

Madam Granger by cherry_cup E/Ma | WIP | 45k When Hermione Granger secures the position of librarian at Hogwarts, she becomes the object of fascination for a particular Dark Lord in the making. AU. 1940s (no time-traveling)

Oceanfront View (It’s me and You) by ChaoticBabe T+ | One Shot | 1k This wasn’t how things were meant to go, the world fell before they even found there feet.

Orphea by SallyJAvery M | WIP | 48k "You could not believe I was more than your echo." A spell to sing the dead to life, when the living are lost. Tomione, post-war, dystopian AU.

The Plague by QueenRuby E/Ma | WIP | 17k A plague has hit the wizarding world and the greatest minds alive must get together to find a cure before all is lost. AU/AR

Romanticism by mysterymin M | WIP | 8k In a dystopian world where Voldemort has won the battle of Hogwarts, the purebloods have decided to weed out the weakest of the mudbloods.

Types of Iron by knittedcoffee M | WIP | 1k A magic and sci-fi blend AU. A magical and medieval world is connected to a technologically advanced one run by robots, but they do not coexist under the reign of Lord Voldemort. Warnings: violence, death, language, involuntary self-harm. "As technology advances in complexity and scope, fear becomes more primitive" Don DeLillo. Part 1/?

we'll sing in the sunshine by flosculous M | WIP | 4k Dystopia AU. She was pushed into her cell with only one thought in her mind. Obedience, there's no such thing as love. Was he born normal he would have felt something similar to empathy now, or maybe his chest would convulse with sympathy (...) but Tom was anything but normal. Or Hermione is one of the Hollows and Tom is High General of Grindelwald's Followers.

A Fall Through Time by orphan_account E/Ma | Abandoned | 89k A/U Tomione In a present day dystopian society, muggles and muggleborns are enslaved to their pureblood masters who greedily drain the earth of it's resources resulting in famines and plagues. Hermione, known to her master Draco as Sandy, must do what she does best-survive and adapt. Until that is, she is given an opportunity to go back to when it all started and rewrite history. ~Incomplete~Abandoned~Orphaned~If you are inspired to write something for this story or pick up where I left off--feel free~

#tomione #post-apocalyptic au #dystopian au #extreme au #incomplete #multichapter #sci-fi au

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hyperannotation · 10 months

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"Necrology" is a literary work that delves into the realms of death, decay, and the blurred boundaries between the living and the dead. In this interview, authors Gary J. Shipley, Kenji Siratori, and Reza Negarestani provide insights into the themes and approaches within the book. The discussions touch upon topics such as horror, writing practices, and the merging of corporeal entities. Through their unique perspectives, the authors offer a glimpse into the dark and unsettling landscapes explored in "Necrology." Exploring Horror and Decay: The authors acknowledge that death and decay permeate every page of "Necrology." Gary J. Shipley considers reality itself as a horror, describing it as a carnivorous fog that devours people. Kenji Siratori presents a vivid imagery of the hells within bodies, evoking a sense of horror through surreal and visceral descriptions. Reza Negarestani notes that horror stories inherently concern decay, even when they delve into other themes. Together, these perspectives create a tapestry of unsettling and morbid explorations. Writing Practices and Approaches: Each author provides insights into their writing practices. Gary J. Shipley describes eavesdropping on the polluted organs of imagined creatures, engaging in graphomania fueled by nihilistic incoherence. Kenji Siratori's writing is characterized by a distinctive and chaotic style, drawing inspiration from the mysteries of the mind and the grotesque. Reza Negarestani mentions the necessity of making a pact with putrefaction and exploring the moment of nucleation with nigredo, emphasizing the intertwining of decay and creative expression. The Layout and Subject Matter: The two-column layout in "Necrology" is seen as a means to blend and unite the main bodies of text, reinforcing the themes explored within the book. Gary J. Shipley envisions mechanized deformities and blended tissue, while Kenji Siratori describes the brain of the dead in surreal and enigmatic terms. Reza Negarestani highlights the intimate relationship between intelligibility and a necrophilic intimacy, suggesting that the layout mirrors the fusion of living and dead elements. The Black Slime and the Destiny of Texts: The authors speculate on the destiny of the texts in "Necrology." Gary J. Shipley envisions cloistered hollows, vampire dreams, and inevitable absorption. Kenji Siratori describes the image of a centipede's lung and the apocalypse of the sun. Reza Negarestani discusses the necroses of the soul, emphasizing their role in the arrangement and intelligibility of the universe. Together, these visions evoke a sense of transformation and decay, emphasizing the interplay between life and death. In "Necrology," the authors engage with themes of death, decay, and the merging of living and dead entities. Their discussions highlight the horror inherent in existence, the unique writing practices employed, and the connections between layout and subject matter. Through their distinct perspectives, Gary J. Shipley, Kenji Siratori, and Reza Negarestani offer readers a glimpse into the unsettling and thought-provoking world of "Necrology."

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gentlyepigrams · 1 year

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bird woman feeding bird leg to bird, normandy, ca. 1330. source: the cloisters apocalypse, fol. 22v.

#medievalia #illuminated manuscript #marginalia

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aye-of-newt · 2 years

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My season four theory: Reggie has redesigned the universe with himself at the centre. At first, the Umbrellas will think their job is done and will attempt to get on with their lives sans powers.

However, they will soon realise that a world of Reg’s design is worse than no world at all and without their powers they are helpless to defend themselves against this terrifying new regime.

Five will need to regain his powers and travel back in time to undo all the work of the previous three seasons, leading us back to the apocalypse of season one, which was always meant to happen.

Needing to ensure the timeline goes exactly as it should, he will be forced to found an organisation that monitors and regulates the space-time continuum. He will employ thousands of agents to achieve this aim, using time-travelling briefcases powered by his abilities. He will live a long and lonely life, cloistered from society, as the enigmatic founder of the Temps Commission.

When his younger self drops in on him near the end of his life, the 100-year-old Five will attempt to tell him: “Whatever you do, don’t save the world.”

He will lose his arm in an unrelated kitchen waste disposal incident.

Thoughts?

...you know I can see the vision.

I think that with the exact right execution it could work as a tragedy. It almost makes sense because there would be no worse fate in his mind and no greater failure. It goes against everything Five is and so it would be the ultimate cruel irony.

For decades, Five's only goal is to stop the apocalypse and make it home. It helps him to hold on to some semblance of sanity. And to his humanity. All while in impossibly inhuman conditions. He rebels against the Commission and the idea that time is fixed, rejecting the idea that our fate is sealed and we are helpless to change it. His very core is made of pure concentrated willpower. The very essence of Five is to fight, to claw tooth and nail against every boundary and limit and sacrifice himself over and over again in order to save everyone else.

(Which is why I felt his giving up was... weird... this season. Like I can almost see him getting to a point where he would feel that there is nothing he can do... but I don't feel like that low point was really justified/deserved this season. It didn't have enough build up from where we left him last season. He had majorly powered up and destroyed the entire Board in order to restore things to how they ought to be. He doesn't seem the type to settle for the Hotel and flawed timeline where they could run into their alternate selves at any moment. If I was writing the season I would have had him be more lost and directionless without a clear goal to fulfill. Maybe have him trying to restore the timeline and have the others insist that they call it quits while they are ahead??? His retirement would be awkward and half-hearted. Of course, Allison would have been on board with him wanting to fix things and then she wouldn't have gone off the deep end so much so that would interrupt that storyline... Maybe what was needed was just a More Significant reason for him to give up in general. For Five to more explicitly state that he was afraid of making things even worse if they kept tampering or something. I think this is what they were going for, they just didn't establish it clearly/strongly enough. Whatever, this is a ramble. Anyway--)

The point is, I do really like the idea of Five as a tragic figure. I think an ending where it is revealed that the game was over before it even began would be absolutely heart-shattering. Gut wrenching. To see him fight so hard for decades only to realize that it was all for nothing, that he was blindly charging down a path towards his own destruction, that in trying to save his family he dragged them through far more pain living through three or four apocalypses than they would have endured dying in the first one... it would be devastating. If done just so it could be fulfilling as much as it would be eviscerating. It would be a complete and utter defeat and Five would have to betray not only his entire family but his entire sense of self and all he stands for by becoming the thing he hates.

Of course, it would be a very tall order to do well. It would be very hard to thread the needle in a way that executes that "strings of fate, loop of agony, sink to become the thing you hated" thing without feeling like a total destruction of the character and dismissal of the point of the show. The switch would have to flip at the last second, to keep Five (and us) full of hope as long as possible and only reveal that it was all for naught at the final moment when it is far, far too late to do anything. The audience would have to be convinced and on board with Five until that moment of realization. We should experience it together so that when the ashes fall, we can't blame him for the actions he takes. When we see there horrific, painful end... and it destroys us because there was nothing else he could have done.

It could work.

And I love a good tragedy

But honestly?

I just want to see him win.

I want him to be right.

That there is a way out.

That his love for his family is greater than any other force in all of time and space.

That he can bend reality to his will for the sake of the people he cares about.

That there is always a choice, a way out, another chance.

That is is never too late.

I want him to spit in the face of every single person who told him to give up.

I want the last scene to be Five, utterly content as he sits down and finally goes still, as he looks at his family and sees them safe and happy and alive and whole, and then, finally, he gets to rest.

#thank you for the ask!#this was fun 🥰#five hargreeves #tua #tua s3 spoilers

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homedecortapestries · 4 months

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Famous Tapestries That Changed Art History

Tapestry has a rich history of creativity that is woven with threads. It also carries artistic innovation and cultural significance. While other art forms like paintings and sculpture frequently take the limelight, there is a tapestry that represents a unique form of art, blending aesthetics with elegance. Tapestries, the large and intricate pieces of textile artwork, have a rich history over the centuries and become a popular trend nowadays for those who are passionate about decorating their interior.

In this discussion, we will be going through the rich history of tapestries that have left an in-depth significance on the history of artistic interior designs.

A Few Tapestries That Changed Art History

1. Lady and the Unicorn ( Late 15th century)

The lady and the unicorn tapestries are older than 500 years, and these tapestries are praised for their charisma, symbolism, and rich history. This tapestry is also regarded as the Mona Lisa of tapestries and woven artworks. They are made with wool and silk from Flanders, Belgium, and other European countries. The five senses are represented by the woman interacting with a lion, unicorn, monkey, and other objects in the tapestries. "À Mon Seul Désir" (To my only desire) is written prominently in the tent of the sixth tapestry, the identity of which is still puzzling.

2. The Bayeux Tapestry

If we travel back to the time of 1066, we will witness a masterpiece of tapestries in the Norman Conquest of England. This is the Bayeux tapestry, which has a stretching length of 230 feet and is embroidered with the chronicles of the events that happened during the Battle of Hastings. Not only the minute detailing through embroidery but also the relevance of this tapestry lies in its ability to tell the stories of that battle.

It comes with a great narrative power. A visual narrative that provides insights into medieval warfare, attire, and architecture is provided by the Bayeux Tapestry. Its influence on historical illustration is immeasurable.

3. The Hunt of The Unicorn

This tapestry is referred to as another gem from the time of the Renaissance. This tapestry is a combination of seven tapestries and recently housed at The Cloisters in New York. It showcases the medieval interest in both the ordinary and the supernatural factors. The seven pieces of this tapestry depict a unicorn being hunted while surrounded by a luxurious landscape and rich symbolism.

With its range of colors and meticulous attention to detail, The Hunt of the Unicorn is a perfect example of the period's craftsmanship. As a cultural relic, it illuminates the interests and ideologies of the aristocracy that were common in the late fifteenth century.

4. The Apocalypse Tapestry

The Apocalypse Tapestry was commissioned by Louis I, Duke of Anjou. It presents a striking interpretation of the biblical Book of Revelation. Located in Angers, France, this enormous piece of art is 90 meters long, which makes it one of the longest surviving medieval tapestries. Using a combination of artistic skill and religious fervor, each panel tells a unique story about the end of the world.

Conclusion

Other interior ideas often overshadow tapestries, but they must maintain their rich history, elegance, and cultural value. Famous tapestries which have been discussed in this blog post have endured the test of time. Also, these tapestries are carrying historical significance very effectively. Their intricate designs and way of narration through threads help to connect the people with their artistic heritage. These tapestries are more than just artifacts; they are living examples of the creative and narrative potential of weaving as a medium.

#Famous Tapestries

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