#idk how to organize my thoughts coherently so here we are | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

trashlie · 1 year

Text

ILY FP 210, 211, 212

WOOOOOOOF I’ve been holding off on writing this post, because I wanted to wait for this whole “episode” to fully come out. Quimchee revealed they were all meant to happen in one episode, but SO MUCH was happening in the episode that it was too long to do as the one. I... kind of wish I hadn’t waited because now there is SO MUCH for me to cover, so I’m going to do my best to keep this organized and coherent.

No lie, these go up there in my top episodes, especially 212. I have a feeling I might have some different feelings than others on this one...? We’ll see, I’m keen to hear how all of you are thinking and feeling about it. To me, these episodes really encapsulate a good 80% of the plot that we’ve been dealing with, and there’s some good reveals in here that have been a LONG time coming. I think everything is set up now for the time skip to come, and especially after all the events that transpired this arc (remember how this all started out so many moons ago with Nol going to the company Christmas party? That feels like it was years ago to what is happening now!) I am BEYOND excited to see what the time skips have in store for us!

Anyway, before I start spoiling things, let’s get into it!

Well and truly, I love this arc! It’s really capture so much of the story this bigger story has centered on - the relationship between Nol and Kousuke. This isn’t the root of the story, of course, but it’s a significant portion of what we’ve come to read for, I think, and I cannot tell you how much I love seeing the characters verbally acknowledge things they’ve swept under a rug.

212 felt especially raw to me - Kousuke’s confessions are tragic in the way of too little too late, and the realization that Nol was never against him, that he was always on the same side, that they could have been an incredible team may come to haunt him. That acknowledgement of his that nobody really liked him - no one else but the one person he had demeaned and devalued until he was truly nobody - really hit me like a sucker punch. I truly thought these were truths Kousuke wouldn’t be able to reach until he lost more, like his job or his sense of self, but I guess we can argue that he’s lost a lot of his sense of self; from the moment he punched Nol, it’s clear that he’s dissociating. That also serves to tell us how important this moment is for Kousuke, what it means to him, what Nol means to him.

Now, I’ll be upright honest with you guys, because I think this is where the difference of opinions will come in. I really enjoy stories with this kind of element of hatred and care so intricately interlaced in family or friends. There’s something about this sense of care being overwritten by jealousy so scathing it mutates into resentment and hatred and loathing. The way these two feelings battle out, the way ugly emotions are so strong they come to eclipse any hope for warmth. Idk it’s intriguing to me, it creates a compelling story.

And in Kousuke’s case, it is! A running theory has been that Kousuke treats Shinae the way he does because he is, subconsciously, treating her how he wishes he’d treated Nol. As the story went on and Kousuke’s ugliness started to come out more and more and his paranoia began to consume him, I think it was probably difficult for many to find credence in this theory - that there was no way Kousuke could have cared about Nol and transferred it to Shinae when he treated Nol how he did but I’m still here for the theory. It’s just that Kousuke’s ugliness was so strong, overwhelming, it eclipsed anything else.

Now I’m not saying I think Kousuke loves Nol or thinks of him as a brother, but rather I think deep down, he understood they were connected. As a child, Nol was the only person who didn’t treat Kousuke like an object - like a puppet or rich vending machine or influence to be gained. But how could Kousuke allow himself to think so favorably of Nol when he was so deeply rooted in jealousy?

This is what I find especially intriguing about their dynamic. Something I talk about a lot is that Nol and Kousuke are both the products of abuse - Kousuke is the way he is due to neglect and manipulation, and in turn he took that out on Nol. I’ve seen people say Kousuke doesn’t make sense to them, but he DOES and this episode really drove that home and confirmed a lot of things I’d felt.

Kousuke’s treatment of Nol all stems from Rand and his affair. Let’s look at it from Kousuke’s perspective. He has a father who is never around, and when he is he’s busy and always puts his career first. He rarely joins them for family time, there’s a rift between him and his wife. All young Kousuke wants is for his father to spend time with him, to be around, to notice him. His mother tells him things - if he’s a good boy Father will pay attention; if he wants his father’s attention he needs to be just like him; if he wants Father to care to notice he must be exactly like him. But his mother also says other thing - that there’s someone else, money is being wired to someone. At school people murmur similar things.

All he wants is his father’s approval, his father’s pride, his father’s attention, his father’s time. He must not be good enough, yet. He must not matter, yet. He’ll make sure he does, though. He’ll do exactly what his mother says, he’ll buckle down just like she tells him, he’ll make sure to become the perfect son that his father can be proud of.

So you can understand, then, why the discovery that the murmurs are true, that there’s another family, would shatter him the way it did, why it remains a point of breaking for him even as an adult, why he never really reconciles his father’s affair. How is it that the man who has no time for him or their family, had enough time to create a second family? Why was he so undeserving of his time? Why was he so undeserving of his attention?

And it rooted deep inside him, right in the core of his foundation. This other boy who describes his father as someone who couldn’t possibly be the same man as his father - a funny man, a kind man. That is not the father Kousuke knows, so why does this other child know him? (Never mind that this child has also never met that version of his father.) It all stems from that: a craving for something he’s never received.

Kousuke’s whole speech about how there was only one kind, sweet, generous, funny person in his life was the very person he attacked and tore down hit me HARD. His admission of fear, that he ACTUALLY ADMITTED TO BEING SCARED, that he’ll never be good enough for Rand, that nothing he would ever do would make him worthy of his attention actually hurt. This is the kind of thing I’ve been wanting Kousuke to acknowledge and embrace, because it’s the one thing that has been fueling and propelling him. He doesn’t do this job because he’s passionate about it - he does it because he’s still vying for love and attention. He didn’t forsake his childhood because he was above it - he literally sacrificed it for his father. Regardless of what you think about Kousuke now, it has to be acknowledged that he, too, has suffered. And let’s not pretend that Yui truly believed that Kousuke could win Rand’s affection this way - it still feels like it was a game for her, a manipulation to turn him into someone she could use to get her way, a puppet if you will. It’s fucking sad to think that he gave up everything because he was so determined to earn his father’s love, that his love and attention was believed to be so conditional he had to make himself worthy of it.

“I hate you for making me aware this person exists. And I hate your face being a constant reminder of it.”

So many times, Kousuke has berated Nol for his playful, joking behavior, for seeming so lax and carefree. I’d always thought it was jealousy that he didn’t have that kind of life, that he wasn’t allowed it - and that probably is still a part of it - but now we know that when Yeonggi laughed and played around, he was a vision of a version of Rand Kousuke had never known, a spitting image of a man Kousuke didn’t even know could exist.

And as Nol points out, it was all for naught. All of Kousuke’s jealousy and his fear, tearing down Nol so that he could instead get to know that version of Rand. All of it was for naught, because who knows if that man even exists? It seems like only one person ever knew her, and who’s to know if she didn’t make him up. Kousuke has spent his entire life - sacrificed his childhood, accelerated himself through school, forsook any fun or leisure - on a quest for a man who probably doesn’t exist, for something he’ll never achieve. He spent his whole life tearing down someone innocent trying to get to something he’ll never have.

I really thought it would take for Kousuke to lose it all, to stumble in his career before he’d realize it, but here he is.

But on the other side of that, we have Nol. Nol, who also lost - and lost more than Kousuke did. Nol who was isolated and alienated, Nol who tried time and time again to reach out and create a connection, and was refused every time. Nol who suffered under Kousuke and Yui’s watch over and over. Nol, who despite it all, still tried to treat Kousuke well, still tried to give him a chance, still tried to reach out to him at his most desperate.

I think that really illustrates something important: an understanding that there is a reason for Kousuke’s behavior and his paranoia, where it comes from, but that reason doesn’t justify. I can acknowledge both that Kousuke absolutely is the product of his environment and that he has been an asshole about it lol. Idk I can admit that my intrigue in his has grown a LOT.

These episodes have just tapped into something so deep that I love about this series - that our experiences heavily color our interpersonal relationships, as well as our relationships with our own selves. Nol notes that he, too, suffered, he, too, lost, he has been alone and alienated and despite it all he still tried, and he still attempted to be a good person, in contrast to Kousuke who let his suffering turn him into an asshole. It was kind of a hard-to-read moment, because Nol spoke the truth, and as much as I feel for Kousuke, Nol is right. Because he never attempted to deal with those ugly feelings, because he never chose to face them, because he instead wore them as armor, it became his identity, he became an asshole through those experiences. Had there ever been a moment that he could have met Nol in the middle, that he could have put aside his jealousy, that he could have turned off his Rand blinders, he could have seen what Nol was able to see earlier and more clearly. And isn’t that sad? They could have been a great team, they could have had each others’ back in a world where no one else did, they could have been there for each other, but Kousuke couldn’t cross that line.

Again, I fully acknowledge that Kousuke is the way he is because of those experiences. I acknowledge that this is the wake up call he needed, that he was forced to finally reckon with the truth.

But I also worry what will come of Kousuke as a result of Rand’s arrival. Is he going to backpedal? Is this going to short-circuit something and push him to double down, or is it going to free him?

Kousuke has spent his entire life trying to earn Rand’s favor, to earn his attention. Everything he has done has been an angle to get closer to his father. Like, when you break it all down, that’s the sad, basic truth. He was a child who so desperately wanted his father’s attention that his life became about that. And here comes Rand, showing up when it looks like Kousuke is running away. Rand who never had time for him, Rand who didn’t shower him with warmth and affection.

Rand who showed up and wailed “My son” in response to Nol.

That whole scene honestly hurts me. Nol is hurt, Rand is anguished and horrified, and Kousuke? Kousuke finally witnessing his father show a fatherly side - and it wasn’t for him. And not only that but Rand might not even believe that Kousuke was trying to get help, that he attempted to get Nol up but couldn’t. And does it even matter when the truth is that Kousuke DID cause this? I can’t imagine it was his intention - I don’t think his mind went “punch Nol and he’ll fall over the railing” as much as Nol tried to leave and Kousuke reacted on that. But the point still stands: even if it wasn’t his intention, this is still ultimately his fault. Nol goaded him on and played a part, but Kousuke was the hand that acted.

I fear that this will ruin what little relationship Kousuke has with Rand - and it’s a fear because it means Kousuke could swing in two wholly opposite directions. Does he double-down and return to the side of his mother, the only family member who has made him feel like someone’s child? I don’t think he’s at the point where he can extricate himself from the family, as good as it would be. And I worry that if that’s the case, will he double back down on his treatment and resentment of Nol? For this one moment, he saw that they were equals, that they both had a broken, shitty relationship with Rand. And then Rand showed up, showing that paternal side Kousuke has longed for.

As much as I WANT Kousuke to hold on to that moment, I don’t know that he can. I think the cracks have formed and I think his fragile reality is crumbling faster, but I fear he’ll retreat back into the “comfort” of the world he knows.

Here’s the thing about Kousuke: on some level he knows. He knows that Yui isn’t great, he knows that she has done awful things, he knows that Nol did no wrong, he knows that Rand will probably never change. But these are such uncomfortable truths and he has spent his life propped up by a false reality. This was pointed out by AugmentedElle on reddit, but look at the difference in Kousuke’s flashbacks. Look at the memory in 210 vs 212. The flashback in 210 is the strongest, most vibrant memory we’ve yet seen. Ordinarily they’re in some kind of grey scale, or at least muted colors, sometimes with spot color like in Shinae’s. In Nol and Kousuke’s flashbacks thus far, we’ve seen those muted colors or alterations - Nessa’s face appearing scribbled out in Kousuke’s memories, just as in 212. The use of color suggests that the memory in 210 is, quite possibly, fabricated. It starts out with Kousuke dazed, unable to remember what just happened, and Yui comes in and tells him he won’t have to see that boy for a long time. It feels like something happened - that perhaps Kousuke did something (the huffing that parallels his huffing after he punches Nol in the current story) and blocked it out or whited out and Yui came in and gave him an iteration of the story. It’s the strongest memory because it didn’t come from him - because it was filled in and colored in by someone else. The whole time we’ve thought Nol had perhaps been pushed to the bring, that Kousuke instigated a fight and Nol snapped, but maybe it was never Nol. Maybe the whole time Kousuke has associated Nol with danger and violence - because he was wired to think that way. That whatever happened and lead to that moment was so traumatic he doesn’t have the real memory, and instead carries a fabrication.

And that is essentially the basis of Kousuke’s entire life. Regardless of intent, Yui does manipulate Kousuke. She says things knowing full-well the effect they’ll have. Consider that moment with Nol and Nessa vs Yui in Kousuke’s flashback in 212. He watches Nessa blow raspberries on Nol’s cheek, a warm and silly exchange full of so much love and care - and then he looks up at Yui, who wears her maternal mask, shadows falling eerie over her face. Doesn’t it feel so much like she set this up? Doesn’t it feel like she knew Nessa and Nol would be around? She fills his head with things like “the only way to get your father’s attention is to be just like him” and “we’re not like other families we’re so special” and “isn’t it just so wonderful that rand at least has enough time to eat with us”? That’s not vouching for Rand - that’s passive aggression towards Rand and creating an idea of who Rand is - that Rand unwittingly lives up to. Despite speaking of the affair in front Kousuke, she turns and tells him that “Your father values us too much, he would never do such a thing” - a blatant lie that only plays into that feeling Kousuke wears that he’s been cheated, that there exists a version of his father that has been denied to him. Nessa tells Nol that Rand was a kind, sweet, generous, funny man. Yui tells Kousuke that Rand is anything but funny and he has no time for jokes. Maybe both are true, but Nol’s unintentionally makes a point about how Yui speaks of Kousuke’s father, vs how Yui spoke of Nol’s father. Why would a parent speak ill of the other parent -- if not to make the child see them that way.

(She also tells him there’s nothing she hates more than people who don’t take things seriously, and well, look at how Kousuke came out.)

There’s a fragile cognitive dissonance between what Kousuke knows to be true - that is, the reality that has been shaped by his experiences and Yui’s manipulation - vs actual reality, and we’ve seen this a number of times when various events threaten that tentative balance. Kousuke at the club, angry and paranoid, is aware of what people really think of him. Deep down he knows people don’t see him as great, as an honorable gentleman. Deep down he knows he’s a selfish, judgmental asshole, but it doesn’t fit the fabricated reality he believes in, so it only comes out in his paranoia. He knows that Nol is like him, that he didn’t have the love Kousuke coveted, that he tried to get by quietly, but Kousuke’s fear and paranoia still thought of him as the boy who had earned the love that Kousuke couldn’t, and that made him a threat. He knows what kind of person Yui is and has tried to draw boundaries, but he’s still told her things about Nol that she could act on, because he knows what she is capable of. When people or events fracture that reality, he struggles and lashes out, because he needs that reality to keep it together, but it’s crumbling fast.

Between the phone call with Rand and the moment that Rand shows up on the scene - what is the state of Kousuke’s reality? Is it crumbling? Is he trying to stuff the crumbling rocks back into the foundation? Will he retreat to his mother, the only one who can keep the tint of his rose colored glasses or will he be forced to face reality for what it really is? I wish it would be the latter, but I just don’t know if he’s ready for it yet. I don’t know if he can face that which he’s run from this whole time just yet.

As for Nol, woooooooof. What a fucking NIGHT. To think - THIS IS HIS GODDAMN BIRTHDAY. On the one hand, I think, maybe this can give him some kind of peace. He’s finally gotten a piece of Kousuke’s mind, he finally knows how Kousuke sees him, what he thinks of him, and what motivated him all these years. Maybe with this knowledge, Nol will be able to walk away in peace. He doesn’t have to wonder anymore. He knows where he stands - and where he’s always stood - and I think he’s made it clear that he’s drawn his line. He is done, he is finished, with all of them. If Kousuke can find his way to the other side of the line, then good for him, but Nol has no intention of trying to bring him over anymore.

I do think there’s a lot of room for them to reconcile in the future - when Nol’s raw anger has maybe ebbed, when Kousuke has found himself and learned to stand on his own ground, rather than prop himself up by his fabricated reality. But they are far from there. I’ve said before that I had a feeling maybe we’ll see the three main characters reunite in the time skip as adults after having gone separate ways, and that feeling still lingers. Nol has made it clear that he still wants to get away - and frankly I think he needs to. I wish he’d say so much to his friends, I wish he’d tell them where they stand. I feel so bad for Shinae, who went through so much grief and angst and really put herself out there to bring him back, to get her closure - and then when she had it and was ready to let him go, he insisted on staying. For him to turn around and leave like that again, after everything she told him, after the ways she opened up to herself, god that must hurt a lot. I guess on the one hand, she got the closure she wanted but.... it wasn’t even that long ago that Nol was making jabs at Kousuke for abandoning his friends, and there he goes doing it a SECOND time.

There’s a piece I’d love to give more time and thought to - that maybe all along, on a deep, subconscious level, Kousuke feared Nol leaving and that’s why he’s always acted when Nol was on the leave. If Nol leaves he’ll be truly alone. If Nol goes, there is truly no one left who ever liked him, who ever saw any value in him. This post is already long enough, so I’ll try to spit that out later this week, if I can. I think it’s not a coincidence that Kousuke punched Nol as he was leaving, that he didn’t bring himself to do it when Nol promised he’d leave, just as he let Yui know Nol was planning to leave. Maybe he doesn’t recognize it yet, but I think Kousuke is terrified of being left alone and Nol escaping without him.

Like I said, more on that later, but it’s an important point that I think ties in really well with this relationship Kousuke has towards Nol. It’s complicated, fucked up, toxic, and messy, and it needs a LOT of untangling by professional help. But I do think these last episodes really set something up for Nol and Kousuke’s future - as much as there is so much resentment and anger between them, there’s a mutual sense of longing, of needing each other to fill a void: for Nol, he sought out a brother in Kousuke, a companion against the adults in their lives; for Kousuke, that knowledge that Nol, too, had suffered that neglect, and was the only person who had ever truly liked him. I think one day when that anger has died, when they’ve made peace and hopefully worked on themselves, when Kousuke has freed himself, I think there’s a chance they will be able to reconcile. Like I said, maybe they’ll never be family to each other; there’s so much damage there, it’s really possible that can never be undone. But I think at some point, at least, they will see themselves on the same side, rather than each other.

#I Love Yoo #ILY FP #ILY Spoilers #ILY Brainrot #Nol #Nolan Oliver T. Lochlainn #Kousuke Hirahara #Rand #Yui Hirahara #one day I'll replace my Rand tag with his full name but I can never remember it #lol as you can see this is v v heavy on the brothers and their relationship with each other #i want to maybe do a post later where i point out little individual bits i've enjoyed in these episodes or little details that stuck out to #I REALLY want to write more about their dynamic as brothers but woooof we'll see if i wind up finding the time to write everything i want ;A #i just feel SO STRONGLY about this current arc it's EVERYTHING i've been waiting for and i just have so many thoughts that are all over the #place and it's sooooo had to wrangle them into one place!!!!!!!!!#(I think this is why I like when people send asks - it helps me concentrate on one point lol)#Basically I just have a lot of thoughts and feelings about the content quimchee is feeding us the insight into Kousuke i have been DESPERATE #for this part of Rand the continued hints to Yui and Kousuke's relationship #and yknow even if you don't like a character (at least for me personally) i can often still find empathy #and man i feel for Kousuke in this one #all these truths he's finally releasing all these fears he's facing and one that literally materializes in front of him????#holy shit that's gotta hurt ouchies for EVERYONE #CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS IS ALL ON NOL'S BIRTHDAY?!#CAN YOU BELIEVE HIS LAST NIGHT BEFORE PRISON HIS FUCKING BIRTHDAY IS GOING DOWN LIKE THIS?!#jesus CHRIST #ILY Commentary

40 notes · View notes

the-trans-dragon · 1 month

Note

https://www.tumblr.com/mousegirlheart/712995877228298240/mouse-yaoi-real

Idk it seems ciscentered, trans excluding to treat “male mice” like a coherent thing — rather than some construct we assign to them like how we assign it with amab people — and then further to conflate 2 male mice together as being yaoi and gay… it reinforces being “male” (amab) as a biological thing not something to do with gender and identity.

Hmmm... I can't seem to see things from your perspective. Is the only issue that it says "mouse yaoi real"?

I reblogged because it's incredibly cool that it happened! It helps dissolve our rigid ideas of sex, in my opinion. One of the biggest trans-exclusionary arguments in my current culture is "women are women because they can bear children," which ties into the ever-present homophobic argument of "homosexuality is wrong because it cannot produce offspring."

The ramifications for this sort of thing are still "up in the air," so to speak, since experiments with mice cannot always be replicated in humans. But the ability to create a viable offspring from a same-sex pair of mammalian model organisms is still a big break-through, especially because of the implications of creating an egg with two X chromosomes from a male skin cell with only one X chromosome! As the CNN article itself explains,

"The proof-of-concept research, the culmination of years of pain-staking lab work, could expand the possibilities for future fertility treatments, including for same-sex couples, and perhaps help prevent the extinction of endangered animals. "

The ability to create viable offspring from "male" cells is a direct wound to the idea that "male" is a rigid characteristic. If I allow myself to daydream, I can ponder other possibilities: could you turn "male" skin cells into other cells? Could a trans woman one day have her own cells used to grow a uterus? Growing entire organs is a wholly different feat, compared to creating a single gamete, with difficulties such as incorporating it into a pre-existing organism (eg, even if you could grow a uterus, could you get it connected to the circulatory system?). It's a far-off daydream, thanks to the current culture's fear of research that questions it's rigid ideas of sex and gender. But it's a daydream that comes closer to being reality when science achieves breakthroughs like this!

I am being overly hopeful. Science is very slow to make progress in regards to sex. Progress is discouraged and poorly funded, and can even be destroyed, such as with the Hirshfield Institution. But seeing science make progress like this, despite the hostile culture, gives me hope in itself.

It's unfortunate that our current vocabulary is inadequate and rife with bias that assumes everything is cisgender, heterosexual, and perisex. In our efforts to understand the unbiased nature of sex, it's important to examine our views for these issues. Does "mouse yaoi real" contribute to cis-centric, trans-exclusionary biases? I dunno. No. Yeah. Sure. It doesn't matter. Or maybe it does.

Anyways, the science is really really really really cool. I have other thoughts on the matter, but my vocabulary feels inadequate to verbalize them, and instead I am just taking a moment here to talk about the science a little, explain how it can be utilized as a step towards trans healthcare, and emphasize the importance of celebrating these things.

#sorenhoots #this ask feels kinda bait-y. like its intended to make me delete the post quietly #or make me rethink the consequences of playfully saying “mouse yaoi real.” but i took it as an opportunity to talk about something that is #very important to me. i dont have the words to explain the practical benefits of addressing the non-social-construct sides of sex and how #science and healthcare need a way to study sex without the bias inherent in our culture and language. and i dont think its like....#bad that someone said Mouse Yaoi Real. for the record. taking a playful approach to jargon-heavy topics like the differentiation of #artifical euploid XX pluripotent stem cells into into mature oocytes... well. why not phrase it “mouse yaoi real” lol.#obviously its technically incorrect to anthropomorphize mice and assign them labels like Yaoi but like.... it isnt morally wrong. the humor #comes from the fact that its funny to anthropomorphize mice as Yaoi. i suppose a cis person seeing the joke might have their cis-centric #ideas validated by it but now we are getting into the territory of “whos responsible for the interpretation of art--the artist or the #viewer?“ and at that point ive equated Mouse Yaoi Real with art and thats how i know its time for me to go to bed.

5 notes · View notes

stormyoceans · 1 year

Note

what the actual fuck i'm so fucking mad you got that message in your inbox, you're like the most loving most positive person here always enjoying your interests in such a nice way like that personally angered me you don't deserve that at all. that was written only to piss you off please don't let them, your love for vice versa and jimmysea is honestly the cutest most endearing thing and it makes me genuinely happy seeing you talk about it so excitedly every day. their episodes were soooo good imho so cute so them! i've missed them a lot and i'll be rewatching FOR SURE! what were your fave 3 moments? if you can choose! fuck that anon and the other ones that might be the same person. love you monica keep loving them as hard as you do <3

ANON YOU'RE MAKING ME TEAR UP THIS IS SO SWEET 😭😭 idk if i deserve all these nice words but please know that i deeply appreciate them and that they mean a lot to me!!!! thank you so so much for this 🥺💜

honestly i LOVED the our skyy episodes like i know im terribly biased, but out of all the ones we got until now i think the plot for vice versa felt the most organic and coherent to the characters and their journey. once again everyone involved in the show put so much care and attention into it, and jimmysea have such a natural easy chemistry to them, they sell the lovesick fools who have been married for five years SO WELL. IDK IF I CAN PICK ONLY 3 FAVORITE MOMENTS BECAUSE THEY WERE ALL SO GOOD BUT LET ME TRY:

1) the beach scene. IRREVOCABLY CHANGED ME MY LIFE MY PERSPECTIVE THE FOUNDATION OF MY PERSONHOOD THE BIOCHEMISTRY OF MY BRAIN AND THE ENTIRE MAKE UP OF MY BEING ON AN INTRINSIC MOLECULAR LEVEL. AGAIN. i haven't even begun to process A QUARTER of the insane amount of parallels they managed to pack in just 3 minutes of screentime and how, by doing that, they were able to show just how far puentalay have come in their journey: from strangers to lovers, from a one sided drunk kiss to a passionate yet tender mutual kiss, from a mouthed 'i like your name' to a mouthed 'i love you', from talay's life ending in the ocean to the ocean being the witness of his love, that same love he once thought was just an annoying distraction in the way to achieve his dreams and that now has become an essential color in the palette of his life..... literally made me experience every single emotion present on the spectrum of human consciousness, im gonna need a 2 weeks long vacation in a controlled environment to decompress and recover from the sheer high romance and the whole entire everything of it all

also not to toot my own horn but i love being correct and never losing:

2) both the birthday conversation and the drawing one. SORRY I KNOW IM CHEATING BUT I JUST CAN'T CHOOSE BETWEEN THESE TWO MOMENTS. WHEN I SAY PUENTALAY INVENTED COMMUNICATION UNDERSTANDING CARE LOVE SUPPORT!!!!!!!! im not mentally stable enough to be coherent about this but like.. one of the reasons i adore puentalay is that since the beginning they have always been willing to try to understand each other. no relationship comes without misunderstandings or conflicts, they're always bound to happen from time to time because we're all different and we all react to things in different ways, but what matters the most is the way you can come together after that to face the issue and make it better. i feel like people often have this idealized vision of love where everything must be perfect and passionate and all-consuming, but i believe love is actively choosing to share your life with someone every day as you help each other navigate through it and enjoy the quiet moments together, and i think these two conversations show that puen and talay have this kind of love, a love that will last forever because whatever happens being together is the most important thing for them

3) puentalay and jigsaw sleeping in the same bed. LITERALLY DON'T KNOW WHAT TO TELL YOU EXCEPT THAT I PERSONALLY DON'T EVEN WANT KIDS BUT SEEING PUEN AND TALAY BEING SO TENDER WITH JIGSAW AND REARRANGING THEIR LIFE TO MAKE SPACE FOR HIM HAD ME LYING IN THE DIRT SOBBING FOR SEVERAL HOURS TO CLIMB DOWN FROM THE SUGAR HIGH THIS SCENE GAVE ME WITH ITS SWEETNESS. it also reminded me a little of the scene in episode 6 when talay admits everything he has missed about puen: talay has always been more rational and reserved with his emotions compared to puen, but it's in quiet moments like these that you can see how deeply his feelings actually run. both puen and talay have so much love to give and one day, when they will be ready, they're gonna have a kid of their own and expand their family, and this knowledge is gonna MAKE ME DIE HAPPY AND IN PEACE

#since i ended up talking about vice versa so much (as always ;;;;;;;) let me send you all the hugs and hearts here in the tags anon!!!!!!#💜💜💜💙💜💙💛❤️💓💗💞💜💚🖤🩷💞💕💗💝💖💚💛💗🩵🩷🤍🧡💘🤎🩶💖💓🧡💝💙💜💜💜💜#thank you so much again for this and i hope you're having a wonderful day!!!!!#vice versa #our skyy 2 #m: ask

11 notes · View notes

thegirlwiththelilactattoo · 11 months

Text

No. 10, or Chapter 2: Electric Boogaloo

Introduction

In my first dissertation chapter, I found it exceptionally challenging to parse out what a chapter was supposed to look like and how to articulate my ideas. These are like pretty fundamental elements of writing, so my first chapter ended up being largely unfocused. I'm a write-as-I-think sort of person, but it felt pretty discouraging to turn in writing I felt wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. After sending the draft off to my committee chair for the first round of comments, I decided I wanted to address the most glaring shortcoming of chapter one in my second chapter. This manifested as two goals: remain in control of the argument and use evidence more efficiently.

Writing Chapter Two

I started chapter two largely the same way as chapter one, with a mind map. I mentioned in a previous post how I use mind maps, so I won't rehash that here (link to that post). The argument and evidence I initially planned in my mind map didn't end up in the draft I turned in...at all. Like in my first chapter, I planned to cover a robust amount of information that ended up being entirely unreasonable to cover in a chapter -- not in the sense that there were too many ideas, but that the strands of discussion didn't amount to an actual argument. I like love to info dump, so my writing often reflects me rambling with no point because I'm excited about what I learned. I ended up chatting with my advisor in the early stages of this chapter (good idea!!) to get her feedback. While I also didn't end up incorporating what we talked about in that conversation, it helped to reframe the chapter with more focus.

Another fail this time around, was my also bad habit of doing a ton of reading before I start writing. I ended up reading a lot about new materialisms because I thought I would do a literature review in this chapter. I didn't find anything particularly interesting in the literature from new materialism or other ontological turn stuff, so instead I wasted a lot of time reading for no reason. idk if I have any coherent advice for this, but I think I learned that I need to start with the data first and then read what feels appropriate to help me write the argument. I'm a firm believer in not deleting words. Instead I move them to a different word doc (I call mine "Chp X Bits") in case I want to include those words later. My Chp 2 Bits ended up being about 10k words of different stops and starts where I tried to figure out how to enter the narrative of the chapter.

After this point, I had another committee member read my draft. This was a bad idea. In my discipline, committee members typically don't expect or want to read rough drafts or be the first pair of eyes on early writing. The committee chair is considered the first line of defense who and gives comments on the initial draft. My other committee member did give some helpful comments about my over reliance on other scholars, which for her, limited my own theoretical contributions. Not sure if other people feel this way, but I've found that grad school has chipped away at my confidence to make authoritative claims that aren't couched in some other theorists' words, so this has been really challenging for me. I took her feedback and deleted entire sections that were just me talking about other scholars. Most of the deleted text didn't appear in the finalized rough draft or if it did, it was in the footnotes as additional context.

I switched gears after this second round of feedback and made an outline of the chapter just with data I collected to ground each section. I wrote a section heading with a scant description of what the data demonstrated and then from there, reorganized the chapter to emerge more organically from the data instead of secondary scholarship. As I wrote, I also used color-coding to organize this draft: words I wanted to keep (black), paragraphs that needed to be moved (green), main ideas the section needed to cover (purple/or highlighted), and stream of consciousness to be rewritten (blue).

Like I said before, I love to info dump and having the main idea of each subsection really helped me stay focused. I also find that using different colors frees me to write messily because it's not the standard text color I'll submit. If it's in blue, I know I have to rewrite it, so it's black text. (I also do this as a write anyway. I write everything single spaced and I double space text to signal to myself that it's finalized.) The color coding also helped structure my editing process because I had a better sense of the edits I wanted to make before I sent the draft off to my chair.

What I Learned/Chapter Three Plans

I won't start writing chapter three until July as I take a "break" to edit my first chapter, work on an article, and outline chapter three. I think that I'm going to focus a lot more intentionally on using the data to structure the chapter. For this chapter, I got a lot of great feedback about the theory, rather than structure because my writing was easier to follow. Without the tangents to secondary data, my writing also felt clearer and more controlled. I did qualitative coding for my data, so I have a ton of thematic codes that I haven't really used to their full potential. I'm going to start the outline from the codes/data to keep my argument consistent.

I also think that I'll check in with my committee chair more often. Usually I meet with her once the chapters done, but having her feedback when I ran into a challenge made a big difference. Especially as I attempt to make theoretical claims sans secondary sources, I want to rely on her more for direction.

Conclusion

So yeah, that's chapter two done, which means I'm halfway done with the rough drafts of my body chapters!! Writing my dissertation has been truly an Experience that I don't think coursework/teaching prepared me for. So much of it feels like throwing anything at the wall to see if it sticks, but I think with each chapter I get closer to understanding what this part of the academic training is supposed to do.

As always if there's anything you would like me to write about, let me know!

#phdblr #studyblr #gradblr #grad school #academic writing #dissertation #writing advice #diss update #gradblogging #academia #it's exceptionally bleak that my break is to work on other writing #that's the real dark academia #are these posts interesting #i never have a sense of what's interesting and what's my own gratuitous navel gazing

4 notes · View notes

weebswrites · 3 years

Note

Heyy! I recently came across your blog and a absolutely love your writing! 🥰

Would it be possible to request an angst hc with the Obey me brothers? So maybe the bros were having a bad day and they lash out at the MC. The MC leaves them alone and the brothers don’t hear from them for hours and think MC just doesn’t want to talk to them but in reality MC got attacked and is barely alive. And maybe MC summons the brother with what little strength they have left so the brother is met with an MC laying in front of them almost dead.

Ah I’m sorry I know this is a lot so feel free to ignore this if it’s too much! Have a good day :D

A/N: YES YES YES I LOVE THIS THANK YOU ANON

The Demon Bros Saving Your Life (this will have swear words and light descriptions of violence so if that makes you uncomfortable read at your own discretion pls I love u guys)

Lucifer

“MC, please just leave me alone” he spat, trying to stay calm but losing his patience quickly

“Lucifer, I’m not letting you shove me away. You can do that to your brothers, but not to me” you insist, remembering your conversation where he said to ignore him when he tried to push you away

“I’ll do what I want to you, human, don’t forget your place” he boomed, so loud your eyes reactively filled with tears

“Fine, do what you want” you mutter at him before storming out, slamming the door behind you

He knew he fucked up, but wasn’t in the headspace to chase after you, so he stayed in his office and worked. He’d apologize later

You ran out of the HoL, just wanting to be out of Lucifer’s reach for a bit. You decide to go to Purgatory Hall to visit Simeon, your best friend outside of the HoL, but take the scenic route there to clear your head a bit and calm down. Before you know it the sun is setting, and figure you should get to Simeon’s sooner rather than later.

“Hey, aren’t you Lucifer’s bitch” you hear from an alleyway, and suddenly you’re just as annoyed as before. But you know better than to engage with any demons that are egging you on like that, so you keep walking

Then you’re grabbed from behind and slammed against a brick wall, hitting your head roughly against the surface

“Fuck” you exhale, vision already blurring

“Think you can ignore me, human? You’re weak here, nothing” the demon drove a fist into your stomach, causing you to cough

“I’ll show you not to come back to the Devildom ever again, filthy human”

By the time he was done you were a bloody mess crumpled on the ground, in the fetal position to protect your vital organs as much as you could, but you felt yourself losing consciousness

The demon spat on you before leaving, laughing as he walked away. Your body was in so much pain, and you felt yourself losing your grip on reality

You could felt your lips moving as your vision turned to black, and your last coherent thought before blacking out was realizing you were summoning Lucifer

“I...summon the Avatar of Pride...” you inhaled as much as you could, but his name came out a whisper, “Lucifer”

You saw his legs appear before you lost consciousness, thankful you were actually able to summon him

“What the fuck” was his first comment, as he didn’t see you at his feet, but as soon as he did he felt his heart shatter

“MC! Fuck, MC. MC?” he shook you very lightly, and when you didn’t respond he went into overdrive. He picked you up gently in his arms after examining where you were most badly injured, as to not make anything worse

He was in demon form from the moment he saw you, wanting as much of his strength at his disposal as he could have. He flew you to the nearest hospital (idk if there’s a hospital in the devildom but there is now) and demanded you be placed in the best care possible, and also made it very clear that he wasn’t going to leave your side

He watched as doctors sewed your wounds closed and put an IV in your arm, unable to take his eyes off their every move. After a few hours, the doctor turned to Lucifer

“They should wake up within a few hours,” the doctor said before leaving

“Thank you. Please mail the bill to Lord Diavolo and I’ll take care of it” he said, figuring that was easier than having to fill out the HoL on paperwork

He was then alone with you, and he scooted his chair next to your bed and took your hand in his, holding it gently

“I’m so sorry, MC” he whispered and pressed his lips to the top of your hand as he tried not to cry

He sat there for what felt like hours, but just twenty minutes passed before he felt you move slightly

Your eyes fluttered open, and you took a moment to adjust to the lights

You felt warmth around your hand, and recognized it instantly, looking to your side and locking eyes with Lucifer

“Luci” you whisper, voice hoarse from not having used it for hours

“MC, I’m so sorry” his voice was soft and you could tell how distraught he was, “I never should have snapped at you, it was out of place and rude and I’m sorry” he rambled on like this for a minute, and you just appreciated his genuine care for you as you listened to him speak

“Lucifer” you cut him off, “Thank you for taking care of me. I forgive you”

Mammon

“Just get a job! Then your brothers won’t shit on you all the time” you suggested. Mammon had come to you venting about how some of his brothers had ganged up on him again and demanded that they pay him back. You were more understanding than you probably should have been with him, but wanted him to be proactive and get himself out of this on his own

“It isn’t that easy! Damnit MC, I thought you understood me!” he snapped, and you decided you should just let him cool down

“Look, Mammon. I’m always here for you with this, but you can’t keep complaining about this and not doing anything about it when there’s an easy solution. I have to go study with Satan for a test we have, so I’m going to go meet him. Text me when you’ve calmed down”

You meant it to be caring, but his mind was clouded, and he took it as you pitying him and running away - his greatest fear

“Fine!” he huffed, turning his back to you

You were saddened by this, but genuinely had to go, so you turned and left, thankful for the bit of time that you knew Mammon needed alone to clear his head

You were walking to the library, in the middle of a text to Satan when you accidentally bumped into another demon

“Shit, my bad” you apologize, but the demon had no intention of letting you get away with that

“A human, eh?” he grabbed your shirt collar and instantly drove a fist to your jaw

“What the fuck” you tried to say, but couldn’t really speak

The demon punched you a few more times, and you thought that they had the strength of Beel with how much it hurt

Your body was tossed to the ground and kicked before being abandoned, and you wished you didn’t take the back way to the library

“I summon the Avatar of Greed, Mammon” you whispered, hoping your words were enunciated enough for the summoning to work

“MC!” he noticed you instantly, crouching down and putting a hand on your arm, “MC what happened. Wait don’t talk, can you stand?”

You began to sit up, which he took as a yes, and he wrapped his arm around you to help you stand

He studied your injured face as you stood, and wished he had the power to heal you instantly

“Come on MC, the hospital is close”

“T-Text Satan I’m not coming” you handed him your phone, not wanting Satan to think that you ditched him

Mammon exhaled a laugh through his nose, “You’re always thinking of others, MC” he commented, “We really don’t deserve you”

You just shook your head, feeling like you didn’t deserve the joy the demons brought you

Mammon stayed by your side until you were completely healed, which took a few weeks. He even signed up for a job with Akuzon DC. It was the most selfless you’d ever seen him, and you thanked him for his kindness once you were healed with a gift card to his favorite store

Leviathan

“Just stop! I get it, you have other friends, I don’t care. Go have fun with them” he snapped. Levi hadn’t slept in about 48 hours and you could tell

“Levi, please sleep. I’ll be back in a few hours” you try to comfort him, but he isn’t hearing it

“Whatever, MC”

You’re hurt by his attitude, but know he’s just exhausted. You turn to leave and plan to head back to him a bit sooner to spend extra time with him (quality time love language lookin demon) (also the avatar of envy but that’s not as funny of a joke so)

You were planning to meet with some classmates to study, but you ran into a demon on your way that had been bullying you for being human for the whole semester

You hadn’t told any of the brothers because you didn’t want to make a big deal about it, but you were worried suddenly what the demon would do to you outside of the school grounds

“Hey, it’s the human” she snarled, stepping in front of you to stop your path

“Sorry, I’m busy” you tried to walk around her, but she had no intention of letting you go unscathed

“Not so fast” she stomped her foot over yours to stop you and shoved you back against a light pole nearby

You felt the cold metal slam against your spine and grunted in discomfort

“Can’t take a little pain? That’s too bad” she said, taking you by your shirt and throwing your body on the road

She kicked your body for what felt like minutes while spitting insults at you, before leaving your weakened body on the ground

You tried to get up once she was gone but screamed in pain, not able to move a muscle

“I summon the Avatar of Envy, Leviathan,” you said, tears starting to run down your face at his name

“Levi, Levi please, help me” you whispered as he appeared

“MC, I’m here” he kneeled down beside you and inspected your body, “I’m here, don’t worry”

“Levi” your hand tightened around his jacket, “Help”

He picked you up, maintaining your position in his arms, and took you to the hospital as fast as he could while keeping you comfortable

He stayed by your side as much as he was legally allowed to while the doctors cared for your torso and x-rayed your foot. After a day or so you were allowed home, and he insisted that he stayed by your side until you were completely healed

Satan

“MC, I’ve asked you eight times to leave me alone, I’m clearly trying to read, can’t you take the hint?” he sighed exasperatedly and waited for you to leave, not intending his words to be so harsh but he figured you’d be fine

You were not fine! What the fuck Satan.

“Fine, screw you then” you retorted and left, slamming the door behind you

He realized that you weren’t fine, but wanted to finish his book. Then he’d apologize. But when we went to your room later that night to talk, you didn’t answer.

“MC, come on, open up. I’m sorry for earlier, can we just talk?”

Beelzebub was walking by, “I haven’t seen them since this morning, they left the house crying” he said awfully casually, “I never saw them come back”

Satan felt the blood drain from his face and he ran out of the HoL, ignoring Beel’s “I’m sure they’re fine now!” from behind him

He barely made it out of the doors before he was summoned, and he was confused before he realized the only way he could be summoned was by you

As soon as he was there he saw you, thrown against a dumpster, barely able to hold yourself up

“Satan” you called, voice weak, and he was at your side in less than a second

He stood in front of you and you got on his back, wrapping your arms over his neck

“Tell me what happened. Who did this” his voice was firm and you could almost feel the anger radiating off him

You muttered a name under your breath before resting your head on his shoulder, trying everything you could to not pass out

“Satan, talk to me. I can’t stay awake”

That scared him, so he walked to the hospital a bit faster, but gently still as to not cause you any extra pain

He started telling you about his book since that was all he did that day, but it ended up turning into a long apology for pushing you away and raising his voice earlier. You would have cut him off but you didn’t have the strength to, so you just listened to his words, noticing the thought he had clearly put into them throughout the day

“Satan-” you started, and he instantly stopped to listen, “I forgive you”

He was silent, a sense of relief and appreciation for you washing over him and he thanked you for your understanding of his anger as you arrived at the hospital

Similar to Lucifer, he demanded you to be seen by the best doctor there was on staff, price be damned. He watched intensely as the doctor checked you out, eyeing them up and down to make sure they were good enough and treating you with the same care he would

Once you were released he had Diavolo send a car to drive the two of you back to the HoL, where Satan had had your room prepared with new pillows (the kind you mentioned liking from his room, as well as new ones of the ones you had), freshly washed sheets and duvet, and a cup of your favorite drink waiting for you (he definitely didn’t bribe his brothers to get your room ready, not that it took much bribing)

In addition, each of the brothers had pitched in to get you flowers and a stuffed animal that you’d mentioned wanting, a few weeks ago. The sight of it all made you tear up, and you wrapped Satan in the tightest hug he’d ever gotten

Asmodeus

“I appreciate you trying to cheer me up, MC, but I just need some time by myself,” he said, and you could tell he was losing his patience

“Are you sure?” you offer one last time before leaving, wanting to make sure he really wanted to be alone

“Yes! I am!” he snapped, and you felt bad for pushing

“Sorry, Asmo. Feel better” you leave and take care to close the door as quietly as you can on your way out

You were having a bit of a bad day yourself, so you decide to go walk around the devildom and let the fresh air clear your head

Which ended up being a bad idea, as you ran into one of the demons that always hit on you in one of your classes.

“Hey, MC, you finally aren’t with any of those idiot brothers” he approached you and tried to touch your arm, but you pushed it away

“Oh, they’re fiesty. I’ll have to teach you a lesson” he spat on the ground next to you and before you knew it he pushed you against a wall and was punching you senseless

It felt like he’d never stop, but eventually it did, and he left you to bleed on the road. You tried to stand up, not thinking your injuries would be that servere, but you couldn’t move. You sighed and closed your eyes, exhaustion suddenly washing over you

You knew you probably had a concussion and some broken ribs, and that you shouldn’t lose consciousness, so you did the only thing you could think to do. You summoned Asmo.

“I summon the Avatar of Lust, Asmodeus” you spoke, and there he was

“MC! Babes, what happened? Where are you hurt” he knelt in front of you and looked over your body

“Ribs...and my head...” you whined, leaning forward for him to take you in his arm

Asmodeus was stronger than you realized, and he picked you up easily and started walking you back to the HoL. “Let’s get you laying down and I’ll call a doctor” he said gently, “Then Satan and I will take care of the idiot who did this”

Until you were healed he was by your side, bringing you anything you even thought of wanting and getting the classwork you missed from your classes

Beelzebub

“Hey Beel, what’s up!” you walked into the kitchen and greeted your favorite demon cheerily

He grunted, usually a sign that he should be left alone, but you wanted some Beel time and figured you’d just be cautious and give him his space

“How was your day” you asked innocently

“Not now, MC. I’m not in the mood” his voice was firm, and you took the message

“Got it, I’ll leave” you said apologetically, and left the kitchen. You were a bit upset by him pushing you away, but knew he just needed space. You decided to walk to get takeout for dinner, and made your way to the restaurant on your own.

That was a mistake. You weren’t even halfway there when you figured later you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time

“Is that a human? Here?” you heard from across the road, and sighed, hoping to get off easy

“Hey, human!” the demons walked over to you and you stopped, deciding to at least acknowledge them so they’d think they could insult you and move along

“Wow, I’ve never met a human in real life before” one of them smirked, “I wonder just how weak they really are”

“I wouldn’t test it, just because I’m a human doesn’t mean I don’t know some demons who would make your lives miserable if you hurt me”

The other demon scoffed, “You’re lying. What demon would befriend a human”

You were getting irritated at the attitude being thrown at you, so you decided to fight back with a little sass of your own, “Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, and Lord Diavolo, to name a few” you smirked and crossed your arms

“Bullshit” one of the two demons got in your face, “there’s no way a demon like that would look twice at you”, and before you could begin to think of a comeback you felt a sharp pain in your side

You looked down to see a gash in your side, thankfully seeming to not have hit an organ, but it was still bleeding pretty badly. You didn’t know what to do, but didn’t really have the chance to do much because a few strong punches were delivered to your core immediately after

“Fuck” you mumbled as you crumpled to the ground, and heard the demons laughing as they walked away. You felt yourself bleeding pretty heavily, and knew you wouldn’t be able to make it back to the HoL

“I summon the Avatar of Gluttony. Beelzebub” you said, hoping you remembered how to use your pact correctly

He appeared before you and you let out a sigh of relief, then wincing in pain at your own action

“MC!” he instantly took off his grey hoodie and pressed it to your wound, “There’s an underground hospital close, is it safe for me to lift you or can you walk”

“I think I can walk, but can you keep an arm around me” you ask, and he obviously does

You get to the hospital and are instantly checked in and brought to a care room. Beel holds your hand and lets you squeeze it as tightly as you need as your wound is sewn up, and then the nurses give you pain medication for the next few weeks

You didn’t know the names of the demons who hurt you, but Lucifer found out easily with his many connections, and he and the rest of his siblings, along with Lord Diavolo, made sure that the two demons never so much as thought about you ever again

Belphegor

“Belphie, please let me in” you knocked on his door again, not knowing what had caused him to storm off in the first place

The door opened, but before you could say anything Belphie was talking

“MC, I’m fucking pissed right now, and the last person I want to be around is you” his voice was sharp, and you almost teared up at how genuine his words seemed

“Fine, okay, I’m sorry for trying to help” you responded before turning and running down the stairs from his room in the attic, wanting to give him space but also run away from him

You were going to try not to cry, but as soon as you stepped outside the HoL you couldn’t hold back anymore. Sniffling, you walked to the park nearby to sit at a bench and think. You pulled out your D.D.D. to text Beelzebub and ask him to check up on Belphie, but didn’t even unlock it before someone sat down next to you

You didn’t recognize who it was, and you wiped under your eyes as the demon began to speak

But they didn’t say anything near what you expected. Well, you didn’t know what you were expecting, but it wasn’t to be called a filthy human by a stranger

The demon proceeded to call you names, but you were too mentally exhausted to fight back, so you just sat and listened as they tried to get a reaction from you

“What, aren’t you listening to me? Stupid human” and the demon started punching you. Hard.

You tried to fight back at first, but compared to the strength of a demon you couldn’t really do much. Once you started losing consciousness the other demon left you to sit, laughing at your wounds

You didn’t know what to do, you didn’t want to bother Belphie if he was still in a bad mood, but you needed help. You pulled out your D.D.D. and saw a text from him, reading: ‘MC, I’m sorry. Please come back, give me a chance to explain’

As you couldn’t move, you realized your only option was to summon him, so that’s exactly what you did

“I summon the Avatar of Sloth, Belphegor” you suddenly got nervous, unsure why since you and Belphie were so close, but you knew he’d help you no matter what

“MC? MC holy shit” he sat next to you on the bench and you instantly leaned into him and started sobbing

“MC I’m so sorry, this never should have happen” he had an arm around you

You sniffled, “It isn’t your fault, I was just clearing my head” you reassured him, still hurt by his previous words but not at all blaming him for the other demon’s attack

He brought you back to the HoL and gave you ice packs for the bruises that were starting to surface, making sure you had everything you needed for the next many days until you were healed

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

A/N: This took me longer than I thought it would to write but I also kept taking breaks and had three classes today lol. But here it is !!! I love writing angst hehe so this was really fun

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me headcanons #obey me lucifer #lucifer x mc #obey me mammon #mammon x mc #obey me leviathan #leviathan x mc #obey me satan #satan x mc #obey me asmodeus #asmodeus x mc #obey me beelzebub #beelzebub x mc #obey me belphegor #belphegor x mc

673 notes · View notes

thiswomanshouldbewriting · 2 years

Text

Since @heinous-bitch was curious about this, and there's nothing I love more than talking, here is some extra info on the state of italian schools, inspired by this post. I'm by no means an expert, just an italian that went to public schools from the age of six up until university. Sorry this took so long, it was kind of hard to organize all of my thoughts in a somewhat coherent way. Under the cut because it got way too long.

First of all, I personally believe that the problems in italian public schools can be boiled down to three main points:

1) Poor planning in public structures

2) Abismal maintenance

3) General lack of care from students as well

(You might notice that I specified public school. Thankfully, Italy has a somewhat robust public school system, meaning that the vast majority of people goes to public schools. For the record, I think the kindergarten situation is more complex and relies on the private sector more, but let's ignore that for this post).

Let's delve a bit more into these points.

1) Things that are bought with public money need to be cheap. And not just as a rule of the thumb, as in "if I need gloves for the hospital lab and I need to pay them with public money, I need to determine the level of quality I need l, and then ask the price to three different industries, and pick whichever is the cheapest". So, the rule is "pick the cheapest as long as the quality is the same" and I believe this applies to entire buildings as well; who gets to build the school/hospital/whatever? Who made the cheapest project. This is useful to avoid things such as "I purposefully picked the more expensive project so that my buddy who works there will be paid more" but, you might guess, makes it more likely to actually get something that is sub par.

2) If it's public, it's probably drowning in paperwork. Italian paperwork/bureaucracy is notoriously hell. Everything is slowed down. You know that gif from The Good Place "it could take between a week and 11 years"? Yeah, that is an accurate representation of the italian experience when it comes to road work, buildings under repair/construction, etc.

3) Idk what it's like in other countries, but (and this is particularly truefor high school students) many kids/teens just do not care about the damage they do. Why should the school waste money fixing the doors of the toilets if students will puch/kick them in again? Or cause burn marks with their cigarettes.

Now that we've discussed the causes, let's talk about their effects in your day-to-day life: is the state of italian schools this bad? Yes and no. And with that I mean that it does sound insane if you tell it to someone who is not used to it, but it mostly just works fine if you're used to it.

My highschool didn't have locks on the toilets' doors. Soap and toilet paper never existed, nor did we have warm water coming out of the faucets. I think the teacher's toiletwas better, but it was locked. Since it was an historical building it was really hard to heat it up, and the windows in my classroom were shit, so I distinctly remember attending lessons in winter with my coat still on and still suffering from the cold (how was that bloody classroom colder than the outside? Idk). But we did have a computer room and even a small café inside the building where you could buy your breakfast/middday snack, so it's not like we were abandoned to the wolves or something.

I'd say high schools have the worst of it because 1) students are now old enough to cause significative damage to it 2) You generally only stay for 4-6 hours every day, so I guess there's less care put into how liveable the space is. My elementary and middle school were better.

But we do have some tragedies. As I was writing this, I tried to find on google an article on a student who died in his high school because part of the ceiling collapsed and he was his by a metal tube.

This particular case turned out to be from 2008, but by googling "ceiling collapse in school" I realized I got plenty of results from all years. Almost none of them are fatal, many don't even result in injuries, but they do happen.

I didn't initially remember what year this story was from, so I googled "ceiling collapse in school" and I realized (with some horror) that I got plenty of results from all years. Almost none of these incidents are fatal, many don't even result in injuries, but they do happen.

Even more shocking, in my opinion, is what happened to the elementary school in Amatrice (central Italy) after an earthquake in 2016

Thank God this happened in the night in the summer, and no one was there.

Students in the university residence in L'Aquila weren't so lucky in 2009.

8 students died here after an earthquake in 2009. Italy is a seismic country that apparently doesn't know how to build anti seismic structures (also filed under: why I'd never in a million years support the creation of nuclear plants in Italy).

But this problem is not only related to schools; basically, Italy is a state that could work wonderfully in theory (public schools! public healthcare!), but not so much in practice. And yes, schools and healthcare should definitely get more funds, but I do not have the knowledge or skills for that discussion.

Italians feel free to add to any point of this.

#Parole al vento #Italian stuff #long post

20 notes · View notes

bulkhummus · 3 years

Text

Welcome to Night Vale SPOILERS/////

listened to wtnv 171 again and having big thoughts and feelings about a cecils literal manic episode about (literally, heavily implied) killing the version of himself in the mirror while on public radio in light of wtnv 192

some quotes that really got my gears turning regarding the big plot drop of supposedly cecils father and his inability to remember correctly (not new But really prevalent in recent episodes) and im not making connections or anything im just drunk and spitballing and the episode really had some gnarly philosophical questions dinnit?

1. “If you think about a memory long enough, doesn’t that mutate the truth? Isn’t every act of remembering another log on the fire of lies?”

“You think awareness and manifestation are one and the same, don’t you?”

“Could that [a crack] be an egg, or a twig, or a leg? Narrative is everything, isn’t it?”

An unreliable narrative is one of my favorite things in story telling. One of my favorite books has to do with the unreliability of memory, and how a distorted memory (from time, trauma, bias etc) comes to be the most accurate version each time you remember it. It gets watered down each time. I think its cool that Cecil is aware of that, and also that its understandably a huge point of distress for him. He’s constantly misremembering and eventually trying to decipher if what he feels or thinks is even real. Pulling things out of context often makes them seem crazy, when there is no narrative to connect them. Cecil’s job is literally to offer that narrative, but what happens when he can no longer supply a somewhat coherent one? What happens to Night Vale? Why does cat ballou not hold up anymore? also i love that cecil watches the movie on repeat (mentioned at some point) bc its like that thing about people who are anxious like to watch things theyve seen because its low stakes and you know whats gonna happen and you dont have to make space for new story or characters in your head? IMAGINE PUTTING ON YOUR COMFORT MOVIE TO FIND THAT ITS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT???????? ouch

2.“When was the last time you saw your mother?…Did she lean over your sobbing face and ask you: ‘Why are you crying when you don’t even exist?’ Did she tell you again about the mirror?’”

“What unholy monster [the one in the mirror] cries like a child, what does it want—Why won’t it stop?!”

“Did you ponder the idea that such a coat was so basic, [angrily] so unassuming, so without frill or feature that no one had ever thought to create it? [angrily, scarily] Do you want to know what’s in the drawer below the table?”

I like here, that these quotes are kind of like call and response within the episode. Cecil talks of his mother asking him why hes crying, and moments later Cecil wonders why the monster in the mirror is crying. His mother tells him he doesn’t exist (SO fucked up) and moments later he’s the angriest he is the whole episode (voice literally rumbling goddamN BALDWIN) talking about how something could be so unassuming that no one bothered to even spend the time or energy to make it. Didn’t think anybody would need it or want it. Why else would they include that angry thought about being so unneeded that the thought never even crossed a persons mind to make the thing? It it weren’t Cecil talking about himself? Panicking about his existence and if he’d ever been wanted or needed to the point of him being there for whoever does?

2. B —“You didn’t ask for any of this, did you? But what have you ever asked from the universe that you could not get yourself, and when has the universe ever obliged?”

c-carlos? Maybe is that one thing possibly, good, that has simply happened to cecil ??? (And Their SON??? Obviously but that wouldn’t have happened without carlos there) im just thinkin abt it

3. “What was it your mother said before she left home when you were a teenager? Did she tell you she was an oracle?”

CECIL IS AN ORACLE!!!!!!!!!!!!! LIKE I wrote a big long rant about wtnv 192 and now I listened to this episode and had a conniption when he mentioned her disdainfully being one. A mother telling a child they know them and who they are can feel like divine truth, and if they call you a monster and tell you that you don’t exist, then is it still divine truth? Is she still all knowing? Do you believe her because shes your mother and mothers know best?

4. Do you notice it wears black rings?”

Cecil says this of the monster in the mirror, and says this about the man digging into the tree in wtnv 192, and he thinks that that man is his father. BUT if the monster in the mirror is the cecil we know, who killed the mirror version of himself from another reality who was a teenager (as it’s been implied since cassettes and the intern anyways) then what does that imply???? oy vey

IN CONCLUSION : none of this is literally an essay about anything. Im just drunk on a sunday and put on night vale To fold clothes. i wonder if other people in night vale are as fragmented by the weird reality bubble they are in as cecil? he seems to be caught in the in between one foot in and out With cal and his father and sometimes knowing carlos and sometimes not and whatnot

ALSO AS A FUNNY SIDE BAR: IMAGINE BEING A PERSON IN NIGHT VALE maybe u just cooked dinner maybe ur taking a drive and the fucking local radio host is just having a manic episode with severe instances of unreality (in every sense of the word) on the radio ?????? i so deeply wish after weird episodes like these where cecil is just balling out in the disassociation soup that in the following episode someone would say something about it in passing like “yeah what WAS that the other night cecil? u know we can hear u when u do that right”

also in the REAL world like our world, cecil is a direct metaphor for ptsd, feelings of unreality brought on by anxiety, period of disassociation and just like the mental state being fragmented by trauma. Its like such a direct metaphor lmao.

also like the episode had everything and Cecil Baldwin really used the full command of his voice. truly bonkers, that he could pack so many different emotions into a 25 min spiraling monologue. it could have been so boring but he really organically (while still imploring Cecil palmers flare for radio host dramatics) had the full decadent range of delicious anger, fear, disdain, apathy, panic, disgust, demand, hollow joy, etc and that he sounds so BITTER at the end when he says “wont you have a good night, night vale?” it feels like such a slap to the listeners face because while we get to end the episode (and the town in the show), cecil palmer continues to writhe in these questions and worries and fears. Like it was SUCH a good way to end it.

—also all the funky sound design is so good and I like then warped version of the main theme! they should do more of that (tastefully)

if you’ve read this far godspeed and keep on trucking idk what the fuck was in that vodka lemonade but im wired

#all of this is MY OPINIONS not facts so dont be mean im just having fun #tell me your thoughts i want OLEASANT DISCOURSE #PLEASANT BEING KEY #Come chat with me about it and also anoht what the FUCK carlos’ role in night vale is and if its really him just being cecils husband #Wtnv #Welcome to night vale #thought tag #Wtnv spoilers

106 notes · View notes

adhduskull · 3 years

Note

Bro danny phantom is so cool n stuff, infodump man!!!! Just,, yeet ur feelings about it. I love fanart n stuff of danny so gimy ur thoughts on it!!!

!!!!

Well, so first off I have a whole sideblog for it @superphlyduskull :3c if ur interested

Second this is straight up like. The most invested I've ever been in a fandom tbh, it's the first time I've posted anything and the first time I've attempted fanfiction!! (tho I haven't finished or posted anything yet) I recently thought up a headcanon that ghosts see more of the light spectrum than we do and that thats also how they become invisible, by only reflecting light humans can't see. I'd like to make a little fic abt it I think! Maybe one where a bunch of bugs follow him around bc I think it'd be cute

I think what really gets me about this fandom is the potential for worldbuilding. The show did close to fuck all in terms of exploring its own lore, but there were hints everywhere of how the world might work, and it's SO FUN to play with!! It leads to so many interpretations that are all equally plausible! Plus the huge amount of AUs inspired just by the source material... the way it lends itself to crossovers super easily as well, considering Clockwork has sent Danny into a different universe in the show (yknow, to stop the timeline where his family and friends and teacher die because he cheated on a test, eventually leading to him destroying the world...... there are some interesting morals in the show)

The angst potential is also insane, and I'm actually interacting with angst a lot more in this fandom than I usually would bc its so beautifully handled a lot of the time. Between identity reveals going wrong and the Guys in White getting a hold of him and Vlad being a shitbag to Danny being the GHOST KING

Ghost King Danny is probably one of my favorite AUs, I think partially bc its really fun to explore how insane it is for poor Danny to be saddled with this huge responsibility, and also to see how much power that gives him? Like on the one hand thats too much for a kid his age to handle and I feel like I might be projecting a bit since I was responsible for more than I would've liked from a young age, but also it reeeally spices up identity reveal scenarios and can save him too much grief in others bc depending on the take, a huge amount of the ghost zone has his back!! Like uhhh No, you are NOT going to mess with our King, [insert possible antagonist here]

It's also super fun to think of what ghost culture might be like, as well as just how ghosts work! We see glimpses in the show, but again, nothing is explored much? I love the universally accepted headcanon that ghosts have a vital organ called a core (though how it works varies greatly from person to person), and the idea that there are multiple ways a ghost forms (like from a being dying, or just forming from ectoplasm and strong emotions or big concepts, or being straight up born??). I've also seen the idea that a lot of ghosts don't really mean harm to Danny and that ghost culture is generally more violent bc they're not as squishy as humans!

Also!! There's gonna be a new graphic novel which is sick as hell! We don't know much more than that, but hopefully Nickolodeon doesn't mess too much with the creative team, because I'm really interested to see where they take it (especially since I think bitch fartman doesn't have any say in decisions? I'm not sure on that tho). Either way it's new content and I'm excited to see where the fandom goes with it too!

I have also realized the reason I don't infodump much is because I'm terrible at explaining things and trip over my words and am hard to follow lmao, particularly in person. You'd think that as an actor I'd be a little better with words but naaah lmao. I need to rehearse them for them to come out right apparently

Anyway idk how coherent that was but if u ever want to hear me ramble about dp feel free to send me more asks! Esp on my sideblog, I'm Always down down yell abt it!! Thank u for sending me that ask btw, it was really nice to do a bit of infodumping!!!💜💜💜

#i didnt realize how much i needed to just ramble about dp #that was really freeing #my chest feels lighter??#but anyway thanks for the ask!!#ask #thekawaiibutterflygirl #danny phantom

95 notes · View notes

bakatenshii · 2 years

Note

hellaur it's the csm nonnie i just finished csm and it's so cool, i'm doing fine as well hehehe, i went into csm without knowing any background and honestly i misunderstood the plot big time because i wanted to read csm because of the chainsaw dog and i thought they're all chainsaws, and there is a much better chainsaw and they all fight.

i was shocked two chapters in because the character which made me want to read csm died? and like i was conflicted on whether or not i should continue, obviously i did.

my favorite characters are kishibe and quanxi, also the takoyaki guy who reminds me of tamaki (bnha). i didn't think half of the characters would die right away because there are some really good demons/hybrid/fiends that i was expecting to have a bigger role especially one of quanxi's girlfriends the halloween one, (cosmo)

as for makima i didn't know she was the antagonist because i truly thought it was gun and when she was revealed it felt like a big joke, because wtf she's good at it, like i was fooled. and she's a good antagonist, and she basically manipulated half the demons in the area.

but i feel like she's just like denji, but more experienced because how did they let her have such a high position knowing that her powers are like that, and it also begs for other questions because it feels like she manipulated everyone

everything that happened was premeditated by her, to work in her favor and she manipulated everyone, also in her conversation with kishibe when she said she remembers things they don't know about like other devils that have existed long gone, does that mean she's old asf?

i do agree that her reasons are shallow because what prompted her to do those things (minus being a fan) like is that her true reason? does she know more? and yes reze is so much better

also the angel devil, i feel like he's still working with makima (willingly) but he has grown closer to aki. everyone is suspicious right now, i feel like they're all controlled by makima.

so far, i'm planning to reread some chapters and check some stuff i may have missed but i'm very excited for the second part because oh my gosh, also the power of the devil depends on how the item/object is feared and if people know the csm is the hero then he is no longer feared, does that mean his power will lessen(?)

and another thing is how cool are the devils in csm, like i wouldn't have thought that the plot would be like that because (like i said i thought they were all chainsaws kdjfhdS) but it really gives a nice way to introduce more characters, also i want to know how big the organization is.

because there are many devils out there and i'm sure some devils will come back, honestly i don;t know if this is understandable like i'm just rambling hehehehe half of these might not be coherent but!!! either way thank you for your response it's so cool to read vv long

also another question is what devil would you like to see in csm?

ahh NO THANK YOU FOR THIS RESPONSE! i think one of the best parts of reading manga (esp ones like csm) is the theories and analysis and deepdive into the lore, so I’m so glad you’re here to scream about it with!!

I do think the killing of characters was done super offhandedly but I also read that it was specifically done like that to prove the fickleness of human life and how fragile it is? humans die in an instant, at any time, and if I think about it like that then I do think the manga portrayed that super well.

I wish we got to see more of Kishibe!! and I also wish we got more Kishibe Quanxi backstory? because they clearly go all the way back. Hopefully we see more of Kishibe and Yoshida in the next part bcos god knows theyre the only ones left still alive HAAHAHAHA

The gun devil reveal was so anticlimactic for me, but at the same time I was almost relieved that we didn’t have a whole War Against Gun sequence because for some reason, a generic flashy shounen-style Boss Fight feels cheap to be included in csm? IDK IF THAT MAKES ANY SENSE, I COULD BE CHATTING ABSO SHITE OAKAOAK I just think with how deep the lore is and all the conflicting questioning morals (esp with the whole fear strengthens the devil aspect), having one Big Boss feels... like a cop-out? it just doesnt suit it imo, and I’m glad they went the route they did. I just wish they did moreee especially w Makima, shes deffo very old and she mentioned csm killing her 26 times already, I just. I just want more lore more explanation more expansion?? WHICH I GUESS WE’LL GET IN PT2

omg i would die if angel devils still alive and has bodily autonomy (ie not under makimas control) because he is my abso fav character and i need MOOOREEE screams && I’m excited to see Power hopefully come back next pt, and i keeeep thinking this, I know theres a future devil but I’d love a time devil. one that can manipulate time would be so sick, and I imagine what with the fear factor, time devil would be quite powerful as well bcos everyone’s scared of the passing of time ya know?

#urusai! baka #csm spoilers #csm #side note i also read csm for pochita #i like literallt was so excited to meet pochita #AND THEN THEY NUKED HIM IN OAIAOAO THE FIRST 2 CHAPS #MY POOR BUB #AT THE END WHEN HE SAID I JUST WANTED TO BE HUGGED BCOS EVERYONE FOUND HIM SO SCARY I SOBBED #I LOVE U AO MUCH MY LIL BABY I WILL GIV EU THE WORLD???#HAVE FUN ON UR REREAD!!#oh i totally glossed over ur denji makima skmilarities point hold on #i think id find her more interesting as a character +villain if they just gave us more parallels between her and denji or maybe her backstor #or just anything honestly?#i see what people r saying when they draw parallels i just dont personallg SEE it in the manga if thag makes sense #I THINK THE WHOLE BIG ORGANIZATION THINS IS SUPER INTERESTING AS WELL #u know when we were sent to that other dimension (i think hell??) and there were devils fhat we couldnt even begin to grasp or understand #id love to aee how they play into it? itd ve super cool and i feel like with the whole #set up to revive power and recreate power #we might get to see how the whole dying process goes and how theyre revived and what the whole syatem us #ALSO. Also also ALSO I WAS TALKING TO MY FRIEND LENNIE ABOUT THIA AND SHE BROUGHT UP THE FACT THAT #THEY MENTIONED ALL THE DEVILS HEARING CHAINSAWS BEFORE THEY DIED. I NEED AN EXPLANATION.#ID IT BCOS CHAINSAW DELETES THE EXUSTENCE OF DEVILS HE EATS THEREFORE HE HAS POWER OVER LIFE N DEATH TO SOME EXTENT #SO MANY QUESTIONS ITS SO INTERESTING #thank you for listening to me ramble!!!

7 notes · View notes

whentherewerebicycles · 3 years

Text

wow okay i am skipping the lingerie party lol and am instead going to just briefly jot down some thoughts before i go to sleep and wake up at 5 for my flight tomorrow morning. jesus christ i have ONE MILLION thoughts and feelings about this weekend. i want to preface this by saying that on the whole, it was a fine social experience! it was nowhere near as awkward or painful as i was expecting. or like, parts of it were painful, but it was 100% to do with my own complicated feelings about literally every part of this tradition and the wedding industry in general lol, and not anything to do with the people themselves. the other women were friendly and very welcoming, i made an event best friend who was wonderful company, and it was really fun to get to spend time with both my sister-in-law and her older sister, who was so charming and wonderful. i’m glad i came even though thinking about the $$ i spent on this trip makes me physically gag.

but okay i want to just record some THOUGHTS that maybe i will continue unpacking with some distance. i feel likeeeee okay here are my thoughts.

the social norms around femininity are just a fucking minefield and i feel like i really just gotta keep walking back the impulse to judge other women for the choices they make as they navigate around the manifold traps and snares and half-buried landmines that constitute the landscape of being a woman. like jesus christ. it’s so fucked up, it’s so fucked up, the received and socially enforced norms of femininity are just so fucked up. I think ALL THE FUCKING TIME of this margaret atwood poem i love so much, which was REALLY on my mind this weekend:

How can I teach her some way of being human that won’t destroy her?

I would like to tell her, Love is enough, I would like to say, Find shelter in another skin.

I would like to say, Dance and be happy. Instead I will say in my crone’s voice, Be ruthless when you have to, tell the truth when you can, when you can see it.

I feel like the first bit was very much on my mind throughout the weekend, but those last three lines have come to the forefront over the course of this last day, as i have tried to do some Thinking about what i observed/experienced/felt this weekend. whether or not this is what it means in the context of the poem, tell the truth when you can, when you can see it, expresses something of my complex feelings: I don’t know that I can tell the truth about femininity because I don’t know that I can see it. i am both too close to it/still emotionally entangled in it and too far from it to know which parts of it are ‘real’ and which parts are just performance.

i feel like one thing that struck me this weekend, in ways that i don’t know if i’ve noticed as much before, was that so much of the things women say to each other or do in these social contexts is performative, and they know on some level it’s a performance, but we are all going through the motions of doing and saying the expected things anyway. that has not always been clear to me. i have spent so much of my own life as a woman thinking that other women perfectly, seamlessly, naturally embodied the norms of femininity, and i was the only one (or part of a group of only ones) who couldn’t remember my lines, or kept fumbling my cues, or felt so painfully, self-consciously aware that i was playing a role that i could never deliver a convincing performance. but this weekend, after the initial social panic had passed, i started trying to get out of my own head a little bit and look for things that disproved the very strong theory i had brought into the weekend. and of course then i started seeing more and more of the little moments where women say one thing and do another, or profess one belief/conviction but then the whole corpus of their lived experiences and choices contradicts that stated belief, or whatever. and also just like, moments of pathos, where someone i had judged harshly at the beginning of the weekend offhandedly revealed something about her past that really changed my perception of her, or at least made me think like, ah god, i have to have empathy for and with this person, because i think she might be a complex person just like me, with an intricate inner life that her performance partially reveals and partially occludes from view, and agh, it sucks to have to think of people as complicated instead of as safely two-dimensional & easy to dismiss, and the reason it sucks is because then it forces you to realize that you share more with this person than you’d like to admit, and that some of your wounds are the same, even if you dealt with those wounds (the wounds of girlhood, or rather the emotional wounds that our culture inflicts upon girls, which then become tangled up in complex and painful ways with the lived experience of girlhood itself) in really different ways.

but also ugh. we are all performing gender norms but there is just something that does not feel playful at all about embodying conventional femininity. i can’t think of a better way to phrase that right now but it’s like.. the performance isn’t fun. it doesn’t seem to be fun. i don’t know that anyone here was having fun doing it, even if they were having fun being with each other. but it was like doing the intensely gendered social rituals was like, the price of admission? like it was the toll we had to pay to be together spending time in the company of other women? i don’t know man but it fucking exhausts me. like i can push myself to stretch my genuine empathy and sense of solidarity with other women much further than my knee-jerk judgmental reaction, but i can’t ever get to a place where i find any of those social rituals anything other than fucking exhausting. they feel so fucking joyless. they feel like things that many women have internalized as ‘things we must do in order to have relationships with other women.’ (please do not even get me started on how exhausting heteronormativity is i think i could write an entire other essay on how women use these bachelorette party-type rituals to spend time with their closest female friends, but the whole event is still implicitly organized around men, and these women’s male partners are still positioned as the priority in their lives, and the whole event is framed as like, a last burst of intense closeness between women before the bride is delivered over to her husband. like i KNOW that this is not how women think of it but all the RHETORIC of the bachelorette party, the little events and rituals and games, the little comments everyone makes all fucking weekend, good fucking lord, my jaw is so TENSE.)

anyway god i just AGHHHH. idk sorry this is definitely not coherent at ALL because i’m tired and still need a bit more distance/time to process some of this. i guess here is one last thing i want to register before i sleep. i am in my 30s now and i am living a life that is so, so far removed from the social world i grew up in. marriage is not a norm among my friend group, almost all of my female friends are queer women, many women i know are not partnered and have no interest in being partnered, and the friends who are in heterosexual relationships tend to be in very gender-balanced relationships or slightly nontraditional relationships where it feels like both partners have engaged in conscious reflection about what they want their relationship to look/feel like. also i now date women, am out as a lesbian, and spend most of my time teaching/working with queer- and trans/nonbinary-identified kids.

so like, the world i live in now is just so different from the world i grew up in. and sometimes it is easy for me to kind of downplay the intensity of my own gender distress as a teen and young adult, or to sort of - act like it was a phase in my life that had much more to do with me than with the social environment i lived in. i don’t mean ‘phase’ in a dismissive ‘those feelings weren’t real’ kind way, but more like, ‘oh that was just part of the normal growing pains of figuring out who you are and what kind of person you want to be as an adult - everybody pretty much goes through some version of that.’ it’s true that everyone DOES go through some version of that, as just like, part of the process of individuation in that age range. but also like. idk man. being back in this environment - straight white women from the midwest and south, all engaging in the rituals of heterosexual white femininity - was just so intense and so MUCH, and it brought back a flood of feelings and visceral memories that i feel like i will need to spend some time sorting through over the next few weeks. like, what i experienced back then really WAS gender distress, and it was so, so distressing. i spent the years from age 11ish to 24ish existing with this constant lowgrade baseline feeling of wanting to claw my own fucking skin off because my own gendered body felt like such a prison, and i sometimes felt like i literally wanted to destroy my own body because i could not yet conceive of an alternative to inhabiting that body or playing the role that had been handed down to me. until i started reading queer memoirs and inhaling lesbian media and (especially) reading about queer femme identities, i literally did not have an image or any kind of felt sense of what another way of inhabiting my own body might look/feel like. i literally could not imagine it!!!

and that is why the distress feels so distressing, and becomes internalized in such violent ways, i think. because it’s the blind, mindless panic of a trapped and wounded animal. except that you lack any real understanding of the larger social forces at work, or any language with which to describe or conceptualize what social norms are or how they’re enforced. so in your mind, the only thing you can see wounding you is your own gendered body, or the way that gendered body is socially 'read’ by others. and that is why you want to claw your own fucking skin off, just literally dig your nails into your own flesh and claw it the fuck off. because you can’t see a norm, but you can see your gendered body, and you can see the ways that it causes other people to react to you, or treat you, or hold you to a certain set of expectations, and so in your mind you are like: this must be destroyed. in your mind you are like, the only way out is to get out of this fucking body, but that’s impossible, surely, you can’t get out of your own body, so you have to settle for starving it and self-harming it and ruthlessly punishing it in a thousand terrible ways, because you might not be able to leave your girl’s body behind, but you can make it suffer and pay for what it’s done to you.

i am old enough now, and have spent enough time thinking and writing about those feelings, to identify them when they arise again, and to get the necessary distance from them so that i can say, what i want to destroy are the norms themselves, and the distress they cause, and not the body that has done nothing to me but be me. so i am not quite as sucked under as i used to be. but i think that there is something about the violence and intensity of those feelings that i forget sometimes, or misremember with age and distance. it’s easy to be a little bit patronizing to my younger self (or by extension to my younger students sometimes), because i now live in a social world that is largely arranged in ways that minimize rather than intensify or amplify gender distress. but when you have no choice in how to arrange your life, and no language with which to understand what is happening to you or what you are experiencing, and no frame of reference to help you understand that this is a period in your life and not forever, and no models you can look to in order to discover alternative ways of inhabiting your body or arranging your life... my god, that’s quite different from being an adult with a wide range of experiences and with much greater autonomy over your own body and life. anyway idk i need to keep thinking but now i must go to bed and try to sleep five hours before the plane.

#how can i teach her some way of being human #that won't destroy her!!!#gender #mw #to think further #girls I have been

23 notes · View notes

bookofmirth · 3 years

Note

after rereading the series and finally finishing silver flames ( which i truly enjoyed, even when there were points which felt disappointing and a little incoherent ) i feel like i can finally pinpoint what is so jarring to me regarding this series. It just seems so disjointed, which becomes especially apparent after reading MaF and the immediately reading WaR.

We move from the first two novels of the series, which are coherent and clean, to WaR - which is hoenstly just a mess, something which was so blatant to me on the reread. during this time, it’s clear that sjm made several massive changes to link this book to the future spin offs, and also obviously changes her original plan to pair mor and azriel - which monumentally changes the way that the previous book is read, and the perception of their characters.

Even with FaS - setting up for cassian and nestas story, sjm completely changes direction between this release and silver flames. And all of that lead up with the Illyrian rebellions and cassians not being respected as a bastard, and his mission fighting for Illyrian female rights - amounts to absolutely nothing.

Don’t get me wrong, I really really enjoyed silver flames, and perhaps some of these ideas will crop up in azriels book and therefore won’t be wasted. But it just makes the series feel disjointed and leaves me at least, feeling unfulfilled.

Sjm is such a good author, in ToG the plot was expertly executed and when you reread the series, you can see hints and foreshadowing even back to book one. She knew exactly where she was going almost from the beginning, and each decision and plot point was used to create impact and build up to the ending. I don’t get that with acotar.

There is so so so much build, and almost no pay off - and I really got that sense in acosf, I loved it as a stand alone - but when we look at it through the perspective of the entire series, there were things which grated and a lot of things which I felt were built up to and nothing happened... Tomas, Cassians mother ( was so sure we would learn where she was buried at least ) the Illyrian rebellions and the Illyrians hatred and disrespect towards Cassian, Mor and Nestas relationship, CASSIAN AND MORS RELATIONSHIP ( I understand that the mor situation will be something which is focused upon primarily in azriels book, or hopefully her own, however their relationship involves Cassian as much as them both and I really wish Cassian had actually confronted the part he played in that whole situation - a part he played for 500 (!!!!) years. It’s a role which he was unable to relinquish in ACOWAR, and actively rejects Nesta to act as a buffer multiple times, seeing it as an obligation almost - and then in SF, pays it no attention at all. Feyre and Nestas relationship also isn’t really touched upon, as if that final act healed everything - what about that interrupted conversation in the library, when Nesta was cut off ? Why Nesta always favoured Elain, even Amren and Nesta - we still don’t really know what happened there... argh there’s just so much potential and so much set up, and it just seems forgotten about ? It makes the book seem disjointed and a bit of a let down.

Yesss I totally get what you mean here. ToG is honestly the superior series, and it’s because it has the cohesion that acotar doesn’t. Everything feels like it’s meant to be there, each character, each worldbuilding detail, their histories, everything just comes together in a wonderful way that just wrecked me when EoS came out and then was resolved perfectly in KoA.

Compared to that, acotar feels like sjm is figuring things out along the way and it is seriously driving me nuts. I’ve had multiple conversations with other people in Discords and they’ve said similar things. acotar at this point feels like sjm is just coming up with random ass ideas and throwing them in. No book in the series feels more like that than acowar. And it was that point where we knew that there would be more books, right? So combined with the fact that she pounded that book out and it got rather half-assed editing, you’re probably right that a lot of things were changed in order to set up the other books, even though it didn’t make sense with what she’d written before.

I agree with you re: Mor and Az, and I feel like I’ve been seeing more people say that lately? That there is a feeling that they actually were supposed to be together and she changed her mind? I wrote a bunch of fics for them back in the day and they’ve gotten a bit more attention lately. But once acowar came out I was like, I’m gonna reread, and I’m gonna find all the clues, I’m gonna see where all this build-up was, and.... considering how often people say that sjm is so “good” at foreshadowing, I’m sorry, but not in this series. In ToG, yes, because she had a clear goal at the end! She knew where she was going and she stayed on that path. In acotar, idfk. Anyway my point is that I’ve reread the series a couple of times through since acowar came out and I’m still over here shrugging because up until that point, Mor and Az could be read in completely opposite ways. (Maybe it’s an Azriel thing, given the current discourse, idk.)

I will say, however, that we had clues that there was tension between them and I had noted that Az is quiet troubled and even pre-acomaf, I would not have been surprised by his extra in acosf. But all of that could have been addressed with Mor and Az still being together? We all had plenty of explanations at the time for the tension, and Mor being queer was like 1 of 100 of those explanations.

If we look at Mor’s character through the books we have so far, I still see almost zero signs that she’s queer except for her literally saying “I like women and Rita’s has a lot of women and here’s my gay story”. Other than that, there is like..... nothing that feels organically queer about her!!! And I love her and I want her to be gay af!!!! But I wonder if my forgiveness of how acowar went down was more about my personal reaction than how well the story was actually done.

And the fact that, like you said, there is still no resolution to the fact that Cassian is supposedly a buffer between Mor and Azriel? Like???? We were all sitting here after acowar thinking “okay, well if she’s gay then someone knows. Someone has to know. She can’t just be gay and NO ONE WHO LOVES HER KNOWS.”

Then in comes acosf with a big “fuck you, y’all thought” which just.... to me, it signals that her queerness was an afterthought. It’s still an afterthought because her queerness is limited to Mor and women blushing at her and Mor has her corner of the world in which she can be gay, but that gay never spills out into any other aspect of her life. It’s just conveniently isolated so that it doesn’t touch or affect other characters.

In terms of continuity, acowar was such a huge shifting point in the series that people left in droves. It was a huge mess in the fandom. And then acofas was just fluff with no real point in pushing the story forward - even the Nesta stuff was a sneak peek, it had nothing to do with acofas itself. And now acosf comes in ignoring things she had set up previously, with almost zero nuanced discussion of the Cassian/Azriel/Mor thing, which means she still (?) doesn’t know what’s going on there. And I think that we did get some answers with Nesta’s reflection on her relationship with her mother, but the deal with the Illyrian rebellion was just in the way so let’s nix that, and then let’s focus on Eris (🤮) just because she feels like it even though she’s set up all these other characters whose stories need more. (Much like acowar, this paragraph is a MESS LOL)

And yes I KNOW that the series isn’t over, clearly, but she keeps setting things up and then letting them go nowhere, or making them seem important and then resolving them off-page, or changing character relationships (Mor and Az) but then having the characters involved act exactly the same, as if nothing had changed (by having the “buffer” situation still exist as a real thing).

I did enjoy the book, a lot, it was a fun read. But tbh we have so many arguments and disagreements within the fandom rn because things have been so left open to interpretation that we it’s not even a matter of “oh I saw this slightly differently”, it’s “WHAT book did these people even read???” That’s kinda weird, to me. There is reader response, and then there is what we have now, which is people having absolute opposite reactions to what they think happened in acosf.

#acosf #acosf spoilers #spoilers #sjm critical #ask #acotar #wow you got me started lol #anon

82 notes · View notes

harlequinmoss · 3 years

Note

How would you rewrite season 3 so it would be more coherent? I'm not talking about a full on rewrite of the entire episodes, I just mean how to make the plot lines and development flow better or changing them to be satisfying for all the characters.

Okay this is a really good question. I was going to say to make it more centered on FOWL but going back and reading the episode titles, it already kinda is. Like there's not that many episodes that don't tie into the finale in some way. I do have tweaks here and there that would help with plot and character development throughout the season. This ended up being a lot longer than I thought so here's a page break lol

Going in a linear format, Steelbeak should have made himself smart in Double-O-Duck instead of making the ray to make everyone else dumb. He'd be a more competent villain and more in line with his character in the original DWD. Maybe he could have even played a roll in LGD. It also would have avoided both him and Launchpad being mostly comic relief characters. I think there's too many jokes at Launchpad's expense about him being dumb. If he went back to his "normal" level of intelligence at the end, he could have told the family about FOWL without jeprodizing the search for the rest of the season. All they'll know is that FOWL is trying to take down the family and where the secret headquarters is. There's still the search for the leader and why FOWL is doing what they're doing. This makes it so that Huey has more to do and accomplish in what is supposed to be his season.

Next, The Rumble For Ragnorok. I'm just going off of memory here. I don't think that this episode did very much in the way of developing characters. Or at all. It was a forgettable filler episode where Dewey learned a lesson about humility or something and then it didn't come into play ever again. This episode could have been removed entirely to make room for an episode after LGD to give the Mallard-McQuack family more screen time and development. A general plot of this episode could be: Huey is helping Fenton and the other adults search the other realities for Gosalyn's missing grandpa. They end up finding him but he's either dead/a totally different person with different memories that doesn't remember Gosalyn at all. This event causes Gosalyn to give up the search and accept that her family is gone. Dewey has an emotional moment with her aside where he comforts her and relates the situation back to his mom and talks about found family while looking back at Launchpad and Drake. (Not really integrating this into any of my other points but if Della died on the moon in season 2 and the kids knew about this, it would make the interaction more impactful) At the end of the episode, its shown that Gosalyn has her own room, either in the lair or in a house similar to the original DWD, and Drake tucks her in while singing her lullaby.

The Phantom and the Sorceress. Oh God, what a mess. There's way too much wrong with this episode. Soup-Du-Silence had a good idea on how to fix it from Lena's perspective, which you can read about here. As for Gladstone, he could have still lost his powers and come to the mansion for help. But instead of him asking literal children, its Della and Donald (and maybe Fethry is there too) and then its a cousins adventure! Donald revels in Gladstone being unlucky but still wants to help. Gladstone doesn't seem so pathetic and played for comic relief. They track down the Blot together after Lena and her family fight him out of the Saberwing house, or they're about to find him when the Blot's gauntlet breaks and Gladstone magically gets his luck back for seemingly no reason, much to Donald's dismay. It might have to be two different episodes because cutting back and forth between the two plot lines would detract time from each and make the episode harder to follow. Idk but there's so many things they could have done that would have made the episode actually good and coherent

Let's Get Dangerous. It was good but it felt rushed. It needed to be longer. The timeline was hard to follow. Instead of the cheap shot at the end were Heron picks Bradford up in a FOWL helicopter, have the triplets being suspicious of him and figuring it out for themselves. Maybe they're all wary for different reasons and talking about it in a group huddle and Huey connects the dots in a dramatic reveal. They confront Bradford who does an evil villain slow clap congratulating them on figuring it out, but before anything else can happen, he's able to escape.

How Santa Stole Christmas. I don't think we needed this backstory. Instead, give us the opportunity to see bonding between characters. Its Della and Donald's first Christmas back together. Let us see that. Give us an interaction about the sweater. "You still have that sweater?" "Of course, wear it every year." And then they hug or something. That's literally all they had to do. Instead of following a Santa storyline that ends in Scrooge leaving an impoverished child alone in a house with nothing but a lump of coal when he could have given a tiny portion of his wealth to help her, let Scrooge learn the true meaning of Christmas through his family. Or even better yet, let him throw a party, inviting over recurring characters, and have it double as a brain storming session on how to defeat FOWL. Show them coming up with the plan for Webby's birthday party. Give us interactions with characters who haven't been there all season. Penumbra can help. Where has she been? She was building a ship back to the moon before, right? Give a conclusion to that. If she's decided to stay on Earth like it seemed in the end of her episode, all we really need is a short two second clip of her hanging out with the other Moonlanders, having their own form of Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever else.

As for the last few episodes leading up to the finale, I get what they were going for. Give each of the triplets one last centric episode. However, I think that the messages fell short in the Dewey and Louie episodes. I think they should have taken more of a Beaks in the Shell approach where the selected triplet still gets to shine, while also setting up high stakes for the finale. Don't be adding new characters so late in the game, be wrapping up storylines with already established ones. There wasn't really a point in adding Kit or Poe, other than the writers wanting to make reference to as many characters as possible. Same with April May and June.

Now for the finale. My main thing: don't make Webby a clone. It messes too much with all the dynamics in the show and ruins the found family message they've had this entire time. It would have been a lot better if Webby's parents were FOWL agents who had a change of heart after having their child and got killed by Bradford or Heron when trying to leave the organization. That's ample reason for Beakley not wanting Webby to know. I think the finale did a pretty good job of wrapping things up outside of that, honestly. Again, there wasn't really enough time to give all the characters a proper ending, like Gene who just disappeared once he was saved, never to be seen again, but if time was managed better in the episodes leading up to the finale, it would have made it so that more characters could have accomplished what they needed to. And what was with Bradford getting turned into a real buzzard at the end? You really going to just undomesticate him like that? Give him some poetic justice, push him into the void that makes people cease to exist.

That's about all I can think of at the moment. Thanks for the ask! It was fun to go through everything and think about what could have been done better

#ducktales #ducktales season 3 #dt season 3 #ducktales critical #ducktales criticism #dt criticism #dt critical

31 notes · View notes