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slexenskee · 2 months

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Detour (MDNSY Oneshot)

For an ask about the reactions of the JJK cast on MDNSY Gojo's... everything 😂

Scrubstan22 finds himself in the (un)enviable position of explaining Ru-kun to the JJK cast

(Link here: or read below)

Nanabi Shun, better known by his online handle ‘Scrubstan22’ is having his most surreal day yet. An unhinged mad scientist turned villain with a space-time quirk and an obsession with Ru-kun that borders on the same level as even the most delusional of Scrubs, has accidentally flung him, an innocent bystander, into an alternate dimension.

This would be terrifying, if it wasn’t apparently some kind of alternate dimension where Ru-kun’s anime is real.

And not only is it real… it’s apparently Ru-kun’s true origin story??

To be fair, it’s still terrifying, but Scrubstan22 has more pressing matters to focus on than his own mortality and possible impending doom.

Gojo Satoru apparently exists in this world— but Ru-kun does not.

It’s utterly absurd! It’s unreasonable and unfair! Maybe those songs really do already exist in this world— as the very unamused talking Panda keeps trying to tell him— but if No Scrubs and Ru-kun aren’t performing it, then they don’t actually exist at all! Nanabi couldn’t possibly put into words how life-changing it was to see Ru-kun perform in person. The fact that he doesn’t exist in this world— or at least not as the shit-posting global celebrity rockstar that Nanabi knows him as— is really quite sad. These poor kids don’t know what they’re missing out on. As a major Scrub and Ru-kun simp, Nanabi just can’t let this slide. He has to rectify it immediately.

Luckily he has a perfect solution.

His entire downloaded archive of all things No Scrubs and Ru-kun.

Some of Gojo Satoru’s students are more impressed than others.

“I hate that he looks so good in that skirt,” comes from the glasses-wearing girl. Maki, he thinks is her name. He only watched through the anime once so he’s pretty bad with the names of all the side characters.

“I should have known he’d make an excellent Sailor Moon after he stole my uniform.” Kugisaki Nobara complains, looking exactly as her character does in the anime.

Neither of them are enthused to see Ru-kun in his crossdressing glory, but Nanabi notices they’re unwillingly enthralled nonetheless.

Itadori Yuuji himself— the main character of Cursed Fight Season One— is unsurprisingly the most enthusiastic about it all. He nearly climbs over Nanabi for a better look at the recording on his phone, eyes alight.

“Sensei is so cool as a rockstar! It really suits him well!” Itadori exclaims, delighted. “And he’s singing ‘My Chemical Romance’? Sensei has such good taste!”

“He’s just an emo-punk loser who clearly had way too much time on his hands,” Fushiguro Megumi protests, although despite his inflammatory remarks he too doesn’t look away from the screen.

Apparently quite a few No Scrubs’ songs are from this band ‘My Chemical Romance’. Yuuji even shows him the music video of the same song from the actual band just to prove it, although that was wholly unnecessary. Nanabi believes him when he says all these songs already exist in this world and belong to other bands— he just doesn’t care. If anything, seeing the other bands perform it just confirms what he already believed; Ru-kun does it better.

Nanabi is happy to show them all the fan recordings he has of No Scrubs, gushing over the various outfit choices and the songs themselves. It’s actually kind of nice that these songs exist already, because that means these kids already know them and he can argue about which are superior without having to explain. Itadori’s favorite is ‘A Loaded God Complex’, called ‘Sugar We’re Goin’ Down’ in this world (although Itadori admits the changed title suits Ru-kun far more), Fushiguro’s is ‘Island in the Sun’, and Panda translates that Inumaki’s is ‘Thanks for the Memories’, but Panda himself confesses he’s unfamiliar with this genre of music. The two girls decry all their picks as boring, and don’t seem particularly impressed by any of Ru-kun’s songs until—

“Paramore!!” The two girls screech in unison, suddenly looking a lot more invested than they had earlier.

Nanabi has up a recording from the Scrubs Unite tour, which Ru-kun had done entirely in drag. They’d finally gotten to the encore, where Ru-kun had tried to weasel his female bandmates into singing the encore song, insisting it was made for a female vocalist. They summarily denied him, so he ended up singing the song himself, called Misery Business. It’s one of Nanbi’s favorite performances, and one Ru-kun hasn’t done since.

Even Maki and Kugisaki are begrudgingly impressed.

“He sounds like a male Hayley Williams— that’s so fucking unfair,” Kugisaki denounces, despairing. “Why does that bastard have to be good at everything, seriously.”

“The outfit is pretty spot on too, if he just dyed his hair, it’d be a great cosplay.” Maki agrees, sourly.

“Does he play anything else from Riot?” Kugsaki rounds on him. “What about That’s What You Get?”

Nanabi looks up at her helplessly. “Sorry, I don’t think so. But they apparently have a ton of unreleased stuff though, so maybe I just haven’t heard it.”

Apparently back when No Scrubs was truly an underground band playing random shows at dive bars, they had an insanely large setlist. Most of those songs never made it onto any of the official recordings. He’s heard rumors online that there’s a vinyl floating around, but aside from a single interview with All Might, has no real confirmation of its existence.

“I think it’s awesome that Sensei has an alternate personality as a rockstar,” Yuuji enthuses, looking rather fond and indulgent as he stares down at Ru-kun strutting across a stage. “I hope it’s more relaxing than being The Strongest all the time.”

Nanabi blinks at him. “Oh. He’s that too.”

The Jujutsu Tech students stare at him blankly. “... What?”

As it turns out, they’re all collectively more confused and bewildered by the whole Sixwings thing than they are the ‘world’s strongest’ thing. In this world, since the moment of his birth Gojo Satoru was always meant to be the strongest. That he can destroy armies in the blink of an eye and pull out purple-laser-death-beams-of-doom (apparently a technique called Hollow Purple in this world) and walk through explosions unscathed is just common knowledge among the Jujutsu World.

So all of his footage of Dabi’s many international exploits was met with a genial disinterest.

His media folder of Sixwings, however…

“He’s… really in a relationship?” Kugisaki looks utterly confounded. “A normal, healthy, longterm relationship?”

“He’s getting married?” Maki sounds bewildered.

“He has a kid?” Fushiguro sounds unimpressed.

Panda scratches his chin. “Huh. Hey, that’s good for him! He sounds like he’s actually a well-adjusted and normal guy.”

“Is his boyfriend a psychopath?” Kugisaki asks, urgently. “I really can’t see how else this would work out.”

“Not at all! Hawks is well-known as a very charming and friendly hero. He’s actually a really good guy.” Nanabi protests.

Kugisaki squints at him. “How the hell does he put up with him then?”

Nanabi smiles sheepishly. “Uh… he’s pretty easygoing I guess?”

Maki is leaning over him for a better look at his phone, using her fingers to zoom in on the photo he has up of Hawks and Ru-kun at the U.A. School Festival. He doesn’t swing that way, but even he has to admit they looked really good that day. And with Eri thrown in on top of it? It’s no wonder they’re regularly voted as the cutest couple in Japan.

“Damn. They actually look really good together.” Maki says, begrudging.

“Tuna, tuna.” Inumaki pokes Panda in the side.

Panda gives a solemn nod. “Inumaki-kun has a good point. What’s all this gossip about a Sixwings baby?”

“Oh, that’s Eri-chan.” Nanabi scrolls down to a better photo of her. There’s one from the Ru-kun signing event at Tower Records, where a sinfully good-looking Ru-kun is holding her on his hip and waving out to the crowds. “She’s the child he birthed from his own body.”

Fushiguro blinks rapidly. “He what now?”

“He’s fucking with you.” Kugisaki denies immediately.

Nanabi shrugs. “Maybe— but no one knows for sure! To be honest, none of his powers make much sense to us, so some people believe it and others don’t.”

Maki’s expression turns worried. “Well, they’re not all that clear to us either… I mean, there’s a lot you can do with cursed energy…”

She glances up at Panda. Panda just gives her a thumbs up. “That’s right! I mean, I exist, so who knows!”

“There’s a couple different rumors about it, but none are confirmed.” Nanabi fills them in with a gleeful expression. “The main one is that she really is the Sixwings baby, and they had her when they were teenagers and kept it a secret. There’s also a couple variations where Eri is his child, but the regular way, but he’s slept with a lot of people and none of them were women so people are pretty skeptical about it. Then there’s also the theory that he did birth her from his own body, but not with Hawks. There’s no real guesses on who her father is for that one.”

His companions look at him with varying degrees of incredulity. Nanabi spreads his hands. “The likely answer is he’s just messing with everyone and she’s adopted, but like I said, we really don’t know!”

Itadori doesn’t really seem to care about the truth either way, grabbing at his phone to scroll through the photos. “They’re so cute together! Haha, she really kind of even does look like sensei a little bit! She’s definitely just as stylish as he is!”

Itadori keeps scrolling until he gets to the infamous Swing incident, saved in all its glory in an endless gif format.

They all stare in silence as, on screen, Gojo Satoru gets KO’d by his kid on a swing set over and over again.

“Send me that.” Kugisaki demands.

Scrubstan22 gets rescued eventually. It’s a pretty boring affair, truth be told. He didn’t see any real curses, or any kind of fighting.

Gojo doesn’t return to campus until long after the sun has set, to the bizarre scene of all his students shoving their phones at poor Nanami, who looks as if he regretted ever coming in person to turn in his paperwork. They’re apparently trying to show Nanami photos of Gojo in drag, despite his vocal protests. The moment they lay eyes on him they pounce on him instead. None of their explanations make any sense. There’s something about him being a rockstar, and also married, and apparently a mother, and they have plenty of blurry photo evidence they try to shove at him. It looks like they all took photos of someone else’s screenshots, so the quality leaves much to be desired. Maybe if he squints really hard, that does kind of look like him in a mini skirt, but who’s to say really?

Unfortunately for the students, the space-time continuum rights itself overnight and they all lose their collective memory of Scrubstan22 and his alternate-universe. But the digital evidence remains, and occasionally Kugisaki will pull out her phone and watch a very random gif of Gojo-sensei getting smacked to the ground by a kid on a swing, and while she has no idea where it came from, she draws immense satisfaction from it anyway.

#mdnsy oneshots #fic may death never stop you

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roll-for-gaslight · 23 days

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I'm not sure exactly how to put my thoughts into words so pardon my rambling but I'm thinking about how Kristen, Adaine, and Fig's character growth all stems from growing into a person they always could have been in a better situation. Also, it's interesting the way the bad kids seem to bring out these parts of each other because they're healing!

Like I know it was a kind of jokey moment but Adaine's little "Fabian hit me!!!!!" versus her insistence on being independent to the point of endangering her mental and physical wellbeing! She grew up so independent, unable to ask for help because of the risk of being ridiculed. She never asks for help and holds herself to an incredibly high standard. But that's not how her childhood should have ideally gone! She was supposed to have a big sister to tattle on and fight with, she was supposed to be taken care of! The BKs make her feel safe and cared for in a way her family never did, so her character development very much means slipping into the "little sister" position she was always supposed to occupy.

Fig pushed down her natural and newly-forming personality when the very foundation of her identity changed. She threw herself so wholly and entirely into her new aesthetic and vibe and vehemently denied the version of her that came before. Now she's growing to accept herself at all stages of her life, to a version of herself that brings in the parts of both her childhood and post-tiefling personalities that she likes and forms something new that makes her comfortable.

For Kristen, losing her religion made her lose a sense of identity. Without her parents to take care of her or her brothers for her to take care of, she was suddenly accountable to absolutely no one. She has Jawbone and Sandralynn, technically, but from what we've seen neither of them actually parent her a lot. So, she leaned hard into doing whatever she wanted, living wildly, engaging in all the things she never got to before, living a life as far away from her childhood as possible, and that's reflected in her clerical work. She loves Cassandra and wants her to thrive, but hates that what that means has a lot of overlap with what it meant to be Helio's Chosen. Like the daily prayer, the proselytizing, it reminds her too much of the things she was raised to do for Helio, and the fact that Cassandra needs Kristen to take care of her makes her accountable to someone in a way that she really wasn't for a while. Now that she's in the back half of her character arc, trying to bring Cassandra back and working hard for it, she's growing a little more responsible. There have been a lot of good moments this season where she's tried to help other people outside of combat-necessary healing, such as giving Lydia Barkrock the help action and the way she reacts after Fabian attacks Adaine (which I know is technically "combat-necessary healing" but how it happened came across as very Big Sister, like pulling the crayon out of her brother's nose in the first episode, especially with how it was immediately followed not with a bit like everyone else but with "oh no fabian got possessed I hope he's okay!!!! poor fabian!!!!!"

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captainkirkk · 6 months

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✩ WEEKLY FIC ROUND-UP ✩

All the fics I’ve read and really enjoyed in the past week-ish. Reminder: This list features any and all ratings and themes. Please look at tags and warnings on ao3 before reading.

Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-Kun

Sick Days by IcyPheonix

Iruma encounters a side effect of living in the demon world he'd never considered before.

He has absolutely no immunity to demon sickness, and when a mild seasonal cold sweeps through the school, Iruma is wholly unprepared for what happens.

how to be a good person by thewunderkind

In the middle of one of the harshest winter in the Netherworld, they found a human child.

Beef Consommé by Vamillepudding

Parenting is Bruce's thing, and Jason isn't planning on messing with that. But when Bruce fails to spot the countless red flags about Tim's home life, it falls to Jason to step up. Of course it does. Because he's literally the only one in his family who knows how to be responsible, and if Dick disagrees, he can suck it.

stay with me by envysparkler, Periazhad (+podfic)

Jason knows it has to be bad if Bruce is asking him for help.

ATLA

The prince and the admiral by Buridanio

Iroh was exiled many years ago. Instead, Zuko is sent on his Avatar hunt on the ship of the abusive admiral Zhao. Until they cross paths with the ship of Chief Hakoda of the water tribe who, despite Zuko's insistence, for some reason refuses to kill him.

A Start by RumpleByRam

After long years at sea fighting the Fire Nation, Hakoda hopes the shipwrecked prince will have some useful information to end the war.

After long years at the mercy of General Zhao, Zuko hopes that the Water Tribe chief will kill him and be done with it.

Neither of them get exactly what they want, but somehow, that's better.

Marvel

No patch job by Buridanio

Fury wants Peter Parker to join the team of Avengers. The Avengers aren’t unanimously thrilled about the idea. But they get to know him, come to care for him, and start to realize that he really, really needs their help.

Clone Wars

Get the Balance Right by litrapod (litra), wanderingjedihistorian (RangerJedi67)

"It’s why we have to get the balance right,” Cody pointed out. “You are my mate which means in our pack hierarchy your word carries weight. But if I’m there and you speak up when I don’t?” Realization dawned on Obi-Wan’s face. “It could come across as me trying to take authority from you,” he said. “The very thing our mating is designed to prevent.” Cody nodded, grateful that Obi-Wan finally understood.

#i also reread the 'mage in a wolf pack' series but that is too long to rec on here #and lbr i reread that series on a monthly basis #weekly fic round up #my posts #fic recs #marvel recs #dc recs #atla recs #sw recs #m!ik recs

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mxmorel · 4 months

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on messy redemption arcs (specifically todd brotzman's) and why i think they're a good thing

sharing the following thing i wrote in the dghda server re: todd's character growth in s2 upon the request of another server member!

for context, this is regarding a conversation that sprung up in the dghda server about some people viewing Todd as manipulative/uncaring towards Dirk, vs other people who saw his arc in s2 through a different lens. to be clear, despite various disagreements, the conversation was positive and everyone was respectful which was really nice, considering how bad discourse can get sometimes. but anyway i came in late to the conversation and this was my contribution - clearly, i fall in camp 2:

[About Todd's ups and downs in S2:] growth isn't linear and people can take steps forward and then fall back, but what matters ultimately to me is that they keep trying to take those steps forward even when they make mistakes and I think Todd does do that.

He's spent so much of his life in a prison of his own making, lying to everyone and digging a hole so deep he didn't think he could ever get out of it. And I think he did always care about Amanda at the very least but he did this HUGE fuckup and covering that up led to this avalanche of horrible decisions and now he has to own up to his shit and learn how to care about people again without hiding from his actions.

He definitely gets tunnel vision about Amanda, and I think that makes sense. He’s so desperate to “fix” things and a big part of his story in season 2 is learning that, like Amanda said, some things you can’t just FIX. Sometimes you just have to pick up the pieces you have left and do your best to make something good with them.

Additionally [in regards to previous comments made about Todd ignoring/not caring about the trauma Dirk suffered in his second bout in Blackwing], he doesn’t know the extent of what happened in Blacking, not yet. And he’s taken several steps back by centering all his focus on finding Dirk - Dirk who has always seemed so optimistic and enthusiastic - to “fix” things (because he hasn’t learned his lesson about fixing things yet). And he doesn’t know how to reconcile the Dirk he knew before with the things that this new stint in Blackwing has changed about Dirk.

I don’t think Todd is malicious or not caring about Dirk - I think he has done so much self isolation over the years that he is unused to knowing how to identify what’s going on with other people/doesn’t know how to handle things. He does try to uplift Dirk, even if he doesn’t always do it in the right way, but that doesn’t make him cruel or manipulative. It makes him a human person who is also struggling to learn how to exist in community with others.

I think there’s also something to be said for the black and white ways we can view fictional characters who react to situations in ways that create defensiveness in us based on our own experiences/our own traumas. I think processing that through fiction is such a powerful tool but it can also put blinders on us and view some characters as wholly good “perfect cinnamon rolls” and other characters as “horrible manipulators”, when really, both types of characters have strengths and flaws, and neither exists purely on one end of the spectrum or the other.

tl;dr redemption arcs can and should be messy sometimes because people are messy. none of these characters are inherently good or inherently bad and i think that's what makes them all such compelling characters.

#dghda meta #??#is this meta? i don't know i've never written meta before #i'm not one of the smart meta writing fandom members lmao i'm just a guy with a lot of feelings #i'm hobbs if he wasn't a cop #dghda #todd brotzman #dirk gently #this is missing some context of specific posts from other server members that i was referring to / addressing but i made some edits for tha

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crowleys-ducks · 6 months

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Balls off the walls theory time, aka, crowleys-ducks needs their morning coffee. A theory about Maggie, under the cut.

Maybe this has been said before, maybe it hasn't. But what if the reason Maggie isn't affected by Aziraphale's miracles is because she is an angel... and a demon. Follow me on this. Maggie tells Nina the record shop used to be in the corner of Aziraphale's bookshop, and she tells Aziraphale, "I've loved this shop since I was a baby." We assume she's talking about the record shop, not the bookshop. But maybe she is talking about the bookshop.

What if Maggie is an angel-demon hybrid from the future who carefully inserted herself exactly where she needed to be to make sure Good Things Happened and Bad Things Didn't? Are you still following me? I'm not sure that's a Good Thing, but let's continue.

Maggie is amazingly calm during the bookshop attack and barely reacts to a demon flicking its long tongue at the glass. Almost like she's seen such before. She tells them, "You don't scare me by making faces. I have brothers." She has brothers? Like demon brothers?

Maggie next says something interesting. She says she's spent her entire life being scared. Of what? Not selling enough records? Not making friends? Nah. Nothing is ever that simple and neither is this theory. What if she is from a future in which her (and her brothers') very existence is something unacceptable, and so she went back in time to make sure it would be?

Maggie is sweet and kind, blonde too, much like our favorite angel. She can be brave, and a bit spicy (flipping off the demons), like our favorite demon. Okay I'm just going to say it.

What if Maggie is a future child of Aziraphale and Crowley? (if you've lasted this long, I commend you. If you're leaving here's a cookie for the road, I completely understand 🍪)

It doesn't make sense does it? It shouldn't make sense and yet. She calls Aziraphale an angel. She's sentimental about bygone things and dresses very vintage. She doesn't notice (or ignores) the demons outside the bookshop. She's wholly unaffected by Aziraphale's attempts to make her forget the ball. She pushes Nina to help her tell Crowley that he and Aziraphale NEED TO TALK. "That's all we needed. It's what you two need as well."

Maybe because Aziraphale and Crowley didn't talk enough, despite finding a way to be together and having (Aziraphale voice) OODLES of children, Something Terrible did happen in that future. But it's Maggie's misunderstanding of things that makes her think she can Make A Difference.

Maybe in the original timeline, The Metatron never offers Aziraphale Gabriel's position, the halo thing was a "oopsie" moment, etc, so he and Crowley do get together. Heaven and hell keep the status quo static and quoey. Crowley's confession is well received, and deeply reciprocated. And there's a cottage and kids and happiness, for a time. But when heaven and hell find out, well, that's an excuse for the Big One. War, betrayal, death. Maggie's kind and those who are sympathetic are hunted by both sides. She's spent her whole life being afraid, but she gets a chance to fix it.

She goes back in time. If she can make sure her parents talk properly early enough then surely they can stop Bad Things from happening. And if she stays there long enough, she can help stop it too. Maggie doesn't expect to fall in love with Nina, and it really couldn't hurt to ask Papa for a little love advice... He always knows what to do. And sure enough, it all works out in her favor, as Crowley and Aziraphale become a part of her love story. They seem to be getting on earlier than she knew they did. But The Metatron is two steps ahead of her.

Let's say The Metatron, can see through space and time, and he sees a future he can not allow to happen. Maggie's future. Maybe God doesn't want it happening either (who knows? She's on a beach somewhere and can't be bothered so we're focusing on The Metatron instead). Angels and demons consorting! Having children! Preposterous! Although that future DOES lead to the war heaven wants, The Metatron can't risk all the hoards of angels and demons who DID follow in Aziraphale and Crowley's direction (as well as Gabriel and Beelzebub's), going their own way, creating their own abominations. It's like an infection he doesn't want spreading. He has a proper idea of how to handle things. Stop it before it ever gets started (bro you're about 6000 years too late but-). The Metatron makes sure to swoop in at the opportune moment and suddenly Crowley's confession falls flat. Aziraphale's pleading is rejected. The Ineffables break up before they ever get together.

This is worse than the world Maggie came from. Because now there's no demon-angel children from anyone and Aziraphale and Crowley have been separated and might possibly be fighting against each other. It wouldn't have happened if Maggie hadn't went to the past.

Maggie doesn't know. She thinks she's started part one of Fixing Things and is peacefully asleep in the record shop, dreaming of a world where her parents and her siblings are in their lush garden once again. Dad spending hours in his little sun hat and glasses tending to his plants. Papa wrapping her in a favorite tartan blanket and reading to her under the shade of a tree they planted together. Her brothers being little shits and chasing her through the woods as they play games until the sun sets. A wonderful world of love and warmth. A world she misses dearly. A world she may never see again.

That's all. I have finished my coffee and I hope I can still show my face in the fandom after this.

#Good omens theory #good omens maggie #aziraphale x crowley #Good omens 2 #Good omens meta #good omens headcanons #Good omens #az fell #Aziraphale #antony j crowley #Crowley #Nina

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courtneysartblog · 8 months

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The Music of Good Omens

Let me take you on the little musical rabbit hole I went on yesterday. (And be mindful this is coming from a listener of music, not a professional aka I never took a class in this and haven't read sheet music in over ten years).

So when I first started listening to the Good Omens 2 soundtrack (done by the amazing David Arnold) I found it really intriguing that neither Crowley or Aziraphale had tracks really named for them. And that got me thinking, they don't really have motifs either. At least they didn't have motifs that are uniquely dedicated to themselves as characters separate from each other. Looking through the season 2 soundtrack that also seems to be the case. While there are a couple songs named for characters, often times paired together, (Maggie and Nina, Crowley and Muriel, Gabriel and Beelzebub) these tracks aren't really repeated throughout the show (from what I remember), so they aren't these defining songs that make you stick the tune to the character and/or some emotion they are feeling. So basically there are songs named for characters because the scenes are these character moments, but the songs are not used as repeating motifs. For example He's Smoking and Crowley Goes Large, feel like moments that could have the motif (because of character and tone) but don't really. Even characters that have a lot of songs named for them, don't have a through-line. For instance Beelzebub in Hell and Beelzebub Isn't Happy don't have any shared motifs. The soundtrack rather has great moments to bring the tone and setting and feel into the story. But, at least from my hearing, there aren't a lot of strong motifs repeating for these characters, to say, show when a character is triumphing or about to do something important/thematic.

So then I went back to the original soundtrack, where there are a lot more character specific tracks, and where there are are also a lot more motifs used. The most recognizable to me being Anathema and Adam and the Dog as both have a very folky, almost hobbit kind of sound. They sound very different from the rest of the soundtrack and seem to connote the perfect world of Tadfield. And you will hear the motifs throughout the show at appropriate moments.

Again these motifs aren't super present and not every character has one, so I'm guessing it's either David Arnolds style to not be ham-fisted with themes or else was not his vision for Good Omens. But they aren't absent either, just more subtle than say a major blockbuster score, which a lot of times are trying to make you feel a certain way with a lot of big emotions in a short amount of time. The world of Good Omens is fantastical and quirky, and it feels like the music works to express this. The soundscape seems focused on tone and setting more so than say characters. Which isn't a bad thing because the motifs that do show up feel very natural to the emotions of the scene. But it also means that motifs overlap different characters sometimes.

But let's get back to Aziraphale and Crowley, who as I said, don't have any character motifs of their own. But they do have one together! There are two major motifs for them. One is the main theme (0.17 secs), which is that recognizable staccato section you would start singing if asked you to sing the theme. It's not always exclusive to them, but more often than not if they are getting into shenanigans you will hear the theme crop up into the score. And how amazing is that! They share a motif. It's wholly them, and it's the theme for the entire show! For me the theme captures the quirk of the show, the idea of the ineffable.

The second motif also comes from the main theme. I'm guessing that this is the bridge of the song, but don't quote me on it as, again I do not have enough musical knowledge. But it's the softer section of the title theme(0.51 secs) that sometimes has a twinkly sound, sometimes has a more sweeping feel. And I think for a lot of us it's most memorable as the song Crowley sings to Warlock as a nanny, and then the 1941 blitz scene (6.23) where Crowley saves the books and Aziraphale realizes he's in love. If you want to give it a listen Lullaby is the track you will want to pop on. I absolutely love this theme for them because it's so romantic, so soft, and in the original theme it sounds like two people dancing together. The entire opening theme is a Walts in 3/4 time, so really the whole song is a dance, but this part especially sounds like two characters going back and forth with each other. I watched this interview of David Arnold talking about the music and learned that this song was actually the first track written for Good Omens. How crazy is that! And from there or lullaby melody was incorporated with the rest of the theme. Along with that, Arnold has commented that this opening theme is a dance between these two characters. This is their theme and it was created to reflect the dynamic between the two. Because the show is about an angel and a demon, heaven and hell, Arnold paired moments of levity with darker moments to show the duality between the two. The entire score is literally Crowley and Aziraphale. Wow.

But as for this main lullaby melody, this is what I think of as the Nightingale in song form. The musical motif that shows everything is alright.

So that had me re-listening to the original soundtrack to pick up on where the lullaby motif plays. We of course hear it in the 1941 scene, which is not on the soundtrack at all. (This has me thinking that there could be other tracks are not in the soundtrack, and maybe I do need to rewatch everything to see if the motif is snuck in other places but for this post I'll go off of what we have). We also hear it in the track Lullaby, Adam(0.41), and Adam Sleeping, which are all moments when either Crowley is singing a child to sleep or Adam is sleeping. I think the motif is less paired to Adam as a character and more as a counterpoint to Warlock being sung the same theme.

We then we hear it again Witch, during Agnus Nutter’s burning at the stake, which is kind of an odd one that I could connect to her prophetic nature to shape things towards the ineffable, but I think that would be a stretch. The next section we hear it is the 1941 moment, and it doesn't crop up again until the end of the show in End of the Story, Shadwell and Tracy, All Change. And I think this motif is most notable here at the end of the story, in moments where characters are coming together, where things are right with the world again, aka Nightingales. It's used in a lot of moments with a lot of different characters but again, it's a song at least I connect a lot with that 1941 moment and then the section with Crowley and Aziraphale right before they go to the Ritz and the final scene of the show.

So then that had me going back to the Season 2 soundtrack to find our motif there. The opening theme is riffed on a lot in the soundtrack, perfectly fitting Crowley and Aziraphale getting into trouble, but our romantic motif doesn't crop up a lot, at least on the soundtrack, again the entire show would need a rewatch to pick out if it's slipped in anywhere. There's a new more distorted appearance of the song at the beginning of the 1941 Blitz scene (also not on the track), but from the soundtrack this motif only really appears in flashbacks. Most notably It's What God Wants, and His New Children from the Job mini-sode and then Not Kind from the Grave Robbing mini-sode. And it's very much used in these moments of Crowley doing something for Aziraphale, when they are on the same page with each other, being tender, in these small moments similar to season one and the 1941 Blitz.

But you know where the theme doesn't appear? During that kiss. Instead of our motif we get this angelic vocal moments slipping down into a deeper sound. It's sinks where as the lullaby motif floats. And this is why I think we will see the lullaby motif in season three especially in a kiss scene...

Okay I won't start another essay, but yes. I think or lullaby romantic theme is important, and we see it so little in season two because all is not okay. There are no nightingales. Even if so many moments are romantic, these characters are not quite dancing with each other anymore.

But you know what new motif we see a lot of. Yep it's that really depressing, heart-wrenching one. Fallen Angel, which of course plays during the Job mini-sode when Aziraphale thinks he has done wrong by lying and thwarting the will of God, and now believes he's destined to fall to hell. It's also him realizing he is now separate from heaven, just like Crowley is from hell, on their own side. But it's lonely there.

I love the Fallen Angel track, and we get to hear it's melody a fair amount, starting in We're Going to Hell and then a little in Need to Cut and most notably in I'm Going to Save Her, (the moment where Aziraphale is ready to do something entirely against the rules for humanity). It's so thematic why Fallen Angel reprises in the Edinburgh mini-sode. This song is a code for Aziraphale's journey as he struggles with his idea of goodness and where heaven fits and doesn't fit this. This motif depicts the heartbreaking conflict Aziraphale is going through so well. He's lonely separated from Heaven. He struggling with what he thinks is the right thing, and he's still holding on tight to his ideas of heaven. But it's not just Aziraphale's moment. Crowley is there too, also being reflected by this song. He understands the truth of Heaven. But he's lonely from his own fall, and lonely from not fitting in amongst the demons of hell. This is a lot of what season two is about, these two characters struggling with their relationship with Heaven and Hell and with each other, and it's reflected through this motif.

But it's not limited to the flashbacks.

Let's put a pin in this and just talk about the musical roller coaster that is the final four songs of the GOS2 soundtrack, going from I Forgive You into Don't Bother, The Biggest Decision and then The End? Because oh my god. I Forgive You is the kiss scene, and the score here is crazy. It's starts with this angelic choral bit that we've heard throughout the soundtrack and then we hear a bell toll. Which for me was just such a symbolic sound. The tolling bells go off throughout the soundtrack, especially as a way to transition from softer, choral bits into the darker more intense sounds. And here, as the kiss goes from airy, the bell tolling lets us know, this isn't going to end well. And then the song sinks. The next three tracks are crazy to me, because as you watch the show, there is no hope, it's just a consistent downward spiral of heartbreak. But the soundtrack keeps oscillating from soft and angelic, into dark and depressing. Back and forth until we finally settle into The End?

Don't Bother and The End? are especially interesting to me, as it feels like these two songs are a part of a whole, to the point that it's almost jarring that The Biggest Decision , which uses the main theme, is between them. Oh my god the connotation of giving us the main theme sans the romantic lullaby melody and then just taking it away? Snatching any kind of comfort or hope from that ending by not ending with the theme? Their song? Damn.

But going back to Don't Bother and The End?, you know what these two songs, especially Don't Bother, sound like? They sound like Fallen Angel.

From what I can hear, it is not the same melody used. But they do go together. Fallen Angel and Don't Bother are part of the same song or if not, they are at least companions. I don't think it's just they have the same artist or that they are a part of the same score. To me they sound like they are a part of a whole.

And why does the song denoting loneliness and self conflict come up during Aziraphale and Crowley's divorce?

Of course this sound would be brought back. It's a motif of conflict of loneliness and that's what the last moments of GOS2 is.

But it's not like the Fallen Angel motif pops up anywhere in season one. It's a season two original to perfectly connote Aziraphale's struggle with right and wrong. Sure there are songs like Holy Water, and Crucified and We're Not Killing Anybody, that are in the same ballpark as Fallen Angel, but its not like the motif crops up in the first season at all...

We're Not Killing Anybody has the Fallen Angel motif in it. You know, We're Not Killing Anybody. The scene where... What scene was that? Oh yeah, Crowley and Aziraphale talking at the bandstand.

THE BANDSTAND BREAK UP SCENE IN S1E3 HAS THE FALLEN ANGEL MOTIF IN IT. THE SCENE WHERE THESE TWO CHARACTERS CAN'T FIND THEIR WAY TOGETHER AND WHERE AZIRAPHALE STRUGGLES WITH RIGHT AND WRONG AND HEAVEN AND--

So yeah. It comes full circle. The Band Stand Breakup is Fallen Angel, is our Divorce motif. Fallen Angel has always been them. It's always been the song in absence of nightingales. It's always been the song where they walk away from each other. God Damn.

The Fallen Angel motif has, at least for season 2, replaced our beloved romantic motif. That's why the lullaby is absent this season. No nightingales.

Doesn't that hurt just so good? Really the music is so subtle but so so smart.

#good omens #goodomensseason2 #crowly x aziraphale #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #crowley #good omens 2 #aziraphale #good omens soundtrack #good omens music

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nicoleanell · 1 year

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I would love to hear your meta on the scene from Renfield with the priest and the vampire hunter, if you’d be willing to share!

SURE, THANK GOD YOU ASKED.

My thing with that scene is it was peak Give Renfield A Hug and also the most irredeemable thing he does in the movie short of destroying some kid's ant farm, and that instantly made me fall in love with him.

I like the fact they made Renfield an aggressively sympathetic character and at the same time not wholly innocent. Robert Montague Renfield is neither a good guy or a bad guy but he deserves to be okay. (Also he may come off way more "sane" as movie Renfields go but he's not a well person lol, and the fact he's in an all-gender support group for abuse survivors very rapidly becomes not so much A Joke as it is the Entire Point of the movie.)

In the flashbacks, it's totes played for comedy and riffing on the 1931 movie and there's a little bit of an "unreliable narrator" vibe to it when Renfield's like, it was good we had great times etc. :))) We don't really know how in control of himself he is or how much he's whitewashing. But then we get the church/vampire killer thing and there's like... the first seed of something more real going on. The movie tells us upfront that the last time Dracula was almost defeated he stopped it, willingly, and it wasn't normal vampire enthrallment stuff as much as a very human emotional choice.

There's some heavy-handed manipulation happening and it's *completely* non-supernatural. They'll lock you away. I'll protect you. I care about you. And Nic Hoult's big woobie eyes hold all the sadness and isolation and genuine hope/desire to be loved, and it's unhealthy attention but there's nothing better out there for him. 🥺 <- emoji rendition of Renfield and also me.

Oh and for good measure his "he really means it this time" internal monologue is 100% meant to sound like toxic/abusive boyfriend stuff he's echoing from the support group, which is A Joke in this movie until it's not anymore.

(Side note, I saw you mention this in another post - the mental institution headcanon is Valid. I would've liked for it to be explicitly in there somewhere but as far as I'm concerned nothing *contradicts* it and it's one of like 3 facts people associate with Spiders Georg over here. So I'll take that crumb that the threat of him getting locked up is just as likely to be in an asylum (again) as a jail. And yikes the legitimate fear of that being WORSE than the hell he's currently in.)

And the second he does the thing, some priest *completely proves Dracula right* by immediately throwing more guilt and blame on Renfield and being like YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYONE ELSE HE KILLS NOW. Which, fair! But also, dude, you're being the opposite of helpful here! Lmao fucking Catholics. He knows this! It's why he can't get out! Of course he chose Dracula and he did it on purpose and he did it because of trauma and it *cemented* him being trapped forever. This is the climax of an entire other movie in which Renfield is probably not the main character but would definitely end up my problematic fave anyway.

SO YEAH. Between that and the reveal he left a whole wife & kid, there's such an interesting theme of guilt/shame on top of self-esteem and learned helplessness issues I was not anticipating in this movie. It's important for him to get to a place of: "I want to blame this legitimately awful monster but I also did SOME of this to myself, and when I can accept that without immediately going into a fetal position, it gives him less power over me."

Does not remove his power completely! 'Cause Renfield 2023 is also not, like, saying that you can just Easily Decide To Leave Your Violent Abuser. But the affirmations about being enough and deserving better and seeking better in spite of having failed or fucked up before are important.

#renfield #renfield 2023 #local-redhead-bookworm

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angeart · 5 months

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And 29!

--from ao3 wrapped [writers edition]

29: Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

this is a very interesting question! and also very difficult, given the amount of things i've written in combination with my bad memory. so of course i went and dug through things, overthinking this, even though, really, i know exactly what to answer. still, let me take the long route. (because i'm an idiot and there's no other way.)

so first i'll ramble about things i like.

starting with the phrase that always makes me weak, and i don't think i use it enough, but characters just dissipating into giggles—that exact wording. like. c'mon. that. whenever i get to use it, i'm so happy. it's such a lack of control and overflow of joy. the best thing ever.

but if we move into specific passages... (i go on a bit of a tangent, so the rest is under the line-) (dancing scene at the end there and a bit of a hmtb spoiler/sneakpeek/preview for you guys)

i looked over the cursed forest au fic (even with death haunting your footsteps, your flowers will bloom again), looking for pretty sentences, and the problem is, that fic is full of pretty sentences. (i honestly don't know how i did that, but it does make me happy.) something about words like the warzone of his good intentions, you know? (i had more. i'm trying to be concise.) (i promise.)

but really, there's one phrase in that fic that i do think about sometimes still. so it needs to be mentioned. here:

It still hurts, to be treated so gently, but unlike everything else, it hurts in a way he thinks he might be able to survive.

------

i also want to bring up a sentence from Elegy that lives in my head rent-free (this is from chapter 3, which i'm aware is unreleased as of now, but shh):

The grief is a guillotine, and he’s bending forward, hair falling away from his neck, baring skin and bracing for impact.

there's just something about that that refuses to let me go.

------

but! i also enjoyed writing happy things. (shocking)

especially this passage from these flowers will wither (like you and me), but they're not dead yet was very fun to write:

Grian grins at him, something bright and cheeky. “Do you want to try that again?”

There’s a pause when Scar attempts to recalibrate. (He fails.) (He absolutely fails.)

He tries to grab something rational in him, tries to tell himself that Grian means dancing. But his traitorous heart supplies a wholly different answer to him.

Scar pushes himself up and, with fingers sliding along Grian’s jaw, he presses his lips to Grian’s.

(They’re warm. They’re chapped. They’re Grian Grian Grian Grian.)

He feels the vibration of Grian’s laughter against him before he really registers the sound.

“That’s not what I meant,” Grian scolds, but there’s no bite in it; he sounds entirely too pleased and amused, even as he piles a handful of sand on top of Scar’s head in playful revenge.

------

and this honestly now brings me to hmtb. which is where we anchor.

believe it or not, there is a happy scene that i can't stop thinking about (just the sheer power of it, across all the pain and messes and saddness—scar making grian laugh like this.)

------ hmtb chapter 49:

Scar looks at him innocently and presents his question: “What is a romp, Impulse?”

Grian bursts out laughing.

A big, toothy grin spreads across Scar’s face at the sound.

Impulse’s eyes briefly flit to Mumbo and he feels his face get hot. “I— What— That’s not fair!” he whines. “That’s not a truth, that’s a, Scar, I’m not a dictionary!”

At that, Grian laughs harder, bending over. His giggles tip over proper cackling, a bit breathless around the edges, and Scar thinks it’s the most wonderful sound in the whole world.

------ and of course this moment from chapter 47:

Neither of them can help it; their lips treacherously stretch into smiles where they’re pressed against each other, before they both helplessly dissipate into giggles, feeling lightheaded and high.

“What are we doing,” Grian huffs out through his laughter.

“Kissing,” Scar replies cheerfully and demonstratingly places three kisses along Grian’s jaw.

It’s the best thing in the world.

------

bet you didn't expect me to pull out the happy scenes out of this mess of a fic. ha.

but also! one the things i really like and enjoy is throwing anything to do with explosives, tnt, fire, etc, at scar and grian. like this:

Skin tingling and heart feeling like TNT on the verge of explosion, Scar moves to follow him, blindly, willingly, the way he’d follow him anywhere.

and this:

Watching him, Scar laughs quietly. He thinks of the sound the flint and steel makes, of the little click, of the hiss of TNT as it readies itself to cause damage. It sounds like his heart feels. He thinks of sparks that catch on leaves and grass and bark, a tree going up in flames, the catastrophic heat spreading violently to anything it touches, and he wonders if that is how Grian’s heart feels.

------

now, since i'm already rambly. there is one bit of hmtb i keep thinking back to constantly. and it's a particular conversation from chapter 21 (the talk in the middle of a crisis). this bit in particular:

“He wasn’t afraid then. He knew you could kill him, but he wasn’t scared. And you know what, Grian? You didn’t kill him,” he finishes softly.

“I… didn’t kill him?” Grian repeats, dazed and wobbly.

“He wasn’t scared, and you didn’t kill him”

(you guys should keep this in mind too. it might get a callout sometime, uhhhhh, around chapter 100 or so at this rate—)

(don't worry about that, ofc.)

and now for the real answer. (wow.)

because here's the thing. you're asking what's my favourite passage. and really, i love all those other things too, but there's one particular bit of writing that hits closer than any other.

the dancing bits.

the heartachy, complicated, painful dancing bits.

and yes, this ties to the whole fic i wrote about them dancing in the desert, but listen. the purely-hmtb bits? those? those. okay?

here we go:

------ hmtb chapter 37: call of the desert

Scar sighs a little and says: “I miss it.”

“Scar,” Grian’s voice is absolutely unsteady.

They haven’t really talked about the desert, not since it was over.

Nobody ever talks about life games, if they can avoid it.

But now Grian sits here and he has to forcefully remind himself that the skin over his knuckles isn’t torn raw and that Scar’s blood isn’t coating his hands and he has to accept that Scar misses the desert and Grian also misses it, in a way, and it’s all so dizzying, it makes him lightheaded.

“We used to dance,” Scar says thoughtfully. “Why don’t we do it anymore?”

“I forgot how,” Grian barely manages to get out. He didn’t forget. In fact, he remembers every step Scar taught him. He remembers them stumbling together into a fall, a small giggling heap on top of the warm sand, limbs tangled. He remembers the moment when Scar grinned wildly at him, joy bright in his eyes, as they completed a couple of steps without a hitch for the first time. He remembers how they laughed and danced, giddy and high on life in a world that promised nothing but death.

He doesn’t want to remember. It hurts his heart.

“I can teach you again,” Scar suggests softly.

The pain in Grian’s heart just gets worse.

Scar reaches for Grian’s hand, then. Even if they’re both sitting on Grian’s bed and they can’t dance like this, he still slides his fingers underneath Grian’s palm and brings it up, in exactly the same way he held it when they danced. With curved lips, he hums a melody.

Grian looks at him, absolutely wretched. His hand twitches in Scar’s grasp, but he doesn’t pull it away. “Scar,” he half-whispers, in a miserable tone. He meant to say stop, but he can’t bring himself to. So he just pleads, using Scar’s name itself, hoping the other man will get it.

Scar studies Grian for a second, before he lowers their hands. He huffs out a small laugh. “It’s okay. We can leave it for some other time.”

Grian purses his lips. He doesn’t say there won’t be another time. He doesn’t say he doesn’t want this. He doesn’t say that something in him desperately wants this, actually, please Scar please.

------

but, you know what. it isn't over.

this answer has been long enough. i know. i know. (i appreciate and love everyone who bothered to read this far <3 ) but. but there's more.

there is more, and it's so closely related, these scenes are entwined and live snugly side-by-side in my heart. but. here's the thing.

this next bit is 1,2k long, and it's from a chapter that, as of now, hasn't been released yet. for the curious, greedy, hungry souls (love you all to bits), here it is:

------ hmtb chapter [unspecified]

Scar blinks and recalibrates under the scrutiny. His eyes dart to the jukebox and he lets a smile spread across his lips, as he reaches out a hand to Grian. “Hey, G, you wanna dance?”

Grian’s eyes widen a fraction, thrown off by the abrupt suggestion. “I’m… not sure,” he manages to say, eyes dropping to Scar’s invitingly outstretched hand, palm-up and ready for him.

His emotions wrangle in him—a need to be close, to give in, to accept everything Scar’s giving him, pushed violently against the sharp memories of sand and desert, something happy tiding over into blood and pain and misery.

He flexes his fingers, pulls them into a fist and then stretches them out, trying to unknot the tension and release the slight tremble that courses through them. His throat feels dry, all of a sudden.

“It’s okay,” Scar says in the softest tone that never fails to tug at Grian’s heart. “I can lead.”

The music turns mildly cacophonic, askew and sick. It buzzes and pitches and tilts, in a way music isn’t supposed to be able to. And Grian realises that he’s told Scar before that he forgot how to dance.

Scar taught him all the steps, back in the desert. A lot of hours spent in the stifling air upon sun-warmed evening sand, stumbling and laughing and holding onto each other. Their skin was more tanned then. Their eyes were brighter, their souls wilder. They felt unstoppable.

Grian feels anything but right now.

He doesn’t know if he can take it.

But Scar’s reaching out to him and Grian finds that he cannot turn away from it, his body shackled and chained, unable to resist. And so even if everything in him screams no, he still finds himself reaching back, meeting Scar’s hands with his own trembling fingers, trepidation sinking its teeth into him.

Scar’s smile brightens and oh, maybe it’s not trepidation that Grian feels.

He feels Scar’s fingers take hold of his hand, secure and warm; they pull at him, but not in a destabilising way. It’s the opposite: they tell Grian exactly where to be. Scar’s other arm finds Grian torso and seamlessly slides across to his back, sending shivers down Grian’s spine; his wings stretch out and shudder, before they fall back, feathers lightly brushing over Scar’s skin.

Everything about this is electrifying, and it’s driving Grian haywire.

He thinks maybe he needs to stop thinking. Maybe he needs to give in to the part of him that wants to let Scar have control of the two of them now; the part of him that wants to trust and believe that he’s safe; the part of him that craves affection with ugly, hungry desperation.

Scar leans closer and with a rumbling baritone wrapped in velvet, he checks: “Ready?”

Running on nothing but instinct, Grian squeezes at Scar’s hand.

With a low chuckle, Scar lets go of Grian’s back and Grian almost gasps at the abrupt loss—but all Scar does is guide Grian’s free hand to his waist. “Like this,” he murmurs, his voice just a step away from purring, and then his hand slots back against Grian’s spine.

A trembling breath leaves Grian’s lips and he dips his head, leaning forwards, inching closer to Scar. He feels the response in the way Scar’s touch on his back turns firm, accepting the new closeness with reverent neediness. He can’t see Scar’s face, but he can tell Scar’s lips are curved in a smile, cheeks slightly dimpling.

He almost wishes to look, but he can’t, he can’t, it’s too much.

He takes a deep breath though his nose. The air isn’t dry and hot. The ground doesn’t shift underneath his feet.

It hasn’t shifted underneath his feet in ages, but right now in this very moment, a part of Grian distantly thinks that it should. That if they’re going to dance, it should be atop a mountain, feet sinking into sand.

They’re standing on carpeted floor, and the music disc is one they didn’t have in the desert, the sounds of it wrapping around them in a rhythm completely discordant to the fast beating of Grian’s heart.

With gentle and deliberate move, Scar directs them to sway. Their feet shift, steady on the solid floor, something learned and simple. Scar leads them in careful, basic steps, the ones he used at the very beginning to teach Grian. Back when even that was too much, and Grian kept stepping on his feet, and Scar kept catching him.

Scar doesn’t need to catch Grian now, because Grian knows these steps. They’re imbued in his muscle memory, something sunken and anchored, a part of his soul that’s reserved for things that feel like home.

Testingly, Scar throws in something more complex. He pulls Grian along, turning them in circles, every step confident and filled with joy. The music is the background rhythm, but they’re both locked somewhere else, in a fragment of a memory—something that used to be; something that Scar believes could be again.

With a curve to his lips, Scar hums and remarks: “You said you don’t remember.”

Grian’s breath hitches and it’s only now that he lifts his head to meet Scar’s gaze. Despite that, his feet do not stumble; he doesn’t need to watch where he steps, he knows it all by heart. His gaze anchors in green eyes and something rises within him so tidally and overwhelmingly that he feels hot wetness blur his vision all of a sudden. “How could I forget?” he manages past the lump in his throat.

Scar gently lets go of Grian’s hand and instead reaches to touch Grian’s jaw, brushing his thumb soothingly over Grian’s cheek as he takes in the raw, ravaging emotion in Grian’s eyes.

Grian moves his suddenly free arm around Scar, fingers finding purchase in the fabric of Scar’s shirt, digging into it until he has a firm grip. His lungs spasm in his chest, his heart stutters, his wings droop then lift and spread. A loose feather drops to the floor and Scar sidesteps it expertly, as if it was somehow too precious to damage.

“You remember,” Scar murmurs, an odd inflection to his voice.

Grian’s skin buzzes where Scar touches it; a tingling, warm sensation spreads from Scar’s fingertips and robs Grian of breath. “Of course,” he murmurs, quiet, destabilised.

Scar’s eyes crinkle in joy, lips spreading into a bright, toothy smile that ends in dimpled skin as he looks at Grian. He makes no attempt to call out Grian’s earlier lie; he seems content in knowing that this is the truth, warm and alive underneath his fingers, guided by his steps. “Oh, I wouldn’t mind teaching you again, but this makes me so happy!” he admits openly, fractionally heightening their tempo as he leads them in spinning circles, everything in him attuned to the music even as it becomes nothing more than a background noise.

Grian isn’t ready for those words. Nor for the way Scar looks at him.

He feels like he’s drowning, and Scar’s both his sea and his oxygen.

Scar starts humming in tune, the happy expression lingering on his face, and it’s only then that the discordant rhythm of the song disentangles and starts making sense to Grian. It’s only the reverb of Scar’s voice that puts coherency into Grian’s existence; into their steps across the carpet that doesn’t give underneath their weight; into the way the room sways around them, full of warm shadows and flickering flames and muted colours not quite matching sand.

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not-poignant · 5 months

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Hi Pia

I'm so sorry you've been experiencing difficulties recently. I'm sending all my love and light your way and hope you start to feel a little less shitty soon.

P.s - Do you mind sharing your tiktok so we can follow you there too? Or is it a private acc?

Lots of love to you <3

It's not private! It's just not updated very often. Overall I'm more active on Instagram. But neither are private. The Tiktok is very art-focused so it might not be what you're looking for. But it's also pretty harmless overall.

And thank you anon <3

The last few days I had to stop writing and like...quickly redo my schedule for December and cut it back a little, which always makes me sad, but I'm trying to conserve my mental health as well as my physical. I realised I met all the criteria for a pretty serious depressive episode late last week (I have, alongside severe PTSD, Major Depressive Disorder, which is the one that will kill me if I don't keep an eye on it -> though I'm happy to report I'm not like in a very like 'I don't want to live' space right now, I can just tell I'm feeling / experiencing a lot of the red flags that go in that direction), and if I don't act now, that tends to lead to pretty bad places.

So I've redone the schedule for December and that will come out likely on Friday or Saturday. And then I'll only be posting during January for half of the month, and not the whole month, and taking off two weeks re: posting. Hopefully these are the sorts of things which will head off me needing to go into hiatus because I desperately don't want to do that <3

I can already tell I'm doing a little better after being a lot firmer with some boundaries, and also just...with myself re: taking more time off. I wish I didn't feel so guilty about it? But that's not anyone's fault here, that's shit to work on with my therapist/s, lol.

Today I spent around 3 hours researching a response to an ask (whoops), and then realised - not through any one person's actions but a bunch at once - that I need to kind of stop engaging with facecast stuff (nothing wrong with facecasting, the problem is wholly on me there and I wish I'd seen that sooner and saved people some pain and saved me from some rudeness).

I put away the shopping (we have a really good grocery delivery system here which is great for my disabilities etc.), and had some raspberries, and put on the Christmas tree lights.

I was so tired at lunch that I could only manage a bowl of cereal (and couldn't eat breakfast. I think my therapist would be like 'why are you putting three hours of research into responding to something instead of focusing on eating food' but well, whoops? Lol. To be fair I thought it would be way easier to answer, but Tumblr's search function is SO broken).

I fed my wonderful cat, Maybe, and got some sleep in the afternoon and then did some writing (1,200 words) on Palmarosa. It's like 7.00pm right now, and I'm going to put up some chapter commentaries on Patreon and Ream.

Tonight I might do some watercolour art, and I'm hoping to finish Palmarosa tomorrow.

December is actually a hard time of year for me anyway. It's the month that has the most chronological / time-based triggers, and my therapists know this and I'm hearing a lot of 'how are you in the lead up to December' which is about to become 'how are you coping with December.'

I'm grateful for small pleasures. Like my dahlias are looking pretty awesome right now. Here's some photos of this week (some art I'm working on, Maybe being cute, or screm, dahlia, Christmas set up, T-Rex ornament, Santa Platypus ornament):

#asks and answers #personal #lots of love to you too anon i hope you like the photos #that pride blanket was crocheted by my mum #i never have a themed christmas it's just #20 years of collected decorations salfjkas

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ecoevoexo · 1 year

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support for your community has to include supporting so-called "bad" people--abusers, manipulators, reactive ppl, annoying ppl, etc--for it to be meaningful. so much community for ppl rests on the very thin ice of being considered a good or useful person, which fosters cliquishness, competitiveness, an environment of precarity and at worst mutual hostility. we have to accept that a lot of people are going to do harm, especially in marginalized communities where many of us grew up learning harmful survival skills and having a general animosity toward the world. the solution is not either to wholly reject people who fuck up, nor to ignore or forgive the ways they fuck up. *genuine* accountability means that we work to reduce harm while holding true to our boundaries and the needs of those who do harm. this means not punishing people, not with social attacks or exile. (im talking about within our own communities, obviously things are different if we're talking about a celebrity or whatever) your community should feel like the kind of place where *you* could realize you were abusing someone and be motivated to stop without having to fear it would ruin your life or find it easier/beneficial to keep doing it. so often the dichotomy seems to be 'excuse abuse OR punish/exile abusers'. neither of these options work for a community where a lot of people have personality disorders trending toward abusive behavior, where people have learned survival through abusive patterns and now want to do better but don't know how and are terrified of unlearning what has kept them alive. there are techniques of social healing, conflict transformation, and emotional growth with boundaries that can and should be learned, to get us out of this hellcycle of 'enable or punish'.

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rotisseries · 3 months

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I HAVENT GOTTEN OAST THE INTRO OF THIS EPISODE BUT TELL ME ABT AKU ATSUSHI COLORS ‼️

ohhh my god ok so in very classic visual symbolism white=good and black=bad right? and atsushi is white and aku is black right? but atsushi's outfit has touches of black, his tie his suspenders his pants, the stripes of his tiger form(and his hair too in the manga. studio bones die challenge) and aku's has touches of white, his hair, the shirt underneath his coat (which btw that white shirt being wrapped underneath his black outer layer of brutal protection goes CRAZYYYYYY btw) and so neither of them is wholly good or bad aku is not entirely bad and atsushi isn't wholly good. it's played for laughs but atsushi was literally gonna rob someone for his own survival at the start. lol. hashtag moral greyness

white/black symbolism ALSOOOO goes crazy BECAUSEEEE it's complementary. very yin and yang of them. in fact there's this cool ass scene near the end of season 3 where there is some INSANE yin and yang symbolism going on. there's also scenes they have together where they have to work together for reasons, usually forced by circumstances, and their color palettes effectively invert, with aku becoming mostly white with touches of black and atsushi becoming mostly black with touches of white (and it looks so slay too) which is kind of symbolic of how they each have a side to themselves that they only let out with each other. you haven't seen a TON of their dynamic yet but they force each other to act in ways they normally wouldn't. atsushi is harsher and meaner to aku than he would ever be to anyone else whereas in contrast aku is forced into some level of goodness. atsushi hates to kill and doesn't want to kill anyone but every fight he has with aku is one where he IS trying to kill him, in contrast there is. well that's a spoiler actually. hurry up and get through s3 it carries sskk on it's back. anyway they each tend to be the other's only exception to their usual morals which is supported by the visual symbolism.

in conclusion. new double black well I think that's not true and I think they're called that so you can look at them and see every way they are not actually chuuya and dazai starting first and foremost with the fact that their color palettes are NOT both black and only black

#ANDDDD THEY ARE VERY SIMILAR CHARACTERS IN VERY DIFFERENT SITUATIONS #hashtag two sides of the same coin hashtag the dark and the light hashtag can't have one without the other #sskk supremacy sorry. color symbolism goes crazy #ask #tallytals #hi tals!

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balanceoflightanddark · 2 years

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Kuvira and Bryke's Problem with Moral Ambiguity

I will be honest with you...I really like Kuvira.

She is probably one of my favorite characters from Legend of Korra. I like her design. I like a lot of the ideas behind her. And I think Zelda Williams did a great job with the character. So I can understand why Bryke wanted to do something different with her and try to redeem her.

Here's the problem. I love Kuvira...but she's also indicative of one of the show's biggest problems. Mainly the inability to commit to a morally ambiguous conflict.

Again, the whole point of Kuvira's character was that she wasn't a wholly irredeemable monster. That her methods, while heavy handed, weren't entirely in the wrong and her heart was in the right place. And we do see evidence of that early on with her forces giving relief to billages, stamping out bandits, and outing corrupt officials. Heavy handed and early warning signs sure, but nothing too over the top.

Then they made her into a power hungry dictator.

Yeah. Kind of hard to sell her as sympathetic when she takes imagery from real life oppressive and fascist political parties and governments.

Sad thing is, Kuvira here is not the exception to this. Throughout The Legend of Korra, we are presented with many antagonistic groups that are responding to some injustice or moral qualm which doesn't paint the current status quo the heroes are defending in a good light. Non-bender discrimination led to Amon and the Equalists. Unalaq was a response to mankind losing touch with the Spirit World. The Red Lotus were spurned by corruption in high places. And Kuvira was restoring order to a broken Earth Kingdom full of anarchy. It's clear that Bryke intended for all of these groups and characters to have some kind of point to generate moral ambiguity. Asking whether or not Korra and Co were truly in the right.

Yet when it came time to deliver, the antagonists were almost always portrayed as being in the wrong and often were portrayed in a way that makes it difficult for the audience to truly sympathize with them. The Equalists and the Red Lotus become terrorists. Amon is a bender with flimsy reasonings. Unalaq literally fuses with the Avatar equivalent of Satan. And again, Kuvira becomes a dictator. While their points are given some credence, the characters themselves always become a final boss for the heroes to triumphantly defeat. Which...muddies the message since it becomes difficult to see the villains' argument when they're treated the way they are.

Now admittedly, it is difficult to write a character like this. Balancing out the character's reasonable and sympathetic traits with the need to be an opposing force to the protagonists who audiences are normally predisposed to root for. So the question remains: how do you go about finding this equilibrium?

While I'm not a professional writer, I can think of at least two good methods. The first is allowing the antagonist to do genuinely good things that seems at odds with their position. This could include a concern for civilians or their comrades, limiting their violence, or throwing themselves in the line of danger for the sake of others. Kuvira does demonstrate this a few times with sending relief to civilians who need it or choosing to face down the Avatar herself rather than ordering her men to do it.

The second is actually giving a concrete reason for why the antagonist is escalating things. Maybe the situation is just that bad where the antagonist feels the need to escalate or is a response to something that the heroes did. Perhaps the antagonist's grievances are legitimate and they have a solid reason to fight. Again, this is explored with Prince Wu's incompetence and the attempted assassination on Kuvira's life by Suyin. While her methods are heavy handed, you could see why she may need to employ them.

The foundations for a solid character are there. If they expanded on that, we could've had a fairly compelling conflict where neither side is entirely in the right nor are they in the wrong.

And then they introduced re-education camps and had Kuvira invent the Avatar equivalent of an atomic bomb.

Uh...hate to be that guy, but why the hell is Kuvira sympathetic again? Especially when other villains who did far less evil get crapped on while she gets a redemption arc in the comics?

glares at what they did with Azula

...I'm sorry but no. Korra wouldn't have ever turned out to be a fascist And trying to say the villain can be redeemed because they're like the hero raises so many flags for the franchise as a whole that I'm surprised they didn't do the same with Ozai. What? He's who Zuko would've ended up as if he went too far.

I get what they were getting at with Kuvira. I really do. And with better writing, maybe she could've been that character I mentioned. The groundworks are all there. But the problem they ran in was consistency and commitment. They failed to keep her sympathy and anti-villain status consistent by making her too horrible to properly feel for. And they never actually committed to fostering this morally ambiguous conflict.

Trust me, I'm not knocking against Kuvira and her fans. I'm really not. I understand the appeal. I even think a lot of her fans have better interpretations and ideas than Bryke (trust me, Kuvira has some pretty good fanfics out there). But if they wanted to redeem who we saw in the series, we needed more than a single comic trilogy. Especially when other characters don't even get a chance at that.

#kuvira #lok critical #lok salt #i guess #kuvira meta #anti bryke #anti lok comics

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tenebris-lux · 10 months

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“That night I had come to the fatal cross-roads. Had I approached my discovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the experiment while under the empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must have been otherwise, and from these agonies of death and birth, I had come forth an angel instead of a fiend. The drug had no discriminating action; it was neither diabolical nor divine; it but shook the doors of the prison-house of my disposition; and like the captives of Philippi, that which stood within ran forth. At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and the thing that was projected was Edward Hyde. Hence, although I had now two characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly evil, and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll, that incongruous compound of whose reformation and improvement I had already learned to despair. The movement was thus wholly toward the worse.”

~ The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

I still think this implies that, in a very literal sense, someone else taking the drug might not necessarily reveal their “inner evil.”

You know who I think would “come forth an angel instead of a fiend?”

Gabriel Utterson.

True, it would depend on the circumstances of taking the potion—his state of mind and motivation, for example. And, as he is human, he is not perfect. But the book shows that he’s definitely a good person. He shows concern for his friends, and tries to help one of them. He’s sincere in his actions and speech. I won’t go so far as to say he has no evil bone in his body, but only because of my personal beliefs that no one is perfect. But his actions and motivations were all for the good.

Still—I can’t quite imagine what difference the potion would have on him.

“… That which stood within ran forth. At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion…”

Whatever evil would be in Mr. Utterson, during the story at least, it was slumbering in him.

The very first paragraph that introduces him seems to portray him as a typically impartial kind of guy. Yeah, he’s curious about what it’s like to get completely drunk and cut loose, but not enough to actually try it. (If he drank the potion while dwelling on that, then yeah, the evil would come forth.) Also…

“But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. ‘I incline to Cain’s heresy,’ he used to say, quaintly; ‘I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.’”

Which means he generally minded his own business. If he felt disapproval at all, he wouldn’t voice it.

In the case of Henry Jekyll, he did interfere a bit. He wanted to know what kind of hold this Hyde guy had over his friend. This included staying out late trying to catch Hyde, and trying to talk to Jekyll, even pressuring him to talk to him. He let it drop when Jekyll told him to, however. Could be part of that impartial nature of his, or more likely courtesy. It’s hard to make your friends uncomfortable and keep the pressure on, even if it’s in their best interest.

His saying that he’d look after Hyde should anything happen to Jekyll also shows how much Utterson cares for Jekyll. How many people would agree to look after their friend’s friend, one whom you’re sure is BAD NEWS and creeps you the fuck out?

So anyway… if Gabriel John Utterson were to take the potion, I believe there’s a good chance his evil side would not be the one to manifest.

#the strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde #jekyll and hyde #gabriel utterson #gabriel john utterson

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definitely-not-the-kgb · 10 months

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I had to log in to my computer for this. Let's go.

I. Hate. Nationalists.

I. Hate. Conservatives.

I hate self-proclaimed "Marxists" who are both Conservative and Nationalistic.

Marxism, Socialism, Communism, and all Leftist ideologies are incompatible with Conservatism and Nationalism. There is no compatibility between them, and the adoption of Conservatism and Nationalism by economically Socialist people and parties is not only revisionist, it is a total and complete betrayal of Marxism in all its forms, including Leninism and Stalinism, ideologies behind which many of these bastards hide behind.

The LGBT community benefitted thoroughly from Socialism in Eastern Europe, that is undeniable. Countries like the German Democratic Republic, the Polish People's Republic, the Republic of Cuba, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and the Lao People's Democratic Republic have brought freedom, in large part, to LGBT people, within the frameset of their times. The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the People's Republic of Bulgaria made enormous scientific steps to understand LGBT people. Lenin had liberated LGBT people in the early Soviet Union before Stalin undid that in one of the worst mistakes of his premiership.

For self-proclaimed "Socialists" and "Marxists" to deny this is to deny historical fact and give into the lies of Liberal propaganda, based mainly on a purposeful misunderstanding of history and on survivorship bias. Am I saying that LGBT people were entirely free? Of course not. Persecution was still common in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Macedonia, Romania, Albania, and -of course- the Post-Stalinist USSR, and even in countries where it was wholly legalised, often the governments didn't go further to ensure protection, but this happened at a time where in the Capitalist Bloc tens of thousands of LGBT people were executed and imprisoned compared to a few thousand in all of the Eastern Bloc in the same time.

The liberation of LGBT people is inherent to Marxism, and anybody who claims that not to be the case is not only a revisionist and a reactionary but a traitor to the revolution and the cause: Do not let their pitiful attempts at Identity Politics get to you. No war other than the class war means no war based on gender, no war based on ethnicity, race, nation, or anything. The only fight that Socialism must embark upon is that of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie war whose intrinsic goal is overthrowing the established order and liberating the proletariat, be they a woman, a man, neither, both, in between, or someone else entirely. Regardless of who they do or do not love.

Nationalism is against all the values of Marx and Engels, Lenin and even Stalin. Do not let them hide behind their excuses from Kim Il Sung and Stalin. Stalin never supported Nationalism. He explained in Marxism and the National Question that each nation has different material conditions, and thus they each have varying procedures to be taken to achieve the revolution. This is one of the few beliefs he shared with the Left Opposition of Trotsky.

The belief that the primary division of humanity is the nation is revisionist, not just revisionist but one of the main rhetorics of fascists and nazis, according to which the superiority of one nation over every other separates "Good" from "Bad". There is no "National Communism"; there is a "National Way to Communism", no Socialist Nationalism, no Left-Wing Nationalism. Any ideology that puts the nation before the people and culture before the workers, that ideology is not leftist, socialist, or Marxist, but rather some type of Falangism more or less moderate.

Be warned of these reactionaries and fascists pretending to be Socialists: do not fall for their rhetoric and stand your ground. The liberation of the proletariat includes everyone, all people of all nations, everywhere on Earth. No tolerance for the intolerants, no war but the class war, no enemy but the bourgeoisie. Remember, comrades, the revolution is red, rainbow, black, pink, blue, and every colour because the only struggle that unites us is against the oppression of Capitalism. The only things we have to lose from this liberation are our chains.

#marxism #socialist #communism #leftism #antifascism #anti capitalism #lgbtq #gay #lesbian #trans #anti reactionary #anti conservative #progressivism #workers solidarity #international solidarity #solidarity forever #workers rights #workers of the world unite #activism

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snipsnipsnippy · 7 months

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On Ahsoka vs. Kenobi Shows

I wrote this as a rebuttal to one of those Anakin is a monster and the Jedi are innocent victims who did nothing wrong ever posts, and I decided I didn't want to bring attention to it, and I had my own things to say.

There's this idea going around that the Anakin we see in both Ahsoka and Kenobi are mutually exclusive and one of these shows "got" him and the other is propaganda.

Simply in the timing of these, yes, Anakin feels different between these two narratives because he is. Kenobi takes place about 9 BBY where we see Darth Vader approaching the heights of his darkness. The light in him is squashed. Anakin isn’t coming out. The only time we hear his voice is to tell Obi-Wan that Vader killed Anakin, that the man he once loved is gone, which is in my opinion refutes its own statement, because that wasn’t for Vader’s gain. If his only goal is to destroy Obi-Wan or hurt him, why say this? It was only to show mercy to Obi-Wan’s conscience. It was the smallest flash of the Padawan Anakin we saw. Which is to say, there is a lot of growth we see in Anakin from Padawan to even the start of the Clone Wars and certainly by the end of it.

So when we see him in Ahsoka, whether you think of it as a recollection, a mystic guide, or Anakin himself, the context of his character growth matters a literal fuckton. Ahsoka takes place about 11 ABY. 20 years later. And Anakin has changed greatly in that time, beyond literally dying. The entire point of the original trilogy was to show Anakin’s redemption from Darth Vader. He’s turned back to the light by the end of ROTJ, or at least some part of him has. Even in the flashbacks, these are 2-4 years after when we see him in the Kenobi flashback. One shows Anakin as he is a teenager in a practice fight against the man he called his brother or father and the others where he is in a literal war zone.

The way Ahsoka’s Anakin is presented is not as a true flashback. It’s a sort of a play presented by current Anakin of their past. So it’s Anakin inserting his history as Darth Vader into his history as this funny older brother Jedi. These flashback scenes were designed to help Ahsoka reconcile that Anakin is neither wholly good nor wholly bad. The point was not for him to feel like General Skywalker or Darth Vader. It was for all of that history to be in one character. If the goal of Kenobi was to free Darth Vader of Anakin to fight the darkness, then the goal of Ahsoka is to remove the separation of the two, to restor balance. If you walked out of Ahsoka thinking Anakin was fully good, you didn’t pay attention. If you walked out Kenobi thinking Anakin was fully evil, you didn’t pay attention.

From the time we meet him, we are told he will bring “balance to the Force”. This doesn’t mean he will become a great Jedi. This didn’t even have to becoming a Sith, certainly not to the extent of Vader's genocide, but equal and opposite reactions and all. In order to balance the dark and light, he must have experience in both. Balance includes the dark and the light, which is the sort of Anakin we see in Ahsoka, using this mix of the dark and light. If you’re going to be mad that Anakin is not pure evil incarnate, you’re in the wrong universe. We are explicitly told that this is not the case. That Anakin is not fully evil. “Good” people do bad things and “Bad” people do good things.

You can’t ignore that these stories are told by their main characters experiences. The way that both Obi-Wan and Ahsoka view Anakin is incredibly important as well as the point of their lives this view is in. Obi-Wan saw Anakin as a reflection of his merit. Anakin’s successes were his own, as well as his failures, and being the only witness to Anakin’s darkest failure, his perception is cast in this darkness. Ahsoka never had this experience. She knew he’d become Vader, but she’d left him when he was still very much a Jedi and she still looked up to him. She remembered him as good and leaned on those memories for support, believing that Anakin was always inside. When she hears of him again, he’s killed his master, not for his own gain but to save his son. Compound this with the fact that she’d been talking with Luke who shared this same sentiment about his father, that yes, he'd done terrible heinous things, but there was always good in him.

All this is to bring us back to the core of this godforsaken universe. The entire message underlying each and every Star Wars project is about redemption. From Anakin to Boba Fett to Han or Ben Solo, Reva, Hux, Kallus, Bo-Katan, I could go on... There has always been this belief that no one no matter the evils they have committed can still do good and find good in their heart if they only make that choice. This doesn’t make them intrinsically good or evil. This doesn’t make heroes or villains. This just makes people who walk both sides. No, Anakin’s atrocities are certainly not excused by any number of good deeds, and he is by no means “good”, but the message in all of Star Wars is that there are no truly good or bad people, no heroes and villains. Even the light and dark sides of the Force are not wholly good or evil. Their defining traits are selfishness and selflessness. There is good and bad in both of these extremes.

Ahsoka is also just getting started. Kenobi’s story is finished. Of course, their character development is going to be different at this point. This is the point where we’re watching Ahsoka step into her own self-led narrative. And her sluggish pace is a valid criticism of the character, but it’s not the final word on her story. I'm excited to see more.

#star wars #im not usually on the defend anakin team #but i think hes a fascinating character #and i hate this black and white interpretation #and i really think Ahsoka did him right #the jump between general to vader #chefs kiss #he is both #anakin skywalker #darth vader #ahsoka #kenobi #obi wan kenobi #ahsoka tano #vktxt

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