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sudokuplayer · 7 months

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MY LOVE IS A WEAPON THROWN ONTO THE OBLIVION OF YOUR BODY (taken from booklet of original art and essays by Sufjan Stevens, written to accompany his new album Javelin)

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1.MY LOVE My first love was an involuntary sound – the music of the spheres – a subdued, white-noise shuddering of my heart, a fluster of hummingbird vibrations that I could taste in the prenatal hemispheres of my mouth, body against body and brain against brain, two conjoined selves conjuring an off-shore thunderstorm in the horizontal distance, dazzling with flashes of metallic music and elemental chaos in the safe harbor of my mother’s womb. There was no light and no dark, no semblance of simile or semaphore. There was only the blurred and audible presence of a distant and divine voice hovering above the waters where I balanced between the prism of absence and presence on an inflatable dirigible of sea foam, wandering into the oleaginous abyss with a half-smile of hazardry and wizardry – my maiden voyage into the “unbeknownst” of oblivion. For what did I really know at this point in my primordial mindlessness? Nothing at all. I was struck dumb, created from ignorance and ether, first without function or features, then without order or form. I was sensation and consciousness postponed, a wet and placid portion of monotonous fruit cut in quarters awaiting heaven’s blessing. My only occupation at this point was to occupy, be occupied, preoccupy, and prevail nature in a womb-world of benevolence and buoyancy. The music of the heartbeat of the universe danced me to sleep. Within this realm, I was love and life supreme, undivided by thought, word and deed, a small promise kept until the act of doing would undo me for good. My birth was my undoing. And then I was born into oblivion.

2.IS I remember in college, falling in love for the first time, two spring months of rapture, residing on the tail end of a helium balloon. I was so giddy about everything: washing the dishes, tying my shoes, scrambling eggs, binding books, pulling berries off juniper trees. My infatuation had such an arrogant persuasion on the world around me. Everything as metaphor ascribed with romance. I remember, while mowing lawns on the college campus, finding an injured fledgling crow by the dining hall. I carried it to the biology lab, where we called a woman who ran an animal sanctuary from her home. She met us on a bike with a wicker basket. “You are doing the universe a great favor,” she said, holding the bird to her breast, like Mother Goose. The event provided endless fodder: for prose poems and folk songs and long conversations on the roof of the aspirin factory, where we got drunk on Boone’s Farm sangria, speculating on cosmic intentions and the order of the universe. So much meaning, so little time. I was young and dumb and in love. Guided by a perverse curiosity and a voracious sensation-of-the-imagination pivoting at the tip of my tongue, I marveled at the mysteries of life laid out before me, awaiting in the calm commotion between innocence and experience.

3.A WEAPON And then experience pummeled me. Many years later, after the long-suffering exhaustion of life had driven me into the bleak underbelly of realism, my most profound thought was sad and static: that nothing really matters, nobody loves me, and loneliness would always be my most devoted companion. In my new sobering worldview, absent of love, I began to encounter everything as an object without meaning, without modifier. The homeless man selling day-old newspapers on the subway was just a homeless man selling day-old newspapers on the subway. There was no metaphor, no rapture, no cosmic intentions. I had to ask myself: does this make the man, the newspaper, the subway, or myself any less meaningful? No. Quite the opposite. For what resided in that substantial vacancy where I was always prone to symbolize the world to death is exactly what I needed right then: Opportunity. Presence of Mind. Peace On Earth. Stable Stoicism. Absence of Metaphor. Responsibility. And Hard Facts. That was my prayer: to shake off the doting artistry of an over-eager poet with a proclivity to create dreams from doldrums; to approach the world as a concrete object, a thing to be held, not a thing to behold, or allegorized; to remain at peace and in careful jurisprudence in spite of the resentful intonation of my overarching loneliness that devastated innocent bystanders with all the magic castles of the imagination. I told myself: I must snuff out the candle of candy-corn dreams. I must soldier on like a dead-end daydream undeterred. I must be steadfast in the stolid presence and essence of common sense and survival. I must be true to life internal and reside in resignation at last.

4.THROWN My second love was less ecstatic, but more tragic: the “gift” of sight – an elemental flash of lightning, which struck me like a bag of metal shavings thrown out onto ice reflecting back at the centerpiece of my sternum. A sucker punch to the chest. My cold consciousness came into sharp focus, rattled by illuminating waves invading everything around me. The light was loud and extraordinary. And even with my eyes closed, my pupils began pontificating at the pornography of sight, and I was momentarily carved into madness. Seeing is believing is birth. I shuddered and shirked at the tangible evidence of something else – the others – the imposition of a sensation outside myself, in which everything was separated into opposable armies: the land from the waters, the air from the earth, the seasons from the doldrums, the seen from the unseen, sin from sainthood, light from dark, good from evil. Everything was put in its place by the curse of namesake. The world was now before me, beneath me, above me, and ultimately against me, a pressure foot pressed down on all sides. I felt a cold claustrophobia, empty and alone, trans-natal and tragic, baffled by the violence of this new environmental context. And to think I was just a silly beansprout of a thing shivering under the medical lights, squirming like an open earthworm, now tasked with this terrible act of naming. God gave me a pen and a pad of parchment paper. “Transcribe your feelings and your findings,” she said. “Do your thing. First thought, best thought.” I did as I was commanded, a dutiful sea urchin inching its way to the possibility of words and wisdom.

5.ONTO A world without language was once the indication of certain death. Soundless, voiceless, nameless vapor. A typography of empty vessels. The void! But now, what of the tragedy of names, spoken into existence with the demystification of words? I was culprit and complicit, identifying all the divergences, differentiations, variations, permutations, diversities, dichotomies and double entendres. Categorizing the animals, cutting them down to size, organizing the parts of the body with the parts of speech, a fanatical grammar-game of possession, domination and death. I had to ask myself: Is this manner of identification in the name of higher knowledge even if it disregards purpose, analysis, and compassion (observation absent of intention)? And how could it be undertaken without idolatry and ulterior motive? I desired the objectivity of the photography of the baby-brain, whose fuzzy visionary reception was a delightful nebula of perfumed consciousness and joy. I wanted to see the world coherently and without discretion, discernment, reduction, and deduction – unintelligible intelligence. Instead I began to perceive how intimate knowledge generates prosperity (fullness) and progeny (fruitfulness) – of ideas and offspring. To be “made known” was to be consummated: “Adam knew Eve” – intercourse as discourse (knowledge as physical/sexual engagement). To know someone was to take possession (to gain access, in confidence and with confidentiality). The exchange would potentially unveil the secret knowledge between lovers (the nominative ordinances of arousal) – wherein posterity would become the observable antecedents of this sacred wisdom, and pleasure would be its misfortune (of infatuation and love, of chaos and order). My sexual discourse began to die a slow death of observation and objectification, a nonsense category of substances seen and deemed believable, predicating a cosmic break from the universe: a psychic rebirth, from which invisible things transformed into figures of speech, wherein figures of speech were left dead in the wake of rivulets and rivers, drowning in a molten waterfall of dread, where they would meet their maker in linguistic whimsy. My death was now new life. My reincarnation, a reverse sublimation. I was made known; therefore, I knew nothing.

6.THE For a short time, my pet peeves were my shortcomings: dry skin in the morning – brushing off the bed sheets with bits of outer insulation from my body. Was I molting? I needed to drink more bitter herbs, I thought. I had chronic stomach pain, below the clavicle, a small fist of air. Sweet antacid, mint leaves, fennel seed tea. Invisible Anxiety. The pain in my leg: a hypochondriac’s dream. Soothing myself with palm oil and camphor. Small applications on the surface. At dinner with guests, supplementing aspirin with ice-water, saying very little otherwise, a friend agreed with everyone’s assessment: “Yes, sometimes you are cold and unfeeling. You could warm it up a little.” My apparent coolness – was it a matter of objective safety? That remote vacancy which I brought to every engagement, keeping the world at arm’s length, the anthropologist’s vantage point, sustaining the presumptive: was that my vocation – the judicious spectator, an odd outlier outlining all this activity while staying behind the line of sight? As the youngest sibling, I was always evaluating my older sisters with fierce judgment from the corner of the room, just out of reach: eavesdropping on phone conversations, catching glimpses of padded bras, curling irons, and maxi pads passed between casual doorways. Taking stock of the panoply of premature adulthood (teenage pregnancy), unruly rebellion (sneaking out at night), clumsy and combative excursions with our wicked step-mother (cat fights with elegantly finger-nailed fisticuffs). I watched from a dutiful distance, careful not to engage, harboring a catalog of tragicomic events and all their moral assessments in order to avoid the worst-case scenario for myself. I was in the world, but not of it. I learned from the mistakes of others: that I was nothing more than a mistake waiting to happen, potential energy. I learned from the mistletoe to keep watch overhead so as to avoid the dangling modifier of accidental affection. I learned from the stone in my shoe to keep walking through the pain with a staggering refrain in my step, a constant reminder of the brokenness of my body and the indefatigable self-loathing of my own self-consciousness.

7.OBLIVION My third love was a surprise affection – ticklish touching and tender swaddles of terry towels and cotton cloth wrapped in armfuls of goose down feathers transfixed in the careful undertaking of childcare. A sensual delight! I was an object to be objectified, a thing to squeeze and prickle, caress and carry about in a breadbasket. I grew from a pinecone to a pine tree, from a newt to a dinosaur, from a poppy-seed to a poppy flower bursting with fireworks. This love then transferred its fornications onto something wet, wild and ornithological – a flying, feathery python ascending to its countenance as a bastion of bridegrooms in a flaming aviary chariot of leathery kisses all aimed at my elbows. Hope is a thing with bird feeders. So I watched the feathered fowl crowd around the seeds and suet, grubs and grains with dinosaur intensity, beaks and claws doing their vast prehistoric business with messy execution. My lovers cawed at their community of plumy mishaps like transcendental mother hens: nuthatch and creeper, tanager and titmouse, blue jay and junco gallivanting together like an armful of woolen throw blankets clapping the dust from their ornamental features. Our fairy dance of foreplay lasted for days. Cat calls as birdsong with balloons, iambic pentameter poems, chimes that rhymed with clanging crystals hung on fishing line, and all the fanciful costumes with sequins and fringe, flowered bell bottoms, metallic body suits, reggae music, ballroom dancing, charm bracelets, diamond rings, glimmering little earrings with fly-fishing ornaments, and, on the last day, a very long and serious monologue about global warming. Our lovemaking was quick and witty, a little slutty and clumsy – nothing more than a jaunt, a quick choreography of slaps and body slams, two pigeons in a mosh pit, working things out in juvenilia. Nature had done its work. Afterward we lounged together in the afterglow with soft pillow talk and dreams of nest eggs and parenting, protecting, foraging, feeding, and changing diapers, all the domestic labors of love. But for now, in a warm bird bath, sunning ourselves with a glistening glow, I could only think of the sweet bliss of here and now, the wetness of loving kisses on my nape, my neck, my back, my rump, my foreshortened wings and a sweet nectar nightcap. Hope is a thing deferred, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life.

8.OF My fourth love was peripatetic: a suitcase stored in an overhead bin on an airplane. Things beget things beget responsibilities. I procrastinated my life by traveling far from it. A day before the voyage, I stayed up late in the polar forces of the night, diligently packing the baggage on the couch, opened up like can of tuna fish, a glass of lemon juice on the nightstand (master cleanse), the Siamese cat washing itself, the dollar store dishes in the sink, my dirty clothes in a paper bag. The last time I had left for this kind of trip, my things were in boxes in one room on the second floor of a gated town house in God-knows-where, New York. Now everything had been transferred as in a swap meet, boxes upon boxes, things upon things, other voices, other rooms. The living room was a labyrinth of speculative journeys, a crossword puzzle of travel prompts. Outside, gale force winds rose to the occasion, knocking on the windows like unwanted guests. I imagined the weather overtaking everything in an apocalyptic frenzy: cups and saucers trembling in tongues, plastic wrap coming undone in a transparent wedding train, pillowcases falling over our heads like hard hats, ceiling fans circumnavigating the neighborhood like helicopter rides, the colored crayons on the kitchen shelf thrown asunder to make slapdash hieroglyphs all over the window panes, the mysterious penmanship of the gods! My mind was preoccupied by disaster, a force majeure, an act of God, a ball of yarn, and the four horses of the Apocalypse. I wanted nothing of it: this origami suitcase lifestyle of travel and transition. I wanted to be here and now. I wanted silence, solace, and stillness. I wanted the simplest of things: a bowl of vanilla ice cream, a warm bath, and a quiet place to sit and stitch my hand-crafted cross-stitch of rainbows and sailboats framing a sexy cartoon portrait of Dionne Warwick diligently working the lines for the Psychic Friends Network from way back in the 1990s, when every solution to every problem was just a phone call away.

9.YOUR History repeats itself, defeats itself, cheats itself, berates and beats itself. I am not historic. I am histrionics. I must hate my mother and my father. I must hate myself and take up the cross and be born again. In this way, my fifth love was an immutable shadow following me with sticky tricks and schemes, a cancerous contamination of the mind that could only be cured with the deadly venom of a cone snail. I couldn’t quite shake it, the cobalt-blue memory of a ghost haunting my sophistry, a prescient reminder that the knowledge of faith and the substance of hope were right behind me this entire time (and not something to pursue, or follow, like an ornamental object on the horizon, dazzling, elusive and alive in the distant future). The Divine Inside was a “previously known encounter.” I could never see it face to face, but only feel it in my shadow, the former patterns of an aura left behind, pushing forward, pursuing, persuading, steering and navigating my memory through the valley of the shadow of death. I wanted so desperately to “have and to hold” the real substance of things (evidence!), the physical, intimate engagement with the body and the blood, which I actively sought out in transcendental activity, prayer and supplication, the sacraments, the feasts of the saints, a metaphysical substance to salivate and sublimate within the natural order of things. But this was a false pretense. God is not natural, but supernatural. The real material of divinity is ineffable, unassailable, unknowable, unutterable, and unreal. The evidence of providence is not within our line of sight, nor within our grasp, but instead beyond and behind our physical kinesphere. It is unapproachable, unspeakable, unobservable, and ultimately “erstwhile”. And yet still we continue to feel it “under our skin” and “within the universe” of our own personal history: The Past/The Passed/The Repossessed. God is our delayed consciousness – the nameless, faceless dichotomy of our secret truth. And we are made in its indistinguishable appearance. Therefore our own true “image” is without a name or a face – a baseless, shapeless cloud hovering above the waters, a countenance of empty atmosphere (signifying nothing) – a gothic apparition, a vision of love, a dance of the eternal travesty of life, a burrowing beetle of impenetrating curiosity. Digging for the true grit of life in the eternal dirt of the universe.

10.BODY My last love was a kind of science fiction. I was out running errands at the mall when I saw a fleet of lampshades falling like flying saucers from the sky. The alien robots came to me in an escalating beam of light and said: “We come in peace! The obverse seeks to make its face shine upon you, while the inverse hides in shame.” They did their thing with my body, prodding and poking around for some good news, but at first I would have none of it. I struggled and squirmed under nylon restraints strapped onto a stainless steel operating table. I was a basket case of curmudgeonly vitriol, pointing out everything that was wrong with the world around me: Fossil fuels. Cancer. Money. Greed. Sales Tax. Frozen Yoghurt. Religion. Varicose Veins. Junk Mail. But the alien robots were unflappable. They said, “We just need a little DNA, not a diatribe,” while swabbing the insides of my mouth with a cottony Q-tip. Then, after careful intubation and a slow drip of aesthesia, I eased into the abyss. They removed my clothes and covered my body with a marshmallowy spray foam. They swaddled me into a warm cocoon of maroon goo, where I remained in stasis to the end of the ages, slowly resuming into the soft, pillowy features of my former self – pre-natal, premature, pre-conceived – a slippery and succulent primordial membrane of soupy warmth and illuminating agency awaiting, once again, the cosmic journey laid out before me like a yellow-brick road of possibilities – the secret oblivion of love, the “unbeknownst!” Within this pinprick vision, I saw a tapestry of afterbirth in afterglow as an addendum to an immaculate after-thought of rapturous joy. I was born-again in fullness and truth. I was a peanut. I was a pretzel. I was a pan-fried shrimp. I was pandemonium personified. I was once again myself waiting to happen again and again and again and again and again … until the end.

— Sufjan Stevens

#sufjan stevens #javelin

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zetsubo-bani · 20 days

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Scenes/characters I expect to see after blue revenge arc

Just to clarify, with blue revenge arc I'm referring to this mission arc we currently have. I doubt r!ciel will be defeated after the missions are over so I will probably give it a different name whatever follows after we've seen o!ciel and sebastian at the hotel.

For obvious reasons I will exclude o!ciel and sebastian, they are literally the protagonists, ofc we will see them again. Undertaker and r!ciel will also be excluded since they are the major antagonists right now and will also definitely appear again.

So let's begin:

1. An interrogation scene between layla and the reapers

Remember that layla got captured by ronald and william? I definitely expect layla to make a return once she arrived in the shinigami corp. I'm not sure if I expect ronald to be there but william definitely will be and I can also see grell and othello watching since we haven't seen the two in quite a while

2. Another interrogation scene in scotland yard headquarters

Blavat got arrested and was supposed to be put into prison and later appear in court alongsides o!ciel but since he and sebastian already escaped, blavat is the only one in prison. Considering scotland yard just freshly captured blavat, an interrogation about his motives is to be expected

3. Some focus on the midfords

Lizzy is included as well (but that was the best picture I found). They obviously need to deal with the whole drama themselves and I definitely expect them to reappear and talk to each other about what they think about the twins drama and lizzys depression

4. Sieglinde and wolfram with their research and planning

Sieglinde still has the blood samples from the sphere music hall and surely must have read what happened in the newspaper. I don't think she will just sit by and do nothing for the rest of the manga, I'm certain they will appear again somehow

5. A reunion between the servants, lau and ran mao

Sebastian and o!ciel will probably be there too (or not depending on their mission) but I do expect those 5 to see each other again and exchange how their missions went. I think that's where they will find out that snake died

6. The queen and her servants

Girlie has been awfully quiet since the twin reveal and I wonder when she will appear again. R!ciel mentioned needing to hold a audience with her but being too weak right now so who knows when she will appear again. I do think it will happen somehow

7. The p4 reuniting

I don't think we will get something too big but I definitely think they will appear again. They were part of the sphere music hall so the police was on the lookout for them anyways. I do expect them to appear again and talk to violet since we haven't seen them reunite after blavat nearly killed violet

8. Soma focus (?)

Now I wasn't sure if I should include him since I'm pretty certain he will be in the hotel that o!ciel and sebastian will visit next. But if he isn't in the hotel then he will definitely still appear afterwards. That man can not completely dip after agni died and he still falsely believes it was o!ciel

9. Tanaka (maybe with the servants?)

Tanaka is still with r!ciel and undertaker but we haven't seen him in a good while. I do think we will see him again once yana finally shows r!ciel again. I theorize that maybe we will see some reunion between the servants and tanaka but that's probably something I just really want to see. I doubt tanaka will leave r!ciels side since he did say that he's forever serving the head/heir of phantomhive and o!ciel wasn't supposed to be

10. Some flashback with vincent

That smug bastard will appear, I know it. I'm pretty sure he must have done something to end up dead so I think we will get a focus on him in a potential flashback from r!ciel. Afterall since r! ciel was raised to be the heir, I'm certain he spent more time with vincent than o!ciel did and probably did catch a few things here and there. Maybe that would explain why r!ciel caught onto the fact that something was off much quicker than o!ciel did

That was my little theory on who/what I think will appear/happen in the next arc after the missions. Hope you liked it!

If you have any corrections, additional thoughts or agree with anything, please let me know!

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bambi-kinos · 1 month

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McLennon male/female AU

So way back in June 2022, I was talking with some friends including @dovetailjoints about this Paul McCartney manip where his face was converted to a woman's:

I promptly lost my mind on account of being a huge d*ke so I started spinning up a McLennon m/f AU about it. I still think about it a lot but I also don't know if I'll ever write it or not. Looking at @erinarigby's beautiful rendering of John and Paula reminded me of it, so I am publishing these notes for the pleasure of the reading audience.

I might still return to it at some point but I am currently waist deep in my longfic and have different projects lined up after that.

John and Paula are at the fete together but Paula is being crowned the Rose Queen or whatever it was that was happening in the background. Her best friend is Dot and her closest guy friend is Ivan and she's too busy basking in the attention of winning a competition to give a single fuck about John Lennon. She already knows her worth so who gives a fuck about that guy? They do NOT have a fateful meeting at the church hall.

(The secret is that she quietly follows him on the bus and has his route memorized. Light stalking of the teenage girl kind and I bet Dot has been helping but they treat it as a big joke.)

Ivan and Len both know Paula from school before they went to gender segregated academies or whatever. Paula actually finishes her education here because her dad wants her to do it and I bet she would have been a daddy's girl through and through. Mike is still her little brother and she vacillates between doting on him and bullying him. (Older sisters can be really mean to their younger brothers, I've noticed.)

Ivan still sings her praises to John but John does not take this in the slightest bit seriously. He and the rest are convinced Paula is Ivan's secret girlfriend (it's actually platonic between them, George is the one who carries a torch for Paula) and that Ivan wants her around so that he doesn't feel lonely at Quarry Men practice.

Things finally come to a head when Paula helps Ivan carry his tea chest bass to a QM band practice. The mythical J. Paula McCartney! (She won't tell anyone what the J stands for because it's embarrassing.) Paula's face definitely catches some unwanted attention so she deliberately plays up being Ivan's girlfriend to escape it. I imagine she's pretty cold about this kind of thing and probably much more ruthless than AMAB Paul because she has to play for keeps to be taken seriously.

Then she notices John playing with banjo chords. She says something. This goes very, very poorly.

John could take direction from an AMAB Paul who showed off his skills but Paula just rocks up and makes fun of him to his face. "She doesn't even play! Ivan, muzzle your bitch and get her out of here." Doesn't help that John is immensely taken with her but he doesn't like this at all.

Years of slapslap (no kiss) ensue, Paula eventually does make her skills known to John in someway but he's able to put her down for being a girl and therefore not a threat. I have no idea how they would both develop musically but I imagine that any attempts at a collaboration between them would go immensely poorly at this stage. John would not be able to put aside the sexism and Paula would needle him mercilessly.

Eventually though they come to a sort of détente which means that their two social spheres get some measure of peace after some 2 odd years of them screaming at each other during house parties. Everyone else can tell they want to fuck each other's brains out but they both frequently declare their public loathing of each other. For some reason John makes it his business to know what the guitar girl from Allerton is doing with her time and who she is spending it with. As she gets older this might even become a more reasonable proposition as Liverpool is still a rough neighborhood and she insists on walking home by herself after dark. Eventually she and Ivan stage a public break up so that John realizes its "over" (lol) between them and stops bothering poor Ivan about it.

George is more territorial about Paula which is cute coming from a pipsqueak that John easily has 30 pounds over. Unfortunately Paula does not see George that way.

At some point Paula becomes a bit of a woman about town and starts seriously dating men. John muscles his way into this, for some god forsaken reason, and makes a nuisance of himself running off Paula's dates. More screaming matches ensue but John seems incredibly agitated about something that Paula doesn't understand.

At some point in the détente John makes it into art college. Paula makes sure to mock him to his face for being an academic failure and reminds him that he'll never graduate because he doesn't have the guts. To this end John does in fact buckle down out of pure spite. I don't know if he would actually finish but I think he'd actually develop as a painter and a sketch artist just to show her up. I don't think John Lennon of all people could bear a beautiful woman mocking him for his inadequacy.

John might go on two dates with Cynthia but I think she would be a little unsettled at how he manages to insert Paula McCartney into every single conversation, but not in a jealous way. Cynthia tracks down Paula at some public gathering and asks her if she's being bothered by John. A trio of Dot, Paula, and Cynthia forms. SLEEPOVERS etc. John settles down because Paula isn't actively dating anyone here, she has her galpals and they are extremely epic friends.

Something happens that triggers Paula and John running off on their own. I'm imagining John stealing a college teacher's keys and they drive out to get some lunch somewhere. It's an unexpectedly good gesture from John Lennon who Paula usually dismisses as a cad.

I think at some point during this conversation John would admit that he knows Paula is a good guitar player -- its just that he can't really own up to it in public. A unique moment of vulnerability from him and she responds in kind. She tells him she thinks he's the best singer she's ever heard. For the first time things are not shitty between them. John probably ruins this by honking her breasts.

Paula graduates secondary and has to decide what the fuck to do now. It is 1960, they're going to go to Hamburg eventually but not yet. John has managed to establish something with Stu and I think Paula sent George John's way because he needed support that he refused to accept from her because she's female. She's been a loner for all her life, it's not a big wrench now.

George has had a front row seat to John's Paula obsession for years now and he's both intrigued and weirded out and wants to date Paula himself.

I'm imagining some scenario where John finally goes…why not try it. What's stopping him. So he finds her at an outdoor market and he actually tries to be smooth. He catches her eye on the other side of the road and nicks a wildflower bouquet. He trips comically and almost goes down but then appears three stalls later. Paula is laughing, yes yes she thinks it's funny. He waits at the end of the strip and gives her the bouquet and they spend some quiet time together. Nothing sexual, John is just ready to try something he's never attempted before: treating a woman like a person.

Paula reciprocates and buys him something to eat probably. He really is very handsome and very intelligent. She likes him better without the quiff and says so. He succeeds in making her laugh. His hair is so red and he's still the beautiful boy she saw on the bus.

They're watching the sun set over the Mersey when she says "I was accepted to [university.] I'm leaving at the end of the week. I'm studying music."

John goes quiet but doesn't really react except to congratulate her. He knows she will do well.

He goes home and it goes poorly.

Cyn and Dot throw a big good bye party for Paula to celebrate her leaving home. Their pearl is escaping into the big wide world. Paula is deeply unhappy. Something is missing. She gets very very drunk. George shows up and tells her that John and Stu have secured a gig in Hamburg. They'll be leaving at the end of the week too. For some reason John was really, really intent on leaving all of a sudden. Paula definitely locks herself in her childhood bathroom and cries her eyes out.

John notably does not put in an appearance at the party even though Stu and his hot friend Pete Shotton definitely do along with George. Everyone knows that John and Paula have a thing so where the hell is he? Even if they don't like each other they've still been a big part of each other's lives -- John has an arrest record because he punched out the guy who spiked Paula's drink a few months ago and she screamed bloody murder in the police station until they let him go. What gives?

John still does not put in an appearance. Someone sees a creeper by the front door but he slides away before anyone can see him.

Around 4am Paula finally drags herself upstairs upset and wasted and not sure why she's unhappy. She hears the rocks clatter against her window and by the time she pokes her head out John is risking death by climbing up the drainpipe. She almost screams but helps him inside instead.

John is a MESSY PERSON and he promptly goes to pieces in her arms. What am I supposed to do without you, he sobs. Aren't you going to miss me? Aren't you going to think about me? Don't I matter to you at all?

They have another small argument but its not very serious and its clearly flirting at this point. They're both pretty bombed so they just end up stripping and holding each other.

Jim finds them the next morning. It goes poorly.

Paula decides she's going to Hamburg with John. He told her they need a fifth person and he gave her the eyes. She knows what he wants and she knows what she wants and she isn't wasting money on some stupid school. She doesn't want to be a music teacher anyway.

Jim informs her she is not going to Germany in the company of four randy boys much less with the town ne'er do well John Lennon. Paula bides her time and packs a bag and her guitar. She escapes out the window the morning that they're set to leave for Hamburg and shows up at the last second. John hugs her tightly and doesn't let go for several hours. She just blew her uni placement to be with him.

Hamburg happens. It goes poorly but also very well. John suddenly gets a lot more sensitive to their accommodations. If it was all blokes he wouldn't care but now that they're out of the cradle of Liverpool he's suddenly sharply aware of how many people are watching them, and watching Paula, and how vulnerable she actually is. Paula adjusts to the German catcalls and otherwise refuses to appear ruffled. Honestly don't know how to render this particular section except that John would get an early education on how a woman and a bandmate can be treated. This isn't Cynthia being pawed at by a German sailor, this is his bandmate Paula having to dance away from blokes trying to climb up the stage to get to her. "Alarmed" doesn't quite cover it.

For Paula its an education. She's never performed live in front of an audience before; this version of Paul never performed with the QM. Gelling with the band out of no where is a hell of a challenge but Hamburg still makes them. She surprises John by engaging in the loogie races and by being intrigued by the sex workers around town. I think that she and John still wouldn't be having sex at this point because John is still absorbing all the new experiences and it's easier to keep her on a shelf where he can admire her tits without actually trying to fuck her. In John's mind he's keeping the upper hand by not ruining Paula by having sex with her. In his mind he's protecting her from something; he doesn't feel worthy of her and if they get physical he's scared of making her "dirty."

Paula still has ways of unsettling him though. Imagining John's face if she shows him the underbust corset she bought without a shirt to go under it. He's only seen her nipples in the dark before so seeing her dressed up like one of the street girls makes him pretty feral and that's on top of the prellies.

Paula only performs dressed this way once which results in some mass chaos at whatever club they're performing at that night, kek.

Honestly Hamburg is still intensely deranged and Lennon and McCartney's fixations one each other becomes even more pronounced once they start writing songs together. I can't imagine how their music would change once they have access to Paula's vocal range. Probably something more Nightwish-esque as I think Paula being a woman would make John more tolerant or intrigued with operatic styles just because he wants to hear her belt it.

George still gets deported for being underage but I think John and Paula end up staying in Hamburg together because Paula doesn't light a condom on fire this time. She's too busy putting it on John. I like to think they spent Christmas in Germany performing and boning.

They finally make it home after New Year's. Paula is half dead and John is barely a person because he's full up on amphetamines and sex. Mimi won't let John into the house because he had the nerve to take off with a scarlet woman to Germany without asking permission which means…

Jim does not officially let John into the house so Paula sneaks him in through her window. The band recuperates through out January and John gets used to sleeping next to his lady. It's a quiet hibernation period that they think back on fondly later.

At this point Paula is somewhat disgraced for running off with John Lennon and once again John gets to see this up close and personal which is discomfiting for him since its his actions that are visiting these consequences back on Paula's head. He didn't quite understand how intense the judgment was before he saw it aimed her way. It forces him to grow up a little.

But he still takes her to Paris. Common expectation is that they're running away to get married. Neither of them want to get married yet but they're also doing the Lennon-McCartney dance with each other where they become screamingly jealous of anyone who looks at their partner.

Things progress to 1963. They meet Brian, shit happens idk. Beatlesmania kicks off. I have this idea that maybe Paula crossdresses as a man. She is beautiful but she still has a strong jaw and her breasts are small enough to bind without much effort. She is also still the tallest member of the Beatles and she easily has a full inch over John in height (which regularly leads to the best erections of John's entire life.) Being an Amazon has its advantages and this one means she can present herself as a man to secure a unified front with the other Beatles.

I am unable to render how Beatlemania would change if Paula was the single girl in the Fab Four but I can imagine how it would change their look -- 3 beautiful matching boys and the sole female. Lots of color play in my mind going on and of course there's the quiet understanding that Lennon and McCartney belong to each other.

Paula "accidentally" gets exposed as a woman when John loosens her undergarments as a prank and her breasts pop out during a performance. (I don't think anyone would see her nipples, it just be immediate cleavage and a button pops off her jacket.) I am unable to render how this would go, I can't imagine anything except a huge uproar that would send the Beatles into the stratosphere. This would become a moment that gets debated for decades, whether it was a prank from John or if John and Paula came up with it together.

Paula has incentive to do something like this: Brian won't let John and Paula get married because it would disrupt the Beatles image.

1965 - the big one, I think. Paula can be a woman in public now which results in the photoshoot that breaks the world. Referred to only as "the Beatles wedding." It's just too good to pass up.

Paula gets to model a few hundred different wedding gowns (most of these are separate from the boys just because there's so many and she looks good in everything) with various accoutrements anc accessories. There is a portion where the boys will be dressed up as grooms and they'll be getting special sessions with her each.

John is a complete and utter bastard leading up to and throughout the days of this shoot and its commonly conjectured in Beatles fandom circles for decades afterwards that he was seething with jealousy and humiliation -- he should have married her years ago so that this kind of spectacle couldn't come to pass, and he knows it, but he can't change it now and he's furious that she's dressing up as a bride when she's not even really his. And on top of it George and Ringo are getting to see her before he does and they won't tell him what she looks like.

"I hate you and I will never forgive you for as long as I live," is what George tells John when he asks how it went, what she wore, what it was like. John is hurt and confused.

"You're a lucky man John Lennon. Don't squander it," is what Ritchie tells John when he asks about it. "Make sure to brush your teeth and whatnot though."

John is nervous as hell even though its just some stupid photo shoot and they've done thousands of those already. Brian won't let him drink to calm down so John now has to face Paula in her wedding gown while completely sober.

There's a modern trend of "photos of grooms seeing their brides in their dresses for the first time" and I think all 3 of the boys would get these with Paula. It might even be enough to power several magazines, idk. Collectors items and whatnot. The McHarrison issue, the McStarr issue, the McLennon issue…

Photogs definitely capture the moments leading up to the reveal and then the seeing, the shock, the surprise, the awe. George started laughing and flung himself at her and danced her around, Ritchie did that presses-his-fist-to-his-face thing men do sometimes when they're overcome, yes, Paula is an absolute joy. She made sure to insist on having all different dresses per day because she didn't want repeats. Her boys deserve something brand new every time.

John though. Oh, John. Very nervous, trying not to be, clearly hating the camera, he doesn't turn when he's supposed to and he only reacts when she touches his shoulder and calls his name. Honestly I can see them leaning into a beauty and the beast angle with these two.

If there was any doubt before there isn't now. It's love. Everything else fades away and it's just John and Paula being themselves, except they were always in love, weren't they.

The world promptly goes completely insane upon the release of the Beatles wedding photographs. They got what they asked for and then some. Honestly John and Paula probably have one iconic photo spread of just the two of them that day and in that timeline, that portrait blots out pretty much anything else of cultural significance from 1965-1968. The world turns on but the wedding portraits from that day is what ends up being the most iconic part of Beatlemania.

after that IDK, I'm not really capable of thinking past that. I just like the idea of the wedding photoshoot and how John and Paula came from those humble beginnings. I think they'd definitely have children together but I don't know if they could manage a stable family unit or if they'd be able to save the band from the break up. But there wouldn't be any faffing around about "the Lennon and McCartney rivalry" or "they always hated each other." The wedding shoot was too real.

Notably, John and Paula did attend the premier of A Hard Day's Night with Paula in a white dress and John in a black tux. Symbolism.

I think by the time the Get Back sessions happen John and Paula have an almost three year old and Paula is heavily pregnant with their second or third child. Instead of the deadline being Ringo's acting job they're trying to get one last project in because the second baby is due in February.

I think with Paula's height (she would still be taller than John after all and this time she's wearing high heels to make the point) and her androgyny they would also get some mileage out of early boundary pushing by dressing her up in the boys clothes, so the Shea uniforms would definitely make an appearance unchanged except Paula's tits are out to here and John spends a lot of the stadium concert unbuttoning her jacket every time she buttons it back up.

Just occurred to me that Help! would be a much more straight Dr. No parody especially with Paula as the built in Bond girl. AHDN would be more similar as a documentary with surreal comedy elements but Help! would definitely be more ridiculous and Johnny gets his girl in the end haha

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

These are all my notes from last year. Thought you guys would appreciate. As I was writing this out last year, I remember being caught between two impulses: the "John and Paul would be a pregnant teenagers couple" idea (which I see many other based users have agreed with!) and then the "Beatlemania but if Paul was a woman" idea. In the end I went with the Beatlemania Paula because that's more interesting as a story especially with Paula having to exploit her androgyny for success. That being said I think Paula would absolutely be the Domme to John's sub, there's no way a Beatlemania Paula doesn't have John's balls in a cage and John liked being controlled by a strong woman. He's not allowed to finish until she tells him that he can.

I remember thinking that they would have their first child in 1965, with the idea being that Paula is pregnant during the Beatles Wedding Photoshoot, which would take place sometime in the winter so that the fashion designers could sell their wares with Paula advertising them. IMO Paula would make John wear condoms for years but once Ed Sullivan happens John makes a disturbingly sincere plea to trash them and Paula assents. Two months later she's pregnant after John's been climaxing inside her multiple times a day <3 But honestly, she's rewarding him for being so fucking brave all the time, he's unironically earned it.

I also think that a female Paula is still has full on baby rabies and by late 1964 she's desperate to get pregnant by John so they can finally start their family. There's an element of rebellion too because she'd be furious with Brian for not letting her and John get married and retaliates by having out of wedlock children.

#mclennon #my writing #talktalktalk #thank you for the art #the beatles #fanfiction

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infiniteeight8 · 3 months

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you once mentioned that Tony would most likely turn into a corvid when hit with an animal transformation spell, and I've been obsessed with the idea ever since because it makes so much sense!

Could you please write something with Corvid!Tony ? Anything I swear, I love it so so much

Stephen doesn’t know the difference, but having read a bunch of articles on corvids, I am going to specify here that Tony is a crow. Which type I did not narrow down. LOL

The sound of footsteps drew Stephen’s attention away from the relic he’d been showing to Tony. Apprentice Mehra was hurrying into the relic hall with a dull silver dish containing a dozen similarly dull silver spheres. “Slower, Apprentice,” Stephen called out. “If you don’t have time to be careful with those, you shouldn’t be handling them at all.”

Mehra slowed to a stop and shot Stephen a bright smile. “It’s fine, Master Strange, they’re secure!” He gestured with the dish… and one of the spheres rolled off the top, slipped over the lip of the dish, and skittered across the floor with a musical noise before bumping into Tony’s foot. He barely had time to yelp before he was engulfed in a swirl of silver light.

“You were saying?” Stephen said dryly. He crossed the room and took the dish from Apprentice Mehra before turning to check on Tony.

Where Tony had stood there was now only a bird with glossy black feathers. A crow, or maybe a raven; Stephen didn’t know enough to tell the difference.

“Crap,” Mehra breathed quietly.

The crow cawed loudly and hopped a few times in place, then turned to look at Stephen.

“It’s temporary,” Stephen assured Tony. “You’ll be human again in a couple of hours.”

Tony let out a truly deafening series of caws and then launched himself into flight. He headed straight for Mehra and proceeded to beat the apprentice about the head with his wings, cawing the whole time.

“Is he okay?” Mehra asked desperately, trying ineffectively to shield his head with his arms.

“Just angry,” Stephen said dryly.

Mehra swore as a wingbeat caught him solidly across the face. “Can you call him off?!”

Stephen considered. “I could try, but I don’t think I will. Consider this a learning experience.”

#IronStrange #triple drabble

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abybweisse · 5 months

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I like your idea about Druitt and Unny still in cahoots. It fits well with them both involved in what occurred at Weston. Redmond called on uncle Druitt so he knows the secrets of the Music Hall and the school. And of course none of it would've been possible w/o Unny, and there they both are on the Campania. I never did buy Undertaker's excuse for refusing to reap Druitt or let him be killed. Your idea makes much more sense. Toboso makes us laugh at Druitt so we won't suspect him 2 much, right?

⚠️ long post ⚠️

Undertaker and Druitt connections

I suspect that -- unless they are somehow related, and they might be -- Undertaker first became interested in what Druitt was up to when the viscount began selling off children and young women at auctions, if not sooner (and I'll get to that later in this reply).

If Undertaker was called upon to remove remains from any of the buyers, or from Druitt's estate, he'd want to know what they were doing to those victims/bodies. We know he's picked up remains from Phantomhive Manor on numerous occasions; Sebastian has the other servants pile up the remains from the circus troupe attack and cart them to some back or side gate for Undertaker to collect them. Most likely, this was done whenever there was a failed attack at the manor, even before our "Ciel" became earl and master. The Phantomhives, going back however far they go, would have been common targets to anyone who wanted to get rid of the queen's watchdog. And we know that before other servants were even hired by Sebastian and our earl, assassins and thieves were showing up on a nearly nightly basis. Somewhat regularly, in any case.

We now know quite a bit about how our earl ended up with his current servants, but we've learned very little about how he ended up with his various connections; we don't even know how he connected with Vincent's old, remaining network. I imagine that one of the first reconnections he made (besides Madam Red and Tanaka, of course) would be Undertaker. People would show up to the manor, Sebastian would kill them, and then what? Sebastian would have asked his young master how he wants to dispose of the bodies. At first, our earl might have suggested to bury them on the vast estate. But, as the numbers mounted, this would have taken more time and space, plus it could open them up for investigation, if remains were found (by others) that weren't proper burials in the family cemetery. Another option would be to dump them off the grounds, as far away as possible. This could still become a problem. Our earl would remember the creepy undertaker that popped up around the manor (and possibly also the estate grounds) from time to time, back when his predecessor was in charge. During the instruction both boys received about being earl and watchdog, Vincent might have already explained why he has Undertaker in his network... at least the professional reason, though definitely not the personal reason.

I don't know whether Druitt was ever in Vincent's circle, a member of the evil nobles. They probably attended Weston together, but we don't know if he's the Scarlet House prefect. Either way, Druitt might have actually become a subject for investigation before. There's even a scene during the curry arc that could be a hint to that. The jeweled lady that Druitt recalls might actually be Vincent in drag, at some event years ago, there to investigate Druitt or someone else in attendance.

We have no idea how long ago Druitt started trafficking humans, so perhaps it was related to that... and he just got away to do it again and again... much like we've seen him get away with the things he does while our earl is watchdog. Even when Druitt is arrested, he goes free. Probably bribery to corrupt officials. Some of the higher-up ones might be clients/buyers. Yana-san really drives home how much corruption and fraud and abuse there is in her Victorian England. Sadly, it's not too far from reality.

Doctors were largely detested during the era because of some shady practices that many engaged in. Practitioners would be hired to have people committed to asylums... or even to examine girls to see if they were still virgins, so their families could prostitute them out and charge more for their first assignations. Surgeons (for practice) and anatomists got their human dissection subjects through various means; some were acceptable and others were downright despicable. They prescribed dangerous substances as medicines; sometimes the "cures" really were worse than the conditions.

Though Druitt doesn't have a medical practice, he has a medical license. Before he even got into selling live humans, I wouldn't be surprised if he was involved with supplying and/or buying corpses for study. It would be interesting if Druitt cut out the grave robbers by going straight to undertakers for a supply, because he seems like the sort of person who would do a lot of studying on his own, particularly since he's an aristocrat with no intention of opening a public medical practice. Druitt's connections to Undertaker might go back quite a long way, maybe even back to Druitt's Weston years... when Undertaker would have likely re-entered Vincent's life. Who knows, but I'd be very interested to find out.

When Sebastian investigates all the people with events for the social season, narrowing down the ones that might line up with Jack the Ripper, we don't know where he gets all of his information. It's entirely possible that some of it comes from Undertaker, particularly about people like Druitt. Which supports the idea that Undertaker might already have a history of dealing with the remains of people who have passed through Druitt's doors.

Well, they definitely meet before the events of the Campania, since they already have some sort of dealings with each other, including the Aurora Society. Druitt could easily be the one who introduces Undertaker to Stoker. I very much doubt it would be the other way around, with Stoker making introductions between Undertaker and Druitt.

I'm sure there was more I wanted to get to here, but this reply has been sitting in draft for ages, and I've forgotten whatever else I'd wanted to say. 😬

But Druitt has got to supply more to Undertaker than simply laughter. Knowledge and/or experimentation that leads to medical technology would be very helpful for his current activities.

And we can't ignore the possibility they are also related. Particularly if Undertaker ends up being Cedric K. Rosewood, Rosenthal, Rosedale or any other last name that would make him sound right at home in Scarlet House....

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dadbastiandisaster · 1 year

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It’s always stuck out to me that Sebastian has such a thing about being seen naked? He says it almost outright in Book of murder (I don’t have the manga with me but it’s something along the lines of “never in the contract have I been seen by humans such a state of undress” or something, and he’s got the little anger marks on his face); when he does the do with Beast in book of Circus he is still fully dressed, and when he has all his outfit changes for infiltrating the sphere music hall with Nina he’s like holding his shirt closed when Ciel barges in (?)

I guess it’s probably supposed to be a little joke about ‘oh you thought you were going to get fanservice of Sebastian but you’re not >:)’ but it’s so at odds with the rest of his character? Like, he’s a Demon, and he’s not exactly modest (refer once again to him shagging Beast for information) so???

My best guess is he thinks it’s undignified but please give me your opinions kuro-tumblr

#black butler #kuroshitsuji #sebastian michaelis #leave your thoughts in the notes #i am curious as to want you all think #original post

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midnight-in-town · 8 months

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Orphanage of livestock

Alrighty, buckle up guys, time for another very cringy theory. :D Big thanks to my friend @dorkshadows for all our discussions about the current arc; this arc is really making us wrack our brain for ideas. xD

To start, here's a reminder as to where we stand vis à vis bizarre dolls:

UT first used to edit those corpses' cinematic records with fake memories he made during the Campania arc, but it quickly changed during the Weston arc to "longing for the future"...

...which are "incomplete fragments that the dead crave about the future they were to have had". Since UT didn't explain anything new ever since, it's likely that the records are still being edited with this method in the current arc.

Then, with the blue sect arc, we were introduced to the use of blood transfusions as "fuel" for the bizarre dolls' longevity...

...and our!Ciel's side set out to crash these collect operations in order to weaken the Undertaker and real!Ciel's side.

Mey Rin's investigation confirmed the existence of one blood collect site...

and so did Bard's:

However, in Finny and Snake's investigation, while the orphanage did sort the children into 4 groups too, the elder siblings pointed out that...

...not only have they never any blood drawn from them, but the orphanage is rather forcing them to attend classes, in order to develop their "aptitude" based on the tests they took when they arrived. Most importantly, when Ginny fledged, the chief of staff said...

...that "the aptitude honed there will make contributions to the world" (as a child with Corgi aptitudes, Ginny's classes were about physical activities "like gymnastics or horse riding").

Investigating Ginny having fledged, that's when Finny, Snake and the elder siblings discovered yet another lab (very similar to the one in Sphere music hall) with evidence of blood collection, but also of organ collection.

So, since this arc with Finny and Snake heavily parallels the circus arc, I was wondering if the purpose of dissecting these poor kids was similar to what Kelvin and the doc did with the kids they abducted:

In other words, whoever is behind this operation (UT is involved, but he might not be the only Shinigami deserter behind this) are maybe killing the kids to collect blood but also many different organs, so that they can probably upgrade their latest bizarre dolls (both in body and record).

Under read more for additional explanations/speculations:

1) the orphanage collects the children's organs to physically upgrade BDs ?

Most likely by grafting new organs or body parts (taken from the orphanage kids who fledged) on bizarre dolls who need them.

For example, considering the Polaris = Joker theory: back in the circus arc, Joker said:

and then Seb cut his second hand. Yet, when Polaris attacked Agni (who was quite strong), Agni noticed that...

...his opponent was very quick and strong. So if Polaris is indeed Joker, then it's likely BD!Joker has new strong arms.

Additionally, crack thought, but we witnessed both Doll and real!Ciel suddenly collapsing, which we automatically linked to needing more blood to keep on functioning, but if they really got new organs from those kids, then maybe...

...the issue we witnessed isn't anemia, but some sort of graft versus host disease? Or both lmao. (I'm totally reaching here)

2) the orphanage also collects the children's organs to gain more sponsors ?

Additionally to the Bizarre Dolls, these organs could be used to gain more sponsors, similarly to Bravat who used to provide blood transfusions to parliamentarians who suffered from kidney failure:

Only rich folks would have enough money to buy organs if they needed it, so they'd make good sponsors for this super expensive BD project.

Of course, the risk of graft v. host disease would be very high as well but, since Othello said "they learnt more than they ought to have" upon visiting the Sphere music hall's lab (ch125), maybe they figured out about how to make a successful graft, on top of blood types ? (Or, most likely, the ones running this clown show just don't care about their sponsors dying once they've gotten the money ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ exactly like Bravat who killed the parliamentarians)

3) the orphanage collects the children's organs for experimentation

This would explain why Finny finds a lot of similarities between this orphanage and the German lab by which he was experimented on for enhanced strength.

Additionally, this would explain Snake's weird comment on "orphanages being terrible places", if he too was also experimented on as a child (which is how and why he understands snakes) :

Lastly, back to the Polaris = Joker idea, Agni mentioned that Polaris had "unimaginable strength". As we know, Agni was one of the strongest characters, so for him to qualify his opponent as "unimaginably strong", it is likely that Polaris has some kind of enhanced strength.

So do they research about enhancing human (or bizarre doll) strength or longevity? Or is it research on cinematic records? Your guess is as good as mine but, as already proved with the circus arc, no one will miss these orphans...

...making this "the best recycling scheme" one can think of. T_T

4) the orphanage assigning orphans to classes based on aptitude tests is used to upgrade BD's records or lack of soul:

The kids are sorted into 4 groups based on the aptitude test they took. Literally quoting the manga:

Mastiff kids learn reading, writing and skills needed to be senior servants managing large manors

Corgi kids specialize in physical activities

Collie kids learn all the skills to make a living as a domestic servant and martial arts

Pomeranian kids (kids who scored the highest on the tests) study latin, maths and games

These orphans are told they are saved and then to envision their future based on their aptitude and what they're forced to learn in their respective classes. This is probably done so that they will develop very specific "longing for the future" which, again, are "incomplete fragments that the dead crave about the future they were to have had".

So, once they fledged and are killed, their "longing for the future" are probably extracted and used one way or another. Since the records are already edited, the goal behind this might be to create some sort of a soul substitute, as hinted by Jane in the Heathfield investigation arc:

and it sure would explain why the chief of staff said the aptitudes can contribute to the world:

That's why something like a change in the afternoon tea menu of the pomeranian kids (from lemon drizzle cake to lemon tart) would actually matter, because taste is probably one of the parameters that can influence the "shape of a soul" or something.

There are 4 groups in the orphanage; in the previous investigations that mostly meant 4 blood types, but this time it might mostly mean 4 star lords:

Mastiff kids for used for Polaris, who defines himself as a butler (he's not real!Ciel's butler tho++) (Joker?)

obviously Pomeranian kids are used for Sirius (real!Ciel)

For Canopus and Vega, it's a bit trickier, but I propose Corgi kids for Vega/Layla, despite her probably being high born, because she worked as a nurse helping veterans with rehabilitation, which looked like this :

This leaves Collie kids for Canopus...

even if Canopus' true identity is really the least obvious one right now. FYI, some Japanese speaking fans have discussed that Canopus is the maid Jane and she indeed worked as a maid and knew how to fight, so it fits (I personally have another theory in mind for Jane, but Canopus!Jane definitely has some basis). If not Jane (or Doll, like some fans keep saying), Canopus can still appear during Seb & Ciel's investigation, so we'll just keep these details about Collie kids in mind.

I'm sure the truth behind Snake & Finny's investigation, as well as the next one with Ciel and Seb, will provide us with more hints about how the bizarre dolls and, more specifically, the star lords are becoming more and more perfect. So far this post is what I can guess with what we were given.

TL;DR in many possible ways, the ones behind this arc (besides UT, I mean) are preying on these poor kids and making use of every parts of them (blood, organs and maybe even their longing for the future).

That's why giving them mistletoe when they reach fledging day is so ironic...

...because they really suck every "nutrient" possible from these kids until they die.

Not gonna lie, it doesn't look good at all for Theo. He's headed straight for real!Ciel... ://

Kudos if you read all that, I hope it was as clear as possible! As always, thoughts in comments or reblogs are welcome! :D

#kuroshitsuji #finnian #snake #undertaker #doll #joker #2ct #baron kelvin #blue revenge arc #circus arc #layla #jane #as of:#kuro203 #kuroshitsuji theory #my analysis

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oh-snapperss · 4 months

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Just fine and normal thinkin about etho’s instinctual desire to die in his home but translated to the knight/“and it’s not tonight” verse and I’m WEAK……bc……in that universe….is his home his king??

Idk I’m sending this between clients but I just want u to know yalls story has me INFECTED (in a good way)

AUUUUUUGh yes yesyesyes it ABSOLUTELY is that way!!! etho's home has always been found in the comfort of knowing he'll die near his home.

on a fun note :3

After the war? He will be ash at the bottom of a pyre, and a name inscribed in the knight’s hall. He knows that this is not what Ren wants to hear. So he pretends.

Will his ash sound like music in the wind? Or will it be silent, scattering across the desert until there’s nothing left to remember?

"and it's not tonight i'm set alight" that verse is very fun to think about in comparison to the "it's not tonight you hold me tight"

"set alight". literally. literally. these two verses within the sphere of ren and etho in this is like. etho's either going to burn in his death for the king, that moment he's waited for all his life to die at home. OR he's going to be held tight:] also by his home. and currently, they're wavering between the two when only one can really be true.

idk. food for thought!! thanks for the ask i'm insane right now SKDJHFSKDFHJ

@hitheeprithee

#rentho knights au #laurie thoughts #lunarcrown #hermitshipping #<tagged for filtering purposes

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mysebacielblog · 3 months

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@bitchthings Honestly there’s no such thing as dumb questions because I was legit going to make a part 3 just for her!

Headcannons on Who Knows Sebaciel is a thing Part III:

Lizzy: Oh Lizzy. Poor Little Lizzy. I feel like she doesn’t know Until Now. These new chapters will be interesting because up until now Ciel has been “different” and actively avoiding her. Now that she knows that he’s not her “Ciel”, I believe she is going to come to her own conclusions about him whether based on reality or not. She might have thought of him as “Aromantic”. Such words didn’t really exist in popularity at the time but People like the King of Prussia existed. Both him and Ciel have similar comparable archetypes, like Queer coding, distaste for femininity and romance, but also weirdly enough Tall Solider Fetish. There is also the fact that Mr. “I Can’t Smile” is always cackling into giggling fits around his butler. It must sting. And why does his lips look kissed? Could it just be her imagination? I don’t think she has all the pieces just yet, but Soon.

Francis Midford: NOPE. Obviously no. Otherwise she would be next in line behind Bard to Beat up Sebastian (and die horribly). Her Flesh and blood?! With a Commoner?! A Peasant not of High Society!?? Forget he’s gay and barely of age THE AUDACITY to exchange glances at a Servant man! What would the papers say?!? Pearl clutching!!!!

Sphere Music Hall Starlight Four: Strangely Enough, Yes. It’s not uncommon in a boys school to get bored and hook up, but also gossip. They’ve seen how close they seemingly are, and they’ve seen it All before. It’s not New. What kind of teacher scoops up a student in his arms for a scrape? They might even know how bad they have it more than even Ciel and Sebastian know.

Edward Midford: Vaguely through rumors, since he’s so connected to the Starlight Four. He hates Ciel’s guts but he Has to protect the family reputation by disputing the rumors. At least for Lizzy’s Sake.

Nina Hopkins: No, because She’s too busy wildly inappropriately sexualizing her customers to realize some of her weird daydreams are correct. How many times has Sebastian strutted in to order matching outfits?

Wolfram Gelzer : No. In some ways he’s as innocent and curious as Sieglinde. There must’ve been questions during the green witch arc on what the heck was going on that entire time, but the Culture shock and the Language difference didn’t answer any questions he might have had about the odd pair.

Ciel 2: Oh this will be INTERESTING. Some twins/siblings instinctively know each other’s type(?) So if this is true Ciel 2 might sense the Attraction Our Ciel feels, and might even reveal his affections or make fun of his twin. And he knows that Sebastian is a Demon too. He’s going to mess with them so much. This is going to get messy.

#sebaciel #kuro shitposting

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bihastuff · 11 months

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Seeing Ginny wearing that white dress , reminded me of lizzy when she was at the sphere music hall .

Usually at the hospital it recommended to wear loose clothes to make it easier for doctors to check any part of the patient. In this case they are wearing dresses so doctors can easily draw their blood 🙂.

But I still don't understand why they cut ginny's hair 😢.

#kuroshitsuji #black butler #kuro 200 #kuroshitsuji spoilers #kuro spoilers #black butler spoilers #ginny #elizabeth midford #random bihastuff

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thesinglesjukebox · 2 months

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BEYONCÉ - "TEXAS HOLD 'EM"

youtube

Maybe the colossal discography of Beyoncé -- which now includes country music -- might lend a clue?

[6.00]

Dorian Sinclair: Rhiannon Giddens’ banjo is the first thing you hear on “Texas Hold ‘Em,” and it’s both a lovely introduction in its own right and a suggestion that Beyoncé is undertaking this genre shift in a smart, informed way. The banjo work isn’t the only standout on the track, either. Beyoncé, as always, knows how to wrap her voice around a melody line, and the backing harmonies are frequently gorgeous. I just wish the song that this is all in service to felt a little less slight. “Texas Hold ‘Em” is undeniably a real country song — but a middling one. [6]

Rachel Saywitz: Beyoncé’s long-awaited country turn is a bit lackluster, if only due to the nonsensicality of it—I find it hard to believe that the rumored Vegas Sphere headliner has been to a grimy Southern dive bar, drinking bad whiskey out of Solo cups, even once during the past few decades of her career. “Texas Hold ‘Em” sounds like what a pop star thinks country sounds like: stomp claps, echoing vocals, the word “hoedown.” Even with Rhiannon Giddens playing a banjo riff ready-made for the barnyard dance hall, the song is a bit too commercial to be fully believable. Yet as on even the most lackluster Beyoncé songs, her vocals and intonation save the track from diving into pure pop country slop. Her growls in the chorus fit the song’s overstated twang, and while the second verse’s depiction of a heatwave seems totally devoid of Beyoncé’s material reality, she rises to meet the drama with a tenor that sounds almost believable. [7]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Beyond the camp appeal of listing country apparel (“boots! spurs!”), this is shockingly half-assed stuff from Beyoncé. Lyrically and sonically, it’s the type of inoffensive pablum engineered to soundtrack a commercial for the new Lexus TX, with nothing spiky to distract from how its three-row luxury treats every seat like the best seat. [3]

Aaron Bergstrom: I understand that country songs are not required to be true-to-life first-person narratives, but I would believe that Johnny Cash actually shot a man in Reno before I would believe that Beyoncé has ever set foot in a dive bar. [5]

Brad Shoup: She's jumped right into the vibe of a country singer on the gentle downslope: the easygoing, modest gem that tips its hat at contemporary songwriting but is mostly an excuse for a nice hang. It's here for a good time, not a long time. The banjo's loping; the acoustic has a nice percussive affect. We're here to do a little stepping, not watch the band cut loose. The text itself is about a rich couple dabbling in the honky-tonk lifestyle—the image of perhaps the most in-control pop star of the century popping into a dive bar on a lark is pretty funny. The sampled piano and whistling at the end suggest another kind of dive; suddenly, it's the aughts and she's checking out Grizzly Bear with her sister. [7]

Jackie Powell: Beyoncé's decision to release the instrumental to "Texas Hold 'Em" and its a cappella versions accentuates her desire to remind those who love her, and those who might not, of the innate musicality that she has always possessed. She’s not just great because she’s Beyoncé. Her knowledge of music history—which has been a motif in her solo work since 2016—and also her vocal tone and ability to emote through her four-octave range are essential to her greatness. Between her intonation of each hook of “Texas Hold 'Em,” which captures how bouncy a hoedown feels in person, to the stunning two-part and sometimes three-part harmonies in the verses, Knowles gives such a memorable and fun vocal performance. Those overdubbed harmonies are so bright. They give off a warmth that feels like a much more enjoyable morning alarm. The banjo, which is heard throughout, is played by Rhiannon Giddens -- yet another example of Beyoncé’s methodology when it comes to using her platform. Her modus operandi as of late has been to use the attention she attracts to bring the mainstream public to those who have been doing the work and under-recognized in the genres she’s making music in. This willingness to uplift artists continues to be noble, but I question how self-aware Beyoncé is when she mentions parking a Lexus in the hook. While this is a reference to her partnership with the luxury car brand over the summer that provided half of a million dollars to small minority-owned businesses, it still comes off as a bit out of touch with the communities she’s paying homage to. [8]

Jeffrey Brister: I’m astounded that Beyoncé released a song that sounds so dilettantish. The beginning really gets me—I’m getting ready for something incredible. And then it just…keeps going and going. It sounds marginally more country than “You Should Be Sad." [4]

Nortey Dowuona: The difficulty in writing music, especially popular music, is that when composing songs, the most catchy, acceptable, understandable sounds become so overused that anyone who's spent a lifetime paying attention to popular music in all its forms could start noticing the similarities. Megan Bulow, a German singer who lived in Texas at 14, is credited as a songwriter on this song, as well as Lowell, a Canadian singer who briefly tried to share the good news of her involvement and later took down the video. They both have written lyrics such as "I'm going all white at your funeral/if you think I'm gonna cry, you're delusional" from bulow's "Boys Will Be Boys" and "but not me, I'm free/by the wings on my back on my shoulder blades" from Lowell's "Runaways" -- two songs I picked from their discography at random that have lyrics evocative enough to jump off the page but empty enough for a stronger, more defined voice to take ownership. This is hopefully a reason they were chosen to work with Beyoncé. Raphael Saadiq, Killa B, and Nathan Ferraro are listed as producers alongside Beyoncé; Rhiannon Giddens is playing the banjo and viola, Khirye Tyler is playing the piano alongside Saadiq, Ferraro and Lowell as well as the bass, Saadiq is credited for piano, organ, and bass alongside Tyler and Ferraro and drums alongside Killa B. Hit-Boy is playing the synthesizer and contributing to additional production work as well as Mariel Gomerez and Stuart White. I'm just saying -- if any of these people watched Franklin when they were young and interpolated it, it was definitely an accident. The deeper one goes into making one little song, the spiderwebs of avoiding even partial similarities to existing songs is becoming less charming and more sinister. It is so difficult that I can list all of these veterans of the industry allied and united in creating this great, if only slightly vague song, but a random person can notice a similarity to a kids' TV show's theme song, and it can gain enough steam for the composer to gently and firmly deny it. Don't be a bitch, just take it to the floor now. [8]

Hannah Jocelyn: Props for rendering Noah Kahan redundant, but bettering one of Mumford’s sons isn’t saying much. The song is cute -- I won’t mind hearing it in every sandwich shop for the next year or so -- but of the two songs Bey released, this is by far the less engaging one. [5]

Taylor Alatorre: The difference between this song and "16 Carriages," and "Daddy Lessons" as well, is that it doesn't feel like either of those two songs expects me to be impressed by the mere fact of its existence. "Don't be a bitch," as the eternal anti-critic refrain goes -- what, were you expecting a reverent, sepia-toned tribute to Bob Wills or something? Just accept the thing for what it is, turn off your brain, and have some down-home country fun, dammit! And as a born-and-bred Texan who's unduly excited for the upcoming Twisters film, I so wish I could. But those mechanical stomps, those painfully forced "woo"s, the "dive bar we always thought was nice," and the chirping cricket sound effect that someone probably put in as a joke and then forget to remove: all of this is laziness dressed up as genre-busting. Rhiannon Giddens is called up to add more subtextual fodder about the Black roots of country, but with the anonymized production she's given, it comes across as just more stats-padding for next year's Grammys. Only in the outro does Beyoncé suddenly remember that she can do Beyoncé things with her voice, sprinkling some belated shards of personality onto a stiff composition that wouldn't be out of place on a filler episode of Phineas & Ferb. If Bey still has Diplo in her contacts, it may have been worth giving him a ring for this -- feels icky to say it, but he can at least make the appropriation go down smooth when he tries. [3]

Katherine St. Asaph: Has anyone done a tally of the number of country songs that mention the word "hoedown," versus the number of pop songs? Would the hypothetical person who'd do so not be among the most tiresome people in the world? "Texas Hold 'Em" (and companion single "16 Carriages," to a lesser degree) is an argument as much as it is a song. As on Renaissance, Beyoncé and her team have done careful, purposeful curation to showcase Black women in country -- and it's earned those women actual streaming boosts (if maybe not literal streaming dividends), which is pretty cool. But the thoroughness and fervor with which she proves this song's authenticity has inevitably -- and deliberately, I should add -- invited Discourse. And as usual, that Discourse keeps missing the most obvious points. There's no use arguing how properly rootsy this sounds or how storied its session musicians are. The country purists object because of the usual respectability politics -- i.e., Beyoncé says "bitch" and has her boobs out in the video -- and those politics form an auricular plug in them that is so strong that this could sound like literally anything and still be dismissed as pop. There's not much more use digging into the whys and why-nots of its country radio airplay. Country radio is playing this because country radio is dominated by iHeartMedia aka Clear Channel, who have the playlisting power that comes with monopoly and the inclination to support fellow megabrands. (Aside: According to Hits Daily Double, after the iHeart execs made their airplay decree, "[they then excused themselves as they were due to have their Stetsons blocked.") While the historical context and broken barriers are undeniably worth taking seriously, they've also kind of led people to make more of the song than what it is. "Texas Hold 'Em" is mostly frivolous, and that's fine! The melody is a grin put to sheet music. It's also a pop song, and that is also fine! If it's a country song about nothing more than the fact that it's a country song, then so are enough country-radio hits that not even I can write a sentence long enough to do the one-YouTube-link-per-word gag for them all. (And "Texas Hold 'Em" would probably be delivered as much more of a gimmick if it was instead given to Lennon Stella or Hailee Steinfeld or Madison Beer, or any of the other B-minus-listers that co-writer Lowell has sold songs to.) Any holdout doubters are advised to listen to the end, where the genres stop competing for views space and start to truly simmer together, with all the heat that implies. [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Fulfills the promise of Beyoncé-fied country only in its last 45 seconds – the house pianos interwoven with finger-picked guitars are almost psychedelic in effect, emerging out of the stomp of the rest of the song in a dazzling clarity. There, she's fragmented and lucid all at once, singing individual words and phrases each laden with strange wells of meaning. Everything else is just slightly too chipper, the joy of those whoops and whistles and nonsensical lines about various bars coming off like strange procedural imitations of authentic human experience. [6]

Isabel Cole: The song reveals itself as more of a fluffy little nothing with each listen, and while it’s carefully assembled it feels perhaps too careful—this is very well-mannered for a song about greeting life’s disasters with reckless abandon. Still, I love the way the melody twists on the pre-chorus, and I’ve always tended to favor the Beyoncé songs where she relies more on her unbeatable vocal charisma than the ones on which she flexes her sheer power. The way you can almost see her drawl Don’t be a bitch, come take it to the floor now keeps me coming back. [7]

Alfred Soto: I don't care whether it "sounds country." It sounds like Beyoncé, just like Madonna made Madonna music and Bowie made Bowie music: they absorbed genres, reconstituted their DNA, and discarded the ephemera. "Texas Hold 'Em" treats contractions and banjos like Madonna did acoustic guitars on the chopped salad mix of "Don't Tell Me": an excuse to express whatever she damn pleases. A fab radio track that reduces The Weeknd's latest to a puddle, "Texas Hold 'Em" is a challenge, a provocation, no more and no less. [6]

Mark Sinker: Reacting against the discourse™? froth up just as you’d expect round this light, slight, likeably McCartney-ish near-fragment of a song, it’s time to turn to sometime TSJ-er Frank Kogan in his essay ‘Roger Williams in America,’ the first superwords essay, as collected here, on the decades-old problem of authenticity, or actually the problem of the problem: “The discussion never seems to go anywhere, since the tendency is for people to debunk ‘authenticity’ without first trying to understand it (…) Rather than debunking it, I would want to explore the power of the real, why the search for the real has such a hold on rock. It’s not a problem to be stopped. I think this is one of the good things about rock (…) Even when the manifestations are stupid, rock’s uneasiness is profound. Great rock thrives on insecurity (…)". Even back in 2006, the word "country" couldn't always just be switched in anywhere to replace "rock" as an obvious identity — though the reason there’s a kerfuffle going on right now (or part of the reason, as ppl enthuse or recoil) is that the search for the real does also have a powerful hold on country. So you can swap words in and sometimes still get sense. Switch more words in and out of these sentences and (by the transitive properties of equality!) we will reach this: “Beyoncé’s uneasiness is profound.” And suddenly this seems much less of a slam-dunk. It surely isn’t the case in this song; to me it’s not much the case elsewhere either. Quite the opposite, in fact. She does not usually come across as (to quote Frank again, it’s a very quotable essay) “born in flight, chased by fear”. And you could — or I could — happily argue that this superb confidence is one of the great things about her. Take it all back out of algebra, though, and the upshot here is yes, of course, Beyoncé can be country, if and only if (of as logicians write it, “iff”) country both is and isn’t rock; when it’s bothered about the real yet at the same time not at all uneasy. I like this as a conclusion, because it has also to mean a whole bunch of stuff is going to be gently churned up — less by the song itself, to be sure, than by all the panics and chatter around the song. It’s an unstable solution, and even if you turn to the extremely solid undergirding supplied in this nice long interview with banjo-scholar and picker Rhiannon Giddens, complete with all kinds of detail you’d need to firm up several arguments (details that include Yo Yo Ma), you’re acknowledging that authority and justification are going at some point and in some places to need ruggedly repositioning or reclaiming, immediate catchy unruffled serenity notwithstanding. [8]

Ian Mathers: I think it's both good and interesting to discuss the broader genre considerations (sonic, political, aesthetic, emotional, etc etc etc) of this, but I am neither qualified to do that myself nor interested in doing it. So let me just say that, while I have not looked up how it's actually doing, "Texas Hold 'Em" feels like it ought to be a hit, not in some overdetermined four-quadrant you'll-take-it-whether-or-not-you-like-it sense, but just because... it's so much fun! It feels like the kind of song all sorts of people will find entertaining and might catch themselves singing along to. Beyoncé is clearly prominent enough it's got a shot, and god knows all sorts of cultural factors might boost it or hold it back, but a world where this is blasting out of everyone's radios just feels nice and somehow correct. [9]

Dave Moore: I don't like admitting to myself that I find Beyoncé more exhausting than Taylor Swift (in part because everything Beyoncé does actually works). It's some real coolest kid in school is class president and valedictorian and the lead in the school play shit. Once again, the song's credits are impeccable, and the song itself is fine. [5]

Will Adams: Much like the Verizon Super Bowl ad that kicked off her new promo cycle, this on-the-nose genre dress-up feels beneath Beyoncé. Renaissance proved she was willing to put in the research. Synthesizing that into something exciting requires more work than this. [4]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: I want Beyoncé to break barriers making country music as much as the next queer, but please god, I hope the album is more interesting than this Lumineers-sounding fluff. [6]

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#beyonce #music #country music #pop music #music writing #music reviews #music criticism #the singles jukebox #Youtube

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