#ALWAYS TORN APART

[animangalover-writes]

I've triggered myself and now I can't stop thinking about zelda and link and their tragic stories and how they're the only ones to ever truly understand each other and how they're trauma bonded and how they're so in love and how-

[chaos-interwoven]

au where a year or two after leaving baltimore, mary and neil end up skirting the south coast of france. maybe they had been somewhere in the uk where mary’s family could provide them with support and resources but some of nathan’s men came looking so they fled. and mary took them to small coastal towns where no one would think to look for them.

it’s in one of these towns, that neil meets a little boy whose grey stormy eyes look just as haunted as his own. he knows that hollow look. he knows that he is wearing it even with brown contacts on. in the months that they stay there, neil learns to run on the beach with this boy and his little sister, learns to appreciate the caress of a sea breeze through his growing hair as he stands shoulder to shoulder with someone his age. neil recognizes the way that boy limps sometimes, the way his lanky limbs shrink in on bad days and he tries to make himself small. he doesn’t need to look to know that there are bruises littering the boy’s skin. and though mary keeps telling him not to get too close, he can’t help it. scraped knees don’t hurt as much if they’re matching wounds with someone else.

mary wants to move on soon enough. she has seen the way her son is becoming attached to this town and that boy and she knows the dangers of that. she can see the way people leave that boy and his family alone, the unspoken guarded edge that surrounds those involved in unsavory business like hers. so she starts packing them up, hiding it from her son until the day of before telling him that they’re leaving. but neil doesn’t fall in line and comply like he should. he cries and narrowly contains a tantrum and mary knows she screwed up. this can never happen again. because neil is begging for them to stay or begging for his little friend to come with them, prattling on about heavy hands and protection. and shouldn’t he know? shouldn’t he realize how foolish he is being? that boy can’t come with them. she can hardly protect the two of them and besides, she doesn’t need yet another mouth to feed, yet another set of papers to procure, yet another gang family after her. so she does her best to quiet him and drags him out of town that night, her hand turning his head forward as he keeps gazing over his shoulder.

it’s the last time that neil makes a friend on their endless journey. mary had lectured him for hours on end about the dangers of connection on the train away from that city. each time he find himself getting too close, he pulls away and spends his solitude thinking of grey eyes, wavy black hair, and a boy that mirrored his pain. it feels less lonely knowing he’s out there somewhere. it feels less lonely keeping that boy locked away in his heart for company.

[glumspell]

My biggest hope for the Mighty Nein animated series is that they capture the tone correctly and don't use the same tone for TMN that they used for TLOVM.

I thought the tone in TLOVM was great for Vox Machina, it was littered with Scanlan style adult humor that suited the adult-style comedy/drama very well but I dont think that exact same tone would work well for the Mighty Nein.

Even though TMN had dirty humor, I think it's style of humor was different than TLOVM. Sex scene cut-aways and projectile vomiting, over the top gore and poop humor throwaway gags I don't think would hit the way for TMN as it does in TLOVM even though it exists in TMN.

I think that in the way that TLOVM is framed around Scanlan style humor, I think TMN is framed around Jester humor- which is still dirty, but sillier and a bit more naive and familiar that fits the mature tone of TMN much better than the throwaway humor of TLOVM.

And i'm sure TMN will be gore-y too but sometimes the gore in TLOVM was over the top in a way that detracted from some of the major villain deaths and made them less impactful when compared to some disposable npc whose skull gets exploded in a few scenes prior. What I mean is that I hope it's gore-y where it counts. Like Caleb crushing the guards while storming the sanitarium in rage and vengeance is not as impactful if everyone dies in a similar fashion all the time, if you know what I mean?

[zehl0w]

Very messy scribble of a comic because they were on my mind (I doubt I’ll ever clean it up so I’m just posting it now so it doesn’t rot in my procreate files LOL)

[corvidcrowned]

One of my budgies passed today, so here’s a little tribute. RIP, Nublar. Fly high little buddy

[deception-united]

what's a word you always mentally pronounced a certain way until one day you heard it said out loud and felt the earth shift beneath your feet

[qoldenskies]

Donnie for sure the second youngest but I don’t think he probably thinks of Leo as older practically. They’re probably only a few months apart at most and I don’t think Donnie would consider that developmentally significant enough to see Leo as a big brother like he does Raph. Leo on the other hand, absolutely views Donnie as a bratty little brother. Basically they’re not twins but still do the twin thing when someone asks who’s older.

Younger: we’re twins it doesn’t mat-

Older: me I’m older

its honestly why i usually like to make their twinship a compromise for donnie's sake. he doesn't really accept the idea of there being a power dynamic between them with their ages (even though there kind of is? raph and leo are in their own little camp separate from donnie and mikey, it's pretty clear by the way raph puts so much pressure on leo in particular) and i usually dont have him bring it up much it at all unless he's thinking more about mikey because i think them having solidarity over having to deal with their older brother bullshit is true and like. genuinely kind of canon? they're so fed up with them LOL

like ngl i actually care so much about second youngest donnie BECAUSE of his relationship with mikey. b team is my favorite thing in the world

(also yes absolutely no matter how small the gap is to me, leo will use EVERY opportunity to hold it over donnie's head. i mean i think episodes like lair games make that clear. when he grabbed donnie's vambrace and held it out of reach in smart lair too LMFAO... genuine bastard older brother behavior)

[silverskye13]

Silver I know next to nothing about the alien franchise and movie, I am giving you full permission to use this ask as an opportunity to spread propaganda to get me (and anyone else) to finally watch it

So it's, so like, the thing is, right. I'm not a movie tech kinda person [though it is technically impressive, the funny little tricks they did, like not having the budget for a Big Space Ship Derelict so they are a scaled down model that the director's kids in space suits walked up to so it would look bigger, and it was shown to the audience on a shitty CCTV because they didn't do a big matte painting of the set they filmed the tiny one, projected it onto a wall, and then filmed that.] So my rant isn't going to be about how technologically cool the movie was for 1979 on a less than optimal budget. But what I do like, what I excel at, is breaking down themes and tropes. And my god. My god. Just. Ugh. [Flails my arms.]

So a basic rundown for the movie, spoilers ahead, and my analysis of how fucking cool it is:

Basic gist of the movie: The crew of the commercial mining vessel Nostromo are awoken halfway through their trip back to earth by a mysterious signal, calling for help on a far away planet. Upon going down to investigate, one of their crew members is attacked by a strange alien parasite which attaches to his face. This kicks off a tale of increasing horror as the new alien kills off the crew one by one, culminating in Ripley [the main character] blowing up the ship and fleeing in an escape pod, not sure if she'll ever be picked up in the vastness of space -- with the ships cat, who miraculously also survives. [We all know Jonesy is the real main character 💜.] Along the way a plot by the Weyland-Utani corporation is revealed, one of the crew is discovered to be an android, and there is a lot of alien screeching.

Now! The themes that I go absolutely feral over can commence.

The horror of the movie, the reason why the alien is scary, and lethal to humans specifically, is it is a creature built for efficient survival, and this is a trait that Ash, the ship's science officer [and resident hiding android] highly praises in the critter. He describes it as beautiful, elegant, pure in its efficiency. The perfect organism. Efficient.

Humans, by comparison, aren't efficient. We are social. And efficiency preys on social needs. For example:

The xenomorph eggs can survive for ages [in the derelict they're found on, the dead alien who drove the ship is described as fossilized. These eggs have been here for thousands of years. But they activate immediately when a curious human pokes around them. It isn't a fast process. Kane is poking around for a few minutes, looking at the movements of the creatures in their eggs, making observations. Curious. Curiosity is an inefficient trait -- he would have survived if he had climbed out of the hole the eggs were in and left, or even waited for the rest of his team to enact quarantine and investigation procedures.

Speaking of quarantine! When Dallas and Lambert bring Kane, newly infected by an alien parasite, back to the ship, Ripley locks them in the airlock. There are quarantine procedures. We can't risk the whole crew. But they are scared for Kane's safety. He might die without help. They break quarantine. If they hadn't broken quarantine, the baby alien would've been born in the airlock, where it would get spaced the moment it was born.

When the face hugger parasite dies and Kane seems to return to normal, what they should have done to attempt to reinstate quarantine was put him in hyper sleep. His body would have been frozen in a stasis which might have frozen the parasite or, if it hadn't, would have left the new baby alien trapped in a stasis pod. But Kane, haggard and scared from his ordeal, asks can we please have one more meal together before I go to sleep? And that one meal is long enough for the new xenomorph to be born, and release terror on the ship.

There is more. Parker would have lived if he hadn't gone to find the cat by himself, leaving the safety of his group. Dallas would have lived if he let Ripley go through the vents, but he was the captain and he didn't want to risk someone else's life so he went instead. Brett would have lived if he'd left Lambert behind when she was being attacked, or if he'd hit the xenomorph with the flamethrower instead of insisting Lambert get out of the way first. And Lambert would have lived if she'd run instead of being paralyzed in fear by the creature killing her friends. And the xenomorph? Wasn't even eating it's kills. No gore. Little blood. It was killing them because it knew they would kill it, and it was neutralizing threats. Efficient.

The xenomorph is very clearly engineered for survival, and it's survival depends on killing the inefficient organisms around it. Even it's acid blood is described as a survival mechanism, not an offensive mechanism.

Okay Skye, we hear you talking about how scary the critter is because it's not a social creature. That's an interesting observation, but it's still just a monster story, right?

Well, let me tell you an alternative story. Just a little to the left of the original, but one I would argue is still very very canon.

You are an android built by Weyland-Utani, a company which is jealously hunting alien tech to use for its many space programs. You are placed on the Nostromo because there is a known anomaly in the area, and they want to find it. Your job is to get a specimen back to the company, all other protocols expended.

You are programmed to be efficient, so you get to work.

You wake the crew when you find the signal. You give them only the information they need to investigate: it is a signal that repeats every 12 seconds. You let them make the conclusion it is an SOS. Humans are social creatures. They want to help other social creatures in need. There is some arguing about whether they should go, but in the end an extra push from you sends them. Ripley, one of the more efficient members of the crew, keeps asking you why you haven't decoded the message.

"Mother [the super computer running the ship] is still working on it." This is true. She has only translated part of the signal. By the time Ripley realizes it's a warning, the crew is already on the way to the derelict. You tell her if she walks out there, they will have already figured out if it's a warning or not by the time she makes it to them. She agrees.

When they return with a specimen, Ripley [efficient, following protocol] doesn't want to let them on. But Ripley doesn't know you're an android, so when you break quarantine, and you tell her you just wanted Kane to be safe, she begrudgingly believes you.

When the alien is loose, it is easy for you to keep them from killing it. Humans are social, inefficient creatures, and you feel no empathy for their deaths. You do pity them though. Between you and the alien, their chances of survival are slim.

If only they were more efficient.

The horror in Alien is not the xenomorph. The horror in Alien is when anything, primal creatures, androids, a particularly greedy corporation, preys on human social needs in order to get what it wants. There is significance in that Ripley, despite everything, chose to save the cat. She needed companionship. All humans do. She needed to save that cat. A cat that was cantankerous and mean, and hissed whenever it was held, was better than the cold efficiency of empty space.

Any system that prioritizes absolute efficiency will be inhospitable to human life.

[spittyfishy]

Thoughts on the Typhlosion allegations/pokemon teraleaks?

Okay, here’s what I’ll say about that. (And fair warning, it is nothing positive)

I think the fandoms reaction to these “leaks” has been absolutely ridiculous. They are not canon, they do not change pre-existing information present in the games and anime. Concept art is interesting, but things that were scrapped and did not appear in the actual media should not be regarded as fact.

Especially the Typhlosion thing, it’s like if jk Rowling said ‘oh yeah at one point in the writing process I thought Harry Potter would be a girl, but I changed my mind’ and the fandom went ‘oh my god Harry’s been a girl this whole time!’ Like no, a lot of work and ideas go into the concept and development of works like these, and then creators pick and choose the best of their ideas and use that, but I think it’s very problematic to judge them on the concepts that they themselves already decided weren’t good enough to use.

I have very strict opinions about what counts as canon, and that very simply is ‘what is in the work itself’. Unused concepts, things a creator said years later online, and really popular headcanons don’t count. They’ll never count, sorry but that’s not how language works, you can’t just redefine canon to encompass anything that maybe could have been a part of the project. It can be super neat to look at what changes could have been made, but it needs to be understood that that does not impact what the actual game is like.

This Typhlosion thing especially, it *could* be neat if people just took the scrapped stories to go “oh yeah the Pokémon world could have had myths and legends similar to our own! That will be interesting to explore in fan works!” But that’s not what the majority of people did. Instead, people took it to mean that somehow all Typhlosion are secretly evil and shouldn’t be left alone with children and anyone who has one or likes that Pokémon should be ridiculed based on nothing.

Because the stuff that in those leaks (baring things about unreleased games) are nothing. Looking at them in the sense of seeing ‘How It’s Made’ is interesting, fine go for it yeah sure, but they have absolutely no bearing on the actual franchise itself. And I have no patience for the people taking them as gospel and insisting they be considered more true over the actual canon.

[heyitsdrawey]

I'm making an addendum to my pinned but am saying it here too. Do not engage in discourse with me. I DO NOT WANT TO ARGUE WITH YOU :( I want to be friends with people. I have accidentally come upon minefields of arguments and I don't want that at all. I'm extremely scared of saying or doing the "wrong thing", please don't attack me if I'm wrong about something, just tell me gently, I promise I have good faith and don't want anyone hurt. It's hard knowing who to trust in the realm of media discussion, and I just want to learn. Please, give me the chance to.

[ilovegayvampires]

Broke: Adaptations where Dracula is looking for a girl who doesn’t even know him because she looks like his ex girlfriend

Woke: Adaptations of Carmilla where her and Laura were destined to meet and fall in love, meeting again and again through time and reincarnation, but being torn apart by the cruelty of fate, and seeing each other in a prophetic dream when they’re young

[stellamancer]

niku!! I saw your post and now I'm curious - what are your top five love songs? ✨️

hehe birdie hellowwww. my top five love songs in no particular order! love distance long affair by deco*27 hey, it's okay if you laugh. hey, it's fine if you cry too hey, it's okay if you get mad, you're allowed to fall in love hey, it's okay if you wanna kiss, hey, we can hug too. hey, it's fine if you want me to be yours and yours alone.

with you around by yellowcard

you're making movies in your head when you fall asleep having nightmares, dreaming that I'm gonna leave i know you've always been afraid of ending up alone somebody hurt you, now you're waiting on a dial tone

all you wanted by michelle branch

if you want to, i can save you i can take you away from here so lonely inside, so busy out there and all you wanted was somebody who cares

till i by hiroyuki sawano ft yuuri

cause i wanna be a piece of you till i die no one wants to be alone even if you're torn apart and put back together and though we fall apart between the hell's divide if you wish for it, i'll always stay by your side*

kokoronashi by majiko (originally papiyon-p feat. GUMI)

you can’t see! you can’t see! just take my bones, why not everything? start tearing me and damaging, do anything, lay me in the ground i’m screaming and shaking, my eyes turn red somehow even now wrapping me around, your touch abound, not letting go even when i say it's okay

[swamp-cats-den]

Started watching the first episode of the new Doctor Who season, and it's making me nauseous. Of course it's a cat that has to be killed for a comedic effect, never a dog. Something something the cats are villianazed in media (even those who love them often use such kind of language to talk about them - 'cats are assholes', 'my cat will eat my face if I die'), and all of that contributes to the overall treatment of cats disposable. The posts in Reddit dog threads would be like 'Hey I just got a pittie from a shelter 2 days ago, and he's tried to eat my elderly cat I've had for 10 years 5 times but other than that, the introduction seems to be going well! Just in case the mauling attempts intensify, should I get rid of the cat? I can't give the dog back I've got so attached🥺'

(for the record, I absolutely adore dogs too, I'm just sick of the treatment of cats in media and often, in real life as well. Guess what, neither is better than the other, and a dog will eat your face too, they both are fucking carnivores)

[miu-the-moose]

“My Boy Only Breaks His Favourite Toys” is the quintessential Kokichi shipping song from TTPD:TA, but “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus” is the oumota song.

[tojisun]

i need the canucks to win for the love of it all. for the whimsy of it all. for a reminder, for themselves, that hockey is fun as it is tenacious

[mangle-my-mind]

I saw Swept Away today, catching it on the matinee of its final day. Wow. It was so beautiful and intense, and it made me all the more sad that the production got cut so short.

The whole cast was phenomenal. The dancing! The climbing of the ship rigging! The HARMONIES! The heart-wrenching performances! And you could tell by the end just how heavy this day was for them. The final moments hit extra hard today.

The stage production and choreography blew my mind! I'll be thinking about the shipwreck scene especially for a while.

And of course the (spoiler alert) cannibal sacrifice/self-sacrifice scene between Big Brother and Little Brother - I was clutching myself, the railing in front of me, anything I could the whole time. It was awful and beautiful.

Happy trails to the whole cast and crew! You delivered something spectacular, and I hope it finds new life after Broadway somewhere. But even if it doesn't - it was a magical moment, however brief, and I'm grateful we got to experience it.