#thoughts from elle

[holy-reference-in-a-username]

What did Tori include in that letter, you ask?

[halcy0ng1rl]

What do you mean in 2007 a bunch of NIN fans showed up to a sketchy location sourced from a series of websites for the year zero ARG where some of which were handed phones, were then called on said phones and told to go somewhere on a specific day and when that day came willingly hopped onto buses that took them to a random warehouse where they watched some guy give a speech and then were taken to a separate room to watch a NIN concert

[liesmyth]

Is it better if John erased their memories, or if they came back that way and he just decided not to fix them?

It's immensely better if he intentionally mindwiped them. TO ME.

I'm a John fan. I think he's a tremendous tragic antagonist, and that everything he does in the HtN backstory is relatable if not painful familiar. He was under immense pressure, trying to mitigate the literal end of the world, having his mind and his whole self changed in ways he had no frame of reference to understand. He went from being desperate and trying to do his best to being carried away by circumstances to going absolutely fucking insane. There are many ways to rationalise John's actions all the way to the end, which is what makes it such an effective corruption arc. If you want to engage in some blorbo apologism, there are plenty of excuses to be found.

There's absolutely no fucking way to excuse mind-wiping his friends. THAT is why it's so important to me that he did it deliberately, in cold blood, justifying it to himself as a way to take their burdens upon himself so they wouldn't have to feel guilty. He removed their agency. He didn't want any peers in the world he'd created. He could have acknowledged what had happened, for better or worse, and tried to make amends - but instead, he chose to remove their knowledge that something had even happened in the first place. It's the turning point! I need him to go into that with his eyes fully open. He's doing it on purpose! He weighed the pros and cons and prioritised his comfort over his friends' identities.

EYE believe that his story arc is infinitely more powerful if there's a point we can look at and say "here is when John's story went from things happening TO HIM to John doing terrible things". Especially in a backstory that's ultimately about divine corruption and losing touch with your humanity, I think that turning point needs to be something that has a personal value to him, something that can't be chalked up to "he was high on death" or "humanity was doomed" or even "he touched the soul of the earth and went insane."

I think it's important, thematically, that one of his first actions after acquiring godlike powers was to make sure that no one would be able to remember his human self and challenge him on equal footing, even if he's still internally lamenting his own loneliness and wishing things were different.

Obviously, this is all coming from a known John Girlie™ and Eldritch Alecto Enjoyer — I interpret John's ascension to quasi-divinity as something that was mostly imposed ON him and he couldn't control, which is why I need him to cross the moral event horizon outright with the mind violation of his inner circle. Someone who views John as more directly culpable in the end of the earth might feel less strongly about the importance of the mindwipe in his story arc than I do, but TO ME it's the culmination of the tragedy. You've become the inhuman horror, baby.

/post that inspired the question

[thatfriendlyanon]

Elias Kovalen :: second child of Freya & Cern

[darkmatilda]

i thought—i was SURE—that nothing in this world could make me less sexually attracted to spencer reid but then i saw his haircut in season 9 and oh man

[singeart]

No thoughts just vibes

[jamiethebeeart]

I'm so very very normal about Dani, I promise (lineart by @five-rivers ) @green-with-envy-phandom-event

[sketchiefoxie]

I’ve been rewatching Steven Universe and guess what?? I found @intotheelliwoods lol. They’re so much more of a precious bean in real life XD. But seriously it’s been hilarious to say “Hey look, it’s Ell!” every time Lars comes on screen. (for those who don’t know, @intotheelliwoods has Lars as their icon.)

[mysticalallblue]

dont be shy flame me all you like, maybe its just the saw (movies) fixation, maybe its my angst loving heart, but i cant get over the headcanon that the metal mask sanji was forced to wear gave him scars in and around his mouth. like his lips, cheeks, and that crease of the lips on the side where the two meet, i genuinely feel like it left deep scars on him, ones that stick with him till this day, ones that you cant really see unless your really paying attention.

(chopper, with his better eyes, would pull him into the infirmary. patient-doctor confidentiality. and ask him, as his doctor, how he got such peculiar scars. sanji wouldnt tell him, not yet. not so soon, not if it meant telling chopper about the vinsmokes and everything about that horrible country.) 

germa was a cruel place, whats to think that they wouldnt make this boys life worse, he’ll never forget that mask no matter how hard he tries because the memory is engraved into his skin & mind via deep scars.

(and maybe after whole cake, it was easier to heal, its easier to stop seeing only his scars but himself.)

[elletromil]

Emergency workers report a cloud. Just that, a cloud, and isn't it funny how we often don't notice little things like that, they report.

- Episode 17 "Valentine"

[sellenite]

random musings on the mood of a strong, summer thunderstorm:

heat that clings to your skin—dewy with a sheen of sweat, but it turns to prickled goosebumps when the breeze smooths over you.

the roll of thunder starts out dull, but it gets deeper, cracks louder, as it gets closer. you can see the sky darkening—inky blue like the color of the deep ocean—and drawing together.

there's a heaviness to the air; the potential for the pour of rain to start at any second, but for a moment all of the unspilt energy just hangs, suspended in the clouds above.

[liesmyth]

my locked tomb hot take of the day is that the way Harrow’s symptoms are presented in HtN line up much more closely with religious OCD with poor insight and psychotic features than schizophrenia. She shows almost no signs of paranoia or delusions (G1deon really was trying to kill her! It’s absolutely true that the other houses would swoop in like vultures if they knew her house’s true position! Her sword and psyche were both actually haunted, to the point that Alecto could hitch a ride in her body. She is never shown in the text to hold a belief that is inconsistent with reality, IMO) and her only true psychotic symptom that we see is hallucinations, and she seems to most of the time have some idea that they aren’t real, which indicates a level of self awareness incompatible with schizophrenia. She also doesn’t seem to display many cognitive symptoms like thought block or disorganized speech and thinking. The rest of her behavior is highly obsessive (compulsive praying, wearing face paint even when nobody is around, obsessive studying, needing her food to be arranged on her plate a certain way) and is very in line with someone suffering from religious scrupulosity. As someone who has experienced both OCD and psychosis, and knows how the symptoms can overlap, this is is the hill I will die on.

I don't feel like I can contribute in any meaningful way to your points, so I'll just put this out into the world and say that I appreciate your insights!

Speaking from a #meta perspective: I know that around the time HtN came out, Tamsyn gave interviews talking about her own experiences being hospitalised for mental health reasons and implied that was what she was partly drawing on when writing HtN. I can't remember if she called Harrow schizophrenic or stated that it was her intention to write her as such, and the author is dead anyway. Plus, obviously, the fact that someone's writing was informed by irl experiences doesn't have to mean that said writing is a 1:1 parallel for those experiences, expecially in a sff setting where ghosts exists and in fact there's something that Harrow can see and nobody else can.

TO ME, the fact that people who experience psychotic episodes can recognise themselves in Harrow's internal monologue and experiences is more meaningful than whether Harrow “really” has a given specific disorder or she's just seeing ghosts. The point is that SHE feels a disconnect from reality and that she's delusional and cannot trust anything she remembers or reads. Nobody in-universe is ever going to diagnose her, you know? The series itself doesn't claim to be straight-up representation for any specific named issues — things like Cytherea's cancer or Harrow's mental state are left ambiguous and partly influenced by magic. I think the fact that readers can relate to some symptoms some characters experience is more meaningful than whether these symptoms all point to something that can be diagnosed unambiguously.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me!

[robo-dino-puppies]

eyyyy look who tried to do some modding in veilguard :D

I love that Rook gets to wear this coat with the feathers but I hated the leather high-collared studded whatever-the-hell shirt thing that was going on underneath. so I tried to swap it with the "civilian" version but keep the feathers :D

the coat and pants clip like hell on my shortass elf, but still! (actually I checked and it clips on the civilians who wear it too... so that's not a me problem lmao)

anyway to elaborate: initially I tried to edit the textures to get rid of the weird shirt thing BUT the chevron stitched pieces are part of the model (BOOOOO) so despite changing their color/texture I couldn't get rid of them entirely. then I saw that swapping armor/character parts was a thing? …that I don't really understand, honestly, but there's a tutorial and I can follow steps. anyway, some civilians in Treviso wear the same coat with this low-cut shirt underneath except no feathers, and I wanted that BUT WITH THE FEATHERS. so. I did it! YAY GO ME!!! not super thrilled with the pants but I like the civilians' boots better too.

here was my initial check to see what it did to npcs that share the outfit:

and checking the color-changed version next to a civilian npc

coat and feather colors achieved! now to do the shirt and pants.

to elaborate more: so in the Rook and Ivenci versions, there are three meshes (? correct term idk?) that combine to make the whole ensemble: feathers, coat, and undershirt-belt-arms-pants-boots. can't just make the undershirt invisible bc there's no torso under there lol and it would also get rid of the arms and legs. in the civilian outfit there are two meshes: coat-and-belt and undershirt-torso-arms-pants-boots.

but like. they're basically the same? so I thought I should just be able to leave the feathers in place and replace the coat and undershirt! which worked! (after uhhhhhh several fails. yes I can follow a tutorial; that doesn't mean I can follow it on the first try because using the frosty editor feels approximately like me walking blindfolded through a convenience store knocking things off shelves. or something. idk what the hell I'm doing lol)

I hate wearing the same outfit as Ivenci tho. seriously considering putting Ivenci in something else and giving the random civilian npcs Ivenci's fit lmao. or just dress the civilians in some other civilian outfit? I wonder if I can do that...

[thatfriendlyanon]

right. i keep thinking about it and chickening out, so, finally: i'm gonna take a break from tumblr for the rest of june.

caveats: cleaning out any tabs i've still got open, answering tag games/asks, and making moodboards

[numbr1sarjant]

bad sketch. loser humanization. ill have better later. blehhhhhh

[fingertipsmp3]

Things that happened in my sims game today that ✨just make sense✨

-My sim went on a date with his stalker