#*waxes poetically some more*

[kwillow]

Started this back in February when it was more topical but... I suppose no time is a good time for romance as far as Theo is concerned.

[scoobit9]

Huge fucking Jooster dump you know the drill

[dustteller]

Now that I am mostly over the Absolutely Feral stage of my Radiant Emperor Obsession and can think again, I want to do a proper write up on how the series handles colonialism. I need to get my sources together and make it all pretty and stuff, but the gist of it is this.

I actually really respect SPC for not making it A Thing. Like, the colonialism is an inherent part of the serting, and a lot of important moments hinge around it, but there's also a pretty clear refusal by the author to turn it into A Statement. I think they do a really good job of walking the fine line between aknowledging it and making it clear that its an important part of the setting, without turning the book into a political thesis on Why Bad Actually.

I think a lot of fantasy authors that frankly have no business making their books into political science treatises try to be super philosophical about it, and inevitably have almost all their points ring flat bc the main character almost always ends up perpetuating the system they spent the whole book critiquing. The classic example being, of course, "We've destroyed The Evil Empire! We will now replace it with The Good Empire, which is functionally identical to The Evil Empire except Good bc our Main Character is in charge! This will totally change the systemic issues we've spent the last three million words exploring! How? Don't worry about it, absolute power only corrupts you if you're A Bad Person!" (atla. atla i am looking at you. my love for you does not mean I am letting you off the hook.)

The Radiant Emperor books interact with and aknowledge the colonialism. The empire canonically falls at least in part because of one guy's willfull ignorance of the differences between his culture and that of two of the people he loves the most, because his culture supercedes theirs to the point where he does not even consider the posibility of this difference truly existing as a real-life power imbalance. And still, these books are not about that! That is not the main theme! It is important. It is handled pretty well, it is aknowledged, and it is not The Point. I really appreciate that more understated approach that SPC takes, because ironically by refusing to partake in dramatic philosophical grandstanding the media often ends up making way better and more nuanced points, because then their point actually fits into the story they are trying to tell.

[fictionadventurer]

I know I just said that we shouldn't categorize people in history, but when it comes to the presidential podcast, I do find myself sorting presidents into "good" and "garbage" piles based on how they treated their wife.

Good

Ulysses S. Grant gets top marks here. I'm not crazy about his wife, but he was, and they're cute together. She was sunny and upbeat enough to boost him through a lot of years of struggle, and he was devoted to both her and the children.

Theodore Roosevelt was a loving husband to both his wives and a ridiculously devoted father to all his children.

James Garfield starts out in the garbage pile because he married her without love and had an affair, but the way they both overcame that to fall deeply in love is a pretty beautiful redemption.

Woodrow Wilson seems to have had a pretty good relationship with his wife. I know less about them so this is a tentative classification, but she was willing to basically help run the country after his stroke, so it suggests there was something good there.

Garbage

Warren Harding reigns in the garbage can. Multiple unrepentant affairs with long-term mistresses.

FDR was already on pretty shaky ground in my mind, but once I learned he had an affair with Eleanor's secretary, and then Eleanor stayed with him through polio, and then at his death he was with this same secretary while Eleanor was away, he lost a lot of points.

Middle Ground

Lincoln and his wife had a pretty rocky relationship, but from what I can tell they tried to make it work and were planning on taking steps to improve things before his death.

Chester Arthur's wife hated that he was constantly away on political business, which gives him a lot of bad husband points, but also she did want that high-class, high-status lifestyle, and from what I can tell he did love her and had a lot of regrets after she died.

[flowercrowngods]

sometimes when i get a prompt ask i get so smiley like wow you really think of me as a writer huh? :) you see this scenario and want it in my words? :) you trust me like that? :) you know i exist? :) you think i can do this and make you happy with it? :) idk idk there’s something about getting random prompt asks that just :D

[coldswarkids]

sometimes i'm so taken by the thought that we must not lose sight of how the world is a community and we are all of us longing for it! that the human spirit, is at its core, a fine thing with a lot of love to give

[heliotrope155]

Just rewatched Saw (2004) again and it's such an underrated horror film. It's got those Mad Max-esque, genuinely jarring moments interspersed throughout, and is not light on gore or psychological horror.

[doedipus]

a large amount of time I've been spending on -untitled undefined scope original fiction project- since the last time I posted about it has been trying to develop the protagonist concept I came up with last summer or whatever into like, a character that would feel real and era appropriate.

it's fun research to do. naturally a lot of the details I assigned to her are things that I already think are cool, so it's been a lot of fun trying to trace her traits back through the relatively recent past, getting reminded of how much things have changed, or where the gaps in my intuition are, and then doing a flurry of reading to get a sense for exactly how someone like her and the people around her could have happened and what her life was probably like leading up to her present day. hopefully this results in some good good verisimilitude.

[lorephobic]

idk how to even like. put this pain into words and i would normally vent about this shit on twitter, but the person its about follows me on there so like. anybody have skills for coping with the crushing realization that the person u love most in this world and have built ur life around sees ur current situation together as a temporary hurdle that's preventing them from their truest and happiest self which. is separate from u entirely? anyone know how to deal with this?

[softquietsteadylove]

Who do you think is Ajaks favorite child?

So, Ajak would say that she loves all her children equally. She would never have favourites!

But yes she does and it's Sersi--hear me out!

It's not just the picking her to take over as Prime, because that's obvious. But I'm talking about how I think Sersi is the most human of all the Eternals.

Ajak loves all her kids. They function all together, as a family, even the cantankerous Druig and stubborn Ikaris and prickly Thena. Ajak wouldn't change anything about them.

But Sersi is different. From the moment they first awaken Ajak knows Sersi has insatiable curiosity, and passion, and love for all she does. Ajak sees how much Sersi loves life in all its forms and admires it, maybe even envies how much more freely Sersi can love without the burden of the truth weighing on her.

Ikaris is her secondhand, and he knows all that she does (mostly). He becomes a confidante to her in a way none of her other children are. And yet this ultimately dooms them both to never actually being able to depend on each other in an emotionally healthy way. Both are a pillar of the irrevocable truth and fear how it will crush their family if they move from that.

But that's why I think Thena's role in this is so fascinating (my bias is showing, I'm well aware). Because Thena also knows the truth, on some level, even from the beginning. It can be argued even before then--maybe she always gets Mahd Wy'ry, maybe she always remembers the horrors that they facilitate in their missions.

Ajak knows this. That's why she suggests erasing Thena, because she really does love her, and she knows firsthand the burden of knowledge. Thena already had wisdom, it's the knowledge that really endangered her.

I also think that's why Druig's relationship to Thena is so much deeper than what we got in the movie. He speaks up for her--he speaks up for her against Ajak, and Ikaris, and Arishem himself. He believes that Thena has a right not to want to forget their lives, and he obviously doesn't trust the answers he gets from Ikaris or their Prime.

Ajak is a very complicated character. She's not entirely right, she's not wrong either, and I do believe that she does the best with what she has. And that she loves her children. That, above all else, is what drives this person: love for her children and for people.

And that's Sersi's favourite thing: people. Sersi loves life and the people in it, and everything in between. Sersi is who Ajak could be if she didn't have the burden of their mission on her. And yes, she does impress that onto Sersi and burden her with that. It's hard to reconcile, and confusing, and it creates hardship for Sersi. But Ajak did so knowing Sersi was the right one to take this on.

Because this mother has high hopes for her daughter, and she knows what she can handle because she forged this child's soul from her own.

[buckera]

I think I used to write fanfics in a more eloquent way, using a bigger and more complex vocabulary, but the thing is... I started to put emphasis on how the characters think about and experience things and I just realised that most of the time, they wouldn't really use the words I picked for them.

I mean, I can wax poetic all I want, but the 20yo dude I'm writing about wouldn't always think that the sunlight hitting his crush's hair is ethereal or exquisite or magnificent or like the liquid honey dripping over the edge of the jar at the summer harvest... mostly, he'd just think it looked pretty.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I started to apply the 'he wouldn't fucking say that' onto the narrative parts more often and if it's good or bad, I don't know, but it makes the process feel a little more authentic for me, personally.

[thebaffledcaptain]

Music of the Revolutionary Century: Roslyn Castle

Perhaps tied for my favorite Haunting Revolutionary Tune, Roslyn Castle was used throughout the Revolutionary War as a British march, though it frequently takes the form of a dirge, becoming associated with funeral affairs (in one copybook from the period it is indeed labelled as "a Dead March"). The tune is named for the existing Roslyn Castle in Scotland—perhaps its somber air comes from the fact that the castle was evidently damaged multiple times from the 15th to the 17th century and lay mostly in ruins by the time the 18th century came around, when it was supposedly composed. Allegedly the British played this march in low spirits when they marched out of Hempstead Harbor, Long Island after the war.

My favorite version of this tune is not necessarily a particularly historically accurate one, but it is another instance of a rendition I find captures the tone of the melody so well. Melrose Quartet's version is a supremely emotional one, in the most comprehensive way possible: it is mournful, yet majestic—tragic, yet triumphant.

For my fellow music nerds out there (forgive while I get technical):

Interestingly, as my fellow fifer pointed out to me when I first mentioned the tune, the fife-and-drum version of the tune excludes the raised leading tone because fifes are tuned diatonically to "folk B-flat" (it's... complicated, I can't explain it fully myself—they're essentially played in the key of D, tuned in the key of Bb, and, like... actually pitched in Ab... it's not important) and aren't capable of playing that D#, which they substitute as a D natural. The result is something rather modal, a little less acute and a little more poignant—all that tension is gone, and that half-step alteration feels, somehow, profoundly resigned, without that painful pull toward the tonic.

[ceaseless-watchers-special-girl]

love being awake when everyone else in the house is asleep. i can feel the shift away from reality, the moment it becomes just me on my own. like a liminal space between what is and what could be, just for me. my worries are but a distance memory. it's just me, and the silence of the universe, and the stars blinking back at me.

[alliwantistowearcomfypants]

I said before that I don't understand people saying that Dean is more goofy and happy before he goes to hell cuz I think honestly, what made him less goofy was losing Ben and Lisa. Now, I don't like how they went about establishing that relationship. It was completely out of the blue and super underdeveloped. But, there's no denying the effect letting them go had on Dean. I think that's what killed a lot of his goofy side more than hell.

[technicolorxsn]

love how there are pretentious video essays that just repeat the book and meander and ramble about house of leaves. it's what zampanó would have wanted. it is not, however, what I want

[helium-rambles]

My Favorite Perfumes

Ahh, thank you!! Excuse to ramble!

First off @moth-time YES! They are SO much nicer than alcohol, in my opinion. They make some oil perfumes that are still sprays, but I go for the ones that are roll on or just dabbed onto the skin. Sprays have a tendency to stick to clothes and thus last longer and have more projection, over something just on the skin that will evaporate from your body heat.

I shop indie perfumes as it's easier to find oil based ones (and it's usually significantly cheaper!)

Of all the indie perfumes houses I've tried, so far my favorite is Cherry-ka's Trunk on Etsy. They make fragrances inspired by fandoms and horror tropes and the wild west and overall are just really cool. I found them by looking up a fandom thing on etsy and was confused as to why a fragrance showed up. Eventually curiosity got the better of me and I tried some, and have been in love ever since.

I've now sampled 55 of their scents. Of those, I have destashed 17 of them to my roommate, am currently sampling 7, and the rest I liked enough to finish up the sample and some I'll full-size (or have already full-sized). Also worth noting that they're gender-inclusive! All their scents are for people of any gender! (Some indie perfumers tend to label feminine or masculine or unisex perfumes, which is apparently an indicator for people who are into mainstream perfumes to get an idea of a scent profile. But as someone who doesn't have the baseline knowledge of what that means, I feel a little off-put on trying some of those scents.)

My absolute favorite from Cherry-ka's Trunk (and of every fragrance I've ever tried) is Flying which has notes of fir, mint, and florals. This is also the one that taught me about resting oils. When I first got it, it pretty much just smelled like mint to me. I liked it (in fact, I will wear almost anything with mint in it) but it was pretty plain mint. Then as I used up the sample, the other notes became more pronounced. When you first apply it, it's still mostly mint, but the florals add some sweetness to it, and as the scent dries down, there is the astringent woody quality of the fir.

I didn't even notice the change as I used up the sample, but once I finished the sample, I found myself missing it so I bought a full-size. When I finally got it in the mail I was disappointed to sniff it and only get mint. Why did I want to full-size this again? I put it at the back of my perfumes and forgot about it for a month, only to try it again and be like WOW! I LOVE THIS! I waited until I used up my 5ml to purchase another, and I regretted waiting it, because I had to wait another month for it to become as beautiful as it gets. Next time, I'm ordering as soon as my bottle starts running low!

Other ones I've full sized from them are...

Pronounced (metal, green tea, paint, musk ) This smells strongly of metal to begin with! If you do not like the scent of metal, I don't recommend this. The metal fades away into a beautiful musk. I'm addicting to their musk. It's not an overy dirty musk, nor the laundry detergent musk. I don't know what type of musk it is, but I know I'm the most attractive person alive while wearing it. Oddly enough, I've found this is a summer scent for me.

Two Queens (lavender, coffee, musk, aftershave) Honestly, I got this for the coffee note, but don't smell any coffee in this. I do get a very herbal lavender, that reminds my of motel linen (fitting because of the inspiration for this perfume) and it dries down into that amazing musk. This musk is a little brighter(?) than Pronounced but still very good. I huff this scent until my nose wears out.

Conman (chamomile, blueberry, muguet) This blueberry.....I usually find blueberries too tart and sour, but this smells the way I want blueberries to taste. It's sweet, but not sugary. It's nicely supported by the herbiness of the chamomile. Kinda like a dried grass smell. I'm also very tickled by the name of this. I'm unfamiliar with the character it's based on, but I wear this when I want my own conman confidence.

And I will cut my rambles there for now! I'm not sure if this answers the question of what sorts are my favorites, cuz the only real pattern I've noticed in my collection is that I like mint and (some) musks. And I like metal and leather scents for summer. Thanks again for the excuse to ramble!