#Fascinating Bloom

[candylandphotos]

Beautiful girl with flowers in hand

"Blooming in beauty: A beautiful girl with flowers in hand."

[anonymouspuzzler]

evil comic I've been meaning to draw since the bloom update dropped

[Image ID/Transcript: A three-panel black-and-white Smile for Me comic divided into three images.

In the first panel, Marv is drawn from the waist up carrying a fishing rod over one shoulder, the other hand on his hip. He is looking forward with a neutral expression, saying, "Howdy, youngsters. Check-in for ol' Marv Truncler?"

In the second panel, Habit is standing at a countertop with a misspelled "check-in" sign, a "ring for service"-type bell, a box full of paperwork, and two pens. He is smiling, clapping both hands next to his head, saying (in misspelled Habit-speak) "Hello mister!! Welcome welcome we are so happy to help you find your smile again Kamal can help you with papers and walk [text blocked off by Habit's head in the word balloon]-re room". Kamal is standing behind Habit, wide-eyed, blushing and sweating furiously, clutching a bunch of papers with shaking hands. There is an arrow pointing to him reading "HAS LIKE 15 CHEESECAKE MAGS UNDER HIS MATTRESS RIGHT NOW WITH THIS GUY ON THE COVER".

In the third and final panel, Kamal and Marv are walking side by side. Kamal is blushing, sweating and looking incredibly nervous, papers stuck under one arm, the other held stiffly at his side. Marv looks relaxed, one arm holding the fishing rod over his shoulder, the other gesturing with a pointer figure. Kamal shakily says "so uhhhhh how umm what uhhhh what brings you to the Habitat"; the word balloon is partially covered up by Marv saying, in bold text, "NOW LEMME TELL YA ABOUT FISH SON". End ID.]

[shoceted]

hijikon nation we won... maybe at some cost but we won i think

[thyandrawrites]

I'm enjoying the deeper dive into Reo's feelings that epinagi made possible, but I have to admit I'm curious to see how he can go from thinking this,

To saying this,

In the span of a couple minutes lol

[fatalism-and-villainy]

Mmmkay, I have thoughts on Alana’s arc and contextualizing Margot/Alana.

This is sort of tangential to what I said here regarding the interplay of control and violence on the show. In that post, I said of Alana:

With Alana, [violence is] the only possible culmination of her losing control of the situation with Mason Verger, with her being forced to follow the abdication of her morals all the way to the end point.

Alana isn’t a “natural” killer like some of the characters on the show, but she’s capable of it when pushed (unlike, say, Chilton) - and the set of circumstances that get her there are losing control, and only being able to regain control for the situation by enabling, and participating in, murder. And this arc sheds some fascinating light on some of the central traits that have defined her throughout the show.

Two of Alana’s key qualities as a character, I would say, are both related to control. Firstly, she feels a strong sense of personal responsibility - she can’t just stand aside and allow injustice to take place. She always intervenes in a situation to advocate for what she feels is right, such as with Abigail, and with Will during season 1 and his arc in prison. She’s very invested in rightness, rather than simply self-preservation, at least initially (less so come season 3, where she’s fine with throwing Chilton under the bus) - when Gideon is loose, with a strong possibility he’ll come after her, she’s not solely worried about her own safety, but rather expresses concern over what happened to him and the fact that he can’t truly be held accountable for his actions when operating under reduced capacity. And she can’t be persuaded or intimidated into acting in her own self-interest if it contradicts her values. She refuses to withdraw her report citing her concerns about Jack putting Will in the field when pressed to do so by Kade Prunell and smarmy institutional self-protection; and, of course, she refuses to take the out that Hannibal offers her in the s2 finale. That moment in Hannibal’s kitchen encapsulates so much of the essence of her character - she’s not the kind of person who could ever walk away without trying to bring him down.

Her other central attribute in the early seasons is self-control. She’s self-aware almost to a fault, and always striving to keep her worst interpersonal impulses in check. She knows her shortcomings in her personal relationships, and compartmentalizes accordingly. She avoids being alone with Will in an effort to maintain professional boundaries and resist indulging in something that she knows would be destructive. Her words to Will after turning him down are telling - she wanted to sleep with him, and was internally divided about the rejection, but an affair would have been “reckless.” She’s extremely careful, including with her own desires.

(Her relationship with Hannibal, tellingly, is not reckless from her POV - it’s her attempting to find emotional safety from her conflicted feelings about Will. There’s an interesting parallel in her kissing Hannibal after the party in Futamono to Will kissing her at his house in Fromage - she “reached” for Hannibal the way Will did to her, grasping for stability.)

What changes for her in season 3 is that, in a word, she gets reckless. She becomes much friendlier with ruthless pragmatism, whereas before, she was outraged at - for example - launching a defense for Will in court based on untruths, even if it could exonerate him. Her plan to play Mason relies on her confidence that the FBI will swoop in and bail her out in the end, so she maintains her trust in institutions (at first), but she’s still willing to use extra-legal channels to catch Hannibal, and manipulate an incredibly dangerous man to her ends. And it’s all still of a piece with her character and her need to take control over and assume responsibility for the situation with Hannibal - but it’s a version of herself undergoing transformation, becoming more ruthless and more willing to take matters into her own hands rather than following official channels. And, crucially, it involves her losing control of the situation, despite her conviction that she can manage it - by which she learns that it’s impossible for her to absolve herself of complicity here, and she has to take a more vigilante-justice route, put her life in danger by loosing chaos in the form of Hannibal, and allow him to take the fall and lie for her.

The fling with Margot correlates both to Alana’s becoming as this new, more ruthless and untethered version of herself, and in the slippage of her carefully maintained self-control. Hooking up with Mason’s sister is pretty much the definition of reckless! It makes the situation considerably more precarious, and the alliance with Margot is hardly essential to her original plan, even if there does end up being $$$ attached to it. But it’s an indulgence that she didn’t allow herself to fully give in to with Will. The parallel between Will and Margot is made pretty apparent wrt their relationships with Hannibal, but I think they also represent something similar to Alana (who herself gets, in certain ways, take the role of Hannibal for this arc). She wants to save people, and Margot, while not toothless, is fairly disempowered and traumatized, someone in need of saving. The relationship with her, for Alana, is a form of giving in to something she’s long denied herself. And, thematically, it makes perfect sense that the safeguards she’s put up around herself begin to dissolve in tandem with her personal beliefs being challenged and forced to adapt.

[metalic-sky-sprite]

Some 14-ish year old Chance doodles (ft. His mom and lttm)

[aristhought]

mushroom doodles for the autumn months / ig

[magentagalaxies]

i need to keep working on my finals but i high key just want to watch the producers again

[suhyewon]

more unwell thoughts about the idea of healing and how the show intertwines it with truth and memory in different ways. under a cut because im going to TALK

i'm re-listening rn and i'm just approaching the end of season 1, and coming back to the beginning right after finishing the final season is just striking with how much dot and lily's relationship evolves over the course of the show. i mean, of course it does, but like........ the way lily shows up still so angry and hurt because of her mom leaving, and how much that shapes every part of their relationship especially at the start, and that hurt isn't gone by the end of the show but they're working on it. they understand each other better.

like, dot knows why she moved back to mount absalom, and the glimpse we get in 5.11 shows us how hard it was for her, but lily doesn't know that. she was a kid at the time. and at the start of the show she doesn't even believe (or doesn't want to) that dot cares about that, that it was hard for her, even that she's a good person. and learning the truth doesn't change the pain they both went through but it does let them start to rebuild a better relationship.

what about with wes and silas, who in their own ways have both forgotten their pasts? i don't think we know how long wes worked at fenwood with dot, but he spends a good amount of time just walking around completely unaware that he's dead. and you could argue that he's happy so it's fine, but there's just this huge chunk of his existence, of who he is, that he can't even begin to grapple with because he doesn't know about it. and how do you even answer a question like this - is it better to be unaware of something so monumental about yourself, if it means being happier? never thinking too hard about anything that might cause the facade to crumble, even something as simple as your home address? is that happiness real, is it worth it?

and silas being kind of the same but in the opposite direction, he doesn't remember what happened to him either but that just means he's walking around with this immense pain and sorrow he can't do anything about, because he doesn't know what caused it. and even so, he doesn't want to know - lily still has to talk him into it - because remembering might be the first step to healing but it's still going to fucking hurt. is that better? you'll never move past it but at least it won't get worse? (it always gets worse! "i'll lose control" "you've already lost it")

and that just..... circles back around ad infinitum. of course wes doesn't want to find out that he's dead! he seemingly disappears from the face of the earth once he does, just trying to deal with it all, with what this means, and then later with who he even is if he's an echo or a memory rather than a ghost. he has a complete crisis, which is completely reasonable, and it must have fucking sucked.

likewise silas, having to face what happened to him, knowing nothing except that it's going to be awful. blooms even tries to deny remembering it when lily says he does. having to relive all of your worst experiences just for the chance of peace after.

and likewise lily, coming to terms with her mom leaving and how much that continues to hurt her, but being able to acknowledge that it hurt dot as well. and that even though dot caused her all that pain, she's also not a bad person, and they love each other; even though it means letting go of her anger and resentment about it. like, that's also hard. anger can be validating. you were hurt. it is and will continue to be horrible. but being able to move past it means their relationship can start healing, too.

there's just something about all of that, how facing the truth can heal but first it's going to hurt. it's going to hurt because it means acknowledging the pain is there. it means acknowledging bad things happened. maybe it means having to relive something awful or realise that the situation you're in is way more fucked than you thought - but also acknowledging that denial is only going to make it worse.

it hurts first.

but you can heal.

[batfamiliar]

in all english dubs darcy says some variation of "bloom's gotten tough", but i greatly enjoy polish dub's "she's stronger than she used to be" with the emphasis on "used to be" because it implies darcy's talking about much older events in season 1, instead of just the recent ones like bloom training on pyros or just in general

[paskariu]

Girls' spa day for the orchids with some warm water and fertilizer :D

Gonna need to get some more soil for the right and middle orchids to ground the air roots but they should be fine for now.

[mattsmemes]

[marymekpop]

⟢ highlight of the hour: our blooming youth [5/20] ⟣

I knew you would listen to me. I believed you would listen to even a lowly eunuch.

Tell me. We need to save someone if we can.

[magilv]

reaver spec my beloved,,,,,,,,     they’re warrior blood mages & i will hear no contrary to that, bioware told me themselves

[candylandphotos]

Beautiful girl with flowers in hand

"Captivating the moment: A beautiful girl holding flowers in her hand."

[valleynix]

Are Lunatic and Daniela going to have a romantic relationship?

nope! they’ll be strictly platonic :3

i have a plan (kinda) to have a relationship bloom between them and C-Dani (Dani’s copy, who’s like her but a bit touchier, more feral, more scars, but is also so kind and shyly leaves them flowers/shiny rocks while she crushes on them and helps patch up their wounds (they don’t need it <3))

(it’s literally the cutest thing and “Line Without a Hook” goes so well with them)