#The Story of the Woven

[faithsknife]

people still think dean wasn't in love with cas. people actually believe that shit. i could line up plenty of examples, but his widower/grief arc at the beginning of s13 is one of the best. LOOK AT HIS FACE. literally the face of a man who believes the love of his life is dead

[vasira96]

can't stop daydreaming about a soulslike zelda game yall i'm so normal about this

[suntails]

⚔️🐍

[puppyeared]

i feel like im not making any sense but does anyone else feel like there are stories that let u run with them and ones that spell everything out for you

[dejasenti99]

you've been through the war, but you've nothing to show.

[soloorganaas]

amy not being a lesbian is one of the greatest sins tww ever committed tbh

[plague-of-insomnia]

I think the worst thing about kuro antis is how much of a disservice they do to Yana.

Acting like she’s a bad storyteller because they don’t like the way she tells her story.

Yana is an incredible storyteller.

She is able to weave together so many threads so there’s always a set up for something and yet she does it in a way that doesn’t distract from the overall story.

Just think about the twin reveal. It was set up as early as the ripper arc I believe and didn’t come out until 100+ chapters later. And yet if you look back you can see all the clues she left.

She carefully chooses how she sets up panels and which POV she uses. She picks her kanji so carefully, often they can be read 3-4 different ways!

To say she’s a bad writer or that she just “accidentally” does things for “fan service” is a slap in the face to the hard work and careful craftsmenship she puts into her work.

If you think she’s such a bad mangaka, if you find her “sexualizing” of characters so repulsive, then why are you in the kuro fandom? Why are you still reading the manga?

I’ve come across plenty of media where I liked the concept but hated the execution. And you know what I did? I stopped reading/watching and moved on. It’s that simple.

[thatgirlonstage]

man the way Magnus entrusted his relic to Jack and June because they were good people with rustic hospitality and it turned an entire town into a place of betrayal and coups and distrust and finally an inescapably looping nightmare for years where death was perpetually an hour away and the way that the town was ultimately saved with kindness to animals through reuniting the purple worm with her children and the self-sacrifice of the town's self-appointed protector

and the way Merle's relic took love that had bloomed from rivalry and twisted it into a desperate need to prove oneself capable and better, to become unto a god, the way it drove Sloane to run away from everyone she cared about rather than reach out to them for help, and the way it was only stopped with peacemaking, with reaching back for her still when all hope seemed lost, with Hurley leaping headfirst into silverpoint knowing full well she would be killed but doing it because she cared about the person inside even at her worst, even when she was irredeemable, even when no one else would think to find anything human left in there at all

and the way Taako's relic was put to the use of science and exploration and used, for a while, successfully, but with too much greed, with too much selfishness, with too much focus on Maureen and Lucas's goals and too little trust of other people's word on how dangerous these relics are, the way it ultimately became the tool of a creature trying to claw its way back to the life and loved ones it knew and had lost, a creature that had long since lost its sense of self, that had merged with others just to survive, and the way familial love was necessary to stop it, the way Lucas got to his worst out of love of his mother and the desperation to do anything to get her back, the way he got brought back to his senses by that same love and the realization of how badly he'd failed her, the way he was still an untrustworthy dick at the end but they let him go anyway and he came back when it mattered

the way Lup's relic was locked away for a decade and ultimately uncovered and reactivated by Gundran's desperate desire to reclaim what once belonged to his family, the way it was not stopped, the way the loss of Phandalin haunts the narrative, a reminder of failure and of people the boys couldn't save

the way Davenport's relic gets caught up in a game of smoke and mirrors while on the harsh time limit of the end of a journey, the way part of Jenkins' ploy is that he seems utterly unthreatening, the way Hudson's death and the loss of his head in particular is practically collateral damage, the way the train could not be saved but this time the people were

the way Barry's relic is in the hands of two liches who are very obvious and intentional foils to him and Lup, but even more than that, the way it's so buried in the suffering of losing everything that makes you yourself, over and over and over and over and over, the way Wonderland is designed to make you eventually dependent on this cycle of loss just to stay alive, the way it's only beaten by changing the rules of the game

and of course the way Lucretia's relic stays glued to her side, the emblem and reason for her loneliness, isolating her in a bubble of her own making, until, of course, she lets her family back in, and as raw and painful a reunion as it is, as it has to be, because you can't stay safe from your mistakes forever, the seven of them together find the solution she could not find alone

[weaversthread]

A Letter, A Lecture, and A Question of Loyalty ⚔️

[patrocles]

“Daniel is not blamed or looked down upon, nor is his death glorified. Instead, the show explores how the characters attempt to honor Daniel’s life, as well as the impact of his death.” (X)

RESERVATION DOGS (2021 -)

CREATED BY: Sterlin Harjo & Taika Waititi

[evermoredeluxe]

rappers releasing 6-8 min long diss tracks is so funny to me. like damn you are pressed

[tibli]

i dont mind k*bumisu shippers, but when they act like their ship is somehow 'superior' to labru bc labru is apparently 'just shipping two guys together for no reason' i have to laugh. for starters, they're narrative foils, which is gay as hell on its own. but on top of that, kabru spends probably 80% of his time in the story thinking about laios. not his party, just laios.

originally, we're led to believe he hates laios, only to find out kabru actually just wanted to be his friend so he could understand him. hell, the scene where kabru blurts that out might as well have been pulled from a romance novel lmao

then we have laios who, sure, isnt the most romance-minded character— but that doesnt mean its impossible. the epilogue at the end of the manga shows kabru being a trusted advisor of his, so clearly they've built up a rapport by that point

[slimeshade]

Minidump of art done for my buddy @astorichan of the main characters from her lovely story Where Your Dead Stars Shine

Bonus 12am sillies:

[kaurwreck]

On Stormbringer, why Chuuya's humanity isn't left ambiguous, and why N is wildly unreliable for exposition. Everything beneath the Read More is both spoilers and also nonsense if you're unfamiliar with or haven't finished Stormbringer.

I read Stormbringer because when trying to dig into Chuuya's backstory, I couldn't find any clear information. However, the sum of what I was able to find indicated that whether Chuuya was the original or the clone was left ambiguous. And then I read Stormbringer, and it wasn't left ambiguous at all; textually and metatextually, the story concludes that he is the original.

The only specific argument I've seen as to why Chuuya's humanity is ambiguous is that N said he was a clone and there would be no reason for N to lie to Chuuya. But, N has every incentive to lie to Chuuya. The only way to continue the research effectively is to have back the research's source material; iterating on a clone is ill-advised (consider training deep learning models on output from deep learning models, as a comparable example) and can only suffice for so long if it ever sufficed at all. (If that logic isn't enough on its own, N's quick dismissal of the clone's bio matter is.)

But, if your source material believes himself to be an individual, he will resist returning to you as source material. That's the only explanation for why N tortured Chuuya too: if Chuuya's conscious self is separated from his singularity, such as when Randou separated him, the singularity is released as a black hole kaiju, so you can't simply lobotomize him. But maybe you can psychologically break him into complacency.

The only other argument against the epilogue as evidence enough that Chuuya is the original might be that Mori is unreliable for exposition too. Except, in his dealings with Chuuya, Mori is uncharacteristically sincere, honest, and forthcoming. He is manipulative, but because he's manipulative, he understands that Chuuya responds better to frankness. Further, the two people he presents to Chuuya as his birth parents resemble the actual author's parents, providing metatextual validation that those are his parents.

I can't imagine what's left that is ambiguous.

I think, at least sometimes, people just want it to be ambigious. I've seen takes that in confirming that Chuuya is the original, the epilogue cheapens Chuuya's arc. It doesn't, but placing his nonhumanity as integral to his arc certainly would. His arc is that it didn't matter if he was the original or the clone; as Randou told him in Fifteen, regardless of any of our origins, we are all patterns written on flesh. (That's important, because it's what Verlaine couldn't understand himself, and his inability to grasp it, his belief that he was inherently deficient for his origins, is why he perceived insincerity in Randou's assurances.) Mori gifts him the opportunity to confirm his background years after he'd already chosen his innate humanity. He accepts Mori's gesture but does not act on it, because the confirmation that he was born to his parents changed nothing to him. It sincerely did not not matter.

The epilogue's confirmation that Chuuya was born to parents and isn't a clone would only cheapen his arc if Chuuya's humanity existed in defiance of his nonhumanity. But that was never the story. Rather, the story is that Chuuya embraces and internalizes faith in himself and his innate humanity, something with which he struggles as he's fraught with insecurity over whether he's capable of being who he needs to be for those he loves. It's evident that this is his arc because faith in one's innate humanity, compassion, and ability to navigate uncertainty is paralleled throughout, including in Dazai and Adam.

It's also why Stormbringer is framed within the context and themes of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; Frankenstein's monster isn't human in defiance of his inhumanity, he, like Frankenstein and the rest of us, is human because he comprises patterns of curiosity, love, and mistakes made flesh.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Skin and Its Girl

literary fiction with a little magical realism

follows a queer Palestinian American woman born with blue skin, recounting her childhood, to the great-aunt who helped raise her, and piecing together her great-aunt’s secrets

family, identity, and stories

[greyhavensking]

god rewatching black sails is a gift because I didn’t remember the scene when Dufresne is in the middle of attempting to take the merchant ship and Flint’s explaining to Silver the importance of this particular moment in winning the day — because, as he says, the men in these waters don’t fear guns or swords, and you don’t get what he’s driving at until the merchant captain asks Dufresne: “Are you him?”

these men don’t fear guns or swords or canons. what they fear is Flint’s name, his reputation. his stories.

without those stories, the black flag they fly means nothing. there’s nothing to back it up, and it’s why dufresne’s command of the situation shatters so quickly and violently. goddamn this show is good.