#a passage through the light

[dangerpro]

I just found out about a cool Japanese (i think?) musical about the french revolution but not being able to find any clips of it online/ anywhere AAAAAH

[bugsbutch]

let SJ dream, ok??

[historyisneat]

This is going to sound a bit strange, but I think the costuming in A Passage Through the Light for Camille may have been inspired somewhat by LRF (1989). I don't have any evidence to substantiate this besides that those are the only two places I've seen the costuming for Camille include curly hair that is pulled into a ponytail (and as far as I've seen there aren't any portraits of him that display him wearing a hairstyle like that). And the striped blue vests combined with a dark coat definitely seem simalar.

[allerod]

wajda’s danton is an adaptation of przybyszewska’s the danton case that dares to ask a question “what if danton was just a genuinely swell guy”, and takarazuka’s a passage through the light is an adaptation of wajda’s danton that dares to ask a question “what if robespierre was a lesbian tumblarina” 

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep - A Fragmentary Passage - Depths of Darkness

[sparkler-parent]

I just found out that the fireplace in aviary is double-sided and you can use it as a shortcut to the mask room

[emile-hides]

Upon rewatch of the Mario Movie, I really gotta wonder how long the Mario Bros were in the Mushroom Kingdom for. 

They get sucked through the pipe past sundown Brooklyn time, which depending on the season is like 8-9 o’clock, Mario arrives in the Mushroom Kingdom in the day time, maybe late afternoon, and spends the rest of the day through the night into the morning on Peach’s Mario Maker level, travels all the next day, sleeps in a Fire Flower field for the night, arrives at the Kong Kingdom mid the next day, leaves the Kong Kingdom on Karts around sunset, which turns to night as they are ambushed, leading to Mario and DK spending the entire night inside an eel only breaking out early the next morning, just to make it barely in time to Peach and Bowser’s wedding sometime around noon, and go back through the pipe to have it be early morning in Brooklyn with the rest of the Mario family carrying on with breakfast as usual.

So they spend 3 Days in the Mushroom Kingdom, but only like 12 hours of Brooklyn time seems to have passed.

[blindluck]

i know we're not supposed to take marvel's physics super seriously but the concept of time dilation is such a fun one to consider

[unladielike]

Honestly, the older she gets, the more this one post would encapsulate Vivan’s personal stance on romantic relationships as a whole. Like, she would go from ‘romance is only for normies’ to ‘being in a relationship with someone is hard, because it requires compromise, patience, and change. It would also mean I have to alter myself and become an entirely new, different person to adapt or fit this relationship’, so I imagine later on throughout her twenties, Vivian would become very disillusioned by romantic love, because it’s just so much work.

...Furthermore, being in one would mean that she has to actually put in effort and pay actual heed to reality in all it’s harshness for once, and suddenly, nothing is funny anymore, because she’s forced to confront the fact she doesn’t want to grow older or give up a part of herself, even if it would benefit the other person (aka stop obsessing over hot two dimensional men). And all of a sudden, her life is no longer a comedy. It’s real, to the point where she can no longer run away or escape through fictional worlds as much as she wants when the going gets tough.

To that end, I can see Vivian ironically being miserable... even if she happens to love someone so much, she doesn’t want to separate from them, because she will have to grow alongside them and undergo the dreaded journey from ‘girl’ to ‘woman’.

And as if that wasn’t enough, there’s already this sense of loneliness she would feel during each instance a friend gets married, because it feels as if she’s being left behind while they’re starting new chapters of their lives. Since she herself abhors change as well, being in a relationship and being single are seriously two types of unhappiness for her, and no matter which path she takes, she feels she will be miserable... to the point where Vivian would likely waste away her twenties, being depressed and just unable to cope with this sense of loss that she finds really hard to put into words.

[bugsbutch]

Robespierre: A Passage Through the Light stream

November 29th, the birthday of yours truly (and of some guy named Frank Wildhorn too), celebrate with me by watching this 100% historically accurate musical with English subtitles kindly provided by @coeuraubonheur and translator who prefers to be stealth. if you're interested in:

women

pretty costumes

stabby women

unhinged gay Saint-Just

banger songs

then come to the stream this Tuesday Nov 29th at 8:00 pm CET. please send me a DM beforehand for the link and password (don't be shy, you don't have to follow me or anything). see you there!

[historyisneat]

Ended up drawing these three from the musical for no particular reason

[sandwhich-lady]

Currently thinking about the time that I insisted to my parents that we go to knotts scary farm, completely underestimated the scare factor, and was scared shitless the entire time

Went to the first haunted house, hated it, didn’t go into another one until near the end of our trip and it was one of those interactive one where you get a weapon and stuff, and I got the bright idea that reciting a monologue from the play I was doing (shout out to The Passage by Robert Lawson) would help me get through it and be less scared (it did)

So shout out to the scare actors that had to deal with a 15 year old theatre kid scared out of their mind firing a toy gun at them while screaming “AT SEA ONE DAY. YOULL SEE LAND WHERE THERE IS NO LAND. AND ON THAT DAY AHAB SHALL GO TO HIS GRAVE. AND ALL, ALL SAVE ONE WILL FALL”

[coern]

two embers needs to release soon already so I can have a little more of an excuse to draw alef and resh as siblings and draw them to six trillion years and overnight story

[homunculus-argument]

This is one of those ideas that someone's probably already done, but I came up with another concept for a game:

A game where most of the cutscenes are flashbacks of memories the protagonist has, and the "skip cutscene" button says "repress this memory". You can play through the whole game while skipping all of the cutscenes, you don't need to watch any of them to complete the main storyline and get the main intended ending.

But watching through them doesn't just give you a more thorough - and occasionally, even completely different - understanding of the whole game, and information that makes you see certain characters in a different light, but it unocks new options in the game. You watch through the cutscene flashback of the protagonist's mother doing something fucked up, and suddenly all your conversations with her now have the dialogue option to go "hey mom remember when [the fucked up thing] happened?"

This particular conversation branch doesn't seem to lead anywhere, she'll flat-out deny that the thing ever happened, and she calls you crazy for having ever imagined that, but later on you can stumble upon something else that you clearly saw in the flashback, that you couldn't have found out any other way. It's one thing to wonder why you would remember something that never happened, but how would you have known that this passageway was here, and opens exactly the same way you remembered it?

There are passages in the game that aren't required for the completion of the main storyline, that aren't blocked off by anything visible and obvious, but have text like "you cannot go through this way, this hallway is too noisy", and it takes a completely unrelated flashback for you to recognise what that specific sound reminds you of, which opens up a whole sidequest of you figuring out why you can't stand hearing that noise. Once you've made the connections and finally remember, you can go through the hallway. There's nothing on the other side that you need for the main quest, but things that may help unlock some other mysteries.

The main game is simple and straightforward, you can just play through that one and be done with it. But that's not the whole picture, the full story. There are answers peppered thorough the whole game, answers to questions you might not even think of to ask. Explanations of why the protagonist is the way they are, and things that make you see characters you interact with - and your interactions with them - in a completely different light. Most of the relevations are grim. The only question to ask yourself is

Do you want to remember?

[critterbitter]

re: your thoughts on legendaries (which is very cool and based) what’s your take on the differences between legends:arceus giratina and platinum giratina, especially since you defined them as hating the world? specifically the bit where giratina (at least seemingly) actively defended the world from cyrus trying to destroy it, after trying to do the same thing with volo’s help centuries prior?

Weird ghost worm upon yee (AND MORE ART BELOW CUT!)

Anyways, here’s my mad ramblings about Giratina and Arceus’s backstory.

Tldr: Giratina’s a conglomerate of angry souls scorned by Arceus.

(Here’s the playlist. It’s all about worms.)

How it Started.

The original one has chosen favorites over the passage of time. Heroes, legends, protagonists…

Arceus intervenes for those it loves, and the consequences of a god touching the mortal world is devastating in its entirety. One act of divine intervention causes entire civilizations to collapse. One whispered suggestion drives an entire legacy insane.

So Arceus, paralyzed by its love for the mortal world, acts very little, learning from its mistakes. Apathy soaks through every motion. And thus is the way of the world.

But people love the Originator. Religions are born from Arceus’s rare deeds, and generation on generation taught its benevolence. Imagine spending your entire life chasing after that golden light. Imagine knowing its real and there, and it loves you.

Imagine begging it for help, and seeing it turn away when you need it most.

I think those people would feel very abandoned indeed, if they spent their lives worshipping, and receiving no response at all.

Giratina is born from the abandoned, the lost, and the angry. They’re a hundred thousand souls who’s adoration turned to spite. They’re an entity who demands for Arceus to look at them, so they can finally rest.

Arcues can not look at them in full, because if it does Giratina will fade.

(Scio, beloved. For I can not let you go.)

So the Original One banishes the Unwanted Beast into the distortion world, and Giratina seethes, and starves, and screams.

(Here are two truths about the Beast Between Dimensions—

1. Some part of them still loves Arceus. Arceus is their anchor, after all— the sole reason why they exist, why they are. But Arceus can not love it back in a way that matters, and that hurts.

2. Giratina is made of a thousand voices. Some of these voices remember that there’s a world above. They miss it.)

Why Giratina attacked Hisui in PLA:

PLA Giratina’s not a new god, but they’re very, very bitter and barely coherent on a good day. Volo serves as a conduct to help unite the broiling mass of ghosts against Arceus, and thus Giratina’s hatred overcomes any flickering affections they have for the land.

It doesn’t help that Arceus intervened for Hisui, sending Akari to directly stop Volo from summoning Giratina.

(As for Volo, well.

Imagine being a child who was thrown into the future due to Palkia and Dialga’s fits, who learned his people (his world) no longer exist beyond a shadow in the history books and a single, bitter lore keeper.

Volo doesn’t remember his original culture beyond vague imprints and singing praises to Sinnoh, but he knew he was loved, and he knew his family is dust four hundred years in the past. There’s a special sort of rage in him that echoes Giratinas.)

(Why did you abandon my people, Arceus? What kind of god are you, to leave those who love you so callously behind?)

(Maybe some part of Giratina recognizes Volo, beyond a feeling of kinship.

Maybe some part of Giratina grieves because it recognized the child Volo was.)

When Volo gets his pound of flesh, (when he realizes Arceus is not beholden to him, that the inherent alien morality Arceus holds is not a personal slight), Giratina will finally rest.

Anyways what I’m trying to say is: Arceus is never a person, but a nebulous embodiment of the connection shared between pokemon and humans. It tries to experience what it’s supposed to embody, but millennia of watching people be and cease has given it choice paralysis, apathy, and a hoarding issue. If something lasts forever next to it? Good.

Giratina was once a person. (Correction, a LOT of persons.) They don’t think very linearly either, but they have context on mortal matters and are thus the more benevolent and malicious of the two. One day, time will smooth them into something like Arceus. We can only hope the two keep each other in check.

THE DIFFERENCE OF LEGENDS ARCEUS GIRATINA VS PLATINUM PEARL GIRATINA

If the ancient version of giratina is an angry conglomerate of ghosts scorned by Arceus, the modern iteration of Giratina’s a creature that’s more settled in its skin and more assured in its duties. Giratina still has beef with Arceus, but they unionized into one being who’s love of the mortal world has triumphed over its ancestral grudge. One might even postulate they have shifted their anchor from Sinnoh the god, to Sinnoh the place.

((We call this character developement. Good for you, weird ghost worm!))

(((FULL DISCLOSURE, VOLO BEING FROM THE PAST IS INSPIRED FROM FOXFALL. You know. The fic that got me into this fandom. Please give it some love.)))

[headspace-hotel]

nature things that a lot of people don't know about and weren't even taught about adequately, but they're actually really fundamental and important to know about

how rivers work. Where do they get started? how do they decide which way to flow?? what makes one river muddy and the other one clear?

[They flow downhill. Always. If a river is flowing a Way, that way is Downhill. They start with rain flowing or soaking downhill until it forms into a little trickle through a channel like a gully or drainage ditch, and the farther it flows the more other trickles flow into it from the land around it, until you have a stream, and the streams all flow downhill until they run into each other, and eventually you have a river which finally reaches the ocean. Rivers never flow FROM the ocean because the ocean is the most downhill you can possibly go. I don't think rivers usually split in two—a fork in a waterway is usually two rivers joining together.]

[On the subject of pollution, rain is usually supposed to soak slowly through the layer of leaves, roots, and dead plant material that covers most biomes. But if you tear up the plants and leave bare mud, or replace a forest with a muddy cow pasture, there's no filter, and mud and contaminants wash into the river. Just plain mud can be pollution.]

how soil works. What makes different soils different? Why are some soils good for growing a garden and others terrible? Does it need more fertilizer?

[The sand, silt, clay diagram is very simplified and only deals with one aspect of soil. Roots, soil animals, fungi, and dead plant material are all part of soil and affect its structure, making it spongy and full of holes and passages for nutrients, water, and new roots. Tilling can break hard soil, but tilling doesn't make soil light, fluffy, and permeable—disturbing the soil as little as possible, protecting it with a layer of plant material, and allowing the natural life forms of the soil develop their networks and tunnels and slowly break down the plant material layer does. This is also very simplified. Soil is COMPLICATED.]

what fungi are, and whether they are dangerous.

[fungi cannot harm you unless you eat them or unless they're growing inside your house and you're inhaling their spores in a concentrated space. There's like, one species in Japan that causes skin irritation. You can touch any other species without any harm whatsoever. *Most* of them don't harm your garden either—in fact, most plants connect their root systems to the fungal mycelium in the soil and receive nutrients from the fungus in exchange for the products of photosynthesis.]

Whether lichen harm trees

[no. They're just hanging out. But a LOT of lichen on a tree might be a sign that the tree is dying. It's not the lichen's fault though.]

What moss is??

[it's a plant, but a very simple plant that doesn't have any vessels for transporting water, so it has to live somewhere damp and soak it up like a sponge. There are hundreds of species of moss, and different species live on the side of a boulder vs. the top, or a living tree trunk vs. a fallen dead tree trunk!]

where bugs go in the winter? I straight up had a book as a kid that told me that they just die, without explaining how the species doesn't go extinct if the winter kills them all.

[Tl;dr they're usually hibernating in fallen leaves and dead wood and plant material. Some do this as eggs or larvae/caterpillars; in this case the adults do die, but their children sleep peacefully through the winter to awake in the spring. And still others hibernate as adults. This is why you don't clean up your flower beds until late spring.]

How Many plants there are

[WAY more than you think]

How ecosystems work apart from "everything is out to get everything else and take resources from other organisms."

[Competition and cooperation are both important in ecosystems! Weeds are competitive and they can choke out other plants, but they also protect the soil from erosion and harsh sunlight, keeping it moist and helping organic matter to build up. A lot of plants, when they're young, need to be sheltered by other plants that protect them from dryness, heat, and herbivores. This isn't even getting into how some plants will send nutrients to seedlings or to understory plants in a forest! Before industrial agriculture made monocultures dominant, people used and were familiar with cooperative relationships between plants a LOT more.]

The range of creatures that are pollinators, and how important the variety is.

[Bees, wasps, butterflies, moths, flies, ants, beetles, hummingbirds, and bats are all pollinators, and flowers are usually shaped and colored and scented to attract particular pollinators. Bees can't do everything, and honey bees are only one kind of bee. Red flowers and long tube shaped flowers are often for hummingbirds, pale-colored flowers that open at night need moths, and flowers that give off strong foul odors often attract flies. It gets WAY more complicated than that—sometimes a flower is only pollinated by a single species of bee or wasp or beetle.]

How many bees there are besides honey bees

[LOTS. And you've probably never seen most of them, if you don't regularly spend time around native plants! There are 140 species of longhorn bee alone, and most people haven't even heard of longhorn bees! There are well over a hundred bumble bees too! Bees come in bright, metallic green, blue, and pure gold. In the USA where I live, some of the most endangered bees are the adorable, fluffy bumble bees—the American Bumble Bee is threatened, and we have some species, like the rusty-patched bumble bee, that are critically endangered.]

[Please, please, please do not use pesticides on plants unless it is a necessity, and please do a LOT of research on the specific pesticide you are using and its effects on non-target insects. If there is any alternative, Do Not Do It. ESPECIALLY not pesticides that come in dust or powder form, ESPECIALLY in the USA, because regulations are so loose here that regular people can buy pesticides in dust form that are horribly toxic to bees.]

[How horribly toxic? A pesticide like Sevin dust will cling to the fuzz on every single bee that visits your plant—like pollen—and those bees will probably die. And in social bees, before they die, they will take the poison back to their hive (like pollen) and potentially kill the entire hive.]