#about the blog structure

[anghraine]

Hi! Can you explain what really the power of foresight was with Faramir? I read the books earlier this year and I don't really quite understand it. He could predict the future? Like he would see it in his dreams? But how did he found out from Gollum that he was taking frodo and sam to cirith ungol and that he had committed murder before?

No problem, it's one of my favorite topics!

The concise explanation: I think Faramir's foresight/aftersight in terms of visions is a largely separate "power" from his ability to bring his strength of mind and will to bear on other people and animals, and to resist outside influence. The visions seem more a matter of broad sensitivity, something Faramir doesn't appear to have much if any control over. The second power is (in our terms) essentially a form of direct telepathy, limited in some ways but still very powerful, and I think this second ability is what Faramir is using with Gollum.

The really long version:

In my opinion, Faramir (or Denethor, Aragorn, etc) doesn't necessarily read thoughts like a book, particularly not with a mind as resistant as Gollum's. Faramir describes Gollum's mind in particular as dark and closed, it seems unusually so—

"There are locked doors and closed windows in your mind, and dark rooms behind them," said Faramir.

Still, Gollum is unable to entirely block Faramir's abilities. In LOTR, it does not seem that Gollum can fully block powerful mental abilities such as Faramir's, though his toughness and hostility does limit what Faramir can see. (Unfinished Tales, incidentally, suggests iirc that Denethor's combination of "great mental powers" and his right to use the Anor-stone allowed him to telepathically get the better of Saruman through their palantíri, a similar but greater feat.) I imagine that this is roughly similar to, but scaled down from, Galadriel's telepathic inquiries of even someone as reluctant to have her in his mind as Boromir, given that Faramir is able to still see some things in Gollum's mind, if with more difficulty than usual.

(WRT Boromir ... ngl, if I was the human buffer between Denethor and Faramir, I would also not be thrilled about sudden telepathic intrusions from basically anyone, much less someone I had little reason to trust.)

Disclaimer: a few years after LOTR's publication, Tolkien tried to systematize how this vague mystical telepathy stuff really works. One idea he had among many, iirc, was that no unwilling person's mind could be "read" the ways that Gollum's is throughout LOTR. IMO that can't really be reconciled w/ numerous significant interactions in LOTR where resistance to mental intrusion or domination is clearly variable between individuals and affected by personal qualities like strength of will, basic resilience, the effort put into opposition, supernatural powers, etc. And these attempts at resistance are unsuccessful or only partially successful on many occasions in LOTR (the Mouth of Sauron, for one example, is a Númenórean sorcerer in the book who can't really contend with Aragorn on a telepathic level). So I, personally, tend to avoid using the terminology and rationales from that later systematized explanation when discussing LOTR. And in general, I think Tolkien's later attempts to convert the mystical, mysterious wonder of Middle-earth into something more "hard magic" or even scientific was a failed idea on a par with Teleporno. Others differ!

In any case, when Gollum "unwillingly" looks at Faramir while being questioned, the creepy light drains from his eyes and he shrinks back while Faramir concludes he's being honest on that specific occasion. Gollum experiences physical pain when he does try to lie to Faramir—

"It is called Cirith Ungol." Gollum hissed sharply and began muttering to himself. "Is not that its name?" said Faramir turning to him. "No!" said Gollum, and then he squealed, as if something had stabbed him.

I don't think this is a deliberate punishment from Faramir—that wouldn't be like him at all—and I don't think it's the Ring, but simply a natural consequence of what Faramir is. Later, Gandalf says of Faramir's father:

"He can perceive, if he bends his will thither, much of what is passing in the minds of men ... It is difficult to deceive him, and dangerous to try."

So, IMO, Faramir's quick realization that Gollum is a murderer doesn't come from any vision of the future or past involving Gollum—that is, it's not a deduction from some event he's seen. Faramir does not literally foresee Gollum's trick at Cirith Ungol. His warning would be more specific in that case, I think. What he sees seems to be less detailed but more direct and, well, mystical. Faramir likely doesn't know who exactly Gollum murdered or why or what any of the circumstances were. Rather, Gollum's murderousness and malice are visible conditions of his soul to Faramir's sight. Faramir doesn't foresee the particulars of Gollum's betrayal—but he can see in Gollum's mind that he is keeping something back. Faramir says of Gollum:

"I do not think you are holden to go to Cirith Ungol, of which he has told you less than he knows. That much I perceived clearly in his mind."

Meanwhile, in a letter written shortly before the publication of LOTR, Tolkien said of Faramir's ancestors:

They became thus in appearance, and even in powers of mind, hardly distinguishable from the Elves

So these abilities aren't that strange in that context. Faramir by chance (or "chance") is, like his father, almost purely an ancient Númenórean type despite living millennia after the destruction of Númenor (that destruction is the main reason "Númenóreanness" is fading throughout the age Faramir lives in). Even less ultra-Númenórean members of Denethor's family are still consistently inheriting characteristics from their distant ancestor Elros, Elrond's brother, while Faramir and Denethor independently strike Sam and Pippin as peculiarly akin to Gandalf, a literal Maia like their ancestress Melian:

“Ah well, sir,” said Sam, “you [Faramir] said my master had an elvish air; and that was good and true. But I can say this: you have an air too, sir, that reminds me of, of—well, Gandalf, of wizards.”

He [Denethor] turned his dark eyes on Gandalf, and now Pippin saw a likeness between the two, and he felt the strain between them, almost as if he saw a line of smouldering fire drawn from eye to eye, that might suddenly burst into flame.

Meanwhile, Faramir's mother's family is believed to be part Elvish, a belief immediately confirmed when Legolas meets Faramir's maternal uncle:

At length they came to the Prince Imrahil, and Legolas looked at him and bowed low; for he saw that here indeed was one who had elven-blood in his veins. "Hail, lord!" he [Legolas] said. "It is long since the people of Nimrodel left the woodlands of Lórien, and yet still one may see that not all sailed from Amroth’s haven west over water."

In addition to that, Faramir's men believe he's under some specific personal blessing or charm as well as the Númenórean/Elvish/Maia throwback qualities. It's also mentioned by different groups of soldiers that Faramir can exercise some power of command over animals as well as people. Beregond describes Faramir getting his horse to run towards five Nazgûl in real time:

"They will make the Gate. No! the horses are running mad. Look! the men are thrown; they are running on foot. No, one is still up, but he rides back to the others. That will be the Captain [Faramir]: he can master both beasts and men."

Then, during the later retreat of Faramir's men across the Pelennor:

At last, less than a mile from the City, a more ordered mass of men came into view, marching not running, still holding together. The watchers held their breath. "Faramir must be there," they said. "He can govern man and beast."

Tolkien said of the ancient Númenóreans:

But nearly all women could ride horses, treating them honourably, and housing them more nobly than any other of their domestic animals. The stables of a great man were often as large and as fair to look upon as his own house. Both men and women rode horses for pleasure … and in ceremony of state both men and women of rank, even queens, would ride, on horseback amid their escorts or retinues … The Númenóreans trained their horses to hear and understand calls (by voice or whistling) from great distances; and also, where there was great love between men or women and their favorite steeds, they could (or so it is said in ancient tales) summon them at need by their thought alone. So it was also with their dogs.

Likely the same Númenórean abilities were used for evil by Queen Berúthiel against her cats. In an interview with Daphne Castell, Tolkien said:

She [Berúthiel] was one of these people who loathe cats, but cats will jump on them and follow them about—you know how sometimes they pursue people who hate them? I have a friend like that. I’m afraid she took to torturing them for amusement, but she kept some and used them—trained them to go on evil errands by night, to spy on her enemies or terrify them.

The more formal version of the Berúthiel lore recurs in Unfinished Tales:

She had nine black cats and one white, her slaves, with whom she conversed, or read their memories, setting them to discover all the dark secrets of Gondor, so that she knew those things "that men wish most to keep hidden," setting the white cat to spy upon the black, and tormenting them.

Faramir, by contrast, has a strong aversion to harming/killing animals for any reason other than genuine need, but apparently quite similar basic abilities. He typically uses these abilities to try to compassionately understand other people or gather necessary information, rather than for domination or provoking fear. Even so, Faramir does seem to use his mental powers pretty much all the time with no attempt to conceal what he's doing—he says some pretty outlandish things to Frodo and Sam as if they're very ordinary, but it doesn't seem that most people he knows can do all these things. This stuff is ordinary to him because it flows out of his fundamental being, not because it's common.

It's not clear how much fine control he has, interestingly. This is more headcanon perhaps, but I don't feel like it's completely under his control, even while it's much more controlled than things like Faramir's vision of Boromir's funeral boat, his frequent, repeated dreams of Númenor's destruction, the Ring riddle dream he received multiple times, or even his suspiciously specific "guess" of what passed between Galadriel and Boromir in Lothlórien. Yet his more everyday mental powers do seem to involve some measure of deliberate effort in a lot of the instances we see, given the differing degrees of difficulty and strain we see with the powers he and Denethor exhibit more frequently and consistently.

This is is also interesting wrt Éowyn, because Tolkien describes Faramir's perception of her as "clear sight" (which I suspect is just Tolkien's preferred parlance for "clairvoyance"). Faramir perceives a lot more of what's going on with Éowyn than I think he had materially observable evidence for—but does not see everything that's going on with her by any means. He seems to understand basically everything about her feelings for Aragorn, more than Éowyn herself does, but does not know if she loves him [Faramir].

I'm guessing that it's more difficult to "see" this way when it's directly personal (one of the tragedies of his and Denethor's relationship is that their shared mental powers do not enable either to realize how much they love each other). But it also doesn't seem like he's trying to overcome Éowyn's mental resistance the way he was with Gollum, and possibly Frodo and Sam—he does handle it a bit differently when it's not a matter of critical military urgency. With Éowyn, he sees what his abilities make clear to him, is interested enough to seek out Merry (and also perceive more than Merry says, because Faramir has never been a normal person one day in his life) but doesn't seem to really push either of them.

So I tend to imagine that with someone like Faramir, Denethor, Aragorn etc, we're usually seeing a relatively passive, natural form of low-grade telepathy that simply derives from their fundamental nature and personalities (as we see in Faramir with Éowyn, possibly Faramir with Aragorn). That can be kicked up to more powerful, forceful telepathy via active exertion of the will (as described by Gandalf wrt Denethor's ability to "bend[] his will thither" to see what passes in others' minds, and seen with Faramir vs Gollum, Aragorn vs the Mouth of Sauron, more subtly Faramir vs Denethor). At a high point of strain this can be done very aggressively or defensively (Denethor vs Gandalf, Denethor vs Saruman, Denethor vs Sauron seriously is there a Maia that man won't fight, Faramir vs the Black Breath given his completely unique symptoms that Aragorn attributes to his "staunch will", possibly Aragorn vs the Black Breath in a healing capacity...).

Anyway, I hope these massive walls of text are helpful or interesting! Thanks for the ask :)

[airenyah]

pics for better view:

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Joong talking about the moodboard tweets when a fan asked in his Twitter Space on August 3rd, 2024:

TRANSCRIPT (as far as I can make out the words) *italics indicate a translation

Fan: Your tweet last night. (giggles continuously) Joong: Yep. Ah, it's about... [unintelligible] something? Buddy, did you see that? Buddy, did you see; did you see that? Dunk: I did. Joong: Super funny. Fan: You searched it from... Joong: Yeah. Fan: You searched it from Pinterest? (laughs) Or... well. Joong: It's actually, it comes from so many places like Pinterest, Canva, and my gallery already. I have [unintelligible]. Fan: (laughs) And Dunk, what do you think about that? Of what Joong tweeted. Dunk: Is it though? (everyone laughs) Fan: Or maybe another reaction? Or... yes, it... Yes.. it... Dunk: (pause) Could be for now. Could be, could be. (Joong and the fan giggle) Fan: Okay. Okay. Maybe... maybe yes, it's for me. 'Cause I'm still shaking right now, I can't imagine anything... anything else. Thank you so much. Joong: Thank you so much. Dunk: Thank you. Joong: Thank you.

(source)

[right-agent]

me with. wilson

[absolutebl]

hello! i was wondering, what pronouns do you use? i was just thinking about your blog today and realized i didn't know how to refer to you!

mostly I answer to "yes... and?"

[gros-chat-fait]

Konoha's three-headed beast.

---

I realized recently that this blog had its 5th birthday back in August. So this is sort of a celebratory redraw of maybe the first drawing I posted, aptly titled: Naruto's harem. It exists in an alternative universe in my brain where Neji is alive and thriving and is being an awesome uncle to Naruto and Hinata's kids; Shikamaru/Temari are nomadic diplomats neither of which have to give up their homeland nor their day jobs for the other; and Sasuke is still a wandering deep-state agent, presumably (can you tell I haven't read the sequel?); and they all help run the village behind the scene.

Now have I improved? The more I draw the more I realize how limited my abilities are, but it's fun nonetheless to create and share the worms in my head <3 Thank you all for looking at my stuff and liking/reblogging and yelling about them in the tags/comments and decided that I'm worth following; I do see them all and appreciate all of them so much. I'm just not good with words <33333

For comparison:

[toytulini]

me, stupidly and weirdly resistant to listening to audio books vs reading a physical book for no real reason: man i wish there was a way to like, read a book while i crochet like i do with tv shows and movies and podcasts

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

frickin shite that was the worst small group I've ever been to in my life

[an--artistic--autistic]

The way my disabilities affect my day-to-day life varies.

Some days, physically I'll feel fine (or as close to fine as I can get right now), and other days I cannot sit up unsupported due to pain and fatigue.

Some days, I can go out and talk to people, go to events, classes, meetings, and be totally unphased, and other day's, sometimes someone asking me a casual question is more than enough to trigger a meltdown.

A lot of people tend to think that however I am one day is The Only Way I could ever be, and when they see me on a different day, they assume I'm faking, or developed something new, or that I was just being dramatic.

This is super common with dynamic disabilities and ambulatory mobility aids (in my own experience)

I have had people be completely shocked when I briefly walked across a room without my cane, because they hadn't seen me without it before.

I've also had people be completely shocked the first time they see me using it (usually family), because most of our interactions had been in someone's house, or I'd been sitting down with it tucked out of the way.

None of my conditions are 100% the same 100% of the time. Sometimes I lose vision due to migraines, sometimes I can't walk due to nerve pain, sometimes I have trouble speaking or processing information due to autism. None of that is true for me all of the time.

I find it to be one of the most irritating things to try to explain because it's constantly coming up.

Yes, I still have mobility issues even though I could walk to that garbage can. Yes, I still have processing issues even though I listen to music (this particular one happens a lot and it's very funny to me). Some days are worse than others. Some are better. I have literally no control over any of that.

Anyway, point is that dynamic disability is a thing that exists and health & support needs can fluctuate and abled people can shut the fuck up when they see a wheelchair user stand up for 5 seconds.

~ And I'm sure people with static disabilities have an entire set of similar issues from people's misconceptions (though I can't say much on that personally)

[imminent-danger-came]

You ever feel slightly too weird for weird spaces

[sagesilentfire]

you know what? no. No, i will not stop being mad about the minecraft movie. because minecraft is not a fucking meme. there's a reason it got popular in the first place and there's a reason it's stayed popular, and it's not because funny haha creepers or cgi llama abominations or anything. it's because minecraft is a world with endless potential and history. you are alone, there is no one like you in the universe, and yet there are old buildings and strange not-quite-yous and every implication that there was someone like you once. and you build, and you craft, and you explore, but the world is massive and there will always be more to see, to do, to explore. the people who came before you knew that too, and they did their best, and you can feel their history in your bones, as you sneak through ancient cities, as you avoid traps in jungle and desert temples, as you wander through villages and outposts and old, abandoned shipwrecks. there is a past here, old and huge and all-encompassing, but there is also you, and with you there is a future. whether you spend all your days idly farming and mining and crafting or you go to the End of the universe and slay the dragon there, it doesn't matter. because with you is the future, and the past. and the past will not define you and the future will not swallow you. you are there, and the universe was made for you.

do you think the executives at fucking warner brothers understood this? do you think they spent half a second playing this fascinating game? do you think they read the end poem, or wandered through a ruin, or built a really nice house that they could be proud of? do you think they ever built anything in their lives? or did they look at a few memes and decide "okay, let's put a meme that has been dead for longer than our target audience has been alive in there and call it a day. yeah, let's whitewash steve too. bare minimum effort, collect the paycheck. because it's just a silly haha meme game. who cares about it, right?" those soulless corporate fucks don't give a damn about minecraft. they just want money, and i'm not going to give it to them. nobody should. don't go see this hell movie.

and the universe said I love you and the universe said you have played the game well and the universe said everything you need is within you and the universe said you are stronger than you know and the universe said you are the daylight and the universe said you are the night and the universe said the darkness you fight is within you and the universe said the light you seek is within you and the universe said you are not alone and the universe said you are not separate from every other thing and the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code and the universe said I love you because you are love. And the game was over and the player woke up from the dream. And the player began a new dream. And the player dreamed again, dreamed better. And the player was the universe. And the player was love. You are the player. Wake up. unless you're a warner brothers executive in which case you're ruining art and can die in your sleep and i'll piss on your grave. rest in hell. goodbye.

[katabay]

okay hang on. we gotta inject some levity back here, otherwise I might lose my mind a little bit. persona crepe comic incoming

[anghraine]

Speaking of the sidelining of Elizabeth's arc in pop culture/fandom takes on P&P, I do have a more uncharitable than usual speculation about it:

I don't think Elizabeth is written as an audience stand-in in a general sense. But the novel does give audiences a carefully-constructed space to fuck up in the same ways that Elizabeth does.

The audience participating in Elizabeth's flawed patterns of thinking and reacting and engaging with other people is not equivalent to Elizabeth doing it in-story. But I think the novel is more broadly concerned with these kinds of patterns in ways of thinking and approaching the world and especially approaching people in the world than with it as a purely in-story thing.

The novel's exact central turning point is Elizabeth's horrified epiphany about her faults following Darcy's letter. That moment is integral to Elizabeth's characterization, but much of what she says of herself and how she's been approaching the world could be fairly turned on much of the audience because of how the book is constructed. This construction is very clearly deliberate.

It's easy to feel like Elizabeth's flaws and mistakes are not really a big deal when it's stuff we ourselves do all the time and when the person doing them is as generally admirable and engaging as Elizabeth. But while she overstates things in the horror of the moment, the novel still insists that the flaws in her approach are a big deal, ethically. They are morally wrong. Elizabeth has to struggle to grow past those patterns and flaws, however imperfectly, and I think there's an implicit challenge in that: so should we.

tbh I suspect that challenge is really uncomfortable for some people to think about too hard, and that's part of the reason there's so much flailing to make the book centrally about anything else.

[madi-konrad]

How long should a chapter be?

I write sapphic fantasy romance. I've self published one fantasy romance book, and I'm working right now on editing and publishing a loose (ten years later) sequel and a short story collection. I was wondering how I decide how long scenes, chapters, and even longer segments of a work (parts, "books", etc.) Thanks for reading my rambling blog!

I've always had an intuitive understanding of what makes a good ending of a scene, a decent ending of a chapter. And I want to talk around some of my thoughts, because what makes a good chapter also makes a good story--pacing, plot action, reflection on action, all that stuff. If you can figure how to end a chapter, you can learn how to end a story.

So, my chapters tend towards the short side. I generally write chapters between 700 and 1,400 words long, though I've gone as short as 200, and as long as 2,000. I do think, depending highly on your own personal style and the conventions of the genre, that a mere count of words can help you here. If you're reading a genre or book that runs long on the wordcount, the chapters will probably be longer, too. If you're reading a thriller (the ur-example of "this book goes fast") the chapters will probably be short and choppy. Read the kind of book that you're writing, and you'll get a good idea of expectations around chapter length.

But where does a chapter end? Where does a scene end? What does it mean when a reader says the chapter should have ended here, and not there?

Well, I haven't studied literature much from an academic perspective, but I have listened specifically to how people talk about story structure, and specifically how screenplays are written. And there, structure is king. You need to deeply understand how stories are structured in order to compress the wild, untameable creatures of creativity into a strict, 90-120 minute feature film length (or 45 minute / 22 minute / 11 minute television episode length). As a basic idea: your story has a main character with a goal. The structure of a story (three act structure, etc.) tells you how your main character goes about achieving that goal, and whether they're getting closer to it or further away from it moment to moment.

Story structure is goal oriented. A scene ends when your characters either take a significant step closer to or further from their goal. This is usually the protagonist, but can also be the antagonist or supporting characters, especially in novel writing. That goal could be (for protagonists): stopping the Bad Guy, furthering (or frustrating) the Romantic Relationship, becoming a Better (or Worse) Person in a specific way, Solving the Mystery. The goal should be VERY CLEAR in your reader's mind -- informed by your exposition and how you introduce your characters, as well as by genre expectations (mysteries have a very clear goal, for instance: figure out what the hell happened. So do thrillers: survive).

Looping back around to chapters: these I view as mega-scenes, comprised of one or more scenes defined above. At the end of the chapter, the protagonists should have moved more dramatically further from or closer to their goal. If a scene shows progress that is, on its own, more significant than usual, that means it can be a chapter by itself. A 200 word scene that changes everything to that point gets to be its own chapter. Those kind of chapters, though rare for me, usually do hit much harder than the chapter with three scenes that hits the 2,000 word mark.

The old cliche about ending each chapter on a cliffhanger? Well, this is where it comes from. Done badly, the cliffhangers come out of nowhere and make the reader groan. But done well, the reader goes, "Oh, no," and turns the page -- or "Oh, fuck yes," and turns the page.

I don't always have this structure-oriented perspective in mind when I'm writing. Usually I do, but writing for me has always been a push-pull between intuition and more structured thought on what should happen next. Sometimes, I realize in editing that, to maintain the flow of the novel, I should lengthen the pace of this scene, or shorten the pace of that one, or split this into two chapters so the narrative weight of the ending of this scene is increased.

Anyway, this long ramble captures some of my thoughts on how you find the ending of a chapter, the ending of a scene. If you can nail that, you're well on your way to telling more impactful, better structured stories.

[smallandalmosthonest]

.

[meatriarch]

MEATRIARCH OVERVIEW.

m'kay so -- mostly putting this together as both a quick look for new faces & a lil' refresher for those who've been following for a while but also as a general overview on not just how i run things but also on my muses, their portrayals, some blog updates, and so on! ♡ meant for clarity & hopefully ensure there's no confusion about certain things i may mention on the dash but always feel free to shoot me a message / ask for anything further! ♡

MARIA AURORA FLORES.

starting off with my main girl, my pride & joy, my sunshine incarnate. i write maria as someone very warm & with a whole mess of love to shower on those she cares about. she is achingly sweet, doting, affectionate; she adores her friends, adores her mama & sister, has a complicated relationship with her father. i've done quite a bit to flesh her out beyond what gun's put out for her in the slightest & i love where she's grown over the months since adding her onto the roster. she is my main / primary muse -- so know i constantly yap and ramble about her, i have headcanons and lore posts sprinkled all over the blog & the archived blog. i love & adore her as a muse and she's become both incredibly special to me & easily one of my absolute favorite characters to write as. that being said, with how much i've added to her, i view my portrayal of her as more oc at this point than a character of gun -- unfridged my girl, yanked her away from them and took off with her lmao alot of what i've built with her was both greatly helped by the dynamics weaved together with my affiliates / mains' portrayals which i'll get to later on ♡ but know some things may not carry over into interactions between my maria & any duplicates of my affiliates' muses!

ANA FLORES.

i haven't gone through much writing for ana yet -- but know when i do speak of ana in a general sense on here? i am specifically referring to my own ana & my personal flores' family lore! if i refer to other ana's in future posts i'll most likely note so either by, for example, ' renee's ana ' or if its to that point in plotting, then with a dynamics tag on the post! otherwise assume when i'm yapping about ana in general i'm referring to my own portrayal of her by default! c: ( note that all you cute ana mutuals are still more than welcome to interact with posts about her / her & maria / the flores' ♡ just something to keep in mind if i refer to her in a general sense in posts! )

DANNY ALEJO - OSORIO.

ya'll may know our just some guy danny by gun's canon of him -- danny gaines. the danny here however is technically my own portrayal of danny gaines that i developed before he was officially dropped & we got his last name. should i interact with others writing danny gaines? i'm completely gucci with considering my danny & gaines as entirely separate characters!

* correction : i now consider danny to be entirely severed from guns danny gaines and is, now, an oc fully. he is entirely his own character. otherwise, the speedrun of danny is as follows : danilo alejo-osorio is mexican-colombian, befriended maria in their early teens. he comes from a broken family with a very fractured & a.busive father, his mother returned to colombia and started another family there believing he'd have a better life staying in the states. he went through a very rough period hanging with a real shitty crowd of so-called friends, got into a shitton of fights, broke into homes and businesses with them, stole shit, broke shit, just in general not great influences. a break-in went wrong, his "friends" scattered, and he was arrested when the police showed up, and spent time in juvie for it. none of those friends ever came by. his father didn't, none of his family did. maria, her mother and ana, instead, were his constant visitors. and it was her coming to see him, her encouragement and push for him to do better is what finally made him realize he needed to turn his shit around. at the point of maria going missing & the house, danny's going to trade school by the southern coast for ship & underwater welding courses & training. he & maria are best friends. he is her ride, die, kill. gun noted once upon a time how strong dannys' devotion to her is -- my danny is very much devoted to her. he would kill for her without hesitation -- and not in his dire au's, even, but just in general. danny would do anything for those he cares about. any of the friendgroup.

THE FLORES FAMILY.

my personal take / lore is as follows basically : papa flores ( ramón ignacio ) & mama flores ( carmen ainara ) were long-term sweethearts whose marriage and little family seemed perfectly ideal. however, the closer that their eldest daughter, maria, got to her teen years, the sicker carmen started to become. she attempted to keep it under wraps, hush-hush from the girls' to not worry or scare them. but she was diagnosed with a lung disease ( p.ulmonary f.ibrosis fingerguns @ silver for same braincell lmao ) that is considered ( esp in the 70s likely ) to be terminal. while the girls' weren't aware of her being ill to that degree, ramon fully was. and the stress of coming to terms with his wife being sick and finding out that she may eventually pass due to it, so he claims, "caused" him to start an affair. carmen does find out, and ramon removes himself from the flores' family home to move in with his affair partner. maria, being forgiving and more gentle-hearted compared to ana, attempted to still paint him in a positive light so that ana wouldn't resent him. tried to give him the benefit of the doubt -- that he at least still did love them all. that he'd keep the promises to still be active in their lives, still show up when he said he would -- however, there's only so many excuses, so many promises broken, so many calls never ringing through, before that hope crumbles. ana would witness both her mother & maria deal with their fathers' heartbreak through closed bedroom doors, and it'd only make her despise him more for it. when maria later goes missing, ramon returns to try and help in whatever ways he can -- and ana is very unreceptive to him being there. he lost his chance in her eyes to play "dad" to them. and she makes it known clearly to him how much she resents him and reminds him he's got no place in their family, anymore. that he's there ONLY to help find maria and not to expect shit from any of them.

THE HEWITTS & THE SAWYERS.

by default, i say a giant fuck you to the difference in continuity's when it comes to the family! i write the hewitt's as an extension of the sawyer ( or, slaughter ) family tree. the hewitts & sawyers connected when luda mae married charlton hewitt sr. luda, in my personal canon, was born into the family through one of grandpa sawyers' many kids' he's taken in over his long-fuckin'-ass lifespan lmao alot of the family dynamics that are my canon here stem from lamb & i's back & forths. i find blending the various iterations of the family -- from originals to remakes etc -- as all just extended families to each other alot easier to work around and opens the door to more interactions with canons' from other versions of tcsm! c: i'm currently slow-piecing together a family tree of the hewitt-sawyers based on that blended concept. to the sawyers, luda is referred to by aunt or grandma ( sometimes ma luda, even ) and thomas is referred to as cousin tommy.

THOMAS & THE TITLE OF "L.EATHERFACE".

i was going to make this its own post but i'll add to this one instead. but with the idea of the hewitts & sawyers being just on massive family unit? of course there's the question of how the fuck do both thomas & bubba ( or other iterations of LF ) work then? i'd argue its primarily due to the fact that those who don't personally know them both don't know their actual names, and simply refer to them by the most notable feature -- the masks. with my thomas, yes, he does take faces of victims and he does wear them. however. thomas' skin condition -- flesh-eating disease / tumor growths on his face -- is why he wears his animal-leather half-mask. that half mask is his primary mask. he is almost always wearing that or varying versions of it. when thomas DOES skin someones' face to wear? it is almost always out of rage. hatred. it's done to intimidate. to unsettle. its from back in september but, one of my thomas' replies to kels notes this about thomas! the masks of both animal & human leather are still very much a part of thomas as i write him -- but, when it comes to the hewitt-sawyers being one family unit & thomas & bubba co-existing? "l.eatherface" becomes a title in a sense -- two giant motherfuckers who wear masks?? they get confused for one another. despite thomas being arguably much larger both being beefy & being 6'9 compared to bubba. they both don't really stray far from home. how often do outsiders get a chance to see them both separately let alone close to one another? likely not a common sight. it'd be very easy to spot one of them and then assume they are one in the same, honestly. that's how i go about things here, at least! it ties into more, again, of the back-&-forths lamb & i have minecrafted especially but, i'm all for altering that for specific interactions for those who don't want to meddle with all of that! (:

NANCY.

spooky momther will retain what her abilities have grown into by my personal headcanons across the board! however there are certain points to how i portray her that, from any posts about her i've made, are tied into lamb's johnny and so know that there will be differences in how she may be with other johnnys! i'm all ears to how different nancy & johnny's relationship can turn out! if theres anything i feel overlaps with other dynamics of theirs, i will let you know and we can work something else out c:

GENERAL PORTRAYAL NOTE.

mentioned it already but : all muses here are very heavily canon-divergent & built out from their canon lore by my own brainrot going wild with them all. with that in mind, i do just about consider each of my portrayals of these muses as my own oc's at this point with how much i've added onto them / built them up from literal nothing like in maria's case. i'm more than happy to either adapt how i write any of them to better fit into anyone elses' takes! and i'm more than happy to welcome more into the brainrot that i've minecrafted with the flores' or the hewitt-sawyers etc! that's something to come from plotting however! if we haven't really spoken ooc / etc then i default to a more general vision of the characters for the time being. i'm all up for taking different routes with new writing partners so please don't be shy about reaching out! c: if theres anything that conflicts with pre-existing personal lore of mine or is too similar to plots or dynamics i have already, i'll let you know and try to offer alternatives!

AFFILIATE PORTRAYALS & RELATED AU'S.

i have a few writing partners who i am affiliated with & with their respective tcsm canon muses. kels' leland, rae's connie, & lamb's johnny -- when i refer to leland/lee or connie or johnny in general on my posts, do know i am specifically referring to their portrayals as my general lore across my blog takes their muses & the dynamics built between them into account ♡ like i mentioned in ana's lil section, i'll start to make note in posts when i am referring to duplicate johnnys / lelands / connie's / etc for when im mentioning others' portrayals specifically! by default though i am always referring to my affiliates' portrayals when i post c: just wanted to clarify that though in case it was at all confusing or unclear ♡ affiliate verses here are as follows so far : - cold case ( cc / maria's dire au ; with lamb's johnny ) - no one saved you / we saved us ( nosy / wsu / maria & leland's joint dire au ; with kels' leland & lamb's johnny ) - oath binded ( maria & johnny's red string & reincarnation au / with lamb's johnny ) and then the still babiest dire au for my danny, - choke chained ( with lamb's johnny ). these verses, for me, are strictly worked with lamb ( & with kels for nosy/wsu ) -- meaning i'm not writing in them or doing similar au's with other portrayals of johnnys or lelands! again in case i haven't been clear on it before and it causes any confusion or anything! ♡

MARIA & JOHNNY.

i am not going to be shipping maria in any romantic / intimate sense nor am i open to any prolonged captive plots & interactions with other portrayals of johnny sawyer. those types of dynamics & interactions i've decided from this point on to close that for my maria to lamb's johnny ( @johnnysslaughter ) ♡ there has been a lot of plotting & build up between my portrayal of maria & lamb's portrayal of johnny and their varying dynamics across verses / au's and their different trajectories. and because of how many different iterations of their dynamic has been pieced together, i personally am not going to be taking other plots / dynamics with other johnny's that fall under the same umbrella as the dynamic between our maria & johnny do -- again meaning, i personally won't be shipping romantically / intimately nor will I take on plots that run parallel to cold case / no one saved you re: maria being taken captive for a prolonged period of time with other johnnys. alot of this decision on my part is very much due to how much we have developed them together -- another big part of it is my trust & comfort level with lamb to explore those dynamics between maria & johnny. this doesn't mean we are exclusive to one anothers' portrayals -- i am happy to write with other johnny's! and lamb is welcome to interact with other maria's! but from this point onward, i will only ship maria & johnny with lamb. ♡

[edge-oftheworld]

descriptions and reasons under the cut

this is a cashton sponsored post

okay. So. This is gonna be a long one so buckle up. Basically, long story short, changing the entire industry and the way we consume music as a result. Charting won’t matter nearly so much, and promo will have a lot less of a monetary incentive.

pros: I hope on a site like tumblr this is pretty obvious. All people deserve a living wage and the whole broke musician sleeping in their car til they make it big stereotype excludes a lot of people and actually causes a lot of trauma that probably has something to do with the high mortality rate of musicians even after they make it. More people from poor backgrounds being able to do music ESPECIALLY in countries that are marginalised by the industry. A lot less ability for labels and managers to take advantage of people which we see all the time. Musicians can afford things like therapy and actual instruments and education without having to work another job even before they’ve made it big.

basically what I’m proposing is this: streaming services like spotify reverse their tiers of income to artist per stream and it’s more like tax brackets: the less streams you get, the more you earn per stream. until you can from one full length album earn enough to survive. you do earn marginally more the more it’s streamed so I don’t get yelled at too badly—but it’s like being in a higher tax bracket, you take home more in the end but the government or streaming company takes a higher portion, so it should be a win win situation. Ticket prices to shows are also capped but not unreasonably: you can still sell packages with VIP and merch there’s just a top price that’s only waivered if you do some charity donation with a percentage.

cons: need regulation to ensure streaming services don’t completely bar the work of lower performing artists (but remember they still take a cut. and if you get zero streams you still earn nothing so you will need some promo, just so the streaming services don’t get mad at me. I know that’s not quite UBI it’s the best I got sorry). there’s the whole idea that artists will make bad low effort songs just to get a high percentage of the cut of them—but refer to previous point, this may not be a problem. also, with so many good songs already there do you think people are genuinely gonna put in no effort? if you made a song that’s already a lot of effort. HOWEVER

Using AI to make songs might cause problems so idk maybe some regulation there—I think there is already is there? or can we just tell when there’s humanity in something?

there’s the possibility that the streaming services go out of business because bigger artists remove their music from them (bigger artists being their main source of revenue). I don’t know how to properly mitigate this risk—other than stopping said big artists creating competition platforms that are basically the same as the platforms we have now. idk maybe it’s just me but I can’t see this making it any worse, only better. we need to value art and artists and the income discrepancy does no one any good.