#contents are fragile

[kaptorka-prod]

Short focal length chosen because of Sam's POV, so there might be some visual distortions.👀

[janasojka]

Fragments.

[s1ck-pupp3t]

I love, Ms Paint. CHEERS!

OK real art dump over. Click MORE for Real dumb stuff

something something They faces killing me why nobody gaf. Its a Transparent .PNg! You can put them any where to Not Care About.

[fatuismooches]

Smol idea but Dottore holding fragile reader a few days after they woke up from their coma and just, squishing them. Like he would lightly squish their face lovingly or their arms, legs and body. He loves to touch so much after being alone for so long so he just unconsciously does it. So much so that reader tries to get back at him as squish him as well, but Dottore just loves it more and leans into it. Hehe

SQUISH SQUISH! Dottore likes to do so because he can finally get a reaction out of you. For so long, his fingers traced along your arms until he reached your palms, hoping you'd squeeze back, twitch, anything. But he always received nothing in response. But finally, oh finally, all his waiting and patience has paid off. Sure, your body is still cold, but it isn't as bad as it was before. Most importantly, you always have an interesting reaction to all of his words and touches. It's funny, to be honest, because it was the opposite all those years ago. You'd love to poke and bother him to see what he did, but now it's him doing the poking.

When Dottore first did this, you wrote it off as him doing those weird doctor things and simply examining your body to see all its changes from your coma... however, it became obvious that there was an ulterior motive to this and it certainly wasn't medical. He just wants to touch you, to feel his beloved's warmth after a long four hundred years. His hands simply wander all over your body by themselves, even he does not register how he wants to feel you until he's already doing it.

Certainly, this comes as a surprise to you as your Zandik was never one to be so touchy-feely, you always being the one having to seek him out for some soft touches and that was if he allowed you to... but if he was doing this so openly now, then he'd better be prepared for revenge! (Your "revenge" being more of a reward for this mad scientist, nowadays, any affection you launch at him, will turn into a session of him teasing you. Man, four hundred years really changes a person, huh?)

In conclusion, you're his stress ball.

[brodyfoxxsmassivetits]

laur and their strange creature thing

[lambcultist]

The TLOU fandom is so sensitive and those ppl are migrating over into the Arcane fandom and spreading their pro-censorship agenda

it's so unfortunate. i'm not much older but i feel as though most of the people spreading these narratives are actually on the younger side and it can be pretty obvious. i feel like many of them first got into fandom spaces during 2020 and did not care to learn the 'etiquette'. i miss when fandom was just a bunch of weird kids :(

i grew up with unrestricted internet access (not good! which is also why i do not allow minors to interact with me!) and have been in fandom spaces since around 2014. i always understood the concept of ship and let ship, dead dove do not eat, and don't like, don't read. we are losing the sacred texts <//3

i know this is me preaching to the choir here, because only my followers will read this and pro-censorship people will refuse to read all of this, but i need a rant.

censoring fanworks is bad. posting a (correctly tagged) dark fic on ao3 or tumblr, which are places that are supposed to be mostly free of censorship, is very different to posting something like that on apps that have strict guidelines against this. if these people don't understand the history behind ao3 or the fanfiction.net purge, even the tumblr purge, they shouldn't be talking about these things. i'll always be anti-censorship because we have explicit evidence that it is harmful.

if we censor fanfiction, who gets to decide what is and isn't moral? what is and isn't a moral representation of darker topics? what topics should be allowed? because i can tell you right now, the complexity of this discussion will result in everything except for fluff being purged—and sometimes even fluff could be considered bad (e.g. hurt/comfort fics). with the way that conservatism is heading right now, and the actual published books that might be banned in the united states soon, who is to say we will still be able to write slash fics anymore? in the us, a bill is being drafted to force people to verify their id before using sites like ao3 so that people won't be exposed to porn or lgbtq+ content. this is exactly what i mean when i say we should not be censoring fanfiction. it harms everyone, not just people who write questionable content.

i don't understand people getting their panties twisted over coming across this stuff, and deciding to go harass the creators who (more often than not) are mentally ill and coping. i do not understand how sending people death threats puts you on a higher moral ground than them. if people cannot separate fiction from reality, that is their own problem—they should be thinking critically about everything they engage with. playing a game like tlou and then drawling the line at fics with themes like stalking and kidnapping (which happens similar in the source material!!!) is strange.

because nobody is forcing these people to read these fics. most of the time they are tagged correctly. you have the choice whether or not to read something. i have things i won't read or write about and that's fine, i just state it in my blog rules and move on. scroll away from any fic with those topics. i am starting to think these people do have some level of morbid curiosity that makes them read triggering stuff, but they suffer a moral panic over it, which is why it bothers them so much that they go out to harass people.

it's absurd. we are seeing a very concerning rise in purity culture and conservatism lately. i am just confused by it all. these debates hardly existed a while ago. unfortunately if you use the internet, you will always come across unsavoury things. thankfully fanfiction is fiction. it isn't harming anyone. there are honestly far worse things out there.

little nervous to post this as i have just rambled on and on and i am actually afraid to receive hate—but these are my thoughts on the matter.

also adding: i miss the arcane fandom when only season one was out. i also miss the tlou fandom from before the hbo show got released (especially because a lot of new fans will be blatantly zionist and deny the grosser aspects of it) when the fandoms were a little smaller, especially here on tumblr, it was very safe. now between racist jayvik shippers and people who simply cannot think with nuance to save their life, it's a hellscape

[rottkitt]

me desperately checking tumblr for more sour screen (or at least taco) content but the first wave of art ended and now i’m just gonna have to be sad about it and keep checking

also HI OMG? i woke up to like 40 different tumblr notifications i love you guys so much *mwah*

have even more sour screen as a token of my appreciation! :)

[geospiral]

Those posts with pictures of people’s worn yet well-loved plushies with the caption “to be loved is to be changed" but applied to Sua and her porcelain doll symbolism. 

Because of the neglect Sua faced from her own Guardian as well as the ways in which alien society mistreats humanity in general, she was left with no real sense of who she was as a person or what she wanted, seen as nothing more than an accessory to be flaunted and then put away without any thought or care. Sua was made to be seen as the epitome of what a human should strive to be: aesthetically pleasing to her Seygein audience, well-behaved, and talented. And while having these attributes did nothing when it came to being treated with any kind of real respect by the Seygein, I think it was what initially drew Mizi to Sua.

But while Sua seemingly being perfect may have been what initially grabbed her attention, I think the reason that Mizi fell in love with Sua was because Mizi was aware of the positive impact she had on the other girl. Growing up with and seeing a being that you view as the embodiment of perfection become more open and visibly happy whenever they are with you and clearly being as attracted to you as you are to them must have made Mizi feel like she was the most lucky being in the entire universe. And Sua felt this way too! Because Mizi attributed all those supposed perfections to Sua as a person and saw all of Sua’s accomplishments as being her own and not an extension of her Guardian or anyone else's. When Mizi looked at Sua, she simply saw Sua—no one else—and that must have meant everything to her. Mizi made Sua feel human.

And while the two girls essentially became each other's universes, Sua, who previously had no hope or desires of her own, began to adopt those of Mizi’s. Mizi’s innocent goal of singing on stage was changed to wanting to sing with Sua, and Sua, despite knowing the truth about their circumstances, took that on as being her goal as well. Any wants and desires that Mizi had became Sua's as she centered her life entirely around the one that essentially breathed that life into her. Like how a doll adopts whatever fantasy the one playing with it imagines. However, when it comes to porcelain dolls, one of their most defining features is how fragile they are.

The more you play with a porcelain doll, the more likely they are to break, and while Mizi’s love was what saved Sua, it simultaneously doomed her. The more Sua grew to love Mizi, the more of herself she wanted to give. Round 1 was the last time that Sua and Mizi were ever going to play together, and while she knew that by the end of their performance she would be broken, Sua fell apart happy.

[beebiesjeebies]

something something wire frame monkey

i just think metal should get their own tails adjacent. where are my tails copies sega. give me.

[kaptorka-prod]

"Careful, the contents are fragile."

[lighthouseshepard]

its real missing juno steel hours

[schismusic]

Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile (and me) at 25

It turns out it's very hard for me to talk about Nine Inch Nails on this blog. Not only because it's a band whose catalogue I explored in a very, very weird manner (essentially anything after 2005, barring Hesitation Marks, is terra ignota to me, a guy who fucking shelled out fifty euros as a fourteen-year-old to go see Trent Reznor perform live as his first ever paid gig) but also because what I do know about them has indelibly altered how I function, not just as a musician but as a person as well. Issue is: The Downward Spiral turned thirty last March. Your usual suspects and I ended up giving it another whirl. I hadn't heard it in full in, at that point, a good five years if not more – my memories of it were confused at best. Of course, hearing the whole thing after so long reminded me of the absolute paradigm shift the record was for me (and, doubtless, for many others as well) which led to me finally biting the bullet.

There is another Nine Inch Nails record hitting a special anniversary this year. It perennially exists in the shadow of the other two "classic" NIN records, mostly due to its perceived length, width of scope, breadth of intent, intensity. I'm not a Nine Inch Nails historian, despite the profound interest the band has always sparked within me. I will not pretend to have any special insight to offer within the recording process, the songwriting, the psychology behind any NIN release at all – and especially not a release as personal, as layered, as complicated, and ultimately as definitive as this one. Anyone with ears will however have to agree with this: sure, it might not have singles as iconic, it might not be as concise, it might not capture the zeitgeist as well as its predecessors, but The Fragile hit its twenty-fifth anniversary with what we can only assume to have been the same grace as works like Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Homer's Odyssey, Nintendo R&D1's Super Metroid. It's not even a contest. Pretty Hate Machine, barring a couple of incredible songs that would be absolute standouts in any other discography, is mostly just cute and quite unfocused in a number of crucial ways that make it breathe stilted compared to what's to come. Broken and The Downward Spiral still hit like a truck with very little rough spots – they remain lean, efficient pieces of slaughter machinery – but, as acutely noted by recurring blog guest Francesco Farabegoli, their reliance on heavy guitars seems to be more a byproduct of historical coincidence than that of genuine affection, on Reznor's part, to that specific brand of aggression. As such, it's easier to see them retrospectively as double-bound to phenomena like the Seattle sound's overnight success, or the surprisingly big following garnered by genres like death metal and projects like Ministry. None of this applies to The Fragile. Every single sound design decision in The Fragile stands as well alone as it does within the context of the whole NIN discography up to that point – including the Quake soundtrack, which (if not for its inherent ties to an external vision, not directly pertaining to anyone in the band) might actually be its closest peer in a number of ways.

Following up on the more abstract moments of Quake, for starters, The Fragile by and large foregoes the grid-like structure that even The Downward Spiral still abode to. As a result, most of the album's songs retain a surprising "live" feel to them; however, it has to be noted that the sounds themselves are imprecise, artisanal, acoustically coherent to their own reality, believable within the context of a hypothetical recording space: somewhat damaged, in most scenarios. The irony of saying this about a record whose singles include, among other things, humongous-sounding digitally distorted walls of electric guitars and actual breakbeats does not escape me, of course; but tracks like The Great Below (one of the album's thematic centerpieces) are ultimately so enhanced by the unnaturally warbled synth strings, the alien-sounding acoustic guitars or whatever that fucking pluck even is, the single-tracked lead vocals that it's actually impossible to unhear it, once you've heard it. In other words, The Fragile's ultimate superiority lies within its decision to sound – plain and simple – like it is dying.

What most popular rock and rock-adjacent acts of the 1990s made finally clear is the inextricable connection between grief and anger, mourning and fury. On average, the more personal the record, the clearer the connection between the two. In Utero, Dirt, the more politically charged branches of emo, the bands that most openly associated themselves with the nu metal image all end up converging onto an angst-filled paradox of vehement depression, or abulic bloodlust, if you'd rather. This is also the case with The Downward Spiral – a record that conveniently expresses its sad moments in the form of exactly that: sad moments (A Warm Place and Hurt, to name names). I am also conveniently leaving aside the more overtly sexual side of all the records and movements mentioned – but ultimately, bloodlust and appetite are not just metaphors of destruction, if you catch my drift. All of this somehow ends up actually coalescing into virtually any given second of The Fragile's hour-and-a-half runtime. The irony is that this exact coincidence of sounds and feelings looks a lot like your average sixty-year-old who takes up the habit of looking at obituaries posted on the streets and put in local newspaper – an exquisitely Abruzzese habit, from which I am not exempt.

Pointedly enough, a couple of tracks on the record openly tie into the then-recent demise of Trent Reznor's grandmother Clara, the woman who encouraged him to actually pursue a serious career in music. It gets particularly grim when you realize the instrumental I've just linked above this paragraph – candidly titled I'm Looking Forward to Joining You, Finally – has one single thing written under its title in the CD's booklet: the chilling epigraph "for Clara". I spent a lot of time in a cemetery on November 2nd, 2024, as my family and I waited for the Day of the Dead mass to start. Everyone in town had reunited in the graveyard, with the hilarious result that the place in question was more populated – and noisier, regrettably – than the actual town itself. A literal necropolis, then: a city of the dead, as in quite literally built with them: the little family mausoleums and the big structures comprising multiple assorted burial recesses, if you squint, look like condominiums, late nineteenth-century roofed avenues, suburban villas. Then, those who populate these areas, of course very much alive, speak of things pertaining mostly to people who are alive – and boil with the self-destructive rage pertaining to people who are still alive (self-destuctive, that is, only insofar as other people they know no longer are alive).

I was born on July 11th, 1999; as such, I am about two months older than The Fragile. The fact that this particular record would turn twenty-five the same year as me imposed a redde rationem of some kind: finally face this behemoth, advertised to be more depressing, more horrifying, dirtier and more suffocating than any other NIN record was. And so I did. Mere days after the record's anniversary, my girlfriend would tell me she wasn't feeling the spark anymore. As usual, she'd called it right – neither was I, as hard to admit as it was. Grandpa stays buried, much to everyone's chagrin, and I am nowhere closer to making my own Russian Ark than I was when I posted my last piece on here. I fumbled a cute-looking girl a week ago and while on the one hand I knew this was gonna happen and I was going to take it in stride, on the other hand this very much did not happen, which led me to finally listen to Justin Broadrick's Jesu (more on this in another post: it's probably gonna be a fun time, unlike this one). A couple of other things happened – a British girl hit on me after my band played a local underground music club, and then forgot to actually follow suit with her actual plans, luckily for me seeing as she looked to be quite drunk already – but the point still stands: I am the one looking at obituaries, blindly reading on, recognizing last names with a grimace, refusing to engage with my own fallibility.

So twenty-five years on, we have to face the music. Reznor has, so far, never made anything as intense and personal and calculated and brutal and perfect in the etymological sense of the word as The Fragile. Doing so would, in all likelihood, kill him. With Teeth is a record that admits a form of defeat: I'll take a quiet life, I'll take a rock quartet with synths, I don't fucking care about perfection any longer. Hesitation Marks deals in different forms of anxiety, more befitting for a man (at the time) nearing fifty, with a wife and children and an Academy Award or two sitting on his shelf somewhere. Both are mostly cute – I will go so far as to admit I have an actual soft spot for Hesitation Marks, making it the only NIN record outside of the classics that I willingly go out of my way to listen to in full – and ultimately inconsequential. I guess I can certainly aspire to be as inconsequential and cute as these records are, knowing there will forever be a record like The Fragile somewhere behind my back, hiding in the shadows.

[thatfriendlyanon]

you do not have to be good. even the best of us have been misunderstood.

caruphys fans stay winning FINALLY !!!!! korus fans on the other hand........

[copias-thrall]

Con Dewy

Bridgeport 8/20/23

[swallowtail-ageha]

God i wonder why people don't comment on fics anymore if any time a commenter does a percieved slight to the author including saying "i'd want to see more" the author didn't throw a massive tantrum block the commenter and post their comments on ao3 to have people reply to them "yasss go you totally owned this entitled fuck!" like gee i wonder why

[kaptorka-prod]

Uncensored 🥒perspective here. Thanks for watching! 💙💙💙