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olderthannetfic · 5 months

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https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/739381076510785536/so-it-seems-our-flag-means-death-has-not-been#notes

I liked OFMD and I'm sad it's not getting renewed, but I agree that the fandom was especially toxic, even by the standards of currently popular slash-heavy fandoms. I wanted to read fic after s1 ended the way it did, and I read a little bit, but along with it having all the tropes that I can't stand in a lot of what is currently big with the MSF crowd (and that I'd been happy to have a reprieve from in my current main M/M fandom), the toxicity of the online fandom discourse made me quickly realize it was one that I was going to discuss among my current-friends-from-other-fandoms who also watched it, and my sister who watches it, and pretty much ignore the rest of the Internet. It was such a perfect storm of everything awful, from people who are overly invested in it to an unhealthy degree (I think I realized I wasn't gonna be active in the larger fandom around a month or so before the s2 renewal announcement, when I saw earnest PSA tweets telling people to "stop threatening suicide in HBO's replies if they don't renew OFMD"), to bombarding and parasocial obsessions with the creators and actors, to all the classic "anti" and purity police crap that plagues anything that gets popular on here.

The fandom it reminds me the most of, honestly, is Yuri on Ice fandom at its peak in early-mid 2017. Again, a show I love, but a fandom I absolutely do not miss. In some ways they are kind of similar shows: ones with canon M/M romances where they were not billed as that, and they were hinted from early on but people didn't trust it due to years of dealing with queerbaiting, where that sort of thing slowly crept up on people and then became the defining feature of how it was discussed everywhere. I wonder if there's a particular level of insanity that that type of thing breeds in its fans - or maybe, more broadly, "canon M/M with a large female fanbase." Like, you don't see this kind of thing in canon M/M stuff that's mostly watched by queer men rather than women, but there are shades of the insanity I also remember from Glee fandom (I was more active on the F/F side of things there, which had its own unhinged drama, but the Klaine vs. anti-Klaine stuff was so explosive that it was hard not to notice it if you were anywhere in that fandom, like a mushroom cloud in the distance). But YOI and OFMD do seem very... singular in the particular kind of obsession that they generate.

And I really wish people would shape the fuck up, because if they're going to act like this over and over again, that's just going to de-incentivize showrunners to make shows like this for that audience.

Driving Con O'Neill off Twitter was one of the worst parts of it, too. There was something so refreshingly earnest about how much he embraced the fandom, even the weirdest parts - saying with regard to NSFW fanart that "art is art" and retweeting stuff like his character in a crop-top that said "babygirl." It was so nice to see an actor who didn't usually have that kind of following embrace it wholeheartedly rather than steering clear. ....And then people had to be awful and creepy and obsessive and he left Twitter. I bet he's going to be a lot more skeptical of dealing with fans in the future!

It's not just the canon m/m aspect: it's the wholesomeness.

Yes, yes, they're all evil pirates, I agree, but watching S1 did give me the feeling of something that was supposed to be very progressive and light-hearted in particular ways. I don't think that's bad, but it does tend to attract some very over-sensitive fans with some very rigid expectations.

It's sadly par for the course that one of the random side character actors is the fun one and people are jackasses and desperately want the leads they ship to be the fandomy ones and/or just start creeping on any actor they can get a reaction from.

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foursaints · 3 months

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taking notes, nodding thoughtfully while reading your lily thoughts and I realized I struggle to understand her as a character because everything she is in canon is so muddied by who she is in relation to everyone else. I want her to have a hermit era where she locks herself in her apartment every night learning some new little craft just for the satisfaction of mastering it and I want her to have a going out era where she’s at the bars every weekend and everyone’s watching her but she only dances with her friends and always goes home alone. Like I need to her to live her best life outside of who she is to other people, and see how that’s realized for her. What crafts would she learn behind closed doors, what’s her getting ready routine?

I’ve had friends who feel very much defined by who they are to other people and the expectations surrounding them and it’s interesting to question their conception of themselves - a lot of times, I’ve found they don’t have the words to describe themselves without invoking other people’s opinions of them, even if it’s just an attempt to diminish the reality of those opinions (ex. “I’m not *that* good at piano” etc etc). I want to know how Lily would describe herself and what she sees when she looks back on her accomplishments.

anyways. thank you always for your thoughts 💕

this is such a beautiful message, it’s so thoughtful and well-put. i agree that i find her challenging to pin down because she only (canonically) exists in relation to others but that struggle is what always brings me back to her…

i tend to see lily as profoundly lonely but in a secret way that only makes her more Singular. i think her private life (her getting ready routine!! her daily rituals!!) is extremely well-cultivated because she is used to being misunderstood/projected on but it’s the fact that she appears so self-sustaining that gives her that special halo she has. lily always has little private things it seems she’s doing just for herself (it’s to make the daily experience of Being Herself feel more bearable… she’s trying to assert borders on the nothingness by giving herself Things Lily Does) but it makes others want to watch her and guess at what she’s thinking.

the flipside of this question, to me, is also that it is addictive to be loved in the way that lily is. she doesn’t have a clear picture of who she is (profoundly lonely also means empty) and it can be freeing to have an outsider offer a flattering one for you: when she’s the object of love, she’s a beautiful intelligent witch and even apparent flaws like her temper become charming & palatable facets of this picture. it feels really good to be that girl.

i think it’s less a question of expectations and more one of definitions. her relationship with petunia interests me the most because her sister refuses to see her as Special, and if lily isn’t Special then she’s nothing at all. and that’s really horrifying but it’s also part of her reality.

to me, what happened to her (dying young and getting made into a saint, essentially) is the best thing that could have happened - because she in a sense escaped her own self and Became “that girl” permanently in collective memory. i think she’s pathologically committed to her own self-mythologizing and that’s an answer itself.

#a #guy straining with veins popping jpeg <- me trying not to make this about bartylily #what if we were empty husks (in opposite directions) wearing masks (that couldn’t be more different) and became human together #it’s the best possible ending for her you have to believe me….. they could fix each other….#i need to return to them. i forgot my roots #t

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baddygab-bi · 3 months

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My theory is that Eddie is going to be written as an ever straighter man in 7x05. Based on the leaks (however true they are), it seems like I’m going to be right, but I was thinking all of this before the leaks came out. I won’t say what they are, only the things I’ve been thinking for weeks or things that can be easily assumed based on writing and plot. (Also please don’t send me more spoilers, I want to have some surprise)

In s7 so far, Eddie has been seen as a guy who married a woman. I thought the line “you mean slept with,” was weirdly included to show that Eddie likes to sleep with women. Also he enjoys cars, martial arts, going to the bar, and basketball. Can queer men like these things? Of course, Tommy does, Buck does (mostly), but the point is that they’re seen as stereotypically straight-man stuff, which is why it’s more shocking that Tommy and Buck are queer. They’re giving Eddie more traits to make him ever more masculine. They mention his girlfriend a lot and show them standing pressed-up against each other.

We all know that Buck is going to come out to Eddie in his loft. I can 100% see them having Eddie being the very supportive straight best friend to Buck, because I think the show wants that dynamic of “queer man and best friend face no awkwardness, just support and love.” To show the audience that two men, even one who’s bi can still have a close best friendship with another man without it going romantic.

Oliver and Tim both said things along the lines of the crush not being on Eddie, no plans for buddie right now. Ryan said (around the time of shooting this episode) they’re going to be closer than ever, which I assumed weeks ago was that Eddie is going to call Buck brother in that loft scene. Closer than ever? They haven’t recently defined their relationship at all, so being referred to as brothers would definitely fit that mark. This also would create deniability for the writers not making buddie canon, because “they’re brothers.” Oliver also said “if one character realizing his bisexuality” and I know he was talking specifically about people’s reactions to Buck, but the singularity of it made me instantly think that he’s the only one exploring his sexuality this season.

Next, we know Eddie and Marisol have a sexy time moment in this next episode because the actress posted a picture. Easiest way for the audience to see Eddie as a straight man? Have sex with a woman. “But Buck had lots of sex with women and he’s bi!” True. But you have to think of it as a general audience, mainly straight, viewer. Woman = not gay. Especially with what (according to leaks) seems like the plot will be more about Eddie wanting sex than the other way around. We know he and Shannon had a good sex-life and that it’s implied that he and Ana hooked up at least once if not more. He’s no Buck 1.0, but when it comes to Eddie’s sex-life, the writers aren’t shying away from him being seen as a manly man.

In the promo we see him and Marisol at the restaurant and the one thing I noticed first was the fact that Edy’s shirt is low cut and her push-up bra is truly doing the most. Like half of her boobs are just totally out. Wardrobe dressed her to look all sexy (they very likely provided the bra too), to show that Eddie is a typical dude-bro with a hot female girlfriend. In an episode that Ryan mentioned included something about intimacy, and from what I know of the leaks, it’s really digging into the fact that men have sex with women and it’s all the show that Eddie is here for that.

If buddie ever goes canon, the earliest I can imagine things even starting on Eddie’s side would be season 8. I think Marisol is here to stay until further notice, which makes me sick, but I’m theorizing that the “looks at their relationship closer” thing will be him asking her to move in, because that’s the only thing it can be. From what we’ve seen and heard, their relationship is going good, and even though these writers have lost the plot (literally and metaphorically), because it’s been less than 5 months of dating and they’re still getting to know each other, they think that seems like the next step in their relationship. It once again will highlight the way they want Eddie to be seen as a macho guy. I know so many people are thinking that the writers are just putting Eddie through this relationship to show that he’s a repressed queer man, but i don’t agree. I mean, yeah he could been repressed, but I don’t think that’s why the writers are doing what they’re doing. I think we’re trying to find something that they’re not giving us, because what they’re giving us just feels so wrong with everything else we know about Eddie so far and where his story was leading to in s6.

Plot wise, buddie still made the most sense. Past tense. The end of season 6 really fucked with things to the point where had they gotten rid of both girlfriends, it would’ve been fine, but it still feels like Buck and Eddie are too separate right now for it to go romantic as it is right now. But as for partners, yeah, Buck and Eddie will always make the most sense for each other in theory. In practice though, the show does have to worry about ratings and hopefully the reactions to Buck show them that they don’t have to worry about it negatively affecting the show, but I just really don’t think that they’ll have Eddie be anything other than straight because they’ll lose fans that way. Granted it’s homophobic fans, and they’ll gain more queer fans, but when you think about the business side, the numbers would jump too much. I love how much we all love watching 911, but people watching through pirated links, illegal streaming sites, tumblr gifs, TikTok’s, and uploaded google files, while they are obvi massive fans, aren’t considered in the viewership counts. The show may gain a huge influx of viewers if Buddie happens, but the numbers they’re looking at aren’t tumblr users, they’re people watching on Hulu and live TV. Which tends to be people in older demographics, people they risk losing if they have the other “hot straight firefighter” “go gay.”

This isn’t to be negative. I love buddie. I love BuckTommy right now too. I’ll be so sad when Tommy leaves. I’m just trying to be realistic because I can see so many people getting their hopes up, and not just in a fun shipping way, but in a real way where they’re confident buddie is going to happen this season. I’m so scared for the show and everyone’s heartbreak when it doesn’t happen.

#911 spoilers #911 abc #eddie diaz #911 theories #911 s7 #911 speculation #911 7x05 #911 marisol

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innerchorus · 11 months

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Remembered that the word(s) mage/magus/magi has roots in Persian and decided to look it up, and whaddya know, interesting shit!

“Magi (/ˈmeɪdʒaɪ/; singular magus /ˈmeɪɡəs/; from Latin magus, cf. Persian: مغ pronounced [moɣ]) were priests in Zoroastrianism and the earlier religions of the western Iranians. The earliest known use of the word magi is in the trilingual inscription written by Darius the Great, known as the Behistun Inscription. Old Persian texts, predating the Hellenistic period, refer to a magus as a Zurvanic, and presumably Zoroastrian, priest.”

“The word mágos and its variants appear in both the Old and New Testaments. Ordinarily this word is translated "magician" or "sorcerer" in the sense of illusionist or fortune-teller, and this is how it is translated in all of its occurrences except for the Gospel of Matthew, where, depending on translation, it is rendered "wise man" or left untranslated as Magi, typically with an explanatory note.”

And then I was like, well, the hell is “Zurvanic”? And

“Zurvanism is a fatalistic religious movement of Zoroastrianism in which the divinity Zurvan is a first principle (primordial creator deity) who engendered equal-but-opposite twins, Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu. Zurvanism is also known as "Zurvanite Zoroastrianism", and may be contrasted with Mazdaism.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zurvanism

I don't know what I'll do with it but!!! Very interesting!!!!!

Oh yeah, as someone who often thinks about Team Zahhak mages vs the priesthood in Arslan Senki, I'm aware of this and it's definitely of interest. Tanaka doesn't give us a Parsian word for mage but does use some terms for priests / priestesses (kahina, priestess, see the term 'kahinat', and magpat, a high priest, likely taken from 'magu-pati' / 'mobad' the first part of which obviously shares an origin with mage/magus/magi).

In terms of ArSen, I've talked about the similarities between the priesthood and the mages before. Of course, there are differences, but it's clear that the priesthood also have an understanding of magic that goes beyond that of even the most well-educated Parsians, even though aside from communicating with the jinn they don't actually use it (except for perhaps as a countermeasure against malicious magic, though this isn't something we see directly in canon). The mages of Team Zahhak don't seem to openly define / refer to themselves as priests, but in terms of function and how they essentially view Zahhak as their god, isn't that exactly what they are? It's telling that when Kishward and Zaravant first discover the underground space used by Team Zahhak in Book 12, Kishward comments on its similarity to a temple, leading Zaravant to wonder where the 'priests' are, and the fact that it's later referred to as the 'dark temple' both in the narrative and dialogue serves to emphasise this further.

The overlapping nature of the historical term and the way that the nature, doctrine and abilities of Team Zahhak and the priesthood seem to mirror each other is something I think about a lot, especially because of Gurgin! Yes, it was inevitable that I was going to mention him in this post, but it feels very relevant because here is a character who was occupying one role, and left it in favour of the other ...but did he ever really stop being a priest?

(This is also why, although I obviously wish the eventual outcome had been different, I liked his conversation with Guiscard in Chapter 108.)

#arslan senki #the heroic legend of arslan #team zahhak #gurgin

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horizon-verizon · 2 months

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And let’s not forget that Laena herself is half Targaryen, she’s a direct descendant of Aegon the Conqueor, Rhaenys’s daughter and Aemon’s granddaughter. Baela and Rhaena are 100000 % Targaryens.

This denial of the dragons twins being Targaryen ever since HotD premiered goes along with the denial that Jaehaera will die and the desperate presumption that the show will keep her & she'll birth Aegon III's canonical children...that GRRM will "change his mind" bc the changes in HotD from canon events or characterization indicates such to them.

What happened to "two canons"? Even if the show did that, why do you think that the change will mean the actual series and history of the original story will also change?!

I already have one anon show how GRRM will never do that, but the other thing about that presumption is that GRRM has never really been that involved with the writing f this show. Even if he did come in to "fix" the 2nd season--and only IF bc we have no real confirmation--we need to remember that he'd be writing from what is already written and shown in the 1st season, and I already said many times that once you fuck up the characterizations and events/timeline of the first season you messed up your entire storyline. Because how can a story's characters and the internal lore of said story--the very history you've built up--be so different from what the first season and the tainted/ruined/misinterpreted messaging in the second? It's an imminent continuity error as well as a straight up lie--not fiction, a lie.

As it is, no, GRRM is not going to change his mind and recreate the original story or the in-world history for a few fans who can't take the fact that a few Targs are black and their singular girl will survive the shit her grandparents, parents and great-grandparent set up for her. He's had his lore for going on 15 or more years before HotD existed and before you ever even watched GoT or 1st pick up any ASoIaF installment...you think you're that fucking special? For a show that doesn't even match what her definitely put down in several sources?! Nah.

It's actually so arrogant bc why do you feel so entitled to have the story changed and not try to intake the purpose of Jaehaera's death and Daenaera's purpose for the Targ line towards Daenerys? ASoIaF maybe have received a commercial status as soon as it passed into a publishing house to be sold onto the market, but it is still a literary piece, an art piece. It still passes on an intended idea about "human conditions", to put it simply. And I mean the entirety of ASoIaF: the main series, F&B, the Dunk and Egg series, AWoIaF, all of it. And it's heavy on women and them defining and trying to restore and maintain their agency and/or protect a larger community as they cross class boundaries. Such ideas and commentaries on hierarchies--flawed they may be--should not be reduced into a capitalist product you can make demands of because you decided to engage with it and see it as just a thing GRRM makes money off of! Reminds me of people saying fanfic writers "should" do this, that and have editors...

Why do they feel so fucking entitled to a critical piece of lore to be changed...and not take time to actually try to know what they are reading?!!

#asoiaf asks to me #laena velaryon #hotd fandom #fandom critical #daenaera velaryon #jaehaera targaryen #jaehaera's death #hotd characterization #fandom racism #capitalism #consumerism #book vs tv comparisons #fire and blood writing #fandom nonsense #hotd #asoiaf

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ofallthingsnasty · 4 months

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From the yandere alphabet, could you possibly do F, H, J, or N for Blue? Him and Bill are my favs :)

Yandere alphabet

Of course 💕 Blue is from this fic and my not-so-little beefy merman, you can find more yandere Blue here and here. For everything Blue, browse my OC: Blue tag.

tw. yandere, noncon, oviposition, f!reader, minors dni

Fight: How would they feel if their darling fought back?

Hurt, betrayal, disbelief, anger, annoyance - Blue feels a lot of things at once. But the only emotion that he will show is anger. Of course, he knows that what he is doing isn't sane, isn't consensual - he isn't delusional - but he thinks he is acting for both his and your own good when he takes you for himself. Blue is a lot older than you (which is only natural, considering that merfolk live longer than humans do and mature slower) and he sometimes gets a little cocky, a little condescending. To him, you're still so young and immature - especially when you tell him (fully aware that his last fertile seasons are approaching) that you want to put off having kids for another few years. He takes you out a sense of entitlement and hurt that you're suddenly 'breaking your promise', coupled with the 'I-know-best' attitude I mentioned above - so how does a boyfriend-turned-captor react when the love of his life is fighting back? It's definitely going to be a pile of negative emotions. When you dare to buck under his grip, to wiggle away from him or even try to hurt him - he'll go through a million thoughts in one second. But his pride is too grand to show you that it makes him sad, deep, deep down - the only thing that you will reap is acid, in hopes that it might deter you from acting out again. He can fix your relationship later, he thinks. Because you're more likely to see that he was right all along with a fat-cheeked baby on your arm. Hell: What would be their darling’s worst experience with them? I'd say that depends on you - as in, what would be worse for you? He isn't violet, but he is going to force himself on you so you can carry his eggs. He isn't going to isolate you forever, but he will definitely keep you from anyone and anything until your babies are a little older. So, what is worse? To get violated by your partner of more than a decade or to be all on your own because he thinks it's what is best for you? Which can you stomach better? That one singular traumatic event or the grueling years of isolation and solitude? Both are harrowing in their own right, though the latter might not be defined as a 'single experience'.

Jealousy: Do they get jealous? Do they lash out or find a way to cope?

Oh, Blue gets jealous pretty easily, even as his 'canon' self. Your worlds are so different - he can't follow you to land, only has you when you're at sea with him - and, as many men with big, great egos do, he has that little nagging voice in his head that tells him that you might just fall for another human because it's easier, more familiar. I didn't mention in 'at home', but you wear his bite on your neck for that very reason. He's trying to tell any potential suitor to back off. He's a biter in general, obsessed with leaving marks all over, to make it clear that you're taken. So when he gets jealous? It might just be the straw that breaks the camel's back. You tell him you need more time before having kids and he can smell some other man on you? That doesn't bode well for you. Trust me.

Naughty: How would they punish their darling?

Never physically, that's for sure. He will give you the cold shoulder, will ignore you, will get loud and desperate - but he won't ever hit you. Really, in his eyes he isn't even punishing you. He thinks that you're still in a relationship, even when he forced his eggs into you, thinks that he simply had to force you to see what's important. He thinks you're just arguing like couples do, that he's simply voicing his anger and frustrations. (The fact that there is now a considerable power balance between you is ignored by him.) So why would he hit you? He isn't like that, he loves you, don't you see?

#yandere teratophilia #merman x reader #monster x reader #terato #OC: Blue #tw.yandere #tw.noncon #tw.oviposition

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samsvenn · 2 years

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SAKAMAKI BROS BODY HEADCANONS! :D

𝐒𝐚𝐤𝐚𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢 𝐁𝐫𝐨𝐬 𝐁𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐬

𝐒𝐡𝐮

His body’s strong and he has muscles, but they’re not defined. Faint lines show they’re there, but it’s mostly just due to metabolism.

The guy barely walks or runs, I doubt an eight pack’s there. I don’t even know why Rejet decided to put on their canon art that Shu apparently has abs but go off

He has very broad, classical shoulders; think of Shang from Mulan. Because of his developing trauma with depression and apathy, Shu took sword fighting less seriously in his middle teens so there was ligament straining not too long after. Beatrix, being extremely fearful for Shu’s future, began to be extremely strict with warm up stretches before and after training sessions.

Doesn’t shave often. His face? He’ll try to make the effort. Uses straight razors because he hasn’t caught onto gillette and has slept through every innovation the shaving industry’s accomplished. Plus it only takes ten seconds max to replace the razor with a brand new one and the blade’s cheaper.

But anywhere else? Shaves every two-three months minimum. The longest he hasn’t gone is eight years. Do what you will with that information

His legs are his gems and his calves are impressive. They’re the most toned part of his body. Shu likes to sleep barefoot because socks get uncomfortable to sleep in when they’re moist with sweat so there’s a tan line from his ankles and where his pants end.

Yes, he has a happy trail.

𝐑𝐞𝐢𝐣𝐢

Although he started late into swordfighting, his body’s much more built than Shu’s because Reiji’s been fairly consistent with his training. No stagnancy, just enough recovery periods before he gets back on his feet.

An athletic build. He doesn't really have the muscular physique of a footballer, but equivalent to that of a fencer’s.

Loves the feeling of his soft, shaved, moisturized skin rubbing against the material of his clothes or his silk sleepwear. He keeps it a secret but the amount of unscented lotion this man has would have you confusing him for Laito.

His abdomen is much more defined than his chest.

Reiji has stretch marks around his shoulders. When he got into swordfighting, Reiji was obsessed with surpassing Shu in such a short amount of time that his skin was stretching far too quickly for his own good.

𝐀𝐲𝐚𝐭𝐨

The classic basketball athlete physique; not too muscular, but good enough in areas that need it. His lower body’s better than his upper body mainly because Ayato kept losing to Subaru so he decided to up his footwork.

His figure's pretty common in the basketball community, but the only singular difference between them and Ayato is that he loves showing off his toned body whenever he gets the chance. A little sneak peek disguised as him readjusting his shorts, taking off his basketball jersey to wipe sweat from his forehead, cheerleaders swoon over him and he knows it.

His body’s physically better at sports than all of the triplets. He can run faster, jump higher, his endurance is pretty amazing, you get the gist.

Ayato’s body is the most toned in the family because in his diet regime, he cuts rather than bulk. Ayato loves himself and doesn’t understand why he’d sacrifice his present muscles to gain more protein and bigger muscles, only to pile months of cutting for the newer, bigger muscles to show.

Simply put: He’s lazy and doesn’t want to sacrifice his good looking body when his body’s the “best it is now”.

When he started to lose muscle definition because there was a 24/7 takayoki all-you-can-eat buffet place and the grand prize was a three month 70% discount card, Ayato legitimately broke down crying because it was either his body or takayoki that had to go.

𝐋𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐨

Naturally has the body type that current popular models want: androdygenous, but not really. Cordelia’s genes really came through because his body is scarily symmetrical.

Religiously shaves, dermaplanes or waxes, depending on how large the coverage is.

Every part of his body’s been moisturized to perfection. Every part.

His figure’s pretty lanky despite being shorter than Reiji and his pants don’t help but add to that illusion. Laito’s stomach and v-line are more prominent than any muscles in his body, due to his night time ‘hobbies’.

His chest is the weakest in the family. At first they all agreed it was Kanato, but Laito and Kanato might as well in the same category if they weren't gonna sugarcoat anything at that point.

Gets confused for a girl a lot. When people see his back profile or are behind him, it just reasonably registers in their heads. It also might be due to the erotic pilates that his ass makes it harder for people to not notice he’s a guy at first glance.

Has a bumpy, v-shaped mole under his left ass cheek. He likes to cop a feel every once in a while. This became an inside joke between Subaru and Laito that the V is missing two curves or, ‘3’, to complete a heart; a joke that Laito needs to be dicked down or cowgirl-ed.

“Heheh… Oi Laito, found those two curves yet?”

“Do keep asking me in the hopes you’ll find some yourself, Subaru-kun?”

𝐊𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐨

Very doll-like to the point where it’s uncanny valley levels. Not a single blemish, pimple scarring, it’s so freakishly unnatural to the point where it’s unnerving.

His physique’s quite scrawny in vampire standards. It’s almost impressive that in a society full of hulking, domineering monsters, Kanato’s body is considered a miracle with how dainty, coquettish; and dare I say angelic, it is.

Kanato’s skin looks unnaturally translucent. In room lightning, you can easily see blue veins running under his boney arms.

When he stretches, his bones (especially his ribcage) look like they’re going to pop out of his skin. The worst offense to this is that if he’s wearing a thin cloth material such as silk, nylon or finely compressed cotton, it really does look like his bones are protruding from his body.

The only Sakamaki that can’t grow body hair. It never really introduced itself during puberty. Kanato has a love-hate relationship with this because it’s made him feel left out and made him feel that he was stripped out of his masculinity. All his other brothers got their chance, why didn’t he?

At the same time, he’s relieved. It brings him closer to the unreachable perfection of what a doll looks like; docile, cute and decievely kitsch.

Gets dysphoric quite often. Should he hate his hair? Should he love it? He’s the only one who inherited it, so does that mean that he should be proud of the love it brought? Was it even love?

Why does he feel like this?

𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐮

The skin on Subaru’s hands aren’t even. There’s deep slashes of discolored scarring that spread out like electricity.

Gets red easily. Whether it’s caused by rashes, irritation, gashes or vampire allergies, one speckle is enough to make him look like a lobster.

There’s large dots that are speckled and look like freckles or ladybug spots on the back of his legs. They’re actually small scars caused by Younger Subaru landing on a bed of thorny, white roses while escaping his tutors to visit Christa.

Ranked as the second best body in the family. He carries the title proudly.

The only reason he’s not first is because the family discussion was about who's got the most defined body, not really on who’s got the most muscle mass.

Really fits the young, rebellious rogue image; strong, well-built and rough around the edges. There are times where he wonders if his mother would be happier if he portrayed a more princely image that’s reminiscent of Karl’s earlier years.

Maybe it's for the best that he didn’t.

His forearms are bigger than his calves.

Chest and arm gains for days. They make him look more intimidating and it removes any soft features he inherited from Christa. Subaru has the biggest developed chest, but not necessarily the broadest. That goes to Shu during his swordsmanship days.

Loves the way his arms make his prey gulp in fear. The mere thought that they’re antipicating what those arms of his are gonna do to them gets his blood going.

He doesn’t see himself the way his mirror does. Whenever he does catch a glimpse of himself, there’s always two common sights he’ll see: a disfigured, male version of his mother or his crying child self.

What these two have in common is that there’s this imminent feeling that something’s horribly ‘wrong’ within Subaru; a deep-rooted defect that can’t be loved.

#diabolik lovers #diabolik lovers fandom #diahell #sakamaki brothers #shu sakamaki #reiji sakamaki #ayato sakamaki #laito sakamaki #kanato sakamaki #subaru sakamaki #headcanons #diabolik lovers headcanons #dl #dialovers #diabolik brothers

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dameronology · 2 years

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Hi! Could I please request imagines of Steve or Eddie with a short reader? (Pref one who isn’t a rabid chihuahua because not all tiny ppl are filled w/ rage 24/7 ty 🥰)

i will drink to this bc i'm 5'3 on a good day which isn't even that short but i work with lots of tall ppl so i have a little bit of a napoleon complex at times but i hate the tHeY'Re DeMoNs cOs tHey'Re ClOseR tO hElL bullshit

eddie munson

a lotta people write eddie as being tall as fuck but canonically, he is 5'10 which is definitely on the taller side and he's somehow still lanky and gangly as hell

idk how people individually define short but in my head it's like 5'4 and below so he's definitely towering over you in some way or another

obviously, he teases you about it; especially when you ask him to get stuff down for you from a shelf in the supermarket or to reach the leftovers at the back of the freezer

it makes him feel needed in a sweet domestic way

eddie will sometimes use your head as an arm rest, just to take the piss

one of his nicknames for you would definitely be "short stuff"

"having trouble reaching that, short stuff?" and "how's the weather down there, short stuff?"

it also means this clothes hang off of you and he loves that !!

like seriously his heart skips a beat every time you have to roll back the sleeves on his denim jacket or t-shirt that he's leant you

his arms are long enough so that he can keep a hand on the small of your back when you walk.

i'll tell u what tho. sharing a bed with him is a pain in the fucking ass

because the man spread eagles his stupid gangly limbs everywhere and you're forced to resign yourself to one singular corner of the mattress

but then he tangles himself with you in the night, and he's tall enough to completely enclose your body in his and it's sweet as fuck

steve harrington

steve is also on the much taller side at 5'11

he insists he's six foot though and honestly you're just gonna have to let him have this one

either way, he's a lot bigger than you

honestly it's not something he paid much attention to until dustin, lucas, mike & will had their growth spurts and he's all like "wow haha you're actually fuckin' tiny"

one time he took you & the kids to the theatre and the lady in the box office asked if you wanted a kids ticket

steve said yes because he wanted to save money and you didn't talk to him for the rest of the day

he loves the height difference tho. it means he can rest his head on top of yours when you hug and you're the perfect height for forehead kisses

his favourite thing to do is sling an arm over your shoulder whenever you're walking beside him

and sometimes he runs up to you and picks you up into a kiss

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson reader insert #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson imagines #eddie munson oneshot #eddie munson #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington reader insert #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington imagines #steve harrington oneshot #steve harrington #stranger things x reader #stranger things imagine #stranger things imagines #stranger things #asks

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mixed-up-media · 1 month

Text

HOW THE LAIKA MOVIES CONNECT TOGETHER!!!!!

Also known as history of the beldam!

Warning: most of this is just crack. This was my shower thought this morning and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. None of this is canon. This is just dumb crap. It is held together by 2 strings, 3 old gum pieces, a roll of duct tape, and a used bandaid I found behind the school bleachers. This post is also a long one. You have been warned.

Ok, let's start off with something that has been bothering me, and the rest of the Coraline fandom, FOR YEARS! What is the Beldam? As far as the internet is concerned, she's the villain in Coraline, not much more than that. However, other sources say that another meaning of beldam is "old hag" or "witch" which makes sense. Something that also stuck out to me was another website stating she was an evil fairy. I feel like a beldam is not a singular term for the other mother but rather a species of evil fairies. Once again this connects to one of our favorite detail in that movie, the mushroom circle.

Mushroom circles are known throughout folktales as gateways to fairy realms. Keep this in mind! So what other thing is connected to fairy realms? OH YEAH, TROLLS!

So, I have not read "Here be monster," that is my summer reading goal, it just has to come. So I don't know what lore drops are in there, all I know is that the book is the reason people say Egg's real name is Arthur, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯! What I do know that that in most mythologies trolls are evil and here that is not the case. Something that I noticed in Boxtrolls and in the little info piece on amazon for "Here be monsters" is that both towns end with a bridge. Cheesebridge, Ratbridge, you get the picture. So that means to me is that the trolls are connected to bridges. If you don't know what I'm going for here is the trolls that live under toll bridges. You know that thing that we were all terrified of happening to us from Monty Python and the Holy grail, yeah that thing. They make it very clear there is some sort of connection." Lindow states that the etymology of the word "troll" remains uncertain, though he defines trolls in later Swedish folklore as "nature beings" and as "all-purpose otherworldly being[s], equivalent, for example, to fairies in Anglo-Celtic traditions". (Wikipedia)

Otherworldly you say? Well as a fandom, WE KNOW PLENTY ABOUT THAT! So I'm getting that there is some sort of fairy world situation going on. Like there's a world with magic separate from our own where creatures come from, K.

Some else I noticed was the similarities between Kubo's aunts and the other mother.

Notice the white faces,red lips, and lack of eyes. Now I'm aware that the sister's designs are biased off of the Geisha, however there is something else that connects them, the obsession with ripping a child's eye out, which I would assume is something Geisha women don't do ( I could be wrong.) So I feel like there is some sort of connection between the Beldam and the moon king. A partnership, a teacher of how to remove the eyes of kids, the biological mother of his children. (Low key shipping them)

Then there the witch situation. Witches have been known throughout history as evil, but we watched ParaNorman, and we paid attention! WE KNOW THEY'RE JUST MISUNDERSTOOD! So we've established that there's magic, but we've never really come up with where the magic comes from. I have a whole theory on why Norman can see ghosts, ( I'll post that one later) but I'm pretty sure the magic effects genetics. Now, hear me out, what if the magic comes from the magic fairy realm thing from earlier.

SO POSSIBLE TIMELINE, MAYBE!

A LONG LONG LONG LONG TIME AGO, the Pre-Beldam Fairy was just livin her life. She discovers some sort of dark magic and turn evil. She goes down to earth but uses a portal thing to get there. Out from that portal thing comes some trolls that find a home under a bridge. After years of evolution they become boxtrolls. Then Beldam fairy meets the moon king and has his daughters helps him tear his grandsons eye out. The fairies in charge are like: Dude, the frick is wrong with you, and banashes her to what would become the american continent. They also strip her of her powers which then finds its way to the other side of the soon to be continent. There her magic connects to several families including the one of a little girl with long black hair. Over in Oregon country the beldam finds herself hiding for years and years. Eventually a family of pioneers show up and build a house. Not wasting any time, the beast uses her dark powers and finds a small hole in the wall. She discovers that it's made out of some of the magic ripped from her and uses it for her advantage. Eventually she develops the persona of "The Other World," and The other Mother. She eats kids souls until a blue haired girl defeats her. Who knows if she actually killed her or not!

How does Missing Link fit all this? Well TADA

Lionel found an old monkey carving from a old Japanese town, a newspaper clipping from a few years back about "Boxtrolls" and an old book from back when the mayflower first set sale (I feel like the book was something Aggie's mom brought with her to the new world and read it to Aggie for years)

THE END

People who might find this humorous

@evenceflux18

@officermaddie23

@kpyeeper

TAG MOREEEE

#coraline #laika studios #laika #paranorman #artists on tumblr #the beldam #the boxtrolls #kubo and the 2 strings #the missing link #I've lost it #henry selick #AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH #Crap post #coraline jones #eggs trubshaw #Arthur Trubshaw #norman babcock #Kubo #Does Kubo have a last name?

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iwanthermidnightz · 1 year

Note

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2023/04/11/taylor-swift-breakup-joe-alwyn/

Hmm, weren't we just...

Finally, an article that does her justice. SHE’S the hero of the story. And it makes sure to highlight the fact that her genius artistry is now and always should be what she’s known for. The songwriter and artist of the decade.

In one of the defining early moments of Taylor Swift’s career, in 2008, she sat on a maroon armchair as a guest on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” chatting about her new country album, “Fearless.” Swift, prodded by DeGeneres’s rapid questions and general nosiness, revealed that one of the tracks, “Forever & Always,” was about her recent ex-boyfriend, pop star Joe Jonas. DeGeneres assured her that she would have no trouble moving on, and Swift agreed.

“When I find that person that is right for me, he’ll be wonderful,” Swift said, then smoothly delivered an instant-canon zinger: “And when I look at that person, I’m not even going to be able to remember the boy who broke up with me over the phone in 25 seconds when I was 18.”

“OHHHH!” the studio audience gasped, then broke into applause as Swift gave a satisfied smile. “No! You! Did! Not!” DeGeneres yelled, as Swift started laughing and looked sheepishly down at the floor, adding: “Sorry, I had to.”

The phone call reveal became a staple of Swiftian lore, but the incident also said a lot about Swift as an artist and celebrity: It wasn’t just that she was connecting with listeners as a teenage singer-songwriter, something Nashville executives previously did not think was possible. But she was also connecting because she was willing to be open about her heartbreak in a vulnerable, authentic and snarky way that struck a chord with fans and continued as she became a global pop megastar.

As savvy a move as it was, however, her candor set the tone for the next decade of her public image. Her dating life — and particularly her breakups — became open season for jokes, memes, award-show punchlines and numerous headlines as she dated fellow celebrities (Harry Styles, Calvin Harris, Tom Hiddleston) in her 20s and wrote songs when the relationships ended. Swift has made it clear that she found this almost-singular focus extremely offensive, telling the Guardian in 2014: “I really resent the ‘Be careful, buddy, she’s going to write a song about you’ angle, because it trivializes what I do. It makes it seem like creating art is something you do as a cheap weapon rather than an artistic process.”

Swift’s intensely loyal fan base took the cue, as evidenced this week by the outpouring of emotion over the end of her six-year relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn. Any potential mockery about breakup songs to come was completely overshadowed by out-of-control grief from the Swifties.

Entertainment Tonight broke the news Saturday evening, exclusively reporting that Swift, 33, and Alwyn, 32, were over but that the breakup was “not dramatic” and “the relationship had just run its course.” This report set the internet ablaze, with some fans refusing to believe it until a more celebrity publicist-friendly outlet such as People magazine weighed in — and People wasn’t far behind, citing an anonymous source that the news was true.

This time, Swift is the hero at the center of the story, partly because she’s so much more famous than Alwyn, known for roles in “The Favourite” and the Hulu series “Conversations With Friends,” but best known for his relationship with Swift.

But also, this is Taylor Swift in 2023: The media ecosystem has changed, with social media platforms and fans driving the narrative instead of the tabloids, and the Swiftie fandom is a universe with its own language, customs and rules that can overtake the internet with its intensity. Although her fans still speculate about her private life, Swift has made a concerted effort to move away from the “look at all of her boyfriends!” storylines that consumed her early media coverage. She stopped hiding coded messages in her lyrics about potential subjects of the songs. She and Alwyn rarely appeared together in public and wouldn’t even say each other’s names in interviews. Her sold-out Eras Tour celebrates her evolution and makes it clear that the past is far in the past.

It’s a world of difference from a decade ago, and Swift knows it. For someone who is rarely seen in public unless she definitively wants to be, it was no coincidence that she took a brief, heavily photographed stroll outside a restaurant in New York City on Monday night. Fans are already comparing her black-shirt-and-bedazzled-jeans outfit to Princess Diana’s revenge dress, and speculating that she purposefully appeared because she wanted to let everyone know she’s fine.

Swift, a self-mythologizer to her core, knows all of this, and she’s aware that the fandom is eagerly awaiting to see whether she will address the situation in concert. She recently swapped out one song on her Eras Tour set list, “Invisible String” with “The 1,” the former about soul mates, the latter about looking back fondly on a past relationship.

(LINK)

#thanks tree #the digs lmao

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super-hero-confessions · 1 month

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I am so tired of people acting as if actions, singular or otherwise, should define a human being forever and always like people can't make mistakes, do wrong and learn better, or change what they do and who they are.

I am so tired of people conflating logical explanations and rational deep thinking that tries to explore causality with making "excuses" for obvious repercussions due to circumstances, or condoning evil shit like it doesn't matter and there's no way to prevent it because they're "just monsters".

This thinking is what's wrong with society.

This thinking is what leads ex-cons to call it quits on reintegration and commit more crimes to get thrown back in jail because hey, they may be used for slave labor, may be mistreated and dehumanized, but at least they can eat.

Let's see what happens when you make a mistake or do the wrong thing and not a single goddamn person lets you breathe for it, coming down on you like you're the devil showing your own stupid humanity for a single second. God forbid you have an unpopular opinion in a closed minded space.

I am so tired of common sense being uncommon. I am so tired of the hostility towards anyone who's not a perfect angel, like that's a realistic standard to hold humans to? Or fuck it, canon ideas that make a fave not a perfect angel or even "drawing a line" at one specific crime.

I am so tired of people being so damn media illiterate and incapable of basic reading comprehension. I am so tired of the double standards and hypocrisy.

I am so tired of people being "confused" by media literally designed to make them think. I am so tired of people being obtuse and purposely misconstruing a message or making up bullshit to villainize an author or their work.

How does anyone fuck up author's intent so badly? What is so hard about differentiating reality from fiction? Context clues are taught in 4th and 5th grade, how are people this willfully ignorant? Are they just trolls?

Is it just the constant battle of nature vs. nurture, of perception and personal bias that leaves people blind and unwilling to see past their own preconceived world views?

Why are we still here? Just to suffer?

Ducks are fucking rapists. Yet they are still a well loved animal for many people.

Most if not all animals are murderers. Hamsters frequently eat their own babies.

Nature has a way of working itself out to promote survival, regardless of the cost. If you treat someone like an animal without giving them the chance to define themselves and who they want to be, they will act like an animal. They will survive.

Fucking Megamind taught us that!

If you're someone that thinks a villain like Homelander, who has literally been through the worst possible shit a human being could ever go through and then some, a guy who is clearly, very clearly mentally unwell, is completely beyond saving or proper help and treatment?

You have lost the plot and are part of the problem. Ableist as all hell too.

Please, for the love of God people, get yourselves educated. There is so much that's easy access in the age of the Internet. I promise, education and understanding is how we make the world a better place.

Not all this... Performative stupidity.

#confession #rant

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zone-seven · 7 months

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Thinking about zones culture...

(Before I get into this, please keep in mind that I see the DD universe as like 75 years removed from the literal apocalypse, so things like communication, transportation, and infrastructure are very different from our modern world, or even the real world 1950s. Add that to extreme poverty, and you get zone dwellers living 'only' 200km apart who don't necessarily know that much about each other first hand.)

Really there is no singular "zones culture". Well, there is in a sense — in the interplay between the collective cultures of the California Desert — but that's nobody's real culture. It's just the natural result of cultures colliding.

This half-real "Zones" culture is little things — like everybody knowing a little bit of English, but not because they speak it for real, just because it's the lingua franca between communities, and between the desert and Battery City. It's using the same ingredients in very different cuisines because those are what's available in this time and climate. It's dressing pretty differently but following similar principles, since everyone lives with the same relentless sun, dust, and drought. It's broad things that came about due to proximity or convenience, not necessarily out of a sense of community.

But then there are smaller, much real-er cultures — local ones, lone ones, town-by-town ones. It does tend to cluster in regions, and there is lots of crossover of course, but each settlement, whether 100 people or 10,000 people, has it's own norms and customs. There's a lot of dead space out there; neutral towns vary wildly in their languages, religions, beliefs, and values... and smart folks will know at least a bit about their immediate neighbours! It's hard not to, to be honest. Life in the desert of California (and maintaining sovereignty from Battery City) requires a decent bit of cooperation and willingness to form alliances.

Some of the biggest towns in the Zones — the few approaching that 10,000 citizens mark — have quite the influence on the settlements around them. The biggest of them even exert influence on the entirety of the Zones, being big enough to support things like newspapers and far-reaching radio stations. Even then, though, people really do value tradition and custom; they've fought tooth and nail to keep it, as did their parents, grandparents, and so on. The city is already after their culture. They're not friendly to people trying to change their ways.

Killjoy culture is a little different.

Killjoy culture, as I'm defining it in my canon, is primarily the culture of ex-citizens of Battery City. Of course, it is also describing a political movement, and these escapees are not totally isolated in their politics, so it also includes some people who were born in the desert. There are plenty of reasons why desert-borns dislike the city, though few take it so far as to join up with killjoys. Similarly, some immigrants from the city have no interest in the political fight and instead do their best to assimilate into (usually) one of the larger towns. Mainly, however, I think about Killjoy culture as being heavily influenced by Battery City, especially in ways that feel very 'un-city' and free to people who once lived there, but feel restrictive and extremely 'city' to anyone desert-born. It's sort of separate from the cultures of desert towns as a whole, because they do not interact nearly as much or on as good terms. Neutrals don't have the sort of wariness with each other as they do with 'joys.

So, I think killjoy culture is sort of false in the same way that "zones culture" is false. It exists, but it's built first and foremost around something other than its people. Well, that combined with whatever scraps of Old World (pre apocalypse) culture their family in the city managed to keep. Very “killjoy” to have one-of-a-kind cobbled together cultures like that.

Killjoys do have a sense of community, though neutrals often miss this because killjoy community looks different than theirs. Killjoys are often rather nomadic, and they're always scattered. A lot of their culture is in media, and in folklore, and in the few events that are important enough for mass gatherings. Different than typical zones folklore, which often follows certain themes — killjoy folklore is heavily influenced by lobby culture, including a lot of droid religion.

But folklore is another topic…

#by 'lone cultures' i mean ones that are very different from any other in the desert. only one that speaks XYZ language for instance #eg. ghoul grew up in a very orthodox jewish community that has no equivalent. there are 2 other jewish communities nearby but hers #was the only yiddish speaking one and also the only hardcore religious one. no experience like it anywhere else.#and she fits in kind of 'weird' because of it. not at all city enough to fit 100% with joys and not quite desert enough for everyone else #I think the zones does fall into a sort of urban rural divide too. big towns are much more liberal and politically involved #(against bli I mean. not that there’s no politics in small settlements)#Jet grew up in the second biggest zones town and that one is more actively ‘fuck bli. we’re our own people’ than ghouls town of 500-odd ppl #hard to organise and stand up to it with that few so people care more about keeping a low profile so they don’t get bothered #danger days #the true lives of the fabulous killjoys #ttlotfk #zones culture

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kaurwreck · 6 months

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not to have rewatched bsd upwards of six times on main, but I really don't think sigma could have been created by the page.

according to ango's info ability, sigma stabbed taneda and stole the page from the special division, which is why decay of angel is even in possession of it. although one could argue that sigma was retroactively created by writing into existence the sky casino and backdating it by three years (1) sigma then orchestrating the events of his own creation would create a paradox, and (2) the bsd universe is canonically sensitive to paradoxes which are marked by singularities/subclasses of singularities (oda vs gides, shibusawa vs atsushi are examples). so it seems charmingly pedestrian that sigma stabbed taneda and made off with the page without any physics-wrinkling consequences.

also, taneda and sigma's encounter and the nikolai's chainsaw parlor trick are suggested to have roughly happened concurrently. it's ambiguous, but the lighting is parallel. if this timeline of events is roughly accurate, that doesn't preclude the decay of angels pre-drafting the events that they then wrote out very quickly upon receiving the page.

but based on the timeline in which mushitaro collaborated with fyodor and then was snatched by fyodor, it seems more likely to me that ranpo being framed as killing taneda and the agency being framed for nikolai's chainsaw snip snip WAS the work of a reality bending skill— which mushitaro's canonically is. his skill seems to cover up crimes by eliminating evidence, but nothing suggests that the skill won't frame others based on their proximity if simply disappearing evidence isn't enough to obscure the crime's actual perpetrator.

also fyodor is first and foremost a conman. that was the purpose of showing us his encounter with ace. the tricks he's used before, he isn't likely to retire. he convinced ace that he could bend reality when he was only really bending ace's perception of reality, which he explains but also which dazai teaches sigma how to do in the context of rock, paper, scissors. (and to quote chuuya from the onsen audio drama— dazai doesn't waste actions. There's a reason he taught sigma this in particular.) further, we know based on ivan that fyodor loves a good lobotomy. why emphasize that ivan had been lobotomized only to then kill ivan shortly thereafter? like dazai, there's no reason to believe kafka asagiri is using the limited space his mediums allow to just fuck around. it's more likely a hint that one of the tools of fyodor's trade is inducing amnesia and suppressing the personalities of specific people. which would explain sigma thinking he's a three year old whose entire purpose is defined by the sky casino.

anyway. this is all conjecture. but I think it's substantiated conjecture worth considering.

#bsd #bungo stray dogs #bsd sigma #the book #bsd fyodor

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bleachbleachbleach · 6 months

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All right B3 I gotta know...what concept of time do Shinigami use? How do they mark or measure the hours of the day? What kind of clocks or time-telling devices do they use? Analog or sundials?

“There are not just two times,” notes the physicist Carlo Rovelli in The Order of Time. “Times are legion: a different one for every point in space.” What we think of the present, he writes, “does not extend throughout the universe.” Rather, “it is like a bubble around us.” The “well-defined now,” as he calls it, “is an illusion.”

— “The Science of the Perfect Second,” by Tom Vanderbilt in Harper’s Magazine (April 2023).

Where time is concerned, I think we have enough canon evidence to say that the standard the Gotei has chosen is “whatever best coincides with the living world,” a 24-hour day with hours and minutes and seconds.

We see this mostly in the Soul Society arc, where Rukia’s execution is timed to the hour, and Hinamori has a whole alarm clock:

This isn’t to say there aren’t other forms of time in play as well (earlier Rukia tries to direct Chad toward the “hour of the tiger,” which no one else has ever mentioned as far as I know—maybe this is Kuchiki time, maybe this is Inuzuri time). I kind of feel like Soul Society may have embraced the multiplicity of different available measurement systems even harder than we have. Like, we have the age-old battle between Imperial and metric, and countless additional Indigenous, religious, etc. systems of measure. They have madness.

At the same time, I can think of some reasons this wouldn’t be true: Their world—at least, a world they have institutional memory of—is smaller than ours, in that there were fewer generations across which things might change, and fewer population loci (or rather, a singular locus, that being the Seireitei). There is also, of course, the near-infinite variations within Rukongai—but where shinigami are concerned, it’s the Seireitei and the Seireitei. Anyone shinigami happens to be familiar with X, Y, or Z system of Rukongai measurement is still going to know what the Seiretei uses; and what the Seireitei uses is probably 1) whatever the nobles continue to assert, combined with 2) whatever the 12th is begging people to use instead (Gotei-specific standard being the latter).

Which brings us back to the Gotei usage of mainstream Living World time.

The very interesting follow-up questions, of course, are:

Why?

To what end?

Practical Reasons

Despite the fact that this conception of time is even more removed from that which it is derived than it already is for us, there are practical reasons for its usage: Shinigami understand their purpose to be mediating the balance of souls across dimensions, which means their work directly concerns the Living World. For the sake of the dangai and keeping the number of shinigami that vanish in it to a minimum, standardizing time as much as possible seems important. It gives the 12th something to work with—some worldview that can unify the worlds a little bit and make all of this interdimensional travel and tracking possible! (See the links at the end of this post for further discussion!)

Also, without standardizing time across dimensions how are you supposed to make it to your Worm TV Zoom meeting on time? (Sidebar: I’ve previously hypothesized that the pomp and circumstance of the Worm TV was about network security but let’s be real, it’s probably also how you have a conversation in [nearly] real-time across dimensions. I would not be surprised if there was a wicked delay on denreishinki messages/data. See: The Great Gentei Kaijou Debacle of 2001.

Ideological Potentials

What follows are five ideas I think are interesting potential outgrowths of the discussion on Soul Society's use of mainstream Living World time:

1. Having chosen Living World time as the standard doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the most relevant concept of time for vast swathes of non-dangai/shinigami life in Soul Society.

We get “shinigami aging makes no sense” discourse all the time, but like, there’s at least two ways of looking at that: Either shinigami aging doesn’t work with (this concept of) time, or it’s this concept of time does not work for them. "Time" not working/not applying isn’t unique to shinigami, and we have plenty of Living World examples of this: Indigenous time, crip time, Island time, &c.

Functionally relevant or not, though, I think Living time holds additional, deep-seated ideological meaning for shinigami, too.

2. The choice of Living World time as Soul Society’s standard plays an active role in making and defining the relationship between shinigami and the living.

At a basic level, the purview of shinigami is death, and “life” may be described as being in time, where “death” is being out of it. This is complicated by any number of things—namely, there being an afterlife and some version of time still operating there, lol, but also the notion that being in time the “correct” way makes you more alive (see: crip time), or the notion that life and death are dualistic opposites (religiously and culturally, not a universal truth). It's of course further complicated by the fact that even if it's not the most relevant measure of time in Soul Society, time does in fact (now) exist there. Soul Society is not out of time so much as it is in time in very strange ways that stretch the definition of what that's supposed to mean.

3. The Living World is a moving target, as far as understanding it goes.

It’s constantly changing, and even if a soul is a soul is a soul, I feel like there’s no way the relationship between shinigami and the Living World has enjoyed the same level of elemental stability. Even taking only the 20th century into account, the cultural significance of shinigami and other such folklore in Japan has had massive swings. Who’s to say the Meiji Restoration and “modernization” didn’t make shinigami work way harder? Who’s to say the re-emergence of said folklore post-WWII and through the mid-20th century didn’t similarly impact what it meant to be a shinigami, how hard it was to do your job, and how much job you had to do? (Is reishi even thinner when fewer humans believe it might exist? Is it thicker under torii gates, or in spaces of ritual?)

Going off of that:

4. If ways of knowing can impact ways of being with respect to the relationship between shinigami and the Living World, perhaps Soul Society itself feels those impacts even more strongly.

The nature of zanpakutou is all about manifesting the inner into the outer world, and given that Soul Society is reishi all the way down, maybe some version of that holds true for Soul Society as a whole: It has seasons and solar days and all of these things, in these particular ways, not just because it exists in the echo of the Living World but also because bringing this concept of time to Soul Society has effected concrete (inasmuch as anything reishi is “concrete”) change in Soul Society. Maybe, given enough time, shinigami could wake up one day and Soul Society WOULD have a molten core and a real moon.

Or maybe there are too many additional forces working against any kind of progressive trajectory (see: Soul Society anachronisms, see: the incredible stretchiness of space-time in Rukongai/traveling across Rukongai [yes I’m thinking about Renji in the Bount arc, I am never not thinking about Renji in the Bount Arc]).

The relationship between Soul Society and the Living World, in addition to being defined in terms of life and death, could also be defined in terms of the material and the spiritual. Perhaps time becomes a critical link point between the two. In the Living World, units of measurement broadly writ have gradually lost their material referents; instead of measuring every kilogram against a literal kilogram object, The Kilogram, kept in a French vault, they are now measured in terms of universal constants, or math. But time has never been material, and maybe that makes it ideologically special for Soul Society and the Living World—a point of relation, an opportunity.

5. Living World philosopher Henri Bergson suggests that the spirit is anchored in the past and the body in the present, and time is the union of the spirit and the body.

Basically, he theorizes that pure memory is within the purview of the spiritual, and in order to react with consciousness you need to perceive something and let memory impress itself on what it means to you--it requires relation with the past. Spiritual beings and the past aren't exactly the same thing in Soul Society, but the way time and memory work and the way image functions in Edo-looking Soul Society roll together in cool ways here.

And perhaps time, then, becomes a way of laying claim to the shinigami’s prime directive: To be shepherds of souls, stewards of the balance between realms. If time, and by extension, the relationship between shinigami and the living, can be defined with *increasing specificity*, then perhaps in some courts this might prove the prime directive, prove the legitimacy of the shinigami project--that is, their relationship to the Living World and what it is they think their job is.

Then time becomes both a means of relation and intimacy between these words and their denizens, and also a measure of control/claim that is as loving (six hearts beating as one) as it is violent (thousand-year blood wars).

Further Food for Thought:

-> “In Search of Lost Time,” by Tom Vanderbilt in Harper’s Magazine (2023), which inspired a lot of my thinking here and offers an absolutely beautiful rumination on time, systems of measurement and their dematerialization, and different elemental clocks. I’ve read this three separate times this year because I liked it that much!

-> “The Tyranny of Time,” by Joe Zadeh in Noēma (2021), which is also about the standarization of time and the ways our minds and bodies might be out of sync with this standard; and is also about the historical muddiness of time and timezones and time in scatters of English villages.

-> More on the "Hour of the Tiger" thing:

-> More about different conceptions/measurement systems of time, and its wimeyness in historical Japan and also Soul Society (see "info" tab for our response tags):

-> Thinking about time at an existential timescale (primordial ooze shinigami):

-> Followed up by more about Universal Time and the Dangai:

#a forewarning that this post is very long #it is stream of consciousness but it also took 9 billion years to re-find the links at the bottom so please enjoy them!#polynya i swear you have a post where renji is very frankly discussing the fact that winter hours themselves are a different length than #spring hours and i'm pretty sure he's talking to byakuya but i cannot find it and now i feel spiritually bereft without it #bleach headcanons #shinigamiology #no brain just bleach #asks #bleach #i'll reiterate our standing invitation to all tumblr anons #please make a blog! join the fandom! we want to engage in dialogic communications with you and also be friends!#we want to hear your soul society time headcanons!

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randomnameless · 11 months

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Of all the masterful and progressive storytelling elements and themes conveyed by the humanity-defining, unparalled work of art in written format that is the Aeneid, which is your personal favorite?

I'm personally stuck between:

Every man with an iota of self-esteem is secretly an evil violent sexist child-liking grapist who deserves to be beaten near to death for little to no reason, and only by either being a doormat to the women around them and allowing themselves to get cheated on with no actual protest or anger or being redeemed by the purity of heterosexual love can they ever hope to be anything more than human scum

Mixed-race people are inherently born wrong due to not solely belonging to a single race, needing to choose a singular side in order to ever find any sort of happiness, with the pain of the uncertainty being so great they'd genuinely be better off un-aliving themselves than to continue to live with such a massive burden

And, last but not least, genocide survivors are not only selfish cowards for not announcing to an entire continent that had just wiped out most of their race that they still had the things they were genocided for in the first place and choosing instead to lie to them to restore peace and order and avoid being killed simply for existing, but also people with comparable, if not inferior, suffering to someone who was tortured as a child and became a racist, imperialistic warmongerer who started a war just to gain more territory and finish the genocide her inspiration started because of it

Replying to an earlier ask I just thought about tying it with this one lol

The Aeneid is peak exemple of something touted as canon when it's pure headcanon, and when people try to explain how the many takes and "points" from that fic aren't in the games at all with links to the sources and all, those people are harassed and cyberbullied because I guess some people really are asses and don't like when others point out their ship isn't canon.

Now, back to your award winning list,

I would say this one takes the cake, with the added topping that this fic also portrays the "other" race as inferior, making you more violent and, in general less "human".

I recently learnt (you learn new things everyday!) the word used back then mulatto (mulâtre for us!) was used to described mixed-race people, the parallel being made with a mule being important, because a mule is neither a horse nor a donkey but something seen, back then, as "inferior" to both and that cannot produce offspring, aka - again i stress the "back then" era - something "wrong" that isn't supposed to exist.

And Billy feeling like she's wrong because she's mixed race feels really... well, in check with the theories of "back then" about mixed race people - hell, even in certain parts of the world today, being mixed race is seen as fucking bad thing and the mixed-race persons are discriminated against because they're not totally "A" but also "B" and "B" is seen as worthless/shitty.

I know some fics tackle dark themes and dark fics (iirc) don't have a happy ending, the author is free to do whatever they want after all it's their fic - but the way this fic tackles this issue, and how said resolution is touted in the fandom as something "good" - like how the fuck someone wanting to die because they are mixed-race became touted as "the pinnacle of the mc's story where they finally become A again, and get rid of their B blood!"???

Every woman perceives herself as an innocent little child, has her ultimate goal be to give birth to children and start a family, and will see themselves as ugly and unworthy of love the second they have a mild inconvenience happen to them Every man with an iota of self-esteem is secretly an evil violent sexist child-liking grapist who deserves to be beaten near to death for little to no reason, and only by either being a doormat to the women around them and allowing themselves to get cheated on with no actual protest or anger or being redeemed by the purity of heterosexual love can they ever hope to be anything more than human scum

I'm cheating and grouping the two lol

It's the usual brand of sexism, and no, I don't think the pseudo "role reversal between who is an ass and who isn't" removes the sexism label, especially since women still want to start families and become Mothers (tm).

It's as if someone is saying they're not sexist because while they defend the tradwife movement (pure love! Must be pretty to be married! Babies!), they also think men deserve to die and be treated like subhumans or second rate humans who can be abused whenever a woman feels like it.

What is even the point? The message? If men BaD and "pure" women GoOd, if the "pure" women do the same thing as the men did, are they BaD too or not?

And lol@ the casual homophobia, "peepee on peepee action" is bad and leads people astray, Man must be redeemed by womanly love!

Victim blaming is so mainstream in the canon Fodlan games!

As a rule of thumb, I don't like the "trauma contest", but I've seen a lot of fics were this specific issue - absolutely not resolved in FE Fodlan!! - is resolved in a similar way, the Nabatean genocide is revealed just like the greater lie about the origin of crusts, and yet some people react with "yay you might have been hunted to near extinction to the point you can't even call your relatives relatives and lived in perpetual fear for the last 1k years of being slaughtered, but do you realise your lie made me feel sad because people want to marry me???"

I still think this take teeters a tad too close to the "it's your fault/you deserved being genocided/hunted because you belong to the wrong race" nauseabond take.

Again I need to stress how there's nothing inherently wrong with a Dark Fic, or fanfiction that tackles, elegantly or not, certain themes, and that's not what I'm ranting about here.

The Aeneid however takes itself as canon, is rec over canon and is lauded as essential to understand the canon (let it be through the very same reasonings and plot points developed in redshit essays about the canon, or fans rec'ing to other people).

It isn't the canon discrepencies that kind of annoy me, but it's rather how people will tell you how to interpret canon, in the light of this fic - from harmless stuff like "Supreme Leader totes has scars - so her FEH beach alt, made by IS mind you, is wrong" to the "toxic Faerghus masculinity values chivalry thus BaD, that's why they need to be civili- I mean, Adrestianised" to the various Rhea shitstorms/takes that are way too numerous for me to list, and ends up with people being puzzled when canon!Rhea (voiced by Kikuko Inoue) bakes cookies.

#anon #replies #fandom woes #now that i'm typing this i realise why the momo sobfest pisses me so much #the cast is lit blaming the relic aka the dead nabatean for momo's karmic punition #for having participated in a genocide #wah wah genocide victim bad for punishing its genocider :(#assuming momo effectively killed bob the nabatean who became blutgang #or drank his blood #let's say i'm not fond of the aeneid #and it's not a case of the usual don't like don't read #it's showered down your throat whenever you want to talk about canon

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