#it got really long i'm so sorry LMAO

[franky-y]

finally managed to finish this

[stjernespiller]

Another eye

Can also be found on AO3

You can’t see anything.

Blood drips from your face. You think it hurts, in that distant way everything does now. You try to get it out of your eye, just enough to see the fight, but your vision stays dark through the wet sounds of blood and flesh.

Stupid, you think to yourself. Stupid stupid idiot, zoning out in a battle. Should have just looped forward to the king instead of taking that bathroom break and fighting the floor boss. Couldn’t even blinding cry, so what did it matter?

Your family members are speaking. They don’t do that much in battle. You should probably listen.

Bonnie is crying.

Mirabelle heals you again, a light feeling drifting over you that does nothing to take away the weight in your stomach. You don’t know why she did it again, you just need to get this blood out of your eye and you can go back to the fight, stop zoning out just enough to beat the sadness blocking your way to asking the king the question you’ve been dreading.

Isabeau is saying something very close to you. You think it’s him, at least, from the deeper tone. You can’t hear it. Can’t fight can’t see can’t hear. You’re pathetic.

He touches your face.

It’s- new, strange, unexpected. You flinch, and he takes his hand back, like your family always does because you’re so weak you can’t even handle being touched. But the hand only leaves for a moment before it’s back again, holding your cheek. you stand very, very still.

Is the fight over? It has to be. You almost had it before you got distracted and let yourself get hit. Maybe Isabeau and Odile got it while Mirabelle was healing you. He wouldn’t be touching you like this if the sadness was still attacking, back turned to where it stood.

He wipes the blood away from your eye, unstained hand doing a much better job than yours had. You still can’t see. You still can’t hear what any of them are saying. He sounds close to tears, though.

Ah. You know why you can’t see.

It clears your hearing. Fear, for some reason, leaves when you exhale. You breathe deep in, again, and a full sense of calmness fills the space of the fear you breathe out.

The blood hadn’t covered your eye, it was coming out of it. Stupid Siffrin didn’t pay attention to the fight and lost another eye.

Isabeau is cursing, voice wet with tears. His other hand cups your jaw, keeping your head in place. He wipes more blood away, touching your eyeball with so much gentleness you feel it should heal it. Mirabelle crafts another healing spell, and Odile asks Bonnie for the one sweet tonic you picked up this loop.

You pick up your wooden arms, raising them slowly, like through a thick fog, to land your hands on Isabeau’s. He drops his hands from your face. You’re speaking to your whole party when you say, “It won’t work.”

Bonnie sobs. Someone, likely Odile, pours a tonic on your eye anyway.

You just need to get to a frozen tear. You don’t remember where they are, but maybe you could convince your family to lead you to one. If you could find some excuse. Or just swing your arms around until you hit one.

“The head housemaiden could heal you,” Mirabelle whispers, voice just as teary as Isabeau’s. “I should have taken more healing classes. Studied more on my own. I can’t do it. And by the time we get to her...”

She trails of. Crafts another healing cure. It works just as well as the others.

Healing of this scale needs to be done quick. You know, because you all talked about it when you lost your first eye, and when Isabeau showed you a small scar on his bicep. Go more than an hour or two without the right healing craft, and it’ll be permanent.

An idea lights up in your mind. You turn your head, but it all stays black, and you can’t look anyone in the eye.

“We can find a tear. Freeze me.” It’s so perfect. You almost have to stop yourself from grinning. The best excuse you could have ever asked for. “when you beat the king and everyone unfreezes, someone can help me.”

The lie is easy, as easy as all the others you’ve filled these two days with. They won’t beat the king without you. You won’t unfreeze with everyone else, and the head housemaiden will never help you. But you need to see to fight, and you need to loop to see, and you need a tear to loop.

It’s quiet for a moment. “Will that work?” Odile asks, voice strangely soft.

“It’s worth a try.”

“We’ll find a tear!” Bonnie yells. They either stamp their foot or jump in place. “We’ll defeat the king and you’ll get your eye back!” their voice is still wet. You don’t know why. Are they scared of fighting the king without you? Now you’re thinking about the loop you let them go alone. Stars, you really are an awful person. Of course they’re scared when you can’t keep fighting, and just before the king, too.

“Let’s bandage it until then.” Mirabelle says, and a piece of cloth presses against your face. It’s nice and cool. “Your coat is all dark know.”

Odile, you think, listening to the footsteps, start walking. “We can’t go back,” she says, “hopefully there will be some tears further in.”

You walk after her. The corridor is as familiar to you as the rest of this blinding house. You don’t need an eye to know the way.

Isabeau still hovers beside you, steps heavy but careful. He doesn’t offer to guide you, probably afraid to touch you, but you can imagine his arm reaching out, hovering above your shoulder, ready to steer you away from the walls or the floor or what else you might kill yourself on. Fragile little Siffrin, can’t walk on his own.

Bonnie is to your other side, rushing ahead for two steps at a time before falling back again, never straying far. They hiccup, and audibly sniff their snot in. You feel awful. The tear is close. You just need to loop.

Mirabelle walks in front of you with Odile. You can almost feel her continuously looking back at you, footsteps irregular in that familiar pattern. You don’t know why it’s familiar, and when you try to remember, it slips away like lightless sand between your fingers.

The air is tense. You slip into your mind, a little. Claude is up ahead, frozen in time with the secret ingredient. You turn a corner, and don’t think about how strange it looks to your family for you to walk through the corridor like this. Isabeau calling you graceful is there, memory pushing itself to the front of your mind, but you don’t force yourself to act as if you don’t know this place better than yourself. They won’t remember.

“Does it hurt?” Bonnie whispers besides you. You instinctively look towards them, but still see nothing but darkness around you. “Sorry, stupid question. Of course it hurts.” Their voice is still wet. They sniffle. “You just act like it doesn’t.”

You’ve been acting a lot. Almost everything feels like a secret, a lie, a play. This isn’t one of them. “It’s just an eye.”

It’s the wrong thing to say.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN JUST AN EYE?!” Bonnie yells, and their voice is still wet, but it cracks in fury. “You always do this, you don’t care about anything! It’s your eye, you can’t see, you lost both of them now! You have to care!”

They hate you. You remember, now, that they don’t love you. You couldn’t get yourself to help them this loop, too tired from hearing the same thing again and again and again. In this moment, Bonnie hasn’t hugged you. In this moment, you haven’t talked with Bonnie about losing your first eye. In this moment, they still hate you.

But it’s fine. You’re on your way to a tear. You’ve all been walking this stretch for a while, Mirabelle should see Claude soon, and then they’ll find the safe room, and after that - you think you’ve seen tears there before.

“It’s just an eye,” you say again, because you can’t bring yourself to pretend any differently, that it matters to you more than having to loop and run through the third floor again. “I’ve lost worse.”

Bonnie doesn’t respond. Claude has to be here soon, right? Was she always this deep in the corridor?

"How is your eyes not the worst thing you've lost?" Mirabelle asks, so quiet you almost don’t hear her. The kind of question she doesn’t expect a response to.

You shouldn’t respond. You don’t want to respond. How can you. You can’t speak it’s name, can’t tell them anything about it, and you already didn’t help Odile this loop because you couldn’t bring yourself to follow the blinding script again when she won’t understand and won’t remember and won’t care.

“I lost my home,” you say anyway, because it’s all one big cosmic joke. They won’t remember anyway. It doesn’t matter. “And I don’t even remember it.”

Does your country matter, if no one remembers it?

Isabeau speaks up, always the emotionally mature one. “I’m sorry, that sounds awful.”

“You never remember anything,” Bonnie sniffles, sounding tired. The kind of exhausted you get calming down from crying. You wish your stupid eye would let you cry.

You’ve already broken the dam. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. “I don’t.” Isabeau tugs at you cloak, pulling you slightly towards him. He lets you go, a meter more to the left of the corridor than before, and doesn’t explain anything. You don’t ask.

“Not even the word for a stuffed animal. Or a sharpening stone, which you use all the time. Or bananas.” It seems to calm Bonnie down, listing all the things you don’t remember. You follow along.

“Not the name for all the birds in Dormount. What bonding earring are. What we did last week. My family. My country. Your names, that one time.”

It doesn’t calm you down. Or the others, for that matter. Isabeau stopped walking. The other three follow suit.

You stop too, because the others did. Then you wish you had kept going, because now you’re just standing here, and you still can’t see anything.

“Sif...” Isabeau starts, soft and careful. “I’m sorry. We’ve been poking fun at your memory, but this... We need to talk, after we beat the king.”

You don’t want to talk. Have you already made the pun on your memory this loop? Bonnie said you couldn’t remember the name, so probably, you need something else, something to divert the attention, it doesn’t matter because they’ll forget but right now they remember and you don’t want to talk.

“Aren’t there any tears here?” You ask, and it comes out harsher than you planned.

“Oh! No, not yet, but there’s a door here, maybe on the other side?” Mirabelle sounds nervous and jumpy. Did you do that? Stars, you’re awful.

Then you think. There’s a door, and you hear someone open it. Claude was before the door. She was, you know it, you can’t have forgotten that, Mirabelle stops you all and says the same thing every time.

Did you all walk past her? Did... did Mirabelle change the script? Because you’re blind now?

Your head hurts. You walk towards the door, and only need to follow the wall for a moment before you reach it, having been pulled from the middle of the corridor by Isabeau. Was that.... because of Claude? Did he pull you out of the way?

When Mirabelle tells everyone to hurry through the safe room, they do so. No one talks about taking a break, and Odile’s stomach doesn’t rumble. You’re through the room without eating or touching the star.

“There!” Bonnie yells, first out of the second door.

“A tear,” Odile says simply. “Two, actually. Pick your poison, Siffrin.”

You chuckle, just a little. Lean right. But you don’t actually know where in the room the tears are. You just know the door to the king is straight ahead.

“Can I lead you to it?” Isabeau offers. You empty your mind, think of nothing, and hold out your hand.

He guides you in an arch. Let’s go of your hand. You reach out, and dream of nothing.

[vynnyal]

This is likely the hardest I've laughed in rain world yet. Basically, you can glitch a spear into a quantum state using a dead bat body, allowing stabbed enemies to follow you through tunnels. So I tried bringing a leviathan to Moon. And the game really, really didn't like that

[marclef]

THE EYHM COLLECTION GROWS!!!! managed to make some space without having to move too much so they can all be together!!

(i made the smaller ones into stickers bc i'm running out of picture frames!! hope that's ok!)

THANK YOU SO MUCH EVERYONE WHO'S GIFTED THESE TO ME THOUGH!!! I'M CALLING ALL OF YOU OUT HERE BECAUSE I LOVE YOU!! ❤❤❤❤❤

*sharp inhale* @eskariolis-con-salsa @oddpizza @woobab @the-little-knight @moon9931 @misdreavusplush @noodletime @witch-tower-au !!!!!!!

hope you all have a good holiday season!! love you all! *MWAH*

[crossbackpoke-check]

Why I Am Not Coming In To Work Today [abridged], Jess Zimmerman

part one | part two

[ayotofu]

this might be an unpopular opinion but i kinda hate it when people make buck a navy seal instead of a navy seal dropout like. occasionally i've seen people using an au to do it decently but i feel like most of the time its dickriding the us military

[doctorweebmd]

i love the comments on the latest chapter of the path to paradise where people are like 'akutagawa leave those crabs alone!'

because that's something I do

literally traveling the world's oceans, harassing all of God's crustaceans

for example took a weekend trip with my partner for our 6 year wedding anniversary a few days ago and spent a solid multiple hours searching for and harassing crabs

here is photo evidence of the largest and most in-chargest one I found:

[judeiscariot]

I recently started listening to CSH and famous prophets (stars) is one of my favorites out of everything I’ve heard so far. I’ve seen you mention it on here a couple times and I’d love to hear more about your interpretation of it! Only if you feel like it of course lol but I’m not great at lyric analysis stuff and I’m super interested

hi yes i’d love to talk about it!!! i’ve been wanting to do a line by line of this song for forever so thanks for asking <3 (fair warning though this is gonna be really long)

this song is sort of the last 'event' on the twin fantasy timeline, even though it's more of a summary. it's the culmination of everything that this story has been building up to. it's a breakdown in every sense of the word. like many songs in twin fantasy and will's body of work at large, it has an insanely ambitious structure that's hard to even nail down. it's made up of around six parts but it's basically impossible to even separate into choruses/verses/bridge, etc, so i'm just gonna go section by section:

much like the first track on the album, this song starts off with a really simple, isolated bassline before will's voice comes in softly. the first thing the speaker does is apologize to the idealized future versions of himself and his partner who he had become attached to. he had all these wonderful visions of what their life together might look like, but he's finally realizing that none of that is ever gonna happen, and things are quickly coming to an end. the 'ripping of the tape' could refer to an audio tape, a reference to how the original version of this album was a lot rougher in terms of sound quality, and will has said before that he prefers the smoother, more professional sound of face to face as opposed to the lo-fi of mirror to mirror. the tape could also be what's metaphorically holding the relationship together, and it's finally failing. the speaker knows the relationship is falling apart, but the realization doesn't make it any less painful. in the final line, he shifts the blame to the subject, in a coy and resigned sort of way.

the bruises represent the speaker and his partner - painful, brought on through trauma, lesions that the speaker carries around physically on his body. 'kicking the back of the seat in' probably refers to the fact that most of the vocals for will's early projects, including twin fantasy (mtm) were recorded in the backseat of his car, hence the band name. the speaker has sort of embodied the role of 'emotional punching bag' throughout the story (you can text me when punching mattresses gets old), and the bruises, or the pain the speaker was caused through the relationship, were something he wore with pride as though they represented the burdens he was willing to shoulder for love of his partner. but the bruises are fading now, healing, steering the speaker towards the metaphorical 'healing journey' he will embark on after being set free from the expectations and needs of this person. the vocals up until this point are soft, almost spoken-word, but here we crash into a jarringly intense instrumental that totally shifts the tone.

this part is buried beneath the instrumentals, almost inaudible, but it's so important. i see this as the speaker encouraging his past self, who this album is sort of dedicated to, not to spend too much time lamenting over the end of the relationship, because everything is gonna turn out alright even though it feels like the end of the world. even still, the speaker knows his past self wouldn't listen to this advice if he could hear it.

an experience like the one conveyed through this album is very much confined to teenagers/adolescents. it's essential that the speaker and his partner are fumbling young people with underdeveloped brains. there are certain emotions and ways in which we see the world as teenagers that inevitably dampen when we become adults. even if the speaker and his partner, now grown, were to touch each other like they used to, they wouldn't be able to access the emotions that were conjured by their teenage brains. the speaker and his partner are no longer in contact, sure, but they've lost access to one another in more ways than one. the speaker likes to think that he remembers what it was like to be with his partner physically, but he gives just about the vaguest and most generic description of a human body that he possibly could, literally trailing off at the end like he can't name anything beyond a few body parts. he doesn't actually remember specifics about this person at all.

the speaker questions whether the deterioration of the relationship was his fault, if he could have done something different, been better, saved it somehow. at the same time, he's realizing that he couldn't have, and wondering if this whole thing, that he dedicated all this time and stress and agony and love and joy to, was a complete waste of time, simply because it was destined to fail. throughout this verse, the speaker is coming to terms with the end of the relationship while simultaneously resisting it. it's pretty clear that there have been a good few 'breakup scares' at this point, and the speaker isn't sure if this is the real, true, final end. is this how life is going to be from now on? waking life feels like a bad dream, and he's walking around wondering if this person is, or ever was, his, if they're truly gone. 'the great silence' is the enormous canyon that opens between two people who have just ended a relationship as intense and intimate as this. they go from indescribable closeness to functioning like complete strangers, and it would give anyone whiplash, but especially a teenager who had never felt truly loved or understood before this person. this relationship has been so unsteady that even once significant time has passed since the end, he still sometimes wakes up with the hope that he might roll over and see his former partner next to him.

will refers to himself as both 'nervous' and 'a wreck' multiple times in this album, and in several other places throughout his discography. it's kind of a recurring motif. this may also be a callback to 'the bell jar,' one of the first tracks will ever released, before he was even making music as car seat headrest. as far as 'naming names' goes, this is probably a reference to the fact that he did in fact call cate wurtz by name in famous prophets (minds) in the mtm version of the album. cate wurtz is a comic artist and the author of the lamezone series, and she may or may not be the subject of twin fantasy. i find theories about the real life person who might be the inspiration for this album largely irrelevant and uninteresting, nevermind unimportant to my personal interpretation of the album, so i'm not gonna linger on that aspect of it. the last line is probably a reference to this song's counterpart. famous prophets (minds) ends with a spoken word recitation of 1 kings 19:11 - 12. the actual final lines of the verse are as follows: "But the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper." in the song, the final line is changed to "And after the fire, a sound of sheer silence." right before will says 'silence,' the music cuts out completely.

by this point in the song, it seems like the narrator has fully accepted that the relationship has come and gone whether he likes it or not. this person has faded into and subsequently out of his life, as people often do. there's nothing more to be said, it's all over, there's no getting around this.

now we slide into the seminal refrain of this song. even though in the previous verse, it seemed like he had fully accepted the end, now he's crying and screaming and begging to go back. the end of a relationship like this is obviously going to cause some extreme inner turmoil and it's not gonna be a smooth transition for the people involved. the vocals here are kind of agonizing - it gets more and more intense until he's more or less howling. even after the final repetition, he goes on yelling and crying under the instrumentals. what is the speaker even begging to go back to? when the relationship was new and full of promise? before the two of them ever met in the first place? if he could go back, would the speaker do things differently, or does he just want to live out the events of the relationship again exactly as they happened, so he can cling to the fleeting moments of joy and hope that were there, even though he knows how things are going to end? at the end of all this, he asks his former self again not to spend too much time on it, which is somewhat ironic. once he's done yelling, the instrumentals quiet down almost entirely to just the bassline that was present at the beginning, with the occasional guitar note.

the speaker didn't want his partner to develop too high an opinion of him. even though this whole album is literally about his ridiculously high opinion of this person, he's anxious at the idea of his partner thinking of him the same way. he doesn't want to disappoint him. the speaker also asks his partner not to joke about his own death - this is the only person he's ever felt truly loved or understood by, and the speaker desperately doesn't want to lose him.

the speaker urges his partner to keep it together. because he cares about him deeply, yes, but also because he's not sure if he'll be able to give his partner the support he'd need if he truly lost it. the 'art' he mentions is likely a reference to the art of cate wurtz, but like i mentioned above i'm not interested in diving too deep into that whole deal.

now we're back to the seminal refrain of twin fantasy itself. the whole 'beach' theme is a frequently recurring motif in will's work as far back as the numbered albums. the 'grave' is the place the speaker is trying to lay his feelings for this person to rest, and the ocean is...everything. life, the universe, any given day-to-day experience that might bring up feelings of this person again. no matter what the speaker does, this situation affected him so deeply that his feelings will keep resurfacing over and over again long after the relationship has reached its conclusion.

the refrain continues in the background as the instrumentals build in intensity and will starts to shout over himself. when an artist’s work begins to gain recognition, whichever piece it was that initially drew the attention of large crowds of people may become their 'holy grail,' so to speak. if a particular song gets a singer famous, or a particular painting gets a painter famous, they might lean on the themes and techniques they used when creating that particular piece in an attempt to create another piece which draws similar attention. this leads them to 'descend into cliché' and create work with less creative integrity. the grave symbolism continues, and now at the emotional climax of the album, the speaker says he might ‘fill it in,’ signifying that he has reached some sort of emotional resolution. he is hammering in the nail to ensure that the coffin remains shut tightly, so he can finally move on with his life and walk away from these emotions which have consumed him. 'i could give you what you deserve' may be a reference to the oft repeated line ‘art gets what it wants and art gets what it deserves,’ which pops up throughout will's work. the speaker comments on the fact that he could continue to make music about this relationship, that he could ‘watch the hammer swerve,’ as he attempts to metaphorically nail the coffin shut, i.e. watch himself fail in his attempts to move on from the emotions he has drowned so many times in.

the mirror symbolism is a direct reference to the original version of this album, with the 'mirror' symbolizing the relationship between the speaker and his partner. i've talked about the 'mirror to mirror' vs 'face to face' images before, but i'll summarize it again here: the first image is one of two mirrors facing each other, creating an endless tunnel of reflection between two people who can only see themselves in the other. the face to face image is one of two people regarding each other, recognizing the other while existing as separate bodies. the mirror breaking is the transition between mirror to mirror and face to face. the fantasy is shattered, and will is now at a very different place in his life than when the original version of this album was written. he's decidedly beyond his adolescence, and he no longer sees his partner as a mirror. he wouldn't trade anything for this absolutely necessary change in perspective. 'blackstar' is probably either a reference to the david bowie album of the same name, or the radiohead song of the same name. 'painstar' is explicitly a reference to cate wurtz's work. basically, it's a concept from the lamezine comics of a star/entity which only comes around once every thousand years or so. when you touch it, you feel unfathomable pain, but only for a split second. i see the concept used as a metaphor for the pain of the relationship - was it worth the agony the speaker is currently in for the joy he once had? the vocals here once again grow increasingly intense as the speaker begs...someone, for something.

as the vocals descend in intensity, will mutters this, which is probably a reference to the bit in high to death that includes an audio sample from the movie adaptation of ray bradbury's 'all summer in a day.' it's a science fiction story which takes place on a planet where the sun can only be seen once every nine years. the main character, a girl named margot, is originally from earth, and remembers what the sun looked and felt like. the other children don't believe her, and lock her in a closet before the day the sun is supposed to show itself. when the sun does appear, the other children forget about her, and she remains locked in the closet. the sample included in the song is her calling "william! let me out! william! william! let me out, william!" margot is a stand-in for the speaker's partner, who is begging will by name to release him from the fantasy will has him trapped in. now the roles are reversed and the speaker is begging his partner to let him inside the locked closet. despite all the speaker’s efforts, the two of them still somehow end up on opposite sides of the door. will wants his partner to let him in, so that they may at least be in the dark together. 

the instrumentals quiet down once again so that will is singing over a simple piano tune. this verse replaces the lyrics in the original version of famous prophets which called cate wurtz by name. in the original version, these lyrics were buried, whereas these are at the forefront, accompanied by almost no instrumentals. it's impossible for the listener to miss these. in the first ‘descend into cliché’ verse will mentioned that he could 'sing another song' as a sort of coping mechanism or way of dealing with the end of this relationship, so the 'music forsaking you' could refer to the speaker's coping mechanisms not being enough to comfort him in the aftermath of the relationship. rolling the stone over the grave is the same deal as will 'hammering in the nail' in an attempt to seal off his feelings about the relationship. this also evokes some biblical imagery, with how the entrance to the tomb of jesus was blocked with a huge stone. on the other hand, he could stare his feelings in the face, confront them head on and learn to cope. 'when the levee breaks' is probably a reference to the led zeppelin song 'if the levee breaks.' it seems like will is referencing several well-known musicians while thinking of his own 'prophecy' for his music career. this could be a reach, but the stone line might also be a reference to the rolling stones if we're going with this interpretation. the final line might refer to the fact that, even though these bands were and are incredible famous, the music industry is a cyclical entity and all famous bands will eventually fade out of the spotlight.

that 'what happened to you' might be a reference to leonard cohen's 'death of a ladies man.' will is a big leonard cohen fan and references to his work pop up fairly often. but other than that this verse fades into a soft instrumental where the fractured pieces of what will eventually be the spoken word outro start to fade in:

these are snippets from 1 corinthians 13, and reesa mallen is the actress who played margot in all summer in a day. this is a direct quote from the verse, but will shifts the order of the lines around to depart from the original meaning. the intended message of this verse is basically that love is the key to everything, and that one cannot access great and miraculous things in the absence of love. this arrangement of the lines sort of suggests the opposite - that love enters your life and wrecks you on its way out, that no matter what sort of effort you put out, when love goes it will leave you with nothing. i'll talk a little more about the use of this verse when we get to the end.

this is the true ultimate climax of the song, and of the story as a whole. it's a fractured, distorted sample of my boy, the first song on the album. i can't even describe how crazy this actually sounds you gotta just listen to it. i've talked about this before but my boy is a pretty hopeful and optimistic way to open this album, and throughout the story all that optimism and hope has pretty much been crushed. to me, this part is where the speaker has a breakthrough of sorts and truly, truly understands that it's over, even though his feelings for this person will keep resurfacing, the relationship is crumbling in his hands and soon there will be nothing left at all. the only line from my boy that's not present here is 'we won't be alone,' so do with that what you will. this section is just so insane, the instrumentals and the desperation and rawness of the vocals, there's one or two moments in here where will's voice blends completely with a guitar note, it's incredible. one of the things i love most about twin fantasy is how it manages to take this experience that would generally be regarded as frivolous, unimportant, childish, naive, etc, and successfully convey how deadly deadly serious it feels in the moment. like when we break it down to its bare essentials this album is about an online relationship between two teenagers in 2009. yet it somehow adequately conveys the absolute utter and complete long lasting devastation a relationship like this can feel in a hormone-addled teenage brain. the emotions of teenagers and adolescents are very often brushed off as overdramatic and kinda made fun of in media in general, but just because adolescent emotions are affected by teenage hormones or whatever doesn't make them any less real. in fact i think being a teenager often makes interpersonal relationship experiences similar to this all the more visceral and painful. this part of the song is where that really comes through for me and i find it so incredibly cathartic. the sheer grandiosity of the instrumentals ties it all together, and the horn arrangement in particular is amazing. will uses horns a fair amount in his work and it's always beautiful, but something about this instance specifically just shakes me to my core, man. it's like he's wailing in agony with all the choirs of heaven behind him.

now the instrumentals quiet down and an unfractured recitation of 1 corinthians 13 fades in. this verse perfectly sums up everything this story is about, and the whole idea behind remaking the album in the first place. the speaker and protagonist of the album is an adult now, and he's had years to process these events by this point. he no longer views them through that addled adolescent lens, but he remembers what it felt like to be shaken to his core by this situation. even still, he now sees the relationship for exactly what it is. he no longer sees others as a reflection of himself. he's able to regard the person who he underwent all this agony for as a separate, independent being and understand that his perception of them was false. no matter one's age, it's often borderline impossible to grasp the full significance of important life events as they're happening. only with time and reflection can we truly come to understand and process how events have affected us and how we are changed in their aftermath. the speaker in mtm is clouded by raw emotion, and therefore only capable of knowing 'in part.' the speaker in ftf is more mature, has garnered more life experience, and evidently spent many painful hours working through these events. therefore, he now 'knows fully,' and with the ability to know fully comes the ability to be fully known, to be truly loved and understood as he never could while operating under the delusions fueling this relationship. the instrumentals drop off entirely for the final line, which is a slight alteration from the actual bible quote. the original is as follows: 'And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.' this change allows for ambiguity as to which of the three remain within the speaker. the change could also refer to the two versions of the album which now exist, or it could refer to the speaker and the subject as people.

so that's famous prophets (stars). it's an absolutely incredible song and if you've never heard it you really really should. you can only really get the full affect if you listen to the whole album straight through, but i know not everybody feels like doing that lmao, same as many people don't feel like listening to a 17 minute song in the first place. but i think this song is best heard in your room, in the dark, at night, played over a speaker, while you're maybe just a little too high. can't recommend enough.

[chipistrate]

You see that theory going around on Twitter about Gregory being innocent in the main ending?

@/TheJ_Pro on there has a pretty detailed thread about it if you haven't heard it.

YEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAH I SAW!! MY SON!!! MY SON IS INNOCENT!!!!

Honestly I think he's valid in his actions whether he did it or not considering the situation he was in at that moment- but after hearing the evidence of him not doing it, even outside of that thread, I'm definitely leaning more on the side that it wasn't him.

[talesofwhimsy]

WHY?, “Sin Imperial" // Car Sear Headrest, “I Can Play the Piano”

[monty-glasses-roxy]

For some reason, this round of meds (same dose and everything as last time) is making me have very violent Realisations and Remembering Things moments. And by that I mean the Thing I Forgot and/or the Realisations show up with a bat and see how hard they can make my brain hit the wall. So anyway.

YOU GUYS REMEMBER SPIKE THE WETFLOOR BOT??? YOU GUYS REMEMBER HER??? THE FIRST FAZBEAR ANIMATRONIC TO BE BORN FROM LOVE INSTEAD OF PAIN??? YOU REMEMBER HER???

CAUSE I JUST DID

[ilovettrpgs]

rip Magnus Carter you would have loved causing problems for the general public and also not having mad cow syndrome

[cold-neon-ocean]

Do you still have some headcannons for your proxima midnight family? I absoloutely adore Proxima's family art you made and the mom is just *chefs kiss*

Aw sure omg!! I'm happy to talk about my Prox headcanons! I still had so much of her I never got around to sharing! I can't remember if I ever said her family's names here because the original post I hadn't decided on names for them yet. But her father is Antares, her mother is Helya, and her brother is Craster!

So to kinda give a general sweep of the ideas I had for her species, they aren't super advanced in the technology area, in fact they never leave their home planet so they're an incredibly rare sight anywhere else! They live in big nomadic family units similarly with a lead mated pair (in this case Proxima's parents, Antares and Helya), and extensions of the family as well. I never shared her aunt and cousins, but Helya has a sister named Miev, and Miev has 3 daughters, Estraza, Rhea, and Miran.

Proxima is actually the second youngest of the family (but outgrows everyone except Estraza who is just massive). In order from oldest to youngest of all the kids it would go: Estraza, Rhea, Craster (Proxima's older brother), Proxima, then Miran.

Here are Miev and her girls!! (this art is very old lmao, from 2020)

Proxima only ever got along tentatively with her cousins, minus Estraza who was kind of the second mom of the family unit. But Proxima and Miran especially did not ever really like each other.

Estraza has a husband and they are expecting their first child. She's got those new mom anxieties as well as looking after her sisters because they cannot be trusted to look after themselves (she would really like it if they could get their acts together). Rhea is a grown woman having her rebellious teen phase, she's superficial and a bit full of herself, she just wants to vibe and not be asked to do anything I love her. Miran is complicated, she's like a little 3D printed copy of her mom and is desperate for her approval.

This got a tad long so I put the rest under the cut XD

Miev's husband was killed not long after Miran was born and she never really recovered from it. She lost a lot of weight and just shut down for a while, and Estraza had to step up to take care of her and her sisters. They also rejoined with Prox and her family after that as well. Now Miev is just kind of spiteful and angry at everything (she loves her kids though) but her and her sister have always butted heads so everyone living together again has been a trial for sure lol

Sorry I mostly talked about her aunt and cousins alskjdf I never got to talk about these 4 but I'm flattered you like Helya! She was one of my favorites from back then ;; For a bit about her, she's kind of a tough mom, she's stern but she's also where Proxima gets a lot of who she is from. Proxima was a challenging daughter for sure, but Helya did love her very much and only ever did what she thought was best. Proxima was actually always a daddy's girl, she and her father were very close, meanwhile her brother was the biggest mama's boy lol! And Prox and Cras were good siblings to each other as well, Craster has ENDLESS patience and Proxima REQUIRED endless patience.

There was SO MUCH I had going on in Proxima's story involving her family~ I'd planned out a lot leading up to eventually joining the Black Order. So much DRAMAAA. ESPECIALLY with her aunt, especially with Miran. It would probably be more suited to to a post specifically about the backstory I had for her if anyone would be interested in that, it's been a while since I talked about anything Marvel related XD I don't wanna make this post too long akjkfdgj There's a lot more I could say, I had a lot of headcanons about her species and their culture and all that stuff that ties into story things as well~ I'll bullet a couple points re: her family though!

Prox and Craster loved to wrestle and play fight and she would always lay his ass out lol

Rhea loves doing her sisters' hair and just general family grooming, it's very relaxing for her and she actually does like spending time with her family despite how tired of everyone she acts. Miran was her main victim for the longest time because she was the youngest. On the RAREST occasions Proxima would join and they'd have a proper Girls Night.

Estraza always made a point to include Proxima in things because Proxima would otherwise not include herself. Prox had a lot of respect for Estraza so she'd always kinda just do what she said lol. It annoyed her mom a little bit because she really didn't listen to Helya all that much.

Estraza lost her eye in the same event that killed her father.

Rhea is considered rather unnaturally beautiful so she's very popular with guys but lord help her because she 100% doesn't know what to do when being courted lmao it's all fun and games for her until someone tries to flirt and then she's all "mom come pick me up I'm scared".

Rhea actually did like Proxima and wanted to connect with her, but the two are so fundamentally different and Rhea takes things VERY personally so Proxima's general disinterest would hurt her pride lol

Helya pretty much regards her nieces as other daughters. Miev cannot say the same about Craster and Prox though.

ldksjdf I'll pause here, I'd be happy to talk about them more for sure! I really liked what I had going with Proxima's story and family, I'd love to revive it somehow ;; There was so much omg like she was all I thought about for a long time, I miss her so much ;A;

Thank you for asking about her and her fam!!! It meant a lot knowing someone was interested in hearing more about them after all this time <333

[unplanned-parenthood]

cw lots of mentions/discussion of suicide/death, etc (house md has ruined me. shows made to torture ME in particular)

been marinating this since i saw a poll abt it + a fic i read a couple days ago but re: what will house do once wilson is gone. after watching it play off i had like, no doubt the only possibility was for him to off himself...which does sound very awful but. i don't think it really is? not for house anyway.

the only reason he got off the bus was because of wilson (always thinking abt this. it doesn't hurt here. get off the bus house. but he hates me. you have to get off the bus) he has lived so long in pain, it feels more cruel to ask him to live without wilson. and while i get where the people who say wilson would try to talk him out of it are coming from (obviously wilson is wilson and he will always worry, so like, sooner or later he will start thinking about the after) it makes me wonder, what is on itself more selfish: asking him to continue living with pain, except he doesn't have one of the few things that made things easier—or asking him to die for him, like he has done before?

i would like to remain hopeful that maybe if house kept on living he would maybe get a prosthetic and try to continue doing what he loves with a fake id or something. still grieving, but for wilson now, not his leg. but at the same time that sounds like, a little too hopeful, and i don't think wilson has that kind of faith on house, faith that he would be able to go on without being even More Miserable. so maybe in his head he knows it's the right thing to say, to ask him to "continue living", but i don't think he would be able to actually do it, and neither would he straight up ask house to Die (he already did that, and i think twice might be too much for wilson's conscience, this time it would be 100% guaranteed that house would die) because it's selfish. right? and just how fucked up is it to ask someone to die for you (again, because it really wasn't about amber was it, house didn't do it because of amber, he did it for wilson.)

one of the traits you can stamp on wilson's forehead is that he is the opposite of selfish, you look up selfless and there's a picture of him next to the definition, but he also kinda sucks. he's selfish in the most unexpected of ways, so i think he would probably do nothing. not bring up the topic at all. just let time pass. leave it unsaid. because he's not asking house to die for him, but he's also not stopping him from doing so.

i think house would notice, because of course he would notice, it's a conversation he probably expected to have with wilson as soon as they checked in inside their first motel. a whole sermon and everything. but like! it did not happen, and it will never happen.

it's both selfish and selfless, which i think sums up their relationship a little too well. because it's easy to say it's all about house, but it's also about wilson, and how wilson likes feeling needed, likes enabling him. he surely must have noticed years ago how unhealthy being so codependent is but he didn't stop it, because he likes it! because he has fun with house! they don't know how to exist without the other anymore, so, isn't it only logical they die together? asking house to kill himself when he dies seems cruel, since he would technically be doing it because of wilson, but also—isn't it kinder, in a way, to finally let him stay on the bus?

[bat-bytes-back]

this is like really out of character for us rn but we need somewhere to say this rn!!!

we’re really starting to feel like that a lot of people who say BLM and ACAB or are making pins of it are like just saying it as like an aesthetic? I mean not everyone obviously, and I’m not saying if you’re doing those things that you are using it as an aesthetic, but I feel like anytime I look online about it it’s all like aesthetic shit. which pisses us tf off as a bodily black system.

it’s not even just with BLM either, I feel like I’ve seen it with other things too. it’s used as an aesthetic and trend to some people and I just ??? if you treat it like that then you can kindly get the fuck off our page because we have no respect for you

our lives are not your fucking trend

our lives are not your fucking aesthetic

[thehallstara]

nerd pacheco for the ask meme, if you haven't already :3

okay this got. far too long by accident (apparently i had more thoughts than i thought) so it's going under a cut oops!!!! apologies for how all over the place it is

gonna start off with just saying my version of nerd diverges a bit from pretty much all the other versions out there– while it riffs on the wiki version for a lot of it over the past 6 months they've really become my own thing 😆

starting off with disability moments bc i think about it a lot!!! has eds imo, and gets hit with cfs/me post superallergic because like. yeah lets be real it's right there

unlike declan, uses their wheelchair both on and off the field!! will also sometimes use forearm crutches depending on the day but overall pretty frequently uses mobility aids imo

i forget how common this is but. grew up in utah closer to salt lake city. has complicated feelings about it. has complicated feelings about moab too.

is living in dec and ruthless's old apartment– ruthless offered it to them when they fell

black and ashkenazi, not particularly observant but grew up with judaism in like. the background if that makes any sense??

had a somewhat complicated relationship with hurley before their death– i think the two of them are just far apart enough in age that they weren't like. super super close but did love each other and they did take it hard when they died

is unfortunately in love with famous owens and questions every choice they've made in their life that's brought them to this point weekly

(but also. is blown away at the way they've learned to be vulnerable with each other, the way they fit into their side and their apartment and their life like it was inevitable and maybe it was)

we keep referring to frankie, nerd and torus as the blunt rotation because they're all stacked together in the midfield and while i don't think that's literal i do think the three of them have gotten quite close at this point

also has another trio going with yosh and parra (and sometimes rosales. it depends). guys who have been here too long

stats wise absolutely refuses to field double plays despite being our best defender??? assigned conservation of energy by the sim i literally think about it too fucking much

people from their old teams they're still talking to: hank. zack. malik. haruta but it's complicated. tiana. jeff de la cruz but it's also complicated.

helped with urban planning after they fell to help rebuild a post-great fire chicago!! still is with a lesser extent but is also on like. three different municipal committees atm! does not actual firefight– this is the way they've responded to the call.

i love them