#parallel space app

[callme-baeee]

ㅤ♡ HUSBAND!LUIGI MANGIONE HEADCANONS

WARNINGS: suggestive language, curse word i guess that's it. Idk man.

ㅤ♡ You met Luigi because he was struggling to parallel park his car, and you yelled out, “Want me to do it or are you gonna figure it out, fucker?” He smirked (classic him), parked it perfectly just to show off, and then walked over to ask if you need any help. (It was his car. You were walking past. Fate said yes.)

ㅤ♡ He’s the guy who looks tough as nails but will 100% scream if there’s a spider in the bedroom. One time, he made you “escort it out” while he stood on the bed yelling instructions. (You married him anyway because he’s hot.)

ㅤ♡ Proposed during a candlelit dinner at home because he knew you'd get suspicious if he planned anything fancy. Mid-spaghetti twirl, he slid the ring across the table with a suave, “So, wanna make me the happiest guy in the world?” (You choked on your wine, said yes, and then yelled at him for ruining the vibe with how casual it was.)

ㅤ♡ If he sees you crying over a sad movie, he’ll immediately start roasting the plot to make you laugh. “Why didn’t they just move to Florida if the killer clowns were such a problem?” Meanwhile, he’s crying too but won’t admit it.

ㅤ♡ He always insists on carrying all the groceries, even if it means his arms are about to fall off. (One time, he dropped a bag of flour in the driveway and mumbled, ‘It’s fine, I’m still strong,’ as if you doubted him.)

You forwarded your hand indicating him to give some bags since he had too many bag in both of his hands. It was a silent command, one laced with the expectation of immediate compliance.

Instead, he shifted the bags from his left hand to his right, a move that seemed deliberate, almost theatrical. His right hand, already laden with the weight of too many bags, now bore them all. And before you could voice your annoyance, he reached out—grasping your hand with an ease that caught you off guard.

Then came that smile. Not just any smile, but the kind that could melt glaciers, warm the coldest of hearts, and disarm even the most stoic. It was pure, unfiltered joy—mischief and charm rolled into one breathtaking expression. The cutest smile humanity had ever seen, or so it felt in that moment.

You sighed, tilting your head to the left, then the right, your disappointment on full display. “Asshole,” you muttered, your voice carrying just enough edge to sell the act.

But deep down, in the space you guarded most fiercely, you couldn’t have been happier.

ㅤ♡ The man is an absolute menace in the kitchen. He makes a huge mess every time he cooks but insists it’s “part of the creative process.” (The food is always delicious, though. You can’t even be mad.)

ㅤ♡ He buys you flowers randomly, but not the typical roses. He’ll show up with a weird mix, like sunflowers and baby’s breath, saying, “This one reminded me of your smile.” (You secretly press and save every single flower.)

ㅤ♡ A firm believer in PDA. He’s got a hand on your waist at all times. One time, a stranger commented on how affectionate he is, and Luigi smirked, “Can’t help it. She’s irresistible.”

ㅤ♡ You once joked about him doing your makeup, and he took it as a personal challenge. He watched three YouTube tutorials and showed up with a fully stocked Sephora bag. (He tried his best. It was bad. But you loved him for it.)

ㅤ♡ Absolutely melts if you wear his clothes. Walk into the room in one of his shirts, and he’s done for. “Yeah, we’re not leaving the house today,” he says as he picks you up and throws you on the bed. (RIP your plans and your legs.)

ㅤ♡ When you’re upset, he sits next to you quietly until you’re ready to talk. No prying, no pressure—just his presence. But the second you say what’s wrong, he’s already figuring out how to fix it.

ㅤ♡ He has a whole notes app list of “things she likes,” where he writes down random stuff you mention. Favorite snacks, dream destinations, weird obsessions—he’s got it all.

ㅤ♡ Once, during an argument, you jokingly said, “What are you gonna do? Leave me?” and he dead-serious replied, “Don’t even joke about that. ”

ㅤ♡ Hates shopping for himself but LOVES spoiling you. If he sees you eyeing something, it’s yours. “You deserve it,” he says, even if it’s something silly like a $25 glitter pen.

ㅤ♡ Swears he’s a big, tough guy but turns into absolute mush around kids. He’ll let them climb all over him like he’s a jungle gym. (You’re not saying it out loud, but yeah, you’re mentally baby-trapping yourself.)

ㅤ♡ Insists on celebrating every tiny milestone in your relationship. “It’s been 100 days since we had our first pizza together!” (You love him for it. Even when you’re rolling your eyes.)

ㅤ♡ One time, you were drunk and jokingly said, “You could totally ruin me, and I’d still thank you,” and he just leaned in and said, “Careful what you wish for, sweetheart.” (You did not walk the next day. The prophecy fulfilled itself.)

ㅤ♡ Every night before bed, he pulls you into his arms and says, “I love you more than yesterday.” It’s cheesy. It’s perfect.

[zot3-flopped]

Sylvia Plath did not stick her head in an oven for this! When Taylor Swift took the Grammys stage last month to claim her award for Best Pop Vocal Album for Midnights, she saw that spotlight as an opportunity to announce her 11th studio album: The Tortured Poets Department. The follow-up cut to audience members—Swift’s music industry peers, mind you—told us all that we would ever need to know, and the collective disinterest across the crowd echoed through our TVs.

Folks from all walks of life took to social media to express a multitude of reactions. Swifties clamored to their beloved monarch’s forthcoming era, while others lambasted the terminally cringe title and artwork and ridiculed Swift for making a night recognizing musical achievements across an entire industry about herself—knowing perfectly well that it would send her fanbase into a surge that would, no doubt, overpower the excitement around the ceremony itself.

Quite a few people questioned whether or not that moment suggested that a critical—definitely not commercial—tide would turn against the world’s most-famous pop star. And, perhaps it has—but, to most, it will look like nothing more than a single ripple in Swift’s ocean of successes.

Swift remained relatively hush-hush about The Tortured Poets Department up until its release, leaving her fans, admirers and haters alike with nothing but an album title to ponder about. And it’s a bad title.

If you have never been in Swift’s corner, her taking the route of labeling her next “era” as “tortured” was likely catnip for your disinterest. If you are a fan—not necessarily a Swiftie, but even just a casual lover of her best and brightest work—you might be beside yourself about the first Swift album title longer than one word in 14 years.

In terms of popularity—certainly not always in terms of quality—no musician has been bigger this century than Swift, which makes it impossible to really buy into the “torture” of it all.

This is not to say that Swift being the most famous person in the world makes her immune to having multi-dimensional feelings of heartbreak, mental illness or what-have-you.

But, she has made the choice—as a 34-year-old adult—to take those complex, universal familiars and monetize them into a wardrobe she can wear for whatever portion of her Eras Tour setlist she opts to dedicate to the material.

Torture is fashion to Taylor Swift, and she wears her milieu dully. This album will surely get comparisons to Rupi Kaur’s poetry, either for its simplicity, empty language, commodification or all of the above.

And, sure, there are parallels there, especially in how The Tortured Poets Department, too, is going to set the art of poetry back another decade—as Swift’s naive call-to-arms of her own milky-white sorrow rings in like some quintessential “I am going to take pictures of a typewriter on my desk and have a Pinterest mood-board of Courier New font” iPhone fodder. 2013 called and it wants it capricious, suburban girl-who-is-taking-a-gap-year wig back!

Soaking our book reports in coffee or having our moms burn the edges with a kitchen lighter cannot come back into fashion; the cyclical notions of culture cannot make the space for such retreads.

There is nothing poetic about a billionaire—who, mind you, threatens legal action against a Twitter account for tracking her destructive private jet paths—telling stadiums of thousands of people every night that she sees and adores them.

Tavi Gevinson says it well in her Fan Fiction zine: “When 80,000 people are also crying, you become less special, too.” If Swift can return to one of her dozen beach houses across the world, kick up her feet and say “I’m a poet of struggle,” then who is to say that millions—maybe billions—of people with access to a notes app and a social media account won’t dream that dream, too?

Maybe that looks like a net-positive, but it’s inherently damning and destructive to take an art form that has long stood on the shoulders of resistance, of love and of opposition to power, systematic injustice and climate warfare and boil it down to the new defining era of your own 10-digit revenue empire. “My culture is not your costume,” yada, etc.

The Tortured Poets Department does begin with a shred of hope that, just maybe, Swift knows what she’s talking about—as she sneaks in a cheeky “all of this to say,” textbook transitional phrasing for poets, on opening track “Fortnight.”

But “Fortnight” unmasks itself quickly as a heady vat of pop nothingness, though it isn’t all Swift’s fault. “I was a functioning alcoholic, ‘til nobody noticed my new aesthetic,” she muses, attempting to bridge the gap between a behind-the-scenes life and on-stage performance—only for it to occur while propped up against the most dog-water, uninspired synth arrangement you could possibly imagine.

Between producer Jack Antonoff’s atrocious backing instrumental and the Y2K-era, teen dramedy echo chamber of a vocal harmony provided by out-of-place guest performer Post Malone, “Fortnight” chokes on the vomit of its own opaqueness.

“I took the miracle move-on drug, the effects were temporary,” Swift muses, and it sounds like satire. This is your songwriter of the century? Open the schools.

The Tortured Poets Department title-track features some of Swift’s worst lyricism to-date, including the irredeemable, relentlessly cringe “You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate, we declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist / I scratch your head, you fall asleep like a tattooed golden retriever” lines glazed atop some synthesizers and drums that just ring in as hollow, unfascinating costuming.

Aside from the Puth nod, which I can only discern as a joke (given the fact that he is one of the 150-most streamed artists in the world and is one of the blandest pop practitioners alive—I don’t care if he can figure out the pitch of any sound you throw at him), I think Antonoff should stick to guitar-playing. Get that man away from a keyboard, I’m begging you.

Synths can be, if you use them correctly, one of the most emotional and provocative instruments in any musician’s tool-box. There’s a reason why keyboards defined the 1980s; they rebelled against the very oppressive nature existing outside of the cultural company they kept. There’s resistance in electronic music that, while they brandish an aesthetic that, to a layman’s ears, seems like technicolor hues for any infectious pop track, it’s a genre that aches to tell its own story. That is simply not the case here, and that electronica hangs Swift out to dry when she drags us through the lukewarm “I laughed in your face and said, ‘You’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith’ / This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel, we’re modern idiots” lines, only to hit us with a softly sung F-bomb that sounds like a billionaire’s rendition of that one Miranda Cosgrove podcast clip.

I used to rag pretty heavily on Reputation—mostly because I thought (and still do, mostly) that it sounded like Swift had given up on making interesting, progressive pop music; that, in the wake of her (arguably) best album, 1989, it seemed like she’d lost the plot on where to go next. But as she’s put out Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department back-to-back, I find myself clamoring for the Reputation-era more than ever—at least seven years ago, Swift wrote songs like she had something to prove and even more to lose.

That was the always-obvious charm of Reputation, even despite the downsides—that she took a big swing from the echelons of her own musical immortality, that the comforts of winning every award and selling out the biggest venues in the world were no longer pillowing her aspirations. Even though that swing didn’t land, she still made it in the first place—and Swift is at her best either when she is clawing upwards (Reputation) or faced with nowhere to go but into the studio and noodle with the bare-bones of her own sensibilities (folklore).

You get something like The Tortured Poets Department when the artist making it no longer feels challenged, where she strikes out looking.

The mid-ness of The Tortured Poets Department will not be a net-loss for Swift. She will sell out arenas and get her streams until she elects to quit this business (a phrase decidedly not in her vocabulary, surely).

She will sell more merch bundles than vinyl plants have the capacity to make, and rows of variant LP copies will haunt the record aisles of Target stores just as long as Midnights has—if not longer.

Perhaps, in five or six years’ time, we will speak of this record just as we now do of Reputation. But right now, it is obvious that Swift no longer feels challenged to be good. The Tortured Poets Department is the mark of an artist now interested in seeing how much their empire can atone for the sins of mediocrity.

Can Swift win another Album of the Year Grammy simply because she released a record during the eligibility period? The Tortured Poets Department reeks of “because I can,” not “because I should.”

On “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can),” Swift tries stepping into the shoes of the country renegades who came before her—the Tammy Wynettes and Loretta Lynns of the world. But her self-aggrandizing inflation of importance, glinting through via a seismically-bland bridge, is backed by a minimal set dressing of guitar, drum machine and keys.

“Good boy, that’s right, come close,” she sings. “I’ll show you Heaven if you’ll be an angel—all mine. Trust me, I can handle me a dangerous man. No, really, I can.” On “Florida!!!,” Swift calls upon Florence + the Machine to help her sing the worst chorus of 2024: “Florida is one hell of a drug / Florida, can I use you up?”

Even Welch, who is a fantastic pop singer-songwriter in her own right, delivers a grossly watery verse: “The hurricane with my name, when it came I got drunk and I dared it to wash me away.”

Not even the typos on the Spotify promotional materials for this album could have foretold such offenses. I won’t even get into the sonics, because Antonoff just rewrites the same soulless patterns every time.

What separates The Tortured Poets Department from something like Reputation is that, on the latter, Swift made it known what was at stake and who she was making that album for—herself, in the aftermath of her greatest long-standing criticisms (“Look What You Made Me Do” triumphs exactly because of this).

On The Tortured Poets Department, there is a striking level of moral nothingness. The stakes are practically non-existent, and the album sounds like it was made by someone who believes that they had no other choice but to finish it, as if Swift fundamentally believes that her creative measures are firmly embedded in the massive monopoly her name and brand currently hold on popular music. That’s how you get meandering pop songs about hookups, wine moms, Stevie Nicks comparisons, Jehovah’s Witness suit mentions, hollowed-out, tone-deaf nods to white-collar crime in lieu of empowerment and, topically, Barbie dolls.

(Don’t even get me started on the Anthology lyrics, which feature these absolute barn-burners: “Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto” and “My friends used to play a game where / We would pick a decade / We wished we could live in instead of this / I’d say the 1830s, but without all the racists / And getting married off for the highest bid.”) This album and its hackneyed grasps at relevance exist as “Did I just hear that?” personified, but in the most derogatory sense of the notion.

My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” features another low-point in Swift’s lyrical oeuvre, as she sings “I felt more when we played pretend than with all the Kens, ‘cause he took me out of my box”—perhaps a measure of her capitalizing on the Barbenheimer mania that none of us could escape, not even the musician who spent most of 2023 flying across the world from one country to another.

But you, us, the listener—we want to believe that Swift makes these records because she has the artistic will, drive and interest to continue giving us parts of her story in such ways that they exist as an archival of her life.

But the problem is that, on The Tortured Poets Department, Swift is packaging her life into a form that is easily consumable for the 17 or 18 years olds who pour over her music. Just because her Eras Tour film is on Disney+ doesn’t mean she has to strip her songwriting (which we know can be, and has been, phenomenal) down for the sake of it being digestible by a wide spectrum of ages.

And, sure, maybe that makes the work accessible. But on The Tortured Poets Department, Swift makes Zoomer jargon her bag—titling a song after one of the most popular video games in the world and conjuring flickers of “down bad” and “I can fix him”—and it feels like she’s cosplaying because the Fountain of Youth was out of order.

Now that Swift is in her 30s, it sounds like she is infantilizing her own audience more than ever before—that singing to them at a level that could force them to reckon with something more akin with adulthood would be some kind of kink in the coil or her consumeristic threshold, that writing lyrics that sound like they were penned by a 30-year-old would, somehow, deter the interests of the billions of people who adore her.

If making one, continuous coming-of-age album is what Swift has been doing for 15 years, folklore and evermore were hiccups in the timeline—existing as the most fully-formed renderings of Swift’s own insecurities and concerns. They mirrored our platitudes towards an uncertain future with sweet, stirring remarks about isolation and heartbreak and the unavoidable, hard-worn truth about getting older. On those records, her larger-than-life living seemed, for once, to truly feel as close to the ground as ours.

Now, though, Taylor Swift is at the top of the mountain. Far better artists have made far worse records than The Tortured Poets Department, but you can’t read between the lines of this project. There is nothing to decipher from a place of quality.

Sure, Swift’s fan base will pour over these lyrics for the rest of their lives—insisting they know, for certain, which song is about who. But you cannot place a bad album on the shoulders of lore and expect it to be rectified.

We are now left at a crossroads. Women can’t critique Swift because they’ll run the risk of being labeled a “gender traitor” for doing so. Men can’t critique her because they’ll be touted as “sexist.”

And, sure, Swift is probably too easy a punching bag in this case—and most of the time, I would argue she is undeserving of being a victim of such barbs. But, you cannot write about someone being a “tattooed golden retriever” and get away with it and still retain your title as the best songwriter of your generation. You just cannot.

Sisyphus should be glad he never got the boulder to the top of the mountain—because Taylor Swift is showing us that such immortality and success ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. And, when you’re standing on the peak alone, who else is there left to hit?

In a recent interview with The Standard, Courtney Love said that Swift is “not interesting as an artist,” and I think The Tortured Poets Department proves as much. She has nothing to fight for, no doubters left to drown.

So where does she turn? Well, to boredoms of celebrity thinly veiled as sorrow everyone and their mother can latch onto—because we’ve all had to “ditch the clowns, get the crown” at some point in our lives, right?

The billionaire is having an identity crisis, but there are no social media apps for her to buy up. So she sings like Lana Del Rey and writes meta-self-referential songs about looking like Stevie Nicks.

What’s hollow about The Tortured Poets Department is that the real torture is just how unlivable these songs really are. No one can resonate with “So I leap from the gallows and I levitate down your street, crash the party like a record, scratch as I scream ‘Who’s afraid of little old me?’ You should be.” And normally, that wouldn’t be an end-all-be-all for a pop record—but when your brand is built on copious levels of “I’m just like you!” as the demigod saying it to their fans does so from a multi-million-dollar production set, it’s hard to not feel nauseated by the overlording, overbearing sense of heavy-handed detritus we’re tasked with sifting through on The Tortured Poets Department.

Love’s words to Lana, her advice to “take seven years off,” should be applied to Swift. Now, that doesn’t mean that, to make a good album, you must sit on material for years and labor extensively through the sketching, shaping and recording in order for it to be transcendentally landmark. But it’s obvious now that not even Taylor Swift wants to be the head of an empire—that she, too, can’t outrun the damning fate of being plum out of ideas by hopping in her jet and skirting off to God knows where.

See you at the Grammys.

****

[ghostly-bat]

I came from the post about Duke and Damien's dynamic, and I wanted your input on a Duke and Jason dynamic

Sorry this took a minute. With these kinds of questions I like to write them down in my notes app, rewrite some stuff and add some stuff just to make sure I got everything!

I think Jason and Duke have a really underrated and compelling dynamic, especially when you look at how their experiences both parallel and diverge.

Jason grew up with a rough start, carrying the weight of his trauma, anger, and resurrection in a way that shaped his sense of justice into something sharp and personal. Duke, on the other hand, is newer to the vigilante world but no less hardened by loss—he’s lost his parents, too, and navigates grief with a quiet resilience that Jason probably recognizes more than he lets on.

What makes their potential relationship so interesting is that Duke is one of the few Batkids who didn’t immediately fall into the same power dynamic with Bruce. He carves his own space. That independence might earn Jason’s respect pretty quickly. Jason doesn’t want clones of Bruce; he wants people who can think for themselves and question the system—something Duke absolutely does.

I also think there’s a big brother/little brother vibe here, but not in a patronizing way. Jason might see a bit of his younger self in Duke—the trauma, the anger, the feeling of not fitting perfectly into the Batfamily mold. But where Jason went off on his own, Duke stays, and that contrast could lead to some really reflective conversations between them.

They’re both blunt, smart, and loyal in their own ways. If they teamed up more often, I could see them forming a bond based on mutual understanding, unspoken support, and the kind of sharp banter that only comes from people who’ve seen too much too young but refuse to let it define them.

[isagrimorie]

It’s always frustrating whenever the BAU tackles a case where either the victimology or UnSub has similarities to Prentiss’s background/upbringing but the writers rarely use it to give insights on Prentiss or have Prentiss’s background provide some insights into a case.

As an example, The Performer is an episode featuring Gavin Rossdale as a rockstar whose kayfabe was being a Vampire ala Lestat but fake.

The show could have dove a little into the goth community, a community Emily Prentiss used to be a part of. Did they do that? Unfortunately, no, they hung a lantern on it. The writers had Penelope tease Emily about how she used to dress Goth. Even though, Emily still dressed like one but corporate style.

In the episode, Pleasure is My Business. The UnSub grew up around wealth and privilege and then used sex work to lure her victims.

We discover in Lauren that Prentiss was in a similar enough situation re: Operation Valhalla.

Ala The Americans show, Prentiss used intimacy to get close to Ian Doyle.

Emily Prentiss became Lauren Reynolds because she matched Doyle’s type.

I know the writers had a vague idea of Prentiss’ past only that the writers had breadcrumbs pointing to a rich, mysterious past. They don’t have a crystal ball, but the privileged background could have been a jumping off point for a discussion, an insight to the UnSub’s thoughts.

In the season 16 episode, Orpheus Wrecks, the writers could have again used that case as a way to get more insight into Prentiss’ hidden personal life. As a Politician’s kid, and a somewhat savvy political operator herself, Prentiss would have been as familiar, if more, to the DC wonk space as Bailey was.

Prentiss would also be familiar with the Beltway Elite app even if she didn’t use it herself.

(As a former Spook, the idea of having an app like that in her phone would give Prentiss OpSec paranoia. She would not want her photo distributed everywhere. Being on Politico was enough of a headache for her tbh).

I know Prentiss’ whole thing is she wanted to distance herself from her mother’s political life but she would still have friends and would have known more people as she climbed up the ladder in the FBI.

Other shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Elementary, and Person of Interest almost always use a kernel of similarity/parallelism in their various cases of the week as a jumping-off point to tell a richer story about their characters.

Criminal Minds does but selectively.

This is what makes the show frustrating. You can always tell when the show could have threaded the Case/Monster of the Week and connected the case to one of the characters.

Morgan and JJ also needed more exploration. The only one the writers they consistently use this with is Reid.

To the writer’s credit they have vaguely gestured at Emily’s mysterious past— setting up Emily’s existential crisis about her morality in the face of what she’s done while she worked for CIA and JTF-12.

But then the show goes several episodes mentioning the problem, an arc villain, and it’s frustrating!

(I sometimes lowkey wish some Whedon trained writers joined Criminal Minds to establish a good character-to-case ratio. Like, Jane Espenson. Or someone from Person of Interest writers room joining the Evolution writers team. The idea of Denise Thé writing for the CM ladies makes me yearn because delicious character development + inventive messed up twists. Erica Messer does a good job showrunning— a different job altogether than just writing for the show. But also— I yearn! Think about a POI caliber writer in a CM writers room! It would be so good to have, IMO. Not that PoI was entirely perfect either, I have my frustrations too!)

——

Chris Mundy seemed interested in delving into the internal lives of the characters, especially Emily’s. Demonology was really important for our understanding of Emily Prentiss.

Her guilt, her low-key self-loathing— the way she runs from the people she loves because she thinks she’s not worth it. The way she can conform to be anyone to fit into a situation and not stand out.

Her casual regard for sex as a tool to help her get accepted. All things that were helpful for Prentiss when she became a spy.

As Michael Westen from Burn Notice said: “People with happy families don’t become spies. A bad childhood is the perfect background for covert ops.”

TLDR— It’s just frustrating because they’re always nearly at the cusp of a great character driven procedural but then almost always back off from giving us really good food.

[smolvenger]

In A World of Boys, He's a Gentleman (Professor! Tom Hiddleston x Reader blurb)

Summary: Collapsing into tears after a hellish week, your professor boyfriend confesses he loves you.

Warnings: cursing, some work problems (I may have used some of my irl experiences in here, oops) Reader liking Romantasy books, but other than that, some hurt/comfort and lots of fluff!

A/N: I decided to leave it ambiguous if Reader is a student or not, so that is personally up to you. From @holdmytesseract's request for the birthday blurbs! Thanks for your patience!

Word Count: >2K

A03//My Ko-Fi//My Etsy Shop//Masterlist//Wattpad

Taglist: @asgards-princess-of-mischief @jennyggggrrr @five-miles-over @fictive-sl0th @ladycamillewrites @villainousshakespeare @holdmytesseract @eleniblue @twhxhck @lokisgoodgirl @lovelysizzlingbluebird @raqnarokr @holymultiplefandomsbatman @michelleleewise @wolfsmom1 @cheekyscamp @mochie85 @fandxmslxt69 @skittslackoffilter @mischief2sarawr

If the past week was purgatory, then today was utter hell.

Everything in your life was driving you so busy, you felt both stasis and panic at once. You got so distracted that you would zone out on your phone closing and reopening the same apps for hours. Then at work, people were driving you up a wall. Because you were a good employee who had to get things done in the order and way they trained you or else…less got done. The impossibility of productivity crept on you. Minutes became hours. You had to argue with someone in a conversation that should have been four minutes but lasted eight because she would not shut up, kept repeating the same things over and over, would rarely let you speak and when you did, never replied or added onto your responses. On top of that, your body decided that the buttcrack dawn of morning when it was still dark was a good time to be awake. And impossible to drift back to sleep even when you took cold medicine. Which then made you exhausted at work.

Thank god for your professor boyfriend.

He was your light in the midst of all this. You had dated for some time, and even the sight of him putting on glasses in a nice suit as he headed off ofr work still made you tingly inside. He would leave you little gifts at your place- flower bouquets, cupcakes, and the like. You were at a point where you didn’t have to have romantic dates all the time. You were now just in his place. Just hanging out. Simple as that. 

You could be quiet and not interact every second. As cats parallel played you could just be in comfortable silence together. Especially when it came reading- for you had something of a silent book club. You both turned off your phones and would sit devouring book after book. 

He was a Literature professor, so it was in his nature. It seemed though sometimes he was never off the clock!  He even challenged you- it was one thing that drew you to daring him. He was smart enough- he respected you as an intelligent being in your own right but was able to have questions and discussions. It was the academia in him. It made you grow into wanting to be a better person for him…and he for you.

Though today, your stress, anxiety, and semi insomnia was creeping up on you. You sat on the brown chair and he on his sofa. There was the same book in your hands. He was already rubbing a finger over his lips, pressing his glasses close. Enchanted by the spell words made. It was a well-reviewed piece of literature that won awards and was featured on the official lists of esteemed journals. He recommended this title to you and you were both reading it. 

As you sat with your own copy that he leant you, you cracked open the stiff spine from it’s newness and began to read…

You were spacing out on the first chapter. It was dense, poetic, and beautiful….but you had no idea what the heck was going on.

After a few more pages, it was starting to get sad.

What was it with these books? And it was not cheery- Was high literature just sad things happening like people having affairs on their wives or committing abuse or doing drugs or going to war or just being awful with no repercussions?

With a sigh, you reached into your bag and pulled out a different book- an escapist, spicy romantasy that all the girls on social media were losing their minds over. You replaced the high literature book, setting it down quietly, and opened it. Tom was so engrossed in the book he didn’t notice. You didn’t want him to notice.

You found this time you were understanding the words in front of you. And you found yourself drawn. Was it the best piece of literature to be studied in a professors class in the future? Hell no. But you were here for a good time, not a long time. And not to study human nature deeply, but to be in a different world, where you had a different name, a different look, and different problems, but far more magical and exciting than everything crashing down in your dull, grey reality. One where your clothes were beautiful with corsets and fine fabric instead of just jeans. One where you would have a sword with a name then a smartphone that sucked all of your free time. One where you could be a princess, a queen, an assassin, a fae lady, a vampire, a pirate, a goddess, a duchess… anything other than plain old you in a plain old life at a plain old job.

Tom looked up. He then eyed over your cover and back at you.

You looked up at him and grimaced. Then you shoved the book back into your bag.

“Please! Don’t judge me!” you cried.

“Why would I judge you?” he asked.

You gestured over to the book in his hands.

“I’m reading this silly trash book and you have all of your fine literature!” you cried.

He set his own copy down, but his blue eyes softened.

“My dear…Is something up?” he asked.

He knew you well enough he could tell the signs.

“Yes, my day was hell! It was this and this and this and…I try to handle it but..I’m overwhelmed so I can’t…I really can’t…I’m not even smart enough to read this book, because I try and try but I just can’t understand this stuff and I can’t get into it, like you…I’m an idiot…”

You burst into tears, and he came over, hugging and kissing your head in little pecks. 

“No…darling, no…” he murmured.

You leaned into his arms. You found yourself vneting and complaining the suffering long inside you.

“I know…I’m a mess…” you sobbed out. “And there was a lady at work who’s a bitch, and my job is so hard, and I can’t sleep at night…it’s just…I wish I could be smarter, nicer, better for you Tom, but…”

“How do you take tea?” he asked.

Looking up, you wiped your tears with your sleeve and answered him.

He made it for you the way you liked. It was the prettiest mug- white with bluebell flowers painted on it.  And returned with it. You sipped at it, it was perfect in it’s flavor and so warm, you felt it melt inside you. You placed both hands around it- science said it was like receiving a hug. Feeling the warmth inside and outside as you looked up at him. 

He scooted himself to be close, a gentle smile on his face and one of his large, beautiful hands rubbing your forearm in comfort.

“I know I’m a mess.” you said.

“I like you as a mess.”

You began to blink at him.

“No, I…but I’m…I’m trying, but I just…I know I complain and I read trashy books and I call people bitches and all that, you can say it, Tom. It’s the truth,” you replied.

“Set your drink down,” he requested.

You complied.

He cupped your face. A gasp aired itself in your throat. 

“My dear, you are perfect as you are. A mess, broken, crying…and I want nothing else than to be with you.” he confessed.

You nearly dropped your jaw.

“That’s…a…you’re saying that…”

“Well…I…yes, I never thought I’d run into someone like you, who’d change everything. Why should I care if you feel upset sometimes like every human being  or what you read to make you happy or that things aren’t always wonderful…I…I love you….there, I said it.”

Love. The little word that changed everything. And it was the first time he said it. It was…unspoken. Something you both felt for the long months you dated, but never confirmed. And here it was, materialized and as present as the furniture and mugs and books, for it was just as real.

“I love you too, Tom.”

You embraced him tight, and he embraced back. He then pressed his forehead to yours, squeezing hands.

He then let go, looking down at your mug.

“Here…your tea will get cold…” he said, offering the drink back to you.

“And…my book….” you murmured.

“Oh, I have no problems with you reading it with me! If it’s that good, I’ll make you another cup of tea and get us some biscuits as well! Then you must tell me all about it!” He gave a little laugh. “Who knows, I may even try it myself someday!”

Smiling with him, you gave him a kiss on his cheek. Then, you settled into cuddling him, sipping your tea and enjoying both of your books in a moment of pure bliss.

[sepdet]

thank you for your tags on the anhedonia post! reading that van gogh was adapting other mediums' techniques for his painting style was cool, especially bc it really helps ground how and why his style was so unique. <3

i got to see two of his paintings in person the first time i went to moma, pls enjoy the pictures i took of them:

Great photos! i'm regretting not taking good ones when I went to the Met last year, although I took a lot of details, figuring there's good overall reproductions online.

For example, I took a photo with the label (as I often do in museums) just to remind myself it's The Olive Trees, but mostly focused on closeups and oblique angles that show brushstrokes in relief:

I think it was the first lecture on this playlist that alerted me to van Gogh's ink drawings. That's how he started as an artist, with pencil, pen and ink, and charcoal studies, sometimes adding watercolor.

After that I began looking up "van Gogh ink drawings" online and on an app I use called Art Authority, from which I grabbed these two drawings from 1881 and 1883:

Sometimes van Gogh would do a pen and ink study before a painting, labeling what colors he planned to use. (Fishing Boats, 1889)

At other times, he would describe recently-finished paintings in letters to his brother Theo and draw a copy in pen and ink, as he did in this drawing of Starry Night:

He flirts with pointillism, too, but he didn't take to what Seurat was doing, placing different color dots side by side for certain light/color effects. Van Gogh was drawn to the energy of complementary colors, but colors meant and FELT something to him, so (I think) he couldn't be so detached in how he used them. I believe he was using hatching (parallel lines in rows) instead, or other forms of mark-making, which he had learned early on as a way to fill space with texture, indicate planes, and suggest energy and movement.

And just like Cezanne and Picasso and a lot of other very creative artists, he was always experimenting.... he doesn't always use the same techniques! So this doesn't apply to all his paintings, and often it's only in parts of each painting!

At any rate, there's quite a few lovely ink drawings by van Gogh that most people never see, and they helped me see his paintings in a new light.

PS I'm glad you don't find my going off on tangents in my #comments annoying; I often respond to a post by relating to something I understand, but in the process I can go wheeling off away from the original topic!

[mushgloomz]

Dead of Night

Joel Miller x F!Reader WIP

• an: okay so i’m actually posting my first fic and i’m making it a WIP/series just because i’m still finding my feet. the title is inspired by the song of the same name by Orville Peck bc it just gives me such joel in Jackson energy. i have a rough vision for where i want this to go, and considering i’m a fiend for smut it feels odd to just keep it tucked away in my depraved little notes app <33

• chapter warnings: mild threats of violence, weapons mentioned (guns), swearing

• wc: 1.7k approx. (keeping it short and sweet until i figure out what the fuck i’m doing loool)

Chapter 1: Monotony

Dawn streamed through moth-eaten curtains, never repaired or replaced since the outbreak, and caused you to stir from your slumber. With squinted eyes, you glared toward the source of your disturbance and sighed. Early mornings had never been your forte, and as summer crawled ever closer in Jackson, your unwanted alarm clock in the sky had been waking you earlier and earlier.

You watched dust and brick particulate shimmer through the beams of sunlight for a moment from your bed before biting the bullet and shifting yourself onto your feet; cool hardwood flooring in desperate need of a sweep underfoot.

Your bedroom, a reasonably sized space with a singular window on the wall opposite your bed, was your place of respite. Nothing felt better than returning to the safe haven that you had created in an otherwise unfamiliar place. You opted not to use the main light whenever in your bedroom - two small lamps on either side of the bed and a standing lamp positioned beside your wardrobe created the soft, warm ambience you liked best when wrapping up in your duvet with a steaming mug of tea and a book.

The house you’d been given was quaint; a bedroom and bathroom upstairs, a guest bedroom, open-plan lounge, and kitchen on the ground floor. It suited you perfectly. The hospitality given by the people of Jackson was an otherworldly parallel to your very first encounter with some of the townsfolk.

///

Three months earlier, trudging across seemingly unending wilderness in no particular direction, you were cornered by four people on horseback whilst refilling your canteen at the bank of a river. Snow lay heavy at your feet, though it was not responsible for the sudden chill running up your spine. You can still remember the interrogation that ensued, shouted at you over the rumble of the water behind.

“What are you doing here?”

“Where are you headed?”

“Do you have any weapons?”

You had squeaked your answers back, a pathetic contrast to the delivery of the questions themselves. A fifth individual then arrived, on foot and walking beside a German Shepherd that tugged enthusiastically against its leash in your direction. A plethora of weapons had been drawn and another voice rose above the water, cold and now spitting against the backs of your ankles.

“Now, you get one chance and one chance only for a bullet, so choose your words carefully…”

Your heartbeat thrummed against the walls of your skull, the sound reverberating in the most overwhelming fashion, eyes flitting between the shotgun angled toward your head and the dog in your periphery. You hazarded a glance at your rifle, dumped a meager few feet from where you stood.

“Hey! Eyes up!”

You snapped your head up at the sound of another gun being cocked, raising your hands palms-out in a pitiful surrender; your thick cowhide gloves doing little to disguise their trembling. You can recall the metallic taste of blood in your mouth from chewing the inside of your cheek.

“Are you infected?”

You’d shook your head, remaining thin-lipped and starting to perspire despite the cold. Like an unspoken command, the dog’s handler had taken a tentative step toward you.

“Last chance for the bullet, ‘cause if you’re lying, she’ll be able to smell it out.”

“I-I’m not infected!”. Your voice had cracked, fear swelling in your tone. A swift nod passed between the two threats before you, and the dog handler unclipped the leash of the dog that was soon bounding toward you. You winced at the touch of a muzzle against the flesh of your outer thigh, pressing persistently against the starched cotton hugging your legs. Murmurs and mumbles arose, intangible against the swell of the river. Nods and indiscreet glances between the group, before all eyes fell back to your own.

“Come, we’re taking you to our settlement.”

///

You shrugged on your denim jacket as you stepped from the sanctuary of your home and onto your porch. The boards groaned underneath you, and you made a mental note to remind Tommy of their ongoing deathtrap-waiting-to-happen status. The town’s streets were near desolate at this hour; the lights in the bakery still off. Not even 6am yet, bastard sun.

Gravel crunched beneath the thick soles of your boots as you walked through the square. You’d eaten at home shortly after haphazardly throwing an outfit on your frame, so you bypassed the dining hall and headed straight for the armory. It sounded damn near medieval, but it was essentially just a secure unit within the commune where patrol equipment was kept.

You keyed in the code when you reached the doors, deactivated the alarm, and glanced around the starkly lit room. Fluorescent strip lights were never kind on the eyes, even more so when you’d only had yours open for less than an hour.

It always felt like a treat when you had first dibs on the equipment, but as per usual, you found yourself reaching for the rifle on the far right. My rifle. You’d begrudgingly agreed to the communal weapons storage, and fortunately enough the other patrol officers rarely reached for it. It was tarnished and scuffed to shit, so not a huge surprise, but this gun had been the difference between life and death on more than one occasion. You had an almost innate fondness for the meld of wood and metal in your hands; it had offered more safety, more protection, than any human had in the past eighteen years.

After reactivating the alarm to the armory and shutting the door behind you, you headed to your station; a handover briefing at the watchtower from those on patrol overnight. The shifts in Jackson were fair - one week on early shifts, one week on twilight shifts. Each shift lasted around four hours; a perimeter sweep followed by your designated station inspection. This week you had been asked to inspect the small abandoned commune by the water filtration plant; no more than a few crumbling buildings and the plant itself.

The debrief was, as expected, uneventful. Jackson was in an isolated, rural region of the state of Wyoming, and rarely did any patrols result in anything of note. It was a relief, really. You considered yourself to be a bit of a sharp-shot, trained by F.E.D.R.A. in a quarantine zone for a majority of the outbreak before you made your escape on a whim one evening. Now, at 24 years old, you had honed your skills to an unrecognisable degree - you’d killed people, not just infected; something that you’d avoided mentioning to anyone since your arrival.

The reality was, you were fucking scared. You grew up knowing little of the world before the apocalypse ensued, and while most people in your position seemed to develop a cold callousness that served them well, you held onto the fear.

You were paired with Alex this week. He was a year younger than yourself, with wavy ginger hair that he kept at shoulder’s length and never tied back. The man was pale and littered with freckles and acne scars; a scruffy goatee sat atop his chin. His features reminded you of a youthfulness lost to circumstance, much like your own. Despite this, he wasn’t your favourite patrol partner to say the least - he spoke and acted with a misplaced assuredness; in the three short months you’d spent in Jackson, he’d hit on you twice, and following his subsequent rejections, had adopted an air of aloofness whenever you were around. He’d already began his march to the stables before the debrief had ended.

“I’m taking Chuck today, just so you’re aware.”

Alex’s voice reached you before you’d even entered the paddock - Chuck was the largest horse. You had to refrain from asking whether or not his persistence with riding the biggest horse was an attempt at compensating for something else. You didn’t care anyway; Chuck may be the biggest horse, but he was temperamental. If Chuck wanted to head in a particular direction, no amount of fight would stop him.

Turning your head toward the end of the stable, you saw that your own horse of choice was whinnying gently to herself, head hanging just over the stall door. Sable was the most dependable horse, and the least timid. You weren’t particularly fond of horses, but there was an unspoken level of trust between the two of you that resolved any lingering anxieties when it came to riding. You spoke in a whisper as you prepared her saddle, “Hello you, gonna be good for me today? Ground’s not looking too wet, so shouldn’t be much slipping either.”

Alex and yourself were on your horses and out of the imposing wooden gates of the commune no more than fifteen minutes later. You scanned the immediate vicinity briefly; a dull clunk acting as the starting gun for your shift as the gates were re-bolted behind you. Both horses stepped forward, headed for the valley where you typically began your perimeter sweep. “You sleep well?”, you ask Alex in a soft spoken manner.

“Nah, I got fuck all sleep. The bastards next door to me have this stupid routine of…”

There was one perk of working Alex; once you’d mastered the art of zoning him out, he became your very own white noise machine on the job. Surprisingly comforting, despite the incessant complaining. He would prattle on for a good while, too obsessed with the sound of his own voice, and you could take a moment to actually enjoy being outside of the confines of the town.

Of all the places to hunker down, Jackson had lucked out with one of real natural beauty. Thick forestry, mainly coniferous around the more mountainous regions and dissipating into a cacophony of vibrant oak and birch to the west. Birdsong often woke you if the sun did not. The valley was split by tendrils of the much larger river beyond, smattered with wildflowers, and had a naturally trodden path snaking it’s way toward the peaks.

A naturally trodden path, that currently had two figures walking along it.

Your rifle was shouldered and aimed without hesitation, before you yelled “Hands where I can see them! Don’t fucking move.”

[tanukitsuneko-suki]

build episode 46 thoughts:

- i want so badly to know the international political ramifications of whatever this nationwide split in japan doing to the rest of the world lol

- i’m still thinking of ryuusen but with a flavor of evolt in the middle…i can think of nothing freakier than having a 3p with the literal personification of your toxic yaoi

- other countries probably: the entire earth is at stake?? mf we didn’t sign for this

- at least sento can still smile leading to the end of his series bc emu’s just out of it lmfao

- banjo’s arm…my wife’s thin wrists…ohh she’s so

- endgame cafe nascita team my beloved

- episode title “an oath to be the one” are they gonna be one?? 😭 senryuu??? one…as in marriage ?😭😭

- banjo’s always so fucking funny man…it’s peak writing to make the Terrifying, Potentially Destructive Entity Capable Of Ending Worlds a huge dumbass…bc Sento’s just dropping shit like “this was created thanks to Evolt’s genes within your body” and banjo’s just at the side like 🧍‍♂️🤷

- endgame cafe nascita is so fucking funny because sento’s the only scientist here PLEASEE

- sento saying literally anything:

his teammates: 🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️

- PARALLEL WORLDS????????

- AH. OH. AHHHHHHHHH. OHHHHHHHHHHHH. AHHHH OHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHH OKAY!!!

- everytime banjo tries to process sento’s explanations you can visibly see his brain overheating lmao

- TEARS IN MY FUCKING EYESSSSSS HE LOOKS SO SMUG

- “apparel! …wait, no, parasol!” “parallel. parallel worlds” “parallel” BANJO NEVER CHANGEEEE

- i feel like banjo nothing is making sense to me so i’ll just nod along 😭

- OTHER VERSIONS??!?!! KYAAAAAAAAAAAAA

- “i knew i would be completely clueless!” MAYBE THIS IS WHY YOU’RE MY OSHI LET’S BE DUMB TOGETHER 😭

- banjo’s like. okay whatever. just tell me who to punch

- aeaaaaaa refining the bottles twice? hahah what if ryusen

- notes app lookin ass screen

- oh kazumin your stocks are rising. this humble begging is too cute

- IT WASN’T ORIGINALLY FOR BANJO 😭⁉️⁉️⁉️ i feel silly hyping up the ice dragon thing ngl

- KAZUSENNNNNNNN

- they ignored his shirts…guys let’s not bully gen-san too much 😞 he’s old

- HE CAN’T CATCH A FUCKING SOBA 😭😭 CAN THIS MAN EVEN DO ANYTHING

- akaso doing his best to chew through half-cooked meat might be my new favorite thing

- kazumin 😭 kono hentai

- LMFAOOOOO KAZUMIN 😭😭😭😭 DUDE STOP IT

- bro’s fucking ascended

- IT WAS GENTOKUUU FUCKKKKKKK😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 I DID NOT NEED TO KNOW GENTOKU SMELLS REALLY NICE. OMEGA-CODED AJDHSJHDSJJS

- I THOUGHT THEY’RE GONNA IGNORE IT. WDYM KAZUMIN HIMSELF SAYS GENTOKU SMELLA NICE. FUCKKKKKKKKKKK

- senryuu married

- “banjo. there’s something you need to know” damn let me know too? why are we having a cutscene all of a sudden

- thinking about mii-tan’s fans at the moment. because like if i was wondering where luca went after his hiatus only to find out that his team is gonna battle a space alien in international tv i don’t know what i’d do ?

- “how will the kamen riders (who plunged us into fear as military weapons) stand up against him??” GIRL WHY ARE WE DOING THEM SUCH A DISSERVICE LOLLLLLL

- genkazuryusen poly is so good because kazugen must feel so incensed with senryuu hiding shit from them and going off together to try and save the world by themselves.. and it’s not even because they don’t respect kazugen it’s just that senryuu cares for kazugen too much and they’re trying to shoulder the burden just between the two of them. gaahhhh okay i need to make a chart before i lose it bc like HOLD AWNNNN (i didn't put it here but banjo specifically understanding the reasons/heart of sento's decisions is such a good flavor between all four of them)

- WEIRD ALIEN GOO GO AWAYYY

- oh shit BUILD DRIVER!! GREASE BLIZZARD. KAZUMIN YOU ARE SO COOL. BUT ALSO. THE POETRY OF USING THE BOTTLES OF THE TRIO TO DEFEAT THEIR COPYCATS..AAAAAGH

- “are you ready?” “damn right i am” KAZUMIN YOU ARE SO COOL 😭 PUN NOT INTENDED!!!

- WOWWWWWW

[justeasing]

I'm starting to wonder if Hoyo is letting Genshin die so that they can allocate more resources to other titles...

We've all seen the massive decline since Fontaine. Fontaine was excellent! Fun, beautifully written, lush environment, characters that matched the setting and were teeming with story– Natlan has not.

Natlan has been a disappointment since day one.

Putting aside the lack of POC on the roster, it was disappointing because it wasn't the war-torn space overflowing with magma in the way we thought, where the shadows of dragons in flight loomed overhead, and you had to be careful going between warring tribes. No, instead, it's a BRIGHT! HAPPY place! Full of paint and dancing and Pokemon and– where... does the "war" take place, exactly?

Then there's the characters. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Kinich, but... why does he look like that? And why isn't Ajaw just a Saurian, or a proper dragon he summons, instead of a pixel waffle that yaps? And honestly speaking, if this was the design they were going for and he's supposed to be the hero of the Scions, why don't the canopies have pixel elements? Why aren't there holo-screens they use, or some more NPC costumes that are reminiscent of Kinich's headbands, jumpsuit, etc? There's no parallels to be drawn between people and place. Mavuika - the ARCHON - doesn't even look like she belongs there! And not to mention their stories...

Not a single story quest has been about the character. Yes, they are present, and you get a little bit of insight into their way of thinking, but overall? It's been about side-characters. Kinich? Enjou. Mualani? Atea. Xilonen? Little girl I can't even remember the name of. Citlali? Some dude from Fontaine, of all places. These are not CHARACTER stories. They're random NPC quests. They're not important and have barely any impact, and most were legitimately just... poorly written.

Then there's this weird emphasis on abuse in Natlan. Kinich was abused by his father, the girl from Xilonen's story was being abused, Citlali has alcohol abuse under her belt, AND Ororon was abused... Like what? Why? And now, even the current Lantern Rite is about DEATH. And not even in a poetic, sweetly heart-wrenching way, which can be done gracefully and with meaning, it's just... death.

"People are dying! Happy Lantern Rite!"

WHAT??? NO. WHY?

Augh... regardless. I'm starting to think Hoyo actually wants Genshin to fail at this point. I think they're killing their own game, so then it can just be shut down and blamed on lack of revenue or something along those lines. They want to push it into submission while amping up their more favored titles, like Zenless or Honkai. They're trying to make their newest game flashier, with better combat, etc. while Genshin is slowly sinking. They've already done it once... or has everyone forgotten Tears of Themis?

That's right. We have.

To be blunt, Genshin isn't keeping up right now. None of the fans are happy. They LITERALLY KILLED THE BEST CHARACTER - Capitano - and now there's a fandom-wide depression. Their system of in-game revenue is terribly unfair, and no one should have to hoard primogems for HALF A YEAR to get a character they might want while their current team is being silently powercrept out of relevancy. Not to mention, if you get a character like Sigewinne or Cahsca who are objectively awful, you're screwed! And how're you supposed to know they were going to be so bad until you've already leveled them to 80 and boosted their talent levels to match?

That's right. You don't.

And then there's the representation issue, the one I put aside at the beginning. The elephant in the room at every turn on the HoyoLab App. Whether it's yet another horrible redesign (We really need to stop, you guys. This is ridiculous.) or an argument in the comments, race needs to be addressed by this company, and they simply don't. And now, on top of all that is the Voice Actor situation!

It's stupid. They're a multi-million dollar corporation... they should be doing better, but they're not, and it's because of our own complacency. It's because we keep rolling over and hoping they just "do better" or don't even think this is trashy behavior to begin with. It needs to end. Hoyo needs to be held accountable. Or else, honestly speaking—

...I think they'll drown Genshin on purpose, and they won't even bat an eye.

[archivalofsins]

Oh yeah, I was talking about this with friends yesterday and concluded that Shidou never goes home in Triage. He's still at the hospital just pretending he went home. There are also shots in Throw Down that show that the outside of the hospital he works at literally looks like where he's walking in Triage.

Post has been edited to fix spelling errors, add read more, and information for clarification. Edited: 02/27/24 3:17pm EST

Something Shidou purposely tries to hide as he quickly cuts away from these angles in Throw Down. Favoring showing off more barren areas like this.

The inside of the hospital is shown to have the same handrail on the wall that he walks past in Triage when he arrives home. The tile floor is spaced exactly the same as it is within the hospital as is seen in his makeshift home in Triage.

The tile wall literally turns into a window when he touches it.

Plus, literally no one else's second trial music videos have completely excluded where they committed their crimes. That's even counting prisoners like Mahiru and Futa whose mental spaces were entirely warped from what they experienced over the course of the last intermission. Even still their music videos followed a similar pattern to their first ones.

Even the train Mikoto (John) is seen in throughout Double is prominently shown in MeMe. Shidou's video is the same in this regard. Calling back to his previous one, which allows the viewer to discern between the discrepancies and figure out where he actually is, at some points.

For example, the plants outside of his house are reminiscent of the ones seen in the greenhouse during Throw Down. The shot of the greenhouse and his front door are almost the same.

Except we're seeing from Shidou's perspective.

This could be why the message machine for his house picks up near the beginning. To fully illustrate that regardless of what he tells/shows us he is currently not at fucking home. He's just not there and never went there.

Hell, even if that was his cellphone voice mail that's even more damning. Considering that from the beginning, we've been shown the use of phones is prohibited in his workspace.

Reformation of the Japanese Guidelines for cellular phone use in hospitals (August 2015)

New guidelines ease restrictions on cellphone use at hospitals (August 19, 2014)

Chiba University Hospital How to spend your time during hospitalization

Something that is common for hospitals around the world.

At least, I believe that's what this sign means. However, it could mean something else. It doesn't look like it's very cellphone friendly, though.

UPDATE

@doctorbunny has informed me about what this sign reads. In the older version of Throw Down on the Milgram App this sign was in color and clearly read.

おしずかに 通話禁止 please set to silent mode oshizuka = silent/silence ni = marks silence as the target (IE set _ to silent) tsuuwa = telephone call kinshi = prohibited So, set your phone to silent, phone calls not allowed. (Because operations are going on.)

So, yeah calls are prohibited in this area. Plus this confirms the area that he is in throughout Throw Down is one where operations are actively being held.

Oh, and as a kicker, we've seen what this man's home actually looks like.

It is far less extravagant than the presentation he shows us in Triage. I'm not saying that anyone even believed he went home. Because honestly why would he have mausoleum for his victims attached to his house. What we see in Triage at least to me is clearly an artistic rendention of his work place and showcases how he views it as his personal organ collecting spot.

Then, to add insult to injury, here's the scene mirroring this one from Triage showing us when he's actually home through the lighting and the repetition of body language.

I mean he's better at hiding it than most but not by much.

Other moments that parallel Throw Down in Triage highlighting that we are more than likely still at the hospital and never left.

The metal bars in his kitchen call back to those around the greenhouse.

The place he eats in as well within Throw Down.

And this part of Triage directly calls back to the climax of Throw Down.

[centrally-unplanned]

Since I am blogging about it, I will outline my Tiktok "ban" stance - it is "fine", I have no objections and mildly support it, though I am not nearly as concerned about the tool as its proponents are and I approach it differently.

Fundamentally, "you can never impinge on freedoms in international relations" is a silly stance, because it leaves you vulnerable to exploitation by other parties. You do in fact have to "build" markets, rights, etc, none of them exist in the state of nature or whatever. China currently bans the large majority of western social media apps from the country as part of an explicit strategy for industrial policy for its own tech space and as information control on its citizenry. It is completely fair to go "samesies" in response, in the same way free trade agreements are signed by both parties. Now the US government didn't put a "until China lets Facebook in" clause in the bill or anything, but that is because everyone knows China isn't budging on this topic, I can't fault them for not bothering.

China also definitely does do the things it is accused of re: Tiktok. They aren't as heavy-handed as they are with their domestic platforms of course, but they algorithmically censor anti-China content, promote messages they care about, and share user data with central authorities. Now, I care about this less than others. Algorithms are perpetually overstated in their power, as users have agency, opinions, and also know what algorithms are and notice the rigging. The vast majority of people self-select their information consumption more than algs shape it. Tiktok is not a very effective tool in the CCP's kit. But it still is a tool, and again a stance of "the US government can never interfere with our speech institutions but foreign governments can go to town" is not practical stance, that isn't free speech at all. I find these crimes to be minor, but given that the punishment is "sell Tiktok to a US company at a fair price", that seems fine to me. The fact that ByteDance isn't doing that speaks volumes.

(I really don't care about the data stuff, as a bonus note. Data privacy is the perpetual "dog that didn't bark", and we in fact have large social costs from how religiously we try to protect it to avoid exaggerated harms. But it isn't of no concern, I am sure there are valid points in there.)

Still, I don't think people should downplay that it is legitimately awful for the community in practice. There are lots of wildly exaggerated numbers going around (no, 170 million Americans are not "active users" lol unless you stretch that word to the moon), but still, there are going to be millions of people who will have something load-bearing in their lives affected by a legal fight. The world is full of tradeoffs, I have no reason to think they should be happy about this. They have every right to lament it.

I do think this is another classic example of the US "legalism" policy dynamic - the idea of sitting down and just building the parallel infrastructure for US-hosted Tiktok once Bytedance refused to sell, and cutting them out of the loop entirely, was completely beyond us to consider, when that is the win-win solution to the dilemma. But w/e, in this case I recognize that is pretty idealistic, can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

[andtheywerefootballers]

WIRTZIALA University AU ficlet!

prompt by @disastrouscarrots

Word Count: 681

Synopsis: University AU in which Jamal's an architecture major whose biggest enemy is math and Flo happens to be his math tutor.

A/N: Idk how it works abroad, so putting a lil context just in case, but next to some lectures you have tutorials (Tutorium) where a tutor (sometimes a fellow student in an advanced semester) teaches the course. And @disastrouscarrots told me Flo slayed his math exams during hs so 💅. Flo doesn't have to be a math major to teach the course btw, ig just be in a math-involving major (engineering, cs, ...your headcanons can go wild here).

(ficlet below cut)

Jamal stares back at the weather app, then switches to his messages. Leroy isn't answering. The hallway is mostly empty with some steps echoing from afar. He stands before the seminar door: First one to show up like an overeager, innocent freshman. 

Leroy promised to tag along for their first math tutorial, he knows Jamal's a lost case who stopped going to the math lecture after the first week. He quit the 500 pages powerpoints filled with confusing equations, a professor who's supposed to speak German, but talks in mathematical lingo and theoretical messes and decided to have a mental breakdown at home rather than in a lecture hall instead. 

So. Leroy knows Jamal needs both academic and mental support after being betrayed by the fact that he has to take a theoretical math class.  For architecture. Like, huh? He didn't sign up for engineering, or administration or whatever. He signed up for architecture: construction, design, creativity…not exactly numbers. The uni counseling didn't brief him on this. 

He hears the door fall shut across the hall, glancing up in hope but finds only a handful of students he doesn't recognize. Coming towards him. Straight in his direction. There's a guy leading the group in front. He has a bag slung over his shoulder, wears baggy jeans and an oversized dress shirt. Silver rings flash around his fingers, a denim chain dangles from his waistband. Appears to be a chill dude. Judging by his short, slightly disheveled ash blonde to brown hair and darting eyes, he seems as lost as Jamal feels. 

Maybe he can bond over their fashionable sense of style and shared hatred over maths… because man doesn't look motivated but quite in the motions.  Quite I don't want to be here, but I have to be. Because I also have to practice this exasperating nerve-wracking subject called maths. Then the stranger meets his eyes— Jamal's heart stumbles and he quickly averts his gaze back at his phone. At Leroy's incoming, 'Sorry, won't make it.'

He doesn't roll his eyes. No. It's fine. Maybe Jamal can make a friend today instead. 

And then the guy passes him by and pulls out keys and unlocks the door, the door to the seminar room, like he's some teacher, like-

he's the teaching assistant, the tutor. 

It swooshes in his mind, any remaining thoughts flying away. He feels stupid for reasons he can't really put into words. And then he feels embarrassed, the back of his neck heating up as he realizes this is the guy who will try to teach you and see you're made of straw and empty space. He peeks down the hall, the urge to run away, hide, pay Leroy to take his math exam overbearingly strong. But then he mentally slaps himself, inhales, rolls his shoulders and braces himself for a challenge. Walks through the door to a medium-sized classroom with tables and chairs arranged in an U-form.  He takes a seat by the side, not immediately at the front, not too far at the back. Just right for an incognito plan to talk and interact as little as possible. 

But his classmates ruin his plan because they sit in groups at the end of the U, or parallel to him and he curses and wishes Leroy was here after all. Because now he's sitting on his own, sticking out like a sore thumb. And he feels the tutor's eyes on him. 

He introduces himself as Florian but he's fine being addressed as Flo as he's "only a semester above you guys, so no need to be formal and all." 

He takes his time to talk, mumbling and correcting himself a lot of times, sometimes fiddling with the hem of his shirt, biting his lips. It's…a little endearing. He's scatterbrained but clear when answering questions, even though there are a grand total of like two being asked for the whole lesson. 

From an outside perspective, Jamal may seem focused: furrowed brows, nodding along, taking notes. 

The notes in question are only doodles though, and his eyes are not following equations, but something else. 

[moralesmilesanhour]

Every time i think about atsv and its themes, my mind keeps going back to the scene with Miles and his parents in that college counselor’s office, and what its purpose is.

It establishes the strain that being Spider-Man has put on their relationship, yes - it also establishes that Miles feels trapped and limited, yes - but a lot of fandom discussion overlooks the important parallel that that scene sets in motion between racism in academia and Miles' rejection from Spider Society.

By now, everyone has already figured out that the issue with the 'Canon Event' theory is that it assumes that trauma - specifically experiencing the "right" traumatic events - is what makes a Spider-Man, and it is wrong for Miles to be required to accept this. It isn't enough that he had his uncle die, his father must die also because then he will have sacrificed "enough" to keep the canon intact. No one questions why arbitrary sacrifice is required at all.

The concept of the personal statement being required for college applications, I would like to argue, has the exact same issue.

Miles even says so in the beginning of the movie: "Having 'a story' in the first place sounds gross" (notice how Miles vocally critiques elite academia contantly and has been from the get-go. He is not an apolitical character like some might portray him to be).

It is not enough that Miles is an exceptional student with a variety of interests (art and science), he must have the appropriate traumatic "story" for white academic institutions to find him interesting enough as an applicant, even if the story they want him to tell is not actually his story (no, he is not from a "struggling immigrant family". They own an apartment floor and PR is in the United States). Just like the "Canon events" that Miguel describes are not Miles' story, and Miles does not want them to be because it requires the preventable deaths of innocent people.

In a similar way that has been touched upon more in wider fandom, Rio gives Miles a speech telling him not to let the people in these overwhelmingly-white spaces that he will be entering tell him that he doesn't belong. That speech, as we all know, ends up being a direct parallel to the way Spider Society treats him: he is simultaneously a charity case and a threat just by his mere presence. His very existence is disruptive to the canon: The spider wasn't "supposed" to bite him, he just got lucky. There is a reason why the visual of the ball with Miles' lottery number is constantly paired with the number on the spider that bit him; they are one and the same.

(Side note: this is also what makes Hobie's function as a character so interesting - The idea that you can just simply quit. You do not HAVE to be in these privileged spaces if they don't have your best interests in mind. You don't have to prove yourself to these people to be who you are. But that's a post for another day)

The reason I've been thinking about all this is because I feel like no one really touches upon why Miles' character exists. Like, on a thematic level. Yes, he's there to show that "anyone can wear the mask", but there's a lack of specificity in that statement that I wanted to address with this post.

Miles is a love letter to every black kid that's been told that they're only in the spaces they're in because they "got lucky". He's for every black kid that's ever looked at a college app and been told that they have to take their trauma and put it on display for some white admissions officer to shed a tear over. He's there to argue that you don't have to bend towards any of society's attempts to make a spectacle or a serviceable machine out of you, and that you can just be.

TL;DR: it was never just about the mask MWAH 🫶🏾

[seriemorder]

one thing they keep misunderstanding about tracking apps is that i dont want them to be social i want to log my shit and move on with my life. maybe follow a few choice trusted people but i dont want to interact with them i want us to be like trains on parallel tracks and i see a cool title on the train an im like holy shit i wanna get on that too. but we dont interact about it as the trains pass. the talking about it is reserved for the train station historical liminal space of conversations.

[xfandom-fairyx]

marching band au

bakugo fic

here goes nothing..

—————————————————

My car slowed as I turned the corner onto the road that held the dorm house I would be staying in for the next 4 years of my life. The sun was already going down, not quite setting, but the sky was already turning pinkish orange, rays of golden light peeking through the trees that were scattered amongst the houses I passed by. I took a deep breath, trying not to gape at the building at the end of the cul de sac, as I pulled up the cement driveway— where no other cars were parked. I sighed thankfully. Being the first person here meant I got first dibs on the bedrooms, the thought alone sending a wave of excitement through me. The house was gorgeous, and freaking huge. (How many roommates was I supposed to have, again?..)

Double checking I had the correct address from the email in my phone, I pulled my keys from the ignition, fumbling to find the key to the front door. The heat outside was suffocating compared to the cool AC from my car, making me want to quicken my pace a bit to get inside. Deciding to grab the rest of my luggage after a quick look around and picking my room, I grabbed my backpack and purse before heading up the stairs to the front door. The entrance was framed by a beautiful wrap around porch, a few chairs, benches, and a porch swing adorning the wooden planks on each side of the door. Gently swinging the painted blue door open, I took my first steps inside my new (temporary) home, my chest tight with emotion.

The foyer was a bright space, a few meters wide, but felt cozy. Along the wall to the left was a deep blue, cubby-like bench with coat hooks, cabinets and a shoe rack, while the right wall had an oak table with a beautiful crystal decorative bowl, a fake potted plant and a circular mirror. Placed on the table beside the bowl was a slip of paper that had a list of utilities with passwords, app suggestions, and numbers for the local emergency services since we lived off campus. I quickly snapped a picture of and saved it to my favorites album, a subtle reminder to download the security app for the house, and a separate app for the security cameras. I moved to the left again and placed my keys on the cubby hook on the far right, kicking my slides off to set them on the shelf below my keys, my fingers gently grazing the navy stained wood. I was in no real rush as I stepped to the end of the foyer, taking it all in.

“Holy shit.. wow..” was all I could muster in my awe. The house smelled like oak wood and vanilla— the sweet woody combination fit just right in my head and sent me reeling to see the rest of the place I would call home. The bottom floor had a completely open floor plan where I could see everything from almost every angle across the house. To my right, a deep sectional sofa fit for 10 sat in a semi U shape, a chaise piece attached to run parallel with the longest side of the sofa, the whole thing facing a wall with a 75” flat screen, and a decent sized electric fireplace below it. Sat in the corner about 10 feet away from the sofa was a sleek, black grand piano, surrounded by a corner bookshelf that was full of sheet music, vinyl records, CD’s and memorabilia. My eyes flickered to the other side of the space to a grand kitchen, granite countertops, a huge island with a second barn sink, beautifully crafted cabinets, stainless steel appliances (which were huge, by the way! An 8 range stove?? A fridge big enough to hold food for a football team?! Christ!), and a walk-in pantry to top it off? I was in absolute heaven, daydreaming of the cooking and baking I would have so much fun doing in this kitchen.

I made my way to the left, because behind the formal dining table that sat 6 feet from the giant island in the kitchen, was a wide staircase leading upstairs to a loft area, where I assumed the bedrooms were also. There were a few more doors that I would get to later, assuming one was another bathroom or bedroom, and at least one of them led to the garage.

The loft area sat mostly above the kitchen, dining room and above the piano, leaving a full view of the living room area, and the ability to see at least half of the kitchen and dining room from the side opposite the stairs, and the hardwood floors throughout the entirety of the main and second floors. The loft itself had a study area with a few desks lined against the wall; all 4 of them fit at least two chairs, a work lamp on each surface, and a table in the corner that had a computer with a printer, which I quickly assumed was going to be strictly for homework.

As I made my way down the hallway to our bedrooms, I opened each door to peek inside and see which room I would like most. There were 2 spare bathrooms and 8 bedrooms total on this floor, with the two at the very end of the hallway having their doors 45° angled into the hallway. I opened the bedroom to the right first, and immediately fell in love with the wide space, huge windows, walk-in closet, and a third door that I could only guess was my own bathroom. Giddiness flooded my system as I opened the door and saw I was right. I set my bag on the queen sized bed in the space I couldn’t wait to decorate, and decided I should go get the rest of my stuff and start unpacking. It was dusk now, which meant I didn’t have much more time to get my stuff before night fell over the house, so I slipped downstairs and back into my sandals, flicking the porch light on.

The first load I needed to bring upstairs was my bedding, and if I had enough hands, I could grab my laundry bag. I still didn’t have a clue where the laundry room was, but I figured I would figure that out later. Getting back upstairs and to the end of the hallway had my lungs and legs burning, and I groaned out loud at the several other trips down and back up those stairs I would have to make tonight.

“Ugghhh, fuck!” I groaned, pulling my shirt away from my body rapidly, trying to fan myself. By the 5th trip to my car, I was sticky from sweat, out of breath, red in the face and regretting life, but it was my last load to carry before I could stay inside and relish the cool air of the central cooling system. My last suitcase of clothes and a medium sized box that had my favorite dog’s ashes amongst other sentimental items were in my arms as a big black truck came down the road and to a stop in the driveway next to my Camry. I looked away, trying to juggle the box and suitcase around so I could shut the door of my car, the box slipping from my grasp. Just as I was about to drop that super important box, a second pair of hands reached out to help.

“Woah! Careful! Do you need some help?” A voice asked. My panicked eyes met kind vermillion, that gentle tenor voice belonging to a boy with long red hair that was tied back, a touch of black at his roots. His smile was just as sweet as it lit up his face.

“Yeah,” I said breathlessly, “some help would be great!” He grinned wider, gesturing for me to go ahead of him.

“Lead the way, pretty lady,” he charmed. As if my cheeks weren’t red enough from the exertion, more heat crept up my neck and bloomed in my face. I huffed out a giggle, making my way around the car, leading the redhead up the steps and through the house to my room. I opened the door for him to come in and set the box on my bed, and he let out a low whistle.

“Nice space, can’t wait to see what you do with it,” he commented, a cheeky grin plastered on his face.

“Oi, Shitty Hair, you gonna get your shit out of my car or what? Stop flirting, you just met her,” a voice came from behind him. I peeked around the redhead’s shoulders to catch a glimpse at what looked like Adonis himself. A tall, sculpted blonde with gorgeous ruby eyes was scowling in our direction, his gaze narrowing as he saw me.

Shaking the scrutiny from his gaze off my shoulders, I turned my attention back to the redhead in front of me, trying not to let my gaze wander to his bare arms that were shown off from his cut off t-shirt.

“I’m y/n, by the way. Thank you for helping me with my stuff,” I grinned, holding my hand out for a handshake. He grinned back widely, but instead of shaking my hand, he held his arms out and pulled me into a hug, shocking me at first, but I absolutely hugged back. He felt so warm and his chest was cushioned, (not to mention he smelled amazing! Like marine moss, citrus and driftwood..)

“Name’s Eijiro, but you can call me Kiri, if you want,” he said over my shoulder, giving me a gentle squeeze before letting go, turning to head back downstairs. As I stepped into the hallway to follow him, two more boys came sauntering into view, one with sunny blonde hair and a black streak in it, the other with raven black hair. They were laughing and giggling at the top of the stairs, trying to trip each other to get to their rooms first, but stopped in their tracks as soon as they saw me. Eijiro chuckled and went around them to get back downstairs. The blonde one dropped all his bags, holding up hand to point a finger at me before shouting,

“GIRL! THERE’S A GIRL IN THE HOUSE!” Like I was some kind of 1600’s witch. The raven-haired boy cracked up, and I could hear Eijiro cackling from downstairs. The ash blonde was coming out of his room from behind me, coming to a halt a few inches from where I stood. I could feel his body heat radiating off of him, the smell of warm honey and sea salt floating to my nostrils.

“Yeah, Sparkplug, she’s a fucking girl. Stop ogling and get back to getting your shit out of my truck.” He said gruffly, grumbling out, “fucking idiot” as he passed us all on his way back downstairs.

Snapping out of my trance, I looked between the new boys in front of me, offering a small smile.

“Anyone up for some pizza and we can do introductions when it gets here?” I suggested, making them grin widely.

I got a, “for sure, man,” from the ravenette, and a, “heelll yeah, brother,” from the new blonde to cement my decision, and I grabbed my phone to open up the Domino’s app.

. • ° * ° • . … . • ° * ° • .

A/N: first part might be a bit awkward, I haven’t written in a while. (Help me out with tags?) Next part is in the works, hopefully as I get back into it, I’ll be more comfortable and it’ll get better. I can come back and edit later if I feel like it’s missing something. Hope you enjoy 🤍

[ranticore]

happy anniversary STBH!! i bought both books while on a week break and read them both in two days voraciously despite my phone failing to decipher the epub files (squinting at a 200x zoomed pdf is a painful way to read but it was so worth it). i am periodically rotating the characters round my mind like the hypothetical apple number 1. Cain especially has been placed in my little mental cabinet of curiosity that i drop by during quiet hours to think about. love that man. number one cain fan. chewing him like an interesting stick. i love every other character as well though theyre all so fascinating and v human

anyway all this ramble to say i love your works and im patiently waiting for the moth release. ur prose is so lovely and i love love love the way you interpret folklore and mythology and your art

question for the stbh gang: what actually are their daemons? i know felix has estibarith the swan but im so curious as to the rest...

omg noo i'm so sorry the epub didn't work! i know you already suffered through it but for anyone else with this issue, i have a recommendation for google books app (if using android) but even if that doesn't work, you can always contact me and we can make something more readable (like a pdf with big font or something) that fits

i'm so happy that cain resonates with people, that old man is a favourite of mine even if i did forget to change his name from the original placeholder (whoops). he's a lil fucked up now but his story is far from over

as for tha daemons..

Islin: i narrowed it down to two potentials?? That i kind of bounce between. I tend to lean more towards a polled bull than anything else - a same-sex daemon which would be the only one in the cast i think, which i tried to parallel in pern story with him being the only one who doesn't match the canon rules for rider sexuality & dragon colour. but regardless the daemon is called Tarannach and the overall symbolism is a massive powerful dominant animal who is nonetheless "de-fanged" in some way (polled cattle naturally lack horns!) and appears more peaceful as a result. Tarannach is wilful and domineering, disagrees with Islin frequently (before Islin has his spine-growing moments), and unapologetically takes up space. would also be a massive inconvenience in day to day life but that's kind of the point. Before settling as a bull, Tarannach went through phases of wanting to be smaller and smaller.

Bowman has a dog daemon. It just has to be that way, there's no getting around it. I joked around that she would be a poodle but actually I would lean more towards a collie instead, a herding type. Something that looks rough and ready but is actually surprisingly high maintenance. Her name is Nell/Nellie. Her personality is irreverent, never takes anything seriously. She turns into a feral animal during the full moon.

We know Estibariz is a swan but some more about her - she wanted to be a lioness, something big and fierce, and Félix insisted that she would probably end up a serpent or a fox, something with connotations of being a sneaky liar, and he felt that when she did settle, it would be an externalisation of some inner ugliness he never wanted anyone else to see. when she did settle she enjoyed a big I Told You So. When he was taken by Puck and spat out again, she returned as a form-shifting daemon again, and had gained the ability to separate from him and travel long distances. She never shapeshifted willingly though. The first person to touch Estibariz aside from Félix was Bowman. The second person was Helena.

Clarion is the only one whose daemon was actually, for real, a horse. His name was Drey and he was a dapple grey draft breed.

Senca is obviously a witch so also had a daemon who could travel far from her. He was a bird, I thought maybe a nightjar or collared dove. Never got that far in the au so didn't pick a name. We'll just call him Namiliyath

Léa's was a thorny devil

Jean's is a ferret and her name is Missy. It looks like it could potentially be an ermine, a symbol of nobility, but no. It's a common hunting animal, white with black eyes.

Erica's is a magpie

Pascal does not have a daemon. There's something there that looks very swanlike, but it speaks with his voice. In a human au, it's a golden eagle.

I don't think I made anything for other characters, again I never got that far writing it