#remember World Beyond

[buttertheflame]

I’m very surprised there is an “Okafor is for the resistance” theory circulating in the fandom. ‘He is fomenting a soft coup within the military to peacefully give power to the Civic Republic once the time comes.’ I’m hearing this going, what? I feel like the odd one out! What am I seeing differently?

Maybe it’s my interpretation of his vision: “Monsters that kill the monsters—that’ll be over soon.”

Okafor speaks well and is charismatic but that’s the trick. He doesn’t care about anyone’s freedom, including Rick’s or even his own. He’s a villain—someone to test our two heros’ limits and their beliefs, not support them. Well, if he and Beale were on the same path of destruction and control when they ‘recruited’ Rick and gassed Omaha, then they only disagreed on the tactics of the CRM’s coup of the Civic Republic. They split on something more subtle; Okafor wanted a soft coup but Beale wants a hard coup.

What does that make our heroes, Rick and Michonne? I think for Rick the question will be, to inherent the Lieutenant Colonel’s vision and change it, at risk of losing everything to Major General Beale—or to abandon the Civic Republic’s fight for the safety and comfort of family if he can? I think 1x02 will bring Michonne’s years gone by and her inner conflict into play. As always, she will lead Rick to make the right choice, which will affect a lot of people. ❤️

Even if I’m wrong, at some point I’m gonna argue why we should dislike Okafor and appreciate him as a villain. Think I’ll make it part of a 1x01 analysis thread: Rick, Pearl and Donald: CRM’s Alliance of Three.

[avalencias]

I don’t know what to do—I have to trust someone—I don’t know who to trust

massive, massive props to aabria for this episode (here at this point and after!!)…to all of them really, but it was about here that I was driving yesterday morning and had to frantically try to hold the image in my head for the rest of my commute. I only kind of succeeded but it is what is. wow. what an episode

[quiddie]

“Bring them to me.”

[rocks-in-space]

I absolutely loved how tense the scenes with Ame at the North Pole felt! It reminded me a lot of her conversation with Orima, where any misstep or stray word could have disastrous (or deadly) consequences. Ame/Erika killed it both times, but it's very nerve-racking to be heading into a whole conclave of witch interactions (as cool as Indri was, it felt clear that their conversation only went as well as it did because Ame is walking the tightrope masterfully so far). Everyone is doing such a great job making you really feel how perilous and significant a task this is for Ame.

[rainbow-femme]

Something about Inception has always bugged me and I finally figured out what it is

I don’t think Mal doing everything she did to set Cob up should have been the backstory, it should have been the actual story, and the actual inception they have to do is convince her she’s not still in a dream and is awake

Because two energy companies feuding is way more boring than a man realizing he accidentally convinced his wife her reality isn’t real and they have the ticking clock of her Gone Girl-ing herself and getting him arrested to work against

In the movie they have the problem of the guy secretly having had dream training to protect himself but with Mal, she’s as experienced as every other person on the team, she knows every trick they do and would be able to see them coming, meaning they would have to try and come up with new tricks she could not know or anticipate

In the movie the characters think if they die they’ll just wake up like normal and Cob has to tell them that actually they’re under a new chemical that won’t wake them up if they die and they’ll go to the bottom consciousness zone. Know who doesn’t know that? Mal, who will be under the impression that if she kills her husband she’ll be waking him up and saving him from being trapped in the fake dream world with her, making her very ok with tracking him down to kill him and not caring if she kills the others because as far as she knows they’re just dream apparitions

And you can keep the fact that Cob is keeping things from the team like in the movie, only instead of it being that he has a guilt manifestation of his dead wife coming after him in dreams it’s that the team doesn’t know why they’re going into Mal’s dream. All they know is she’s been acting weird towards them and Cob said he accidentally incepted something bad in her head, so they just assume he’s incepted the idea that they screwed her over or something. But they then find out too late that she isn’t mad at them she thinks they’re not real and so will have no problem trying to kill them and there’s nothing they can do to convince her otherwise

And you can still have the uncertain ending. Mal would wake up and think she’s finally in the real world, go out and hug her kids, see her friends and hug them because it’s finally her real friends. But now Cob has spent, to him, hours with Mal doing everything in her power to convince him that what he thinks is the real world is only a dream and as he watches the happy reunion you can see him starting to wonder if this is real

[dumpster-fire-sapphic-failgirl]

Someday (hopefully) an angsty youth in Toma will complain to their mentor “we can’t all be as wise and never make mistakes like you”

And an old-but-not-as-old-as-her-years-would-suggest Ame will think of a flooded witchfire plain and fire bursting across a platform covered in magical sand and panicking mages.

And she’ll laugh, but it will be tinged with hint of sadness. “Never make mistakes, eh? I know one or two people who’d disagree with that”

And The Witch of Toma would absentmindedly scratch behind the ears of a fox, fur long gone to gray, as a voice in her head would gently say “I know boss, I miss them too”

[cybertron-smash-or-pass]

TFA Arachnus Prime

[whoopseydaisy]

my theory for the end of WWW #34: Something to Remember You By is sadly that The Stranger is coming to Brockvale to raise Sir Curran and his knights as undead :(

[artificialhaunts]

working on my portraiture and digital painting so of course I had to start with DM extraordinaire: Aabria Iyengar!

[arcadianico]

tomb of oscar wild // save yourself, i’ll hold them back - my chemical romance // sandman #37, a game of you #6, may 1992

[chocolate-cringymuffin]

Behold the power of procrastination 🔥🔥🔥

[vaguely-concerned]

I can't get over how well Skyjacks: Courier's Call manages to capture the feeling of really, really good children's literature. Listening to it seriously does make me feel like a bookish eleven year old all over again, all the sedimentary layers of my adult cynicism and ennui about the fantasy genre washed away for a moment to lay my heart as bare and excitable as it was back then haha.

This podcast also has what I think might be my favourite moment out of all podcasts of all time, full stop... and it's just a snowball fight with no real narrative stakes at all, only a dwelling on the joy and the characters in that particular moment. To this day, thinking about it feels like a big smile in my chest. (To be clear it's not like the show doesn't have powerful narrative stakes or High Drama overall! But I have rarely found a story so willing to and so skillfull at lingering in delight and discovery just for the sake of it. There's such an immense generosity in that which I think is an underappreciated aspect of storytelling, and that I am really grateful for.)

(If you've never heard of it before, I'm talking about the all-ages actual play podcast Skyjacks: Courier's Call, and you can check it out over here if you'd like! It also carries over and builds on a lot of really amazing worldbuilding from Campaign Skyjacks, part of which is a deeply queernorm approach, so that's another level on which people might connect with it. And if all of this weren't enough: absolute banger music at every turn, as with Skyjacks itself. Season 3 is just starting now, so it's a good time to get caught up!)

[katzkreationz]

The Fairy hyperfixations are back and drawing me into an old plot I scraped together...

Eventually I'll clean these up but for the time being, meet Oberon the Fairy King! He's totally on the up and up, I promise! And oh look, Anti Cosmo....I'm sure their convo was fine 🙂

[ribbonpinky-art]

sideyshowy bobby

[demeterdefence]

my energy has been low lately so i've stuck to just liveblogging chapter releases, but i was thinking earlier about why lore olympus really nettles me and it's truly indicative of a wider issue.

it's disappointing that a major ancient religion that is still practiced by some people today has been reduced to a caricature of itself, and i say this knowing that there are thousands of reinterpretations of the greek myths, there will always be a new opinion or retelling of them. retelling the myth of hades and persephone isn't necessarily the issue, so much as the constant and dripping disdain to the cultural roots. we don't need to be greek to appreciate the story, but why remove everything greek from it? why westernize every aspect and remove ties to the cultural roots? why whitewash everything from a myth thousands of years old?

part of the reason these myths continue to resonate with us is because the themes are still relevant today. the loss of a child, the struggle against impossible forces, the (often patriarchal) powers against you, a mothers love. these stories hold power, they gave hope and inspiration, they created meaning and connection, and they were vital to the people who lived in that time, in that place. they will resonate with us for many years still, but stripping the roots and core of it out only makes it a hollow, shallow imitation. it's reality tv with neon colours, no love or heritage present; it's cold and shiny and plastic, and it insults what it claims to portray.