#spectre talks

[spectralclockwork]

since i plan on crawling out of the ditches soon (wink wink hint) I'm going to do a teeny bit of a self promo to my fellow beloved writers out there. I'm spectre, I was active in shuake fic communities about a year and a half ago and though I never gained a whole lot of traction I did have a lot of fun chatting with other writers!

Though they were small, you might remember me from my fics Penny For Your Thoughts and Eat Your Heart Out, as well as many many thread rambles.

Ultimately a combination of mental health issues and the decline of the beloathed twitter I had to leave the platform and stopped posting my work. But NO MORE! I miss the days of spreading my madness amidst the world, so I plan to start posting again here while I work on a very special fic I've had on the backburner for two years now.

If you're interested, stay tuned! I have lots in store for you all.

((and if you recognize me as someone you used to chat with or just want to connect, feel free to come say hello!))

[milkywayes]

GARRUS VAKARIAN: DATABASE IMAGE ACCESS. > PT. 1 : 2160, 2166, 2170. > all files backdated according to user preferences: (terran_coordinated.calendar).

[a-crow-with-rights-and-anxiety]

Hey so you remember this thing that everyone on mathblr got excited about recently?

This is the hat, and it's what's called an "aperiodic monotile". This means that no matter how you arrange copies of this tile, you can never get an arrangement that will repeat infinitely (think of it like the irrational numbers of tilings). This was big news in mathematics as while sets of more than one tiles have been found that are aperiodic (e.g: The Penrose Tiles), this was the first tile that's aperiodic by itself, hence "monotile". (There are some caveats to this but that's not important for understanding this post)

However.

If you look at images of the hat tiling, you may notice something.

If you look at the tiles labled 1 and 2, you'll see that one's a reflected copy of the other. In fact, any infinite arrangement with hats requires you to you mix unreflected and reflected tiles. Which raises the question: is it possible to have an aperiodic monotile that doesn't need reflections?

Presenting the Spectre, A chiral aperiodic monotile.

Using only translation and rotation, any arrangement of copies of this tile will never repeat.

Mathematically speaking, this is really fucking cool.

The paper on it is still in preprint, but hopefully I won't need to retract this post. A copy of it can be found here and a post going into some more details of how the shape was discovered is here.

[senei]

bro needs some chapstick

[trek-tracks]

Lost TOS episode plot where Bones gets possessed by the spirit of an ancient cowboy and nobody notices for three days

[autistickaitovocaloid]

Finished this game like a minute ago

[justsalpals]

the spectre really had no idea what she was doing to me when she nonchalantly described the Voices as "shards of broken glass on the floor"

I'll never be over it

a man with a head full of broken glass, trying to do the Right Thing among all the constant discord and overlapping pleas and more pieces of himself fracturing underfoot with every tentative step

how it implies sharpness and reflections and fragility and images falling into one another and something broken that can never be put back

[ivystoryweaver]

IvyStoryWeaver's 1st Fic-iversary

My Masterlist

🎉 I posted my first Tumblr fic/first Moon Knight fic With You on May 29, 2023!

📚 Since then, I've posted 60 stories involving over 120 different chapters/individual posts, a few Moodboards, and Oscar Isaac Characters Valentines

💞 I have the most fun moots and lovely followers and I gotta celebrate with you!

📥 SEND ME REQUESTS! Unlike for my 1000 Follower/Holiday Celebration, I am taking regular, real, full requests - anything you like!

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ

❓What’s your favorite story? Tell me! (Masterlist)

📖 Send me requests about your fave stories! And questions about where any of my fic characters are now. I would love to tell you about:

How is Marc doing with his sobriety after With You? or how is Jake adjusting to being out of the shadows? (Or how were they before the story?)

Questions about Poe and Elia from The Only One

Or Jake and the mob boss’ daughter from 3 Times fic

How about ghost!reader and the boys in Spectre

How are Marc/Steven and their kiddos Elle & Max from Eight Nights doing?

Or did you like Lockley, Grant and Jakob better in What a Mother Can Be?

How's life for Steven after Steven Grant Oblivious Roommate Headcanons

Or Miguel after (or before!) Decadent

Let's not forget Perfect Fit Nathan and Nate (part 2 is almost done, I promise!)

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ

DON'T FORGET:

🎮 - games - "Would You Rather?" "FMK" etc 🤍- get-to-know-you questions here or Top 3's here

OR just shout into my Askbox

Scroll to the bottom of this post for prompt ideas

All of you have made this the most fun year in a long time. Thank you!

My Masterlist

Askbox

Previous Celebrations

[flowertab]

Emmy realizing she got trolled by a ten year old

Earlier in the game she insists she saw a mouse come out of a pipe, and Luke is like, “sorry Emmy, Misthallery doesn’t have mice” while having a LITERAL MOUSE IN HIS POCKET

[ketterdamskaelishprince]

ada's spectre, and why i'll likely always feel sad about it

here is the promised analysis/talk about ada's spectre. going to preface this by saying i obviously don't know the true intent behind everything and her design, i just like to look, giggle and then make sad little observations which just help me love this silly webcomic even more. so if you disagree with me on something– totally ok! i love to learn and i love to see different interpretations.

there's also a few bits i missed out because i wrote this all last night in a bit of a haze, and i cannot be bothered to expand on some of my ideas, especially when it's just stuff like "BROS SO PARANOID AND RAW RIGHT NOW".

anyways, here we go :) @mugcereal this one's for u pookie <3

so i think with ada's spectre, we first need to look at the instance as to how she gets it, because that always makes things way more sad!

to specify, she turns into her spectre at episode 69, and i think it's really sad how she does it. she basically gets a string of roasts from prospero that go along the lines of calling her "conceited" "twadry" and "... and stupid!" – effectively throwing back in ada's face what she believes everyone thinks of her.

(obviously, as a very big and glaring sidenote, i believe prospero is aro/ace or just aromantic so OBVIOUSLY i am not bashing him for this. bros told her so many times that he doesn't want to be with her, let alone to be touched. that is a flaw in ada's character and is a reminder to us on the importance of boundaries!!!!)

so, ada is basically there, collapsed on the floor in a robe– effectively showing the most intimate and private part of herself as an insecure and lonely girl. and that's when she transforms.

i think it's interesting to understand how this most likely links to her life and how she died. so we know she was killed with an axe, most likely by the man she fell in love with and worked for, and how prospero's words in this situation, hurt her just the same as the words before her death. why?

because they remind ada of what she knows and fears she is: just a stupid, fake and cheap person who will never have the same status and respect as the people she pretends to be and surrounds herself by.

i think it's also interesting that she's clutching her stomach/torso here, and correct me if i'm wrong but that could be a potential signal to the part of her that was axed to death (?). no idea if that's a good shout or not but it's what i first thought!

anyways! now we move onto her spectre design!

first of all, her spectre design eats. like just a personal side note, i love it. it's just so gorgeous and i don't care if she's terrifying to some because to ME? to me, she's my gorgeous little pookie who can scream and show people their worst fears and she looks amazing whilst she does it <3

ok anyways, actual design.

to first understand her design, i thought i'd show you what banshee's traditionally in folklore look like!

typically, they are described in two ways. the first way is a youthful women with long black hair, blue eyes and just super pale. this description could also lose the blue eyes and just keep the black hair– either way the first depiction of a banshee is a super young woman.

this is not the one we're focussing on today folks!

we're going to focus on the second depiction. a hag/ old woman, with red cheeks, a grey cloak and a green dress, often seen to be combing her hair. banshee's throughout folklore are known to wail, scream and cry when a family member had died. to most, the banshee was a sign that death was coming to your household and they are known in myths and folklore as a predictor of death.

now, hold onto the green dress and look at ada's design real quick for me.

here we see a lot of green, which yay! definitely shows signs it comes from the second depiction. i think, on top of it being a nod to the second depiction, i think it could also be an allusion to something else: jealousy.

green symbolism in media can often vary, from meaning new life, luck and also jealousy. and i think if we take in the things ada screams whilst in her spectre form, such as this from episode 82:

you see there definitely is some sort of jealousy there, but this isn't something i necessarily want to focus on, it's just an observation i made that may or may not be true!

anyways, to continue, i want to look at ada's outfit when she's a banshee. i'm going to basically be making my notes i took last night look nicer.

(keep in mind that when i wrote these, my ideas were literally bouncing off my brain and sometimes they're a bit contradictory, but i think that's the beauty of my crack theory analysis!)

i think the act of almost showing her bones to the outside, there's a level of rawness to ada we don't usually see. her spectre form essentially gives her the power to scream out her anger, and by seeing her bones it's almost as if to say this is the ada she doesn't show people. this is the ada that she keeps to herself because god forbid anybody love her (because in life and death it's become abundantly apparent to her that nobody does seem to love that ada).

but then, what i thought was also a super cool thing as how the bones almost act like a corset!

then i got sad because i looked at the bows, and because something dawned on me and it made me start to frown. there was a sad realization to me as i looked at ada's spectre design that even in this all powerful form, she hasn't lost her insecurities, they just become more prevellant. because for all of the traditional wrinkles, hag-like appearance a banshee is meant to have, ada barely has any.

obviously this could be in part to character design and stuff, and yeah probably– but let me be sad!

because ada carries her frills and bows from life here because she doesn't want to be ugly, she doesn't want to be this creeping monster who rips apart people. because if she's not got her intelligence or status or anything going for her, she has her appearance and by god she's not going to let that go to waste. so here her spectre form is, a banshee.

so what must ada do? she must takes her frills and keep her insecurities, her fears and her crippling need to be loved.

another aspect which is super interesting is the stitching on her body. one one hand, it could be an allusion to her violent death, suggesting the man she fell in love with didn't just stop at axing her once, but just kept on fucking going (which, you know: fuck you, whoever you are).

but on the other hand, it could be a metaphor for ada's thinly veiled facade she puts on of being a prim and proper lady (which we actually, interestingly enough, see she looses a lot the more time she spends with montresor– opting to take parts of his language like "ain't" and "beggin'". this sort of leads on from previous ideas people have made of ada willing to change herself to be loved. she swaps civility for the wild wild west all for a bit of love).

ada offers up parts of herself in this metaphor. that's what she always does. she offers herself to the rich man she fell in love with, she offers herself up to prospero (again, look at the. side note. bro wasn't wrong for rejecting her he literally can't like her) and she offers herself up to the acolytes and she fucking barks for them (because i'm not over that).

piece by piece, she strips away everything she is until she literally is just skin and bone. and once she's torn herself apart, she needs to stitch herself back together– because it's against the facade she's put on to look so broken and messy. and so she repeats the cycle again, giving more and more until she is literally hanging on by a thread.

her powers are also super cool. traditionally, as i said, banshees wail when a family member is soon to die/has died, and is often like an omen/predictor of death. so yeah, ada having a banshee scream makes sense. but the whole 'fear itself' is also super cool. i kind of like that she has this– because its sort of satisfying for her, the girl who's been pushed over but still comes running back, to watch as people become paralysed with fear. idk, retribution or whatever.

i'm going to leave you with this not very profound thing i wrote last night (and then just some other mumblings):

i think that although spectres are super powerful and also just a very fantastic concept, they're also fragile. spectres are quite literally the monster inside of you. yet here ada's monster is, and with all her bows and revamped dress of a banshee (or potentially an allusion to her life as a maid) she tries desperately to be anything but that. because to here it's ugly and it's too much of her on display. and with some much of you on display comes the very fear that if you are hated, disliked or something repulsive, you no longer have anything to blame on anybody else. you just have yourself to blame.

(as morella says here in episode 88).

i'm not saying ada isn't deeply flawed, because she is. she has so much fucking baggage and insecurities that they literally forbid her from doing the right thing sometimes. i don't think she's a good person, but i also think that she has the opportunity to be a good person/ do a semi-good/ non-bad thing, and all she has to do is take it. but i also think it's nice how that's shown in her spectre design.

and, you know, if none of this makes sense, that's also fine!

anyways, yeah. somebody tell me never to make a random analysis at night again because it's a bit of a bitch to translate in the morning.

[sleepynegress]

BELOVED - 1998

[spectralclockwork]

is there any overlap of fandom for persona 5 and warframe. i have an au i'm itching to talk about.

[kaiserouo]

If you hack it, it takes care of you.

(prev)

[furbyqueen69]

Okay what if Lenore's specter matches Annabel's and is like a husband or something-

[confused-beany]

Having watched all the Bond (Daniel Craig) movies now I can safely ascertain he was indeed hotter as the cunty dramatic detective in Knives Out and should keep doing more of those

[focsle]

What’s the point of claiming a place is haunted when all you have to say is that there are ‘strange lights and sounds’. That’s so boring. WHAT strange lights and sounds. A car? At least make up something interesting.