#the darkness surrounds us

[lakecountylibrary]

Book Review: The Darkness Surrounds Us by Gail Lukasik

Chicago, 1918: Nellie Lester flees her home in the city to be a nurse on a remote Michigan island for a wealthy lumber baron's pregnant wife. She is haunted by her mother's past and her own demons.

Nellie has more than the Spanish flu motivating her to leave Chicago. This gothic murder-mystery with a touch of romance will keep you guessing! Perfect for a cold, dark night, this novel takes place during a typical Midwest winter. I found it to have an interesting premise, although it was a little slow in sections.

Will Nellie make peace with her demons and solve the island's secrets, before the lake freezes over? Reserve your copy today to find out!

See more of Brenna's recs

Check out The Darkness Surrounds Us

[brookheimer]

people acting like twitter's new post count is gonna cause a mass exodus to tumblr.... this website's demographic has not changed in 865578 years and it sure as hell won't now. this is the site for people who were weird and unhappy in middle school. everyone on here has either been around since they were weird unhappy 13-year-olds or joined when they were weird unhappy 13-year-olds, left because they thought they were normal for a while, then came crawling back again when they realized deep down they were still weird unhappy 13-year-olds. what does this site possibly have to offer you if you grew up happy well-adjusted and unaware of homestuck

[sesamenom]

Day 6 Objects & Symbols for @tolkiengenweek: Silmarils.

[kirbyliker12]

This is the deepest I can delve into how I view them n their implications through imagery before it bcomes incomprehensibl 😙😙😙😙maybe I’ll do a tiny bit of elaborating in tags idk(this was mostly an excuse to practice drawing dranzas head)

[myhauntedheart]

"If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes into you"

-Friedrich Nietzsche

"Si miras largo tiempo a un abismo, el abismo te mira a ti"

-Friedrich Nietzsche

[bthump]

Idk I too want better for Casca but I really dislike the hype for Casca potentially becoming an apostle, these users put it far better than i would:

https://www.tumblr.com/deripmaver/723418827650727936/why-i-am-a-hater-of-the-apostle-casca

https://www.tumblr.com/deripmaver/723493450382802944/im-so-happy-to-find-another-casca-apostle-hater https://

I skimmed these posts to see whether there were any points made that I felt like "responding" to, and there's a few.

First, Casca being a good person has nothing to do with anything except people not wanting her to become a monster, which I obviously don't vibe with because I think the concept of a good person becoming a monster fucks hard, which is one reason I like Berserk a whole lot. And I think a potential Moonbaby sacrifice would fit perfectly with one of the "good person" sacrifice examples they give: the 'person you loved the most and hated the most' sacrifice motivation, since it's intertwined with Griffith in some metaphysical way and it could be a two for the price of one deal. It's almost too on the nose.

Second, I don't think it necessitates Casca joining Griffith. Griffith seems to be out of the Godhand now, incarnated on the physical realm, presumably no longer presiding over sacrifices, and my favourite worldbuilding pet theory is actually that the godhand and Griffith will be at odds. Something's gotta threaten the godhand's existence since something wiped out the last cycle that we saw in Skull Knight's memory, and an incarnate fifth that appears right on schedule seems like just the thing.

Third, Casca's apostle trauma is, if anything, a sign in favour of her becoming an apostle since like, everyone in Berserk is at least tempted to symbolically become their abuser/rapist/nemesis as part of gaining power, eg:

Why can't Casca get in on the interesting and complicated moral and emotional greys here? This is good shit, I want it for Casca. I want her to be tempted to become what she fears, to escape her own sense of powerlessness through abandoning her morals. It's just a more direct version of Guts wanting to become a monster since that's rooted in rape trauma and both the narrative and Guts himself equates monsters to both his rapist and abuser.

I didn't see them mention the fact that apostles are compelled to love Griffith which to me seems like one of the best arguments against it (though again, I skimmed so maybe I missed it), but Ganishka resisted that, and Casca has a long history of repressing her love for Griffith so I think it could actually be a neat, and overcomeable extension of her human feelings.

Another big and better argument against it, particularly after the last couple chapters, is that Miura clearly just did not give a shit about Casca lol. And I mean I already knew that, one reason I thought the apostle Casca theory held water is that it would be a way for Miura to avoid writing Casca's trauma realistically and instead veer into one big dramatic moment followed by fantastical metaphor while keeping her a less nuanced plot point, albeit a more active and fun one than she had been so far. Instead his way of avoiding writing Casca's trauma realistically was to have her faint any time she thinks about it and then take away her personality AGAIN. So yeah, unfortunately I just don't think Miura wanted Casca to be badass and actively affect the plot. Idk if he ever knew what to do with her after deciding not to kill her off just to motivate Guts post-Eclipse.

Finally I just don't know if there's really time for that anymore. My vision was an Empire Strikes Back style end of second act downturn. Casca becomes a monster and sets a new arc in motion, Guts falls into despair and succumbs to the armour, shit gets real and interesting again for a while. Instead Guts' second act downturn is being mad that Griffith is still a god lol. She could definitely still go apostle at the climax of the story, and you better believe I'm still rooting for that, but idk if it'd be as satisfying lol. But I guess we'll see.

Anyway yeah you're free to disagree with any of my hot takes, but you're not gonna convince me Casca shouldn't become an apostle, because my reasoning ultimately boils down to "I would enjoy it." I would certainly enjoy it a hell of a lot more than fainting damsel in distress Casca which is what we're dealing with right now lol. If your reasoning boils down to "I would not enjoy it" then I probably won't convince you either, and that's fine. We'll find out what's going to happen eventually.

And finally I want to err on the side of caution and make it clear that I have no interest in arguing with the user you linked, and I hope you're not planning to be like, some kind of anonymous go-between linking posts back and forth. I used the linked posts as a bouncing off point to explain some of my reasoning, and that's the end of it as far as I'm concerned.

[downtherabbitholewithlucy]

🎵Imagine the insults a blessing. Imagine accepting the truth🎵

[bsatanas]

Some sketchs from the wlw books I’ve been reading in the past few months:

- A Dark and Hollow Star

- One Last Stop

- Crier’s War

- Engelsfors Trilogy

- The Abyss Surrounds us

[dykeyangel]

like 'i wanna go' doesn't mean he's suicidal, it means 'i've developed friends and family, i've grown, i've experimented and discovered who i am and made peace with it, i've loved everyone i needed to and they loved me back and i know that now. i can let go of the idea of glory and just be with family for the time i have left. i'll sit with ed until i go and tell that i love him, tell him it's okay that i'll be gone because he has people who care for him, it's not just me anymore, i can trust stede to love him, watch him become who he wants to be, i can tell him that i want him to be happy, that he can leave blackbeard behind and be who he is outside of being the legend we made together. ed's loved and protected, the crew is safe, my family is taken care of, and i've done everything i need to.' he doesn't mean 'i wanna go because i don't want to live' it means 'i wanna go, i'm ready, i lived my life and i can let go now' izzy died happy and fulfilled, he died in the arms of the man he loved, surrounded by people who loved him. the crew mourned him by celebrating lucius and pete's love, they mourned him by going forward and avenging him, forming a new family and crew to carry on the legacy of piracy, and most importantly ed is mourning him by doing exactly what izzy told him to do, he's letting blackbeard die and allowing himself to be loved, he moves into a little house with someone who will always love him with izzy's grave and memorial in view, and izzy will always be with ed in so many ways, but especially because he gave him permission to let go of his darkness and become someone better

[emile-hides]

Upon rewatch of the Mario Movie, I really gotta wonder how long the Mario Bros were in the Mushroom Kingdom for. 

They get sucked through the pipe past sundown Brooklyn time, which depending on the season is like 8-9 o’clock, Mario arrives in the Mushroom Kingdom in the day time, maybe late afternoon, and spends the rest of the day through the night into the morning on Peach’s Mario Maker level, travels all the next day, sleeps in a Fire Flower field for the night, arrives at the Kong Kingdom mid the next day, leaves the Kong Kingdom on Karts around sunset, which turns to night as they are ambushed, leading to Mario and DK spending the entire night inside an eel only breaking out early the next morning, just to make it barely in time to Peach and Bowser’s wedding sometime around noon, and go back through the pipe to have it be early morning in Brooklyn with the rest of the Mario family carrying on with breakfast as usual.

So they spend 3 Days in the Mushroom Kingdom, but only like 12 hours of Brooklyn time seems to have passed.

[starsymphonium]

Smoke weed, eat fruit

[dnangelic]

rlly do think dark's magic is basically best defined as being capable of just about whatever the hell he wants. 'it's magic i don't have to explain SHIT yo' <- dark at all times. the caveat is of course that he can't ever actually cast any magic without it taking a toll on daisuke's body, but whenever that's a mitigated issue (like in other verses where it's way more expected of dai to somehow to be able to fight and he's got handicap equipment) like. just because he Looks like he'd be a guy with strictly ~the powers of darkness~ or something doesn't mean that's how it is. canonically he blasts out enough force to restart an entire blacked-out amusement park, can manipulate other people's memories and erases them with literally little to no trouble, he's pretty much constantly putting people to sleep in one way or another, DPS is spensive but debuffs are almost Free

[lystring]

just love that amongst all the insane pushback people have been getting lately for talking very openly about fatphobia in our society which is a serious problem people are straight up reblogging posts adding severely triggering images of extremely anorexic people as some sort of Gotcha, like fatphobia Cant be real because Look how mean people are being about this person who is clearly dying from one of the worst diseases born Out Of Our Fucking Society Being Fatphobic im losing my mind what is happening etc

[whalesfall]

thinking Weirdly about that time an ex friend was telling me about how she shittalked me with one of HER ex friends about how I was pretentious and how like, deeply alien to me that was. like I refuse to talk down to people (or try very hard not to) and I have difficulty Distilling shit into shorter sentences because I hate reducing ideas or not being totally clear, which isn’t for everyone but. pretentious?

[starlooove]

He is in fact not cool with his friends killing people he just can’t do shit about it and the fact that he thinks he can do smth about (and does!) when it comes to his kids is like a major point

[misedejem]

Two of them!

Finally, my island sanctuary can have a hythades zone! It cost so much Gil to get them both!