#their friendship is fascinating to me

[bossladytae]

Fic: The Strongest Bonds Need No Words

Picking up a rock from behind him, Sougo threw it toward the river, watching it skip once. He would show them all by becoming the greatest swordsman they would ever witness, putting Hijikata to shame instead and earning Kondou’s praise once again. They would all regret underestimating him and treating him like a child. The hairs on his neck prickled to attention, and Sougo shot a glance to his left. There was a tall boy standing not too far from him, also facing the river in silence. He was one of the new recruits with thick, fiery orange hair. Saitou Shimaru, fourteen-years-old, bent down and picked up a rock and threw it across the surface of the water, the stone skipping four times before plopping into the water. Then, he looked at Sougo, with impassive yet sharp red eyes.

Summary: In the forest, long before the group of young men are ever known as the Shinsengumi, Shimaru teaches a pouting Sougo how to skip a rock on the water.

And so begins an unusual yet strong friendship.

--

The link to AO3 is in the title if you are interested in reading.

[ottosbigtop]

Newsflash, asshole!

[silentreigns]

Did Charles's phone fall during his interview and he didn't notice? What's going on

[slices-of-naranja]

do any of my friends know the love I carry in every word i say to them. When I add too many words, drag on a joke that’s over, when I message them despite the fact the conversation barely ended five minutes ago? every word i speak is an intimacy that’s laced with outright adoration for them as people and all the little details that make them who they are. Do you know I love you? Do y’all know how much of you I try to commit to memory? How much I try to make you smile? do y’all know the love I feel for you?

[overnighttosunflowers]

I've been thinking a lot about that interaction between Laudna and Orym in episode 102. How it starts with Orym saying "I'm so sorry that the world is moving so fast that we couldn't take the time to help you."

There's a certainty to that framing that is very typical of Orym. Not "I'm sorry the world is moving so fast that we didn't take the time to help you." They couldn't take the time. The mission comes first, second, and third until they've seen it through. 

Now, it's hardly a revolutionary observation that Orym's worldview comes from a particular combination of military training, survivor's guilt, and calcified grief that is ultimately self-destructive. It's also not a revolutionary observation that the party has not quite realized this, or not in so many words. They tend to treat his perspective as the only one unshakeable by personal failing. Later in that conversation in 102, Laudna even tells Orym that if someone needed to "finish the job, put me down," she'd wanted it to be him, because she knows he has the ability to do what's right.

His friends think of him as the only one who isn't a powder keg waiting to go off, but it has gone off, with Orym secretly and self-destructively pledging himself to Nana Morri in order to keep his friends alive. Betraying his friends' trust in favor of the mission. And in the end it didn't accomplish anything.

I think of Orym as someone who holds multiple truths at once. First and foremost there's a soldier's truth, the grim relentlessness that's all that keeps him going sometimes. But we've seen Orym be soft, too. He's gentle. He loves his friends. It's there underneath the grim layers of suppression. We saw it more early campaign. I don't think that he was lying in 49 when he told Imogen that he wasn't worried about her just hours after conspiring with Fearne to take her out if necessary. I think he wanted so, so badly to discount that soldier POV and buy all the way into trusting Imogen. But he couldn't. And I don't know if he was able to reconcile that. I think he genuinely believed both. Liam has said that before the events of this campaign reactivated Orym's trauma, he was legitimately on a path to healing his grief. I think that a healthier Orym would have been able to set down the soldier's truth to simply trust Imogen.

But that's not where the campaign took us. At the Malleus Key in episode 51, Orym collected a locket from a dead Vanguard soldier to remind himself that the enemy are still human. And then after Bor'dor died, in episode 63, he dropped it. Locking in on that soldier's truth. Making that deal with Morri. Not letting his friends stop and rest when they need it badly. Pressuring Imogen to give in to Predathos on the moon so that they could learn more.  

There's a grim run of episodes where Orym is stuck like that, prioritizing his soldier's truth and suppressing the part of him that is his heart. Now, I'm not someone who needs to always feel warmly towards a character or agree with their choices to appreciate their depth and role in the story, and I respect what Liam was doing there. The willingness of the CR cast to have their characters make messy and unpopular choices is one of the things I appreciate most about the show, and one of the things that leads us to the richest and most meaningful moments of character arc resolution. 

But that's where I've been frustrated with Orym: by and large, resolution has not been coming. He's been driving deeper and deeper into his traumatized worldview, clinging to it and stubbornly refusing to hear challenges to it. Repeatedly shutting down arguments by mentioning his dead family. I get it, and I feel for him, and I don't know how else Liam could be playing it given the story that Orym is in and the character that he is—not least a soldier whose training tells him never to question the mission. But, god, I'm ready for the growth. Ready for the story to prod Orym in directions that change. Ideally a shift towards a healthier perspective, but even hitting such a low that the Hells can't help but recognize that Orym's rigid morality is as destructive as it is sustaining. That will make them push back on him.

Because telling Orym he's the good one reinforces his worst instincts, increases the pressure he puts on himself, makes him double down. What he needs is someone to push back. He needs that increasingly brittle sense of his own lens as morally superior and righteous to shatter. 

And I am so, so excited for it to happen—because we're starting to see it starting to crack, just a little. In episode 92, he acknowledged to Imogen that his lens is a lens and not simple objective truth, and even implied it's one he wishes he knew how to set down: 

And now, when Laudna tells him he knows best of all how to do what's right, he admits it again: not a lot of his choices have panned out.

And it's true. They haven't. And I hope he keeps on saying it.

I'm glad to have Dorian back and on a revenge quest against the gods, because Orym trusts Dorian and Dorian is not going to let him sit unchallenged in his own convictions the way the rest of the Hells have been. I'm excited to see more of Braius, who not only disagrees with Orym about the Primes, but also doesn't have the same vested interest as the rest of the party in seeing Orym as good. I hope they both push back on him. I hope it unsettles him and confuses him and breaks his worldview and soldier identity enough that when the pieces come back together, instead of scarring over a second time, they can simply finally heal.

[elvisqueso]

Pocahontas refusing to confide in Nakoma.

Pocahontas (1995)

rambling lil' meta under the cut

i've been thinking a lot about pocahontas's relationship with nakoma and what kind of friends they really are in the context of the film. when we meet them both, pocahontas is elevated and nakoma is in a boat far below her, shouting up to reach her. i think nakoma is always reaching for pocahontas and pocahontas will only reach back sometimes. it's a pretty unbalanced friendship, when you look at it, and i wonder why nakoma remains the main point of contact in the community for pocahontas besides her father. perhaps it's because they're similar ages. maybe they're childhood friends who just got so used to each other that the one may take the other for granted.

pocahontas never confides in nakoma, and you gotta wonder why. even their first interaction has pocahontas demurring when she answers that she was up on the cliff thinking. thinking about what? She doesn't say, but she doesn't refute nakoma's assumptions.

and nakoma...what does she get out of this friendship? maybe she's just used to trailing after pocahontas this way, maybe she just doesn't have another friend, or she thinks pocahontas needs her.

nakoma is sort of a foil for thomas, who trails after john smith like a starry-eyed fanboy with an intense para-social relationship perspective. nakoma also is the active participant in the friendship, not pocahontas. nakoma fills in the gaps of their relationship with assumptions and guesswork, because pocahontas is so reticent, so hesitant to share of herself that nakoma Has to. and when pocahontas's seclusion goes too far, when she fails to confide in nakoma some of the most essential elements of what she intends, nakoma has to fill in the gaps again. and when she does it's Not Good, and her solution is to send their strongest warrior (a man with affection for pocahontas, who might keep her secrets if she needs him to) to try and save her friend. and then it all blows up in their faces and a man lies dead in the water for it.

every relationship in the movie is so tragic like brO—

[foursaints]

thinking about pandora again

AUTISM GIRL!! with her big pale unsettling eyes and sallow cheeks and heart-shaped face and knobby knees. she’s like something that would crawl from a lake & drag you to your death in a fable… xeno was her favorite author, and fifteen years older than her, and she was a weirdo student who ran off to marry that old man (scandalous!)

if she had lived i think she would have been the ministry’s most unruly cursebreaker, and she would have quietly filled rosier manor with pilfered artifacts like the villain from an indiana jones movie, and she would have crowsfeet & pale yellow hair to her knees, and bill weasley would have WORSHIPPED her during his internship.

i hate the idea of her in cutesy tiktok clothes. i dislike the idea of her as fashionable? that’s another oddball child from Rosier House… she was brought up in ancient motheaten hand-me-downs from her grandmother & fraying cardigans & muddy nightgowns she dragged on the floor. she dresses like evan (soft fabrics, baggy silhouettes, for comfort) with her tangled hair limp in her face but she has a magpie impulse that he doesn’t— she collects bangles and bottle-caps and bird-skulls and beads to wear all at once…

i associate her with weather-based magic a lot? i think her magic has a lot of whims (works cited: blowing herself up). i see her accidental childhood-magic to have involved the grotesque (reanimating roadkill), yes, but more frequently bringing the outside weather indoors. if it’s storming outside, it rains in the twins’ room as well. pandora has trouble with boundaries (indoors/outdoors, alive/undead, herself/her brother) and blurs them. her magic smells like ozone & singed hair.

[otaku553]

The eventual kazuha and sanemi dynamic

[curapicas]

The rest of the party is maybe more obvious, so it took me a while to figure out Laios' role in the hall of Izutsumi's caring adult companions. And the role is:

he answers the questions.

[couldneverhurtusnow]

[chemistry] it's not a word that actors [use]. but you must endeavor a little bit to try and fall in love, in whatever that capacity is. and andrew is a very easy person to fall in love with. he's kind, generous, talented. we shot the film at the perfect junction in our friendship where there was a lot we didn't know about each other, but there was mutual admiration and respect. and a similar sense of humor. (...) yeah, it felt fizzy when we were acting. especially with that first scene at the door -- it's so well-written. you feel like you're dancing through the scene, you can go in loads of different ways, and if i went one way, andrew would go another. if that's what chemistry is, i was aware it was happening.

-- paul on chemistry and whether ‘they (andrew & paul) knew instantly that their onscreen relationship was working’ in all of us strangers, screendaily.com (1/31/24)

[the-woman-upstairs]

If the cycles really are cycling, I just don’t see Daniel escaping the penthouse that easily. The parallels between him and Claudia have all the subtlety of a brick to the face and just like how her single-minded focus on taking down Lestat blinded her to Louis, it makes sense for Daniel's personal vendetta against Armand to do the same. I mean, my guy was directly warned against worrying about Armand at the expense of ignoring Louis and we have yet to see that come to fruition. Sure, they’ve connected over remembering San Francisco, but if Louis is capable of lashing out against his own daughter, what chance does Daniel have? He’s already experienced the consequences of Louis “detonating” once before and this time around Daniel is actively building a powder keg, just waiting for the right moment to light the fuse. Like, maybe he thinks the resulting explosion will just tank Louis and Armand’s relationship, but he is still very much in the blast radius!

[roninreverie]

My Hero Academia Team-Up Missions #48: UA's Textile Arts Club

I can't wait to read this one when it finally becomes available.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

sequel to this ramble cause the way james talks bout the reduced cherik scenes throughout the xmen films in this video is making me want to kill people. 'we'll always have paris darling' what if we all blew up.

[kairithemang0]

Do I not ship tadmore romantically because it's straight? yeah probably. they will stay lesbian and bisexual besties with Tadius having feelings for a bit that he gets over and they're just good close friends until the end of time thank you good night <3

[mamawasatesttube]

trying to codify rules for running that lil followers only "we must fix the kon tags" minibang and i think this is the funniest one ive come up with so far:

NO jason todd allowed.

exceptions can be made for background tentatodd ONLY