#this just reminds me of last season

[hyperfixatingonstephcurry]

I feel like a fic about everyone’s first encounter with Wardell™️ would be extremely entertaining

[boxdotden]

So a horse walks into a funeral...

[cashmere-caveman]

[1] Richard Siken, Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light [2] Being Human S1E5 [3] Clint Smith, When people say, “we have made it through worse before” [4] Being Human S3E8 [5] Guillermo del Toro at the 2018 Golden Globes [6] Being Human S1E6 [7] Allie X, Fresh Laundry [8] Being Human S1E5 [9] Christian Wiman, The Parable of Perfect Silence [10] Being Human S3E8 [11] Hanif Abdurraqib, And What Good Will Your Vanity Be When The Rapture Comes [12] Being Human S2E8 [13] Allie X, Fresh Laundry [14] Heidi Priebe, To Love Someone Long-term Is To attend A Thousand Funerals of The People They Used To Be [16] Being Human S3E8 [17] Christian Wiman, Flight

[dazais-guardian-angel]

Dazai truly has become Oda in every way imaginable now. :’ ) the final words he gives to Sigma are the exact same words Oda gives to Dazai in the original scene Asagiri wrote for the end of the Dark Era stage play, 後は頼んだよ, “I will leave the rest to you.”

And I really love the progression of the way his eyes look in this chapter, and how Sigma is allowed to have this moment of questioning and rebelling against all the faith Dazai had naturally been leading him to place in him up to this point, which is what I hoped would happen. He’s been confused ever since Dazai first chose him, and everything he’s ever known about how everyone sees/treats him turned upside down by Dazai’s words and actions, and just when he’s finally started to feel like he’s found some hope and lowered his guard, Dazai pulls him back underwater, instantly reinforcing all of Sigma’s trust issues and reinforcing that he should never believe in anyone, because (he thinks) everyone lives to manipulate other people. Dazai’s dark eyes here reinforce that, too, and the other panels around this point where they look white and hollow and demonic, all like Fyodor’s. He appears like an evil, looming force pulling him back under, trying to kill him, when Sigma is so close to the freedom of the air he desperately wants (aka free from pain, which is what he’s been seeking his whole life).

But then Dazai makes this face, and the first one I posted above, and Sigma understands, even without words, that Dazai doesn’t have evil intent: on the contrary, he actually is bound and determined to save his life -- and the light in his eyes comes out through this determination and kindness, arguably the most light we’ve ever seen his eyes have in the entire manga (in the “I leave the rest to you” panel too). The “No” could be Dazai wordlessly telling him to not leave the water, but my first assumption was that it was Sigma telling himself no, stopping his own train of thought about Dazai being the same as Fyodor and someone he shouldn’t have trusted -- he soon realizes why Dazai stopped him, and that he’s still going to try to save him, that he wasn’t wrong about him, and it’s all because Dazai’s earnest expressions get through to him.

And it’s just so heartwarming to see how far Dazai has come. :’ ) He tried so hard to save Sigma (doing the most physical action we’ve ever seen him do, really), did his best to be reassuring and comforting to him afterwards, and then reaffirmed his promise to ensure he escaped Meursault alive, his final words to Sigma echoing Oda’s and his last action being to save an orphan, just like Oda did in his last moments. Obviously Dazai isn’t actually going to die, he’ll be saved somehow, but I do think as of right now he really does think this is the end for him, and that he didn’t foresee the elevator dropping -- he was examining the wires a few chapters ago because he thought he might need to know how to open the doors in case Fyodor pulled an uno reverse, hence why he looks more annoyed than shocked when the water starts, but here, when the drop collision sequence is initiated, he looks genuinely shook in comparison. There’d be no reason for him to give the thumbs up if he knew more danger was on the way, either; that’d just be cruel. No, I don’t think he saw this coming, and it’s important that that turns out to be the case: it’s important that he spent what he believes to have been his last moments saving someone like Oda wanted for him, and doing what Oda would have done in the same situation. That doesn’t mean that it’s okay that Dazai throws his life away so easily, and cares so little for his own safety; he still has a long way to go in that regard. But it’s still so beautiful to see how much he’s changed, and how much he’s truly begun to embody Oda and his legacy; the fact that he messed up and miscalculated, because Dazai isn’t infallible, but in turn didn’t hesitate to use his last moments to save Sigma. Oda would be so proud for everything he did here. :’ ) 💖

There are a lot of options for how Dazai will be saved, and by who, but personally I hope (and I kind of expect) that Sigma chooses to not give up on him and ultimately plays a role in saving his life, to return the favor and repay him for his kindness. Not only would it be a beautiful way to initiate Sigma’s ADA entrance exam as people have said, but it would bring the Dazai > Atsushi > Sigma chain full circle: Dazai saved Atsushi at the start of the series, allowing him to (spiritually) save Sigma at sky casino thanks to the growth fostered in him by Dazai, and now finally, Sigma could potentially save Dazai thanks to Atsushi kickstarting his own growth (and Dazai continuing it). Fyodor is overly cocky right now and so tunnel-visioned on killing Dazai, it’s possible that he has no idea that Sigma managed to escape the elevator and is now a wild card; even if Sigma doesn’t go as far as killing Fyodor himself (which I don’t want, tbh; that’s endgame stuff arcs down the line and imo Nikolai and Dazai should be the ones involved with that), he could throw a wrench in the jailbreak duel, and help Dazai and Chuuya get out alive. It would be poetic, and only fitting, for Fyodor to underestimate and be outdone by the kind of person Dazai told him is the strongest in chapter 77 -- a self-proclaimed “ordinary man” -- who could only have the strength to take such action thanks to the chain of kindness that Oda originally started. 💖

[m4ndysk4nkovich]

the way that in mandy’s first ever scene she stands tall and walks and speaks with such confidence, but by her last scene she seems embarrassed and more timid. free my girl she did nothing wrong

[usedtobecooler]

i hope what’s gone on the last day has served as a lesson and reminder to people that this affects our entire community and to cause drama and distress, even if you think its only aimed towards one person, means others will filter out and jump ship to avoid the same treatment. how many times must we continue to reiterate that this is the reason our fandom is dying and continuing to die — it costs nothing to be a decent person and at least then this community would still be thriving. hopefully whatever fandoms you all go onto next get the grace that our one hasn’t.

[medievalmidinette]

If anyone is in need of more Quilby/Yugo sibling relationship after last week episodes i highly recommend 'Memories' on Ao3

https://archiveofourown.org/works/924199/chapters/1796126#workskin

[veryanxiouscreature]

SANS THE SKELETON??

[thewingedwolf]

i’m sorryyyyyy i just can’t get over being so bitter about how kate doesn’t get to be a true heroine and lead of her own fucking season and we spent sooooo much time on that stupid plot with the featheringtons last year but the moment the heroine is white again, she gets to be the main character of her own story. i don’t watch this show to watch two white people make out in period clothing, i can watch literally any other period piece for that!!!!

[james-stark-the-writer]

was just rewatching Jack Saint and Patricia Taxxon's video on Mauler (it's called "Long Critique Is Not Deep Critique" and it's like actually so fucking good) and was so taken aback by hearing Twin Peaks music in there now that i've actually seen Twin Peaks lmao, that Laura Palmer theme is so fucking good, Angelo Badlamenti is just truly on another level, i already wanna rewatch the show now (S02 is good, y'all are just cowards).

[masonjarsmoments]

Have to say that I really enjoyed watching them and this podium - still sad for Tate but he was so happy for Erik

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

what frustrates me abt the nevers being cancelled is not necessarily the story like it felt sort of complete. complete enough for a season anyway, openings for a second but, like, done

but all the little things like i get why Knitter, you Knit flesh back together it's like stitching but different. but why Stripe? it's the soldier, the brute force (maybe?), the just following orders, good for using your body to protect the more valuable members of the team but nothing more than that ("im not good, im no leader, im not smart, im just a stripe"), why do we call that Stripe, what does that refer to? and the leader i think of the team was Crescent? why do they call people 'gray'. does it really mean entirely the same thing as 'green' bc i dont think so. theres so much abt the future world we could still find out

how did the galanthi...arrive. how did it start. the parallel situation to the victorians getting spored what was the reaction in future-society. when exactly are they?

[averlym]

a word to the wise sometimes the only true rest is looking beyond what you thought was success

so true! adamandi is full of wise advice such as this, including: "and you'll never feel better if you - fucking die- you stupid ass!"

[tev-the-random]

I know this is very sudden, but allow me to rant about Sonic 06-

*the crowd boos*

LISTEN! It's not about the game itself, that is a story for another post. I specifically want to talk about Princess Elise-

*the crowd boos harder*

Hear me out: Elise had so much potential to be such a fascinating character. It's all right there. So I'm talking about it. Buckle up, I'm putting this girl in a blender 17 years after her game died.

The absurd missed potential of Elise really boils down to her role in the story as a damsel in distress and how heavily the game imposes that role on her, even when it's unnecessary/uninteresting. Point in case, she gets kidnapped and rescued four different times. In one game. But why? What purpose does this serve?

I believe Elise's repeated kidnapping is but a cheap narrative escape. They don't know how to make Sonic and Elise bond, so they repeat the act of him saving her over and over again to drive in the fact that he's a hero and she's... I don't know, she's just a princess.

Just a princess. That traps her into the tiny box that is the stereotypical damsel in distress, and a macguffing for the whole Iblis thing, at most. But that doesn't really suit her background at all, does it? All of the stuff that's given to us tells us that Elise should be more than that.

Ok so, the story goes out of its way to tell us that, for 10 whole years, Elise was not allowed to cry. Not a single tear. That's her main thing, that she has a warped sense of duty and doesn't get to feel much. But did she even know why? The way the story shows it, it doesn't seem like she does, at least not entirely; she was passed out cold when the whole "let's infuse half of a god into your soul" stuff happened. So in a way, this behaviour could be treated as trauma instilled on her by her father drilling the idea of "a strong queen doesn't cry, stop crying, just smile" into her head — we do see a flashback of him directly saying that to her when she was little and crying on his lap. And this would have been a fine point of her character arc, if only they had concluded it in a more... well, conclusive way. By showing her and the audience that the duke was wrong; crying is healthy and not a display of weakness, and her father's "crying is wrong" speech is bullshit. Or even just by having her realise that not crying at all has a negative impact on her health, because it should.

But if we assume that Elise did know why she couldn't cry, the story gets more interesting. Because it's not as if she held back tears for 10 years — a near-impossible feat for a normal human being — just for her pride or because she believed in those toxic words of the past, but because she needed to. There's a fucking monster inside of her and this CHILD is tasked with keeping it locked away all on her own. If she cries, the whole world will end. So she sees a purpose in being emotionally distant: if she closes herself off to all emotions and reactions, she will suppress her need to cry. If she doesn't allow herself to feel anything, she will be able to keep the world safe.

But like, if she ever breaks a leg, she's not allowed to cry, because she doesn't want one stupid broken leg to cause the end of the world. She swallows the pain in silence.

She lost her father, who apparently was her only parental figure, at a young age and was left alone to learn how to tend to the kingdom. She had to attend her own father's funeral, knowing that she had potentially contributed to his death by being in the lab that day. And she was not allowed to have a little cry about it.

That's a lot of pressure, but it's not like she can complain, so she just has to deal with it as best as she can. Which in the game is shown by having Elise be a bit... bland, I guess? At times, I don't know if her weird way of responding to things was intentional or if it was just bad writing.

Either way, I feel like a better way for that to reflect on her character would be to make her stoic, cold and impassive when interacting with others. For her to be unresponsive to Sonic's jokes and Eggman's threats at the start of the game. As the story progresses, she gets to mature emotionally and realise how fucked up she is and how all of these bottled feelings are killing her inside.

Sonic bonds with Elise by providing opportunities and encouragement for her to feel things and express herself. He can see that she cares a lot about things, but it's buried deep down; he sees that beneath all the fear and responsibility she imposes on herself, there's a girl who cherishes her kingdom and loves the people around her fiercely.

But how to bring her out of her shell?

Instead of bringing Elise back to her castle only for her to be kidnapped again — Eggman does have robots all over the kingdom looking for her, — Sonic decides to bring her along for the adventure. After all, she should want to defeat Eggman and the threat he poses to Soleanna. With that, Elise can have more time to bond with other characters without having her whole personality sacrificed to a trope that does not server her or the story.

And the thing is, at first, she doesn't really believe in herself. She only sees herself as the vessel of Iblis, she doesn't know how to fight or run fast or anything like that. But Sonic pulls her along anyway, because she's determined and, believe it or not, she does have power.

And she laughs. She screams, she gasps, she gets a hug. Because if there is something Sonic knows very well, is that the world is beautiful and everyone should get to live life to the fullest.

Now please picture me this: Elise has a hidden feisty personality. As the story progresses and she slowly opens up, she starts showing a tiny little bit of a sarcastic side. She learns that she's an absolute sucker for adventure and speed and daring situations, a real thrill seeker. She starts somewhat confronting Eggman when he kidnaps her — listen, I'm not saying she shouldn't be kidnapped at all, it kind of ruins the fun of it if there are no stakes, but four times is a bit much — and expressing all her pent up anger.

Picture me an Elise who is so done with this shit while also being glad to blow some stuff up. She has that soft side of love and care but also fuck Eggman.

It's during this whole adventure that she gets to meet the cast. And holy shit.

The potential that the Elise & Blaze duo had, man. Elise has a FIRE monster inside of her, it would make so much sense for Iblis to manifest through FIRE powers. And you know who else has fire powers? You know who else is a princess? Who else started her journey as an emotionally stunted stranger who learns to open up thanks to Sonic & co.?

Blaze the Cat

YES, CAN ANYONE HEAR ME? WHY THE HELL DID THESE TWO NOT INTERACT AT ALL???

It being the "Flames of Disaster", Elise can only see Iblis as a source of devastation and pain. She's scared of ever tapping into that side of herself, for her responsibility is just to lock it away and never look at it. But she can't escape it. And it would have been beautiful for Blaze to teach her how to come to terms with it and harness her fire for warmth, light and protection instead of destruction — but also destruction, because you know, sometimes blowing stuff up is fun.

That would grant character development not only for Elise, but also for Blaze, who gets to see a form of Iblis she never imagined before. Iblis is a world-destroying monster, she can't control or defeat it even if she has a connection to it through the flames; but maybe that's not their job to do. They shouldn't be wasting their time running around trying to kill some hedgehog, they should be protecting Elise from being used by Eggman! — Because surely that's what caused the end of the world, right? Eggman being too greedy and freeing a beast he couldn't control? Seems like a logical conclusion by all Blaze knows.

And Elise meeting Silver. Oh my fucking god.

She remembers him. That is literally the first thing she sees when she meets Sonic! She remembers Silver from when she was a child, she remembers he saved her. He was the one who even remotely tried to comfort her when her father died and the one who witnessed the might of what's inside of her. If anything, she must have spent years wondering if she just imagined him or not, this must be such a surreal encounter!

(It was either that or she actually saw the destroyed future and Silver via Iblis or something, I'm not really sure what that first scene was supposed to be. But I'm going with the "she remembers him" path)

At first, Silver doesn't know her, of course; he's only here for Sonic! But when he travels back to the Solaris Project incident, everything changes. And as much as Silver wants to be bitter about how simple the origins of their problems were — how all of it could have been avoided if only those scientists weren't so greedy, if only they had been able to destroy the base form of Iblis before it became a monster, if only the responsibility of keeping it at bay hadn't been put on a little girl, if only she had been able to keep it trapped forever, if only, if only, if only — he can't find it in himself to be anything but compassionate towards Elise. The two of them are very alike, in a way: burdened with the weight of the world, a responsibility they never asked for, but unable to give it to anybody else or give up because they care too much.

So that's the irony of Silver's story: he came to the past with the intent of ending a life, when this whole time he was supposed to save a life. Not just to save his future, but because Elise, like him, was robbed of many things, and it's not fair. He wants to go back to his time knowing Elise would live to see a safe and happy future for herself for as long as she lived. If he couldn't save the future, then at least he can change the past and delay the inevitable, give this world a little more time.

Oh and that's not even to mention Mephiles. He himself is a wonderful villain, but the fact that he never interacted with Elise is such a shame.

Think of the direct influence Mephiles could have on Elise as the other half of Solaris. The ways in which he could have tried to deceive her. Yeah, he wants to drag this out and see everyone suffer for as long as possible, but he has a damn queen in his board, why should he only play with the pawns?

It could have helped push the story just a little further by having him communicate with Elise in any way, shape or form. Replace Eggman kidnapping her 137 times with Mephiles luring Elise and using her bottled up feelings against her. Let her be Solaris' unwilling ticking time bomb.

And of course, I couldn't leave this without talking about the big issue everyone has with Elise. The fact that most people only ever remember her as that random human girl who kissed Sonic that one time. Not only was that whole romance uncalled for, but I feel like the story could have benefited a lot more from their platonic feelings. Hell, let Elise be her own damn character. Let Sonic have a positive influence on her without breaking everything else. Let them remain as friends at the end of the story without resetting everything — and really, just let her know that, even if Sonic leaves Soleanna tomorrow, she'll be ok; she's more than ok now, actually.

TLDR; Princess Elise from Sonic 2006 could have been such a cool character with complex emotions, the fact that her legacy is what it is is really sad to me.

[sskk-manifesto]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ivypond11]

something something about the way scary pushes everyone away because she is shielding herself makes me want to cry. the way she appears to be confident when talking about herself at the beginning of s2 and how self deprecating she seems to be now. "to be so angry at something but nobody to aim it at except for dumb old me, right?" because that's what she does to herself everyday. she can't care for people because it's heartbreaking when they eventually leave, so she says mean shit to them in the hopes she can drive them away because! that hurts less! if she can control the way they leave it will hurt less right?

the way she is fighting herself to not like terry and care for him because, how dare he waltz into her life and shower her with unconditional love and praise? love is not unconditional, if it was, her father would have never left. she needs to be worthy of it, just like willy told her, right? then everybody will stick with her, because she will finally be whole. the broken piece inside her that made her father not love her enough will be whole. she will never be left alone again and she will be able to care once again because nobody will leave.