#thoughts. musings even

[brokenmachinemusings]

so. what’s up with diving?

a lot of people tend to think that diving is some paradoxical thing which has happened but also hasn’t at the same time.

i’m here to say; no it isn’t. all dives did not happen originally, and alter the course of time later.

there are plenty of other posts who go into more detail than mine will, and they mostly focus on season two.

i’m here to focus a bit more on s1. not in detail, just pointing some things out before i go completely batshit. and some thoughts. actually, mostly thoughts.

well, in short, diving never actually happened before the aforementioned dive, which in turn — not always, but usually alters the timeline. sometimes the changes are so minimal it’s barely consequential — sometimes they’re so important they kill someone, get someone stabbed, or save them. obviously, the butterfly effect.

i really do wish i could go in depth in this post outside of my simple disorganized thought processes but i don’t have the time or energy for that. alas, physical as well as mental illness and busy schedules strike again.

studio lan also likes to play around with these concepts. maybe to throw us off, maybe to hint towards the bigger picture, who knows.

well. that’s not what this post is about. i just wanted to point out some examples. which are, here, as goes;

while rewatching, i’m still on ep1, but the most obvious thing is emma upsetting the cup. hers is more of an accident, obviously just spilling over the table.

cheng xiaoshi WHACKS that cup. while it might be for comedic effect, i see quite literally no one pointing this out — and it spins around and hits mr. zhu’s head. and then falls on his pants, which is the timeline reorienting itself.

the next example is have, which is on top of my head, is one that really baffles my mind how i don’t see anyone speaking about xu shanshan more. while lu guang watches the photo, she’s giggly about the message she receives and we all know it cuts off right before liu min enters her apartment — well, that’s not important, but i did want to point out how she’s giddy.

cheng xiaoshi simply solemnly stares into her phone as he reads dong yi’s message. which might be a whole can of worms to unpack later, but either way, it always struck me as kind of odd.

we don’t have concrete evidence that xu shanshan was murdered — but in my personal theory, she was in the original show’s timeline (not the og tl itself), before cheng xiaoshi managed to overwrite it. from her being depicted as a victim once, to cheng xiaoshi’s plan — i doubt li tianchen or liu min cared enough about her to actually have to go through with it.

anyway, i do think cheng xiaoshi’s plan practically worked, especially since li tianchen managed to go “oh shit, there’s people with my type of power, i must see this,” and actually left her alone.

i do think some kind of ��alternative timeline” was mentioned, but that’s kind of evading my memory right now. i’ll get back in on you in the next 100 business days. maybe more or less.

well, i completely forgot to mention xss being mentioned in the newspaper after cheng xiaoshi’s whole meddling which ended up with her turning into a victim — again, kinda steering the timeline. and again, another butterfly effect, considering that turns into xu shanshan dying having to make a plan to avoid her death, catching liu min, lu guang getting stabbed, the li twins, all of s2. which is to say, this is heavily hinted at for not happening in the timelines prior which lu guang had experienced.

ah, speaking of lu guang. sweet boy lu guang. who’s from the future, and considering the timeline being rewritten, he cannot return to the future. this is also implied, or could be a plot hole. considering every time li tianchen touches cheng xiaoshi while the latter is possessing someone, he gets forced out of said body, to the present — as for lu guang, he fully stays there, in the past which isn’t the past, more like a new present or future. with all of his plans intact. sucks that the future he’s aiming for isn’t changing, though.

there’s also the mess which is s2ep8-9. you know, the speedboat episodes. it isn’t quite obvious at first, but lu guang is lu guang the first time. and well, he wasn’t expecting anyone to know his password either. he likely just stashed the phone away for safekeeping, for his own dive, but then the cops found it and cheng xiaoshi decided to dive in — it’s a bit of a mystery on how cheng xiaoshi knew exactly what to do as well. since he was likely very disoriented the first time he was brung out of his possession by li tianchen. well, i’m not one to really delve into this, again there’s other people who have in far more detail than i.

i mean, yes, time nodes are a thing and the timeline reorients itself however it needs to be. no matter how much of change might take place, how out of hand it can get. but it has this margin of error as well. it’s quite odd, really, i can’t quite describe it either.

there’s some kind of mindfuck theory about time not actually being time but i won’t get into that. i don’t remember what it said. but shoutout to you, other theorists.

in short, i don’t think i made this clear due to my incessant rambling; diving always alters the timeline. even if only little deviations happen, it always alters what it was originally supposed to be. and it only happens once, unless you count lu guang diving into himself multiple times… but that isn’t as clear, considering like i said, the future changes — which is stated in the donghua itself, but it changes and he theoretically dives into a different version of himself. theoretically.

well, whatever the case, thanks for reading. hope this makes sense — kind of at least, if you’re interested on my thoughts on anything let me know. or if i forgot to cover some part in more detail.

happy 0913, hope everyone survived well today. i, and cheng xiaoshi, sure didn’t!

[lucabyte]

even dogs pass the mirror test

[madamemiz]

sad: falling out of a hyperfixation

tragic: watching your beloved friends and mutuals fall out of the hyperfixation while you're still in it

[adarkrainbow]

You might have noticed my posts have recently been centered around a same specific... wave? Circle? I don't know how to call this exactly, and I am not an expert of it all...

But there is this wave of authors and editors, a sort of loose group focusing on retelling, rewriting and twisting fairytales and folktales for a modern, adult audience, and that had their era from the 70s to the 90s. Angela Carter, Terri Windling and Tanith Lee, and all the others that came along (Jane Yolen, Charles de Lint, Neil Gaiman, Robin McKinley, Steven Brust)...

And what is truly fascinating, at least for me, is that this is where the thing we call today the "Grimmification" seems to come from. (At least within the English-speaking world)

Today the process of "Grmmification" (as TV Tropes named it) has earned a certain reputation for being a cheap and gratuitous way of offering in a superficial way an edgy, pseudo-anti-conformism, with just a desire to oppose Disney and not true appreciation and care for the original fairytales. You know, a reputation that was gathered by big blockbusters like "Snow White and the Huntsman" or "Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters", or by B-horror movies (the Asylum's fairytale horrors), or by massive pin-up comic publications (Grimm Fairy Tales)... Of course there's a lot of "grimmified" pieces that nuance this a lot by showing a lot of poetry, beauty and art in their harshness, trauma and gore (Pan's Labyrinth, Changeling the Lost) or by just being embraced by the Internet (Gretel and Hansel, Neverafter, The Grimm Variations). But still, you know what I am talking about. We are in an era re-embracing the romance, the humor and the epic within fairytales, a time of re-evaluating positively classic Disney movies and other childhood productions, a much more colorful, optimistic, un-edgy time compared to the boom of dark, edgy, "grimmification" of the 2000s and 2010s. Ended is the generation of McFarlane's Twisted Fairy Tales or of DeviantArt's Twisted Disney Princesses (sorry I forgot who the creator of this series was).

And so, in front of the... I'll say "soft backlash" against the Grimmification process, it is quite fascinating for me to see that the root of this unofficial movement, or the first modern manifestation of this "phenomenon" was the previously described wave/circle of authors. This women-driven wave of authors (Carter, Lee, Windling and Datlow clearly led the dance) who were the first to truly bring all of what we associate with "Grimmification" (making things darker, more violent, the tales more frightening or bloody, bringing Gothic horror or harsh realism to fairytales, sliding in more sexuality and eroticism, openly standing in opposition and rejection of Disney's pop culture version of fairytales)... But out of a movement that...

... stood up for the perpetuation of the art of fairytales ("modern fairytales")

... defended feminist principles (putting the female characters at the heart of the story, highlighting the trauma they had to go through, deconstructing harmful fairytale stereotypes and cliches for women)

... embraced the idea of fairytale as a product for adults (they were the leaders of complexifying and deepening fairytales into a true "fairytale fantasy")

... stood up with queerness (part of the eroticism and sexuality of these tales was also to include lesbianism, homosexuality and a much more open and honest look at sexuality)

... and encouraged research and exploration of the history of fairytales (exploration of Perrault's text versus Disney ; presentation of the alternate versions and uncensored versions of the Grimm's stories) and of other cultural folktales than those traditionally known (exploration of Asian, Russian, African tales...).

And all of these things, that are still thinks people are looking for today in fairytale retellings, came hand in hand with the blood and the gore, the vile and the rape, the dark and the disturbing. The "Grimmification".

I am not at all an expert on this time era or those publications, mind you - I am just beginning to dig into all this, and I speak from the point of view of a casual enjoyer and a researcher of "vintage" books and half-forgotten fictions. I am here doing broad generalizations and I might be dead wrong. But it is just the feeling I got - that the "Grimmification" process took root within these things... Somewhere in the dark psycho-sexual and folk-horror Gothic of the 70s, was the beginning of our modern "Grimmification".

[moonlight-prose]

cooking old man logan dinner, but he insists on helping. he'll hand you things, do as you instruct. but fifteen minutes in you're bent over the kitchen counter, the food is burnt, and logan has already sent you over the edge twice. the fire alarm goes off as he eases himself into you, whispering "just one more baby and then i'll be full".

[the-effect-of-chaos]

There is something so fucking cursed about getting a good couple thousand words into a work in progress only for your brain to IMMEDIATELY start plotting out another fic.

Anyway another thicc thighed athletic Omega Steve who is a total Momma Bear fic idea for you all (that is currently tormenting me because of course it is...) straight from the sleep fogged archives:

O!Steve and A!Eddie one night stand/short term casual hook up post Starcourt, which leads to Steve discovering around Christmas 85 he is pregnant, cue a series of unfortunate events for our favourite babysitter. (BONUS POINTS: they hook up in Indy and don't recognise each other, maybe a BDSM club or something where scents get mixed up and make it hard to discern individuals. Steve only discovers the baby's paternity by scent and running into Eddie later).

His parents find out and he is kicked out for good. Hop's 'dead" it's the well and truly winter and it is by complete accident that Claudia Henderson finds out and forcefully adopts Steve into her home. This saves him from being homeless and/or sleeping in his car however it does mean Dustin and Claudia along with Robin become overprotective as fuck over Steve.

Dustin is able to keep Steve's secret both about his pregnancy and living situation, although he has zero idea of who the sire of the pup is. Which makes his attempts to get Eddie and Steve meet all the more awkward for Steve to get himself out of.

Robin is the only person who knows Steve has found out Eddie is his pup's sire.

The lead up to season 4 remains as seen in canon with the exception being Steve is not actively dating. Instead, he is doing his best to keep quiet about his pregnancy and keep the pups (and the rest of Hawkins) none the wiser at least until he can determine what to do about Eddie, about his living situation and about how he is going to afford raising his pup because you know that man is determined to keep them.

When the UD shit hits the fan, Steve is then left dealing with several crises all at once, and the Upside Down is only one of them.

1. Eddie immediately clocks that Steve is his mysterious hook up/ still harbours unresolved feelings about their hook up when they meet again in the boathouse.

2. The discovery of Steve's pregnancy following the older teens getting out of UD following the Watergate shenanigans and a near feral Steve fighting for his and his pup's life (and turning Eddie on big time while he does it) leads to the pups and Nancy losing their shit not to mention Eddie.

3. Cue Eddie figuring out the timeline and putting two and two together. I am imagining a very stilted and awkward conversation between the two where they both decide to leave the big decision conversation till after they deal with Vecna.

4. Which then sees Feral O!Steve 2: Electric Boogooloo when Eddie gets himself critically injured. (I am thinking a mix of stubborn CPR administration with a shit tonne of various 'don't you fucking think about dying before I have our damn child Munson' followed by him dragging him out of the UD and an adrenaline fueled feral pregnant omega tantrum of epic proportions at the hospital which gets Eddie seen immediately despite the hesitation over the whole satanic panic).

And because I am a HAPPY ENDINGS ONLY in this household despite my love of a good bit of angst in my fics. They get their shit together while Eddie and Max are healing (Steve totally hasn't adopted Max after her mother has gone MIA or anything), and Eddie and Steve obviously confess their undying love for one another. Steve has the baby/ies, and Uncle Wayne gets to be the best goddamn Grandpa in the world. Claudia cries when Steve asks her if she is willing to be his pup's Grandma. While Max and Dustin argue over who is gonna be the better Aunt/Uncle to the baby/ies (Robin is equally as invested in the argument and often is found squabbling with the two of them over it.)

Joyce and Hop are the baby/ies acting second set of Grandparent's, a fact that bemuses Eddie given his history with Hopper.

[septemberkisses]

promised myself that I'd be an academic weapon but instead I am the definition of an academic victim

[spaltedrat]

what the polygun!!!

[seaglassmelody]

Spent my shower this morning thinking about how sad I am that Davrin is the least-romanced companion so I’m going to gush incoherently about him because

GOSH I love Davrin!!!

This is a man who has convinced himself he’s a sword against the darkness. He’s “the bodyguard”, a monster hunter, a gruff all-business type who thinks of himself as not fitting into the culture that raised him

When really deep down he’s a shepherd, a guardian of nature and a DEEPLY caring person who uses professional distance to hide from his fears. His fear of not having a purpose, of not being good enough to raise Assan, of having to discover a future for himself (and with Rook if you romance him)

He’s the companion that calls Rook “the boss”. He pushes everyone’s boundaries and sometimes says rude things (his banters with Lucanis, his one conversation with Neve where he’s testing if Rook is paying attention).

But he’s also the companion that’s looking out for Rook the most. I’m convinced one of the reasons he asks Rook to go out to the forest with him and Assan is so Rook can take a break and just. Breathe in some fresh not-Fade air. See the real sky. He even confirms in his picnic date that he was hoping it would be relaxing for Rook too! He’s trying to shepherd ROOK as much as he is Assan and the halla!

Even when Rook returns from Fade Jail, Davrin’s response to their anxiety and fear with comfort and stability, because he’s ALWAYS looking to take care of people.

And then when you offer him a future with Rook, one he didn’t think would happen because he told himself NOT to fall in love with the boss (but how could he not, he loves the pursuit, the “thrill of the chase” and this time he caught his mark) that future is what he uses to get himself through that last battle. It motivates him and he sounds so soft when he talks about it before you take on Elgar’nan…

His arc is purely reflected in how he talks about Assan. Assan is the symbol of Davrin’s own struggles and also his method of dealing with them- caught between hunter and caretaker, finding a way to balance the two. And his romance emphasizes this by underlining his caring nature even more- he’s a hunter in pursuit but once he catches what he’s after, he’s the heart of a halla.

Just….Davrin!!!!

[shortnotsweet]

In a Week by Hozier ft. Karen Cowley

“The raven is death, obviously. When I die, I want a good tombstone—something right spooky. LT’s got something against the underground, though you’d think that would be just his kind of place. That’s alright. He needs to, he can cremate me. It’s not exactly Catholic, and Mam would turn in her grave, but God is a unicorn and no one is pure anymore, so. What’s all that got to do with me?”

Johnny “Soap” McTavish has a journal. Had. It is his no longer.

Simon “Ghost” Riley had dreams—awful ones, the kind that sank claws into his lungs, dragged him into sleep, and then sent him careening out of it. He still has dreams, but they’re different, now. Better. Johnny’s pages have folded themselves under his eyes and gotten into his head, brighter and more infectious than anything else has ever been. It’s more than the past, that rotting carcass behind him, and more than now. Now is nothing. Now is ash. It’s like, it’s like—blinding, is what it is. He’s a blind man.

It is biblical now. Ghost has read it backward and forward and sideways and inside out. When he runs out of things to read, he reads them again, and when that is not enough, he reads between the lines.

[hanayotta]

i've also been thinking about how the main trio share the theme of striving for freedom and running away.

li lianhua was the first that i saw this in, with him running from his past, his legacy and the image people in general have of him as li xiangyi. from the expectations and roles that come with it. furthermore his relations, past and present, all those who get too close and threaten to limit his freedom. also (according to my personal interpretation) trying to evade societal norms he used to be bound by, like heteronormativity – which he used to fulfill in his relationship with qiao wanmian. now he immediately shuts down any woman making advances on him, without exception.

then, actually more obvious than li lianhua, is fang duobing, who's ALSO trying to escape the heteronormative life plans his family has for him, the arranged marriage to be exact. he keeps choosing to refuse the path prepared for him to instead chase after li lianhua, his dream of becoming a detective and follow his heart into the jianghu. but also wanting to have the freedom to choose li lianhua and spending time with him, against all better judgement or alledged better options.

finally you've got di feisheng who we only later find out has been trying to free himself from the gu bug all this time and by extension the shackles of his horrible past. he also doesn't care to fulfill the expectations people have of him: of exclusively being this evil final-boss leader of the jiangyuan alliance and of wanting to rule the world. even wanting to be strongest martial artist isn't on the forefront of his mind anymore, against wuyans expectations, with li xiangyi out of the picture. funnily enough he too struggles with heteronormativity or, well– he seems pretty certain about not being interested in having a female partner. unfortunately for him the world's largest yandere hasn't gotten that memo yet. so she is another factor he continuously runs from (in a broader sense).

funnily enough, while all three of them experience flight impulses in various situations, they often don't understand or respect it in each other, like with fang duobing chasing after li lianhua and them trying to force a cure on him. or li lianhua trying to "return" fang duobing to his family, seeing it as the better option for him. i think, out of all of them, the best understanding in this context is the one li lianhua has for di feisheng, which kind of shows in the openness with which he treats the amnesiac "a-fei" – as opposed to how fang duobing treats him on occasion, trying to link him back to the image of the bad guy.

[beevean]

I find fascinating that no one in the games calls Alucard by his birth name, not even his own father.

If you never read the manuals, you will never learn that his birth name is Adrian Fahrenheit Ţepeş, and has been ever since Dracula's Curse. He calls himself Alucard, everyone around him calls him Alucard, and even Dracula accepts his son's new name. He greets him as such in SoTN and in Julius Mode in DoS, and the latter instance is even more striking, because by then he goes by Arikado - but to Dracula, he's still Alucard. Not Adrian.

And you'd think that he'd insist on calling his son by his birth name, right? As a way to control and demean him. "Oh, you chose that cute nickname for yourself? Charming. But you are still my Adrian, the boy I raised, and you can't escape from that." But no. Dracula has fully accepted that his son is so against him that he used his own name backwards: and I think that it's a sign that he has completely disowned him. He has no desire of pretty pleading him to join him by reminding him of their family ties: he will do so once Dracula has killed Lisa's last influence on the boy. It speaks of his utter coldness, and how estranged the two have become - after all, Alucard accuses him that he has completely lost his ability to love. (and, as a reminder, in the Japanese version of SoTN, Dracula doesn't even say farewell to Alucard before dying)

There is only one exception to this:

This is a different writer so take this with a grain of salt, but since it's the only instance we see Dracula's thoughts during the 1476 battle, it's interesting. Perhaps he still hasn't learned that his son has changed names, but I can believe he hadn't accepted yet, hence why he's so emotionally distraught. By the time of SoTN, his heart has hardened enough that he no longer cares, and he calls his own treacherous son with the name he has chosen to indicate that the two are enemies.

[createandchaos]

@toapril-official Day 4 - Spiraling

Primordal Fate and her nieces with their favorite speaker!

[wordswhisperinthedark]

That was a fucking fever dream my GOD

[whimzycle]

When I think about Tooth, I get sad.

Because she's a Queen, royal and regal.

And the only thing she rules over is herself.

[not-that-dillinger]

"We're married"

《 from Raye Penber @first-frost-fallen-snow because that would be the funniest route to me also sorry for like disappearing I was focusing on moving out and now my fatigue is killing me 》

Ed awoke for once not slumped over his keyboard, yet also not in the empty apartment he'd moved into when he first moved to Japan. Though he supposed technically, the apartment he was in belonged to him, as did the bed he lay in, though both truly belonged to the man laying next to him. He squinted at the clock on his nightstand, at red LED numbers so blurry, only years of practice allowed him to decipher the time without having to put his glasses on. He still had time before he had to get up, a couple of hours before he had to get to work.

A flash of gold on the nightstand drew his eyes from the clock to the ring next to his glasses. It was the only piece of jewelry he owned, and far more expensive than anything he would ever purchase for himself. There was a similar ring on the other nightstand on the opposite side of the bed that belonged to the other occupant--Raye Penber.

Ed... still didn't know what to make of his new situation, let alone the man he was now legally bound to. He didn't hate him, certainly, though whether he trusted him was yet to be decided. Their marriage hadn't been Ed's idea, nor had it been Raye's. A necessity to facilitate the Kira investigation, it had been called, and Ed had only begrudgingly agreed to it for fear of opposition somehow being used against him as evidence and landing him in prison.

Thought of their marriage left an uneasy feeling in his stomach. He'd sworn when he got his job at Encom, and finally escaped his father's control that he would never put himself in any sort relationship where there was a power imbalance and they were not equals. He wouldn't put himself in a situation where he could be abused again. And yet here he was, a foreigner, far from anyone he could call a friendly face, barely understanding the language and culture, and though their partnership was supposed to be one of equals, it didn't feel that way.

Not that he had anyone on the other side of the Pacific he could call for help if he was able, anyway. His therapist, maybe. Though he didn't trust that the call wouldn't be monitored. Or an old rival, if he was desperate.

He felt trapped. He was relying on a man he barely knew to keep him from being falsely accused of mass murder. He was at risk, not just from his partner, but from the people in charge of the investigation as well, People he felt like were treating the investigation as nothing more than a game, where both his and his partner's lives were nothing more than disposable pawns.

How strange it was, that such a tiny band of metal could hold so much meaning. To others, it would have been a symbol of joy as bright as it's polished surface, but to Ed it had just replaced the physical handcuffs that had bound him to his legal partner to with a symbolic one.