you know the excellent quadruple life fan comic has me thinking about double life again. and MAN. thinking about the soul bonds mechanically. like, before I get into my meta-analysis it’s worth noting that non-diagetically the soulbond mechanic being based on how many hearts someone has is basically the only way I can think to do it in minecraft that’s sensible, but diagetically…
so do you ever think about how the marker of what made people soulmates in double life was pain?
like, soulmates share injuries/pain! that’s the whole premise! like, to the point that day one people were making up elaborate ways to hurt themselves so they could test for their soulmates! you met your (very romantic-coded) partner and confirmed they were the person you were looking for by hitting each other, generally!
being a soulmate in the double life universe isn’t about being compatible, it’s about literally sharing pain, and it’s just… I think about how for some pairs, they share the burden between each other, and it brings them closer. for some pairs, though, the only way they know how to communicate is by hurting one another. and the thing is, this isn’t just a literal thing. like, mechanically, the thing soulmates do is share pain and communicate with pain, but metaphorically, can you say desert duo doesn’t have trouble communicating because half of how they know how to exist is either sharing in pain or causing it for each other? can you say that ranchers’ strength wasn’t a pair of people who understood each other’s pain and desperation to be better than they’ve been before? can you say that divorce quartet isn’t, well—
so pearl wins after scott hurts them one last time don’t you ever think about that,
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I’ve seen some gender bending around and I wanted to draw them. So here’s some tragic lesbians.
Picture one
Owen: Hello Love. You were supposed to live a long, happy life.
Picture two
Curt: Sorry O. I missed you.
Picture three
Owen: it’s quite alright darling. I’ve missed you to.
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fundamentally disinterested in the recurring discourse about kevin's drinking that aims to a) make it his Specific Problem To Focus On And Overcome when it is a crutch and coping mechanism to get him through a Much Bigger Problem (emotional fallout he can't square with by himself, culture shock, trauma, loss of his extremely wildly co-dependent relationship w riko, losing the structure of the nest, mourning a future he was meant to have, processing a grave injustice, anger and fear and desperate grief, all of which is his Actual Specific Fox Problem) while he builds himself back up, and b) thinks that even if it is a problem (more on that later), it's the foxes' problem to deal with.
like. it's just not.
yeah, he doesn't drink until he meets them. they gave him that habit, and in traditional terms, they're (the monsters specifically) a 'bad influence'. but these are the foxes. this is kevin day, son of exy, whose meteor is crashing spectacularly through no fault of his own. there are no traditional terms to be found here. the framework for it literally doesn't exist. neil comes into the foxes with more conventional expectations—appalled at the athletes' substance use, his horror at matt's trip to columbia, his steadfast and early repeated stance that none of the foxes should let andrew treat them the way he does, and certainly not nicky—and tends to engage with them less as the series goes on and he folds himself into the foxes. the thing about the foxes is that they've all been in pits deeper than they are tall. and some of them got a helping hand on the way—erik, andrew's extreme intervention methods, stephanie walker—and wymack was always waiting for them on the other side, ready to throw down a rope, but all the foxes dragged themselves out of their own holes. often not alone, often not without assistance, but at the end of the day, they have to do it.
there's that line neil has about aaron in that scene that got deleted when the timeline shifted around, when he thinks about how aaron got this far in life on his own, surviving on willpower and sheer desperation. that applies to aaron in a way that's a little more acute than some of the rest of them—boy who doesn't let the foxes in bc of andrew, boy who doesn't let nicky in bc he doesn't know how, boy made of flinching and seeking an escape and grieving the one who hurt him—but is broadly true for the foxes en masse.
this isn't to say the foxes can't help each other, but it's not their job. it just isn't. they'll keep kevin alive, keep him safe, keep him flanked and contained within their ranks. they'll fight tooth and nail in this battle with him, fight to get him to that championship game, fight to get that trophy in his hands. but that's all they've agreed to. that's all they're responsible for, in this covenant they've made with him. he says they can make this happen, and they're going to get him to that final game, but it's up to him what state he's in when he gets there.
like. they're foxes. they've been triaging their whole lives. they hate each other and they hate everyone else more. they're the kids with their backs up against the wall. half of them are addicts. i don't think kevin is comparable, personally; he's getting through a horrific situation with a coping mechanism. that's not the same thing as battling yourself to stop using. but that's not really the point of this. what i'm getting at here is that to the foxes, it's easy math: kevin who can lean on vodka and andrew and wymack and the foxes to stay upright when he's not ready to stand on his own two feet is still a kevin who is standing. a kevin with one less piece of scaffolding to lean on is a kevin who falls over, a kevin at risk of complete collapse, a kevin one phone call away from running back to the master, a kevin one crucial loss away from not ever making it back to himself at all. they're triaging. this is low on the totem pole of things they have the room to care about. they very much have bigger problems, both individually and even just kevin-related. if alcohol makes seeing the boy he knew best in the world and moved in tandem with his whole life and who destroyed their entire legacy and his entire life in one move — if alcohol makes facing that boy easier to stomach, then, fuck, why would they take that away? they're foxes. they've all got their demons. this is what kevin needs this year and a half to let him face his, that's all. they can understand that. it doesn't have to be pretty, as long as it keeps him in the fight. that's the priority.
i think there's absolutely space to explore this in fic and art and fandom in a way that maybe does explore it as a Problem, both that it's an active problem for kevin & that it's something to explore other foxes helping him with (there's a t&n fic that i've been gnawing at the bit to read for months that seems poised to explore this premise, and that's super up my alley)! i just think we're in different territory when we're talking about the series—and its characters and dynamics—in a conversational rather than transformational way, and end up talking about this like the foxes are responsible for kevin's choices. i love kevin day. i read these back at the start of 2015 & he's so dear to me that loving him was the blueprint for how i feel abt kageyama. but it's been pretty weird to see how the conversation has been translating Loving Kevin Day into... thinking the foxes are doing wrong by him with respect to this in actual canon. like that's just not how it operates there
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I also just wanna take a moment to appreciate the way Stjepan Šejić writes the Gotham City Sirens, particularly in how he utilizes BDSM. Because first off, he is so right, Selina would be a BDSM aficionado. Girl wears a leather suit and carries a whip and her boyfriend wears a spandex bat mask. That's her gimp lmao.
But also, it's such a unique and interesting lense to view them through. I particularly like the way he uses it to peak into Harley's psyche. It's just such a unique way to view the abuse. Harleen is all about the sexual nature of their relationship and how he pushes through and creates/fills a hole in her psyche no-one else can. It's just a simple addition to the already existing toxic addiction many abusive relationships have, yet it feels like it changes everything about this dynamic. He has a mini-comic, which you can find at eyesfullofscars' post here. I highly recommend reading it real quick. It's good and also you'll know what I'm talking about.
It's called Submissive, and the general plot is that Ivy goes to Selina to get advice on how to save Harley and she's told she needs to replace Joker in Harley's mind until she can get over him. And it's just such a crazy unique way of looking at it. Like it answers a lot of questions that didn't really need answers and just adds an extra level of depth to the characters and topic. And he has a lot of good utilizations of both dry and outright comedy.
Also, he's just, like, an actually good BDSM author. The damage E.L. James did to bondage fiction is so frustrating, it's so nice to read the works of someone who actually knows what they're talking about and can make it good, sexy, and just straight up cool and interesting. I have not yet read Sunstone, but I've heard from peers that it's pretty good so take that as you will.
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something about three days till the blaze or smth
yes I know the song isn't out yet but shush I love heal
[Lil extra stuff below :}]
Twas [mainly] based on the art for the 3DS release :D a more simple version of it yes but im not about to draw every character in the whole damn game but Jash-ified. However that would be really funny tho
Also! I made a MM Jash guy like three months ago but now that the songs are relevant again I might redraw the guy if anyone wants it [or I get bored lol]
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something so insane about Adam saying “it wasn’t about you” to Gansey at the end of TRB and then again during the fight in TDT (defensively, angrily when he’s in a spiral of self sabotage) because there’s truth to it but it’s not True. Adam is always always always defining himself in relation to Gansey and yes he resents that but that still makes it About them. The fact that Adam had a dream about being responsible for Gansey’s death and That was the trigger for his decision to wake the ley line, to prevent that future. And to be his own person outside of Gansey while also not hurting/killing Gansey, but then at the same time he brings the gun with him not knowing what he’ll sacrifice but knowing for sure it can not be Gansey. That means it could be Whelk or it could be him (and it is both in a way) and either way he is sacrificing a part of himself for Gansey. And then when Adam does sacrifice a part of his autonomy to Cabeswater Gansey feels betrayed because he sees it as Adam’s sacrifice because belonging to anything else is better than accepting what Gansey tries to offer him but it is For and About Gansey that he did this and Adam Hates that. And then (I just started rereading TRK so I don’t remember the exact details) Cabeswater being in Gansey’s service or having his spirit or however that works makes it even more insane and that definitely adds to the context of Adam’s anger at him in TDT but I’ll come back to that part later just. You love your best friend so much and you hate your best friend so much and it’s not about them but everything is about them!
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