prontoacambiare

[butcharondir]

THE GALLOWS POLE, EPISODE 1: THE RESURRECTION OF DAVE

Written and Directed by Shane Meadows

Your place in hell is assured. But we're here to offer you a second chance.

[ultrabananapudding]

This is a public announcement but please watch the Severance it's so good !!!!

Don't look too deep into it, going in blind is the best way to do it. It's quite the slow burn, but the pacing is so good and the characters feel so alive that before you know it everything is ramping up in intensity !

Severance has it all: interesting concept, great characters, and an engaging story like !!! What more could you ask ??

[keferon]

Monster hunter au part 11 (final? I think?)

Did you want to see Drift in a nurse costume?......ahahahahha

Orion: God himself couldn't stop him.

Meanwhile, Ratchet walking into God's room: Polish your glasses and get your robotic liver ready, I've got drinks to share and a great story to tell

Previous

[starcurtain]

Woke: Alhaitham sold his grandmother's house and moved into the research center because he didn't like living in an empty home with so many memories.

Also woke: Alhaitham sold his grandmother's house and moved into the research center because it was the last remaining tie he had to Kaveh, and taking ownership of it ensured that Kaveh would have to communicate with him again at least one more time.

[genericpuff]

y'all have no clue how wild it is to live in my timeline, because 12 years ago i was a huge fan of these cute lil' zelda strips and at the time i found out through the grapevine that the creator apparently stopped making these comics because they had started drawing NSFW content-

and at the time i was like "oh ok that's wild but respect"

and now in the present the artist who's making the OMORI manga adaption is under fire for being a shota fetishist and it's putting the spotlight back on the OMORI creator themselves for ALSO being a shota fetishist and oh my god the omocat who made those zelda comics over a decade ago is the same omocat who went on to make OMORI holy shit-

[chloecherrysip]

"C'mon, Luigi! Pump those legs!"

"I'm trying, I'm trying. I got bad knees!"

[gingermintpepper]

Day 2: Hyacinthus

Interpretation notes and trivia below the cut!

Designing Hyacinthus as well as deciding on a personality for him was one of the first big problem I had to solve when the topic of a retelling came up. In most texts, he exists to be loved and then to die and even then, the focus of his death is not his own but rather on Apollo, the one who loses him. General modernised interpretations of him likewise tend to make him agreeable and inoffensive, the sort of character who is likeable and upright but never challenging or ornery. I didn't like any of those options, so I instead decided to build my Hyacinthus from the ground up - for better or for worse. His red hair is his most striking feature, it is his mother's divine hair colour and he is the only one of her children to have inherited it. Similarly, Hyacinthus is the only one of his mother's children to inherit her magic. While some of his siblings were born with a few passive gifts from their mother (Argalus' 'perfect' memory and Polyboea's affinity for mental calculations and projections, for example) Hyacinthus was born with a talent for sealing and warding magic and thusly, much of his life has been shaped by the pursuit of knowledge and his wish to use his talents to better his kingdom. Much of his good-nature and zeal for life and learning is destroyed by the circumstances of his death and entombment. When he is revived, he is angry, lost, devoid of most of his memories and desperate to fill the missing gaps of his soul. He's selfish and snappish, hurt and desperate to hurt others but, most importantly, he is searching. When he is revived, all the world has heard his story but he is not apart of it. They do not remember Hyacinthus, the mage-prince of Amyclae or Hyacinthus, the teacher of men. They do not speak of Hyacinthus, who charmed the gods for their knowledge or Hyacinthus whose beauty was bested only by his wit - they speak of Apollo and his lost love, Apollo and his grief, Hyacinthus, the lover of the Radiant. One can only hope that he will find whatever it is he is looking for on this journey.

Some fun trivia:

Youngest son in a family of seven, his magic was the catalyst for Clio revealing her true identity as a Muse to her children.

Actually prefers to be called 'Hyacinth' but has made peace with people ignoring his wishes and just calling him Hyacinthus out of habit or formality.

Has an intense resting bitch face and struggles with visibly expressing happiness or sadness. This is also a trait he shares with his mother, though his older sister Hegesandre also shares this feature. Cynortas was technically a part of the resting bitch face club but he practiced smiling and looking cheery so much as a child that now has the opposite problem where he can smile through anything, even pain or anger.

Left home when he was 10 to study at the Parnassus Institute for Gifted Children. The Institute specialises in training the children of the Muses, but occasionally it will take in normal people who show great promise. Hector, who becomes quite close to Hyacinth during their tenure together, was one of those people.

Was recognised by Apollo himself at his graduation and was gifted a laurel wreath. Apollo declared him the Shepherd Laureate which made Hyacinth the third Laureate alive at that time - a status shared only by Orpheus, the Poet Laureate and Asclepius, the Doctor Laureate.

Despite his title, is atrocious with animals and genuinely despises both sheep and goats. Has a mild phobia of goats in particular due to a traumatic incident when he was first climbing the mountain where a particular wild goat absolutely terrorised him. Along with following him for days, it would eat anything he left unattended and even bit and headbutted him numerous times when he would try to wrestle his food back from it. He was so bothered by the title in fact, that he asked Apollo if the designation was a joke at his expense. Apollo never denied that it was a joke but he never confirmed it either.

Exceptional hunter but prefers trapping to hunting by dog or arrow. Has never been one for weapons and much rather prefers to fight bare handed if the occasion arises.

Despite his laurel wreath being such a precious object, Hyacinth has never properly worn it. He wore them around his left bicep after obtaining them and when Polyboea contracted phthisis and needed comforting, he gave them to her as an object that would give her strength. Polyboea was buried with his laurels so he never got the chance to wear the wreath on his head.

His favourite colour is a dark oak brown and his favourite hobby is reading. His favourite food is fish roasted by a river and shared with people he loves. He died at 28 on the first day of Karneios.

[castingpods]

Kate and Anne Wolf 359 headcanons bc ofc I’m obsessed with these characters who never actually appear but haunt the narrative

The accident happened in ~late 2011, Anne was barely four. By the time the Hephaestus arrived back on earth she’s nine.

Goddard paid for Kate and Anne to move somewhere with better resources for both of them. I think Maryland bc it has one of the biggest deaf communities in the U.S.

Kate got a degree in nursing after helping Anne recover

Kate started taking ASL classes to better communicate with Anne, and she meets a single father of a deaf son there, who she falls for and eventually marries

Kate always made sure to be honest with Anne about what happened. That her dad was sick (an alcoholic) and that made him make bad decisions, but they were still his decisions and that doesn’t take away from them being hurtful and needing to be held accountable for. And Kate tells her that she is angry at Doug, always will be, but also she can never regret meeting him because he’s the reason Anne exists at all

Eiffel learns how to say three phrases in sign language before he meets Anne in person. They are 1. I’m sorry 2. I love you 3. I understand if you hate me

Anne calls her stepdad ‘dad’ and calls Eiffel ‘Doug’ so people think he’s the stepdad. he hates this but can’t bring himself to say anything abt it because he really hasn’t been a father to her

Eiffel becomes conversational in ASL for her!!! he’s really bad at it at first but Kate helps to translate for them while he learns.

At Kate’s behest they do ‘family counseling’, but it’s mostly just Kate being pissed at a baffled Eiffel who has no memory of any of the shit he did and eventually the therapist just makes Kate switch to individual therapy.

Minkowski and Kate become besties. so fast. they bond over having a complicated history with Eiffel who they have both deeply cared about but also found to be a horribly reckless idiot who endangers the lives of those around him. Eiffel finds it deeply troubling that they are friends and hang out without him.

Speaking of which!!! Minkowski is basically an aunt to Anne. Doug had his license revoked with the accident and never got it back (and doesn’t remember how to drive anyway) so Minkowski drives him back and forth to see Anne.

Anne is one of 3 living people outside of the Hephaestus crew who know Lovelace is a dear listener duplicate and has been sworn to utmost secrecy.

Kate has literally no idea how to handle Eiffel being back without any memory. He’s not the Eiffel she remembers but she’s still pissed at him. He can’t fully understand the scope of what the past version of him did to her. He apologizes a million times but it will never be enough because it wasn’t him who did it, not really, but it looks like him and sounds like him and she can never look at him without seeing him the way she did at the trial, as a monster who hurt her baby.

[bumblingbabooshka]

Voyager should have had an episode where the command trio beat the absolute hell out of each other while blaming each other for being stuck in the delta quadrant as the fever pitch of a rising tension that was building throughout the episode. Like, they're absolutely being pushed to do it by some outside force. Maybe it's a telepathic being - maybe it's that they're stuck in some arena or an alien court or a time loop only the three of them are aware of - no matter the specifics, the sentiment behind their words has to be true and it has to be something they've been keeping back for months, maybe years. That fear and hatred and blame that doesn't really have an actual target because it's not actually rational but 'who's to blame' doesn't have to be capital T true to feel true. If Chakotay hadn't been in the badlands, If Janeway hadn't made that choice, If Tuvok hadn't supported it... "You trapped us here. It's your fault. If you hadn't-! If you hadn't-! If you hadn't-!" are just echoes of "I trapped us here. It's my fault. If I hadn't-! If I hadn't-! If I hadn't-!" Because at the end of the day more than being angry or hateful they're despairing in their own ways. Episode probably has a somber end - they beat whatever it was and it's a victory! They won by working together even after they beat each other half to death! But after the celebration we see them alone in their quarters...silent. Gazing out at the stars, into a candle's flame, at that same family picture before turning away. Because even though they won they're still there in the delta quadrant. Is that really victory?

[sweetsong-reaper]

You get the horrible feeling that you've seen something you shouldn't have...

[compacflt]

Rumors from Pearl Harbor.

When Admiral Kazansky first comes to Pearl, he brings with him about half of his previous staff, all exceptionally-hardworking people hand-picked over years—advisors, flag aides, secretaries, ranks all over the board. But his new hires, upon getting acquainted with the old guard, are shocked to discover that his previous staff still hardly knows him at all.

“He keeps to himself, mostly,” Lieutenant Commander Hartford explains over a pint. “I made the mistake of asking him once what he did for fun. You know, like, hobbies and stuff. He blinked at me for a second, and then said, ‘I read.’ That’s it! I read! My advice to you newcomers would be, don’t ask him questions about his personal life, because it tends to be pretty boring.”

“It sounds to me like he’s a walking, talking Wikipedia page,” says Captain Calvert, who worked for the previous two Pacific Fleet Commanders and thinks she knows how to deal with them by now. “We owe it to ourselves to figure him out. It’ll make our lives easier, anyway. So, let’s put our heads together: what do we know about him?”

What they know are his habits, which they’ll come to learn intimately over the next few years, and which are admittedly pretty boring. Admiral Kazansky is one of the first to show up to work in the morning and one of the last to leave in the evening. He often answers e-mails past 2300 hours, but never later than midnight. Jokes never catch him off-guard; he rarely smiles, and when he does, it has an ulterior motive. When he’s not working, he’s scheming and making plans to go back home to San Diego, and his requests for leave are always granted, because he works like a pack mule from home anyway. He signs off every e-mail with “Sincerely,”…

“Is he sincere, though?” asks Chief Warrant Officer Kent halfway through Admiral Kazansky’s first year. (Admiral Kazansky is surely unaware that his staff now spends the second Friday of every month chit-chatting about him over drinks in downtown Honolulu.) “I can’t ever tell. And he lives in Hawaii. San Diego’s nice, I know, but what’s so different about the beaches there that he can’t get here?”

“I genuinely don’t think he’s human,” confesses Commander Stoddard. “People warned me about that when I came here, and I laughed it off, but… he keeps his desk biologically sterile. Not one fingerprint, but I’ve never seen anyone wipe it down. I’ve looked through his drawers. Don’t judge me, I got curious. Everything squared away, like he’s goddamn Einstein or something. Have any of you ever seen him in his civvies?” No one has. “God damn it, where does he shop for groceries? No one’s seen him at a grocery store? Does he even own a pair of jeans? Does he wear his uniform to bed, too?”

“He probably goes grocery shopping on the whole other side of the island to avoid all the enlisted kids,” laughs Captain Calvert. “Come to think of it…you know how he always eats lunch in the office? It’s always a salad. And always the same kind of salad. This guy survives on one cup of coffee and one spinach salad a day. Maybe he really isn’t human.”

They build out their wealth of knowledge and come to learn that Admiral Kazansky is defined by his extremes, by what he always does and what he never does. Admiral Kazansky gets his uniforms dry-cleaned every week, though he never spills anything on them. No one has ever seen Admiral Kazansky stumble over his words while giving a speech, or trip over a sidewalk curb, or push a “pull” door. He is always polite and never friendly. Sometimes he is cold, and sometimes he is cruel in his patience with you when you’ve fucked up, like a cat toying with a hemorrhaging mouse. But he never raises his voice. He is always immaculately put-together, well-groomed, constructed every day like a product on an assembly line. Nothing is ever out of place. Allegedly his umbrella once turned inside-out during a rainstorm; he disdainfully shook it once, as a hunter might pump a loaded shotgun, and it flipped itself right-side-in again. The laws of physics do not seem to apply to him. Nor do the natural embarrassments that come with being human. Admiral Kazansky is never flustered, never harried, and never falls apart.

“I found this old picture of him shaking hands with another pilot on the Internet,” says Chief Warrant Officer Kent in Admiral Kazansky’s second year. “Smiling like the Cheshire Cat. Never seen him smile like that in all my years working with him. And he had frosted tips, too. Like Guy Fieri on a diet and steroids. It was the eighties, sure, but it’s like he knew how to have fun, once upon a time. Wonder what happened to him.”

“I feel lonely for him sometimes,” says Commander Stoddard. “Strict guy like that, no family, no friends, no wife, nothing to live for but the Navy? He’s like a workhorse with blinders on. Nowhere to go but forward. That’s a lonely existence.”

“Not if you’re a robot,” says Lieutenant Commander Hartford. “I swear, sometimes he breathes and it makes me jump, ‘cause I forgot he was alive!” —What else doesn’t Admiral Kazansky do?

That’s when they realize that none of them, not the old guard nor the new, has ever, not once, ever seen or heard Admiral Kazansky sneeze.

And they all finally give up the game and quit arguing and agree that, no, he really isn’t human after all. He must be some cyborg from the future sent to whip the Pacific Fleet into shape, and you can’t ask for too much humanity from someone who’s doing a pretty damn good job of it.

The rumors start soon after that. Jokes that could get them all tossed out of the Navy, but probably won’t. Jokes that accidentally spread like wildfire.

Yes, Admiral Kazansky could be a cyborg, but he also could be a Mormon fundamentalist, or a Scientologist, or a really weird Catholic. Maybe he goes home to San Diego so often because in his spare time he’s really a mule ferrying cocaine across the Mexi-Cali border. That’s what he does for fun. He eats spinach salads because he’s a reincarnation of Popeye the Sailor Man, and he needs all the super-strength he can get to deal with the Navy’s modern-day bullshit.

“I don’t know if that story makes sense,” laughs Captain Calvert on the phone with her husband in Washington, “but it makes more sense than the real Admiral Kazansky does!”

So the rumors get spread around.

“I don’t know if you know this,” Maverick comments, watching Ice make their bed from the relative comfort of the bedroom doorway, “or if I should tell you this, because you might crack down on it, which would be a shame, ‘cause it’s funny. But every time you send a mass e-mail to the Pacific Fleet commissioned officer corps, you become the main topic of conversation between all of us officers for a solid day and a half.”

“Oh?” says Ice with a smile, struggling to fit the last corner of the fitted sheet to the mattress. He sighs, tugs on the strings of his old ratty-ass hooded sweatshirt, and looks at Maverick balefully through his glasses. “Help me out over here, would you? —What are people saying? All good things, I hope.”

“Not really,” Maverick says, stuffing a pillow into a pillowcase as he stares out the window into the San Diego sunshine. “Some pretty crazy shit, actually. Hard as hell for me to keep a straight face. I heard this one—you know, people are saying you eat nothing but salads?”

“Oh,” laughs Ice, hospital-cornering the free sheet. “Yeah, that one’s kind of true. I bring salads in to the office sometimes.”

“You hate salads.”

“I know, it’s torture! Move over.” He bumps Maverick out of the way to tuck in the last corner. “But, I figure, if a man torments himself with spinach-and-arugula salads three times a week, you ought to respect his commitment. It’s all an act. You get to a certain Defense Department paygrade, it all starts being storytelling and stagecraft.”

“Or trickery and deception, depending on how you look at it.”

“Sure. But you could say that about everything. —Besides, I’d rather the Navy discuss my salads than discuss… well, this.” He gestures to Maverick, then down to the bed. They start tugging the comforter over it together. “How much slack you got over there?”

“‘Bout a foot.”

Ice pulls his side down a couple more inches to match, then flips the top up. “Is that it? That’s all people are saying about me?”

Maverick grins and bends down to pick up a pillow. “They’re also saying that you’re the reincarnation of Popeye the Sailor Man. I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam, and all that. Think fast.”

Ice doesn’t think fast, and the pillow hits him square in the face, and he laughs again as he catches it in his arms. “Shit, that’s good,” he says; “I was just about to call Slider, think I’ll tell him that one. That’ll make him laugh. Popeye Iceman.” He tosses the pillow onto the made-up bed and pulls out his cell phone, but—then he frowns, grimaces, mutters “Ah, no,” and turns away to sneeze.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Ask and you shall receive (a sneak peak of what's to come)

[clowndensation]

there’s a question to be asked i think about to what extent “getting out” can be conflated with “being saved” in this show, and what freedom actually means to any of these characters.

like you can argue that shiv saved ken by voting against him on gojo, but what if your intent behind saving someone is to inflict a worse punishment than if you’d just left them trapped? can a child weaned on poison survive on milk, or are you just sentencing them to a death by inches, starved of the only thing they know? and if you save someone specifically because you know that being saved is the worst thing that can happen to them, is that kindness or cruelty? at what point does a good thing become a malicious act?

and you can say that roman is finally free, but what exactly is he free from? the company? his father? does unlocking a cage mean saving a dog, or are you allowing him out on the street knowing there’s a kill shelter nearby? if the driving anxiety behind roman is that he’s an idiot and a failure—that he’ll never amount to anything, and trying will only lead to pain—and he’s finally cut loose once all of those anxieties have crystallized into cold hard fact in his mind, what has he actually escaped from? if the cage is in your mind, is it even possible for somebody else to unlock it?

the fundamental truth of a tragedy is that even being saved can be a death sentence, if the characters are incapable of escaping the thing doing them the most harm (themselves and their childhoods)

[journey-to-the-attic]

one thing i've noticed about obey me's story is that it generally delivers on big dramatic narrative moments, but often neglects the surrounding scenes and especially the fallout. there is of course, the oft-talked-about lesson 16, feat. mc's death that never gets brought up again, but then there's also s2's amnesia arc, which ends things with "mc has the ring so everything is completely fine forever"

om has a habit of doing this, where a realm-wide (or heck, universe-wide) problem is hand-waved away by the appearance of a convenient fix-it, which is usually either an object or just ~magic~ (magic as a plot device in om in general is handled poorly but that's a story for another day)

in some cases they just don't address the fallout at all. at least belphie talks about what he did in lesson 16 - but, see nb s2, wherein levi floods the entire devildom, submerging entire houses, and they don't bring it up again afterwards. as far as i remember too, belphie's mini-arc in this season wasn't really given room to breathe, either

but here's the main thing (spoilers for nb lessons 38 and 39)

i've just done these two lessons and in hindsight lucifer's mini-arc feels like a lot of missed potential

honestly they could have excluded diavolo entirely - his main purpose was to stall for time so that the brothers could show up. the moment where he kneels was cool (more on that moment later), but the way they've written him in means that the angels kinda. don't get to do anything? at all?

look - raphael has a gorgeous character moment at the end of 37 where he cries for the brothers' plight. like you don't understand this had so much potential!!! he didn't really do much in s1 (and might not have actually been himself??) so i was hoping this would be his chance to shine, but instead he's on the sidelines. simeon gets the most to do, and even then it's really not much. luke doesn't do anything, unless you count those blessings he and simeon give mc, but they don't really factor in at all??

what especially doesn't make sense about diavolo's role here is that lucifer turns on mc after they step in to protect him. this is meant to be a pay-off to diavolo's less savoury motivation for saving the brothers, revealed in his arc in nb s1, but all lucifer does is say it, get mad, then completely forgets about it once all is said and done

if that's all they were going to do with it, why bring it up at all? from a character standpoint, it makes more sense for mc to shield one of the angels - again, raphael this could've been your moment. (alternatively it could've been a call-back to the og s1 where mc shields luke in the underground tomb)

the appearance of the brothers was welcome, but at the same time i don't quite buy that they all got out of their respective predicaments completely fine. (also where did mephistopheles go??) lucifer also calms down very quickly, which is a great moment for the power of family, but at the same time i feel like he would've needed at least a few more dialogue boxes of him registering through his rage that his brothers were there. eh, this is more nitpicky than everything else

the brotherly moment was 10/10 though. love these guys <3

but i hated the final resolution so so much. sure, have god forgive him, whatever. but why would you end it all with a "papa loves you"???? if it had been raphael or simeon saying it, maybe i could get behind this as a symptom of the celestial realm's unhealthy society, but LUCIFER, whose greatest fear was revealed to be his father in s3 of the original story?

om has never made it seem like god's relationship with the angels was anything other than controlling and borderline abusive, and for some reason (if the poignant flashback is anything to go by) they've done a complete heel turn into "actually it's fine because he loves the angels". it could be read as representing how children often still cling to abusive/controlling parents, but i doubt it - especially coming from lucifer, who started a war and lost a sister in direct opposition to his father

and i get the whole deal with "lucifer was so beautiful as an angel" but it feels really disingenuous to the brothers' arc (about settling into the devildom and coming into their own as demons) to harp on about it. like, fuck that, have lucifer cast away the angel form, or at least have some pushback from him in the aftermath. have mc tell him "you're even more beautiful as a demon" or something

then in lesson 39 everything's back to normal. it's a very cute lesson and i had fun in the moment, but it feels off. there's no discussion of what happened, everyone's completely fine. there's got to be some psychological after-effects to all of that, no? for lucifer especially if not the brothers who got frozen as well???

though lucifer's dragon gift was very sweet. i can't stay mad at that old man

[barbieaiden]

rememberwhen he. remember. when. when.when. he

[eosofspades]

okay i meant to make this post forever ago but my personal opinion on why so many people were so dissatisfied with lightfalll (disclaimer: i am not one of these people, i love lightfall SO much), is that lightfall was kind of subjected to a really aggressive marketing campaign.

like, stick with me here, i feel like almost all the lightfall release content (the trailers especially) were so focused on battling the witness, how this battle has been centuries in the making and this is the Second Collapse Finally Finding Us, only for there to be,,, no real resolution. the end was left on such a severe cliffhanger, but not only that, there was NO battle with the witness. the witness didn't even seem to be having a hard time at all with what we WERE throwing at it.

and for narrative reasons *i* am obsessed with this ending; in terms of storytelling i adore practically every creative decision that was made in lightfall, but i think the reason that so many people were so upset about it is because lightfall had such intense marketing and was rooted in the implication that this was the End of Days, only for us to get almost no closure, and instead so many more questions.

(there's also something to be said, i think, about the fact that the people who ARE most upset about this are like, the youtube gamer dudebros who's content is very very often rooted in the aggressive, violence-and-warfare, pvp-centric, no-interest-in-lore approach to destiny, and that the people i've seen primarily ENJOYING the narrative decisions (or at least being understanding about it) are the artists and writers and loremasters of the fandom, but i'm not quite sure,,, how to expand on that point.)