#you’re back in the real thing. (and also thinking that in the dream sequence there won’t be any panels as well)

[swordmaid]

eden verse more like the slow realisation that the story you’re following is false…. it’s never been about you (the main character), you were just forced to play that role because someone else is trying to skew the story to fit them. it’s always been your story but never about you. in this fairy tale you were never the damsel that needed saving, but the knight who went in the journey to rescue the damsel how could you have forgotten that……….

[sepublic]

Watching and Dreaming

         It’s over.

         It’s really over.

         …Man! We really had a timeskip and everything!

         Was it Luz’s eighteenth birthday? Sorry, I was just. SO caught off-guard and disoriented and in such a daze. I remember hearing them mention how Luz was there for the 16th and 17th, which confirms what we already know about Luz’s 15th happening during the timeskip to Thanks to Them. So we have a general range for birthday and all and.

         THERE’S SO MUCH TO TALK ABOUT!!!

         I’m feeling numb y’all. Genuinely numb and in a daze. I think I need to sit down and catch my breath. Just… Fine, let me start from the beginning. That’s a good place, right?

         That nightmare sequence was so HORRIFYING, the way it called back to Lilith and Gwen’s betrayals of Eda over the curse, her trauma over Dell with him losing his second eye! King seeing the skulls of his siblings and being confronted by Bill! And Luz’s dream, being told she’s Belos… Seeing everyone dead, having it reminded to her that she helped him meet the Collector!

         But the way she knows her friends enough that in a final moment of crisis… She knows not to trust this! Reminds herself they’d never do that! And just shrugs it off, the way it all comes around to her original light spell! And it’s what saves and awakens everyone from this dream, because it’s called Watching and Dreaming, beat the fantasies of Adegast like before!

         And that reunion! They’re so glad to see each other… Eda’s excitement to see Stringbean, the way it loops back to that original trio! And the Collector, aww the Collector… The way they’re so mad but also still reasonable, they’re not THAT mean just not aware of boundaries.

         And how Belos manipulates them and GAUGH the age-old theory of the Titan being possessed and halfway resurrected by Belos, covered in his goopy mass… It came true!!!

         But first, I loved how everyone befriended the Collector. How even at their most malicious, they weren’t THAT malicious. And the way King counted on Luz to reach out to them, as she always has! The way they recounted Luz’s own journey to one of her narrative parallels!

         Raine and Belos fighting each other REAL… They’ve dedicated themselves so much to stopping him, and now they face off! And how CLOSE they were too… Titan I love Raine.

         Belos’ giant mock-Titan design was PHENOMENAL, he really went Bionicle this finale and I love it! And good Titan the way the Collector tried to apply the kindness and forgiveness to Belos, because they’re just so naïve! They’re still learning Luz’s compassion and they think it’ll work on this man they’ve been stuck with for centuries, because they can see he’s lonely too!

         But as tragic as it is, you can only get help if you accept it. You need to want to change. And he kept refusing, time and time again.

         Luz’s death, AUGH… I was panicking because they wouldn’t ACTUALLY, but the way the Collector was breaking up! In disbelief! They don’t understand death and they’re just. They really are a metaphor, or just a straight up example, of kids finding things out! They were lied to by the Archivists, who presumably got killed in the mutual war between Collectors and Titans.

         Titan, you’re a monster Belos. You really killed Luz. But Luz, she GAVE her life for this kid she just met, who antagonized her for so long! Because she sees herself in him, she’s just bristling with so much COMPASSION, it’s overflowing!

         And finally meeting King’s dad, and Belos killing what’s left of him. That hurts so much, but it was wonderful seeing the full shot of his skeleton. And the Hooty parasite in his eye… Well. I guess that just confirms that Hooty is one of those eye-worms that survived after all these millennia! Damn.

         Harpy Luz!!! But also Titan Luz!!! And she got big hair!!! Just like she always wanted, and Stringbean came back for her! I loved seeing King and Eda go FERAL over Luz, I love that trope to death. But the way Camila shed a tear like she could tell she lost the last member of her family, after losing Manny…

         But nope! Luz’s friends have faith in her, and they manage to save everyone! With the Collector, my boy… Ngl I thought they’d go with the reveal that Belos’ growth sapped their magic and left them powerless, but oh well!

         And the callback! The callback to magic coming from the heart, Luz, Eda, and King diving through! Luz knowing what she wants, getting to wield bile magic for just a brief time! And the animation the ANIMATION…

         Raine was blind as a bat and just whistling lmao! But seriously it’s sad when you consider they were possibly trying to access any bard magic, but were too exhausted. And getting to reunite with Eda after all this time… Those tear scars are metal ngl. We got Possessed Raine scars after all, folks!

         And the way they all came together to finally PRY Belos from the heart, even as they made a final callback to the beginning scene! Just as Eda said, if Luz works, she can make her fantasies happen, bring them to life, and she DID! AND BELOS ATE IT!!!

         Him trying to appeal to her one last time. Blaming the magic, accusing Eda of having been cursed by dark magic, once again relying on the curse as an excuse. But the WAY the show finished him off… Boiled, BURNED to death in the rain, after talking about how he missed the cool rain of the human realm. The ultimate rejection of this world towards him, that rain that acts as a signifier for the different worlds.

         Luz just watched Philip burn to death. That shit was ICE COLD, in spite of rain itself! Just letting him beg for his life, feebly trying to appeal to ‘peace’, but Luz was allowed to be a bit feral and get some revenge herself. And of course, Eda, King, and Raine got some too! The leaf umbrella was hilarious and anyhow I think there’s something poetic about Raine being named after the thing that helped kill Belos in the end. So long, you messed up bastard! Killed by the witches, by the world you despised! I love the way his patience wears away to reveal his hatred and rage and truth, and he dies by the people he loathed.

         Seriously, that underwater coral look to everything was so cool but so fitting, given the Titan was submerged in water and everything… Luz bringing back the red leaves that were another thing to distinguish from the green grass of the isles, against the green of Belos!

         The callback to Really Small Problems with the BREAD PUN, THAT KILLED ME!!! And Luz regretting, trying to think of what to say, realizing when it was seemingly too late, to THANK them like the first episode of S3’s title! And now…

         Now it’s over. The timeskip and reparations. I feel sorry for everyone who lived in Palm Stings or on the left arm in general, Belos still got to wreak havoc and devastation one last time… But everyone’s freed, STEVE AND LILITH’S FRIENDSHIP I LIVE FOR IT SO MUCH!!!

         Everyone reuniting at the Owl House, Raine and Eda those hags having some rest in the nest… The Collector bringing back Hooty! Lilith and Camila and Amity! Gilbert and Harvey kiss, HUNTER WITH DARIUS AND EBERWOLF!!! Amity and Alador… And Odalia, just straight up ignored! Would’ve loved to see her and Kikimora one last time, it’s a shame we didn’t get to see Kiki again. Maybe I missed her later on, but lol what if we just took the opportunity to say Boscha and the others killed her off-screen what then.

         Luz losing the last of the Titan, the original glyph that started it all… The pain!!! But the way she makes a NEW LANGUAGE WITH KING!!! And still has Stringbean, so she still has another way of doing magic! So it’s not the end, just a new beginning all over again!

         AUGH WHY DID THEY MAKE THE COLLECTOR LEAVE! When King said he showed up one last time I wanted to SEE them again, sure they definitely wouldn’t have aged given it was only a few years and they didn’t grow after millions but whatever.

         Timeskip… GOD THE WAY IT THREW US FOR A LOOP! A three-year timeskip, three years of the show. The photos with an older Vee, that barista lady with Hooty, Eda introducing Camila to Apple Blood! AND OLDER VEE AND LUZ!!!

         I love the way the show psyched us out, making us think Luz was just gonna settle for human college lmao. And the way she said ‘After all this time’ like she was gone for years, and I was thinking! Please tell me it’s a joke! AND IT WAS! AS I HOPED, Camila reminds Luz it’s only been a WEEK!

         And seeing everyone again. The Bat Queen start a new forest of Palismen with Gwen and Dell, Hunter learning from his lowkey descendants? THE TRIBUTE TO FLAPJACK I’M CRYING, WILLOW!!! DAMMIT WE SHOULD’VE GOTTEN A HUNTLOW KISS IT’S BEEN YEARS IN-UNIVERSE!!!

         Checking up on everyone, from Morton to the Selkidomus, Wrath and Braxas, Tibbles and the Slitherbeast with its baby! HARPY LILITH! I saw Boscha… Hexside’s faculty, BARCUS AS A TEACHER! Alador figuring out how to remove the sigils, Darius’ joy and becoming tsundere! Emira’s short hair, I was worried about Edric but then we saw him as a teacher, bless! ALONGSIDE GUS, who is ROCKING IT with those golden dreads and being an expert on humans!

         The way the symbol of Belos’ tyranny was replaced with a forest of wild magic, unbridled, for people to learn in. THAT being the college. Raine there, everyone there. And then they all come together one last time to say goodbye, acknowledging how we missed out on the Quincenera… THE MESSED UP CAKES! Steve just letting the spiders crawl as Luz did!

         And the final light show by the Collector. And that META joke… Saying “They’re about to leave” which could refer to our favorite star child, but it also refers to the audience! One final BBBYYYEEEEE is perfect. That running gag. Both by the crew in real life and in the show. This show gets so wonderfully meta and I ADORE it…!

         (Lmao that last look at the Coven Heads, VITIMIR GETTING AN EXTRA BIT!!! Does the crew love him too, is it a bone thrown to his fans! HELL YEAH!!! Still salty over his hat lmao.)

         …It’s over. It’s really over. After all this time, this is the last I’ll ever write something like this, about a new episode. Unless we get that Raeda prequel which the finale even jokes about, but for now. Thank you so much everyone. For listening, for reading to all of these posts I’ve made per episode since Season 1B began. With how much I dump here, I’m amazed anyone’s read it, but…

         Thanks so much you guys. It means everything. I dunno how to end this off, I feel like Luz… Oh wait! I know exactly how! Just as my beloved characters did, just as @danaterrace herself...

        BBBBBBYYYYYYEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!

[scary-movies-on-netflix]

THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES (2002)

Richard Gere is a “star reporter” at the “Washington Post.”  He and his wife, Debra Messing, go to buy a house, but on the way back to their present, crappy, house, Debra Messing sees something strange in the window.  She is spooked!  The car spins out of control and she bonks her head on the window.  Now, you might think that would kill her, but it doesn’t.  Instead, at the hospital doctors discover that she has a glioblastoma (a brain cancer), and then she dies a few days later.  (It seems like a few days.)

Two years later, Richard Gere is still sad, naturlich.  He drives to Richmond to interview the governor of Virginia, but he enters a fugue state!  His car dies on the side of the road, and he walks to a nearby house, where a guy holds him at gunpoint because, the guy says, Richard Gere has been knocking on his door at 0230 for the past two days.  Local sheriff Laura Linney deescalates the situation (which was weird, because in real life she would have just shot someone) and drops Richerd Gere off at a motel.  Richard Gere discovers that he is in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, which is way off his intended destination of Richmond.  He decides to stay in town to investigate all the weirdness occurring.  The rest of the movie isn’t so much a plot as a bunch of interrelated things just happening:

Richard Gere and Laura Linney drive around and talk to people describing their experiences with the Mothman, an alien or cryptid with red eyes and moth-like characteristics.

Richard Gere hangs out with the guy who held him at gunpoint, named Gordon.  Gordon begins to have dreams predicting upcoming disasters.  He meets a dude named Indrid Cold.  He eventually sits in the cold and dies of exposure, but while he’s supposed to be dead he calls Richard Gere!

In one of the better sequences, Gordon calls Richard Gere .  Gordo says that he has Indrid Cold with him, and he wants to talk to Richard Gere.  A weird voice tells Richard Gere what he’s doing, what he’s holding, the lines from a book he cannot see.  “I want to meet you,” Richard Gere says.  Indrid Cold says, “You already have, [Richard Gere].  I have seen you afraid.  You’re frightened right now, aren’t you?”  Meanwhile, Laura Linney is racing over there, but when she arrives Gordon is fine and Indrid Cold is not there.

Richard Gere goes to visit a paranormal investigator (some dude who wrote a book), twice.  The man lore-dumps about moth-people, but this is mostly extraneous.  He does deliver a decent metaphor, that the Mothman (or moth-people) aren’t necessarily more advanced or smarter than us; they’re maybe like people in a tall building, who can see just a bit farther down the road.

Richard Gere was told to expect a disaster on the Ohio River.  He thinks that this will involve the chemical plant, and he freaks out on the governor of Virginia, who is coming to visit the plant!  Nothing happens.

Things escalate for Richard Gere as his dead wife, Debra Messing, appears.  He gets a letter to await her call at noon on Friday at his house in DC.  He does so, but Laura Linney calls him instead!  She tells him that his wife is dead.  She invites him to Christmas dinner.  Their conversation ends, and the phone rings again!  Richard Gere does not answer and heads back to West Virginia to spend Christmas with Laura Linney.

Finally, in a good set piece, Richard Gere arrives at the Silver Bridge outside Point Pleasant.  There is a traffic jam.  Richard Gere realizes that this is the disaster on the Ohio River, and we have a cool scene where our view shifts from the factory to the bridge.  It collapses and a bunch of cars fall into the river, including Laura Linney’s sheriff truck.  Richard Gere jumps into the water to save her.  They muse over a vision she talked about earlier.

This was…middling to fine.  There are some nice atmospheric moments, such as the phone call and a few other scenes where people encounter the Mothman or Indrid Cold.  We also have lots of red lights like eyes and moth-related shapes as transitions, but this is long, a full two hours, and there’s not enough interesting material to justify the length.  The plot is meandering and lacks focus.  Recommended for fans of Richard Gere or the Mothman. 

[eviltiddyproductions]

Destined with You : Episode 10

that transition from past to present made me suddenly remember that Rowoon is gorgeous!

my man’s never changing her contact name from civil servant haunted house 💀

Jo Bo-ah’s eyes 😭😭😭 !!! I feel every emotion!

she’s so happy to see him ^•^

from the day this show premiered all of us knew they were going to fall for each other spell or not and yet here I am, grinning like a dumbass happy to hear it [except break up with that girl Sin-yu ENOUGH, let me enjoy this blossoming relationship minus the grey area]

that child 💀

wait for me is such a realistic thing to say except it never seems to work itself out in kdrama land 😭😭😭

as of now I guess let me just officially look away from their grey area situation so I can selfishly enjoy

look at her fingers !!!! look at how happy she is !!! her turning back every 3 seconds 🤣

break up with #that girl already! minus whatever she’s got going on with her other man, and whatever horrible thing she’s planning for my sister ; you have never looked at her with love in your eyes !!!!

lmao her side (piece man?) wore glasses and I didn’t recognise him for a second and thought she was meeting someone new 💀

lmao girl you can’t just walk away from a breakup??? stand up ???

well she just sat down…

despite everything I still have like zero empathy for her

lmao now the second male lead is here 😭 I got the flower bouquet peaceful moment for 4 seconds….

please let this be a dream sequence

oh thank god 💀🙏

everything about the office scene was awkward but the lift moment was surprisingly sweet (it was like 30 seconds of them being in proximity, my brain just accepts anything 😭)

this mother and younger coworker storyline and the two bosses coworker romance storyline are things that I support (why not!) but confuse me like sister the main plot has not started unfolding yet, can you take this stuff elsewhere 😭🙏

lmao she always has more heat for hongjo than sinyu like sister get your priorities straight 😭

naur he spat his wine 😂

wait he changed her name on his phone!!!

lmao babe you’re about to be surprised

that is an insane amount of beer bottles for one table 😭

the gloves

talk your shit sister! 💅

of course it was the second male lead lmao. just got pepper sprayed 💀

lmao second leads can never waste a single second like if you rejected the girl once, it’s over for you 😂😭 imagine your competition being someone who was engaged like he obviously didn’t think that man was going to win over him

Jang Sinyu get a grip for real bestie! she’s in an emotional and moral pickle because of you!!! 😍 she liked the other guy first and now has to wait for you but also feel all of these feelings lmao like let her chill.

my sister got into this weird love quadrangle spiritual past life mess before she could get one simple boyfriend

lmao this ‘pure’ talk might be their banter or whatever but it is totally not my vibe 💀

okay secretary Kim chair thing

and this is why you do not kiss around in your workplace

the way I do not know these office characters enough to root for them

you cannot feel any empathy for Nayeon like deadass bullied my sister into dropping out of school and now she’s scheming with someone terrifyingly creepy 😭🙏 STAAPPPP IT

not only is she conspiring to do voodoo on my sister, she’s getting her transferred as well…

get him Mr Kwon !!!

sister put up a little fight?

would it kill him to be a little honest with the one he claims to love 😍

THE HAND !!!!!

I ruined my life watching a show I cannot binge omg 😭. tell me now !!! lmao @the shot of Mr. Kwon clinging to the wall

[honorthysalad]

Did you buy the light novel? What did you think of it? Do you think is worth getting it (and also, if bought it, how did you do it/what site did you use)?

I did in fact buy the light novel. It was about $11 (1540 yen), and I bought it on this site. I purchased the special edition (I think the regular version is 980, but it doesn’t include the bonus comic nor the bonus chapter.) It covers the entirety of the first two volumes and chapter 12 as well.

I do have a post summarizing the new information for the first chapter that’s available as a preview here as well.

Would I recommend getting it? Well… uhhh.. it depends on what you’re looking for lol. I’ll always recommend supporting the author and this manga, so yes, purchasing the LN would be a good way to show that the fans of this manga are interested in exploring this story in different mediums. I think that way they’ll be more willing to take risks.

But what makes me hesitant to recommend buying the light novel is that it’s just the manga. If you’ve read the manga, you’ve read the light novel. There are very little risks taken. Any new information is entirely superfluous, and even then, it rarely answers something I was wondering about. The two scenes that bridge the furthest from the manga are Kurebayashi’s and Asako short POVs. It’s not much though. Also some scenes were a little out of order in order to flow better. For example, they moved the flashback to Hikaru’s dad telling Hikaru about the indoh family curse to after Yoshiki leaves ‘Hikaru’s house to meet up with Kurebayashi.

I’m not disappointed with the light novel. It just exactly met my base expectations beat for beat.

There’s also the fact that it isn’t translated. This won’t be a secret to anyone but I can’t read Japanese lol. I had to read the light novel by taking a picture of every page and putting that into google translate and i did that for all >200 pages. Sometimes the translations were an utter mess. If you read that and think reading a whole book like that sounds like terrible, I wouldn’t get it. It took about 3 hours for me to read the whole thing and that was cause I had nothing better to do.

If you were wanting to get it just for the bonus content, I wouldn’t recommend that either. Entertext was talking about posting a translation for the bonus chapter, and that’s the only new content I’d consider worth it. It explores Yoshiki’s family and is set back in autumn (so with the real hikaru). The bonus comic is self-contained and is a dream sequence (and also if you want it just dm me and I’ll send it to you) so it has zero bearing on the plot.

so um yeah a lot of words to say, get it if you want it. Don’t if you don’t. There’s nothing in there integral to the plot or you can point to and go “oh! So that’s why it’s like that!” or “This was the author’s true intentions!”

[actually thinking more about it there’s the old man convention from the end of ch9 which reveals why those old guys are important. Idk if they said it in the manga, but Mikasa is a shinto priest, Matsushima is the owner of the Matsushima Sawmill, and Takeda is kubitachi’s landlord.]

I do want to repeat though that getting the light novel will open up doors to getting more content. Hopefully the future content will be more interesting or explore some parts that aren’t touched on in the manga.

[tearlessrain]

Lumpy Kiba Part 2: Origins

I just wanted to also address this real quick because a few people have insisted that Lumpy Kiba predates Wolf’s Rain and I don’t personally believe that’s the case.

even more deranged ranting under the cut!

Firstly, I was a teenager when Wolf’s Rain came out and was first popular, and to the best of my memory I only ever saw that silhouette in Wolf’s Rain fan content until later (it made a slight detour through the broader wolfaboo community before taking over clipart repositories everywhere, but obviously it broke containment in short order). I had Lumpy Kiba as my desktop background (on my user account on the Family Computer) for a while. Howling wolf silhouettes have been a thing since forever, of course, but I was obsessed with wolves and I don’t remember seeing much of Lumpy Kiba specifically until more recently.

Secondly, that opening sequence wolf is animated. I know an animation frame can be traced but that seems unlikely in an anime that is entirely about wolves. one assumes the people involved knew how to draw them without tracing.

Thirdly, the anime still is the only place where the wolf silhouette actually... looks good. It’s significantly higher in quality than the clipart and traces that followed, and includes shading and detail that Lumpy Kiba never does. The anatomy, while a bit wonky, makes sense with the way wolves are drawn in the anime.

It matches the style of the anime in the way it’s constructed and the way it moves. Here’s another still from it, of another wolf on a cliff with its head up (though this one is throwing someone else off a cliff. don’t worry about it)

wheeee

anyway, the wolf in this shot clearly has a different silhouette from Lumpy Kiba or Original Kiba, but a lot of the stylistic quirks (prominent wrist bumps that you can also see on the background wolf, concave back, long upper foreleg that extends down off the chest, long metatarsals, skinny waist) are the same, and consistent in a lot of scenes.

you can see the stylistic quirks in other places too, like the end credit sequence where elements of the wolf’s outline are exaggerated compared to a real one (also that tiny waist again). this isn’t a bad choice, and it works well in the anime where the artists clearly know what a wolf looks like and are choosing what to exaggerate. the lumps emphasize the wolfiness instead of obscuring it.

there’s also the particular posture and conformation of Lumpy Kiba that’s rarely seen in silhouettes that aren’t derived from it, but seen constantly in wolf’s rain. real wolves have somewhat narrow chests and stand with their forepaws fairly close together most of the time. a lot of non-Lumpy Kiba clipart reflects this.

but wolves in Wolf’s Rain tend to have broad chests and a wide, square stance that’s congruous with the silhouette from whence Lumpy Kiba came but not that typical in real wolves. they have a stiff, boxy sort of look and movement to them.

in the anime, it looks fine. but it makes Lumpy Kiba stand out because not only is he based on a pretty stylized wolf, a lot of elements that look fine in a few frames in an anime with shading and a cohesive art style around it (the pointy hocks and butt bump, for example) end up weirdly exaggerated in the clipart because whoever traced it was just following the lines they saw instead of considering actual wolf anatomy, so the quirks are both exaggerated by the process, and taken out of context.

my theory as to why people believe they’ve seen that same silhouette predating Wolf’s Rain is the same reason the Mandela effect and that dude who allegedly appears in everyone’s dreams are a thing: human perception and memory is flawed, howling wolves are an incredibly popular motif, and at this point Lumpy Kiba is so pervasive that that’s what most people probably picture when they think of a howling wolf silhouette, especially if they don’t know that it’s all the same wolf. there are also a lot of weirdly stylized wolf cliparts out there, and unless you’re me and have been holding a grudge about this specific thing for the last fifteen years, there is very little reason for your brain to have a dedicated “every distinct wolf silhouette I’ve seen on a tshirt in that weird crystals-swords-and-holographic-horse-print shop at the mall” section in its memory.

it’s certainly possible that Wolf’s Rain traced (and improved) a clipart that already existed for one specific frame for some reason, but for now I’m gonna continue my assumption that Kiba is indeed its origin.

[greatandquestionablecontent]

A little scribble in which an undead person thinks about their favorite ghost

Unreality, nonexplicit discussions of death and corpses, dreamy nonsense, gay if you’re looking for it

Ilya: the ghost, he/him

Delta: the one who dies and comes back repeatedly, #camebackwrong, they/them

Also mentioned: Andromeda, Moriine & Daishin are alive people. That’s all that matters here.

~

Andromeda had always been there when Delta came back, but it was Ilya who they found in that space between. Not always. Sometimes it was instantaneous, going from a dying body back to an undying body, with no gap. But sometimes there was a space of nothingness, and sometimes the undying dragged on and on, and Delta could retreat back into that nothingness while their body reformed. It was in that space that Ilya was most powerful and present, and in that space that Delta was less real than ever.

Without Ilya, it was empty and empty and empty and then there were hours (or they felt like hours) of simply Alone and Dark, interspersed with fleeting visions and passing ghosts, a sense of presence or a passing possession. Sometimes the ghosts would speak to Delta, and rarely they understood. Delta would find themself dreaming twice removed deaths, a spectator to a hazy mirage twisted and half forgotten in the space between ghost and Delta, lost in translation.

Ilya was different, of course. Only Ilya could take Delta from un-nothing into another plane of unreality so solid Delta came to believe it was its own reality. There was the world of the living, the void of the dead, and then there was Ilya.

The previous Delta had never believed in any religion; they knew that now not from memory but with an ingrained certainty, because they also knew that this was closer than they’d ever been to believing in something the way people talked about gods.

None of the other ghosts manifested so solidly, to sit on the floor beside Delta’s corpse and talk for hours.

The other ghosts shared their deaths in kaleidoscopic cloudy memories, chaotically interspersed with memories of their lived. Ilya brought Delta to the day he died, and Delta walked through it again and again, until they knew it as well as they knew their own waking world. That old castle and the flames and the screams, the bodies and the crumbling stone and the magic and flesh… It became Delta’s home, too. Delta lay inside Ilya’s body as it burned.

But Ilya would also take Delta to his life. Delta met his family, saw Andromeda herself through Ilya’s eyes so long ago, even Moriine and Daishin, and many others with blurry faces who had died alongside Ilya, or before him, or since.

They’d walk together through a vast library, blurred at the edges, with books that Delta couldn’t touch or read, but with beautiful golden spires of sun reaching up to the skylights. That was Ilya’s favorite place, always empty of any other souls or remembered persons, vague and idealized. They’d lay together on a rug that had never existed in front of a warm fireplace and stare up into stars that made no sense indoors.

“Do you do it on purpose?” Delta asked once, when they were both in the waking world again, and conversations were linear things that had words and sequences. “The way I could choose to draw a picture, and decide to add something that isn’t real? Or is it more like dreaming, and I just come along?”

“I hadn’t thought about the difference before,” Ilya said, and vanished. He was prone to doing that.

Several days later, as Delta was falling asleep, Ilya’s voice was there in the empty room. “It used to be just like dreaming,” he said. “And then I learned to chose certain themes of dreams, and throw them at people. But now, it’s more like a fully lucid dream. I can influence parts of it.”

“I’ve never lucid dreamed.”

“You know what it means, though.”

“Yes. In theory.”

“So, to answer your question, I didn’t decide to add the stars to the library ceiling, that just happened, the way dreams happen. I didn’t question it, and neither did you. But if you had questioned it, I could have made them go away. I’ve never tried manifesting stars for you, just the way I would draw a picture, just because you want to see stars. But perhaps I’ll try some day.”

And then Ilya was gone again, though he hadn’t really been there to begin with, but somehow Delta knew when the room felt empty again. And then they had the space and privacy to linger on thoughts and feelings that they didn’t need the ghost to know. Not that they really understood those thoughts and feelings either.

It just meant laying there thinking, he said he wants to manifest the stars for me. He said he wants to manifest the stars for me. For me. If I wanted, because I asked, for me, the stars, in his world, in his mindscape, just for me, for me.

It was a warm, floaty feeling. It felt like the library. Safe and bright and idealized and private and impossible.

And then would come some deep seated dread Delta couldn’t understand. The kind that came whenever they had unacceptable thoughts which could never ever be glimpsed by anyone else, which had to be carefully tucked away lest they wander into reality.

[basil-daisy]

Schrödinger's Toy Box

I always found so interesting how difficult it is to find what happened exactly with the Toy Box.

The Toy Box segment is one of the ones that simultaneously excited and annoyed me the most because it's so teased by the game but in the end it's very puzzling. I'm mostly gonna talk about what happened to it and not so much about it's meaning.

We first time we learn about the toy box is in the Lost Library. The area is associated with memories and Basil of course. From it's existence as a library as Basil loved reading books and recommended books to Sunny when they were kids to also having both Stranger and HS! Basil making an appearance in the library. But it's mostly were memories are kept which makes as to why this where we first see it.

We get it again way later in the real world, in a scene that has always intrigued me.

When Sunny finds the picture and he sees the back of it he quickly takes the key and hides it in his pocket so no one of his friends sees it. Nobody seems to have noticed the back of the picture and Sunny puts it in the photo album where nobody will ever see the back of it again.

And lastly we see it in the last dream segment, when we enter Sunny's house and then open the said Toy Box to find the broken violin and sheet music to later play it.

Now, this photo and key are fascinating, because they seem to tell us something.

This photo was clearly left in the tree house 4 years ago. It's all weirdly discoloured because of the elements. It's pretty clear that only Sunny or Basil could've left it here.

What's so confusing is how and when exactly did it end up there.

The Toy Box was already in the backyard when the incident happened. This is proven by the photos of Basil and Sunny opening the glass door and the following photo of Sunny looking at his favourite tree.

You can see it already in the right.

Now I thought the Jump Rope could've been taken from there but the description for the photo of the rope seems to state it was already on the ground.

Photo of a Rope - You hear pacing, the crunching of the grass sifting back and forth. You think you see a figure pick something off the ground, but you’re not sure. You keep staring at the leaves overhead. Everything will be okay... You think... Everything will be okay.

Then we later see it next to Mari's hanging body, now on the opposite side of the tree. Basil most likely used it to get Mari's body up and it'll probably be used as to make it look like Mari jumped from there. This seems to be backed up by the description of the picture of Basil tying the rope. The box most likely creaked when Basil stood on it with Mari's body.

Photo of Hands - You hear shuffling. You hear dragging... and creaking... and pulling. Something is happening, but you refuse to look away from the leaves. Your head feels fuzzy again. You bite your tongue and attempt to wake up one last time, but it’s no use... You’re still here.

And then we never hear about it again. From the description of Sunny's POV it seems Basil did the hanging and afterwards held Sunny's hand and that was it. They looked back at Mari and got scared. Basil couldn't be holding it too because he was holding hands with Sunny.

So whatever was done or put in the Toy Box could only have been done after the whole incident and cover up... But it's curious siince you would assume putting the violin in there would be part of the cover up so why is it not alluded to in the truth sequence?

The violin had to go somewhere and it doesn't seem to be something Sunny imagined since the photo is found in the Real World.... except... Wait, the key doesn't show in your menu in the Real World? But it has an item ID different from the key we use in the Dream segment, even if unused, which makes me think it might've been supposed to appear on the game menu after all?

If it's not an actual thing and it was only Sunny's imagination even in the Real World it gets a bit weird how much emphasis there was on it. The photo is real as Sunny's friends saw it so only the back of it would be imagined and that doesn't seem very likely. The closet is real (Kel talks about it) and Sunny sure does seem to want to forget it exists and he'd rather go where Mari was hung than there so again the Toy Box was most likely really used to hide the violin. You can always justify the key not appearing in your pocket in the Real World as Sunny refusing to look at it. It's plausible since Sunny wants to hide it so damn much or the developers forgetting to add it in that's always a possibility

If it's real then it would mean someone went back there just to hide the violin. That would be most likely Basil as

Sunny was a bit out of it... Well they both were but Sunny was mind turned off out of it so only Basil seemed mentally capable to do that

It's Basil who probably had the photo as it's from his photo album. He put the photo in the tree house, wrote on the back only for Sunny to know and taped the key. It wasn't even the first photo he used tape on.

The thing is again: Basil had to go back. Oh my gods. Imagine hanging a corpse then going inside and then having to go back because you need to hide more evidence. Now I see some logic as to why Basil would hide it in there, even if stupid. He probably thought that putting it there would mean nobody would find it because after it being associated with Mari's "suicide" his parents would want to throw it out or something. At the bare minimum it wouldn't just be in the floor at the bottom of the stairs. Of course we know Sunny's parents most likely knew the truth in the end and didn't tell anyone so it didn't actually work but I can't blame a 12 year old for not knowing how to cover up a murder.

But saying all this it meant Basil

Went to retrieve the Violin at the bottom of the stairs

Got the key

Went outside where Mari was

Opened the box and put the violin there (with Mari directly next to him 🙃)

Closed it with the key

Went back again to get the photo, write on it and tape they key and show it to Sunny, because Sunny knew about it well enough to remeber it in Headspace

Went outside for the third time, this time directly to the tree house, taping the photo to the tree house wall

This is seems so hellish that I have difficulty imagining Basil doing all that when he himself was terrified of the situation. Going back to the scene two times more? That's awful. And I have unfortunately very little to go on to make this time line so it's mostly speculation from my part.

And it's pretty clear it's the same Toy Box in the black photo album and dream sequence.

It doesn't seem believable that it was done days after the day of the incident so this is the only string of events that seem to be possible.

I have an impression the developers really wanted to add it in but they really didn't think of it that much? We know the idea of hiding something in a box was present already in the game's demo, so it has been in consideration for a long time, even if ended up being different in the end.

However I'd say the execution in the final game is kinda weird..

For something with so much emphasis it ended up not making a lot of sense in the whole story. From a metaphorical standpoint it works just fine but from an actual linear story it's a bit confusing.

Toy Box is in Sunny's backyard → Basil uses it to hang Mari → Might've been used to hide the violin and the sheet music??? Not completely clear??? Not sure how or it if happened at all??? → a photograph with the key from said Toy Box is taped to the Tree House?? → the Toy Box is put in the closet????? Was it really? Where the parents who put it there?? → four years later Sunny is still terrified of going into the closet

In conclusion: Can a developer please explain what the heck happened with this damn Toy Box. This is not even an analysis at this point I'm just begging for an explanation.

[wrathfulmercy]

Similarities I found in towl about the way I write Rick part 1

Obviously these are all just my opinions and interpretations but I wanted to share them since I write Rick since 2019 now and had all these things in my head before the series even released. Beware! Spoilers for episode 1 underneath the cut! And tw: heavy topics and long text

- Rick mentions his father was a farmer (what I didn’t expect cause I always imagined him being a sheriff or something too) and that he got disappointed by him as he bluntly lied into Rick’s face. He did it to protect the family in his point of view, but Rick was shocked and hurt by the dishonesty. I always imagined Rick’s father as someone who drastically damaged his general trust and “helped” develop Rick’s trust issues and lack of self esteem cause when he couldn’t trust his father, he wonders if he himself is someone to trust or who will sooner or later be like his father and lets people down. (To be fair I imagined his father as a strict asshole xD but that’s just overdramatizing it for writing purposes and cause it fits to my rick)

- At the beginning of the episode Rick tries to kill himself or at least has suicidal thoughts he doesn’t go through with. I always imagined Rick as someone who struggles or struggled with some kind of self harm (simply because I feel so similar to him that it would fit) and that for him it was more or less a blessing as the world fell to change his auto aggression into external aggression he could let out on the walkers or someone else. Many of you know I studied psychology and know a lot about it from myself as well and in the past self harm was often mistaken with suicide attempts in treatment. It’s not the same! People who self harm often don’t want to die, they self harm because they want to keep themselves under control so they don’t kill themselves. Self harm and suicidal tendencies are not the same! Some people self harm to feel alive again, to feel themselves again (that’s why mindfulness in therapy is such a big topic), to control their overwhelming feelings or to feel the pain in a physical way instead of the emotional way (cause you can somehow control physical pain by treating it - a wound for example that’s why many people who self harm take extra good self care of it - but you can’t control emotional pain. I describe Rick often as a control freak and even if I think that in this scene his suicidal tendencies were indeed real, it showed definitely a part of him I always expected while others often told me like “what Rick? Never would he think about suicide or self harm”. Oh yes he does. He likes the pain and thrives from it cause it makes him feel alive. Thats why he goes absolutely savage without a second thought cause he can let it out there and fight like a monster and it doesn’t even bother him cause he only feels alive then. You can even see how his look changes and he comes back to life after he cut himself and realizes what he was doing. Great acting as well! Cause often you end a dissociative moment where you could easily unalive yourself by inflicting pain so you come back to reality then and often you can’t even remember how you got there. Thats why people who blame others for suicide cause “it’s selfish” are absolutely in the wrong too cause no one in the right mind would do it if they would be able to think that far in that moment. You’re not cause you’re in an absolute exceptional circumstance where your brain chemicals are not working anymore. Pain or the caused adrenaline after it can help bringing it back. Sorry for the Ted talk.

- he writes (love) letters to Michonne and I always imagined him as a reader and writer who likes poetry and wouldn’t only write beautiful letters but also nice poems for the ones he loves. He’s a romantic and I’m glad they showed that. (And yes again I feel so connected to him that since I write, I thought he has to write too haha)

- He admits to Michonne in the dream sequence that he’s late and I always imagined him as an over sleeper due to his insomnia and someone who sometimes is a bit tardy. Even if he tries desperately to be a morning person to get things done, he needs a lot of strong coffee and some time to pass before he functions and talks properly (and yes he loves staying in bed all day). He’s still super reliable and will always be there when you need him, but it might happen he is a bit late 🤣 and the insomnia and nightmares from his ptsd? Also well represented.

- In my head he always was a sweet tooth and a junk food lover and surprise: we got the pizza quote and how much he loves that xD

Bonus:

Also do I have to mention how I imagined the crm working with the ranks and everything years ago with my partners already? Also the A and B thing? My first verse for my OC Alex was the crm and I created her when I first wrote Rick in that world, imagining a character like her fitting there perfectly and teaming up with him. How funny that Thorne exactly fits that badass female character and how she is played by the love interest actress of the face I used for Alex. 🤣 damn I was so close with getting her actress right as well.

[wutheringmights]

CTB Scrap - Miscellaneous Engineer Moments

Both of these scenes are too short to post alone. They are not from the same chapter, but they both feature the engineer.

Note: these are an unedited scraps, so the writing may not be up to snuff. Also, everything include was deleted for a reason, so please do not take it as canon to CTB.

---

Scene #1: Warriors Dreams of the Engineer

This is from the fever dreams sequence in chapter 18. In the final draft, Warriors dreams that the engineer turned into a dog that tries to eat him. Originally, I wanted to reverse to happen, minus the dog.

Why? Eh, I like cannibalism.

TW: Cannibalism

“Agh!” The engineer pressed his hands into his face. When he lowered them, a gash split him asunder, one so deep that Warriors could see the bone between the gush of blood. The engineer stared at the red on his hands before look up and seeing Warriors stare at him.

He laughed, his smile such a wonderful thing to gaze upon. “You really did all this?”

“Yes.”

The engineer laughed again. “You could have just asked. I’d given it.” He held out his hand. “Here.”

Warriors took his hand, relishing in the familiar comfort of the engineer’s grasp.

“You can do whatever you want with me,” the engineer said.

Warriors turned his hand over and bit into his wrist. Warm iron filled his mouth.

The engineer frowned. Gray eyes turned cold. “I’m going to kill you,” he said, as blood flooded Warriors’s mouth. “I’m going to fucking kill you—”

---

Scene #2: The Engineer's Speech

This was going to be part of the build up to the duel in chapter 19. When Link tries to convince the engineer to help him in the tent, the engineer was originally going to have a speech where he explained his perspective.

I cut this because it gave away far too much, but it was a painful cut. Hopefully, some of this will make its way back into the story.

“It’s the only way,” Link said. “Please, let me prove myself. Just trust me.”

“I don’t.” The noise the engineer made could have been called a laugh if it wasn’t so strained. “I don’t want to. It’s just... this is real. Everything is so fuzzy. I don’t remember my room, what’s on the walls. Or Nico’s songs, what the words were.” Somehow, his grip on Link’s wrist grew even tighter. “I studied so hard to be an engineer. I’m the world’s youngest. I’m so smart, but I don’t think my hands remember what the controls were. I don’t even remember what Zelda sounds like.”

“Instead,” the engineer said. “You’re there. In every crevice, no matter where I look, I’ve got you memorized. The child too. In everything I do, you’re both there, inside and out. I didn’t let it happen. I just woke-up, and I was someone else, all without me realizing.”

He pushed a hand through his hair. “I almost ran away. I didn’t plan it. I just wanted to leave. This was months ago—in the spring. I’d just started walking. And I’d found a town. I was going to run there and never look back. Then I remembered the child. I promised him I wouldn’t leave him behind. I was so mad at you too, but I remembered you and I thought that maybe if I stayed, you would get better. You will be my friend again. You’ll…”

As he spoke, his hand traveled down his face, along his jaw until it rested on his throat. “You’re an asshole,” he said. “And I’m the fucking idiot you got dangling on a rope.”

Link didn’t know if there was anything to be said to all that. He started to drop his hand, but thought better about it. “Engineer—”

“Why should I trust you?” the engineer demanded. “After all this, give me one good reason.”

[vanderwoodlings]

You can’t make people love you: a Blair Waldorf playlist (x)

Text version of the tracklist (and commentary) under the cut

1. “Being Good Isn’t Good Enough,” Barbra Streisand. Like, uh… hello Blair’s thesis statement on life. I also love the sound of it as a Blair kind of energy

1. “Being Good Isn’t Good Enough,” Barbra Streisand. Like, uh… hello Blair’s thesis statement on life. I also love the sound of it as a Blair kind of energy

2. “Everybody Wants To Rule The World,” Tears For Fears. Turn your back on Mother Nature/Everybody wants to rule the world

3. “homecoming queen?” Kelsea Balllerini. Well, Blair was prom queen, but close enough. Does it get hard/To have to play the part?/Nobody's feeling sorry for ya

4. “Headlock,” Imogen Heap. You say too late to start/Got your heart in a headlock/I don't believe any of it

5. “Running Up That Hill (Deal With God),” Kate Bush. As Blair like. Literally does

6. “I’m Not Calling You A Liar,” Florence + The Machine. I'm not calling you a ghost/Just stop haunting me/And I love you so much/I'm going to let you kill me

7. “Paper Bag,” Fiona Apple. I was having a sweet fix of a daydream of a boy/Whose reality I knew, was a-hopeless to be had

8. “Money Changes Everything,” Cyndi Lauper. I mean, it’s Cyndi Lauper. Who else goes on a Blair playlist? But also I was thinking a lot of that cynical classism that dogs her mindset, especially after the last couple songs

9. “Dolls Parts,” Hole. I want to be the girl with the most cake

10. “Brand New City,” Mitski. I think my life is losing momentum/I think my ways are wearing me down/But if I gave up on being pretty, I wouldn't know how to be alive

11. “I’m Not an Angel,” Halestorm. Who else could love what I’ve become etc etc. Can't help myself/From hurting you/And it's hurting me

12. “When You Break,” Bear’s Den. You keep begging for forgiveness/But you don't think you've done wrong

13. “You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid,” The Offspring.

14. “Hollywood,” Jukebox the Ghost. I love the play between Blair as the singer, and Blair as the audience, in listening to this. Like, You want Hollywood/And this is real life in both that cynical, manipulative self and that hopeless romantic who literally envisions life in film self

15. “The Heroine,” Unwoman. I asked just one thing of you, to be here/Did I not let it slip that I was sincere?/That was my best poker face, trying not to care/I watch and I wait while you never appear

16. “Envy Green,” The Arcadian Wild.

17. “Cop Car,” Mitski. You know, I don’t actually listen to Mitski but making these has almost gotten my autocorrect to accept her name? I get mean when I'm nervous like a bad dog

18. “Oh No!” MARINA. I always feel like I’m the worst/So I act like I’m the best

19. “The Walk,” Imogen Heap. No, it's not meant to be like this, not what I planned at all/I don't want to feel like this, so that makes it all your fault

20. “Losing My Mind,” Montaigne. It's over, I'm fine (I'm fine)/I'm fine/I'm fine/I'm fine/Then I start crying

21. “Winter Bird,” AURORA. I��ve talked a little in a few of these notes about Blair and her dream sequences, and this song isn’t… quite as directly evocative of their content as some of the others, but I liked it in that way

22. “GIRL,” Maren Morris. If vanity's my vitamin, well, I don't feel the difference/I don't like myself right now, gotta find a way out

23. “Bad Man’s World,” Jenny Lewis. It's a bad man's world/I'm a bad, bad girl

24. “Heartbreak Hotel,” Whitney Houston, Faith Evans, Kelly Price. Since you're not around for me/To tell you, baby, face to face/I'm writing you this letter/And this is what I have to say/All I really wanted was some of your time

25. “Everybody Loves You,” The Chicks. mrs-nate-humphrey called this post-series Blair vibes and like. Yeah

26. “I Will Survive,” Gloria Gaynor. I should have changed that stupid lock/I should have made you leave your key/If I'd have known for just one second you'd be back to bother me

27. “Yesterday,” Tammy Wynette. We needed a non-chuck sad romance song. Also, Blair’s drunk karaoke song is Tammy Wynette! (But it’s “Stand By Your Man,” which I find depressing both in and out of context)

28. “Everytime,” Britney Spears. Every time I try to fly, I fall

29. “King,” Lauren Aquilina. There's so much more/You can reclaim your crown/You're in control

30. “Final Girl,” CHVRCHES. In the final cut (In the final cut)/In the final scene (In the final scene)/There's a final girl (There's a final girl)/Does she look like me? (Does she look like me?)

[crackinglamb]

Questions for fic writers: #7. Any worldbuilding you’re particularly proud of? (*bonk*)

From this list.

Just one? All right, lemme think...

Magic as music in the DA setting. (Did I just write out what the acronym Thedas means? Yes.)

Oh man, this got long. I know, I see your totally unshocked face from here. 😁 Also, spoilers for What a Wicked Game to Play.

Now, at least part of this is not worldbuilding I created, since it's broadly and heavily hinted at in-game. Several characters equate magic and music, calling it a symphony, talking about how it sings or hums or gets into the back of your mind like an earworm (ie the Calling and red lyrium, both Blight magic things). I mean, it's called the Chant of Light, and one doesn't recite it, they sing it for goodness sake! Alas, so long as the music plays, we dance. Thanks Flemythal. That's not at all ominous to consider regarding what might happen if the 'music' stops.

Anyway, moving on.

All I've done with it is take it to a natural (to me, as both a scientist and musician) conclusion. Music and math are intrinsically linked, after all. Eight notes in a scale, in several octaves, means innumerable combinations. Some are melodic because they have patterns, some are just noise. Imagine playing a segment of pi on a piano. It would have no rhythm, because none of the numbers are a repeating sequence.

But the idea led to this:

There is a scene in WG where Imogen, dreaming in the Fade while her body lies unconscious, maps the mathematical signature of the Veil. And she does it by converting the pattern of magic into soundwaves. Yes, I put trigonometry into a fanfic. Yes, I am unashamed and remorseless about this. To this day I'm proud of the fact that I got to use 'asymptotic' in a sentence.

She discovers some interesting and horrifying things in the course of this. As she is the one carrying the Anchor, she can feel its presence within her, especially while dreaming, because all things are possible in our imaginations. And the Fade is a real place to her, as an MGIT, so her perception of it makes it tangible and malleable even though she isn't a mage. (And there's a bonus worldbuilding thing I'm super proud of.) She discovers that at one time it was a seamless resonance, which makes epic magic performed by people like Inquisitor Ameridan even more impressive. Each Blight has weakened it, distorting the music until the math starts to turn irrational. She discovers that the tempo of the Anchor and the Veil no longer sync up because of all the 'holes' in the music (rifts, thinning, etc). As of right now, she hasn't fully figured out what this means for Solas's plans. But she will; that's why I made her this way.

And finally, she learns that regardless of what anyone, Solas included, does, the Veil will fall because the music of it will simply disintegrate at some point. The Veil is less of a physical barrier than it is a counterpoint of music that 'blocks' the Fade from being part of the waking world. This is a real concept, by the way. Using sound to create images: sonar and radar. Using different sounds to block those images: jamming. Resonance is fun.

For most beings on Thedas, magic comes from the Fade, and some of the 'signal' must still pass through the Veil or there would be no more magic left in the world at all. But if the Veil falls due to disintegration, the consequences are incredibly damning. Magic will be unleashed in unpredictable and cataclysmic ways. She likens this to waves on a beach. Each wave is unique, each leaves a different effect in the sand. Her hypothesis is that if Thedas is the 'sand' here, and the waves are the Fade, without the Veil the world will become uninhabitable due to the disruption of things like gravity and the atmosphere and the fabric of reality. The Veil needs to come down in a controlled manner to prevent this. The steady surge of a tide rather than storm breakers. And she does feel that it needs to come down; Thedas was not meant to be separated from its inherent magical nature forever. The Veil was a stop-gap solution for a specific problem, but now it's choking the world. (And oh yeah, it also failed to contain the problem ultimately, but that wasn't Solas's fault. *points to the Sidereal Magisters*)

Okay, that was a lot of words to say something rather simple: the entirety of WG was really just to set this up for Imogen. The next major arc for her is how it all fits together and what she's going to do about it. I'll be writing that as soon as I figure out what that is.

Thanks for the ask, you knew what you were getting into. *bonk* 😘

[adrenaline-whump]

AI art, and a couple of thoughts

Awhile back, an artist/author I follow started playing around with digital art assistants.  They made it sound interesting enough that I tried Midjourney...and got a little hooked. (Examples below the cut.)

As a person who’s never had the patience or skill to Do Art, I find it overwhelmingly joyful to just...enter some words, and be given art in return?  It’s most likely not what I pictured, but that often makes it more fun.  I had fun in the beginning putting in abstract concepts, just to see what came back.  Two of my favorites were generated by simply putting in “evil hunger” and “icy rage”. 

Evil Hunger:

Icy Rage:

At that time, Midjourney was...not good at rendering humans. You see, it works by taking all the art it has access to online, attempting to match keywords to prompts, putting that subset of the art in its little AI blender, and spitting out the result. It doesn’t know, for example, that humans typically have two eyes that look in the same direction. Early experiments gave me a lot of figures facing away from the camera in silhouette, which was good because the clearer ones usually came straight from the Uncanny Valley. I got human figures with one leg, and horses with six.

That was Midjourney version 3.  They’ve since come out with a version 4, which is much better at getting the proper number of physical features sorted. It still has a hard time with hands...but that’s a problem for all artists, from what I understand.

As you can read in the Discourse, if you’re so inclined, AI art can be Problematic. Is it stealing? Maybe. It’s a little ludicrous for me to input “icy rage” into a text box and claim the result is “my art.” There are thousands of real artists, living and dead, whose skill the AI is borrowing. That said, can we defend it as creative derivation? Artists (and writers, and most creatives) borrow from each other all the time. We use each others’ work as inspiration and let it drive our own creation. Isn’t that what’s happening here?

The question is, how much of the result is transforming others’ works, and how much is straight up copying? Unfortunately, there’s no way to tell.

For myself, I’ve got two rules. One is, I don’t use artists’ names in my prompts. A lot of people do, but to me, that’s where it crosses the line into plagiarism.  The other is...well, I’ll illustrate with something it gave me awhile back:

I asked it for a “fire opal talisman” and it gave me this set of four. Look at the one in the lower right corner. It looks like the AI has picked up a signature from whatever art it was using as a reference. That makes me profoundly uncomfortable. So my second rule is, no matter how much I like a result, anything with a ghost signature/watermark is out.

Now, this is a whump blog, so of course I was curious about how it might do for that. The answer is...meh? Even though the current version is better at rendering people, it’s still not great. Many human figures end up looking cartoony. Also, Midjourney has a list of words that cannot be used as prompts, in order to prevent misuse. That’s definitely a good thing, but it means I can’t use “bruised” for example.

I did get a couple of interesting whumpy results, like when I asked it for a film-noir-ish wounded man in a trenchcoat:

That’s not bad. I could use that as story inspo or illustration. It’s just that ultimately, I find that the more specific the result I want, the more difficult it is to wring that image out of the AI.

And one more thing

Since I’m posting this on Tumblr in November 2022, I’m contractually obligated to add this masterpiece I generated five minutes ago:

(IYKYK and all that. The weirdness of the 3 and 4 are an AI artifact, but it amuses me to think that this might be the start of a dream sequence or hallucination where our MC imagines the clock’s numbers moving and changing.)

[armyhome]

Lost In Your Love Story | Yeonjun

⇢ summary: Hwa Suji is a very skilled makeup artist who works at her best friend's salon, serving major Korean entertainment companies and that includes the artists she is a fan of: Tomorrow x Together! One day when protecting one of the members, she ends up having a car accident that takes her to another universe! The universe of your favorite fanfic called "Winter Song" but the thing is, life is not a strawberry, her new universe got a target on her back, she's the villain and has no idea how survive this cannon.

⇢ pairing: Choi Yeonjun x Hwa Suji.

⇢ Chapter 1 : Life is not a strawberry.

⇢ Chapter 2 : Love is a Disease.

⇢ Chapter 3 : Made a little cookie...

⇢ Chapter 4 / 5 / 6

⇢ Chapter 7 : Why Don't You Stay?

⇢Chapter 8: Beyond this universe

⇢ Chapter 09 : I know I love you

⇢ Chapter 10: Lips on You

⇢ Chapter [11/16]: Opening Sequence

Chapter 12: Sour

POV Yeounjun

The doctor seems pleased after seeing my diagnostic "She seems worried about you too, I'm gonna see if is possible to arrange a meeting between you, but right now you should rest"

"How long have I been in a coma? Did I don't rest enough?" Before the doctor could answer, all TXT members enter the room, they jump in my bed, and each one hugs one part of me, laughing "Did you guys see Suji?"

"Yes, noona is fine, she sends us here at the moment she knows you were awake! Her mom says that you are the first person she calls" Hueningkai explains, did she remember about the other world? She says that she loves me there in all worlds that we met, this makes so much more sense right now.

"Okay, I need to see her in person, now," I say looking at them "And you have to help me guys"

"Sweet is better for you rest, didn't you listen to the doctor?" I hold my mom's hand.

"One of the most terrifying things for me always thinks about living in a world without you mom" She held my hand with more strength "I know you were afraid of losing me, but Suji was the last person I see, and I only will found peace and take a rest after seeing her, I'll be back in minutes I promise!"

The boys help me to get a wheelchair, the way Suji was she will be all worried about me, the last time she made Beomgyu put us in the same room, this world would be more complicated, but I'll be calmer just after seeing her and also Suji will be more relax to see me well. When I get to her room, Suji is trying to get off the bed, during Ji Eun's speech she has to think about her recovery. 

"Suji" I whisper, she freezes, and looks at me, she is okay, more than okay seeing that she was almost standing up, my legs were stronger enough, but she was, like always.

"Yeonjun-ssi" Her eyes are full of tears, I get close to her bed, and hold her hand, why she was being so formal with me? Because of other people? Silly girls, I don't care. 

"Well from what I can see you're okay" She smiled a little, and I realize, I never see her without makeup, I put her hair back her ear "I never see you without makeup" Suji cover her face with the other hand "Don't worry, you are beautiful! But how are you feeling?"

"I don't know how to explain, one moment we are in the car talking, and later we are here..." My heart fall, she doesn't remember, or it was only a dream? "And you?" I try to hold a neutral expression and smile a little. 

"The same thing" I force a laugh, looking at her carefully, everything was so real, it is not possible, so I see in her bed, that manhwa, she see my expression and try to hide, the name on that change I can notice "Can I see that? Please?" With a worried expression she gives to me, the story change apparently "Can you lend me? I didn't read this one..."  

"You can take one, the author sends one for her with an autograph" Ji Eun takes off her purse one version "She knew that Suji was a fan so send this for her.."

"HAHAHAHA FAN? THAT IS A STRONG WORD UNNIE, MAYBE AN MANHWA FOND, FAN? HAHAHA," It was the first time that I see her so nervous, so cute, "I think you hate this story's Yeonjun-ssi..." Suji was worried, so I smiled.

"That's okay, we will have to stand here a feel more days, this will be perfect to distract me" I hold her hand i little bit more "Well I just pass by cause I was worried, now I see you're okay I will let you rest, see you soon Hwa Suji!" Cause this time, is my turn to take care of and protect you.

Suji POV

My life was turned upside down, before the accident I was just a makeup artist that has a salon popular between actors, actresses, and feels idols companies, but no one beyond my clients knew my face, and right now I was all over the internet, social media, youtube, even newspapers and I was without control of all those things. I open my favorite channel about kpop news and they have unless one video a week about the case, so I make a playlist and start to watch, these weeks that we were in a coma people got crazy about the details of the accident, I hope Yuri say those things about me because of the shock and unless that psychopath was in jail, I was so focused in the vídeos that didn't realize Soobin was here, he put his head between me and the notebook screen.

"Tsc, you shouldn't watch any of these, people can be really stupid and mean, Suji you should focus on your recovery!" He smiles showing his dimples.

"They're good people, I mean just David cause Danny wearing a TEAM Yuri shirt, that hurt my feelings" I make the fakest sad face ever, and Soobin laugh 'Talking about her, did you still have her number? I hope she got the wrong way, and say those things because of shock or anger..."Soobin's expression became serious.

"Doesn't matter the reason, she accused you, with no proof, and when they discover that was her crazy jealous ex-boyfriend she doesn't dare to say sorry in public!" I never see Soobin so angry.

"Is she okay? This guy is really dangerous, she is being protected?" Soobin closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, so I hold his hand "Maybe you don't understand because you're a guy..."

"I know I'm a guy, but also I'm an idol, in the last tour one crazy person invaded my room saying that I belong to her I know is scary Suji, but I don't blame any innocent people or my fans because of this, I know there is not their fault, noting is an excuse to do this!" Soobin entwines our fingers "But let's do it this way, I will be trying to contact her, but you have to promise me that until there you will only care about your health and getting better!" I bite my bottom lip smiling. 

"Okay, I promise! Now tell me something good, how was your confession, you have a lot of time to do these last weeks!" Soobin gives me his shy smile.

"Was impossible to contact her this whole time, but all these make me see that I need, better saying I must tell her about my feelings!" I clap because his determination was inspiring.

"You look so cool because of this girl, she is that special?" He pouts like he's thinking about it.

"Yes, she is!"

Yeonjun's pov

The doctor finally allowed me to eat solid food, the sensation of the steak in my mouth was amazing, to chew, feeling that going down the throat is almost haven, even with Yuri's presence. I got so mad when I discovered everything she did when I and Suji were almost dying…

"It's nice to see you recovering so well..."She says and I force a smile, I was angry but the managers already say to me that the better way to get what we need and deserve her to do was being as much approachable as I can be "Look.." I make a pause signal with my hand. 

"You have, you must apologize to Suji, in private and in public, 'cause you knew that was Chae-soo's fault and no one else." I drink a little bit of the soup and look into her eyes "Suji got hurt because he was obsessed with you, she almost dies, you should be sympathetic to her! But no you accuse Suji, with no proof!" Yuri drops her spoon on the table.

"Who guarantees that she doesn't work with him? "Yuri almost screams, okay that's enough.

"I do know she is innocent" Oh the strength that I'm doing right now to keep myself calm, strength enough to screech a truck "And from now on we shouldn't see each other anymore."

"You can't be serious Yeonjun." For days, since I woke up I think about that, how I would feel about saying that, if I was taking the experience that I live in my head during a coma too far, but when I read the manhwa all my doubts were gone, maybe Suji can't remember, maybe was just real in my head, but one thing that I learn with all this is: love needs faith, someone needs believe with no doubts on that love, and right now I'm this person.

"I was between life and death and without my contentment you make my private life public, my mom was crying right next to my bed because I was in a coma, Suji's mother was crying right next to her bed, and you were making a circus with the situation! You run to the newspapers!"Yuri gasp.

"I was wonder attack, your fans..."I clean my lips and take a deep breath.

"Don't you dare talk about my MOAS, they were searching for information about the reason me and Suji were holding hands, and if you trust me wouldn't let that jealous consume you..." Yuri's eyes are full of tears. 

"So why you were holding hands with her?" I bite my bottom lip to not say that I love Suji, I need to say that for the first time looking into her eyes and not for anyone else.

"The thought of dying is lonely, I don't wanna that Suji feel that way and I think she feels the same way."

Suji pov

Soobin helps me to get up on the hoverboard, we adapted to sustain me and give me balance, I put on an overcoat to hide all our equipment.

"Are you sure about this?" He holds my hands to help me stand up, I shake my head in the affirmative, "Why do you have so much consideration for her? Really? I don't explain or you don't read everything she says about you? Everything she blames you for?" I balance myself on the electric hoverboard and take a deep breath.  

"Remember the first day that I work with you guys?" Soobin looks at me trying to remember I guess "Well, I accidentally bump into Yuri and the hairstylist, and the hair dye falls all over Yuri? Well that day I feel paparazzi taking photos at that moment and everyone takes me as a villain when was just an accident, this probably happens with Yuri just because Yeonjun was in a different car, she was the manager responsible for that day" I sigh and remember that day when I bumped in her, she was all mean why I'm doing this? Soobin was right, but that feeling on that day, the injustice I feel in my heart "She probably feel cornered, unless I wanna think that way, and that's why she says those things about me, so I wanna give her what I wanna people give to me, the benefits of doubt, and hear what she has to say" Soobin hold my hand, that was new, but I feel that happen before, in a warm day, or was just a dream.

"You are too good you know that right?" I look at him, his makeup was a mess, who did that?

"I doing more for myself than for her, I will sleep better after speaking to her..." I use my thumb to try to fix his eye shadow "Who did that? I doubt was Ji Eun..." He smiles in a shy way.

"It's a new internship that she hired, Jinnah, she still training so give her a discount" Her name wasn't strange.

"Okay," I sigh "But after my conversation with Yuri I will fix that!" Oh lord, what Ji Eun made of my team. 

Soobin accompanies me to the door of Yeonjun's room, I wait, that was the worst part cause I don't think bout if she blamed you for those things maybe she was not in the mood to talk to me, and maybe was dangerous to talk to her alone. If she hurt me? No, she wouldn't do that, there are too many people looking, security guards… Is Parallel 38 here? I didn't see him since I woke up. 

"Are you waiting to see Yeonjun? He is inside, from I can see he prefers your company to mine" Yuri calls me from my toughs, oh she seems angry, you will be fine Hwa Suji. 

"To be honest I'm here to talk to you Yuri, did you have time for a coffee?" Her expression became suspicious.

"Yeonjun barely can sit, how you are all standing up?" I smile, okay that conversation would be difficult. 

"It's hard for me too, but Soobin helps me to do work and made up this" I show a little bit of the equipment that helps me to be like that "We just can't be caught by my doctor!"

"Why are you putting so much effort?" Cause I don't wanna you to see me vulnerable.  

"There are too many eyes, I don't wanna people to make a victim and villains, there is enough hate in social media, I'm doing this so that after we are discharged from the hospital we can live in peace" Yuri take a deep breath but we start to walk in the cafeteria direction.

I buy something decaffeinated and Yuri chose an Ice Americano, we get to a window where have a high table for people that don't wanna or can't sit like me.

"First of all, nothing happens between me and Yeonjun, that day he just wanna explain to me, because that psychopath saw my face..." My legs start to hurt, but I hold on, my doctor will kill me later "And I'm sorry, as a woman and human for you being a pass for this when a guy like that feels free to act like a woman are his proprieties that means that we fail as society" I drink a little bit of my cup "I like to think that you did those accusations because of all this pressure..." She drinks a long sip of her coffee.

"I was jealous" I hold my laugh cause this was so absurd that my brain can act like an adult "I feel the pressure, but I was jealous of you both being found holding hands..."

"Was just survival instinct..." She looks into my eyes.

"It really was? It doesn't seem like that to him." My heartbeat fast thinking about Yeonjun, we don't talk too much before we were waking, the whole thing was so chaotic even inside the hospital, sometimes the team communication speaks with me say was for the best we see each other just before we completely recovered, that was the priority, cause we should do a press conference and feel interviews so the public calm down, even this conversation with Yuri would be happening but I wanna do in private not with a journalist as mediator. 

"I don't have opportunities to talk or have an appropriate conversation with Yeonjun, but I can assure you, right now, nothing is happening between us, or happened to us before!" My dream doesn't count as experience, so she compliments me, for bending at 90 degrees, I got shocked. 

"I'm sorry Hwa Suji, for the things I accuse you of, and I mean that!" I hold her hand. 

"Yuri you don't need to be so formal, I'm not the kindest human being, and we have the same age, I don't know if we can be friends, but I don't wanna be your enemy once I step out of this hospital, I don't wanna we holding bad feelings in our chest" We hold hands, and I leave her in the elevator. 

Once I turn back to my room I found my doctor holding a wheelchair and Yeonjun by his side, I'm over. The doctor give me a speech about how this could retard my recovery, and my physiotherapist Yeonjun stay by his side always agreeing with him, when the doctor lives the room, Yeonjun stays, and his expression was angry.

"I already say that I'm sorry Jun..." I say accidentally, his eyes wide "I mean Yeonjun..." He smiles a bit but quickly comes back to a serious expression.

"Why did you did that?" Yeonjun's voice was low.

"Because, I remember the day I mess up, with your hair dye, the way you look at me, the way everybody looks at me, no one dares to hear what I have to say, everybody just assumes that I was a bad person, and I almost lost my job" So I take a deep breathe "I just wanna give her the opportunity that anyone gives to me of being heard, even if was something that I don't wanna listen" Yeonjun suddenly hold my hand and smile.

"I'm sorry, I'm keeping doing this, not listening to you, I promise to do better from now on, I just get nervous thinking you would hurt yourself, the recommendation for both of us is to rest and do physiotherapy," Everyone says that I was tired of just do that, I even ask my mom my makeup but she says that was no time to think in my job. 

"I'm bored of this, has been weeks, I'm not allowed to leave this room, I can't do makeup cause my mom say I shouldn't think about my work, I can't look at the social media cause doctors think would be bad for my mental recovery, they put me in a jail!" So Yeonjun gives me that look of someone that planned something wrong, he takes off his hospital clothes, foundation, concealer, eyeshadow, eyeliner, and highlighter, that was haven? I press the button and make my bed low enough for to Yeonjun sit there "Get up, I'm gonna give you a free appointment today!" The way he smiles will make my heart melt. 

"And I'm grateful!" After the accident, our relationship became closer, almost dying together can really bound people, and I was so aware that we were closer than was a need but both of us just don't care, the feeling of using my brush on his skin was beautiful, I was born to do this "Nothing can make you happier than so makeup right Suji?" So I automatically think 'marrying you maybe' Hwa Suji you are the worst.

"I can't think of something right now" I start to do the eyeshadow "Hum, I really like to read manhwas, but I think makeup is for me what music is for you..." I was so close that I could feel his breath against my face.

"That's true, the first thing I did after wake up was composed" His chicks became red, "I wrote something for you Suji" Okay Suji don't freak out NOW. DON'T FREAK OUT WOMAN!

"Oh really? Can you sing to me?" I finished his lips just with a labial protector cause it was what we have.

"When we live in this hospital, that music will be your gift!" I pick up the hand mirror right next to my bed, and put it in his hand.

"I will wait with all my heart. Hold for me so I can do my makeup now please?" Yeonjun holds with care, oh lord one more thing to wait for, my makeup is basic because the foundation is not my skin tone, but I look better than before.

"We're looking really good to stay in our rooms.." Yeonjun started.

"I think I'm kinda grounded..." He smiled like a devil. 

"That's the best part, you are already grounded, and have no way to get worst" He jumps back in his chair.

"The problem is, they take away my wheelchair because of my sneak out" Yeonjun looks seriously at me at taps his leg "You can't be serious" He points to his serious face.

"I will do nothing that you don't ask for Suji" Oh boy you don't understand, that was the problem, I maybe ask, oh lord I'm already in the rain, let's accept that.

We sneak out of the room, the hall was empty, so we take the elevator to the rooftop, there was a garden, but the only thing that survives that winter coming was the tulips, so Yeonjun put a headphone in my ear and "Can't you see me?" starts, we stay in silence so the snow starts to fall.

"Is that the first snow?" I ask to put my head on his shoulder.

"I think so..." Yeonjun answered, the smell of his perfume was so good, I close my eyes.

"Are you putting a spell on me Choi Yeonjun? First the snow, now your perfume..." Why I was feeling so asleep "I think I'm gonna take a nap okay?"

"You were the one who shows me a magical world Hwa Suji, when you will see me again?"

[buscemifan]

ok just finished season 1 of da sopranos here are my thotz

• i fuckin love the characters. what a great ensemble cast. the only one who is genuinely intolerable is olivia, which i get is the point but i don’t really like when people are annoying . like. i’m annoyed

• right now the biggest highlight for me is the relationship between tony and melfi, which i get is the point but it’s just so good. he has a very real physical power over her that he understands AND USES, but he cares about her, even beyond just his misattributed feelings for her. like, they have a genuine bond - i see it as very familial, they’re both protective of each other and willing to demonstrate that to the other. but tony’s physical power pails in comparison to mefli’s mental power over him, the difference being she doesn’t try to use that to her advantage. i just love that she trusts and respects him in ways he’s not used to, and that confuses him but he always tries to come back and salvage their relationship after he screws up because she means that much to him

• speaking of, carmela and melfi are two of the best written female tv characters i’ve ever seen. they’re not emotionless femme fatale badasses but they’re also not helpless damsels. they’re appropriately emotional about things but they’re level headed, smart, and clever … i just love watching them, they’re perfect foils to tony

• i’ve had this issue with tv a lot, but violent tv shows cannot parade around threatening their main character with death when fucking obviously they’re not going to kill them. i was almost excited that tony seemed untouchable because i didn’t think i’d have to deal with that, but it’s just like squidgame - you cannot pretend you’re going to kill your protagonist under the expectation that it may actually happen. he’s the main fucking character. there’s no one else important enough to shift the focus to if he did die. it’s a cheap gag. granted the other capos are spared from this but it’s just so lame when it happens to tony

• weather symbolism is used a lot, i like that it’s there but it’s always a bit too on the nose

• dream sequences are often also used too much, i kind of wish more of melfi’s therapeutic conclusions came from stuff that wasn’t so obvious to the audience. i get that tony’s oblivious to it but some of it is just so narrative it reminds me i’m watching a show not experiencing a story

• paulie and christopher are fucking goated

• tony is a really great main character but i’m worried it’s gonna be like bojack syndrome where he continually relearns the same lessons and then falls back into his old habits. that’s really hard to make interesting

[warningsine]

In Alice Lowe’s directorial debut, a coal-black comedy about a mum-to-be-turned-serial slasher, one scene stands out for its blood-soaked intensity. At once anatomically frank and oddly Cronenberg-esque, it’s a prolonged close-up of a belly being slit open and a baby pulled from inside.

“People often ask me if it’s a real caesarean!” says Lowe, who was eight months pregnant on the shoot for Prevenge, gently rocking a pram back and forth. “I’m like, ‘No, I think I’d draw the line there!’ But I’d always envisaged the scene as this total close-up, where you don’t get the chance to look away. We flinch about pregnancy and go, ‘Ooh, we must protect women from this experience,’ but the film is saying why don’t we look at his stuff properly and not flinch away from it?”

Lowe, star of beloved cult comedies such as Sightseers and Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, projected her own fears about pregnancy for the film, which sees her character, Ruth, avenge her husband’s death at the apparent whim of her unborn baby. “[I feel like] our generation has a fear of pregnancy,” she says, “because we’re so narcissistic ourselves that we’re like, ‘Someone else needs attention? Oh, that’s scary.’”

She also wanted, with her writing for Prevenge, to create a female antihero to rank with Walter White from Breaking Bad and Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle. In Ruth, by turns vulnerable and unhinged, we get it. But what of the transgressive women that inspired the character? Lowe lifts the lid on some of her favourites.

Tina from Sightseers

“Tina and Ruth are like siblings, they’re related in a DNA way. Tina I see as a naif who comes to power, a latent psychopath whose powers emerge during the film. Some viewers see her as a feminist! She’s quite naive and selfish in the way that children can be, whereas Ruth is more of a grownup; the scales have fallen from her eyes and she feels like she sees the world for what it is, in this cynical light where everyone’s a monster. But all my characters are related because they’re all aspects of me. They’re like these weird, distant relatives that I feel could have been me in a parallel universe!”

Beverly Moss from Abigail’s Party

“People see Alison’s characters as sometimes monstrous, but I see a mirror. It feels so familiar! She’s such a warm, vivacious actor, and when you cast someone like that as a horrible character it makes it really watchable. I was quite conscious of that casting my film, with people like Tom Davis and Jo Hartley, who plays this annoying midwife character. I thought if I cast Jo no one will be able to hate her! It’s this thing of contrasts and tensions you’re trying to get with the audience where they’re being pushed and pulled one way or the other.”

Classical antiheroines

“I often think about classical female figures who would do bad things, like Medea, Antigone and Elektra. You could say that was a way of telling off citizens in ancient Greece, like ‘Don’t behave this way,’ but they’re also amazing works of art. And I often think, ‘Why don’t we see as many female characters like that now?’ When I was researching the Furies, the classical goddesses of vengeance, for the film, I came across this footage by a Czech expressionist director who directed a segment of a film called Crime Without Passion. He didn’t direct the whole feature, it’s a bit like Dalí doing a section of Spellbound. [The surrealist painter famously art-directed the dream sequence in Hitchcock’s 1945 thriller.] It’s this strange, symbolic sequence with these classical goddesses infiltrating 1930s New York and flying into buildings and springing out of spilled blood. I just thought, ‘This is such powerful imagery, it would be so cool for this to be Ruth’s influence.’ I had this idea that the baby is really a Fury, that she’s actually thousands of years old and hugely wise.”

She from Antichrist

“Lars von Trier is one of my favourite filmmakers, but his female characters are often totally punished and martyred; they’re either witches or saints or some mixture of the two. But I think there’s an argument to say women in our society do get punished, that that’s the reality of it. You have to show the dark as well as the light. If women were all really cool, sensible, amazing people on screen how much pressure would that put on women to be like that? I’ve had comedy writers say to me, ‘You’ll love this character because she’s the only one that’s got it together. Everyone else in the show is a total idiot but she’s attractive, she’s intelligent and she’s got a great job,’ and I’m like, ‘That is the most boring thing I could possibly play!’”

Margo Channing from All About Eve

“It’s [Bette Davis’s] stoicism, her implacability – she had such inner poise and strength. The 30s and 40s actually saw a lot of female-driven films about antiheroines, women who commit crimes, who commit adultery, who triumph over the odds, who put their careers over their husbands, possibly even more than now. I think cinema was seen more as a women’s recreation back then. And so amazing female actresses emerged who were more than just an age, a body, a face on-screen. Yes, there were beautiful actresses. But there were also strong characters who by sheer force of will defied categorisation. And their needs and wants are more complex than just ‘finding a man’.”