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there-was-a-hole-here-itsgonenow · 1 year

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We saw the HSM 2 Troy/Gabriella and Byler side-by-side last year.

And, due to being on a Disney-related trip with my brother and his girlfriend recently while HSM music blasted in the car (courtesy of his girlfriend), I thought back to the above and started thinking about what other potential HSM references would be great to get in s5.

Specifically from the third and final film soundtrack.

Just Wanna Be With You:

So the HSM 2 reference we got for s4 was Troy and Gabriella splitting up for a bit after some bad miscommunication (to sum it up simply). From HSM 3 we have “Just Wanna Be With You,” the couple’s concluding romantic song for the series. And it’s so, so sweet and what Mike and Will deserve to communicate to each other. But more than that, there’s so much of the song that just fits the dynamic they have had from the start! A dynamic that we on this tag know so well!

Read some of these lyrics and just envision Byler TwT:

“We're being pulled

A hundred different directions

But whatever happens

I know I've got you

You're on my mind

You're in my heart

It doesn't matter where we are

We'll be alright

Even if we're miles apart

All I wanna do

Is be with you, be with you

There's nothing we can't do

I just wanna be with you, only you

No matter where life takes us

Nothing can break us apart

You know it's true

I just wanna be with you”

…

“You know how life can be

It changes over night

It's sunny then raining

But it's alright

A friend like you

Always makes it easy

I know that you get me

Every time

Through every up

Through every down

You know I'll always be around

Through anything you can count on me”

I have… so many feelings about this song for Byler. Something I love is that Troy and Gabriella are in love with each other and the song establishes they are friends too. We all know that’s one of the best parts of Mike and Will’s relationship: their friendship!! Their friendship will be at the core of their romance! And just ‘understanding/getting each other and falling back on each other’ and being in each other’s minds and hearts… It’s everything they have but deserve more of too! In truly getting to be together as friends and more than friends!

Not to mention life changing overnight, ups and downs… but they have the ability to make things easier on each other (when subtracting miscommunication and societal norms getting in the way, Mike and Will are able to open up and lean on each other in ways they can’t with anyone else). And what is all Will wants to do? Play DnD with Mike in his basement for the rest of his life. He just wants to be with him 🥲

Also just… IMAGINE getting anything resembling sequences like this for s5 Byler:

(Fanfic balcony wishes)

(This is while they are singing “I just want to be with you”)

(And this lil scene involves playing around with paint; I can’t dEAL!! The vision is there and it’s so precious!!!)

In conclusion: more HSM Byler would be very welcomed!!!!

The Boys are Back:

This is me wanting to be spoiled with OG Party scenes. But seriously though!! This song works for the Party! The whole song is about Troy and Chad thinking back on their childhoods and reliving the pretend games they played as kids—like detectives, spies, and superheroes. We even get a flash of their younger selves!

You can spin some of the lyrics to meaningfully fit the context of the Party (but unlike playing pretend games as kids and teens, the Party’s DnD games keep manifesting into reality). Some of the best ones include:

“Take it back to the place when

You know it all began

We can be anything we wanna be

You can tell by the noise that

The boys are back again

Together making history”

“Here to change the world

To solve the mystery

Fight the battle

Save the girl…

No one can stop us now

We’re the ones that make the rules”

Of course they’re [now] all back in the same place everything began, Hawkins (more full circle relation). Changing the world in the way ‘classic’ heroes do: solving mysteries and fighting battles (both Vecna-related + Will’s painting), but also saving/helping save [Max]. I believe the victories in each example will come because the ‘rules’ (Vecna’s ways of order) are going to be flipped and fought against.

More to be said here but the above speaks for itself. Overall, the main thought is our boys are coming back together again and will make some history. The song is framed as confident and assured, as if a big bad will be overcome. I love the thought of this for the Party!

Scream:

And this one, I feel, fits Mike the most. In HSM 3, this song is about Troy feeling torn about what to do with his life after highschool: go with a basketball scholarship his father has always forced on him or a Juliard scholarship he didn’t apply for. He’s having an absolute mental breakdown trying figure out what he’ll do, a big emphasis being that he wants his own personal choice without feeling forced one way or another. Not to mention, worried about being separated from Gabriella as she got accepted to a college far away from either college option he’s being presented.

With lyrics like these, it’s not hard to associate them with Mike at all (too many feel so on-the-nose too):

“Voices in my head

Tell me they know best

Got me on the edge

They're pushin', pushin', they're pushin'

I know they've got a plan

But the ball's in my hands

This time is man-to-man

I'm drivin', fightin', inside of

A world that's upside down”

…

“I don't know where to go

What's the right team

I want my own thing

So bad I'm gonna scream

I can't chose, so confused

What's it all mean

I want my own dream

So bad I'm gonna scream!

I'm kicking down the walls

I gotta make them fall

Just break through them all

I'm punchin', crushin', I'm gonna

Fight to find myself

Me, and no one else

Which way, I can't tell

I'm searchin', searchin', can't find a

Way that I should turn

I should, to right or left, it

It's like nothing works

Without you”

(This next part is just… scarily beyond fitting)

“… the clock's running down,

Hear the crowd getting loud

I'm consumed by the sound!

Is it her?

Is it love?

Can the music ever be enough?”

Truly… do I even need to explain that? Any of this for ST context?? Mike not only trying to find himself but trying to fight for it… all this on-the-money Vecna and Vecna’d correlation… Not to mention the part about wanting his own ‘dream’—as if dreams already aren’t a huge theme in ST! There’s just so much in the realm of possibility with “Scream”!

Let me put emphasis on this scene too:

“A world that's upside down

It's spinning faster

What do I do now

Without you?”

If this were a reference for a Mike scene… god just think of the serious angst this could entail. Especially if Mike and Will got separated or during Mike’s Vecna’d scenario (playing upon his fear of losing Will all over again). In some version of the UD, physical or metaphorical, perhaps in a situation that has Mike trapped and stuck, yet he is mustering the power to fight back despite being overwhelmed! So, so many possibilities with what we know, especially with a focus on Mike’s mental health in mind.

I swear if I see anything resembling the above scene, lyrics, or anything from this sequence in s5 for Mike, I will lose what little mind I have left.

Troy is even wearing the number 14 on his jersey!!!!C’mon!! It’s right there all gift-wrapped for us!!!

#gimmie 7+7 all day long and forever #this is all one big cluster of speculation and wishful thinking but due to hsm 2 being present in s4…#I wouldn’t dismiss possibilities #just thoughts and feelings and I just think a lil more hsm for st and byler isn’t a bad idea AT ALL #byler #hsm byler #hsm stranger things #st5 hopes #st5 speculation

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kaypeace21 · 3 years

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Will’s fear of clowns

*Ps -not mine. this is a submission from an anon. tw: for s.a. It’s an interesting submission. ANON-please make a tumblr account already . I’m begging you XD

Hi! It’s me, Lonnie Meth Anon. Back with more depressing thoughts about Lonnie!

I just read your post on Jonathan��s ab*se at the hands of Lonnie, and I second it all. It breaks my heart. But it also got me thinking deeper about Will’s fear of clowns. I think you’re right that part of the horror for Will is that the clown attacks in bed. The bed is, obviously, like you say, a common site for s*xual assault. (Doesn’t El’s picture of “three legged Brenner” also have a bed in it? In a picture with not much else?) The fact that Will needed Joyce to sleep with him for a week suggests he was specifically feeling unsafe in bed, or at night.

But maybe it’s not just the location of the attack in Poltergeist that Will found so harrowing. Maybe it’s the combination of that location with the fact of a clown being the attacker.

I think Lonnie might have dressed up as a clown for Will’s birthday one year, and something happened.

In this instance, I don’t think Joyce would know what happened. I think the incident in her mind would be something like “Lonnie dressed up and Will was scared of the costume”. She might even have thought it was cute. Just a typical little kid fear of something mundane. When she teases him about Poltergeist, she doesn’t actually say the movie was the START of his fear of clowns. Just that he was afraid of that particular clown. The general fear of clowns could have been an older one, going back to when Will was even younger.

Maybe Will even liked clowns, before whatever happened with Lonnie turned them into a source of fear for him. Will has a lion plushie (lions are commonly found in the circus) and the circus seems like the kind of vibrant, colorful environment full of outcast, that a young gay kid would really enjoy. If Will did like circuses and Lonnie poisoned that for him, that’s just another reason to hate Lonnie. But it definitely seems possible.

Lonnie is a deadbeat dad in general, but we’ve seen before that he’s capable of faking the “family man” act in front of Joyce and their neighbors. We’ve also seen that even though he treats Will horribly, he would also try and keep Will on his side with father son bonding activities, like baseball. And Will’s birthday is one of the few occasions Lonnie makes a half-assed kind of effort, even when there’s nothing directly in it for him. He sends that card, even though it’s late. Maybe Joyce made called him up and made him send it, but she always seemed happy to keep Lonnie out of the picture. She didn’t even want to involve him when Will went missing. And we know Jonathan would never try and facilitate more interactions between Lonnie and Will. So it seems like Lonnie did this of his own accord, when he realized he’d missed the day. Kind of weird. And it’s classic abuser behavior, to make contact on an anniversary date, reminding you they exist and you can’t escape them. Reminding you to keep quiet. Or hoping you’ll miss them, remember the “good times” when they made an effort, and let them back into your life. (Ugh.)

So, anyway, back to my theory. Young Will likes circuses, and the Byers family are poor, so they can’t afford to take him to one, or throw him a party at an ice cream parlor or a bowling alley, like other kids. It makes sense that they would have a party at home instead, and that the family themselves might dress up. We know Joyce made Will’s Ghostbusters costume in season two, and a clown is a pretty easy costume. Most of it is just make up. It’s possible the whole thing was Joyce’s idea, and she made the costume, and Lonnie just went along with it to look like a good dad in her eyes.

Remember how we see Bob (Will’s new father figure) dressing up in costume for Halloween? Joyce loves it. This is a thing good dads do, to have fun with their kids. That’s also the same episode we see Will scared by a guy in a clown costume, and Jonathan is hyper-protective of him that night. School is okay, but he doesn’t want him trick or treating. (Like he knows that school is a safe environment, but in other contexts, costumes and parties might be a trigger for Will.) Jonathan is convinced to leave Will and “let him have fun” and what happens? The clown attacks. Later that night Jonathan goes to a costume party himself, where he finds Nancy upset and takes her safely home. Maybe this is how Will’s birthday party ended - with Jonathan finding Will upset, and trying to comfort him. The whole night could be playing out like a parallel to that birthday party, from Jonathan’s perspective.

What actually happened with Will and Lonnie is up for debate. It’s possible there was a s*xual assault, and that’s why the clown scene in Poltergeist was such a trigger for Will. Or maybe Lonnie thought circuses weren’t “manly” enough for his son to like, and actively tried to scare Will, so he wouldn’t like them anymore. It’s hard to know. Something would have happened though, and probably something pretty formative, because the fear of clowns lasts a long time.

Something else interesting is that when Mr Clarke is talking about the Upside Down in season one, he uses the metaphor of the flea and the acrobat. Acrobats are a main act in the circus, and, well … fleas. Flea circuses. That’s a thing. Maybe it’s a hint that the trauma that created the Upside Down was circus / clown - related?

Kali, El, and their gang wear clown masks too, when they’re going to confront their childhood trauma, and the child-like Alexei is surrounded by clowns when he is killed at the fair.

Clowns are just so associated with birthday parties and little kids, that it doesn’t seem like a coincidence to me they’re Will’s biggest fear. Especially as the show keeps dropping hints about Lonnie and Will’s birthday. It feels like there’s more to the story. I have a horrible feeling SOMETHING happened.

RESPONE (kaypeace):

I think it’s very possible-that maybe he did dress as a clown for Will’s birthday and something happened. We have alexi (paralleled to Will) playing carnival games with kids. Then he's attacked by the Lonnie-look alike : and alexi looks at his wound then stares at all the clowns laughing around him. Joyce and Murray find Alexi bleeding/dy*ng next to a clown statue. As joyce looks in horror and Murray says to her, he was “only gone for a second” (which sounds like something you’d say in relation to a kid you were supposed to watch-running off ). We also had sarah at age 7 die while wearing a gown with clowns on it (Will: it was a 7 the demogorgan it got me). Death of innocence symbolism? Hopper also describes his depression as a cave- he goes through the carnival ride where it mentions a "cave of horrors", which had decor of a tiger and a clown painting. So yeah... whatever happened probably isn't good. So- there may be some symbolism there in relation to Will’s past. Not only because (like I and you have mentioned before) Lonnie is highly associated with birthdays. And canonically we know he mentally scarred jonathan on his b-day. But also, s4’s ‘victor creel’ may be an easteregg to the xmen character victor creed- who had a tradition of tra*matizing family members specifically on their bdays

As another alternative:I could also totally see Lonnie “ruining” circuses for Will because it’s not “manly” to him. Like how Jonathan liked thumper the rabbit-from the film bambi. in the film, Thumper is bambi’s bff, and the hunters are the bad guys who k*ll Bambi’s mother and terrorize all the wildlife. SO yeah- making Jonathan become a hunter, and k*ll a rabbit ,despite this fact, is really messed up. And shows Lonnie has already tried to ‘ruin’ things the boys like. By mentally scarring them in one way or another…

I also mentioned how Will’s bday could even be a trigger for jonathan in a diff post.

if the s4 bts calender hinting it’ll be near Will’s bday and easter it could be relevant to Jonathan.we know in s1 el has tra*matic flashbacks when seeing certain things- coke, closet, cat, etc. And Will in s2 has his ‘anniversary effect’ where memories flood back based on the time of year.But like … Easter has bunnies - could seeing rabbits jog stuff up for Jonathan? El seeing a cat made her have a flashback of brenner trying to make her kill a cat. Would Jonathan seeing like Easter bunny decor jog up a flashback of lonnie making him kill a rabbit? (It happened on his bday too). So Will’s b day being around easter would only fuel that memory. (heck even popped balloons may trigger gunshot symbolism idk). And then for Will there is clowns that could be a tr*gger at a party.

The flea and the acrobat analogy (in relation to Will and circuses is very interesting) and could be foreshadowing- it’s even a title for an episode so I feel like it’s narratively an important hint to …something. similar to a s1 ep being called “the bathtub”. Also, Will was compared to a circus flea- which were placed in an enclosed space, where heat was applied as they jumped and tried to escape the increasing temperatures as they burned .Which could relate to my theory about Will having a se*zure due his body overheating due to Lonnie injecting him with m*th.

If Will’s bday is in s4- I feel like Lonnie will come back in some capacity (flashback or literally). The ‘sorry, I forgot you b day’ card from Lonnie in s2, in Lonnie’s shed Joyce mentioning Will’s b day, the rainbow ‘happy birthday cup’ placed next to Will at Mike’s -while Will explains the supernatural, Lonnie already tra*matizing Jonathan on his bday, etc…

#submission #stranger things theory #will byers #lonnie byers

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izayoi-hakuyu · 3 years

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Vanitas no carte: A case study of the vanitas motif?

In this I want to examine how the vanitas motif is used in the manga “Vanitas no carte”. In other words: Is the main character just called Vanitas because it’s a cool name or is the manga embedded within a certain literary/artistic/cultural tradition? And is the connection to that tradition just the name of the main character (spoiler: it isn’t, at least in my option) or is the vanitas motif deeply interwoven within the narrative and its themes (spoiler: it is, at least in my option)?

Talking about spoilers: I have only read up to chapter 40, so this may be updated as I continue reading. On the other hand, there will be spoilers for the chapters up to chapter 40.

Note: I don’t know if something like this has been done before. If it has, I’m very sorry. This is actually my second step into the actual fandom and I’m lacking an overview. Also English is not my native language and it’s hard for me to articulate myself properly. I’m sorry if the topic of the vanitas motif within the manga has been discussed before and I’m sorry for any mistakes I make.

So what is vanitas as a motif?

“Vanitas” is latin for “vanity”. As a theme in literature it addresses the transience of all being.

These works of art associates with the vanitas motif show the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death. Symbols of wealth and symbols of death are often arranged in a contrasting matter. Similar to “memento mori” (latin for “remember that you [have to] die”. Memento mori is a vanitas symbol itself and they are overlapping), it accentuates the inevitably of death. But instead of the death itself it emphasizes the vanity and transiency of the human life. Motifs connected to vanitas became especially popular during the baroque period due to religious and social upheavals and the experience of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) and several plague pandemics and the steady presence of destruction and death. On the other hand, social injustice rose due to the build of expensive castles by absolutist rulers.

The vanitas-motif not only criticizes the worldly glory and pleasure that is transient in nature. But vanitas also accentuated that the humans are powerlessly confronted with their own fate and have no control over their own life. This mindset originated in the traditional Christian belief that earthly pursuits and goods were believed to be transient and worthless. Furthermore, people would be expected to accept their fate that would be inflicted by God. While everything earthly would be eventually in vain, God would be eternal.

The paintings under the term “vanitas still lifes” are the most well-known incarnation of the vanitas motif, but it has been also incorporated as a motif not only in painting, but in poetry (for example in the works of the German baroque poet Andreas Gryphius. And I kid you not, he wrote an ode called “Vanitas! Vanitatum Vanitas!”) and other forms of literature. Within the vanitas motif developed a whole collection of symbols associated with it. These are also presented in this manga.

Vanitas symbols in Vanitas no Carte

Hourglass

The hourglass that takes form in Vanitas’ earring is a classical symbol of vanitas. The flowing sand symbolizes the passing of lifetime and mortality. A symbol of the passing of time and the eventual death is also expressed in the gearwheel ornaments on the “Book of Vanitas”.

Skull

The cover of the first volume shows Vanitas in front of a picture frame made of golden skulls. Skulls are symbols of vanitas and memento mori. They are reminder of death and human transience. One of the skulls on the cover is wearing with a crown, which alludes to the typical form of presentation of the vanitas motif, to juxtapose symbols of death and symbols of wealth and worldly power. This relates to the role of the vampire Queen Faustina, who is both in reign of the vampires but who also seemingly spreads death over them by spreading the curse as Naenia (a name also connected to death, as Naenia was a funeral deity in ancient Rome. The name Faustina on the other hand…is a whole new topic for another day and is most likely referring to Goethe’s Faust, a play that revolves around a scholar who makes a contract with the devil. Actually the act of vampires exposing their real name includes elements of/refers to the Faustian pact motif).

Book

The book itself also a symbol of vanitas and finds its place in the story in form of the…”Book of Vanitas”. Books (among measurement tools and the like) within the vanitas motif represent the emptiness and vanity of earthly knowledge and striving. Subsequently they symbolize the haughtiness that can arise out of thirst for knowledge. From this perspective this symbolism is also tied to Dr. Moreau, who horribly abused Vanitas and other children in experiments to gain scientific knowledge in order to become a vampire himself...and his eventual failure.

Knife

Another part of Vanitas as a character is also connected to the vanitas motif – his knife. The knife stands for the vulnerability of the human life and also functions as a death symbol. The knife is especially charged symbolically as Vanitas attacks Noé on the rooftop, declaring their cooperation has ended at this point. Vanitas is refusing to let another person in his life, refusing to trust someone else but himself. His attack towards Noé with his knife not only is an attempt to make Noé hate him, but also a symbolic “cut” of their ties. But the symbolism doesn’t end here, as Noé is the one who stops the knife with his hand. Showing that he will refuse their ties to be cut. Showing that he will stay at Vanitas side no matter what and that he accepts him and doesn’t want him to be alone. In a second situation where their relationship is on the verge of breaking is the conflict within the catacombs, as Noé refuses to agree with Vanitas idea of fighting back Laurent. Vanitas lashes out, severly insults Noé and tells him to leave, if he doesn’t agree. But Noé stays at his side (and still shows him that he doesn’t agree). One could conclude that Noé’s relationship with Vanitas has an element of transience in it by Vanitas coping mechanism of avoiding and leaving others in case of conflict. And Noé fights this transience of their relationship by offering Vanitas trust, acceptation and in the end stability. During their next conflict, where Noé spits out that he wants to drink Vanitas’ blood, Vanitas leaves. But this time it is Vanitas himself who initiates remediation, who fights his own transience when it comes to social relationships. He returns (which is unlikely to him, as Dante states), his care for Noé are stronger than his desire to be fleeting, not being able to be “caught” by anyone. And sees Noé waiting for him. Again, offering stability.

Mirror

The vanitas motif is not only imbedded in the accessory of Vanitas himself. It also finds its place in the design of Noé, more precisely in the small mirror attached to his tophat. In the context of the vanitas motif, mirrors symbolize vanity and the evanescence of earthly beauty. It also stands for pride and haughtiness, similar to the Greek myth of Narcissus. This actually contrasts Noé’s humble personality.

Flowers

Within the manga Paris is described as the “City of flowers”. While flowers can be also a symbol of love and even immortality, their blooming and withering can also be a symbol of death and fleetingness of beauty, especially in the context of baroque symbolism.

Musical instruments

Musical instruments are a sign of transiency as well, as the sound vanishes into nothing as soon as it is articulated. Music is seen as something unique and unrepeatable, and also as something that is transient in its nature. This becomes evident in Cloé’s character arc, as music is her way to manipulate the world formula. Her life is also highly influenced by the transience of her surroundings, while she herself is forced to remain static.

Carpe diem

Latin for “seize the day”. It’s the name of Jeanne’s weapon. “Carpe diem” is an idiom that was especially popular in the baroque era, but it dates back to the roman poet Horace. Along with “memento mori” and “vanitas”, it emphasized the fleetingness of all life. “Carpe diem” emphasizes the call to make use of the day and the time left and to act, despite the eventual transient nature of all afford. The own mortality should be remembered and therefore the day should be seized. This reflects the main characters Vanitas, Noé and Jeanne, who carry on and refuse to give up, despite the external and internal struggles they face.

The color blue

The color blue takes a significant role within the narratives (Vampire!Vanitas being born under the blue moon). While it is not traditionally connected with vanitas itself, the color blue, together with the color black (which are the two dominating colors within human!Vanitas’ character design), is connected to death and melancholy.

The role of the vanitas motif within the narrative

The vanitas motif is embedded both in the form and in the content of the narrative.

The vanitas motif is embedded within in form of the manga as it has an analytic plot structure. This means the story’s conclusion is already presented in the beginning and the rest of the story unfolds how the eventual conclusion happened. This is the case in “Vanitas no carte” as it presents the conclusion, that Vanitas dies in the end within the first chapter and we are actually reading Noé’s memoirs. Therefore it is a constant reminder, that Vanitas will die and nothing that will happen in the story will change that outcome. Everything that happens in the story appears basically unable to change the end. Every positive development is overshadowed by the fact that it is made clear by the narrative since the very beginning that there will be no happy ending for the main characters. This is especially notable in the scene on the rooftop in volume 3, where Noé declares, how he will stay on Vanitas’ side. This scene is followed by an overlying narration of Noé, who says that memories of the beginning awake memories of the end and expressing his regret. In this positive, powerful scene where Vanitas and Noé make up and the themes of human bonds, free will, acceptation of oneself and others and trust really shine…also embeds the eventual tragic end. The omnipresence of death and its fatality and the transience of life and the knowledge that nothing lasts is the essence vanitas motif and it is presented in the mere structure of the manga.

But its not only the structure where the vanitas motif is woven in, but also the story. This shows especially in the character Vampire!Vanitas and in the mere name itself. As Cloe’s case shows: Vampires are pretty much immortal, if not directly killed. On the other hand, it is the curse of Vampire!Vanitas that endangers vampires: Because it gives them back their mortality and the transience of their existence. A transience not brought by an outside force as in the church, that hunts the vampires – but transience within themselves and their very nature. Vampires fear becoming cursed as much as humans fear death – it can always happen, to everyone. It’s not fast, but slow, seemingly unstoppable “decay”. So it is fitting for someone called “Vanitas” to bring transience and the constant reminder of death and fear upon their whole species.

Another factor of the vanitas motif is the inevitable passing of time and the changes this brings – a theme that is deeply tied to several characters arcs, where death and loss and how to deal with both is a major theme (especially when it comes to Vanitas, Noé, Jeanne, but how they relate to each other thematically is worth an analysis itself and I would digress too much). This is especially notable in Cloé’s arc, who is the only vampire in her family and becomes more and more isolated and alienated from her family, who eventually forgets about her. Cloé’s wish to stop the passing of time (and the underlying wish to be happy with her family, to be accepted for what she is), to fight the transience or rather to fight the vanitas manifests in the time loop. The time is reset and tied into a loop – symbolizing not only her being stuck in the past, but also her refusal of a future, since a future meant nothing but being forgotten for her, who sees no other purpose in herself but to execute the will of her family that has long forgotten her.

The concept of vanitas also includes fatalism and the belief that humans don’t have control over their own lifes. This makes Lord Ruthven , who uses curses to bind other vampires to his will and eliminating their own (as he did/tried to do with Noé, Jeanne and Cloé) a fitting villain from a thematic viewpoint as he impersonates fatalism. Personal choices or free will don’t matter for him as he erases both. This makes him a foil for Vanitas and an antagonist not only in actions but in world view. To Vanitas the freedom of his will and the consciousness of his own choices are extremely important to him. He could never choose in the past and was more seen as tool used by his surroundings than as a person. This emphasis of choices opposes Vanitas to the traditionally fatalistic viewpoint of the vanitas-motif. Not only that, but he uses the Book of Vanitas to actually reverse the curse and fighting the transience of existence that has befallen the vampires.

So Vanitas fights Vampire!Vanitas not only as a person by preventing the curse from killing vampires – but simultaneously he fights the transience and the fatalism: He fights vanitas as a concept itself.

But the narrative doesn’t deem transience not as internally negative. Quite the opposite, the narrative sees transience as an opportunity for change. The change of fixed structures is also an important theme after all. This change of structures is of both negative (as the curse dissembles the true name of the vampire and therefore their entire nature and Jeanne’s struggle and agony with coming in terms with seeing herself changing) and positive qualities. In one of the early chapters Vanitas complains about how the vampires are stuck in the past and therefore refusing his help – it is not only after Vanitas proofs himself that he is at least tolerated. The message of the positive side of change is also within Vanitas’ and Noé’s improving relationship and understanding. Even though Vanitas has a hard time to accept these changes (as he didn’t tell Noé about the state of the Queen, because he thought he wouldn’t believe him and refers to the several past experiences of vampires almost killing him), the positive relationship of both of them even inspires changes in others. Notably Laurent. Who, inspired by seeing a human and a vampire in a positive relationship begins to question his own beliefs and is even on the road to uncover secrets of the church, breaking up entrenched structures as well.

As a conclusion one could say that the manga makes many, many allusions to the vanitas motif and incorporates them structurally, thematically and plot-wise.

Vanitas no Carte is really a case study of vanitas.

#vanitas no carte #vanitas no shuki #the case study of vanitas #noe archiviste #vanitas #meta #vnc meta

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belle-keys · 3 years

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I Love Matthew Fairchild aka Incoherent Thoughts about Chain of Iron (2021) by Cassandra Clare

I made one of these rant-rave reviews for SJM's book so check it out if you want, no pressure tho lmao.

Aight so I finished Chain of Iron last night and OMG I HAVE TO YELL like I loved it sooo much like yooo, I have a lot to say. I know the book is new so... beware for spoilers plebs.

Also context: I been reading the Shadowhunter books since I was 12 and I'm 19 now *insert dead emoji face* so yeah, I'm just so happy rn with where the Chronicles have come and the fact that they’re still ongoing *insert uwu face*. I remember when in like 2014-2015 or something when Cassandra Clare teased that Will and Tessa's kids' generation was gonna get a trilogy set in Edwardian London, loosely based on Great Expectations, and holy hell? I think that was perhaps one of the best days of my life considering how much I adore The Infernal Devices (that trilogy really changed the way I see YA literature... don't ask cus I won't shut up about it) (also yes I read TMI and loved it too but there's a “generation gap” between TMI and the other Shadowhunter books stylistically so don't ask me about that either cus I also won't shut up).

Anyway, shoo from here if you want a critical essay on Chain of Iron. I'm not providing that, this is just me raving here for the fun.

Listen... I want the bulk of this to just be two main things: The Matthew Situation, and then all the literary and judeo-christian meta aspects of it.

BUT I ALSO NEED TO TALK ABOUT EVERYTHING ELSE SO FRICK LET'S JUST START WITH THE OBVIOUS SHIT LIKE THE PLOT AND WHATEVER

Okay, the plot and writing and shit, let's get that out of the way:

The WHOLE Jack-the-Ripper-esque ambiance was just sooooo good man wow like I did not expect the book to take this cold turn but it worked so well. There was such a contrast between Jamie and Cordelia's warm little house and then the cold winter and the stabbings and shit and it felt like a nice little callback to the actual Ripper phenomenon that preceded them and a nod to the Whitechapel Fiend story from Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy.

Bitch OFC that whole thing with Wayland was a set-up like nawww that was too easy to spot and I get why Cordelia feels like shit about it.

Dawg Lucie was just the Among Us imposter here in that my girl was just venting and sneaking around with dead people and I was like nooooo girl run, don't deal with Fade this is a set-up THINK ABOUT JULES LUCIE THAT'S LIKE YO GREAT-GRANDSON *sobs* but yeah anyway my girl has death powers she gonna kill some bitches next book.

You see that confrontation between Lilith and Belial? MASTERPIECE DIALOGUE like this was the point within which I was just like "yo is this the book of Genesis or a YA Fantasy novel" like when Lilith said "I may have been cast out but I did not fall" like??????????????????? I YELLED she did not have to END Belial like that. What a bad bitch.

More on Lilith and Belial... "You, who brought nations into darkness? Shall I finally be able to tell the infernal realms you have gone mad, lost even the image of the Creator." HAHAHHAHAHA SHE SAID "YO BELIAL GO GET SOME THERAPY AND GET OFF MY ASS" LIKE??????

Ughhhh yasss Clare has improved writing diverse characters in this book compared to in The Dark Artifices in my opinion... I'm not gonna expand on it cus ain't nobody got time for that but like, I enjoyed how she wove Persian poetry and tales into the story and the way in which she writes Cordelia and Alistair. They're not caricatures of Persian people but rather multi-faceted beings who also happen to be Persian and I appreciate that. Also, Alistair and Thomas and Anna and Ariadne were just so fun and interesting to read as coupbles but also as individuals. She really higlighted diversity in a very natural manner. All I need is a hijabi character and I’ll die a happy woman lmao.

The level of META man like the references to Classics and art (I swear, she might have compared Matthew to angels out of Caravaggio AND Rosetti AND Boticelli paintings and I Am Living For It) and just all the quotes from holy books and shit omg I love it here like you really feel catapulted into the time period, she draws reference to external art and philosophy so well and I feel like she upped the notch on it in this book (didn’t know that was possible but it was the prose is BEAUTIFUL, archaic, but not pretentiously so). No, like the characters live in their OWN worlds of literature and art and history in the way we are living in THEIRS. They quote Wilde and Milton while we'll quote Clare. It's awesome.

This is an unusually structuralist take even from me but: I like the way the milieu social of the book, i.e., the high society Edwardian circles and their values, have a direct influence on the plot. James and Cordelia got married because society’s values essentially forced them to, not a demon. Cordelia abandons Jamie at the end of Iron because her shame as a woman in society and fear for her reputation made her, not a demon. Thomas and Alistair can't be together solely because of how Alistair tarnished the reputation of the Fairchilds and Lightwoods by using the horror of infidelity against them. Issues relating to marriage, gender roles, etc, stemming DIRECTLY from the time period rule the sequence of events to the same degree as the epic fantasy aspects (demons, Princes of Hell, the lore itself) do and I LOVE that dear God above.

OKAY THE GOOD SHIT LET US TALK ABOUT CHARACTERS AND SHIPS (N.B. but imma discuss Matthew and the Fairstairs situation separately below this portion):

Alistair's redemption arc: No, cus Alistair's redemption arc is honestly amazing. He really did change and it's not like his betterment as a person was linked to any one heroic deed but rather he simply decided he wanted to be better especially for his family and he decided to become a proper protective son, a caring brother, and an amiable friend. He fully owned up to his Malfoy tendencies and apologized without expecting forgiveness. He shows how he cares in the little ways and omg it's so sweet and tender. I really do want him to love himself now and be embraced by Matthew especially and the rest of the Thieves.

Dawg Lucie and Jesse are so funny to me like it's so hilarious how this girl fell in love with a whole ass ghost that no one else knows about like HHAHA. Are Lucie and Jesse my ult ship ever? Nah, but it's nothing to do with Clare, it's just that their relationship happened pretty quick and feels quite like something epicly romantic that Lucie herself would write. I just like slow burn and friends-to-lovers the most from Clare. To be honest part of me just wanted Lucie to not have a romantic arc all together but like, it's all good, I'm not complaining.

Okay Grace- like yooooooooooo I never hated her yunno. She has been abused and isolated all her life. It's not that she is a bad person, but rather that she does not know what being a person even entails. Can't even say she's a “doll” of a person cus she's never even been pampered like one by her family. I really started understanding her motivations since when they gave us her half-childhood with Jesse. I want better for her but cmon can she REALLY be saved???

GRACE X CHRISTOPHER *pretends to be shocked*... Okay, sometime in the middle of the Dark Artifices series some big brain put together a very thorough family tree of the families and like, it clearly showed that Grace and Christopher got married so like, lmfaooooo, I knew this was coming one way or another, but the journey to this ship is more important than the destination. Like in a way Christopher is such a cute baby lamb that it makes sense he'd end up being immune to her Grace-ness when he's just a cute little Einstein boiii. Like this is just so funny to me cus he's so oblivious to social conventions while she makes the milieu social her entire life so OFC it's gonna work. Like, this is such a worlds-colliding trope like just Give It To Me.

James and Grace - aw mannn Jamie just had me fricking wanting to hit a wall every two seconds cus like yooooooo every single time I think he and Cordelia are gonna stop being emotionally-constipated spouses, Jamie says some kinda shit like "omg me and Daisy are just friends uwu" like DO I NEED TO HIT YOU?????????? See I can't blame him for not slamming the door on Grace's face even tho he totes should- Jamie is so cerebral and kind that even if Grace wasn't using the enchantment on him, I think he would always be soft for her even if it isn't in a romantic way. There's just so much miscommunication cus like he said "Thank God" when she broke off the engagement with Charles and lowkey embraced her but it also wasn't his fault cus it wasn't even romantic BUT OFC IT LOOKED HORRIBLE TO CORDELIA like James literally never told the woman at least once that he loved her so OFC she thought she was back to square one with him dear God above what a mess. Not his fault, but she DID set down one rule for him: don’t cheat with Grace. And yeah even tho he hasn’t properly cheated, it must FEEL horrible to her cus she’s just been enduring the pain of their unrequeted love for so long :((

See imma just say it but if Cordelia thought that James didn't love Grace then she def would have confessed to him about her feelings right but like James, on the other hand, was delaying his own romantic confession cus he was BEING EMOTIONALLY CONSTIPATED and I can't even say the bracelet was solely to blame cus like my boi was just being so difficult omg I believe he should be lightly spanked by his three parents aka Will, Tessa and Jem *cries*.

Cordelia is such a MOM like she's so mature and stable and her self-preservation instinct? OFF THE CHARTS I love this woman like James definitely treated her well as a hubby but like I JUST WANTED HER TO HAVE CLOSURE ABOUT SOMETHING and boy oh boy she did get that closure she got it good but not from the person she expected in the LEAST *hehe* *pelican screeching*... like Lucie was being sus with the whole ghost business and James was being just, quite a case, dealing with Grace and Belial right and I don't blame them at all for their secrecy and shit but her FATHER DIED and her friends were hiding a lot from her so in a way she turned to Alistair for help but he could only do so much cus of his own pain (she couldn't even talk to her mom cus she's pregnant and she doesn't wanna stress her right) and then there was this emotional block between her and Jamie, Lucie was often absent and conspiring with the dead... the last person remaining was HIM (imma discuss this soon), but yeah my heart just went OUT to her cus she's tryna save herself and her family and she just doesn't know what to do. That's why I love the way her mom told her to stop holding herself back for others and live her own life. Like Cordelia grew on me so much cus in Gold she undoubtedly was a strange Elizabeth Bennet-wallflower hybrid and I... do not usually get attached to wallflowers but in Iron I feel like I finally understood that she was just tryna be unproblematic and self-preserving all along and nottt put her family and friends in a tough situation.... she reminds me of my mom personality-wise so yeah I’m totally rooting for her now that her *situation* in the past seems clearer.

Anna, Thomas and Matthew are such a SQUAD lmfaooooo like united in their gayness they'd be so unstoppable.

Will and Tessa are the most in-love of all the in-loves in this story and I respect that so much.

I lost a year to my life every time the romance between James and Cordelia got cockblocked. Like they were MARRIED and I thought they were gonna at least sleep next to each other at least once BUT NO James couldn't take a hint omg I'm actually gonna eat my fist and sob (but in retrospect, I think this serves a bigger purpose in terms of the narrative structure i.e. the interruption of all the spicy James and Cordelia action serves a bigger purpose which I think brings me to my next section, *exhale*)

Welcome to the Matthew Fairchild Enthusiast Club (this section is me talking out loud; it makes no sense):

bitch.

LISTEN TO ME LISTEN WELL I LOVE THIS BOY SO MUCH IMMA SCREAM I REALLY AM GONNA SCREAM MY FIST IS LITERALLY IN MY MOUTH *BACKFLIPS OFF THE ROOF WITH LANA DEL REY PLAYING*

Okay like where to BEGIN I think the Shadowhunter boy who I'm most attracted to is Julian while the one I love the most is Will but I think I see myself in Matthew the most. Like ever since that first story where the Thieves all met at the Academy then got expelled, I think that I just KNEW Matthew was destined to be epic. Plus the whole Wilde obsession? I’m no libertine myself but I just love his chaos and passion for life.

NO CUS HE'S SO WITTY AND SWEET AND EPIC AND YET SO SECRETIVE AND DEAR GOD ABOVE AHHHHH WILL HE SURPASS JULIAN FOR ME??? Ion even know but this is just sodjsgdwsdygyegydgef

Hear me out but I said after finishing Gold last March that I wanted this book to be Matthew's healing arc right so halfway into the book when I realized that we weren't getting all that good healing arcing I was confused just cus I thought it seemed natural to address all of his alcohol issues and sadness by now. LITTLE DID I KNOW CASSIE WAS SETTING UP A WHOLE OTHER ARC WITH HIM THAT I WOULD HAVE NEVER GUESSED WTH.

At first I thought Matthew didn't have feelings for anyone at all, and if he DID develop feelings unexpectedly, I fricking thought that maybe he's catching feelings for James, if anyone??? I mean, I did have some suspicions about Matthew from the get-go: like he's so secretive and as readers we think we know everything there is to know about him since we were all privy to the truth potion incident in his short story right BUT NO I GOT PLAYED AND I DESERVE IT SO BADDDDDD.

Listen I hadn't shipped him and Cordelia simply because I never thought it in the realm of possibility but it MAKES SENSE as a ship... think about it: he never says what he feels, he flirts with her like he does with EVERYONE, he is kind to her in the way he is with EVERYONE. Really, Matthew is shippable with everyone, doesn’t matter if they’re taken cus that’s just what his Matthewnes allows for ya feel. There is such a beautiful irony that CORDELIA herself did not see this coming. Even the little teasers and hints in Gold have only NOW started making sense to me likejhss. I just felt like the hints in book 1 did not indicate to me that Matthew really harbored real romantic feelings for Daisy. I thought he was upset that James and Cordelia were being fakes, not a developing CRUSH on the woman fgs.

Not to mention that you usually sense a ship building when the emotional connection or sexual tension between the characters is made clearer but to me their FRIENDSHIP grew right but it didn’t feel like Cordelia was thought that she liked him or he liked her so that means me and Cordelia are clowns *together* 😤

Okay I was lowkey having SUSPICIONS but I immediately shut them down right... like firstly when he took her to the White Horse in his car and she went OFF and OFF and off about how she felt free for the first time? I thought Cassie was just tryna develop Cordelia's self-liberation arc through Matthew there. Heck, I didn't even think ANYTHING of it when Matthew confession to Cordelia about the "truth potion" incident at all cus I was like they're FRIENDS??? BUT now it's adding up now...

See when they were at the inn place and he was telling her that she doesn't in the least seem like a 100 year-old married woman? I was like hmmmm he's so sweet but why did Cassie phrase it like that like??? When Cordelia later reiterated that she thought Matthew's flirting was “meaningless”?? I was like hmmm kinda SUS tho. And then when he and James had their fight over the way Jamie kissed Grace like again I thought he was just like? ion know? mad at James for it but I didn't think he was in LOVE with Cordelia??? So I immediately put aside my slight suspicions. The probability that he had a crush on James at that point seemed more likely to me.

BUT THEN it started hitting me that every time Matthew drank, even before he explained his issue with the truth potion, that Cordelia would note it, she would worry about him, she would think of her father which seemed so poetic to me, history repeating itself and all that but this time you can FIX it??? Yeah, but again I didn't think the L WORD would be involved man???

Now imma sound like a delulu shipper here but it just makes sense they would develop feelings logically- reason being that it definitely is possible based on the way Cassie set up the story, like there's a combination of little “friend things” that can turn this into a proper ship: Matthew rescues Cordelia in the ballroom when Grace captures James' attention in Gold. Cordelia sees her father in Matthew all the time but knows now she has a chance to be there for him in the way she couldn't have been there for Elias (classic “history repeats itself” trope, she doesn't want Matthew drinking in Paris like dhshghdfhdhch). Cordelia tastes freedom for the first time when driving with Matthew. Matthew caught James and Cordelia making out in the room and was pissed but not even HE properly knew why then??? Umm, when she thinks James is forreal cheating with Grace on her she subconsciously goes to Matthew??? I also found it funny just how every intimate marital moment between her and James got interrupted somehow. Like, it's as if the narrative is just a living force REFUSING to let James and Cordelia as a ship be consecrated. Heck, every time Matthew is scantily clothed Cordelia notes it. LITTLE CRUMBS I TELL YOU LITTLE CRUMBS.

I tell you when Cordelia showed up to Matthew's flat I thought they were gonna f*ck as friends but I got SOMETHING EVEN BETTER SOMEHOW

THEY ARE GOING TO PARIS LA BELLE EPOQUE PARIS THE PARIS OF DREAMS AND ART LIKE??? FRICKKKKK I DID NOT SEE THIS COMING AT ALLLL MAN? I deadass thought the story would be restrained to the UK but like it MAKES SENSE the trope subversion MAKES SENSE.

“In Paris, with you, I will not need to forget.” SHITTRGEGGGDG

BUT CORDELIA LOVES JAMES TOO LIKE I CAN'T DENY THAT... where are we GOING with this like Matthew wouldn't lie about his feelings and yet Cassie wouldn't give us Matthew and Cordelia crumbs to only end it in the next book immediately for her to just ditch him for James. I mean she was clearly holding back on fleshing out James and Cordelia as a ship for this but to WHAT END??? Daisy feels wild and free with Matthew and she feels warm at home warm with James. I can’t advocate for the sinking of ANY ship here.

Imma say what we're all thinking: Is she gonna give us a Will x Jem x Tessa type situation where Cordelia gets both of them cus I'm not strong enough for this but I also think it'd be really funny if James gets a surprise bi awakening in the next books and then we get POLY even tho this would never happen, it’s actually impossible, because of the whole parabatai thing.

Listen I ship Cordelia and Matthew much more than Cordelia and James, not that I dislike James in any way tho. It's just: Matthew is so unrestrained and she's so composed. They seem like an unlikely pair so it makes sense that they hit harder for me. James and Cordelia have such similar personalities but I ALSO don't ship James with Grace at all so like?? Poly would be... ideal... but it can’t happen especially cus they are fricking parabatai... a Will-Jem-Tessa situation seems more likely but mannnn ion know what to expect. I just want FAIRSTAIRS to have their moment in Paris. I mean James and Matthew clearly don't abhor each other for this.

Take everything I say with several grains of salt, take everything I say with the whole Dead Sea actually, cus I damn well know that Matthew is so flirty and whatnot that I’d have shipped him with anyone in their little circle but now that she set him up with Cordelia it all feels so right?? I have wanted this man in a good relationship since he walked onto the page in Nothing But Shadows so-

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I can't believe Cassia duped me like this omg, Matthew is gonna have his healing arc in Paris with Cordelia by his side like- THIS IS ALL I HAVE WANTED AND SO MUCH MORE. Question to yall btw: are you all as surpised at Fairstairs as me or did yall see it coming all along like smart people? Am I a lone clown? 🥺

BRUH okay criticisms of CC?:

Lmfao a part of me feels like I GOTTA say something bad about CC or the book but honestly I have no objective complaints about it as of now. Am I saying that it’s the PEAK of Young Adult literature and Urban Fantasy? I mean, I make no such claims tbh. I’m not here to be critical when I read as a hobby and when CC’s writing makes me happy regardless of how flawed some people see it.

Okay what next?

So like I’m excited for the adult high fantasy she’s releasing in the fall and whatever other works she might be releasing outside of Chain of Gold within the Chronicles.

As for TLH itself? Man I’m just VIBING like I suspect I will reread Chain of Iron soon and maybe one of the anthologies just because I am happy that this series actually happened after me waiting like 6 years for it when it was just a concept: a Dickensian retelling filled with poetry and culture and history and the conventions I so loved in TID at age 12. This is all I been wanting tbh. I’m just enjoying watching this series come to fruition for it to inspire and transform me in some way. I feel like in a way my coming-of-age aligns with that of these specific characters yet I ALSO feel like I raised Jamie since infancy. Wack.

MATTHEW AND CORDELIA IN FRANCE LA BELLE EPOQUE TO BE EXACT IMMA CRY I DID NOT SEE THIS COMING AND AHHHHHH. ALSO WILL AND JAMIE GOING TO CORNWALL TO GET LUCIE AND MAYBE BOND I LOVE WILL. HE WAS ONE OF MY DILF AWAKENINGS AT AGE 12 AND NOW HE’S HERE AGAIN IMMA CRY. I WANNA SEE MATTHEW GET HAPPY. AHHH.

Ending with a fun quote: “In the wise words of someone or other, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Maurice.” 😉

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naruhearts · 4 years

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It’s Happening.

Sorry I need to get this all out of my brain for a sec and review past stuff so warning for the rambly sloppiness-

A Key Concept: one can’t freely love another person(s) the way they deserve without first loving oneself. We know this is a vital aspect of interpersonal growth and healthy relational interdependence.

Dean Winchester now loves himself (LOVE YOURSELF, SPEAK YOURSELF, folks). He has forgiven the Ghost kid...unshackled him and let him dissipate into the ether of a toxic past (which was all smartly foreshadowed in the metanarrative throughout the past few years over and over again *gingerly cradles my Scoobynatural 13x16 meta* because HELLO, Cas the Honest Man truly was the interpersonal catalyst to saving Dean the Righteous Man. Cas saw the ghost underneath the monstrous shell, the wall, the barrier of unworthiness, and helped set him free. 2 years ago, I wrote: “Who was able to reach through—to communicate and see the little vulnerable ghost boy behind the monstrous facade? A facade created by authority abuse? A facade created to protect himself from a scary world? Who was able to lend him a sense of self-acceptance? CAS. Cas is the living antithesis of control. He’s freedom. He’s non-conformity. And Dean’s finally LETTING GO like Elsa. Releasing himself like Rowena in 13x12. Conquering his traumas. What’s by is by. Dean’s saying I was trapped, but now I’m free. I’m my own person—not Heaven’s tool, not Hell’s tool, not my Dad’s tool, not society’s tool, but my own tool, corroborated by Cas telling him he isn’t a talking dog at the end.”)

Indeed, all this DID come to pass. The baggage was FINALLY unloaded. We meta writers and everyone else who saw the same things, agreed with us, and basked with us in noting those things are still feeling so, so vindicated because we saw the unadulterated story Dabb & Co wanted to tell all along), I’m manifesting.

I’m manifesting that self-actualized and self-loving Dean, finally internalizing and processing Cas’ love confession of truth - finally accepting that he is WORTH Cas’ love - will find Cas and USE HIS WORDS at the growth!Becky end of the long, beautifully devastating, winding road.

I’m manifesting that Dean will finally tell Cas he loves him, too.

That he always did.

Again, I commented re: 15x19 here (I’m also too lazy now to “analyze” this ep in that there’s almost nothing to meta anymore!! Ahh! Common sense):

Dabb & co pulled a necessarily (lol) fast one on us tonight: a literary Bros-Only mirage, veiling the actual narrative underneath -> Love and...Love, in which the Winchesters of the modern age function and self-regulate poorly without their loved ones. Self-actualization and self-love — both of which currently manifest in the brothers’ life courses as facilitated by emotional-passionates Edlund-Thompson-Dabb and more — involves love for others. Of note, Dean Humanity Winchester finally understands his worth. The penultimate trigger for him to love himself was Cas’ unconditional love for him. Cas, the key of truth and free will, opened his heart completely. Dean’s heart, mind, and soul are finally congruent FOR LOVE.

And here:

**And by proxy the greatest love story ever told is entrenched in free will; every action Cas performed after saving Dean Winchester from Hell has been executed with Dean’s influence, character, human essence. Cas and Dean further lit, enhanced, stoked the flames of free will within the other upon first contact -> “When Castiel first laid a hand on you in Hell, he was lost!!” ...[shakes S8 & the Naomi storyline under your nose; take a wonderful storytelling whiff]. They met in the middle on their own accord. Dean and Cas trusting each other, choosing each other, believing in the other, all literally + figuratively threw Chuck’s authority off the rails.** In other words, it’s almost like we can state, with potential certainty, that a love story, a love story of various iterations and multifaceted forms — platonic (Sam, Dean, and Cas welcoming Jack into their non-nuclear Found Family) and romantic ([sub]textual: Dean and the Angel of Humanity Cas) — has again led, all this time, to Chuck’s downfall.

^I wrote this during 15x17. OF COURSE, it’s not subtextual anymore!!

To reiterate:

Free will is love. Love is free will. Love isn’t bound by anything, isn’t trapped nor suppressed by universal rules. It doesn’t exist in a singular vacuum. It controls and frees itself. Love ebbs and flows and transcends even “the veil of death and saves the day.”

In fact, “Love can only be genuine if it’s freely chosen. Which means, unless a personal agent has the capacity to choose against love, they don’t really have the capacity to choose for it...[i]n a world that is centered on love, even God can’t be guaranteed to always get what he wants.” x

Dean and Cas’ love for each other, unexpected, unpredictable, unprecedented and autonomous, permeating the fabric of natural predetermined order, again caused Chuck’s downfall. Oh boy oh boy oh boy.

It’s been building, building, building, waxing, waxing, waxing into a full bright moon from S8-12, then underwent another fundamental narrative shift into textual endgame territory from S13-15 that encompassed the self, the transcendental merging of Jungian Persona and Shadow, that all gathered to the textual surface, Who Am I (I mean, I WROTE THIS FOR @profoundzine within the context of mirror self S14 about DEAN AND CAS GAINING INTERDEPENDENCE which also came true!!); the show is finally going there.

15x19 closed the door to Ye Olde SPN.

It seems to me that 15x20 is going to open another door: one truly for the history books, one of Rebirth, embodying Free Will and Love and...Love, uncensored and raw in 2020, evoking the winds of social change and humanistic positive character arc growth that will topple all of us over into elation.

Endgame Destiel.

I keep saying it, but if 15x20 goes bad bad, I’m with you all in marching up to the offices and raging. However, everything thus far storytelling-wise was constructed to finish the picture they started painting since S7/8.

Goddamn, I’m HYPED FOR NEXT WEEK!!!

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creek-cryptid-deluxe · 3 years

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per request (from a single person, that’s all it takes), my thoughts and feelings about...

the movie adaptation of Queen of the Damned! (buckle up motherfuckers because this is going to be a long thing)

Ok, so it’s pretty much universally known that the movie is... trash, despite the soundtrack being absolutely baller. Let’s examine why this movie is trash, shall we?

So, my first point of contention is that it was meant to combine 2 books. As I’m sure everyone knows, this movie and Interview with the Vampire are based on books from The Vampire Chronicles series by Anne Rice (which she’s still milking by putting out books nobody is asking for. Anne, girl. Stop. Please. You’ve killed it. It’s dead. Move on.) The book series goes Interview with the Vampire (Louis talking to a journalist or author, about his life and afterlife as lived by him), The Vampire Lestat (which is penned by the monster himself about his life and journey into immortality up into his rise to fame with his band, and the awakening of Akasha), Queen of the Damned (which is basically the concert and the aftermath), then is Tale of the Body Thief but after reading it once, I never went beyond Queen of the Damned ever again and that was when I was like 17.

Now the movie Queen of the Damned was meant to combine the second and third books, thereby skipping out on a TON of important information and background regarding Lestat’s motivations and behaviors. (Plus The Vampire Lestat is my favorite of the series. It’s a good fucking book, ok?) So in the movie, we see Akasha being awakened and ripping out her king’s throat with ZERO CONTEXT! Ok, not zero context, but absolutely not enough context to paint a full picture of wtf is going on. Same with his motivation behind joining the band or explaination of his attitude in Interview. (BTW at the end of Interview, he ISNT the one who turns Daniel, the author, into a vampire. It’s Armand.)

So yeah, lots of missing info that I feel is pretty necessary for the narrative to make sense. And I don’t mean that in the usual “omg they left this bit from the book out of the movie!!!” way. I mean it in a significant information for the storyline was just GONE causing the story to make significantly less sense.

Now let’s chat about that casting, boi!

I think we can all agree that the entire thing was acted pretty terribly, yeah?

great. so looking beyond that...

Let’s start with my main issue and that’s Lestat. So his casting in Interview wasn’t physically ideal, however Cruise did manage to capture the personality Lestat had for that novel. While Louis is ‘a whiner’ as a friend put it, because he can’t shed that humanity and the morals and softness of heart that comes with that, Lestat is much the opposite. In Interview, he has completely embraced the decadent, indulgent, ruthlessness of an immortal who has been around and seen some shit. You learn more about why in the second novel. Really, he sort of knew how to play the game from the start. Yes he still had a handful of human attachments, like Gabrielle and Nicholas, but he cut ties with pretty much everyone else outside of a proxy lawyer of sorts to manage his shit and be a point of contact almost immediately. Yeah, occasionally he displays a softness, some humanity, but it always fucks him over, so by the time he meets Louis he has learned that it isn’t the way to go.

Stuart Townsend had potential. Physically, absolutely nails it. Could have easily pulled of the ‘present day’ Lestat of the end of the second/third novel who is basically sick of all the vampire rules about keeping to the shadows and fronts a rock band to give all the other immortals the finger. HOWEVER, he acted it so fucking poorly that it physically hurt. It was like he latched onto the fact that Lestat is indisputably attractive and vampires are generally seen as sensual creatures, then turned that shit up to 1000 and turned it into a caricature. Look at his movement. God the faces he pulls. Christ on a cracker.

Then there’s the ‘singing’. So when an actor lip syncs in a movie, unless the voice of the actual vocalist is super distinctive and recognizable (looking at you Jon Davis. Also on that subject, Jon get your shit together. fucksake. clean it up bro. you didn’t invent dubstep, come off it already. nobody buys it and you’ve become a joke.), you shouldn’t be able to tell that the actor isn’t the one singing. In this movie, there is an OBVIOUS disconnect between the song/voice and the actor. His body language and facial expression NEVER ONCE align with the fucking vocals that we are meant to believe are coming from him. Genuinely, and I say this in all seriousness, the worst lip sync I’ve seen on RuPaul’s Drag Race was a fucking tour de force compared to what Townsend gave us in this abomination. How was there not a point during the shoot where someone stepped in and said, “You know, maybe we should get him some lessons and practice doing a proper lip sync...” HOW DID THAT SLIP THROUGH THE CRACKS Y’ALL??? Him singing is a (if not THE) main plot point!!!! Fuck!

Casting for everyone else? Ok. Not well acted but nothing was so... whatevs? But on the subject of casting, in Interview, as much as he looked like walking sex as vampire Antonio Banderas was, he didn’t fit the description of Armand in any of those first 3 books. When Lastat first meets him (long before Louis was a thing), he’s described in such a way that it seems he was turned as a young man, not an adult. He was described as looking beautiful and innocent (I think the phrase ‘cherub like face’ was used?) which are not words I would attribute to Mr. Banderas. (No offence to the man, because again... absolute walking sex with pointy teeth in that movie.)

Another thing that really bugs me is the secondary plot with Jessie and the talamasca was, again, missing almost all relevant information! like... honestly if they were going to do it the way they did, they should have just left it the fuck out. you don’t get any sort of information about who the vampires in the house are and how they relate to Jessie, aside from some vague b.s. Jessie was already a vampire at the damned concert, having been turned by one of the vampires associated with the vampire lady she was descended from who turned to marble at the end, becoming the new Akasha basically. They didn’t explain anything about elders or ancients and the entire power structure/hierarcy within the vampires.

they just took those 2 books, smashed them together haphazardly, left out FUCK TONS of pretty relevant information, then went “oh here’s a dope soundtrack. hope that is enough to carry this dumpster fire of an abomination that has stuff happen but doesn’t explain shit!!! Enjoy kids!”

UGH.

ok i’m done. but angry. so i’m going to go paint or hassle J into bringing me a dremel to sand his fucking dragon sculpture. thank you for coming to this episode of Dr. M Rants.

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whookami · 3 years

Text

I feel like Digimon Adventure (2020) has wasted it’s potential. Sure, the story is new, creating new dynamics, but the characters... they are so meh. Okay, so Tai is pretty much the same, yay for him, but most of the other kids have been robbed of the traits that made them interesting, that made them feel like more than just 2D characters in a fictional world.

Sora doesn’t have her struggles with how she feels about love, her complex relationship with her mother’s overprotectiveness, coupled with her own sense of responsibility. Koushiro isn’t struggling with his sense of belonging (as much, there are tiny hints), his unresolved issues about being adopted and feeling like he doesn’t have a real home with the people he cares about. Mimi isn’t being dragged down and forced to see the horrors of war, she’s shown to be immediately bouncing back after terrible losses and conflicts, rather than having to find the inner strength to choose her own path and forge ahead on her own. Jou’s struggles with school do still exist, and his practical nature, but they don’t feel as solid as in the original, as much of an obstacle for him to overcome in accepting his place as a Digidestined. Takeru isn’t suffering from the need to prove himself, constantly feeling helpless and like he is constantly being babied, as from almost the moment he appears in the Digital World everyone knows he’s got the most powerful digimon, who also manages to unlock an armour evolution when he can’t immediately evolve back into Angemon. Hikari is...weirder in this. Does she have a personality at all besides blank curiosity and belief in Taichi? Maybe. I guess we’ll have to see. And Yamato, poor poor Yamato who has basically had the core of his character excised and then just... not replaced with anything else compelling. Yamato’s issues with his own worth and his responsibility for his brother, who he hardly gets to see due to his parents’ divorce, how he babies Takeru and treats him like he’s helpless, then coupled with Tai’s seeming competence as a leader and how he’s bonding with Takeru and treating him as more of an equal, sparking Yamato into a spiral of doubt and jealousy???? Now he’s just kinda stoic and strategic, and also blatantly supports Takeru being involved in their fight and taking risks, which okay, from the original would be great character development, but this version just jumps right into being okay with his tiny tiny brother being on the front lines in a war??

Also, not sure yet how this will pan out as the character has only just been (re)introduced, but Tailmon (or Gatomon, for the sake of nostalgia). She was the most interesting Digimon originally due to her being hatched and brought up separately, surrounded by the darkness and knowing that something inside herself was missing, but going along with what she’d been taught until Wizardmon finally helped set her on the right path.

Oh, also, Tai going crazy and this version’s take on the SkullGreymon idea was so weak. Tai wasn’t being reckless or careless or trying to use his power like a cudgel, forcing Agumon to evolve. It was in the heat of a very serious battle and their actions made sense, but were painted as being the ‘wrong’ actions because the plot needed them to seem that way?? Of course Agumon’s gonna go dinosaur crazy upon seeing Tai get eaten. It was weak.

All this good character stuff is gone, and what replaces it so far had been drab, boring, and always easily overcome. In the original series Yamato didn’t get over his issues until like, episode 53!! The characters really struggled with their issues, went through ups and downs, made mistakes, learned over time to fix them. I feel like these new takes are static, not growing or changing due to their situations, just bouncing from one problem to the next without anything really sticking to them. Nothing feels like it has any consequences and I don’t relate to what the kids are going through because it’s just a bunch of huge monster battles without any emotional context besides surviving.

Final thought: Also, how the actual fuck are the kids staying on their Digimon during all these attacks?? Pegasmon literally turns into a whirling vertical disc of death and Takeru is on his back the whole time and isn’t barfing afterwards like a kid who ate before riding the Gravitron???

#Digimon #digimon adventure #Digimon adventure 2020 #Digimon adventure 2020 spoilers #Digimon spoilers #character comparisons

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rokutouxei · 4 years

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the other van gogh

part 4 of: atelier heart

ikemen vampire: temptation in the dark theodorus van gogh / mc, theo & vincent | gen | 2403 | [ao3 in bio]

spoiler warning: this fic references scenes from theo’s main route chapters 3, 8, and 18.

You’d heard about Theo before you’d gone to the mansion.

Not by name, no, not by history either. You’d gone to museums with Vincent’s paintings and had read a few descriptions of historical context here and there but for the most part you had heard about his brother with a peculiar moniker.

The Other van Gogh.

When you’d met him that night at the mansion, the roots of guilt began to implant itself into your heart. And with every second you spent with Theo afterwards, knee-deep in his work, the guilt had birthed in its wake curiosity—as to why he was known for his brother, and not for whatever he had done on his own.

Why Arthur would not stop with his brother-complex jokes. Why everyone thought this was normal. Why no one asked questions—why this was just fact.

What did they know that you didn’t? What made Vincent mean so much to Theo to begin with?

Of course, the kind of brotherly connection and support that siblings do have isn’t really news to you, but you could see at a glance that this was different. That they weren’t just brothers, they were partners, and it seemed that Theo derived so much meaning in his life from Vincent’s existence, like he couldn’t hold himself up if not for his older brother.

But why?

If there is anything the passing of time has taught to its scholars, whether they are the ones spending unending hours and days and years in libraries, cooped up, comparing texts from each other, extracting and analysing and cross-referencing, or if they are the ones who are constantly out on the field, making notes, remembering everything, writing everything down to memory—it is that nothing, nothing, can ever truly be captured in its full historical detail. There are always things that will be missed, overlooked, misunderstood, things that no amount of work on history will ever be able to recover.

That is the weakness of the human perspective. Not everyone will write these histories, and there will be many, many experiences that will never be known.

Theo’s, perhaps, is included in those.

You don’t have much knowledge in history to begin with, but the guilt of not having recognized that first night in the banquet continued to gnaw at you, worsening now that you’re spending even more time with him compared to everyone else, and yet you still feel like you knew even less than you started with.

You have an argument, but even to you, it is weak: that the rest of them are pretty much names you would not have been able to escape in the 21st century educational system. Isaac Newton, of course, the discoverer of gravity. Jean d’Arc, the great martyr. Leonardo da Vinci, with his paintings and sculptures. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose songs you started humming in childhood. William Shakespeare, sometimes called the greatest writer in the English language. Napoleon Bonaparte, perhaps one of the greatest military commanders in history. Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the famous Sherlock Holmes. And even Dazai Osamu is pretty recognized as an author too, as far as you knew. And Vincent van Gogh—of course, one of the most renowned artists in the world.

But Theo?

While Vincent was a myth, Theo remained largely untold.

Look, you weren’t a history scholar, and considering your work back in the 21st century, this kind of knowledge was and is entirely out of your radius of practical information. You really didn’t have much reason to know about it. It’s just a niche that you’re not in. And that’s entirely fine, you tell yourself, no single human ought to know everything about the world—except, perhaps, if you’re Leonardo da Vinci, who seems to have an answer for everything, but that was beside the point.

For the longest time, these missing bits of his history left unknown to you, matched with the fact that Theo isn’t exactly the kind of person who is easy to get to know, made your efforts of really, really doing your best to get closer to him feel like you were instead making friends with a wall.

A tall, handsome, strong, passionate, smart, ocean blue-eyed, ridiculously rude wall, but a wall nonetheless.

Or a closed door.

Until Vincent opened it for you.

It was in response to your bewilderment. When one is a sadist and the other one is an angel, it is easy to wonder how they would be related. The day you go out to the flower fields to deliver painting supplies to Vincent is the day he tells you that “I know Theo’s easy to misunderstand, but he’s a really nice kid, so please be friends with him okay?”

And while the instinct is to say no thanks, Vincent’s not exactly the person you can say no to, so you let it go. And on that very same day Theo had allowed you to see a part of him, one you wondered if he ever really ardently shows anyone else, talking about sunrises and the art world and what he can do. What he wants to do. A little glimpse, a peek of what’s hidden inside, but not enough—barely enough—to satiate your own curiosity.

And you, silly, silly little hondje—Theo is right when he says you don’t know just how much trouble you walk into—you take this little curiosity as a challenge.

So you watch.

Watch what history has missed.

Mastering the art of looking at art with a critical eye is one that is honed over time. But with a teacher both as strict and as passionate as Theo, it is a skill that you quickly pick up. Learning the implications of certain gestures; the observation of the tiniest details; the effects of colors; of sharpening one’s gut.

You thought it would be hard.

Or at least, much easier said than done, especially when the man frustratingly keeps calling you dog or snack or any variation of the both of that when he only has miles and miles of praises for his older brother. You were, are, and will obviously be at an entirely different level than Vincent for as long as you will be here. (Not that you minded. Why would you mind it?)

But it isn’t hard at all.

It’s rather easy.

The easiest things to see are their differences. Of course—it’s always like that. That’s exactly why it’s so easy to misunderstand Theo at face value. Where Vincent’s smile is sunny and warm, Theo has a glare that makes flowers wilt. While Vincent likes his pancakes plain and with butter, Theo can get thirty lifetimes worth of sugar for the amount of syrup he puts on his pancakes. Where Vincent is approachable and perhaps a little airheaded, Theo is guarded, distrustful, wary. While Vincent’s words are soft and kind and gentle like wildflowers are, Theo has the formality of roses but also their barbs and thorns.

But the days turn into weeks and your eyes get trained to see past that. Get used to seeing the gentle rays of sunlight illuminating their irises when they look back at each other, talking about art. Vincent sees the softest sides of Theo, see where his thorns give way to flowers, where his distrust smooths into blind faith.

And you want to see that too.

So you practice.

Start with catching the little details like how Theo walks with his hands in his pockets. Or the way he casually adjusts his tie right before he enters a room before a meeting with a client like he’s psyching himself up. Or maybe the way he bites the inside of his cheek when he’s deep in thought, the lines that form on his forehead when he’s squinting so hard at a painting through his magnifying glass. Or the little tug of a smirk he cannot resist when he gets complimented, the one he so subtly and ever so quickly washes away with a neutral face in a second.

Then you catch other things, too. Like how if you matter any single bit to Theo, you can get him to do pretty much anything, bending himself backward over if you ask him. How he pays attention to things that matter to him, down to the littlest detail, like an artist’s changing focus, a shift in style, a change in technique. And how Theo has a dream and it’s one of the only two things he really, really believes in. (The other is his brother.)

You thought it would be impossible to see Theo through Vincent’s eyes, but.

Eventually you do.

You don’t know where it begins, but it begins somewhere. Maybe on that evening you’d gone up the atelier and seen the candlelight shine on his prideful, confident boyish grin, as if he knew all the answers for certain. Or maybe it was later, standing in the garden laughing because how is it that Theo van Gogh, so strong and imposing and scary is now pinned onto the grass with the most playful golden retriever you have ever seen?

But that’s the important part. You start seeing it.

The same way Theo could tell the painting was a fake at first glance that morning at Cedric’s.

And the wall is still tall and opaque and hard to climb but—

You can sort of see the sunlight peering over it.

On the day of the storm, in between antiseptic and rolls of gauze, silence permeates the library like a dense fog. The only sound you can really quite hear besides the thunder outside is your thumping heart, racing as if in time with Theo’s labored breathing.

There are too many questions to ask. You want to ask him why he does all of this. You want to ask him if it is worth it. And you don’t know the order in which to ask them, which ones are the ones you have to hear, but you do.

Theo, for a brief moment, opens up to you.

Allows you to see the red of his wounds and his roses. See the garden, not his thorns.

But before the two of you could head out to your rooms, to go back to bed and pretend none of this had happened, you hold the first-aid kit in your hands and turn to him, already putting his bloodied jacket on, and ask the question you had long feared asking, the one whose answer you worried you really didn’t deserve knowing.

You ask, “Why is it that you’re so fixated on Vincent?”

There’s a moment of held-breath silence, then Theo answers.

“Because I made a choice that day, and he is all I have left.”

The next day, you catch Vincent in the garden painting. You hesitate at the doorway wondering if you should interrupt him, but eventually decide that this is something you ought to tell him, out of respect.

“I wanted to say sorry,” you say, sitting next to him on the grass. Vincent turns to you with confusion in his eyes.

“What about?”

“When we were at the flower fields, and I asked you and Theo if you were really brothers—I thought about it a lot the past few days, and I think finally see what you mean,” you say. “About Theo.”

Vincent smiles, the smile of someone who knows more than they let on.

(A lifetime ago, in the middle of a seaside town when everything was falling apart around him, Vincent had only one person holding him up, and that was his brother. They were young then—but felt much too old, older than they were. Youth was not gentle with them, and for the most part they spend much of their lives making up for times they spent less kind to one another. Dreaming for the children they used to be, the ones they would have wanted to nurture, but cannot anymore.

The seaside town where their paths were linked and then diverged. They were teenagers, walking alongside the mill, hiding in stockrooms, listening to the crash of the waves against the Dutch shores.

And a full lifetime ago, long after they’d grown out of the old family home, Vincent had taken up his pen and had written to Theo:

We’re quite distant from one another, and in certain respects we may have different ways of seeing, but nevertheless, sometimes or some day one of us might be able to be of use to the other. For today, I shake your hand, thanking you again for the kindness you’ve shown me.

The salt in the air, the gray paths, the winding roads, they all remain.)

That is the weakness of the human perspective. Not everyone will write these histories, and there will be many, many experiences that will never be known.

And because of this the world might only remember Vincent after all. Might only remember he had a brother that stood by him but had nothing in comparison to the legacy of paintings that once were piled up in that said brother’s small Paris home. Might only think that the entire story only revolves around Vincent, and that there is only Vincent and then the other van Gogh.

The world might not know him by name.

But it’s okay.

You hold his face in your hands, that night he tells you he’s sworn to throw everything away for Vincent. The van Gogh that wasn’t the Other one. The name of the feeling you hadn’t wanted to put into words tasting like blood in your mouth.

Theo can do what he wants.

And the world can forget.

But you will remember.

And to at least one person—he will not just be the other van Gogh.

in the atelier: Two children on the beach by Pierre van Dijk

#ikevamp #ikevamp theo #ikevam theo #ikevam #ikemen vampire #ikemen vampire theo #atelier heart #fic #the other van gogh

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darklingichor · 3 years

Text

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton *Major Spoilers*

I did not plan to revisit this one because I still have it mostly memorized from when I read it over and over as a teenager.

I loved this book so much, even though my life was worlds away from Ponyboy's, I related to him.

This is probably the most influential book I've ever read. I found out it was written when S.E. Hinton was a teen and I thought "Maybe I can do it too."

I soon found that I was far too sensitive to let people read what I wrote, I couldn't get around the idea of pouring part of myself into something and having someone tell me it sucks.

Now, I realize that's pretty rich considering this blog, but I couldn't do it as a kid and even now it feels a little like saying "please judge my spleen for your liking. If it is found lacking, by all means throw it in the shredder. Fear not, I will feel every cut."

This is why very few people have ever read my fiction.

That's also why, with a couple of exceptions I try to be very respectful of every book I read.

Anyway, what made me return to The Outsiders was that I discovered that there was a 50th anniversary edition. This hardcover has extras, my finger was hitting buy before I even registered it.

So, reread it for the first time in a long time.

I sank into the sweet nostalgia of the story. Reading this book is like sliding on a well worn pair of jeans. This book introduced me to Robert Frost.

I taught myself to type using the poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" because I had it memorized and would never get tired of it.

I still love the friendships and family bonds presented in the story. I still got a knot in my throat when Johnny died and Dally lost everything. I cried when Ponyboy found Johnny's letter. By God, but I still love this book.

I did notice that some things hit differently now than they did even when I read it once in my 20's.

The first thing I noticed is akin to when you watch The Little Mermaid as an adult and Arial says that she's sixteen and not a kid

and you laugh out loud because, girl, you are a zygote, shush!

When Cherry says to Ponyboy, she could fall in love with Dallas Winston so she hopes she never sees him m again. When I was a kid reading this,familar with The Breakfast Club, Grease, etc, this seemed like a natural statement.

Now? My first thought was "Oh honey, you're more screwed up than I remembered." Because from their first interaction, Cherry would fall in love with a catcalling construction worker.

Ponyboy says that Dallas said something "Really filthy". In the movie, he asks Cherry howhe was suppose to know if her hair was really red, like her eyebrows were. A roundabout way of asking if the carpet matches the drapes. Bad enough and in the context of the 1960's that might have been dirty enough to be censored from the orginal manuscript, but I always imagined it was worse than that.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, after all, Dally wasn't so much a step up or down from Bob, as a step to the side.

Honestly when I was fourteen and reading this for the first time, I didn't think much of Cherry, I thought she was fake, and very stupid. She was older than me, but I knew it was massively fucked up not to admit she dated a bad guy.

I see her as sad now, and she's a much darker character She's painted as someone with integrity, someone with principles.

She wouldn't take a Coke from Dally.

She tells Bob that it's her or the booze.

Won't take a pop from a hood, threatens to break it off with her boyfriend if he continues to drink. Okay, understandable.

Realize he beat the tar out of, and pschologically scarred a kid for kicks?

He was sweet sometimes.

What?

He was something special.

She says to the kid he and his friends attempted to murder.

"He wasn't just any boy."

Right you are, Cherry. Incidentally, did you have any pets disappear while you dated him?

She's a mixed up girl.

I had many a head cannon for the characters in this book when I first read it.

I thought Ponyboy would grow up to be a writer, Darryl would open his own roofing business, Soda and Steve would work for him while fixing cars on the side. Two-Bit would work with them when he felt like it, or he would end up hitching to California to be a stand-up comic.

I thought Cherry would end up married to someone who worked for her father, who I imagined was a lawyer.

After this read through? I adjusted that future.

We met Randy again in That was Then, This Is Now. He's a hippie, which makes perfect sense. I see Cherry running off to Haight Ashbury. I don't get farther than losing sight of her red hair on a crowded, sunny sidewalk, but I get the same spooky vibe I always got after reading Rumble Fish.

Something else that hit differently, the relationships between the boys.

It hit differently for me because I know now why I love it so much.

I remember being in a major reading slump before I picked up this book. See, I couldn't get into the books that were marketed to me. I wasn't in to RL Stine, except for the history of Fear Street books. I couldn't get into Christopher Pike at all.

I was reading mysteries and westerns, but I really wanted something that had people my age in it that wasn't a romance or sick lit. I'd read enough of those, and I thought that if I read one more book where boy meets girl then one of them croaks I would scream.

So I went to my mom's bookshelf, and found her copy.

I really loved that the real connections that are focused on, are between friends and family. These connections were not treated as being less than a romantic relationship. In fact, just the opposite, the gang see each other as their cement relationships. Soda and his girlfriend Sandy break up, he's hurt and it adds to an already rough time, but it is not a focus.

I suppose it could be argued that the reason for the lack of focus on romance has to do with the fact that Pony states that he's not thinking of it yet. But seeing how all of the gang look out for each other from Darryl keeping the Curtis's door unlocked in case one of the boys needed a place to crash, to everyone looking out for Johnny, to Johnny staying with Pony when he was upset after his fight with Darry, and looking out for him when they were in hiding, to Dallas helping them find a place to go after Bob was killed, to Pony sticking by Johnny after the killing, to Two-Bit sticking up for Johnny when his mother came to the hospital and how broken up he was when Ponyboy got sick, and finally how one of Johnny's last acts was to write Ponyboy a letter that he hoped would help both Pony and Dallas.

These are not friendships that end when everyone starts dating.

This seems like a "duh" statement, but you have to think, so many things show friendships as training wheels. Something you use until you reach the next level and find a romantic partner. And, maybe this was just my small town, but that was very much the way things went around me, it was expected.

It was great to read a book about kids around my age who didn't see friendships as inferior to romantic relationships.

Now, knowing that I'm Aro Ace, I think I liked it because it spoke to what I thought was important without making it seem like something I needed to grow out of.

The extras were cool, letters between the author and the editors when the book was in the works, letters from the actors who played Pony, Johnny, Soda, Dallas, and Randy.

It was interesting to read the actors' feelings about characters they played so early in their careers. I was half hoping Matt Dillon would apologize for choking on, and embodying that gigantic piece of ham during the death scene, but one can't get everything in life.

I could read the other SE Hinton books, and talk about the connections between them, but I will likely skip That was Then, This is Now and Rumble Fish.

See, I didn't like That Was Then This Is Now very much when I first read it. A big reason? I didn't like Bryon. There was just something about the character that rubbed me the wrong way.

He's... I don't know... he's like Two-Bit without the charm. Plus, Ponyboy is featured, but Bryon hates him. It seems out of jelousy because of all the stuff that had happened in The Outsiders. And he hates him even more *because* he's quiet about it. I get distancing the last book from the next and that was an effective way of doing it, but when I was younger it just made me not like the character all the more.

I've read it a few times since I was younger, wondering if it would improve as I aged. It didn't.

Bryon is still mostly unlikeable. Plus, I grew up in the Frying an Egg, Diving into an Empty Swimming Pool, DARE, era of drug awareness. The whole book felt like a PG-13 version of The Buttercream Gang. Now that I have sufficiently aged myself...

Rumble Fish, I loved, but like I said, it's an unsettling story and one that left me oddly unsatisfied.

I really enjoyed the next two, Tex and Taming the Star Runner so I may revisit those.

#books #book #s.e. hinton #the outsiders #spoilers #revisit 5 #Book blogging 2021 #revisit

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struwwelzeter · 3 years

Note

So I read your reply to Nyarisu's comment on Lionheart and I'm really intrigued by your comments about how people understand punk compared to what it was initially. Could I possibly ask you to expand on this? Pretty please?

Yes you could! This is a very (very?) personal point of view and I know a lot of people will disagree, but here goes nothing, I guess. If you disagree with me (and somebody will), that’s fine, but I will not engage with anything that’s not a constructively put argument. I’ve spend too much time thinking about this for a “I don’t like what you’re saying and that’s why you’re wrong” anon to change my mind. Just putting that out there - with love 💜.

The thing is, especially on tumblr but I think just in generally aswell, the idea of punk is presented as this ... Robin Hood kind of thing. Beat the system, stand up to bullies, live your own truth, all of that, but it always is presented as something that is supposed to come from a ... dare I say, nice place? Like those pictures of people in studded and sprayed leather jackets rescuing puppies. All of that, you know? And I don’t want to say that is wrong, because it isn’t, and I love the idea of that, it’s just not the entire truth.

Especially in the early to mid 70s, when arguably punk started, there was a lot of fatigue between an old and stuffy establishment and the lovey, dovey peace and love “let’s all be happy” movement of the hippie scene. I was at Force Attack in 2006, which is a punk festival (and possibly dirtiest place in the world) that got established in the early 90s and went on til 2008 (?), and even then some of the “death to hippies” sentiments ran pretty deep. And I know the counter argument to that will be a well meaning “well, that’s not real punk,” the problem is that I think it actually partly is. (Please keep the partly in mind for the rest of this argument.)

The problem with having the exact choice between “get a good job, built a nice house, think of what the neighbours will say, and don’t ask me about what I did in the war” and “we’re all a big part of one human family, and isn’t nature beautiful, lets all make peace, and btw we would have never done what our parents did” is that both models aren’t a sustainable life style for everyone. That’s why you get alot of people saying this is all fake bullshit, and they start being purposely offensive. This is why you get alot of Swastikas around the sex pistols, you get all these artists singing about suicide and incest and rape. It’s not that uncommon for some of those early acts to play with Nazi imagery, or claim that homosexuality is disgusting (despite the scene always being full of LGBTQ+ people), or idk, thinking it’s fun to piss on someone while they’re asleep. It’s alot of outcry, of saying life actually is this shitty and disgusting and I am gonna be that because in a way you will hate me either way. And it’s not always nice. Disdain and hate and petty selfishness are common human emotions and many of them are low and unhealthy, and honestly not nice or helpful or inclusive, but they are there, and I think alot of that early spirit was just about stopping to pretend that they don’t exist.

I think a reason for why we don’t think of the scene that way anymore is that many people very quickly outgrew that, and said “actually, we’re better than that, that’s not who we actually are. I sadly can’t find that interview right now, but Die Ärzte are actually a good exemple of that and they even admit it themselves, that there was a sense of “enough with the happy hippie bullshit, let’s disgust them” and then later going “uhmm - maybe that went a bit far.” I mean offensive or not, but ultimately a scene that is centered around artistic expression always ends with that question of creation, maybe like “if the world isn’t like what we want it to be, how do we make one we like?” - and then you end up with having to come up with answers that are more than just destruction. And then it turns into something else - something that I think is alot more like what tumblr seems to think punk is. And that’s a wonderful thing. Still - a side of punk, whatever that is, has always been what people like GG Allin (please read the wiki for context) have taken and pushed to the limits, and it just - isn’t nice. And here is where things get a bit tricky.

Because against that backdrop, things like John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) suddenly being a dirty old Trump supporter aren’t that surprising anymore. And then you get these 20 year olds “cancelling” the Sex Pistols, and I think there is just a bit of ... missing the point going on. I’ve read a comment on here recently, that basically said something like Richard should stop supporting the Sex Pistols (because he has that album in the back of the studio), and it’s just ... asking for a history to be erased that has rightfully been made obsolete but has still happened and was necessary at the time. You can take any of these early bands and pick their lyrics apart and find something that from our perspective now is disgusting, mean, exclusive, or outright racist. Songs about Fucking? Part of that record is a mysogynisy shitshow, something they were very aware of even at the time, and they still did it anyway because being disgusting was part of the point. The thing is though, the Sex Pistols were hugely influential, and alot of the positive things that grew out of that wouldn’t have been possible if kids like young Richard, or any of the bands you love that were influenced by them, wouldn’t have gotten that moment of “finally a place where I can put all of my petty hate”. It matters, and just because that moment is overcome, it doesn’t mean it should be forgotten, or stops existing in the people that lived through it.

I understand that the question of how much we should justify things with “it was the time” and how we deal with the result is an ever ongoing debate and their are many good arguments for why maybe we shouldn’t try to defend the wrongs of the past that way, and I want to point out that while I rarely agree on that in the first place (because I understand history as a natural learning curve where people aren’t perfect at the first try and it’s doing a disservice to humans just doing their best, but I digress and that’s a bit of another duscussion), I want to point out that I don’t want to defend anyone, rather I want to say “actually, being that horrible was often calculated, part of the point, and if you don’t like it, just leave it, fight it or debate it, but don’t pretend like it was a “missstep” or just a few black sheep of a scene that was never as nice or perfect as you want it to be.” You don’t get to erase half of a movement simply because you wish it wouldn’t exist the way it does - or well. I guess in this case mostly did - past tense.

The ugliness is part of the story to me, and it’s actually the bigger part of why I love this scene. I don’t need “punk” to define my politics, I need it to soothe my soul, and so did many, I think. The Sex Pistols breaking happened 20 years before my time, but I still feel connected to that world, and in particular the ugly parts of it. I often feel like I look at the world, and there are people that seem honestly shocked by the idea that maybe sometimes I find doing the right thing really hard, that I want petty, self serving revenge, that I don’t find it easy to not be selfish and unkind or sometimes want to hurt people because I am hurting myself and see an opportunity to do that. Obviously those aren’t nice things and I don’t want to be that way, but are you honestly telling me you don’t feel that? I find that hard to believe, and it leaves me with an ongoing question of if I am just worse than most people or if most people are just more fake. Both scenarios are equally shit. The ugly side of punk provides - not an answer to that - but maybe a partial solution, at least for me.

Another discussion we have all the time is about how what we consume or allow in artistic expression is influencing how we act as people in real life and how we want the world to be. Where do we draw the line? What is still ok? If I put me entertaining ideas about murder on a canvas, is that still good? what if it’s racism? What if it’s rape? We argue alot about how providing a safe space in art for those feelings is actually preventing us from acting on it in real life, how it’s an outlet of something we would never actually want or do, but then where is the limit to that? I am putting this intentionally controversial, but if we admit that most of us grow up with internalized racism and mysogyny, by that logic, why can’t I paint something that is blatantly hateful if I have those feelings? Maybe that is my way of fighting it, you don’t have to look at it? Not saying that’s what I am doing or would want to do, but what if? For some people Rammstein singing about not wanting to be Angels is crossing that line, for some of us that line is drawn alot later. Who is right? Isn’t that just personal sensitivity? Can you honestly rationalise that? Isn’t it just processing our different levels of petty hate in different ways? I don’t have the answers to any of that, it’s just questions I often have and that I think have to do with this, because alot of the nasty bits in punk will justify it exactly that way, as artistic expression. Alot of it isn’t as political as this scene is made out to be, it’s simply asking those things. I personally relate to that alot, as someone who arguably would draw the line of “we should stop doing this” in art very, very, very late - and certainly later than my own personal comfort zone.

I’m not sure if any of this makes any sense at all. I hope it does - and if it doesn’t it’s probably because I don’t know either, or because I don’t want to fully blow this up into an essay (sorry, too late?) or because I suck at making a point, or maybe because we simply disagree. All I know is that I sometimes see these posts of “what is punk and what isn’t” and it leaves me with this taste of “you’re describing a utopia and it’s cute and I want that too, but it’s not everything punk as I know it is, and it feels like you don’t want to see something that mattered too - even if it was brutal and disgusting.” And everytime I see it I feel alien, like something that mattered to me so much as a teenager and young adult gets taken away from me and made into something so sleek and pretty it becomes something unattainable to be that I simply don’t manage to live up to in the way I would like. I guess that is a petty, selfish way of looking at it too.

«It's a repressive society where you can't be horrible, I'm not horrible, they made me horrible, I'm just honest.»

- John Lydon

#sorry for this getting out of hand

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sweetfeverdream · 3 years

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Victorian AU letters

Oh boy it’s fanfic hours again.

Considering the AU’s context, I suppose that maybe I should be using terms like thy, thou, etc. While I do have a vague notion on how they’re used (thank you Dark Souls), I’m a self taught, non native english speaker, and therefore I am not attempting this.

Dear Sans,

I write hoping that my words can fill your heart with love the same way you did to mine in the night we met. The reveal of your face beneath the starry sky will be forever marked in my memories, it is impossible to forget you.

I can still hear the echoes of your laugh and the jokes you told me, it was like the world was ours, but we didn’t care about it, only about us. The touch of your hands is still on my skin, and I dream of the day you will touch me without your gloves so I can feel your bones.

Mettaton would kill me if he knew about out meeting at the garden. He expects me to get married someday, to get an aristocratic title and make our lives better. I fear that someone might ask my hand in marriage, and stop us from seeing each other. I fear being taken from you before I can properly confess myself. But don’t worry, my life and love belong to you, I would never love someone else besides you, and a life of wealth and luxury means nothing to me. I just want to be with you, for that is my only wish.

Waking up day after day looking in your eyes, with kisses and caresses. Lay my head next to yours and watch your sleepy face until I fall into slumber. I want to hug you and warm your body in the cold days, to enjoy sunny days under a tree with your arms around me, feeling the wind blow.

I beg you to meet me again, I want to tell you in person everything I feel and see your expressions when you hear it. I wait for your answer,

Your Koneko.

Majestic Koneko,

There’s no way to describe how much your letter has lightened up my countenance. My brother says he had never seen such tranquility in my eyes. I read your words over and over again every time I can, to the point I memorized each one of them. I hear the sound of your voice all the time and lose myself seeing roses that remind me of the color of your eyes.

I would be surprised if someone dared asking your hand in marriage, not because of your beauty, for you are the most beautiful maiden of all, but because he would need to compete against me. I will do whatever it takes to have you beside me for the rest of your life.

I’m not afraid, for our next meeting will be soon to happen when you receive this letter, I am coming back to town.

Forever yours, Sans.

My beloved Sans,

The sun did not help on our stroll, but the rain really added to the experience. I could feel your scent when you pulled me closer to share the umbrella, and it always comes back to my memory when I’m alone. Hours have passed by with me staring at the emptiness, dreaming of the time we spent together.

Unfortunately, I bring bad news, this is probably our last date. Mettaton told me that a suitor proposed to me. At first, I shuddered, thinking it was your proposal, but soon my joy was crushed when he said it was from the Duke Asgore Dreemurr. Why a duke? What did I do to call attention of someone like him?

I felt the ground giving in beneath my feet, with nothing to hold on to. Onee saw me crying every night on the past weeks, the pain in unbearable and keeps growing inside my soul. The wedding will happen before your return, and there’s nothing I can do to stop them. Oh heavens, what a cruel fate has fallen upon me.

Please, as my only wish, keep writing to me. No matter how much pain I’m in, I still want to speak to you, still want to know about you and Papyrus, still want to hear your jokes and feel your scent on the letter paper. I will never stop loving you.

Forever yours

Forever mine

Forever ours

Devastated, Koneko.

My greatest love, Koneko

Your last letter broke my heart. How can you tell me such beautiful things, just to reveal that there’s no future to our love? That you’re engaged to another man?

Will I spend the nights without your smile?

Live my days without your laugh?

Can I live on without your kisses and the touch of your hand?

The answer is no.

Sincerely and painfully, I wish you the best of luck.

Forever yours

Forever mine

Forever ours

Sans

Love of a lifetime, Koneko

I had enough time to think about all that happened to us. I received your letters, but felt unable to answer them until now.

Doesn’t matter how ungrateful is our destiny, I still feel a deep joy in having the honor to know you, to have held your hand, to have touched your face, to have caressed you and made you laugh.

Sometimes I feel we couldn’t have changed anything, regardless of how much we wanted to. It was already written on the stars, it was our fate since we met for the first time. And it was good enough like this.

Just imagine, a world where I’d never know you, where I wouldn’t live this burning passion, this intense love, this need to be with you. Impossible. Today, I see that I love everything related to you, even the everlasting pain of not having you here.

I didn’t get the chance to ask you before, and so I am doing it now.

Koneko, would you give me the honor to be your

A stain of paint covers the rest of the paper.

Eternally my love Sans

I was full of hope writing you, wishing for your answer. It’s been two years since the last time we’ve spoken. I wondered every night how you’ve been, if you received my letters and my cravings, if you still love me, and if you’re alright.

And after so much waiting, my answer is finally here. Your brother was here yesterday, and I’m still shattered. How could you do this to me? How could you abandon me? What’s gotten on your mind to pass away?

My life was full of misery, pain, suffering and torture. You were my salvation, my heart, my world and now I find myself completely alone. The days have no longer a meaning without you here, even in my dreams I had you. But now, I don’t have anything, a widow without kids and now without love.

Even if I cried for the whole world to hear, my wishes of seeing your face again will never be granted.

All that remains now is waiting for the day I will be with you in the afterlife, and I look forward to that moment.

Forever yours

Forever mine

Forever ours

Eternally yours, Koneko.

#undertale #fanfic #au #alternative universe #18century #victorian era #oc #headcanon #undertale au #english version

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thegreenfairy13 · 4 years

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We Only Come Here To Sleep

A new Gobblepot fic cause I need to do something on the weekend.

Summary: Three infants have been murdered and their bodies have been found at various places in Gotham City. The public, as well as the mob, want to see a culprit for different reasons. After everything Jim Gordon has been through, one wouldn't think an ordinary case would take its toll on him. But it does.

Read the first chapter on Ao3 or here:

In the end, it wasn’t one of the Riddler’s elaborate schemes, or one of the Joker’s ludicrous plans. It wasn’t Bruce Wayne and his determination to become a vigilante, or even the Penguin and his golden empire of crime. In the end, it was a usual case, an ordinary crime that did James Gordon in.

Gotham City seems to know only two seasons. Through most of the year, there’s an icy wind sweeping through the city, biting into the grim faces of her inhabitants. Most of her days are dark, giving the impression of an endless night.

But then comes the summer. And for a few weeks, Gotham will be tinged with yellow. But it won’t be a bright summer showing off clear skies painting the city with gentle colors. No, it will be harsh and brutal - like everything in this godforsaken city.

The sun will be beating down, baking pavements and glass-facades until each breath in the overheated air will be painful, until each step will be a battle. And the light! It’s never a bright yellow, but a color reminiscent of piss. It suits this pain-filled place, though.

Jim Gordon curses under his breath as exists his car. When putting his feet on the ground, his soles practically fuse with the ground. A wave of hot air hits his chest, and Jim can instantly feel the sweat covering his chest, causing his shirt to cling uncomfortably to his upper-body. Reaching for his sunglasses, he gestures for Harvey to follow him.

The heavier man pulls a face when being ordered to leave the chilled cocoon of his car. Jim ignores him. Sighing heavily, he nods towards the other officers already crowding the scenery.

Despite the buzz, he feels alone. Out here, Gotham is at her worst. For miles and miles, there’s nothing to see but the grey of the concrete and colorless sand. It’s a place where people disappear in the filthy water never to return again. Jim is certain his colleagues will lay him to rest out here one day in the future - he wouldn’t blame them.

After taking a few more hesitant steps, Jim hears the sand crunching beneath his shoes. If he closed his eyes for a moment, he could easily pretend to be somewhere else. At a proper beach maybe, under a benevolent sky. Instead, he thinks how annoying it will be to get the sand out of his shoes.

“Where exactly are we?” Harvey asks with a slight growl, startling Jim.

Jim tilts his head. He contemplates giving his partner a snarky reply but thinks better of it. So instead of pointing out that he didn’t spend the car-ride blindfolded and handcuffed, he explains, “Common ground.”

Sucking in a shuddering breath, Harvey tilts his head. “That’s bad.”

Jim doesn’t reply, simply grits his teeth. ‘That’s bad’ doesn’t even start to cover how bad this could be.

One of the younger officers picks up on their conversation. Confusion written all over his face, he addresses Harvey. “What do you mean?” he asks.

Huffing out a humorless laugh, the experienced cop indulges the lad. “That’s the land between the turfs.” Pointing across the river, he elaborates, “That’s the Valeska turf.” He turns slightly to the right, “The Siren’s oasis.” Making a full turn, he points vaguely in the direction Jim is standing, “Tetch’s outdoor amusement park for the hopelessly lunatic, right beside the Scarecrow’s House of Horror.”

At last, he circles his partner fully. “The Narrows,” he says then, ignoring the slight pang of pain on Jim’s face deliberately. “None other than the Queen rules this shitty piece of the city.”

Taking a deep breath, he finishes his quick initiation to Gotham’s inofficial districts. “But they all pay their tribute to the Penguin.” Adjusting his sweat-sodden fedora, Bullock spits on the ground. “And this crap place? That’s no one’s ground. If a body is being dropped here , the rogues passed their judgment. Together.”

The young police-man gulps. He stares at Bullock and then back at the riverbank where the coroner is already busy taking samples. “So they…?”

Pushing the lad aside, Jim steps forward. “So if a body ends up here without permission here, that means the mob will interfere,” he states grimly.

Approaching the riverbank, the Commissioner finally takes a good look at the corpse before him. Despite all the horrors Jim had been through before, nothing could have been able to prepare him for the sight before him.

For a long moment, he merely stares, unmoving. He has seen corpses before, has been the cause of untimely deaths more times than he’d like to admit, but this is new.

No, in fact, it isn’t. Jim has been confronted with this kind of death before, has tried his very best to suppress that memory as best as he can, but given the context, this is new .

Looking up, he nods for the coroner to start elaborating. Never before has Jim missed the previous forensic, Edward Nygma, as much as this very second. For once, he wishes for someone to wrap up harsh truths in distracting riddles. Jim would give up his year’s salary and then some, if the forensic would give his mind an opportunity to wander off, to focus on something else than the task at hand.

What he gets, though, are simple facts. “Infant. Male. Probably not more than a couple of days old. Maybe not even that. Probably strangled. No severe trauma,” he rattles on, unfazed by the tiny body lying on the dirty ground. Maybe she hardens you to this point.

A baby. Just a little, innocent baby. Jim can hardly breathe as he stares down at what has been a living being, if only for a few hours. His skin is already peeling off due to the merciless heat, turning black and blue beneath Gotham’s sun. Jim wonders if it was rosy, once. He stares down, unable to look away, takes in the little knobs of fat on its upper arms and legs, and tries to suppress a sob.

Somebody should hold this little thing in their arms. It should still be alive, making happy noises, as one gently pinches those tiny rolls of fat. It should squeal with delight, and only cry if it’s hungry.

At last, Jim has to turn away. This is not right. Nobody should discard a child as if it was trash. Especially not here, at this godforsaken place.

His fingers itch to pick up the small body, to hold it, if only for a moment, the way it deserves. In another life, he would know exactly how to go about it. He and Lee would have awaited their child’s arrival with excitement. Would have picked out a crib, toys, rompers, and books, maybe. They would have laid in bed, Jim’s hand on Lee’s belly, waiting for their kid to move, knowing full-well it’s still shielded from this city, from her .

This reality never happened, though. Will probably never happen to Jim, for he doesn’t deserve such happiness, he knows that. But still. It’s unfair. This infant lies there on the ground, discarded like trash, and it’s everything someone like Jim has ever wished for.

He bends down, almost touches the tiny cheek before remembering he’s still a cop. Swallowing heavily, he disguises the motion by wiping the sweat from his forehead.

A heavy hand lands on his shoulder. “You alright, partner?” Harvey asks quietly enough that nobody else hears them.

Jim’s chest constricts, he has trouble taking a breath, and still, his jaw is set tight. Nobody but Harvey would ever catch on, would note that anything was wrong. Jim is thankful for the warm hand, the solid weight on his shoulder. He’s grounding him in his pain, forcing him back to reality, when all he wants to do is float away and wallow in his grief.

“Of course I am,” he replies, a tad bit too quickly.

Harvey arches an eyebrow at him, but doesn’t reply. This is neither the place nor the time anyway.

“Won’t you finally pack up the evidence?” he snaps when the coroner gives them both a look that is too curious for Harvey’s taste. The coroner squints in disdain, but does what he’s told. After all, Bullock has a natural authority to him, he’s a character only Jim questioned successfully so far, and today, he’s glad for it.

They get back into their car, where it’s cold and sterile and death is but a memory at a riverbank. He blinks as he tries to wrap his head around what he just saw: an entire life, wasted in the sand. Neither of them talks as Harvey drives back to the city, back to the living.

Finally, Harvey glances over at Jim, now and then beating nervously the devil’s tattoo on the steering wheel. “That’s the third,” he whispers.

“I know,” Jim replies. He’s too exhausted to say anything else. Over the course of the last three weeks, they found three dead infants. All scattered around the city. The first two had been siblings according to their DNA-analysis. Jim wouldn’t be surprised if the third one is related to them, too.

“You want me to drop you off at the weasel’s place?” Harvey asks, and Jim flinches.

“What am I supposed to do there?”

The other man shrugs. “We found it on Common Ground.”

Jim hums in agreement. “Doesn’t look like a mob-job, though.”

Tilting his head, Harvey acknowledges the statement. “He could still know something,” he states petulantly and both men know he’s reaching for straws there.

“This case is getting to you,” he adds after a moment. Jim rolls his eyes but can’t find it in him to disagree. “You could at least get a free drink.”

The blonde snorts. “I think I’m outta favors.”

Harvey scratches his chin. “Still. Maybe one of his goons has seen something.” He clears his throat, looks over at Jim. “And it wouldn’t hurt for you to let off some steam. You always seem to be better off after pushing the Penguin around for a while.”

Jim sputters. “That’s not true!” he protests.

Holding up his hand, Harvey interrupts him. “It is. Go there. See what he knows, rough him up, arrest one or two thugs. You’ll feel better.”

Horrified, Jim stares at his partner’s face. “You make it sound like I’m harassing an innocent citizen for nothing. You’re still aware we’re talking about the Penguin?”

Harvey snorts in response. “That’s exactly why I’m suggesting.” He clicks his tongue against his teeth. “Not accusing , just to be clear.”

Jim falls silent as he clenches his fists. He’s so damn tired, he doesn’t even want to put up a fight.

“He’ll find out anyway,” he demurs. “And he’ll want answers. You don’t simply drop off a body at the riverbank and expect Cobblepot to keep his hooked nose outta your business.”

“This is a police investigation,” Jim snaps back, unfazed, and Harvey’s jaw drops.

“Even after becoming the Commissioner, you still sound like a petulant rookie on some days.

Leaning back against the seat, Jim closes his eyes. Even before today, he had been exhausted to the point of not being able to sleep properly for weeks. This city just won’t let him.

And now there’s a body on Common Ground.

This city doesn’t seem to rest when it comes to her sinisterness. If Gotham doesn’t want to swallow her entire population whole, she now goes for her most vulnerable inhabitants. Jim wishes he could for once simply search for stolen paintings or chase a burglar. But no, there’s always something bigger, or something more diabolical lurking in the shadows.

Jim’s shoulders slump as he gives in. “Let’s do the paperwork first,” he suggests, cause he’s still the commissioner. “And then we’ll inform the Penguin like the good, little cops we are.”

#gobblepot #fanfiction #gobblepotsummer2020

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