#parallels are like my favorite thing

[evilwickedme]

I just. Ugh. Oh my God. The fucking PARALLELS this season of Good Omens. Y'all know I'm an absolute fool for a good parallel, so to get so many? I'm so well fed today

Crowley and Azira are like, the definition of soulmates of the kind that are made, you know? Like there is no one single other being in the whole of Creation that shares even a fraction of the same experiences. Six thousand years in the making, this ship is - even more according to this season !!! And YET, they are absolutely brand new. They've never been in a romantic relationship - not with each other, not with anyone - and as Crowley pointed out, they've essentially just gotten out of toxic relationships with Heaven and Hell. Except like, not really? Because we see Crowley really got out Heaven so heavily traumatized he never really put all that much stock into Hell. Yeah, Hell might've still been abusive, but Crowley was halfway out the door the whole time. Azira, tho... He still buys into all of it. He's technically out the door, but he hasn't done any of the deprogramming you need to do in order to move on (I feel like I'm mixing my metaphors a little by using cult-related languages, but also abusive relationships are essentially two person cults, so)

And this season sets this dynamic up so perfectly with Nina and Maggie!!!!! And we're supposed to think that Nina is Crowley because she's dark and broody and Maggie is Azira cause she's frankly precious but really it's the other way around and it's Nina who finishes the season being like "I can't be in a relationship right now because I still need to work on myself having just ended an incredibly toxic relationship" and it's just. Nina and Maggie don't end the season together because that's not what they need right now and bc of that they might still be able to be together later, but Crowley and Azira hold onto each other SO DAMN HARD that they end up losing each other SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE AZIRA CAN'T DO THAT SAME THING OF UNPACKING HIS BASE ASSUMPTIONS it's like leaving a cult cause they were mean to you once but still buying into the new agey stuff they used to love bomb you into joining the cult in the first place

And so that's the relationship part of things but also we've got like soo many parallels showing how broken the system is in the first place and obviously ineffable bureaucracy is what stands out here because of the literal lines coming out of various characters' mouths during this plotline but can we talk about how heavily brainwashed Muriel is and how clearly they're supposed to be exactly like a young Aziraphale, one who doesn't "have" Crowley yet!!! Like tell me that if you gave Muriel a fiery sword and told them to watch over the first ever pregnant couple in history they wouldn't give them that Goddamn sword. Nobody on either side is capable of questioning their position in life without exposure to Something Else, but it doesn't have to be like, the being you're going to run off to alpha centauri with. It could very much be a copy of The Crow Road

(sidenote, has anybody read this book? It seems like an incredibly deliberate choice but I've never heard of it! I think I might send in an ask to Neil Gaiman himself if I don't see any meta soon)

Anyway yeah um. I don't know how to end this. Parallels and shadow selves fuck (double entendre)

#ok I lied I do have Thoughts I just hadn't processed them yet #parallels are like my favorite thing #good omens #good omens 2 #ineffable husbands #ineffable bureaucracy #crowley #aziraphale #good omens spoilers #gail speaks

[thatgoddamngingerundercut]

daechwita

#agust d #min yoongi #bts #suga #bts suga #bts gifs #btsedit #my gifs #i like the parallels #that's like my favorite thing in anything ever #show me juxtapositions and parallels babey

[emblazons]

The forever saga of Dustin radioing for Byler knowing we always need Mike and Will (but always struggling to reach them when he—we—needs them the most…and losing the world the one time he doesn’t find them in S4)

Loving that Max is here for almost all of these too? But. Ready for the “feel like you lost” to be over, & for Byler to be on the same page + reachable together for the party in S5.

#byler #that ‘Mike will god anybody’ like remains one of my favorites in this show LMAO #HE KNOWS. HE KNOWS WE NEED THEM ALWAYS LMAO #mike wheeler #will byers #dustin henderson #stranger things #st parallels #my st commentary #the me tag

[wretchedraymond45]

mettatun 🩷

#him 😻 #one of my favorite things ever is drawing news reporter mettaton ex his his hair slicked back #i drew him like that for months because i thought it fit not even realizing i basically gave him spamton hair #but yippe accidental parallel #also. the song mettaton is singing on the top left is love talk by wayv #pinut butter. yammy #undertale #mettaton #my art #doodles #ALLLSOOO the entire time i drew that winter mettaton i just had Uwa so temperate on loop #i miss christmas 😞😞😞 phuck summer bruh... #digital #mettaton ex

[minish-mae]

I saw a thread on twitter comparing Bambi 2 to MDZS and so, with that logic, I proceeded to make some angst :)

#mdzs #wangxian #wen yuan #lan sizhui #lan wangji #mo dao zu shi #mdzs fanart #mdzs crossover #Pakhnokh was the one who made the thread and its like my favorite thing ever #All the parallels are so good ;; #Mae's Art #mdzs bambi au #deerji #bambi 2

[digirainebow]

things that are (probably) true now that we have canon birthdates for the oxenfree characters

the events of the original oxenfree take place on june 4th, 2016. if taken into town, nona reveals that her birthday is in 3 days. since we now know that her birthday is june 7th, and that lost signals takes place 5 years afterwards in 2021, we finally know the exact day the first game happens. yay!

clarissa's birthday happens to fall on the same day that anna was killed. as maggie writes in adler letter 9, april 4th is the day in 1952 that she and anna tried to bring the sunken back.

last year, ren went to the movie theater and watched oppenheimer with nona (and clarissa) because she wanted to see it, even though he wanted to go see barbie, and it was his birthday that day.

#i am actually SO unwell about the clarissa and anna parallel. they absolutely did that on purpose. what the fuck #and my birthday is also april 4th <3 so i'm feeling really emotional about that (clarissa was my favorite character) #oxenfree #oxenfree II: lost signals #oxenfree II #lost signals #clarissa #nona #ren #digi discusses #i will add more if anything else occurs to me! this is just straight off the dome. #i feel like alex's ESPECIALLY has to connect to another date referenced in-game that i am just forgetting at the moment... #the ren thing is cracking me UP also. did he find out clarissa had just seen barbie before they went to oppenheimer and get mad. #^ though this is probably noncanon because in nss's post it implies michael is. Well. able to go to the movies with clarissa. #oxenfree spoilers #oxenfree II spoilers

[palettehao]

I 100% believe when they filmed the roller rink fight the duffers straight up showed Finn & Noah the rain fight and said "You remember this? Do it again."

There's no way the two scenes match up so perfectly without them having to be directed to mirror the rain fight. Like it's not even Mike and Will's positions, it's the facial expressions, the hand movements, the delivery.

Every single thing match's up perfectly and it's driving me crazy

(I highly recommend looking at any TikTok edit of these two scenes together, the whole parallel jumps out so much and in an angsty way, it's fun)

#its my favorite parallel #i have like six edits of it saved #it so clearly means something #byler #mike wheeler #will byers #byler tumblr #stranger things season 4 #stranger things #byler season 4 #byler analysis

[optiwashere]

Weird day of reading today:

Stared at Locked Tomb for a few minutes as I thought about rereads, but at this point I'm just gonna wait for Alecto to go through the series again. I don't think I'm emotionally strong enough atm to endure the memes again anyways.

Reread an old manuscript for a novel that I never finished. 48k and it's just immensely harrowing with a really brutal ending per the outline that I don't think would ever make it past editing lmao. Looking at when I wrote it, that makes a lot of sense. One of the only first-person POV things I've ever written, and it was surprisingly all right. I'd probably rewrite this as third-person close if I were to revisit it. Cool world that I didn't really utilize as well.

Picked through some highlights of Gormenghast and buried myself in indulgent, decadent prose for a while. There's singular clauses with more creativity than entire stories I've written. Just means there's more to aspire to, I suppose!

Wanted to reread some passages from a few Robin Hobb books, but I cannot remember which book is which within a series because all of her novels have just the worst titles. Just meant that I waded through beautiful moment after beautiful moment in search of what I was after. Then wound up reading the ending of Elderlings all over again, much to my heart's deep sorrow.

#random rambling about writing #I get the purpose of the memes in a reference-heavy series like tlt but they're my least favorite thing tbh #but I also think the Moby-Dick parallels in Blood Meridian tire me out so throw me on the pyre about it #and there's a reason I ignore a few lines from Shadowheart in the BG3 epilogue... #(though clearly neither of those things affected the experience enough for me to ultimately stop enjoying either work lol)

[sophfandoms53]

SINCE NO ONE ELSE HAS DONE IT, I DID IT MYSELF

#no bc I YELLED when andrias said this #I was like YO ANNE SAID THAT IN REUNION #SO I HAD TO EDIT IT #TWO OF MY FAVORITE CHARACTERS PARALLELING EACH OTHER??? #I LOVE TO SEE IT #amphibia #amphibia spoilers #amphibia finale #amphibia the hardest thing #anne boonchuy #king andrias

[catharusustulatus]

Steve and Robin play hangman when they’re bored at work and Robin never wins because Steve spells words incorrectly during his turns, always ends up confusing his e’s and a’s. But they’re undefeated at Pictionary, can guess what the other one is drawing in a single line. Dustin always thinks they’re cheating.

When his parents are gone on weekend trips, Robin will come over and the two of them will watch movies all day and bake banana bread. Steve loves banana bread. Robin can’t stand when people chew with their mouths open but not Steve, who braids and unbraids her hair and talk-chews through the whole first half of St. Elmo’s Fire (her pick).

Steve once tried to color coordinate Robin’s closet as a surprise and it did NOT go well. Robin didn’t talk to him for two days, she was so upset. But Steve understands, he really does, when she explains what’s wrong over the phone. When he knocks on her door after dinner with a new mixtape, they end up driving around aimlessly until the tape is over and all is forgiven.

Robin holds Steve’s hand when he gets bad migraines, strokes up and down his arms when he has to put his head in his hands. Understands when certain days are bad days, quieter and gentler with him. She always keeps an extra pair of sunglasses in her school bag, just in case.

They haven’t talked deeply about the monsters, but they know each other’s favorite songs and foods and colors and their celebrity crushes and jean sizes and allergies (Robin can’t eat shellfish). They have done karaoke for longer than three hours and peed their pants laughing and have seen each other naked and have sat in complete silence, comfortable on Steve’s leather couch and happy just to be in each other’s company, their favorite person the other person in the room.

#stranger things #steve harrington #robin buckley #stobin #stobin headcanons #platonic stobin #hear me out: they are everything to me #steve and robin #Steve teaches Robin how to parallel park #Robin makes Steve beaded keychains #steve can impersonate Robin’s dad on the phone #and Robin can forge Steve’s handwriting perfectly #Steve and Robin make banana bread with nuts with peanut butter with bran flakes with chocolate chunks with jam #and Dustin teases them about being old farts but they can’t help it banana bread is so good #Steve has horrible nightmares sometimes during sleepovers and Robin will talk about nothing until he falls asleep again #she’s a grade a yapper and he’s her best audience #when he can’t sleep he’ll say something like Robin tell me about tomatoes and then she will talk about tomatoes until he’s snoring and gone #they are my two favorite people and the best duo and my pookies supreme

[evilwickedme]

Thinking about how grief is such an important throughline in Spider-Man mythos and how that expresses itself in Spider-Verse

Peter's entire character is built off of that one death of Uncle Ben. We've never forgotten Uncle Ben, not ever. Peter B says: "if not for Uncle Ben, most of us wouldn't be here." And even when there is no Uncle Ben, there is still that foundational loss - Gwen's Peter, Miles' Uncle Aaron. These characters loved someone so deeply that causing their death, even indirectly, forever changes the entire trajectory of their lives

And there's this incredibly understandable, undoubtedly human need to assign meaning to grief that, in the Spider-Man mythos, generally expresses itself through the oh so famous line, "With great power, there must also come great responsibility". This is how Peter learns that he can't just use his powers to benefit himself, that he's required to use it to help humanity as a whole (I've spoken on this matter before, but that's not important here)

But this is not the takeaway Miguel has from his loss, exactly. His irresponsibility cost not just his family, but his entire world, and therefore, he feels like he must take every single universe under his wing. There is no deviation, no room for human error. The things he did must have broken the natural order of things, and if that's the case, to prevent any future problems there can be no deviations from the Plan. There is no room for human error or even human ingenuity

Peter B tells Miguel that he's the only Spider Person who isn't funny, and I do think that that's relevant to this. I think ideally the Spider-Man hero archetype believes in the goodness of humanity, and part of that is creativity and breaking the rules, and humor is based on subverting expectations. The laws that Miguel imposes on every single Earth are directly antithetical to this concept

If anything, Miguel's grief is the aberration. Peter B was entirely broken in ITSV due to his losses, but he still believed in Miles, our representation of that hope, of that human ability to change, of that challenge to the idea of what Spider-Man could be. Miguel isn't capable of seeing that hope, that glimmer of something more, because he's still blinded by his grief, still unable to look past it and see a different future

Ideally I think BTSV should deal with this grief. Not just Miguel's, but also Gwen's, and Miles', and the entire concept that the Spider-Man mantle needs to be defined by death and loss. But what do I know I continue to be 100% normal about this movie no doubt

#spiderverse #across the spiderverse #across the spider verse spoilers #spider-man #peter parker #miguel o'hara #spider gwen #miles morales #uncle ben #marvel comics #marvel #parallels are like my favorite thing #grief #gail speaks

[animangalover-writes]

I need more skip x norman content asap and I'm not talented enough to make my own. Somebody please heed my call.

#please one of my favorite things about them is the way skip is truly the only one who understands normans pain #zac played skip learning about his backstory so well #like skip kept being the ONLY ONE to truly humanize and empathize with norman #the idea that in symbiosis hes just able to get him? UGH MY FAVORITE #thats not even getting into the fact that their stories truly parallel each other #being used as nothing more then a pawn? being betrayed by someone you should have been able to trust? being an outcast??? #GIVE ME MORE!!! PLEASE!!! #praying that if they ever make a starstruck odyssey season 2 taht we get more of them #praying to zac and brennan taht they make skip and normans relationship at least a little bit gay #and protective #god i love when they get protective over each other #norman x skip #skip x norman #valdrinorman #skipperskip #norman skipper takamori #norman takamori #skip takamori #prince valdrinor #d20 starstruck #starstruck odyssey #a starstruck odyssey #dimension 20

[emblazons]

That Feel When: you realize Wheelers freaking tf out over emotional (and physical) distance with their Byers is a shared family trait

I love Byler² lmaooooo

#jancy #byler #like pls I could edit nancy's little speech here over a montage of S4 Mike / Mike adjacent moments and fit that shit perfectly lmao #anyway. happy pride to my favorite disaster gay: Mike Wheeler #and to my favorite unwitting ally: nancy wheeler LMAO #wheeler siblings #mike wheeler #will byers #nancy wheeler #robin buckley #my st commentary #st parallels #stranger things

[novelconcepts]

not fic related but you and your wife seem so happy! any advice for a couple of newly married queer ladies?

Hey, I love any excuse to talk about being gay and happy! Congrats on being newly married! I dunno, my advice is always really straightforward. Like. Keep prioritizing communication, keep talking to each other about your day, your headspace, the stuff you love, the stuff that freaks you out. Keep that line open no matter how long you're together, because I really do think marriages fall apart when you start just assuming you can read one another's minds. My wife and I are always really careful to be honest with one another; for example, in the event that one of us is having a bad day and the other person's jokes aren't landing, 'cuz we're just sensitive that day, we talk about it. it soothes hurt feelings before they can really take root.

And find ways of making your own fun. Try new foods together, travel if you're into that, remind yourself that intimacy (if that's your bag) is an excuse to just play with one another and learn about the other person. Cherish the comfort of knowing your person is there for you no matter what, make sure you're on equal footing together, make sure you're allowing each other the space to change and grow and learn. And just take as much joy as you can out of being in love. It's not an easy thing, living in the world right now, but love makes it a damn sight more bearable. Queer love is awesome, queer joy is awesome. I wish you all the best, friend.

#ask #marriage advice #lgbt #my advice is always stuff like 'talk to each other. foster trust. make each other laugh.' #i dunno that it's ever groundbreaking but it's worked really well for us so far #and i think it helps lay a strong foundation for the future so we don't wind up being that old couple that's always bickering #also: having separate hobbies is great. it gives you space to be in your own head and your own vibes sometimes #and then you can get back with your person and tell them all about what you've been up to #parallel play is also really excellent. one of my favorite things. i'll just hang out with a book while she's gardening or whatever #it's a good time

[aparticularbandit]

meta i want to write but probably won't:

chloe is very clearly meant to be the dark parallel to kirika (most evident when we see kirika in true noir mode), but altena is meant to be the dark parallel to mireille.

(and altena's relationship with chloe is meant as a warped sort of parallel to mireille's relationship with kirika. altena pretends to love chloe, but if her hate can save quote is correct, she never truly loved her and only used her as a means to an end. mireille, from the beginning, intentionally said she was using kirika as a means to an end and pretended to hate her, but ended up truly loving her.)

...i could be so much more specific in meta but idk if i actually want to. write that essay.

#musings #noir 2001 #noir anime #noir #noir anime 2001 #mireille bouquet #kirika yuumura #yuumura kirika #LOOK I HAVE THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS ACTUALLY #LIKE I WAS SEEING IT AGAIN WITH MY DAD #because he hadn't seen it and it's my actual favorite anime and we were looking for something new to see don't judge me #AND WAS LIKE AH #I SEE #ALTENA IS A PARALLEL TO MIREILLE #THEY ARE BOTH OBSESSED WITH REVENGE #AFTER THEIR VERY TRAUMATIC CHILDHOOD #AND WILL DO A LOT OF THINGS TO GET IT #so like #it's only now that i'm like 'oh wait actually the altena-chloe relationship is just a parallel to the mireille-kirika relationship' #like i have a lot of thoughts now i'm sorry

[thermesiini]

I REMEMBER what i was going to say. vanitas (character) is also vanitas (concept) and an allegory for a cycle of systematic suffering and abuse that exists haplessly and without purpose. noé right from the start is in denial over the existence of such useless suffering (thinking he can save mina) and continues to deny this by writing the case study of vanitas, his futile attempt to scrape off some meaning from such a bleak allegory. while he can understand that killing vanitas is a form of salvation for him i don’t think that can come to terms with the fact that vanitas did suffer at all. so to write the case study of vanitas, trying to go over the events of their lives together, and trying to piece together vanitas the person he ends up disrespecting his existence altogether, simply by over scrutinizing it. vanitas did not want to be remembered. by saying he wanted to erase the existence of the votbm, he is saying he wants to erase his suffering from this world. what noé does with the case study is essentially immortalize it, because he is selfish, naive, and wants to understand something inscrutable. rather than taking comfort in the fact that vanitas can continue to exist in his memories, like how he will tell him as he dies (i won’t die noé even if i’m no longer here) noé bastardizes these memories and turns them into something almost masturbatory

#also i think thag like noes obsession with vanitas is in part because he is unable to recognize his own suffering #like there are parallels between their stories #having their caregivers die being orphaned like twice and being taken in by child experiments guy number 1 and number 2 #and being sexually assaulted multiple times #the difference is that noé is an archiviste. the only thing he knows how to do is be the narrator and witness vanitas (concept/allegory) #from a third perspective. so it’s not just (or even not really) vanitas pain that he’s coping badly with but his own #i started off trying to focus on the allegorical things instead of the literal character things but whatever i’m not fixing it #i got a fucking hot chip in my eye while typing this and have been crying it out since #didn’t get a desecrate in here because i already used all of those up today and yesterday but YES i squeezed in a masturbatory #<- current favorite words to say #also this definitely ran off in a different direction because my ideas on what noé stands for allegorically speaking aren’t totallydefined #he is a narrator as well as the sole witness to the allegory thus existing somewhere in between narrator #and audience. this also makes him the only real guy in vnc #and i was going to talk about like how vnc is just mochijun thinking about how miserable her fans make her #like noé being in crazy denial over the allegory he fell in love with that he completely disrespects what it’s trying to say for the sake #of his own comfort #much like how readers will often ignore what a text is trying to say for the sake of their own comfort hmmmmmm