#quotidian&sisters

[quotidian-oblivion]

Interaction I Had With My Family As The Batfam Pt. 7

Jason: I'm excited to go to school but I am not excited to start the day with Biology

Bruce: What do you do in Biology?

Jason: Cry

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

#fr i do wanna go to school and get back into routine #BUT STARTING MONDAY WITH BIO AS FIRST LESSON IS NOT IT #quotidian&sisters #quotidian convos #batfam #batfamily #jason todd #bruce wayne #dc #bat fam #bat family #batfam incorrect quotes #batfam shenanigans #batfamily shenanigans #dc batfam #incorrect batfam #incorrect batfamily quotes #the batfamily #jason todd wayne #jason wayne #batman #red hood #robin ii #robin jason todd #jason peter todd #the red hood

[jomiddlemarch]

The Philosophy Inherent in Buttered Toast

Within a week of Shirley’s departure, Susan found that she could not fall asleep, no matter how much she exhausted herself; the windowpanes had never sparkled brilliantly so in the morning sunlight. She’d dare Miss Cornelia Bryant herself to find the smallest speck on the kitchen floor. She concocted impossible delicacies to try and tempt Mrs. Doctor, muttering under her breath about the various culinary restrictions and how she’d like to see anyone make a decent pie with the miserly amount of lard she was allotted, and she starched the Doctor’s collars so thoroughly he’d begged her to stop as he couldn’t turn his head when he drove out to see his patients, especially not that sharp curve onto the road over to the Lower Glen. Work, hard work that left her with a sore back and aching knees and hands too rough to get a pair of gloves onto for Sunday service, had always been a panacea, just as Mrs. Doctor had her garden and Mrs. Reverend had her needlework. 

Once Shirley left, after a brief kiss on her cheek and a little squeeze of her hand as she gave him a neatly tied up box lunch for the train, the week’s sugar ration used up in his favorite sweets, she turned her hand to the plow as it were and expected to find some respite. Instead she found herself lying in her narrow bed, a stripe of moonlight across the foot, her eyes burning, wide open. Her body longed for rest but her mind, her heart, her very soul itself would not allow it, as un-Christian a thought as that might be. She’d drift off in snatches in the early morning, wake with the fog of dreams, a confusion dispelled by the splash of water in the basin and the cold cloth scrubbed across her face. She felt every one of her years like a millstone and if she hadn’t already been plain Susan Baker since she’d outgrown the very little prettiness she’d had a child, someone, likely that outspoken Mary Vance, would have remarked that old Susan Baker looked quite poorly.

She began by reciting psalms to herself and then all her favorite hymns but it made no difference. Unlike Mrs. Doctor, she took no delight in watching the moon wax and wane and thought only a man could have come up with the constellations, the greatest waste of time she could think of and nothing but a lot of foolish nonsense. She took to drinking her tea as strong as she could steep it, nearly black. Coffee was too dear to waste and had to be saved for the Doctor. If he nodded off over his surgery, Susan Baker would be the one responsible for the poor soul under his knife’s untimely passing. She was comforted when Shirley enclosed a brief note addressed to Mother Susan in the letter he’d sent to his parents and sisters, but the relief of knowing him safe didn’t see her dozing in her rocking chair, let alone tucked up snug in her bed.

She remembered something Walter had once said, that there was poetry in the most ordinary things, how he’d gone on and on about a perfectly buttered piece of her toast, sliced just the right thickness, the butter spread smooth and even to the brown crust. She was known for her bread, that was common knowledge in Glen St. Mary, whether it was a white loaf or wholemeal, but she’d thought if she hadn’t loved Walter since he was a tot, she would have given a mighty sniff at his folderol. Now, though, she thought perhaps making a list of all the ordinary things that could be what Walter had called the marvelous quotidian before explaining his fancy words, perhaps making a list might take the place of counting the sheep that would never be sheared nor help her nod off.

To begin with, there was Walter’s buttered toast.

The hiss the iron made as she flicked a drop of water on it to test its heat.

The first even row of knots she threw on her needles beginning another sock in the ugly drab worsted that was military standard.

The last swipe of the cloth when she was polishing the good silver.

The greedy sound the Doctor made as he ate his slice of pie, one she would have scolded the children for making.

Winding the clocks.

Rilla’s little frown as she tried to feed her war-baby and got mashed peas all over the front of her clean white shirtwaist, a dab on her cheek.

Slipping on galoshes when it was a rainy morning.

The crinkle of the pages as she read her Bible chapter before bed.

Beans, bobbing about in the pot.

Una Meredith asking for help with her darning, her blue eyes round as buttons as she said Please, Miss Baker, the only one of the Meredith children to use a title for her.

Throwing out slops when the bucket was full.

Spools of thread lined up in her sewing basket.

Spoons, nestled tight against each other in their drawer.

The milk folding around itself in her chipped teacup like the sheets on the line in the wind.

Shirley’s way of writing the letter S, the same in her name as his own.

Fat blueberries in a bowl, waiting to be made into jam.

She began each night with Walter’s toast. Most nights, she fell asleep between the bean pottage and the slops arcing out onto the dirt. When it had been several days since they’d heard from Shirley or the papers were black with battles and casualty lists, the milk in the tea took the shape of Shirley’s cursive S. When there were letters from all three Blythe boys and the Meredith ones as well, the knitting needles fell from her hands, stitches most certainly dropped.

The night they’d learned about Courcelette, she’d counted each one of the blueberries in the bowl and wept.

And slept.

With many thanks to @batrachised who posted this summary of fake fic with this same title: Susan and Walter have a conversation about the poetry of everyday things. Susan still can't quite understand that poetry nonsense, but after Walter waxes eloquent about her perfectly ensembled toast that has just the right amount of butter scraped on top, she decides that surely a little of it is harmless enough - walter is Mrs. Doctor Dear's son, after all.

I hope my "borrowing" did the initial post justice! @gogandmagog I would have shared this today anyway, but I did love your encouragement post.

#anne of green gables #angst #susan baker #walter blythe #insomnia #the poetry of everyday things #domestic #canon compliant #shirley blythe #miss cornelia bryant #gilbert's love of pie #I hope everyone who wanted to see this is satisfied! #aogg

[sokkastyles]

One thing that strikes me about the “Azula abused Scar (yes, that’s what I’m calling him from now on lmao) “discourse is that in Book 3 we do see how Azula behaves toward Scar at a quotidian level when they’re not mortal enemies and have to coexist, and she’s sometimes mean or a jerk(little sister+14 year girl, even leaving out all the screwed up dynamics of the royal family), but she’s mostly just kind to him. Warning him to not get caught visiting Iroh, telling him the information he wants to know on Sozin(even though it was so basic she easily could have told him to fuck off and ask anyone else), looking after him emotionally, insisting that he be invited to Chan’s party, correctly telling him that he’s welcome at the war meeting, etc.

Nothing says "this character wasn't abused, I promise!" like making ableist jokes about the abuse.

This is a new level of stupid, even for Azula stans.

Azula fandom, and I say this sincerely, you can either pick up your trash or become trash, if this is the kind of behavior you allow in your fandom.

#azula #zuko #ableism cw #abuse cw #azula stans are stupid

[sardonic-sprite]

Ok ok so @quotidian-oblivion has been (lovingly) pestering me to make something of my/our comment thread on "bane" where we were talking about the whole "Ra's wants tim's babies" thing, and what if that actually happened, so here it is 😂 (tw for referenced rape)

So obviously this could only happen if Cass didn't save Tim from Ra's's half-sister so. Hella angst

Poor Cass is devastated that she was too late to stop it. She blames herself, even tho everyone tells it her its no one's fault but Ra's and his sister. She becomes ridiculously protective of tim in response, even well beyond the time she forgives herself

Dick clings to Tim for an entire day when he finds out, trying not to feel rain on his skin, promising it'll be ok someday, that he's there, he'll do anything he can. He's guilty too, wishing he'd been in better contact, gone with Tim, done anything that could have spared him Dick’s nightmares

Damian’s world has shattered. Grandfather... does not want Damian. As his heir. He wants a previously nonexistent child. DRAKE's child. And he has stooped to the lowest low to get it. The carefully built family around Damian is in mourning for something he doesn't fully understand, and Drake now flinches when Damian, in what was supposed to be a peace offering, calls him "Timothy"

Steph and Tim make up as friends when she comes to support him with the shock of knowing that he has (will have, bc they are NOT leaving it with Ra's) a child now that he was not ready for. She doesn't touch him once while she's there, stays at arm's length, and that, Tim thinks, is what makes the visit feel as comforting as a hug

Jason is horrorstruck and breaks out of the rage/aggression and channels it towards hunting down League assassins bc what the fuck how DARE ra's? Tim was fucking 17 and Jason does not care how powerful this bastard is, he's going the FUCK down because NOBODY messes with Jason's baby brother but Jason himself

Barbara is ranting about how Ra's cant even know the genetics are going to fucking WORK how he wants them to, but breaks off abruptly as Tim's eyes well up, changing to enumerating all the baby things she's ordered and telling the dumb science jokes on the onesies because she NEEDS to see Tim laugh

Alfred LOOKS composed but every night he grips that shotgun real tight and has to remind himself that these kids need him, he can't risk himself for vengeance, what matters is Master Tim and the new little master or miss to be. He asks Tim privately if he'd like to choose a room to be the child's nursery. Tim doesnt know, but that's ok, dear boy, that's ok.

Bruce comes home and instead of the joy of reunion (or well, after it) has to struggle not to cry bc God his poor little boy... Damian was a shock too but at least Bruce and Talia loved each other. At least Bruce fucking consented. At least bruce was a goddamn adult. He doesnt think he will ever be rid of the guilt that Tim only found his way to Ra's by looking for Bruce

And Tim himself...

He can't go underground, at all. He redesigns his costume so that he can only unfasten it with a biometric lock, and doesn't tell anyone where it is except Alfred (medical emergencies). Some days, he can't look the girls in the eyes. Some days, he can't look at them at all, not without memories of things he isn't supposed to have seen or. Or felt. He's kidnapped as Red Robin once and chained to the wall, and he dissociates until someone (Jason this time, and who'd have believed THAT a year ago?) comes to save him. He can't get a good night's sleep anymore, not that he ever could but still

He feels paralyzed. There is no putting this off, no playing for time, nothing. They were able to confirm that Ra's's sister IS pregnant, and he knows damn well it's his, and nature waits for no one. In less than nine months now there's going to be a squalling, breathing, tiny, fragile, entire child, and unless he steps in, Ra's is going to raise it. Which means torturing it into a killer.

Every part of Tim screams NO

So they use those months to plan. How do they get in, how do they get out, WHEN is this supposed to happen because they can't well kidnap the child from the delivery room, the poor thing has to be in some kind of stable health, they need to KNOW these things, and thats when Bruce gets a call

Because Talia is fucking livid. She knows Ra's is an asshole, that's why she got Damian to Bruce, but this was a whole new low, her goddamn AUNT pregnant by her teenage non consenting STEPSON? She can't stop that any more than the others now, but she knows what she CAN stop: another tiny child being twisted and corrupted by this absolute monster. They need a spy, right? Well they got one

So there y'are, Q, the horribly angsty beginnings of this Dad!Tim AU. It doesn’t look pretty right now, but it will slowly get happier bc babies are adorable, dammit.

Edit: Part 2

#sprite wrote #somewhat #Q made me #tim drake #jason todd #barbara gordon #bruce wayne #talia al ghul #damian wayne #dick grayson #cassandra wayne #alfred pennyworth #stephanie brown #ra's al ghul #ra's al ghul's sister #red robin comics #referenced rape #dad!tim au

[coraniaid]

Literally the whole point of Buffy's arc in Season 6 is that she didn't come back wrong -- her depression, her inability to connect with her friends the way she wants to, her attraction to vampires in general and Spike in particular, the way she focuses on Slaying because it's something simple that she can excel at when she's struggling with the quotidian and unromantic aspects of her normal life, how hard she finds existing in the world now that her mother's gone and she and Dawn are alone -- these are all things that were true of Buffy before she died in The Gift. They are all things that we have seen from Buffy before, some of them going back all the way to the first season.

Spike tells Buffy that she must have "come back wrong" in Smashed because he wants to believe it -- as much as he wants her to believe it -- because it makes her more like him (and like all vampires, who really have come back wrong, "a little less human than you were"). And equally Buffy wants to believe that she "came back wrong" because it means it's not her fault she feels the way she does now. It means the emotions she's been struggling with all season are something that's been done to her by outside forces and not who she "really" is. But the show explicitly tells us (via Tara in Dead Things, who is clearly more informed than Spike here and actually does the research) that they are both incorrect: Buffy did not come back wrong in any way beyond "surfacy physical stuff". The Buffy of Season 6 is the same Buffy we've seen in the previous seasons; just cast in a new light by new circumstances and new experiences.

The Buffy of Season 5 would have struggled to cope with the reality of life after her mother's death just as much as the Buffy of Season 6. In fact, she does struggle just as much -- it's just that there's a whole world-saving Slayer mission to focus on as well, which she can use to distract herself from the sense of purposelessness she now admits to feeling ("I don't know how to live in this world if [...] everything just gets stripped away. I don't see the point") . But S6 Buffy doesn't get to have that sort of grand adventure to distract herself from the mundane. S5 Buffy gets to battle sword-wielding knights in shining armour and to fight a literal god and to make a big heroic sacrficice to save the world; S6 Buffy has to deal with the squalid reality of the Trio and paying bills and working in the Doublemeat Palace. But, underneath, she's the same person she always was. Again, that's the whole point of the story this season's telling.

We see Buffy struggle to come to terms with this in the second half of the season (including her retreat into fantasy in Normal Again) but it is something she ultimately does accept about herself. It is the entire subtext of her final speech to Dawn in Grave. Buffy admits that things have "really sucked lately" but promises Dawn that that will change; she admits to having gotten things "so wrong" and that instead of trying to protect Dawn (that is, to protect her memory of her pre-S6 self) she should be encouraging her to live and grow (to live in the world, which Buffy described in The Gift as "the hardest thing in the world"). And Dawn is explicitly a part of Buffy (the part of Buffy that exists outside of being a Slayer), so any time Buffy has this sort of conversation with her sister it is really a conversation she is having with herself. It is deliberate choice that the season ends with Buffy and Dawn climbing out of a grave together -- reenacting the events of Bargaining -- with Buffy having come to peace who with she is and her own resurrrection and seeing now how beautiful the world is.

There are a lot of characters in Buffy who come back wrong, but Buffy Summers is simply not one of them. However much she might wish that she were.

#btvs #obviously I voted for Buffy over the silly cartoon boy in the poll all the same #but it really would be nice if analysis of the show could move beyond `everything Spike says is true' #or we stopped pretending that TVTropes was an authority on anything

[operationslipperypuppet]

Can you tell us about the deal your character made with a god, the tags made me curious

Hell yes, but fair warning, this might end up being a long explanation. (This is referring to my tags on this post.)

I promise that most of these details i mention will be important.

To start, I’m playing a game of Blades in the Dark in a slight riff on the town that the game is originally set in, which my group determined in a game of The Quiet Year. During that set up game, we established a character who would try to solve the root of supernatural problems in the city but never quite be successful, and the NPC name generator we used spat out the name “Tip Footman, PI”. When we did character creation for blades, i was a bit stuck, and the GM and other players encouraged me to just play Tip, who’s still a bit of a joke, given his playbook (Quotidian, for which the explanation is “just some guy”.) Tip has two failed marriages and has been a PhD candidate for 17 years, and is attempting to finish a dissertation that maybe just has some formatting issues.

Thus a bit of a meme of me playing Tip at any possibility began.

We flash forward a year or so. We decide to play a game of Fiasco as a one shot, still set in Eelmouth, our beautiful haunted town, a decade or so before the events of A Quiet Year. Fiasco starts with dice rolled and pulling certain dice to determine your character’s relationship with the characters next to you at the table. One of the players next to me got our relationship to be “an informant and an investigator”. Tip is an investigator. I was encouraged to continue playing Tip, and I accepted. The other player next to me and I got our relationship determined to be “twins”. Her character and the one i wasn’t connected to were “a vampire and their thrall”. (This is, unfortunately, important.) The last relationship, between the informant and my sister’s thrall was something like “cult leader and follower”.

The way Fiasco works, as my limited memory recalls it, is that on each of your turns you pull a die and either call for a scene between two characters or start a scene with someone. The color of the die determines whether or not the scene will have a good ending.

Throughout the game, some things become interesting. There are some other mysteries that come up. The cult leader/thrall decided to attempt to create a new god. He failed this task in a way where he was able to create a god, just not the one he wanted. This new god, was the god of failure (someone who existed in the anthology of gods in our blades game already).

The information that Tip received from Nell, his informant, was that the cult leader intended to do a ritual with Mags to unthrall her. Something that could kill her, his beloved twin, who he had already lost when she got turned. He couldn’t have that. But he did try to convince Nell to leave the cult.

So then it’s my turn. And I deliberately pick a die that gives me a poor outcome. And i ask for a scene with this god of failure (who is played by the same player who is playing my sister).

The deal Tip makes is simple. This is a new god, he has no followers. And power comes from followers. So Tip will be his most devoted acolyte. In return for the unthralling failing, he will become the poster child for this god. The person who will, at any turn, fail. This is a man who was newly engaged. Who was starting a program and young with his whole life ahead of him. And he was willing to fail at everything, for however long this god saw fit. As long as the other ritual was also a failure.

And it was. So Tip is, forever, marked by failure. Retroactively justifying a lot of the events of A Quiet Year and our Blades game. He’s trying to get out. He has to believe he will get out one day. And he kept his deal a secret. For decades.

The end of the game went poorly for all of the PCs. The cult guy died. Nell is unable to do her art anymore (it was an art cult). And Mags left town, and is hiding forever in a church, afraid of hurting people once more.

And the best part? We didn’t mean for this game to be canon when we started playing it. And it’s fundamental to how the story works now.

#sorry this required a decent amount of context #but thanks for asking! I’m real proud of this moment it was fun and took everyone by surprise #asks #anon #Alli plays dnd #(really other ttrpgs but that’s my tag)

[raytm]

the ranks of soldiers all dressed in exquisite finery felt disparate to the bleak, dismal skies and the morose features of mourners. he wanted to be beside his sister, a sense of solace amongst the deluging melancholy. he knows her proud features are lined with sorrow, her fair brow pinched, her mouth quavers with grief. it was necessary for him to endure, a last bastion of decorum weathering the anguish that punctuated each, ragged breath. they had spent time in solitude for bereavement, in the swelling shadows of a store marked closed - until further notice. he had cried, lances of debilitating pain accentuating each ravaged sob. he thought, aggrieved with himself, that he could not shed anymore tears, yet now, as the lilting eulogy penetrates the moribund stillness, he wants to cry more than anything else. the days preceding had been filled with consolation, strangers going at lengths to say what a person their sister had been. had, it was impossible to accept. even though it had been his arms, laden with the infiltrating cold, that had held his sister, trudging up the desolate slopes of snow. his nights are beset with it, her features, still and serene, a pallor without even a touch of roseate. they would never have found her in time, spoken as if to alleviate, but it became barbed and infected. he had mulled it over for hours on end, the things he would have done differently, the words he would have spoken. it was all insignificant now, nothing could be done to alter the past. his father placates the people’s concerns with succinct reassurance, he would be there for their family in their time of grieving, this was an insurmountable loss for all of belobog. It had made him incensed, tolerating his father’s impervious facade even in the face of lynx’s death. he had conserved his aloof expression even as they had identified the body, as he had sat with his remaining children around a dining table and ate. his aversion to rest was equated only by his inability to eat, his stomach churning at the very prospect of it. serval’s herbal teas had staved off the worst of it but how could his father indulge in a quotidian glass of heady wine and a meal of sumptuous meats ? it was lunacy. the ripples cast by his sister’s death mantled the cityship in doleful tones of gray and white, the citizen’s rattled by this loss and his father had the audacity to persist in spite of that. in those moments of forced proximity he seethed with it, a profound hatred for that man, for all he stood for, exacerbated by grief and hopelessness. they would send her off as they did their most commemorated soldiers. a casket embellished with the family’s emblem and a lone silvermane medal. it had been gepard’s, he had insisted that it be placed alongside his sister in her burial. his behests, delirious with anguish, had met acquiescence from serval who had spoken to the funeral’s director on his behalf. his father’s eyes adhered to it, austere and glacial. he does not need to be scoured by it to know the contempt his father holds him in. it was an honorable act distorted to insolence under his scornful gaze. Gepard forces his eyes forward as the casket is brought forth, strains himself into becoming proud and taut, suppressing the tears that have bleared his vision during the service thus far. the guards beside him do the same and as the speech wanes into glacial silence the coffin is lowered. 

#here is my drabble / writing exercise of the day uh. #im sorry. #⋆⁺₊❅. 𝐺𝐸𝑃𝐴𝑅𝐷 𝐿𝐴𝑁𝐷𝐴𝑈. › 𝐢𝐜. #gepard drabble

[portablefrailty]

Come Out and Play

Inspired by Wuthering Heights (and a similar picture I just did of Franz Schubert). Emily Brontë, age 28 sits by candle light writing the only novel she will ever publish. Consumption has already claimed her two eldest sisters and her alcoholic brother teeters on the brink of madness.

Her own health beginning to fail, Emily crafts a tale that will shock the literary world with its brilliant narrative scheme and passionate, vindictive characters. Emily imbues Wuthering Heights with an ethereal quality that rises like a miasmic curtain off the moors and blurs the line between this world and the next. It is the omnipresence of death.

Death stalks the living, making the present seem illusory. Lost souls inhabit its mists and shadows. Impatient for reunion, they beckon to their loved ones in life to lay down quotidian burdens and take a stroll on the moors. The siren song that lures Heathcliff to his strange death echos the one Emily must resist long enough to finish her work. Oblivion can wait, but with a child's impatience, grumbling and sighing in the corners like Heathcliff nagging Catherine to ditch the silly and civilized for another wild romp in the open air.

#wuthering heights #Emily Bronte #bronte sisters #Heathcliff #Romantic Era #1840s #19th century #ghosts #spooky #oil painting

[daisyachain]

HXH vol 1-3 notes

Every line is snapped to a curve. Every shape is filled to the brim with whatever hatching or ink it’s meant to have. The tightest manga you’ll ever see. And then the lizard is so beautifully watercoloured that you can feel the scales

The hand-drawn backgrounds make it apparent how much of backgrounds in current manga are 3D modelled/photo edits. This is not a bad thing for modern manga. I like to see a beautiful quotidian setting that a poor overworked assistant did not die to produce. It’s also so so cute to have the simple cartoony bushes

Gon is (: a treat to have for a main character. He’s so interesting! A little boy who is not all there

First time around HXH I loved it and it stuck in my brain but only Kurapika, and I was still so hung up on Yorknew that I didn’t really register or understand the rest of it. Downsides to HXH basically being 2 totally separate arcs quilted together (they did say it had a JJBA influence…)

Poor Aunt Mito. More evidence that Gon is a little…

I had 100% forgotten Kite got introduced here

Leorio is 19????? This makes sense…

Different stories exist on different planes of reality and disbelief. HxH exists on the single top plane of disbelief. The tone and content are impossible to reconcile so you just have to let go of any kind of expectation and be free!

The Hunter Exam arc lasts longer than expected

How on earrrtth can they run that far. That is 2 marathons. And then summer camp starts (see aforementioned disbelief)

Body count is Mad High (see aforementioned disbelief). People just keep dying!

This may be my chance to separate Hisoka entirely from anime/Heaven’s Arena ver. and see why he’s my sister’s favourite

The ♦️unique speech bubbles ♣️ are certainly ♠️ a charm point ♥️

Imagining voices to go with the characters is a challenge. They are all so big-eyed and squeaky in my head. At the same time I remember being 12 and what the 12-year-olds in my class sounded like

My youthful Kurapika obsession hasn’t faded. Sorry mutuals. He’s well-spoken.

Culinary challenge minigame is a bit weak

Midnight game is v fun. Bonding time.

HxH is the most video game a thing can get without being a video game. The blobby shapes. The simple backgrounds. The vivid green of a Pokémon or BotW. The levelling up. I don’t know enough about games to be sure but I want to say that it consciously steals Pokémon’s look

The hunt is on!! Great tension in Gon’s pursuit. I was waiting with bated breath

‘197’ <- I did chuckle

Leorio is the failed main character who never actually gets an arc, but the role he plays is to bring everyone else together. He can’t do it himself. We have to help him together. He needs to stick around or else they’d all shake hands and never again see each other. He is a babysitter not much older than a baby himself

Gon and Kurapika’s bond is so sweet! Underrated axis of character relations. Kurapika always has an answer to Gon’s questions (even if it’s wrong) while Gon opens a whole new world of problem-solving for a vengeance-fixated teen. They care about each other very much, even if it’s just because Gon cares about everyone and even if Kurapika isn’t going to let it go beyond casual cooperation

Hiss-o-ka. Feel sorry for the guy who was just trying to get his license (see aforementioned disbelief)

I don’t know what roles Illumi and Hisoka play with respect to one another and at this point I’m not going to ask. Drinking buddies.

Killua time! Eat your heart out, everyone else

Leorio almost solved his puzzle in a remarkably clever way. Rip.

HxH has a world you should never think about for more than 5 seconds

Off to be final…

Another remarkable blast of tonal dissonance. Yay! Hanzo broke his arm for the greater good (?). The creepiness of the situation does heighten Gon’s wrongness so it works

Killua and Gon’s relationship is the bedrock of the story. I do not remember it being so explicitly stated or so early

‘There has to be something you want in the world that is strong enough that you will break away from us’ well.

Zoldyk arc! A classic. Silva is despicable. I feel like this one went a little better in the animation with the dark colouring and the saturated hues.

Killua breaking out of the dungeon is the scene in so many ways. He can leave, he just needs a reason

Gon HxH and Oz PH have some similarities and Gon HxH and Alice PH have some similarities

Alluka already exists. Illumi- Milluki - Killua - [REDACTED] - Kalluto

Most of what I am feeling during the read is sad for Killua

There’s a bit of a balance of power between narrator characters and main/protagonist/active characters. Narrators are aware of the consequences of the protagonist’s actions as well as where they fit into an overarching narrative, narrators can rationalize and contextualize the seemingly random events around them. Because Gon doesn’t understand any of this, he needs a narrator (Kurapika or Killua). Killua is doomed to be aware of what Gon is doing to him and what is happening to Gon. He can’t tell him, he can’t escape it, he doesn’t want to, his role is to Observe and Know the way his entire self is being warped, and he legally can’t do anything about it because he is not the protagonist

Off to Heaven’s Arena…

#kelsey liveblogs hxh #back in business!

[rockislandadultreads]

Book Recommendations: Wayward Women in Literature

Bunny by Mona Awad

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and seem to move and speak as one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.

My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

When Korede's dinner is interrupted one night by a distress call from her sister, Ayoola, she knows what's expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel and a strong stomach. This'll be the third boyfriend Ayoola's dispatched in, quote, self-defence and the third mess that her lethal little sibling has left Korede to clear away. She should probably go to the police for the good of the menfolk of Nigeria, but she loves her sister and, as they say, family always comes first. Until, that is, Ayoola starts dating the doctor where Korede works as a nurse. Korede's long been in love with him, and isn't prepared to see him wind up with a knife in his back: but to save one would mean sacrificing the other...

Happy Hour by Marlowe Granados

Refreshing and wry in equal measure, Happy Hour is an intoxicating novel of youth well spent. Isa Epley is all of twenty-one years old, and already wise enough to understand that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. After a sojourn across the pond, she arrives in New York City for a summer of adventure with her best friend, one newly blond Gala Novak. They have little money, but that’s hardly going to stop them from having a good time.

In her diary, Isa describes a sweltering summer in the glittering city. By day, the girls sell clothes in a market stall, pinching pennies for their Bed-Stuy sublet and bodega lunches. By night, they weave from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side to the Hamptons among a rotating cast of celebrities, artists, Internet entrepreneurs, stuffy intellectuals, and bad-mannered grifters. Money runs ever tighter and the strain tests their friendship as they try to convert their social capital into something more lasting than their precarious gigs as au pairs, nightclub hostesses, paid audience members, and aspiring foot fetish models. Through it all, Isa’s bold, beguiling voice captures the precise thrill of cultivating a life of glamour and intrigue as she juggles paying her dues with skipping out on the bill.

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father’s caretaker in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighborhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys’ prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buff prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father’s messes. When the bright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counselor at Moorehead, Eileen is enchanted and proves unable to resist what appears at first to be a miraculously budding friendship. In a Hitchcockian twist, her affection for Rebecca ultimately pulls her into complicity in a crime that surpasses her wildest imaginings.

#fiction #thriller #mystery thriller #strong female protagonist #Library Books #Reading Recs #reading recommendations #Book Recommendations #book recs #TBR pile #tbrpile #tbr #to read #Want To Read #Booklr #book tumblr #book blog #library blog

[mispeltnostalgia]

just submitted the last quiz i'll ever do for this course and i am sobbing. doing this course all year with @quotidian-oblivion has been an absolute privilege that i would redo the 032 quiz just to have it continue. this course has brought me and Quo so much closer together as we've realised just how much in common we have and I don't think we'd have the friendship we have without this class. quo's the reason i got back on tumblr and actually started using it and i am so grateful for her in so many ways. this course wouldn't have been nearly as fun without her and i would have drowned without her encouragement and rants on batfam and writing. this course has been a year of chaos and bonding and it has been a wild ride. so while we still have one more assessment to hand in we are still coming to the close of a wonderful shared experience. so thank you past me for applying to this course and thank you quo for being the best little sister a person could ask for.

#nogolsta says hi #quotidian convos #gonna miss my quo days #the tumblr family tumblrweed #family tumblrweed #irl found family au #shitpost quotes #all the different shit we say but as batfam #nostalgia #lmao the only time i'll spell that right

[quotidian-oblivion]

An interaction with my sisters that happened just now as the batboys

Bedtime:

Jason: Why are you acting stupid?

Tim, in the dark: I'm doing an NPC wave

Jason: Go back to bed

Tim:

Tim: Damian, do this

Dick: Like this?

Damian: Tt, you're doing it wrong, Grayson

Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

#im sick #and not sane #pls respect that #dick grayson #tim drake #jason todd #quotidian convos #damian wayne #batfam #dc #batkids #batboys #batbrothers #incorrect batbros #batfamily incorrect quotes #batfam incorrect quotes #incorrect quotes #quotidian&sisters

[byneddiedingo]

Ellar Coltrane in Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014)

Cast: Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Lorelei Linklater, Libby Villari, Marco Perella, Brad Hawkins, Jamie Howard, Andrew Villarreal, Jenni Tooley, Richard Andrew Jones, Karen Jones, Bill Wise. Screenplay: Richard LInklater. Cinematography: Lee Daniel, Shane F. Kelly. Production design: Rodney Becker. Film editing: Sandra Adair. 

Academy voters had essentially two choices for best picture of 2014, not that there weren't six other nominees, two of them, The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson) and Whiplash (Damien Chazelle), quite worthy of the honor. But Birdman (Alejandro González Iñárritu) and Boyhood were the front-runners, in large part because they took great risks. In addition to an often surreal approach to its subject matter, Birdman was filmed to give the illusion that most of it was one continuous take -- even though the narrative was not necessarily continuous. And Boyhood was filmed over the course of 12 years, as its protagonist, Mason (Ellar Coltrane), went from the age of 6 to 18 years old. Faced with two such groundbreaking but inimitable films, the Academy chose poorly: It went for the flashy technique of Birdman instead of the profoundly revealing story of the pressures a child faces in the process of growing up. But it's not just Mason's story, it's also that of his mother (Patricia Arquette), his sister (Lorelei Linklater), and his father (Ethan Hawke). Arquette deservedly won a supporting actress Oscar, but Hawke (who was nominated) also demonstrated the remarkable ability to adapt his persona over the extended filming time. The divorced parents face pressures, too: the mother the more immediate one of becoming a single parent and then making disastrously wrong choices as she remarries, the father the long-term one of remaining a presence in the lives of his children. He seems to have it easier than his ex-wife does, but every time Hawke re-appears in the film, he beautifully communicates the sense of having lost something precious. Like his son, he grows, shedding his fecklessness and irresponsibility, just as Mason learns to sift through the continuous barrage of advice from adults and find the wisdom to become his own person. I don't know of any film that so tenderly presents what the quotidian is like, without resorting to melodramatic crisis at its turning points. The only other films I can even compare it to are François Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959) and Satyajit Ray's Aparajito (1956), which take place in harsher milieus than the Texas towns and cities in which Linklater sets Boyhood. But even though that world is milder and more familiar than the places in France and India where Truffaut and Ray set their films, Boyhood reveals how the world shapes us -- or as Linklater puts it at the end of his film, "the moment seizes us" -- as well as those films do. I think it's a treasure that belongs in their august company.

#Boyhood #Richard Linklater #Ellar Coltrane

[amaurotine-daydreaming]

IV. Off the Hook

Tsubame once said that Oboro's favorite disguise was that of the milkmaid. Jacke finds he's quite partial to it as well.

-

It was a bloody shame, it was, the way that old black marketeer had become one for the crows, but that was the risk of working in the underbelly of society, and nobody in the darkmans was about to shed a tear over it. He had been one of their best, true, but the Dutiful Sisters’ contacts were numerous and vast, and Jacke knew they–like the old man–weren’t all keen to hop the twig and come to Limsa.

When Jacke told The Stray he was going out for some air and to snilch some info from the ports, she just raised an eyebrow at him. She knew his little euphemisms well by now, but Jacke didn’t pay her any mind. Every rogue had their flights of fancy, and with someone he knew to be worthy of his trust was even benar. Besides, he needed to get out of the cloister of the Sisters time and again anyhow, and no one was gonna rook him of that.

The lass he was off to meet in Wineport wasn’t part of the Order, strictly speaking, but in the past few summers she had become one of their most reliable contacts. Slender and fair and a right wallflower, that one. Jacke didn’t mind the occasional bawdy mort what could break him in half if it was her fancy, but this unassuming lass had him in her pull stronger than a siren’s song without even knowing it.

Jacke found her standing primly in the shade of one of the vineyard’s trellised walls, dressed in her usual simple cotton dress and apron and clutching the handle of a milk pail ‘twixt her fingers. Her cropped, dark hair was brushed away from her face, and her eyes were closed. She seemed deep in some kind of peaceful repose, but Jacke was light on his feet as ever and still twenty paces when she opened her eyes and looked directly at him with a small smile. 

Jacke lifted his hand in greeting as he approached. “Ye all right, love? One o’ them beasties didn’t scratch ye up too badly on yer way here, did it?”

The maid lifted a hand to touch where, on the left side of her face, a long, thin scar ran down from her forehead to her jaw. She pursed her lips, but Jacke was undeterred as he sauntered over.

“But ‘ells, ye know I like a mort with scars.” He leaned one shoulder on the wall next to her, crossing his arms casually. “Just means she’s got a story or two to tell.”

“You know, Jacke,” Oboro murmured, one of his fingers tapping the handle of the empty pail he held, “for quotidian meetings such as this, we don’t have to employ quite such convoluted methods.”

“Aye,” said Jacke, grinning, “but where’s the fun in that? Ye make a right rum doxy, love, an’ besides, I hear it’s yer favorite spot o’ mummery to play the milkmaid.”

Oboro’s pale cheeks blossomed pink. Jacke’s grin broadened. That little detail may have been let slip by someone in their merry band after a few too many cups of sake during their trip to the Far East, and even now it flustered Oboro to hear it said. 

“Jacke, please,” Oboro demurred, as if he really were playing the part of a blushing young maiden with her first love. Jacke knew that, while it served the act well, it was in truth anything but. Aye, they weren’t used to a Limsan’s kind of forwardness in the Far East, and Jacke hoped Oboro never quite acclimated to that particular difference.

“Please what, love? Playin’ the doxy is the only way ye’ll let me off the hook for a kiss in the lightmans, anyhow.”

Oboro tilted his head at that, a small smile returning to his lips. “Wouldn’t you like the information?” His cheeks were still dusted pink, but he had recovered enough to now be teasing in earnest, the bene lad.

“Aye, the information,” Jacke said distractedly, his eyes straying from olive eyes fit for a temptress to an equally tempting mouth. “Ye can whisper it to me, quick-like.”

Jacke leaned in and Oboro leaned up. Oboro’s breath was gentle along Jacke’s ear and nape as he murmured about some unusual dealings passing along the Agelyss River. When Oboro finished and drew back, it wasn’t far, and Jacke was more than happy to take him up on the subtle invitation he’d come to know well.

Jacke settled a hand on Oboro’s hip as he languidly found his way past his lips. Whether playing the mort or not, he found Oboro was a rather reserved sort, favoring Jacke taking the initiative in these sorts of things. That was all right by Jacke, especially once he discovered that in the darkmans, Oboro’s ardor was not at all tempered for his coyness.

And even now, with his endearing, oft-stumbling enthusiasm tucked away from the lightmans, Oboro still sought to subtly give as good as he got. He pressed closer into their kiss, his tongue teasingly swiping Jacke’s. Jacke nipped his bottom lip in return with a chuckle, and between them he could feel Oboro’s fingers wrap even more tightly around the pail’s handle as a shiver trembled through him. 

Jacke could drink in those lips until the morrow, so it was with some reluctance that he finally parted from him. Oboro, as usual, opened his eyes second; slowly, as if lost in a pleasant dream. Jacke would never tell a soul, but it always made him preen a bit that a colt what tasted sweeter than any wine in this famous vineyard could be so swept away because of him. Oboro had made him enough of a bloody, lovestruck sot as it was, and some truths–like the precise knowledge of the planes and curves of the man beneath his hands–were too precious to share.

#ffxivwrite2023 #ffxivwrite #jacke/oboro #jacke swallow #oboro torioi #theyre gay your honor #ffxiv #screenshot lovingly provided by Neon owo

[sardonic-sprite]

Got tagged by @quotidian-oblivion to do this wip game so HERE GOES!

Tagging @pevensiechase @aroacepanorientedopentoexplore @thisiswhereikeepdcthings and @envysparkler , no pressure to anyone and all are welcome to jump on

#sprite said #tag game #ao3 writer #thanks for the tag!

[chthonic-cassandra]

Recent books, non fiction -

Karen Brooks Hopkins, BAM...and Then It Hit Me - this is Brooks Hopkins' memoir of her 36-year career at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), where she initially worked in development and ultimately became the CEO. Brooks Hopkins (or KBH, as she seems to be referred in an institution where acronyms are beloved) is not a great memoirist, but she is clearly an incredibly skilled fundraiser and marketer, and her accounts of honing those skills and putting them to use is fascinating despite rather lackluster accounts that make hardly any space for her or anyone else's inner life. There are a lot of things that are warped and rotten about the whole US system of philanthropy and arts funding; Brooks Hopkins isn't writing as a critic of those systems, but as an extremely canny player of them. I don't think this would be very interesting to people who aren't already invested in BAM and its role in the NYC arts scene, but I enjoyed it a great deal.

Nicole Chung, All You Can Ever Know - memoir of Chung's experience as a transracial adoptee (her birth parents are Korean and her adoptive parents are white), and her journey to learning about and ultimately reconnecting with her birth family. Chung writes gently and empathetically about the complexities of her family experience, but at times it felt like she was holding back (maybe out of consideration for her many still-living family members), and I found myself wanting more (for example, we never actually hear from her how she decided to return to using her birth family's last name, though we know she does because it's how the book is signed). The most moving thread of the story, and the one that will stay with me the most, was the the story of Chung's reconnection with her birth sister.

Reginald Dwayne Betts, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Survival, Learning, and Coming of Age in Prison - Betts is a poet (whose poetry I loved before reading this book); this is the memoir of the 8 years he spent incarcerated for a carjacking he committed at 16. I thought this was excellent; I love Betts' style, and his gaze both on the world around him and on his own inner experience was vivid and astute. Many prison memoirs focus on how the author's experience was exceptional in some way, often because they were falsely convicted and don't 'belong' there (as though anyone 'belongs' in a prison); the strength of Betts' book is in the way that he holds at once onto the knowledge that his experience was profoundly statistically unexceptionable, alongside the specificity and uniqueness of his own inner world. Betts writes with great nuance about the quotidian indignities and humiliations of incarceration alongside the beauty of the human connections he makes with the other men there. I loved the way he wrote about his own crime of conviction, his reflection on "choosing to make someone a victim" and how prison never gave him any space to contend with that. Recommended.

Judith Flanders, A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order - another instance of reading Flanders and being disappointed. This had some fun trivia, but didn't come together into a thesis in the way I would hope.

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Mosses - I know Kimmerer's more recent book, Braiding Sweetgrass, has gotten a lot of acclaim; I haven't read that one yet. This is a collection of gentle essays on Kimmerer's career studying moss. I know nothing about this field, but Kimmerer's ability to describe the natural world and her obvious love for the mosses she studies carried me along easily, and I enjoyed this a great deal.

Susanne Foitzik and Olaf Fritsche, Empire of Ants - another book by a biological about a field which I know nothing about, though with a very different tone. Foitzik is breezy and playful in her descriptions of the world of the ants she studied; I was very interested in the topic, but sometimes wished she would slow down and cut back a bit on the jokes.

#books