and we are at the end of vanity

they/them the terror-posting and everything else < hannibal posting is this way < > f1 posting is this way > & knitting & bookbinding

[bongjoonhoe]

La Chimera (2023) dir. Alice Rohrwacher

[verilyconsecrate]

abandon all shame. abandon guilt. there’s no point in that. only make room for the knowledge that you are forgiven and will be forgiven millions of times. do what you wish with that.

[judblanc]

i have a normal relationship with this catholic whodunnit

[astrotheyge]

Jud Duplenticy + kneeling Wake Up Dead Man (2025)

[faeriefag]

"why suck a strap?" have we all forgotten the beauty of theatre? have we truly fallen so far as to think the mind mustn't be pleasured too?

[penny-anna]

one argument you often see about fanfiction is that it's like 'training wheels' writing? like 'oh it's fine to do that while you're still learning, it's easier than coming up with your own ideas'. and I have to say I have just never agreed with that.

[penny-anna]

in my experience it's actually pretty common for newbie fanfiction writers to gravitate towards coming up with OCs rather than writing about the canon characters (hence the infamous Mary Sue); this suggests that many people find that 'easier' than attempting to write about pre-existing characters.

I would say that recreating the characterisation, mood and general vibes of an existing work of fiction is in fact a skill in and of itself that's acquired via practice. A common compliment delivered to fanfiction writers is how well they have captured the spirit of the original work. Inexperienced fanfiction writers fail to do this.

When creating an original character you can, ultimately, say anything about them and now it's canon bcos you created them and you said so. conversely, well, if you are covering a well known song and start playing the wrong notes people will notice immediately.

In addition: a lot of fanfiction, IMO, is in actuality a form of metafictional literary analysis. a story where two characters sit down and talk about their feelings about a canonical event? literary analysis, which is of course a skill. Sometimes fanfiction is bad bcos the writer is not good at interpreting texts.

finally I have made this point before but you never really see anyone suggesting that fictional works based on existing public domain texts are on 'easy mode'. is it 'easier' to write something based on a copyrighted work than a public domain work? Of course it isn't.

[penny-anna]

I know I said 'finally' but I forgot a point:

A major strength of the transformative work is its ability to create dramatic irony. If a fanfiction's emotional resonance is dependent on being familiar with the source material that's not necessarily a bad thing. sometimes it's a sign that the author has done a really skillful job of engaging with said source material.

[judblanc]

so many things happen at the altar. jud and blanc's entire relationship transpires at the altar. they meet at the altar. they specifically walk down that altar to argue. jud dumps blanc at the altar. blanc has his damascus moment at the altar. he attributes his newfound grace to jud at the altar. they decide to share the secret of eve's apple at the altar. there's literally no reason for jud to be back in the church when they hug goodbye except that rian wanted him to hug blanc (who is wearing a white suit) at the altar. then blanc leaves him at the altar. no gay catholics can get married at that altar btw. a catholic priest cannot officiate a gay catholic wedding. btw.

[arctasy]

when the character is obsessive and desperate and guilty and scared and ashamed and traumatized and repressed

[boitterfly]

it’s so special to me that so much of fan culture is textual analysis for the love of the game. like thank god there are people in my phone who are also thinking about this thing i love so much that they are writing transformative fiction as character studies and setting clips of the show to music with theme-relevant lyrics and writing long text posts analyzing every line of dialogue like!! yay!!!

[judblanc]

IS IT EVEN breaking a vow of chastity if whatever souls are made of, his and yours are the same? is it not just a merge of souls. let's discuss

[cicerfics]

#i know jud dealing with shame and catholic guilt in a straightforward angsty way is a popular interpretation in this fandom#but whenever i rotate/write his relationship with blanc i really feel like the more romantic/sexual it gets#the harder he'd lean into the Profound Bond of it all to the point where he'd sound more like a crazy obsessed person than anything else#ive tried to be like ok lets consider that he is clearly afraid of what his body is capable of doing and he chose celibacy for a reason#but theyre rly like that one meme to me like ''im secretly evil and have to earn god's love by repenting [blanc appears] omg blanc hi.....'#bc he rly is so quick to rationalize everything bad into something more hopecore#like he straight up turned killing someone into something god loves him for. it clearly takes a lot of energy and effort#but he always finds a way to spin it#and with the entire Point of blanc as a character being as josho said 'cutting through the torment and despair and making things nice'#+ all the ways blanc feels god-sent and larger than life and is respectful and loving of every aspect of jud including the guilty aspects..#+++ crucially the fact that blanc is clearly not at peace with his religious trauma and cannot reconcile his queerness with it#this all just puts jud in the perfect position to start having Epiphanies about angels and soulmates and whatever else it takes#to change the Story hes telling to reflect something that feels true to blanc. not to convert him#but to make him feel loved unconditionally the way blanc made jud feel loved unconditionally#that is moreso the missing piece in the postcanon puzzle to me than jud's self acceptance i think in wanting to make things nicer for blanc#he will make them nicer for himself too#but then of course i love to complicate this by having blanc actually challenge the Story bc jud doing All That is getting kinda scary#and thats how i ended up writing arrivederci roma which is showing no signs of reaching any simplicity its just insanity all the way down (tags from @judblanc)

[judblanc]

TWO high-strung divas... i dont think they resisted it. i simply do not believe they resisted it

[judblanc]

re: "why'd i think i could lie to you and get away with it?" what other lies do you think jud slipped in there 👀 and do you think blanc caught all of them?

iiii think obviously us as the viewers are meant to worry blanc realized jud did kill wicks for a second while it's really about the flask, and i do think jud knew it was likely gonna be about the flask bc he isnt stupid so he knows he fucked up by stealing it

but i also think the most pressing question isn't any of that, i think what jud is waiting for anyone to ask him is why did you kill that man in the ring? and nobody fucking does, blanc least of all bc he is adamant that it actually doesn't matter.

there are probably several other lies by omission (some likely not even conscious) jud snuck into his very subjective recount of those nine months but i think he wouldn't care about those and clearly neither did blanc.

deep down what jud wants is for someone to rip into him for the boxing ring event and i know this because every single thing that happens in that movie is bc he never got closure after killing that man - he neither found a way to get punished or to be forgiven so he became a priest about it.

and blanc knows this. his refusal to entertain jud's "original sin" is intentional, he's downplaying the severity and relevance bc not only does he think it doesn't matter/hinders the case, but he wants jud to know he doesn't care/mind either way. and jud is compelled by this new approach of someone who knows about this big unforgivable mistake and does not seem to care. it does him a lot of good to see his biggest source of grief and guilt be treated this way.

but he also brings it up enough times, and during such crucial moments, that i know he wants to be asked. why'd you do it. what happened to you that led you to that moment. he wants to be put on trial about it so badly and is terrified of the prospect at the same time.

he's basically been bargaining with god about his eternal soul's (after)life sentence ever since... i was gonna say ever since it happened, but that doesn't even ring true? he found jesus years later. he found this path after stumbling into adulthood homeless and alone and completely failed and neglected by every other system that could've helped him or at the very least judged him properly for what he did (by his own logic).

and someone like thee detective blanc ripping into the "boxing thing" and dissecting it like a case would probably make jud feel both utter relief and like he's awake during surgery. and blanc denying him this was kinda crazy of him if i'm honest. talk about an indifferent god.

but yeah in my opinion the biggest "why'd you do it" of the movie, the most obvious visible elephant in the room that NEVER gets addressed is why he killed the man in the ring.

and i think the movie carefully avoids addressing this both bc it creates an interesting tension beneath the surface of everything that happens with wicks, but also because jud as a character has to be held in a permanent stasis between rage-empathy guilt-forgiveness victim-perpetrator faith-reason etc. for him to want to stick to priesthood as his life's purpose so vehemently.

so yeah tl;dr "why'd you do it" and "why'd i think i could lie to you and get away with it" is textually a red herring, straightforwardly about the flask, and sub/metatextually abt jud's ability to twist any story including the one we're actively watching (and blanc's ability to see through all of this). but it's also a brain-tickling echo of the question about jud's tragic origin story that never gets asked and that this entire whodunnit fairytale hinges on never being answered.

[zotiroboti]

normal ways to look up at the hot older man who keeps manhandling you around and hovering over you

[zotiroboti]

i was putting daniel craig under the yaoi beam back in the old days of skyfall 2012 when all we needed was bond coming out as bisexual to perhaps the gayest javier bardem put to screen and a conversation and a half with ben whishaw in his prime twinkdom .... judblanc would have thrived in this ecosystem but our society sadly seems to have collapsed

[zotiroboti]

it's so fucking serious. to me

[judblanc]

a queer priest in his mid 30s that has fully given up on forming connections outside of the church because of something that happened when he was a teenager meeting a gay man that's pushing 60 and reeks of divorce/some sort of existential crisis and neither one of them expecting to click with someone so well both physically and philosophically this "late" in their lives but having no choice in the matter because of the machinations of fate... this is the height of romance to me

[judblanc]

ohh my god the parallel of jud doing good under a net-harmful institution (catholic church) and blanc doing good under a net-harmful institution (the police/law enforcement)…..

it's one of my favorite parallels/points of friction about themmm i talked about how they trigger each other due to their past trauma with these institutions a little bit here. they try not to see the stereotypical cop and priest in each other but they do sometimes and it pisses them both off a little bit and they hold each other accountable it's great

but then they really do end up admiring how well and how fairly they manage to navigate such a Loaded profession. the one key difference being of course that blanc does everything he can to distance himself from the police while still working with them to solve murders while jud is constantly writhing in his own institution's clutches...

yet another example of how blanc could potentially show jud a new way to pursue his purpose without depending on the institution it's tied to since he's clearly constantly struggling within it! much to think about...