dirt enthusiast
oozey mess
blake kathryn
noise dept.
Love Begins
izzy's playlists!
shark vs the universe
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
AnasAbdin
No title available
KIROKAZE
if i look back, i am lost
Kaledo Art
One Nice Bug Per Day
Show & Tell
No title available
NASA
ojovivo
RMH
macklin celebrini has autism
seen from Croatia
seen from Croatia
seen from Italy
seen from United States
seen from South Africa
seen from China
seen from Germany
seen from Croatia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Azerbaijan
seen from United States
seen from Poland
seen from Bangladesh
seen from Uruguay
seen from Spain
seen from Iraq
seen from Türkiye
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
@deanspantycollection
it's so wild to me that you absolutely cannot force a hyperfixation to happen. like you'll watch the most perfectly tailor-made-for-you content that everyone says you'll love and feel absolutely nothing, and then the thing you watch on a whim to fill time will reach through the screen and put its damn fingers in your brain and start rearranging the neurons right in front of you and every single time you're like THIS??? THIS??????? and this happens like every 6-12 months forever
You know, it's probably ridiculous to assume that Viktor is being somehow mind controlled by the Hexcore in S2 of Arcane. Obviously his actions are entirely his own, right?
After all, mind control plotlines can be a tricky to pull off and when it's employed, creators tend to put a lot of signposts in to let you know what's really happening and how the character isn't themselves anymore.
For example, creators might do things like... having the character's eye color suddenly change, since eyes are the windows to the soul.
Or... creators might indicate that the character's voice has changed somehow, to indicate that another will is acting through them and they're not entirely themselves anymore.
Certainly one really common trope in mind control plotlines is the mind-controlled character is hearing some kind of voice in their head telling them what to do, or seeing someone that isn't there who guides them or controls them.
Certainly in a pinch, if you really want to drive home that a character has been mind controlled and hasn't been themselves, you'd make it pretty obvious by having them be horrified by what they've done once the mind control wears off!
Bonus points if their eyes revert back to their natural color and any other signs of a different voice or appearance go away once the mind control is finally lifted! That way it's definitely clear that they've been set free from whatever influence was upon them.
But seriously, without these sorts of really glaring signposts we can't really be sure if a mind control plotline was intended at all!
(Tongue-in-cheek aside, I actually love the subtlety of how Arcane executed the Hexcorized Viktor plotline, and I love how much ambiguity remains. But for anyone who thinks he was totally in control, I mean, come on guys. When I started going down the list of all the things film and tv usually does to signal a mind control plot I literally burst out laughing when I realized how many of them Arcane had hidden in plain sight.)
The last time I saw a magical mind control arced handled with this mix of "oh it's definitely fucking people up" and "it's really hard to say where the bad impulses end and the active possession begins" was Lord of the Rings.
The One Ring doesn't really control people, at least not in the conventional sense, and it doesn't force them to do things like a demon taking possession of their body might. But it corrupts them, and influences their mind in ways that they can't always recognize, and provokes and stirs up their worst impulses. If it gets enough sway over someone, they will do things that they would have never done otherwise, often to their own horror in the aftermath. It is especially hard for the characters to handle in part because even they can't always identify what was the ring and what was them.
It's just that in Lord of the Rings we are very plainly told that the One Ring is manipulative and has a will of its own. In Arcane, we get pretty much all the same clues that this is going on (more, in fact) but nobody says so. Probably because nobody in-universe is even all that sure of it!
Still, a lot of the same narrative tricks are employed to tell the audience that this mysterious object is a sinister character in and of itself.
Oh, I LOVE this point, because I was just noting to my partner the other day that one of the many influences on Arcane is clearly Lord of the Rings and one of the places you see it most is in the way people look at Hexgems and Hextech items for the first time.
It's not just Powder who gets the glint in her eyes the first time she sees a Hextech gemstone.
The first time Vi picks up the Atlas Gauntlets, she gets the blue glint in her eyes as if it hypnotizes her. Later, Cait notes how Vi seems to believe Jayce's gauntlets will solve everything for her, to perhaps a worrying degree.
Jayce is unwilling to put down his Hextech hammer in the Anomaly future to the point where dragging it around is actively endangering his chance of survival AND permanently maims him.
Even Heimerdinger gets the glint in his eyes the first time he sees the Hextech gemstones, it's this very particular blue shine, and if I was less lazy, I'd go hunting down all the gifs and images but SUFFICE TO SAY, every single time a characters sees Hextech up close for the first time, they get a very particular glow in their eyes.
Personally, I think the metaphor here is simply: power.
Hextech gives you the power to do the thing you want to do. I'd argue the sense of power the gemstone gives Powder is what eggs her on to make her monkey bomb in the first place that brings such destruction to everyone she loves in 1.03.
Viktor becomes obsessed with the Hexcore to the point where he's ignoring the living people in his life who want to spend time with him while he's alive, like Sky and Jayce, so even if Viktor manages to stay alive he's demonstrated that he's not living.
As noted, Vi becomes reliant on the gauntlets, Jayce's mother notes with fear how obsessed Jayce has become with magic and Hextech (arguably, he's Patient Zero in all this) to the point where he's ready to die if he can't have Hextech in his life, it's so beautiful he can't imagine wanting to live in a world without it, and arguably his moment of demonstrated growth and healing at the end of the show is when Viktor and human connection replaces the value he once put on Hextech as the center of his life.
Heimerdinger also makes an interesting note when he says he thought the danger of magic came from humanity's, "Turbulent relationship with power." Which is very in line with the One Ring.
However, he goes on to say that the Arcane itself might be responsible in part for the destruction that springs forth from its use, which implies a will beyond that of the mage wielding it.
So I think on one level, Hextech and its intoxicating influence works as a simple and beautiful metaphor for power, exactly the way the One Ring does.
But, because we're in a fantasy world too, there is a deeper implication with both Hextech and the One Ring that arguably inspired it that there is a will at work, and it's a will that is seductive and a will that bends towards destruction.
From the moment people get that shine of Hextech in their eyes, they begin to act differently unless they wrench themselves from its influence. Already unbalanced people, like Powder, fall very quickly and spiral into destructive uses from it almost from the start. Stronger personalities disavow it, like Cait saying that Hextech will keep us alive but it won't save us, only for her to fall prey to its siren call after the attack on the Memorial unbalances her emotions further as well.
The lure of power is particuarly appealing to those who feel they've lost control but there is a sense that Hextech and magic by extension also preys upon those who are attracted to it.
And with the Hexcore representing the Apex form of Hextech, well, let's just say I'm not sure Viktor stood a chance at all, with how much he felt out of control of his own life (for very understandable reasons) and how it took a reaffirmation of connection with others to restabilize him and make him see the damage this pursuit of power had caused.
I think it’s interesting to note that Echo is basically the only main character that never falls for the arcane and flat out distrusts the hexcore.
Very much like Bilbo keeping an acorn to remind him of home, he never loses sight of his community, his under city, his tree, his cause. Just as Bilbo was unable to strike down the pitiful Gollum, Echo couldn’t bring himself to end the twisted life of his childhood friend.
And when the ring /hex tech falls into their hands, though they wish it never did, both Frodo and Echo are key instruments in the fall of the evil brought into their lives. And both of them ultimately had to work with Gollum/ Jinx to do it. The cost however, is immense and heartbreaking.
Never again can they live as they should have, had the ring/hex tech never fallen into their hands.
in all timelines, in all possibilities, only you...
only you.
by making destiel canon they completely relitigated the lines of curatorial fandom and transformative fandom like BECAUSE fans engaged in a transformative fandom practice that ultimately made its way explicitly into the text from a curatorial perspective the only reading of show supported by the show is that cas was is and always will be in love with dean !! you can only now watch supernatural and have that be the conclusion and ALSO the impetus textually !!
even more of my favorite fics:
some grief, some joy • spinawren The Question of Home • a_frozen_abyss Go Your Own Way • Starshot then a small thing happened • BeaArthurPendragon say it soft and it's almost like praying • Somanywords there's a bear in the woods • itsnotbleak A Haunted House With A Picket Fence • lavenderpanic great whales of the sea • canistakahari Preberseeschießen • Ginny_Potter they're gonna send us to prison for jerks • napricot
I think Spock could hang out with Squidward because they're the same type of cultured faggot but Squidward would get petty and mean about something and Spock would be like honestly mr tentacles I find this type of outburst very distasteful. & he would fix him
do they live in capitalist bikini bottom or socialist space future because the answer really affects whether spock fixes squiddy or systemic injustices change who spock is as a person.
I was imagining the enterprise comes to bikini bottom planet of the week style but I'm obsessed with the idea of spock working at the krusty krab & how that would affect him psychologically
something unknown but very powerful came over me. retro spirk kyaa❣️❣️❣️
I never found an answer because the one thing I want... It’s something I know I can’t have.
petition to tell biden and harris to comply with the icj’s ruling and provisional measures here if you’re a us citizen. so far they’ve sent 47,074 letters out of the goal of 51,200!
what do you mean this isn’t every single episode of star trek tos
My current plan to recover from my mental and emotional existence is to just go so deep into being insane that I'll come out sane on the other side. Being a chronic people pleaser plagued with impostor syndrome stretched me too thin, and that leash simply snapped and I am now a completely untethered, unapologetic vermin.
Fuck having impostor syndrome, if I'm not entitled to be here they should've barred the doors better. If I'm doing everything wrong because of imaginary rules that nobody told me about, that's their problem, you should have made your confusing system more idiot-proof.
I'm not here to please everyone and do everything right. I'm here to make bad art, chew on furniture, make people laugh, cook awful food and look at pretty landscapes, and piss off the people who don't want me to exist. If I have an unseen infinite debt somewhere that I can never pay back, I'm going to keep running that tab until I die. I'm alive purely because the universe is shit at pest control.
i never thought "i'm alive purely bc the universe is shit at pest control" would be my motivation of the day but damn this dude went hard
“I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.”
—
Ursula K. Le Guin, “A Left-Handed Commencement Address” (Mills College, 1983)
this passage planted itself in my consciousness when i was 24, and 10 years later, it informs so much of my approach to living, thinking, creating.
15.02 || 15.17
Absolutely fucking wild that Dean’s entire arc this season was struggling with the fact that Chuck controlled everything about his life and he had no free will, then they made a point to say that Cas loving Dean was the only thing Chuck couldn’t control and THEN they were like “yeah no need to resolve that relationship”
Dean's nothing about our lives is real speech? When he says "everything we are is because of chuck"? He was speaking privately & directly to Castiel when he said that.
Not to Sam. Not everything I am. Everything we are. Dean was having a full on crisis.
"You asked, 'What about all of this is real?' We are." Dean didn't know how right Cas was.
Like no baybee. It'll take 15 episodes, but god himself will tell you Cas defied him and his plan to love you, actually.
Via @vendettasfanfictioning
help
why are there angel feathers in the trunk. WHY ARE THERE ANGEL FEATHERS IN THE TRUNK.
okay hang on. it just hit me again. i suppose you could make the argument that the feathers could have been from any angel. but they didn't know angels were real until s4 so they wouldn't have had a stockpile. dead angels only leave the burned-out shadows behind so the feathers could not have been from dead angels. this suggests that the feathers were given willingly. the only angel this action makes sense for is cas. period. so those are cas' feathers, right? and they're in the impala. the impala, which is dean's body. not only are they in him but they're in the trunk. the trunk. are you. do you? i????????
I think one of the big strengths of fanfiction as a medium is that it can, on average, assume the reader has a way higher degree of familiarity with canon than like…canon can. If you’re in the Star Wars AO3 tag you probably like Star Wars enough to remember more things about it than the average Star Wars-enjoying-ten-year-old. Which makes it way easier for fanwriter a to get to the juicy stuff and really engage with the worldbuilding or minor characters without having to spell out like. Who Wedge Antilles is for everyone who forgot or never noticed him in the first place. You could write a book about Wedge in the old EU because EU readers could also be assumed to be serious fans, but you can’t make a new canon Disney+ show about him. Those cost money to make and are intended for a broader audience.
And all this means that like. A good fic writer can and often will surpass canon when it comes to like. Thematic resonance and stuff, because they can really dig into something. Star Trek 2009 gave Kirk a new, more generic tragic backstory because it couldn’t expect the average moviegoer to be familiar with Kirk’s old, way more interesting tragic backstory. (Frankly, I’m not sure jj abrams knew about TOS Kirk’s backstory) whereas I have read a LOT of well-written, interesting, deeply resonant fanfic examinations of Tarsus IV, and what it means for Kirk’s character that he’s a genocide survivor. Star Trek 2009 answers the question “why did Kirk cheat on the kobayashi maru?” With “‘cause his dad crashed a spaceship when he was a baby.” A close examination of TOS canon implies the answer is “because he lived through a real-life Kobayashi that did have a win option, but which wasn’t taken.” BUT—and this is significant—even the TOS canon movies can’t really assume knowledge of the full TOS tv show, so that implication is never examined or made explicit. Instead it’s fanfic (and maybe spin off novels? Idk I’ve only read 2 trek books, if there’s one out there that covers this that would be really cool) where we get dives into that thread, where Kirk gets a commendation for original thinking because he can look a testing board in the eye and say “I’ve seen what happens when someone is entrenched in this kind of thinking, and I cannot let it happen to me. I understand the lesson, but it’s not hypothetical anymore and it never will be. I did what I had to do.” And that’s interesting! That’s meaningful! That can’t happen in a summer blockbuster. But it can happen in fic, easily, and that’s a strength of fic, I think.
