Something wicked this way comes @excaliginechaos - Tumblr Blog

Posts

rika-mortis

Life is beach

bobbole

Andrea Zanatelli, In Vitam Aeternam

unhinged-soapbox

So I just saw the most incredible production of Macbeth that wove parental grief into the whole regicide plot in such a fascinating way.

So at the very beginning of the play there was a scene where Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are at a funeral as the primary mourners. A stretcher is carried on with a covered body. The body was notably very small. They laid flowers on it and Macbeth immediately left for battle.

Now *I* studied Shakespeare in college so I immediately knew there is one single line that implies that the Macbeths lost a child at some point. Most of the time this isn't utilized in productions; it's just a throwaway line, intended to paint just how determined Lady M is for this regicide thing to work and how furious she is that her husband has cold feet. In this production she delivers "I have given suck, and know how tender tis to love the babe that milks me" nearly in tears. She takes a moment to steel herself before saying, "I would while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed the brains pit, had I so sworn" and she very nearly SCREAMED this in Macbeth's face.

Also noted was how the Macbeths looked at Macduff's children. Lady M was clutching her heart, nearly breaking watching them embrace their parents. Macbeth could not even look at them.

At the end of Lady Macbeth's plot, when she is sleepwalking and sleeptalking, she is typically portrayed as speaking to no one or to her husband. However, at a certain point of her monologue she got on her knees, raised her voice to a comforting octave, and began miming tear wiping, hand holding, hair and face stroking, around a child-sized figure. "Wash your hands, put on your nightgown, look not so pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried; he cannot come out on’s grave." Then she stands and appears to take the child's hand. "Go to bed, go to bed. I can hear knocking at the gate-" then she looks down and realizes that no one is there, followed be the most heartbreaking shriek I've ever heard followed by a full minute of her just weeping while curled up on the floor before she stood up, finished her monologue and left the stage.

Most of the time when the loss of a child is utilized in a performance or adaptation, it is assumed that the child was an infant and lost some time ago. To imply that the child died IMMEDIATELY prior to the events of the play and had been cared for and loved by their parents for a few years adds such a fascinating layer to the desperation to ascend to the throne, Lady M's madness, and Macbeth's initial hesitation into "in for a penny, in for a pound" attitude, Macbeth's fury that Banquo's, not his, children will take the throne, and even Macbeth's eventual demise following a frenzied final battle.

How far will grief push you to fill a hole? How far will grief push you to desperation? And what happens when none of your new pursuits are filling the void left by the one you lost? And what happens when you realize you have nothing left to lose?

It was a PHENOMENAL production.

arahir

Sorry to bother you, but do you have a link to that one post you made on Twitter about making your own custom breaks on ao3? I thought I bookmarked it but now I can't find it. 😩

here’s the link!

how to make custom page dividers on ao3

(1) find or make your image

there are free use page dividers available on google. you can search to get ideas. the trick is to get it to the size you want in your chosen editing program, and to make the background transparent. select > color range is much more efficient than using the wand tool.

tip: keeping it monochrome and keeping the background and inner details transparent is helpful to people who use skins with a different background color!

(2) upload it somewhere

i use tumblr since it’s quick and fast. save as draft or load it to a separate page on a theme or really anything you want. just get that baby uploaded and copy the url.

(2.5) (optional) add ao3′s in-house page separator

ao3 calls this “horizontal line” and it’s useful because it can help you denote where you’ll put your new code because its html tag is <hr /> which is easily searchable in the mess of html you’re going to have to sort through. it looks like this:

(3) put in the page divider.

so now on your uploaded fic you’ll want to go to the html tab instead of the rich text tab and put in your coding. it will look like <center><img src=“whatever the url of your uploaded page divider is” alt=“Page Divider” width=“30%” /></center>

the img src is the image. the alt=“Page Divider” is so screen readers won’t get confused and will just say “page divider” when they come across it. the width tag you can mess with as much as you want until you find a size that works for you! you can switch back and forth between rich text and html to see how it looks as you’re working. this just ensures that no matter how wide the person has the page (desktop vs mobile, for example, it will stay the same size in comparison to the page:

(4) add it everywhere

if you went through and added the horizontal line page divider, this will be easy. just search control+F for <hr /> and replace it everywhere you find it.

and that’s it!! you’re done!! here are some examples of what you can do with it:

have fun with it!!

warning: ao3 likes to add random paragraph tags around these page dividers. i’m sure there’s a way around this by moving where the <center> tag is or something else but i’ve always had to go through and delete extra spaces that pop up around it when i edit my fic. that’s why it’s best to save your custom dividers for the last step. beware!! it’s not a big deal but watch out for it.

halogbs

Golden ⭐️

shinseifer

"average cat owner spends 3 years in prison" factoid actualy just statistical error. average owner spends 0 years in prison. Miette's mother, who kicked her body like the football and went to jail for One Thousand Years is an outlier adn should not have been counted

shinseifer

isnt-it-pretty

It's surprising to me how many fic authors headcanon Kaeya as a sickly kid but a super (physically) healthy adult.

A lot of people I know who spent a big chunk of their childhood sick turned out to have an underlining chronic illness, whether it was there all along or likely triggered by the constant illness is debated and not always clear cut.

I'm not saying people should headcanon one way or another, but I think it's interesting to see the disconnect. If it's because he couldn't become a knight with a chronic illness then I raise you to knowledge that most people don't even realize they have a chronic illness until young adulthood. By then, Kaeya would habe already been a knight for years, and with Crepus dead, Diluc gone, and Jean taking on more responsibility under Varka, who would notice?

Am I just saying this because I want more works with chronically ill Kaeya? Maybe. But it's still interesting to see.

losthomunculus

I think chronic illness would fit perfectly into Kaeya's character now that you mention it. He's very careful about the persona he portrays to others and often obscures the truth about himself for his own benefit... obviously he would hide a chronic illness to keep up the facade of the carefree charming cavalry captain, right?

isn't there also a few notes about him pawning his work off onto others and being "lazy"? that could just as easily be him doing as much as he can without breaking himself and getting others to pick up the slack without making it obvious he needs people to give him a hand.

definitely something worth exploring

vizerothree

Traitor 🗡

solardrink

Insane to me how Kaeya got characterized by the fandom as some slutty guy who only spies around and has sex every other night .. bro canonically makes jam, writes rulebooks for and supervises Klee, watches over Noelle and Mika, misses his family 24/7, and is lonely like all of the time

dandelion-wings

#he offered to compile a guide for the traveler#he planned an entire party for jean and refused to take credit because he got shy about it#he tells scary ghost stories to the kids of mondstadt#he told klee that every story needs to have best friends in it#he loves the summer and collecting seashells#the elders in the city consider him the best candidate for grandson-in-law#i could go on (via @lunannex)

teyvats-worst-hero

Diluc Ragnvindr is a Fucking Menace

(A fight style analysis for @moonilit )

Do you see this man? Do you SEE him???? THIS MAN HAS 3 FUCKING FIGHT SCENES IN THE PROLOGUE ALONE.

And you know what I’ve gathered from this?

1. He’s a menace to society and needs to remember that fire kills people

His burst is a giant fuck-you phoenix flying directly across the battlefield. Diluc. Diluc do you THINK???? That is SO much collateral damage! That’s SO FUCKING DANGEROUS!

This supports my own personal theory that he’s totally not used to fighting near… Well, people. And residential buildings. And… Things in general.

He’s used to being hunted through the snowy wastes of Snezhnaya by the Fatui and their harbingers. That is not a place where you’re thinking of collateral damage! That’s just survival!

Even though there are other characters with huge bursts, they usually don’t share the intent of clearing a battlefield. Diluc’s burst pushes you back. It’s unusual! It’s utilitarian! It’s specifically meant to compensate for being outnumbered or overpowered.

This whole “utilitarian use of elements to push mobs of enemies away from you” thing reminds me of a certain…. Someone.

(Which is incredibly fitting for an early game player. You’re likely to get these two characters during the part of the game where you’re constantly overwhelmed by even basic enemies.)

2. Sick hops

Speaking of being outnumbered and overpowered, this guy can hop 20 feet in the air, do a sick flip, and land in running form approximately 4 times per fight. Incredibly anime of him I must say.

Usually a guy relying on pure firepower and brute strength wouldn’t be so acrobatic. But yet again, I look at his coming-of-age murder crusade and I go “yeah that checks out.” He was running away and trying not to get skewered for like two years.

He seems especially well versed in ice, because in the next scene, he’s encased in ice and melts himself out in seconds.

Isn’t that adorable? Kaeya gets the fire trauma and Diluc gets the ice trauma!

3. Former Cavalry(?) Captain

His normal, charged, and skill attacks seem to be closer to what he just learned. He swings are heavy and brutal. Exactly when you’d expect from a local anime vigilante.

IF HE WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE THE FORMER CAVALRY CAPTAIN!

You can’t use a fucking GREATSWORD on a fucking HORSE. It makes even less sense than Kaeya. I cannot see Diluc “You killed my father, prepare to die” Ragnvindr learning to use a bow or a polearm as a kid either. He would fucking break them. Like Noelle.

I wanna see that interaction

But this leads into my theory that “Cavalry Captain” is legitimately just a front for the position of “Spymaster.” It would make a lot of sense actually. Only deeply trusted individuals, highly skilled in intelligence work with significant connections, seem to get the title. And why is it that two Cavalry Captains were chosen, or at least, were likely to be chosen, as the third in command? That’s so specific and weird.

Diluc likely never needed to learn in-depth cavalry techniques to become Cavalry Captain. That wasn’t his job. Therefore, he is not a bow or polearm user, and he appears to work best in melee combat.

In Conclusion:

Diluc Ragnvindr is used to fighting for his own life in the snowy wasteland, not working around collateral damage and moral quandaries about vigilantism.

dandelion-wings

#tbh with a pyro vision he might have nixed horseback fighting early #bird do you have thoughts as the local horse expert? #how doable is claymore horse fighting?

It is super not doable! You can use a sword on a horse--most horse cavalry and mounted archers have a sword as their back-up for close encounters, though the spear and the bow are both better weapons to use mounted and, cinematic displays aside, the sword was mostly for use after you were dismounted. But you cannot use a sword two-handed, and Diluc's animations confirm that's how he uses his claymore. I've been assuming Rule of Cool, but I mostly only write the Cavalry Company as actual cavalry because I love horses and love writing them; especially as we've gotten the balloons as the main transport in-game, I tend to lean towards the meta that it's a title for something else. (TBH even if they do use horses, it's probably most realistically as mounted infantry: ride to the battle, then get off and fight. Mondstadt has very little terrain suited for cavalry charges.) Especially because, yes, horses do not like fire (and would not like other manifestations of the elements, or wind gliders), and while you can obviously train past instinctual aversions or you wouldn't have warhorses in the first place, fire's a pretty big one and the claymore makes it worse still.

(That said, if you, like me, just enjoy writing horses: assume a very specifically-trained horse, Diluc using his Pyro as a ranged weapon from horseback, and the claymore being used as the backup after he dismounts/is dismounted. Heck, given his shuriken-y things in the manga, maybe he tossed something he infused with Pyro? Or he could've used a lance in the saddle and the blade on dismount, as is the primary Western cavalry tradition. Though Kaeya is still easier to write as an actually-riding fighter as the smaller sword is more typical and both Frostgnaw and Glacial Waltz, with a well-trained horse and some fine-tuning, would work better from the saddle than Diluc's canon fire attacks.)