Narcissistic

00

[crisurdiales]

This one has been a real puzzle!

Plan of Canaan House, from Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. Completely non official and compiled by me through an (obsessive) analysis of the text. Beware of spoilers if you haven't read the book

[iceaxepikkeru54]

This is fucking awesome

[finnivann]

Helen’s regret, the Illiad book III

[ochiody]

painting rkgk

[kekichanwhatever]

*starts playing Piofiore*

...

*starts drinking coffee with a lot of milk and sugar everyday now*

[sorcave]

sometimes you really do just write words for the words and notnfor the content

yeah, I do. See, I have this mental word count that always needs to be met. if i dont reach 1k words per sentence I crash out and start crying over bugs at the back of my house

[sososillyyy]

lowkey let all the marauders be assholes and i’m not just saying like james sirius remus and peter i mean like ALL of them like i feel like ppl tend to forget they r teenagers in most cases whenever they’re talked abt and most of the time teenagers r stupid like let them make mistakes

[sorcave]

literally thank you. people are so obsessed with polishing the marauders into this perfectly marketable brand of tragic softness that they forget being a teenager is a fundamentally deranged state of existence. james potter was a god-complex golden boy with too much power and not enough accountability. sirius black had so much internalized hatred he projected it onto everyone except the people who actually hurt him. remus lupin let things happen because being liked meant more than doing right. peter pettigrew was small and scared and deeply aware of how replaceable he was. they were all flawed. they were all cruel. they were all stupid. and it mattered because they mattered to each other.

but every time someone tries to remind the fandom of this, everyone rushes to rewrite history. peter was never a real marauder. sirius didn’t mean it. remus was just scared. james grew out of it. they’re all redeemed because we said so. but it’s only ever redemption when it comes with charisma. if you’re awkward and bitter and not fun to watch — you’re just a villain.

and while we're here. half of you wouldn’t last five seconds in a room with snape without breaking into outrage. you all talk about “holding grudges” like you wouldn’t declare a personal war on a boy who tried to kill you once at thirteen and never apologized (lest we forget they made his life a living hell since he was 11) and say what you want about movie snape — he kept harry alive when it would’ve been easier to let him die. and unlike the marauders, he was never afforded the luxury of being wrong in a way that was still charming.

let your favs be wrong. let them be stupid. let them be sixteen. otherwise you’re not engaging with the story, you’re just cosplaying better fanon.

[masterofthewarcry]

i think the diochilles dynamic relies on them keeping things on the down low. like there's obvious and clear tension between them that any of their peers can see, but only select peers (patroclus, sthenelus) might be able to surmise that they are meeting running into each other on the beach after dark to fuck fight about how diomedes totally snubbed achilles in that war meeting earlier. and then gradually the fucking fighting shifts from little things to the bigger issues - diomedes is jealous of achilles' glory, achilles is jealous of the respect the others give to diomedes (one covets what is so freely given to the other etc. etc.) so they get even MORE pissy and petty with each other on the day to day but still wont admit to their extracurricular activities, so everyone thinks they hate each other while patroclus and sthenelus are really the only ones that know whats going on.

[sorcave]

The tragedy that is Bungo Stray Dogs...

(essay coming soon, be prepared for another lukewarm take that's been said before.)

[ersatzdagger]

I spelled marauders wrong the first time on Instagram 💀💀

[seekmemystar]

everyone keeps having these moments at the top of the astronomy tower how are none of them bumping into each other

[masterofthewarcry]

‘but you think that i can’t see/what kind of man that you are/if you’re a man at all’ DIOCHILLES

[homunculus-argument]

why are you so fucking tedious

By the power of daily 54 mg of methylphenidate, whatever amount of caffeine is in an eyeballed big mug of instant coffee, two different antidepressants and a three year stint of weekly cognitive psychotherapy.

[wolfythewitch]

Currently watching Helen of Troy (2003). I have many concerns lmao I'm not a fan. BUT. They did include the death of Iphigenia (though in this one she's like 6?) and what was insane was that the soldiers played with her as they led her to the altar, lifting her by her arms and bouncing her, and she was laughing all the while. Agamemnon caught her in his arms, spun her around, and then killed her. Insane scene in a movie I was watching at like 5/10 interest

[sorcave]

Reblogging because that scene with Iphigenia genuinely stuck with me too — it's so jarring and surreal. Apparently, in some interviews around the time Helen of Troy (2003) was released, the director John Kent Harrison said they wanted to make her death “feel more disturbing by showing it through the lens of innocence.” That’s why she’s so young in this version — they leaned into the horror of sacrifice by contrasting it with this childlike joy and trust. It’s meant to be upsetting, like you're supposed to feel complicit as the viewer. I’m not sure it landed the way they hoped, but it is one of those rare moments where the film tries to do something psychologically heavy. Still wild that it's in a movie that otherwise feels very mid-2000s sword drama.

[sorcave]

The Miscommunication Trope Is Not Deep — It’s Lazy

There’s a point at which a trope stops being a storytelling tool and becomes a crutch, and the miscommunication trope has long since crossed that threshold. It’s everywhere: in romances that fizzle out for 200 pages because one person didn’t ask a single clarifying question; in tragedies that spiral out of control because a character overhears half of a conversation and storms away before hearing the rest. In theory, miscommunication is supposed to create tension. In practice, it often reveals a story’s hollowness — a manufactured conflict where genuine narrative stakes could have been.

Here’s the thing: communication is a fragile, deeply human thing. Misunderstandings happen all the time in real life. People talk past each other. People lie. People repress. But what makes this bearable — even fascinating — in real life is context, character, complexity. We misunderstand because we’re afraid, or insecure, or raised in systems that discourage clarity. When miscommunication happens in fiction without any of that grounding, it feels like the writer has run out of ideas. It feels cheap. And most of the time, it is.

The trope hinges on the idea that people do not talk to each other. But in reality — especially in high-stakes situations — people do talk. They ask. They clarify. They text. They call. They double back. They notice. And when they don’t, the absence of communication must be a feature of the character, not a flaw in the plot. If your couple breaks up because one person saw the other hug their ex and left the room in tears without speaking, that’s not romantic tension. That’s bad writing.

What’s frustrating is that this trope is almost always avoidable. Entire plotlines collapse if one character says one sentence. And not a poetic, revelatory sentence — just a basic one. “I’m not dating her.” “That’s not what I meant.” “Can we talk about this?” And when you reach that realization as a reader or viewer — that everything that hurt and broke and ruined could have been undone with a single human impulse to speak — it doesn’t feel tragic. It feels insulting.

We are past the point of finding this compelling. We are too aware now. We’ve watched too many seasons of television where the plot gets dragged by the neck through arcs that only exist because no one would sit down and have a five-minute conversation. We’ve read too many books where the third-act breakup is built on a misunderstanding that could be resolved with one text message — and worse, it’s not because the characters are flawed or scared or shaped by trauma. It’s because the author needed something to go wrong. It’s a tool for false tension. It’s scaffolding, not structure.

The tragedy is not that people misunderstand each other — the tragedy is when people understand too well and still fail to act. That is the heartbreak of Hamlet, of Anna Karenina, of The Godfather — not that no one knew what was going on, but that they did and it still wasn’t enough. Good drama is not built on withheld information. It’s built on choices. And when a story relies on miscommunication, it takes the weight of choice away from the characters and gives it to contrivance.

This is not to say that all miscommunication is bad. There is a way to do it with intent. When miscommunication is a deliberate function of character psychology — when it reveals something — it can be devastating and brilliant. Think of Kaz and Inej in Six of Crows. Think of Marianne and Connell in Normal People. These are characters who fail to communicate because of who they are — shaped by trauma, fear, shame. Their silence means something. But the key is: the audience knows. We are in on the failure. We see the missed connection. We ache with it. We understand why it happens.

But when miscommunication is used as filler — as a lazy wrench to keep a plot spinning — it becomes a disservice to the reader. It’s not clever. It’s not tragic. It’s not slow-burn. It’s just slow. And it wastes the most powerful thing a story can give us: the moment when people face each other honestly, say what they mean, and still have to deal with the consequences.

That’s what makes stories worth telling. Not silence for its own sake — but speech that costs something.

And while we’re on it, maybe the most frustrating byproduct of this trope — especially in its modern fanfic-forward iteration — is how it almost always insists on a moral asymmetry between the characters. Miscommunication, when written lazily, doesn’t just create empty drama — it manufactures a skewed sense of right and wrong, one that often exempts the protagonist from any meaningful culpability. The miscommunicating party — usually the love interest, often male — becomes the scapegoat for not anticipating a reaction they could not reasonably be expected to anticipate. Meanwhile, the protagonist — usually the POV character, often female — is framed as the injured party, even when the miscommunication stems from their own assumptions, projection, or lack of emotional maturity. And no one questions it.

We need to talk about how often these narratives implicitly frame emotional entitlement as justified, especially when the entitlement is romantic and comes from a “sympathetic” main character. How many stories hinge on a protagonist getting upset because the other person didn’t read their mind? Because they flirted once, and then didn’t follow it up with a declaration of love? Because they were kind — and kindness, apparently, is now a promise. And when the other person doesn’t deliver, the story treats it as betrayal, not misalignment. As if decency is a form of leading someone on. As if you owe people feelings just because they want you to.

And yes, I’m not saying this as a dig at female characters — I’m saying it as someone who’s tired of bad character writing being passed off as empowerment. There’s a trend, especially in fanfiction and romance media, where the female lead is insulated from fault, even when she’s the one who made assumptions, even when she projected a whole relationship onto someone who never said they were in one. If a man doesn’t communicate, it’s toxic. If a woman doesn’t communicate, it’s tragic. If he flirts but doesn’t pursue, it’s cruel. If she flirts and he doesn’t pursue, it’s his loss. There is no space for ambiguity. No space for two people who simply read a situation differently.

When we write stories this way — when we punish people for not returning someone’s feelings, or for failing to anticipate unspoken expectations — we reinforce a worldview where emotional clarity is treated as optional and where miscommunication becomes a weapon instead of a wound. The worst part? These dynamics are often dressed up as romantic. As yearning. As proof of how deep the connection is. But they’re not. They’re misunderstandings that curdle into accusations. They teach us that desire alone justifies disappointment, that feeling something entitles you to something back. And that’s not romance. That’s not tragedy. That’s just selfishness in a prettier font.

[romanceyourdemons]

victorian trans guy who goes to beloved local barber sweeney todd and presses half a crown in his hand and says “begging your pardon sir, i know it ain’t much but i was hoping you might tell my employer i get me shaves from you should he ever come around. only he’s been asking me how i keep my chin so smooth and i haven’t the heart to tell him i can’t grow a beard, so i might have told him a little lie, sir, and said it’s all due to your wonderful skill, sir” and sweeney todd goes “no problem. by the way would you say your employer deserves to die”

[sorcave]

There is a line that has lived with me long after my last reread of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It is quiet, easily missed: “I knew I could do it this time,” said Harry, “because I'd already done it.” (Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter 21). On the surface, it’s a simple line, an affirmation of self-confidence — but it’s also deeply, almost disturbingly paradoxical. It is an ontological loop, a closed system of being. The self only acts because the self has acted. The hero saves himself only because he remembers being saved. There is no origin, no first moment of choice. Just the loop.

And that is the genius — and the quiet existential horror — of POA. It is a book about time. But not in the fun, sci-fi “fix the timeline” way. It’s about the kind of time that cannot be fixed because it was never broken. The kind of time that is shaped like a spiral staircase, where descent is indistinguishable from ascent, and freedom is indistinguishable from inevitability.

To begin at the end: the Time Turner sequence is one of the most delicate and destabilizing narrative devices in the entire series. When Hermione reveals she has been using the Time Turner to attend multiple classes at once, it is treated with light comedic effect — a nod to overachieving. But when she and Harry use it to intervene in the past, the tone shifts. This isn’t “changing history.” This is fulfilling it.

When Harry watches himself conjure the Patronus across the lake, he first believes it to be his father. “I saw myself conjuring the Patronus before. I knew I could do it this time, because I’d already done it.” The loop is closed. The spell was never cast by James. It was always Harry. The longing he feels for parental protection — that impossible, desperate hope — is resolved not by revelation but by recursion. He becomes the figure he mourns. He becomes the memory he once witnessed.

This is not empowerment in the traditional sense. It is not the culmination of a character arc. It is the enactment of a script already written. The language of the novel repeatedly blurs past and present, cause and effect. Consider Dumbledore's cryptic instruction: “You must not be seen.” The threat is not to the fabric of time — not in a cosmic sense — but to the narrative symmetry. The moment must unfold exactly as it already has. Time is fragile not because it is chaotic, but because it is so precisely ordered.

There is something deeply fatalistic in this. In fact, it leans eerily close to the Russian proverb: Чему́ быть, того́ не минова́ть — What is to be, cannot be avoided. The entire narrative structure of POA is a dramatization of this logic. Buckbeak cannot die because he did not die. Pettigrew must escape because he already has. The loop is not just temporal; it is moral. The characters' choices are only valid insofar as they already align with the established outcomes.

Let us talk, then, about mercy. When Harry chooses to spare Pettigrew, we are told: “You’re going to regret this,” Sirius said savagely. “You’re going to regret this for the rest of your life.” (Chapter 20). And he is right. Pettigrew’s survival is what enables Voldemort’s return. But Dumbledore replies, “Harry has shown Pettigrew mercy. And that is a powerful thing.” The novel frames this as moral growth. But the truth is, Harry doesn’t spare Pettigrew out of deep ethical reasoning. He does it because, on some level, he must. Pettigrew must live to fulfill what is already written. The prophecy is downstream of this moment. Destiny requires his survival. So, Harry’s “choice” is not truly a choice at all. It is a compulsory mercy.

This is the book in which Harry learns he is not the child of prophecy. Not yet. He is not the boy who lived by virtue of fate, but the boy who loops. His entire arc in this book is not toward new action, but toward recognizing that the action has already occurred. What has to happen will happen, because it already did.

It is also, crucially, the only book in which Voldemort never appears. The central antagonist is not a Dark Lord, but time itself. The main characters are not fighting evil. They are trying to stay ahead of chronology, to align themselves with inevitability. It is a book where the climax is not a battle, but a realization. The realization that the past is closed. And yet, paradoxically, the book does not feel deterministic. It feels mournful. It feels like standing at the edge of a river you have already crossed, watching your footprints wash away. There is no room for change. Only for understanding.

Sirius, too, is subject to this logic. He is a tragic figure not because he is misunderstood, but because he is locked in a narrative that will not allow him to escape the past. When he tells Harry, “I would have died before I betrayed them,” the statement is not just defiant — it is desperate. He wants, more than anything, to be seen as more than the man who was imprisoned. But time does not allow that. He is locked in the identity forged for him thirteen years ago. He is not a man moving forward. He is a man waiting to be proven innocent in a story that refuses to make room for retroactive justice.

This brings us to the Marauders. The true tragedy of the Marauders is that their story is always told retrospectively. We only ever encounter them in memory, in retelling, in regret. We know their ending before we learn their beginning. The past is already ossified, and the tragedy is in how tightly it holds its grip.

POA is, therefore, a novel obsessed with structures — of time, of identity, of narrative. It tells us that freedom exists, but only within the confines of what has already been. It lets its characters act only insofar as they are fulfilling the roles already set for them. And yet, for all that, it remains a book about hope. Hope not in change, but in recognition. Harry becomes the one who saves himself. He steps into the shape of the father he never had. And in doing so, he claims not freedom, but continuity.

Which is, perhaps, the only kind of agency the world of this book allows.

[homunculus-argument]

No wait, random worldbuilding idea:

A people who have an age-old tradition, that when warriors left home to go to war, their family that remains home prepare funeral goods for them while they wait, sewing them the clothes and preparing the tools and all that they will be buried with - to emotionally prepare them to the hard possibility that the one who left will not return home alive. If the warrior returns, their burial goods are all burned in a bonfire that is lit for the celebration of their return.

And to this modern day, mothers of the culture will tell their children "fine, but let me take your measures for burial clothes before you go" as a way of telling them that something they're about to do is lethally stupid. Sharing stories about just how dramatic their mothers are, someone tells their group of friends that his mother once actually took out a measuring tape to start taking his measures when he said he's leaving home for a work trip.

And another one goes "pfft, yeah. This one time I went to a rock concert and came back home to mom sitting on her sewing machine, fucking making me a funeral coat."