#heavy meta

[surprise-existence]

Love my girl Ophelia, my fav from Brütal Legend. Plan to draw her at some point, so I'd like to show the ref page I made.

[sidelit]

It interests me that the party line Dumbledore and Snape give us for Quirrell is "greedy" and "ambitious".

However, Dumbledore's very own trap shows the reverse is true.

Dumbledore's Mirror trap is stated to be that anyone looking into the Mirror of Erised and wanting the Stone for themselves will either:

-see themselves drinking the life elixir

or

-see themselves transmuting lead to gold.

Quirrell only sees himself presenting the Stone to Voldemort. That's it.

Something to please someone else, something to gain approval. No power, no wealth, no worship, no dominance.

So, what is Quirrell’s deepest desire?

Not riches, immortality, personal glory, not even to regain safety.

He just wants to please someone else so completely that he earns a place in their world.

It’s devastating, it's intimate, it's small, it's enormous.

Dumbledore’s trap was designed to catch selfish men, but it caught a lonely one.

The mirror reveals:

Harry sees family.

Ron sees recognition.

Dumbledore sees forgiveness.

Quirrell sees approval.

This is not the fantasy of a power-hungry man.

This is the fantasy of someone who has never felt enough on his own terms, someone who has spent his whole life as the clever, strange boy useful to others but never cherished by them.

He doesn’t dream of possessing the Stone, he dreams only of being worthy of handing it over.

That’s why Voldemort fits his wound, he offers a phantom version of what Quirrell wants: attention, purpose, intensity, acknowledgment.

He is not a villain because of hunger for power, he is a villain because of hunger for meaning.

He wants to matter to someone, and Voldemort is the first person who ever made that feel possible in any real capacity.

[the69thdimension]

I worked multiple angles to try and hang out with one of my fave bands last night and failed. I mean...don't I look like the kind of rocker bitch a touring band would want to hang backstage with?

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Visit Original Link

Metallica - Sad But True

[redlettermediathings]

[lucky-clover-gazette]

For the ask meme: Vio and 7, bc while I know you like the ship, I'm curious about the characters individually!

7- What do you like most about this character?

warning i went on an entire meta philosophical Thought Journey with this one and you will literally be able to SEE where it went off the rails. and then it just continued going off the rails until the rails disappeared from my field of vision and i have no idea if anything i wrote actually makes sense but here just take it

honestly i think part of why I love vio so much as a character is i did NOT expect to like or care about him, and then he ended up easily my favorite. the only thing i knew when i picked up the manga was that i would probably enjoy shadow as a character, which. of course i did. bc he's a very specific flavor of character i always gravitate towards, but vio was like... girl what? why are you in this story and doing the things you are doing? and by the end of my first reading i was just BLOWN AWAY by him and shadow and their entire subplot so i went to tumblr because i felt like i was hallucinating it and here we are now.

re: what i like most about vio... i go into it a lot in this post. vio is fascinating to me as a character from several perspectives, as a writer, a gay person, and just... having the philosophy and experiences that i do. there is such an inherent tragedy to his character that i don't think is lost on the authors--like i say in the post, shadow and vio both don't quite feel like they BELONG in this story, especially with how it ends.

like, i often write vio in particular struggling with the ways he deviates from the narrative set for him, both in canon and out of it. yes a lot of that is tied to queerness, but it also relates to themes of self-determination sub-textually tied to his arc. vio seriously just does whatever the hell he wants a good amount of the time, to like an eyebrow-raising degree. when he separates from the others and joins shadow he's on the Side of Good from the start, but i think he also realizes very quickly that there's more to himself than he'd expected. that doing what he had planned to do, especially to shadow of all people, was going to be shockingly difficult, and perhaps not even the correct choice at all. which is why vio's canon ending kind of falls flat to me, even though i can't imagine it could have ended any other way. this isn't to say he shouldn't have tried to betray shadow--it's an internal conflict he's going through, and a character usually makes the choice antithetical to what actually fuck i just boiled it down to the essentials i know exactly and fundamentally why i like vio as a character holy shit okay

SO normally a character in a story will start out Wanting something and Needing something else, and their entire arc is realizing, "aw beans, my Want actually sucks, i Need my Need" and then they pursue that instead. hero's journey etc.

think about the general premise of vio, and to an extent the other three: character is given individual consciousness to serve a specific noble purpose, and then cease to exist once said purpose has been served. and with the others, that's basically it, minor emotional and relationship arcs aside. but with vio? the premise GOES somewhere. oh no! character finds themselves drawn to the dark side by a "tempting" "evil" person or force, who CORRUPTS them into THINKING they WANT to defy that destiny! that they should be selfish, and bad, and turn their back on what they actually Need to do. so says the narrative, the character NEEDS to accept that they're not meant for anything but being used and discarded, because that's what good people do, and these are the Sacrifices We Must Make to Be Good. does your hero have any kind of unconventional or deviant leanings? well either that shit's getting straightened the hell out, or they are going to perish to save the Pure Good Guys, because that's all they deserve. that is a very common way to handle's vio's exact sort of character premise, and at first glance at the manga, one could argue that it's no exception. link still reforms, after all. arguably this kind of happens with shadow, but i think i like his ending a lot more outside of the shipping context. it says something more nuanced than above, but this isn't the post for going into that.

i would argue that almost every fiber of this manga pertaining to vio is actually trying to do the opposite of what i described above, even though it never is able to come to fruition.

quite simply, compared to the typical Needs and Wants of a corrupted hero type, vio's are like subverted. he's given a corruption arc, and it looks pretty basic at first, but it quickly becomes so... unconventional? and fun? and, dare i say, queer? i say it lot in reference to his whole turn of character once he joins shadow, but vio commits to the bit way more than is necessary to carry out his plan. shadow's not that perceptive and vio didn't need to be so close with him, so snarky and clearly enjoying himself, so bizarrely extra and innovative with the means by which he psychologically tortures his friends. his internal conflict, especially towards the end of his villain era, is less "i'm miserable because i'm a good guy and i want to save the world but i HAVE to pretend to be evil and like shadow," and more "i'm miserable because i'm actually enjoying a lot of these villainous theatrics and also i have become genuinely endeared to shadow, but i know i HAVE to betray him and rejoin the others because the world needs to be saved." i don't think it's a reach to say that that's what vio's conflict is, in the text. we see it in his expressions, his dialogue, and his reactions to things that happen.

i think this whole subversion was something the authors did with his character, whether accidentally or purposefully, REALIZED they did with his character, and didn't want to give up. but still, the story needed to end with vio rejoining the others and reforming the hero, because like. duh, of course it does, nintendo and source material and all that. but with the way a himekawa built up their obvious faves' (vio and shadow's) stories, it's like well shit, we came up with something we love but we can't really see it through. because within this brilliant subversion of the typical corrupted hero arc, the WANT is vio's sense of obligation to turn on shadow, reform link, etc, and his NEED is to say, "hey fuck this actually, i deserve to be a person and have relationships and do things i enjoy, and that doesn't make me any less of a hero. i'm smart and resourceful and there's definitely a way to both save the world and preserve who i am and get through to shadow."

self-sacrifice isn't inherently heroism. in fiction, it's often a deeply shallow and underwhelming resolution, especially when the character spends so much time growing and becoming who they truly are. i didn't grow up with religion, but i have a slight suspicion it plays a huge part in this entire attitude, and it sucks how much that permeates into media culture. doing good isn't something you can just phone in at the last second; it is a constant and ever-changing way of life, based on a moral system you develop for yourself as you grow. pretending to be someone you're not, acting solely under a prescribed ethical code especially as a grown-ass adult, makes you hollow and spineless, as well as unhappy, resentful, and unfulfilled.

doing good is hard. staying alive is hard. making decisions and forming connections and constantly being challenged are all very hard. but when you choose to embrace life, to accept failure and flaws but still try to be good, make meaningful connections and allow yourself to be genuine and happy and queer? that, to me, is the Goodest of the Good. and it's unique to each of us, while being something we all have the ability to choose for ourselves. and it's never too late for that. until the narrative tells you to jump off a cliff because that's, like, way too nuanced to be sustainable, and sure the story's resolved and it ended happily for the purest of heart, but what a bleak happiness that is. fuck that.

like, compare to vio to adora from she-ra. adora got the ending revelation i wish vio could have gotten. the whole, "i am worth more than my usefulness to others, i deserve love and self-determination" thing, and THAT's what really saved the day. adora saw her future, living happily with catra and the others, not dead or used but just LIVING, and said "hey, maybe the real answer here? the key to being a hero and saving the world? maybe it's loving, and letting myself be loved, and not sacrificing myself because someone said it's what i'm meant to do." and holy shit, she was right. and the narrative rewarded her for it, with a kiss from her catgirl gf and also destroying Big Evil and saving the galaxy or whatever.

fucking IMAGINE if that could have been the thing to save the day in the manga, just for a second. if you isolated just vio and shadow's arc and made them the Main Characters, like how adora and catra are in she ra. if it was truly allowed to be Their Story, if it was able to transcend the source material, if if if. it wouldn't even have to be just vio and shadow's story, honestly -- the four could realize, each for their own individual reasons, that maybe they can't unring the bell of their own existence. that they can protect hyrule better as themselves, that they deserve to continue the development they're been experiencing for the past 300 pages. and maybe vio would be the one to set that line of thought in motion, because has it not been set up exactly so he could?? if you've read my main au, you know exactly what i'm picturing here. and while i like some of the manga's canon ending, there's a reason most people who love these characters engage most often with alternate resolutions.

i think i like vio so much because he surprised me, and that's because he surprised the fucking AUTHORS OF THE MANGA. even more than a decade after publication, they made a point to say in their note that they appreciated the way people "got" what they were trying to say with shadow and vio specifically. i can't speak for them, and i will concede that i am mostly overthinking just for fun and none of this is that serious, but... come on. do you not see what i'm seeing here. they did something so fascinating and tragically unfulfilled here, and that all hinges on vio. and it's also just. so resonant to me as a gay person, in the same way she ra was.

obviously i could say more, and this is embarrassingly unhinged and maybe delusional, i don't know. i just wrote a lot of words about something so silly and arbitrary, but i took the time to write them because i care and can't get that time back now. so i might as well commit to the bit like gayass purple boy and post anyway

[gloriousspaceridersworld]

Listen/purchase: XX by dawnbringer

[vinylspinning]

Kreator: Coma of Souls (1990)

When it comes to Kreator’s fifth studio LP, Coma of Souls (celebrating its 30th anniversary this week), I tend to swim against the current ...

Though I bowed to editorial compromise and ranked it No. 2 among all Kreator LPs in the pages of Loudwire, an older All-Music Guide review more accurately reflects my personal opinion that the band’s very successful thrash formula had started getting a little tired by 1990.

To be fair, the same was true of thrash, in general, which succumbed to increasing repetition as the ‘80s gave way to the ‘90s, and never saw its sales or cultural relevance rebound, even after charter bands -- including Kreator themselves -- woke up and tried to inject more innovating.

It also didn’t help matters that Germany’s finest were coming off their biggest-selling album yet in ‘89’s Extreme Aggression, that they felt the commercial pressures of Noise Records’ short-lived relationship with major Sony, and understandably decided to plow the same songwriting furrow on Coma of Souls.

On the positive side, this ensured more head-spinning musicianship and well-chosen stabs at melody from complex moshers like the title track, “When the Sun Burns Red” and “Agents of Brutality,” as well as a refreshing blast of simplicity from “World Beyond.”

Another two songs that stand out of the pack are “Terror Zone,” with its unnaturally measured pace and a melodic bookends to die for, and the vicious, outstanding “People of the Lie,” whose chorus and lead guitar break are almost too hooky to qualify as thrash. 

Moreover, the recruiting of erstwhile Sodom shredder Frank ‘Blackfire’ Gosdzik definitely didn’t hurt, as he established an instant chemistry with Kreator main man Mille Petrozza, leading to multiple, thrilling six-string solo exchanges.

But the album’s second half was a virtual wash; mired in forgettable exercises like “Material World Paranoia,” “Twisted Urges,” “Hidden Dictator” and “Mental Slavery,” and making it impossible, even today, for me to rave unconditionally about Coma of the Souls.

All in all, I’d say Kreator played it a little too safe here, and while some may argue that the band achieved a new level of clinical maturity, I’d counter that this came at the expense of the spontaneous, sonic savagery that originally inspired them to thrash the planet into submission.

But that’s OK: I’ll take a typical Kreator day at the office over most inferior metal bands, any day.

More Kreator: Endless Pain, Pleasure to Kill, Terrible Certainty, Extreme Aggression, Violent Revolution.