WRONG SONG HAIKUBOT

Love emerging from the void, reblogging a bunch of memes, and disappearing again

Anyways hello gay people

i would love to hear more of your thoughts on michael shelley!!! 🌀🚪✨

you're in luck because i've sat on thoughts about him for years and i finally feel like i can articulate them. because michael shelley is such a well written case of tragic horror in the horror tragedy podcast. and, despite my criticisms of season 5, it really did do an excellent job in concluding his character arc with the gertrude backstory episode. in a podcast where a common in-universe theme is that knowledge, and the pursuit of knowledge, is dangerous, michael is a subversion in that his ignorance of the horrors of the world he lived in not only didn't save him, but was intentionally engineered to make him vulnerable to exploitation and harm (which, on a broader scope, emphasises the futility of the world of the magnus archives - regardless of whether you participate in or turn a blind eye to the systems at play, involved or uninvolved, you are not safe).

furthermore, i really appreciate the subversion of traditional tropes of the sacrifice as a typically female figure taken advantage of by a male father, brother, or lover, whose tragic and horrible death is used to motivate him (whether to greatness or self-destruction), with michael being a son sacrificed by his mother (or grandmother) figure, who never actually loved him and whose 'frail' and 'nurturing' qualities were weaponised incompetence used to gaslight and manipulate him - and who continues to operate successfully (at least in terms of what can be said to be 'success' in a world like the magnus archives) without being haunted by any apparent doubt about the decision she made, or any hesitation to use others in similar ways, following this betrayal. which makes the fact that he's sewn into the fabric of a being that represents lies in their most insidious form, used as a weapon to devour people and destroy their lives, all the more abhorrent in hindsight - he is forced to not only relive his trauma in an endless loop (or spiral, if you will), but to become the mechanism which enables it. michael is taken to the edge of something evil (at least from a human perspective), and pushed over the threshold with no hope of recourse. there's almost a reverse orphic quality to it - he descends into terrifying other world, one which exists side-by-side with but fundamentally seperate from his own, against his will, and looking back will only cause him pain as he's assaulted by memories of a life he will never be able to reach.

i think a lot of people forget to look past the surface with michael, despite there being an entire episode dedicated to doing so. which is understandable, he's a very outwardly expressive character - but this is intentional obfuscation to hide an incredibly damaged victim whose hatred of this part of himself is integral to his entire reason for being, and which the rejection of causes him to be unmade, incapable of existing as this contradictory nightmare any longer. it's a mercy killing, and yet it is violent and painful, because michael cannot and should not exist, and excising that graft used to muzzle the distortion is as agonising as latching it into place was in the first place. when michael-the-distortion says about michael shelley "he was born. he was pointless. and he should have died." there is an implicit longing there, a rage at the way he was used, his decisions made for him and used to imprison something else instead of ever being allowed to exercise any measure of free will. because michael shelley probably would have died for the archivist, given the opportunity, but he never got the choice.

Dear tumblr i dont want your livestream thing. Every popup for it has sponsored boobs in it that i can’t get rid of. I dont want boobs in between my she ra posts

If anyone knows how to make those go away please lmk

I am still alive. Check this space tomorrow for any updates.

crying

I want to do a hear me out cake but i think my perception of what even counts as a hear me out has been horribly warped by the simple fact that i am on tumblr

The tma fandom lieddd everyone talks about the “good cows” scene but it was two lines and i barely noticed it the first time! Everyone talks about the Safehouse and it was one episode (technically more if you count apocalypse!safehouse but i don’t)! Everyone talks about the “Somewhere Else” line but that’s just two words, it’s not verbally capitalized like i thought it would be! And jmart is never a cute and fluffy ship like everyone acts like it is, it’s 70% issues and 30% “we’re dating because it’s the apocalypse and we’re pretty sure we’re gonna die”! I’m not talking about tim kayaking here, that’s just denial + a pretty good way for me to somehow have no idea what was gonna happen to tim till it happened. Anyways

Tonight i think once again about the cannibalistic ocean-dwelling scaly llamas

A Dribble of Ink

"'We Have Always Fought': Challenging the 'Women, Cattle and Slaves' Narrative" by Kameron Hurley - A Dribble of Ink

I’m going to tell you a story about llamas. It will be like every other story you’ve ever heard about llamas: how they are covered in fine s

Everything’s going to shit, so take a little time to yourself. I’m reading tma fanfic and doodling bill cipher while looping the machine by lemon demon. Find a few things that bring you some little bit of joy, and do those things. Put your own oxygen mask on first. Take a deep breath, go outside, look at some birds. The world is still here. You are still here. And that in itself is a beautiful thing.