This Might Be A Weird Idea But

A piece I commissioned from the insanely talented conversationparade (who is still open for commisions, check her out!).

Solaire and my Chosen Undead hanging around near a bonfire, talking about jolly co-operation, the Sun and killing things, probably. 

daily affirmations

Been thinking about Lumon/Kier’s obvious disdain for nature. The aggressive sterility of the severed floor. Dieter’s connection with nature being something to be shunned. His natural sexual urges something to be divinely punished, the punishment being a violent reclamation by nature of his body.

Gemma’s “life” being unnaturally extended into Ms Casey. Gemma always being pictured surrounded by nature, Ms Casey’s office being a thin facsimile of it. She tells Irving that he’s a talented lover, she stops him from sighing in pleasure.

Irving admits that their status as people without histories is “unnatural”. He worships a man made god, and when he finds something organic to love in Burt, they make a secret space for each other surrounded by greenery. It’s as close as they can get to feeling normal.

Persephone the goddess of spring, kidnapped to the underworld. Demeter protests, throwing the earth into an eternal winter, awaiting her return.

Irving saw the outside world blanketed in snow one day. He tries to get Burt back. He wakes up almost half a year later, he’s told. He goes outside again and it’s still snowing.

One of the things that make me really mad/upset is when people are so enraged that Harry named one of his children, Albus Severus.

What makes me sad is that it shows a refusal to engage with one of the most important messages in the series.  Harry’s forgiveness, understanding, respect and acceptance is fundamental to the story, and Albus Severus as a name is predominantly about Harry - and not Albus or Severus.

Severus is a clear depiction of what can happen when you fail to move on from abuse.  He is a damaged man, mired in history, who cannot forgive or forget, who then repeats the cycle of abuse by bullying others.  Harry is a direct contrast to this; he was treated horrifically, but due to several factors, he was able to succeed where Severus failed - and was seemingly able to move past the horrors of his childhood.

Severus had no reason to forgive his bullies, who were seemingly unrepentant even two decades later.  Harry, on the other hand, discovered a wealth of evidence that proved that whilst Severus was a bully and nasty towards him, he’d also secretly been fighting to keep Harry safe from harm - and had dedicated his whole life to doing so.

Importantly, Severus is the resentful character who is shown to be stuck in the past, unable to separate James Potter from his son, unable to forgive or forget.  Severus’ hatred and resentment doesn’t punish James et al, and only ate away at Severus’ own happiness.  You could even argue that this hatred became even more of a punishment, preventing him from creating a positive relationship with Lily’s son, because he saw Harry solely as James’ son.

So, why would we wish that for Harry?  Isn’t it far better that Harry experienced the love and support which enabled him to come to terms with what happened to him at Hogwarts, and led him to a point where he was able to forgive?  Harry being able to reconcile Albus’ and Severus’ actions, and accept and forgive them both, is a sign of strength, contentment and peace.  We should be pleased and appreciative that Harry seems to be equipped to break the cycle of abuse.

When people sigh about Albus Severus’ name, they’re really saying, “Harry, you got it wrong.”  Ironically, in doing so, they’re proving themselves to be less like Harry and more like Severus himself - blinkered and blinded, unable to accept, unable to forgive and unable to move on.

drops my briefcase 💼 oh no my sillies!!

Wait sans canonically has an accent??

He does! Now, it’s a pretty subtle thing because UTDR characters usually have very little in the way of phonetic accents (like, the knight chess piece NPC from Deltarune has a southern accent but you can mostly only tell it because they don’t say their final ‘g’s and call Kris “horsie”) but if you pay attention to his speech, you’ll be able to pinpoint some little hints Sans has a few speech habits going on. For one, he tends to shorten the word “you” to “ya” and other similar forms of it:

He also refers to the player character as variations of “buddy” and “pal” a lot.

But what gives it away as being (what I, with my limited knowledge of American accents think it is, at least!) a cartoon Brooklyn accent is his usage of “capiche” and “forgeddaboudit”, heh.

More recent WHA art!!!! + other stuff ^_^

Look, I think it’s pretty clear that the border-crossing people secretly really like Héctor. Evidence for this includes:

• How happy the border guard looked when he finally got through. • The fact that when his Frida Kahlo disguise fails he admits that “actually I am Héctor”, not giving any last name. Clearly he’s gained enough of a reputation with these people that he knows they’re not going to confuse him with the  twelve thousand other  'Héctor’s that they’ve met doing this job. • The other border guard not locking him up, despite Héctor begging him and trying to bribe him and just generally pushing his luck (I remember sitting in the cinema thinking that I would have locked this guy up by now. But it makes sense if they’ve known him for ages and are all slightly amused by/sorry for the guy).

Probably they loved him for providing some much-needed entertainment every year. The border guarding gig on Dìa de los Muertos can’t be the best job in the world, since it mainly involves standing around, watching other people head off to their own families while counting down the hours until you can see yours.

The knowledge that, at some point during the night, Héctor will show up in some crazy disguise or with some convoluted plan to get through (I suspect that the year he met Miguel was the first time he dared to just make a dash for it, since that’s the only reason I can come up with for why he wasn’t better  prepared to stop himself from sinking into the bridge. Probably he was just desperate with the knowledge that this could very well be his last chance), which would then cause some excitement and give you and your coworkers something to talk about, was probably the one thing that kept them from dying (again) of boredom.

And of course, once he got through, this all stopped, since there was obviously no need for it anymore. Sure, Héctor still regularly got butterflies moments before the crossing, convinced that this was the year that they somehow forgot him again and he had to stay behind (one time he freaked out so badly  that Imelda had to physically push him in the way of the scanner), but even he never thinks of sneaking through.

And the border guards, weirdly, kind of miss it— the Dìa de los Muertos night shift is just so boring now— and somehow, word of this reaches the Riveras.

And that’s how The Game begins. The ‘try and get Héctor through border control without them realising it’s him’ game. Thought up to amuse the border guards and, though nobody mentions this to Héctor, to distract him and keep him from getting too nervous before a crossing.

Héctor absolutely loves it— though a large reason for this is  that it’s an excuse to spend more time with his family. Felipe and Òscar in particular get really into it and have been known to spend weeks before the crossing plotting their next attempt. Coco — who most definitely takes after her father in this respect— joins in.

Rosita helps out as well, but less with the inventive side and more with the practical side (where are they going to get the stuff for the disguises? Who’s going to play what part? When are they going to carry it out?), while Victoria makes it clear that she disapproves but then joins in anyway because somebody has to be there to point out the obvious flaws in their plans. Rosita and Coco together then persuade Julio to get involved, though he mainly just sits there offering only the occasional suggestion, and doesn’t have much to do with the overall planning.

Imelda, for her part, thinks that its stupid and childish and will have no part in it whatsoever, thank you very much. Oh, except for providing any materials that they need, and coming up with ideas, and helping them pull it off… other than that, she’s not going to have anything to do with it. (Wisely, her family avoid commenting on the fact that, for somebody who isn’t involved, it’s strange how often she ends up taking over the whole thing.)

Elena, when she dies, takes the same line as Imelda. “This is idiotic and I’m not going to do it— but here are some detailed instructions on how to do it and woe betide you if you do anything else without consulting me first!”  Miguel’s father is happy to help out and his mother, to everybody’s surprise, throws herself headlong into it and has great fun working on all the details and coming uo with zanier ideas each year.

When Miguel himself dies, he finds the whole thing hilarious (him being the only one of the younger Riveras who ever witnessed one of Héctor’s original, more madcap escapes) and insists on sneaking across the border with Héctor. He even manages to convince them to try Héctor’s old idea (apparently mentioned in the novelisation) of dividing himself up into baskets and getting carried across that way.

That’s the one year they call it a draw, since their skeletons start to reassemble at the point of crossing but, technically, both Miguel and Héctor had gotten through before that happened (or, rather, Miguel’s forearm and foot and Héctor’s hand, ribcage and straw hat got through in Imelda’s basket).

The border guards claim to find it a bit annoying— though, last time they brought him in for it, Héctor noticed a large scoreboard hanging on the wall (so far the border guards are winning, but the family’s help has finally allowed Héctor to score a few points of his own). A similar scoreboard hangs on one of the walls of the villa (oh yes, guess who ended up with Ernesto’s villa?) in the room where, once a year, the whole family gather to make their plans.

Snape smoked from age fifteen to twenty and then stopped but he started again after Harry decked that mountain troll in the girl’s bathroom