sublimedetectivemusic

Latest Posts by sublimedetectivemusic

You ever hear that old chestnut about how most people neglect the part of the story of Icarus where he also had to avoid flying too low, lest the spray of the sea soak his feathers and cause him to fall and drown? You ever think about how different the world would be if Icarus died that way instead? If the idiom was to Fly To Close To The Sea? A warning against playing it far too safe, about not stretching your wings and soaring properly? You ever think about how Icarus died because he was happy?

collection of posts for a very specific dynamic

Suzanne Collin’s just said fuck you to everyone who’s ever critiqued the Hunger Games as being a “teen girl saves the day” story. She said oh, Mockingjay didn’t make it clear enough? Here’s a book about how people have been rebelling for decades only to have their efforts suppressed and propagandized. Rebellion takes time and it takes failure and Katniss may have been the spark that ignited the wildfire but she did so standing atop the doused flames of everyone who came before her.

yes & no by natalie wee

via

truly some people have no genre savviness whatsoever. A girl came back from the dead the other day and fresh out of the grave she laughed and laughed and lay down on the grass nearby to watch the sky, dirt still under her nails. I asked her if she’s sad about anything and she asked me why she should be. I asked her if she’s perhaps worried she’s a shadow of who she used to be and she said that if she is a shadow she is a joyous one, and anyway whoever she was she is her, now, and that’s enough. I inquired about revenge, about unfinished business, about what had filled her with the incessant need to claw her way out from beneath but she just said she’s here to live. I told her about ghosts, about zombies, tried to explain to her how her options lie between horror and tragedy but she just said if those are the stories meant for her then she’ll make another one. I said “isn’t it terribly lonely how in your triumph over death nobody was here to greet you?” and she just looked at me funny and said “what do you mean? The whole world was here, waiting”. Some people, I tell you.

twenty years across the sea

Ferocity

When Mina found Jonathan in August:

I found my dear one, oh, so thin and pale and weak-looking. All the resolution has gone out of his dear eyes, and that quiet dignity which I told you was in his face has vanished. He is only a wreck of himself

Mina about Jonathan on Sept 18

Oh, it is too hard that a sweet, simple, noble, strong nature such as his—a nature which enabled him by our dear, good friend’s aid to rise from clerk to master in a few years—should be so injured that the very essence of its strength is gone. He begins to doubt himself. I try to cheer him up, and my belief in him helps him to have a belief in himself.

sorry for romanticising the mundane. i have little else

The World's Tree

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Thor (2011)

Loki (2023) — 2.06 “Glorious Purpose”

The Last Voyage of the Demeter, or: What Can You Do When He's Drunk Your Sailors.

A woman went viral for being turned down for a next interview for a role, she asks the recruiter what she did wrong, the recruiter tells her they were “concerned about her lack of effort in her appearance.”

She explains she wore a freshly ironed blazer with a collared top. Her nails were painted a professional beige. She got a blowout for her hair, so a professional style. She had on subdued gold earrings.

The only thing she wasn’t wearing was makeup; she states she really doesn’t wear makeup, and only had chapstick on, as her skin is sensitive. Her lawyer mother has already explained she has no legal case against the company for any type of gender-based discrimination.

Just in case anyone wants to ask why feminists still refer to the “pink tax” or rail against more and more elaborate makeup trends being pushed on girls and women.

Women being punished socially for not wearing makeup is still a feminist issue.

[“I want to give people some tips on what the cold cut-off is like.

First, you gotta stay cold. The whining will go on FOREVER. They will call you directly. They will email you. They will put EMERGENCY in the email subject, and you will find the EMERGENCY is Why Are You Doing This To Me, You Selfish Brat. They will leave messages. They will call you at work, because they are just so worried, are you okay? If you respond to any of this, even just to say “I AM NOT TALKING TO YOU,” all you have done is show them exactly how often and in what ways they have to harass you until you respond.

After the harassment, there will be niceness. Honeymoon. You will get gifts. Concern troll gifts. My dad, he wanted to buy me a coat. It’s so cold out there, I don’t know if you know that. I am worried about your health YOU STUPID BITCH here I don’t want you to get sick now I AM GOING TO PUT YOU IN A MENTAL WARD. These will be patronizing gifts meant to guilt you about how much they love you and how you are unable to care for yourself properly. Also, there will be checks. With the checks will be little check-ins. Did you cash the check yet? I see you didn’t cash the check yet. Did you get it? Could you just tell me if you got it? I know you don’t want to talk right now and that’s fine, you need space, but just let me know if you got the check? Or when you’re going to cash it? That’s all. Can you not even do that? Really? Are you that immature? Do you need help getting to the bank? Because I can drive you. It’s just a check, for chrissakes, you can’t even take free money?

After that phase passes, there will be a period of radio silence. It’s not over. It’s just a break. When it revs up again, it’ll be through third parties. My coworker saw you at the cafe. I hope you’re not drinking too much coffee. Here, your mother asked me to give you this trinket from your childhood. She seems really upset. I don’t know what happened between you, but I think she’s been through enough, don’t you?

If you can chop your way through that, there will be mostly silence. Except on birthdays, or Christmas. Then there will be passive-aggressive cards and gifts and FUCKING CHECKS.

Let’s shoot forward a few years. Let’s assume the cut-off has worked and they’ve stopped trying to drag you back. Here’s some shit you’ll have to put up with:

You Should Really Forgive and Forget

Strangers, friends, acquaintances, anybody who hears that you have an estranged family member will tell you to forgive and forget. They will tell you that family is wonderful and really more meaningful than whatever you’re going through. Also, bonus round, but WHEN YOU GET OLDER YOU’LL UNDERSTAND, double bonus round, BUT BY THEN THEY’LL BE DEAD AND YOU’LL REGRET IT. After dealing with this shit for years, I’ve found it’s best, for me, to not respond. Maybe give them an mmm, oh, that’s interesting, but it’s not worth it to explain my circumstances or refute their assumption of my personal feelings. If they cared about my circumstances, or my personal feelings, they would have asked.

What people are telling you when they have this round-up toy spiel is what they are capable of. They are not capable of cutting off their family. They are not capable of imagining a life without forgiveness. They are not capable, perhaps, of imagining your life. They are not capable of separating the word “family” from “blood relations.” They are not capable of conceiving of happiness without traditions. These are not bad things. It’s just them, the way they prefer to live. You live differently. The only thing is, you probably don’t go around accosting strangers and advising them to cut off their family, and if they don’t, they’ll grow old and regret all their years wasted placating and living in fear. So, stay that way. Don’t be that asshole. Just understand that other people don’t have the strength to live as you do, and you do not have the strength to live as they do, and that is all okay, as long as they shut up sometime goddamn soon.

You Are Capable of Leaving Me and I Am Terrified

You will get this from partners and from friends. They know you are capable of cutting off people you love very much, people you are supposed to be with forever. There is a line and it can be crossed, and after that, you are gone from their lives forever. They never seem to hear the, “You could always make amends,” part. Just the, “I am not speaking to you anymore,” part. Some people can’t handle that. A surprising amount of people can’t handle that. They can’t handle the fact that if they were to call you on your birthday you would not be pleasantly surprised and decide that it was really all so long ago anyway. They can’t handle the fact that if they blew into town you wouldn’t have an obligatory cup of coffee, or if they got married you wouldn’t call just to say congratulations. They can’t handle the fact that you wouldn’t friend them on Facebook, or ask other friends how they’re doing.

They can’t stand the fact that you could erase them and still manage to exist in the world, without them.

A friend of mine from college had cut off her family, too. She told me about an argument she had with an insecure, needy, hurtful boyfriend. He was pretty much entirely in the wrong, and when he had run out of arguments, he lashed out using her family. “I guess I just get scared,” he wheedled, “Because you cut off your family, I feel like you could cut me off, too.” She didn’t miss a beat. “Yeah,” she said. “I could. If that bothers you, we shouldn’t be dating.” She and I laughed about it later. As if it was supposed to hurt us, the idea that we could protect ourselves, that we could cut out the riffraff. I mean, she had cut off her ENTIRE family — a boyfriend was supposed to get her shaking now? Get a better ultimatum, man.

Flint tried to use this, too. So did an ex-girlfriend. During fights, they’d spit out something about how I can’t deal with family since I don’t have one. The truth was, I couldn’t deal with abuse if I wasn’t having it. If family meant what they were doing to me right then, then yes, I could not understand, would not understand, and would not participate. And that was fucking unacceptable to somebody who needed me to collude in their madness. They knew that if I made the choice to cut them off, it would be complete. We wouldn’t fight. They wouldn’t have any access to my feelings, my thoughts, my experiences, anything they could use to hurt me or know me.

When people say these things, try to cut me down for exercising my ability to define my boundaries, they are letting me know that they want to reserve the right to hurt me in specific ways. They are letting me know that if I stopped being a part of their life, they would lash out and refuse to let me go. They are telling me they expect this of me, they need this in place if they are to continue being my friend. They need to know that I will let them hurt me as a price for any love we shared. They are telling me that this is what they think love is.”]

get to know me meme ♡ 5 male characters [01/05]:

“I have, of course, been called many other things. Most of them uncouth, although very few were unearned. I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. You may have heard of me.”

— Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

Goddamn. Okay

one of the differences between good omens the show vs good omens the book that will always fuck me up is the post-bookshop fire scene. crowley goes from picking himself up, dusting himself off, accepting the loss of aziraphale and Just Driving Anyway to completely falling apart. i do get why people have gripes with it being changed so fundamentally, and i've thought about it a lot myself, but i've never been able to bring myself to get mad about it. i always circle back to how the book was written by two best friends. that drunken, wrecked, grief stricken scene was written in a post-pratchett world. he lost his best friend.

Listen Up Columbia! — Portraits from a campus in crisis Photographed by Gabriella Gregor Splaver

nobody better be posting about the met gala without mentioning the giant pro-palestine demonstration going on outside

why is religious Christmas imagery all so joyful and pleasant? where is the inherent horror of the birth of Christ? A mother is handed her newborn child, wailing and innocent. Her hands come away sticky. Red. Simply by giving her son life she has already killed him. He is doomed from the beginning. Her love will not save him from suffering. Because the thing cradled in her arms is not a baby, it is a sacrifice: born amongst the other bleating animals whose blood will one day be spilled in the name of what demands it. the night is silent with anticipation. Mary, did you know? That your womb was also a grave?

It is November of 1893. You have just killed a vampire. Exhausted and worn, you close your eyes and rest.

You wake up. It is May of 1893. You are on a train en route to Transylvania. Your diary says you have had queer dreams lately.

You try to believe it.

(An old woman puts a rosary in your hands. You accept it without question.)

You are a guest in a castle you have never been in before (you recognize every hallway and know without trying that every door is locked). Your host is a man you have never met before (you killed him you killed him you killed him he had turned to dust and there was blood on the snow).

One morning you cut yourself while shaving.

There is nobody behind you in the pocket mirror’s reflection.

You turn fast, and the razor is like a Kukri knife in your hand.

Thalia doesn’t keep many things in the hundreds of years she’s been alive. 

But long ago, there were people, their names all but distant memories, who mattered in her 1st lifetime. It’s their things that stay hidden in her bag, reminding her of her mortal life. 

A blue hoodie, worn almost threadbare. The scent of its original owner, long since leached from the fabric. But if she closes her eyes, she can almost see the blue eyes of her first and only love. 

A pair of glasses. Frames cracked and crooked. A reminder of a brother she never got to truly know. 

A baseball cap. It’s magic long faded, branded with a forgotten logo. Memories of a blonde girl laughing hidden deep within. 

A letter. Ink fading, paper yellow. The last words of a dying friend. Words that wish her well, words that wished her well in a world they had fought side by side to save. 

Thalia doesn’t keep a lot of things, but even after all this time, Luke, Jason, Annabeth, and Percy will stay with her forever. The memories of her first family to remind her why life is so beautiful.

maybe I'm reading into this too hard but... we clown on kaz for the sheer irony of “the trick is not to love anything, rollins", and considering this is not long after the bathroom scene, yeah lol, HOT bit of irony there. but... kaz said the trick.

yes, the overt meaning is the strategy, the way to do it, but... kaz said the trick, and this is kaz 'nothing up my sleeves' brekker, the sleight of hand magician. I think he meant that it only has to look that way. you'll see what kaz damn well wants you to see; he knows how to constantly turn up the face of the dirtyhands card while never letting you get so much as a look at kaz rietveld, even if he's somewhere in the deck. it's all about illusions, street magic, trickery! rollins' mistake was not loving his son, it was making it too visible, accidentally showing his hand. you only have to think the coin has disappeared; you can't see the coin, or the card, or the woman in the box, but they haven't really vanished. they're still there, somewhere, slipped away to maintain the illusion. kaz's love isn't visible, anymore... but that doesn't mean it's nonexistent.

(incidentally, what is kaz's greatest trick, if not finding the girl who seems to have vanished?)

Zombies shouldn't growl or snarl, they should babble a mixture of incomplete word sounds and whole words or sentence fragments. Every zombie should sound almost but not quite like it's trying to tell you something.

not romantic not platonic but a secret third thing [what would happen between earth and the moon if the earth stopped spinning as illustrated by xkcd randall munroe]

Leo boy

i just met a boy… well. "met" is a strong word. i'll start again

i just saw a boy. his hair was green his voice was deep his eyes were brown his brows were frowned

saw him and remembered-

i once knew a boy… well. "knew" is a strong word. lets try again

i once met a boy. his hair was dark his smile a spark his eyes were brown his words were sharp

he broke my heart

not on purpose i'd like to think though, sometimes, he was mean

and i didn't really want him but he was everything i wanted so effortlessly graceful never quiet or regretful

he was cool and fun and clever and it just kills me that i never got to raise up to his level cause he was always so much better

and all the girls who were around him were all so pretty, all so daunting and all the boys he used to talked to seemed so scary, laughed like barking

but he was cute, and we were kids. i think he was my friend's first kiss and i was jelous of the two cause one day, she stopped looking at me too

i never quite forgave them for i'm as bitter as i am proud but if they had let me in their circle i would have always stuck around

i just craved their validation flinched at every side-eyed glance and i always knew for certain he was the center of it all

if only he had liked me if only we'd been friends but we were only "an acquintance" that we knew a bit too well

cause we were side by side for years in this weird and awkward dance where we either didn´t talk or we had each others back

at least we had that, i suppose all the kids; a united front hand in hand, a silent oath against the adults and the such

we made memories together we broke boundaries together i'd like to know what he remembers from our time there in the trenches

cause i look back and i can't tell why we never crossed that line i would've loved to know him well but we just never seemed to align

if it's true that we have stars, ours were close but different paths and his always shone so bright and mine was always so behind

if it's true that we have stars, i'm a capricorn, a winter gal, so no surprise we grew apart. he's a leo after all

but i've gotten out of track, i said he broke my heart truth is i just couldn't bear the sight of him with someone else

not romantic, i don't care (plus i know now that he's gay) it's his friendgroup i can't stand cause all those people weren't there

not when we were eight, or ten or twelve not when we spilled orange juice out in the grass or when we climbed up that wall, not looking back

when we broke that door and lied for our lives when we won that gold and felt we could fly

when we got punished for not being perfect when we ran 'till our knees gave in when we got yelled at in a foreign accent i heard him swear he would not forgive

we went trough so much shit together it'll hurt me till the end that after nearly a fucking decade i could never call him "friend"

so,

i once met that leo boy i kinda loved that leo boy i didnt know that leo boy but i was raised with that leo boy

now,

i just saw that green-haired boy i kinda liked that green-haired boy i dont know that green-haired boy but i feel like he is a leo boy

oh, i am finally old enough to know why my parents took so long to grab their coats. why they would ask us to get ready to go only to sit down for another round of coffee. what would i tell myself, at 10 years old? it’s okay. sit down with them too. take in the extra hour with your friend and her family. when you get home, write down every moment in your diary. one day you will be older and you will be waving goodbye to your best friend, and you will turn the key to start your beat up little car engine, and you will look back over your shoulder. her hair will be blowing in the wind and she will be beautiful and you will be, for a moment, struck by all of it. what you will feel is so wide and nameless that it will engulf you. and you will think of being 14 and kicking her under the table in math every time you wanted to whisper something behind the teacher’s back. you will think about how long the days felt, and how you could hold her hand whenever you wished, but you didn’t. and you will think about all of the people you could have lingered with. and you will wish, more than you have ever felt a wish, that the universe just gave you that - more time to linger. more time to say - i love you. i know i need to leave, but i don’t want to leave you. and when i go, i am leaving a piece of my heart that lingers too. 

one more round of coffee. the days are so short, and you are so lovely.