dusk’s hidden fear of the encroaching night

Morimens is really funny in contrast because it commits to horror and has Birth all over the place. Thais and the chapter centered around her (7*) is all about that, but it's also a central thing with a couple of chapters before, where a priestess tries to revive a God through a ritual that involves a gestation and birth. They take a few steps to the side, like not saying -how- it got in there, and putting the "egg" next to the heart, but also the entire time you're fighting pregnant women and babies. And it's made very clear how the relationship between this young girl and the priestess is fucked (essentially mother-daughter, but her religion has her blinded to the girl's personhood and only sees a path for her faith)

Or like just the fact that Caro has a central mechanic of Eating Embryos. "Emergency Gnosis", the item that lets you retry, has an ghostly embryo floating inside. They just did a collab with Saya no Uta.

They don't shy away from sex in its depiction but it's also not saying anything that we haven't seen before in... most horror that touches these things. It feels like they understand the visceral discomfort of these things, but don't engage in any meaningful way. I've been playing FFXIV on and off recently, and I'm kind of shocked at how many rape allusions it has? and they're not done with any tact. It's either to paint a generic bad guy as Disgusting and Evil with a cartoonish tone, or going "damn isn't that scary? anyway fight Faceless Bandits". It's just. Almost joking. The text is written understanding that this is shocking but doesn't engage at all as to why, nor does it care how it can affect to just throw that on an audience. It's also, coincidentally, really racist.

Like this. And it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful to hear a soliloquy I loved so much already, and have it come to life in a way it never, ever, did before. I feel like I grasp his motivations, his twists and turns, no longer on an academic level but on a visceral, instinctive one. Because he’s presenting his mental and emotional journey in a way that speaks honestly, like a real person.

It's silly because even if they state that racism isn't a thing in the setting, the text is written by an author that exists in the real world, and the real world and its languages are thoroughly permeated by racism.

Sure, no racism in the setting, but Heath is dark skinned in an adopted family of blondes and called various variants of "dog" like okay sure not racist? "it's because he's poor". That doesn't matter. We, the audience, live in a world where Dark Skinned Poor Boy in Family of Blondes is straight racism, and that colors the word "dog" as it is used in real life. The visual language we use to tell the story is language from real life!

I don't think KJH and his writers are oblivious of the texts they're borrowing from. They sure did keep the intimacy shared between Ishmael and Queequeg, but I don't think they'll ever say anything with their full chest. It's really hard to not see the racism kept in C6 from Wuthering Heights.

Demian touches gender and sexuality, and we have hints of that with Sinclair. Is Frau Eva ever showing up? is that going to be discussed? or is things like Sinclair wearing the feminine version of the Blade Lineage uniform just going to be left there for funsies?

C11 with Outis has the chance of have actual for real lesbians married, but I don't know if they'll take it. They should. Frame it as completely normal and unremarkable. You can't say "gender doesn't affect the story" anymore, sir.

Denied water, blankets, and most of their clothing.

Forced to kneel for hours and kicked if they moved or spoke.

Moved from room to room periodically to deprive them of sleep.

Locked in a darkened container.

Serious injured in their eyes, ears, and rib-cages with tasers.

Beaten by multiple soldiers, breaking ribs, fracturing vertebrae.

Stripped, sexually harassed, and groped.

Sexually violated, anally raped, and forcibly penetrated with a handgun.

This is what Israel did to people who were only under their control from Tuesday to Friday, less than a week. This is what Israel did to people from Germany, Italy, Spain, France, and others of the global north. This is what they did to protesters showing solidarity on a global stage who have lawyers and news attention.

Imagine what they do to Palestinians every day.

Please help my friend Mahmoud to support his family in Gaza. His family's campaign is vetted by @90-ghost, shared by fairuzfan, and hosted by my wife @cannilyuncanny. She transfers donations directly to Mahmoud's sister Mahrah (@mahrahpalestine), who lives in Gaza with her elderly parents.

I've seen a few posts saying that people tend to read stories as historical retelling of fiction rather than stories, and so they forego that angle entirely.

The thing is that PM is writing about stories since the very start (what abnormalities are, fundamentally, is archetypal constructs for that: it's language) and even Lobotomy Corporation makes some very straight forward statements about "tales" (particularly in hell week, with the A reflections and the language they use ("you can rewind time, but you can't reverse a tale") and the ordeals of White ("As long as the Head rules the City, the tale of the Nest will never reach its conclusion")). Ruina then does it again both in the context of the Index and the Head, with the former being way more subtle (the basic premise of the Will of the City is that actions create the environment to replicate themselves, which doesn't take a lot of work to see how that relates to Telling Stories) but the head just straight up says citizens make stories in the cultivated environment of the City.

Limbus is getting pretty heavy on that, sometimes direct with C6 (the Erlking being way more similar to book Heathcliff than the sinner, and that the sinner and Dante are very explicitly trying to do something different) and sometimes not exactly that (The whole Don Quixote thing is -about telling stories of your adventures- and directly related to desire). But, like, it's there, and the more you pay attention to how the sinners take the source material and respond to it the more you notice this intertextual dynamic: they're very explicitly talking with the source in mind.

C9 expects you to understand that it's taking from Hell Screen and A Spider's Thread to understand the characters. It alludes very directly in dialogue to both them around the Araya/Rien final segment, but it's asking you to consider what characters and themes from those stories are being used and how. Like "who is Yoshihide" well, Ryoushuu, but it's not just her, because the nursefathers also take from Yoshihide. Araya is clearly the daughter, but so is Ryoushuu herself, and then Araya "jumps into the fire" like the monkey Yoshihide. Ryoushuu is also the painter and the painting. At the same time, who is the spider? who is the sinner? what is the thread? "Hell" is obviously the House of Spiders. Araya has this funny scene using red thread to make a spider's web that turns into a ladder that is so on the nose, but that's it, right? Some nursefathers want to leave, some don't, they're all cast into hell. Ryoushuu is their way out, but because of the mistreatment, they don't get a thread to climb out from hell. Ryoushuu treated Araya like a kid instead of a thing, and that was her spider's thread to leave the house, but that came with its own set of issues- the story repeatedly connects this thread to the red string of fate, and talks about how they tangle and knot with each other. It's never that simple.

It talks to the source and transforms it to say something about, as usual, cycles and stories.

Rien is wearing a mask of a man wearing a mask. They, on principle, do it for the same reasons: (detachment and taking no accountability. "The prescripts said so" - "that's just how the city is") but ultimately end up in different places. Is it absolute or not? Roland said determinism doesn't matter, choose what you want, but he had to reconcile that it means being responsible for his actions in the end. Rien couldn't do that. "The City" still wanted a "Roland". I compared him to the John Wick type of tragic badass dude killing hundreds because they took something from him (wife, car, dog- whatever, it's "his" rather than a person). I think it's worth thinking why this is done in this way, right? And how Rien is in dialogue with that.

Like, there's something to be said about what language is relegated to what parts of the setting. The Ruins are physically below the City (where stories are being made) and the Relics taken from there are all from old mythology. These old stories that the new are built upon.

There's this thing with Mirror Worlds and the nugget of explicit context we get in the Jia Ishmael story- They're not a natural occurrence, they're made by the will of the observer (this is a repeated concept, too, starting with EGO in LC, and it becomes way more prevalent in Leviathan with the recurrence of "gaze" and now in Limbus too). This is also reinforced by an observation Dante makes with the mirror: If it is indeed infinite, how come the results we see aren't? why do they follow a certain through line? (with C6, it was Cathy and Nelly being only able to see themselves miserable)

It's clear that PM cares about "stories" as a concept. Abnormalities ("fantasies" really) are leaning more into the "building blocks of stories" aspect of Archetype and not exclusively the psychological.

Like sure the lore and whatever but how do we interpret the way these things work? Why is Identity such a strong and persistent theme here, even outside of IDs? (Who is Gregor? Who is Rodya? Who is Sinclair going to be? Who is Yi Sang? Who is Ishmael? Who is Heathcliff? WHO IS DON QUIXOTE? WHO IS JIA BAOYU/HONG LU? WHO IS YOSHIHIDE/RYOUSHUU? Who -is- Dante?)

I suppose it’s been culturally decided that it’s an unnecessary step in the bedtime process. We’re busy bastards, aren’t we? Who makes their bed every morning, I mean, really?

Perhaps, also, our clothing is no longer of the material and methodology where you have to spend extra time/attention/tools on them. Pyjama cases may have had some benefit - extending the life of the pyjamas, or something. Perhaps it was more common in those days for mice to climb into your silk pyjamas, or they kept them from being attacked by dogs, or something. It’s possible that there are unspoken benefits to keeping your pyjamas in a stuffed toy, which previous generations knew instinctively and we have forgotten. Some people are like that, they maintain rituals and practices that don’t get written down, and so become arcana. My father-in-law owns special clothing maintenance tools such as shoe trees (which you place in your shoes every night at night) and trouser presses (in which you leave your worn-but-not-dirty trousers overnight so they are crisp in the morning). He irons his pocket handkerchiefs - why? so that they fold into a precise pocket shape, with the same fold pattern as plastic-wrapped disposable tissues: the optimised shape for pockets. You are not going to read in the literature about there being a reason for ironing pocket handkerchiefs. It is a habit that is not captured by history. You have to speak to a practitioner to even consider that there is a specific value in pocket handkerchief folding. Maybe we operate at a remove from the people who could have told us why they bothered with the idea and then stopped.

You can buy a selection of pyjama cases online, but with no explanation of why you’d want to, it’s hard to see how this helps. The only real thing i can see is that it’s cute and tidies the pyjamas up, but we’ve all decided that untidy pyjamas are a problem that doesn’t need solving.

From “Lockesley Hall” (1842)

From Wuthering Heights (1847)

From Barry Lyndon (1975, adapted from an 1844 novel)

In all three cases there is a:

Poor and Vengeful Suitor -> His Fickle Female Childhood Sweetheart -> Her Rich Suitor

In Lockesley Hall Poor and Vengeful Suitor demeans Her Rich Suitor’s love for His Fickle Female Childhood Sweetheart by likening it to the love for a pet.

In Wuthering Heights Poor and Vengeful Suitor demeans His Fickle Female Childhood Sweetheart’s love for Her Rich Suitor by likening it to the love for a pet.

In Barry Lyndon His Fickle Female Childhood Sweetheart likens her own love for Poor and Vengeful Suitor to the love for a pet.

A life shaped by hard experience ⚔️

The line: Nelly make me decent.

Every part of that 4word sentence is so deliberately chosen and so specific in its context, as spoken by a person of color.

First off, it’s the fact that it’s not a question, but an order. At that point Heathcliff’s position in the house has been reduced to no more than a servant, but he still ‘orders’ Nelly to fix him up, as would a man of the house, more so for his innate aggression and resignation, rather than a false sense of superiority.

Secondly, he calls her ‘Nelly’. Not Ellen, like how Cathy calls her in front of Edgar when she wants to appear like a proper mistress. It’s almost affectionate in its ever-present informality when it comes from Heathcliff, so it sort of strips the “command” of any real authority.

Then it’s the “make me”. He is not asking for “help” tidying himself, or for her to pick some clothes for him, or comb his hair. “Make me” is much more brutal, to the point, and efficient. Like he doesn’t know exactly what it is that will make him look better, specifically, and just wants to be “fixed” all around. ‘Make me’ removes all agency from Heathcliff, and places him entirely in the hands of Nelly, like he is a dog to be groomed.

And obviously “decent” is layered as well. In a more modern context, “decent” could also be something of a measurement. Something “good enough” or “okay” but not great by any means. Passable. Tolerable. Mediocre. But also, with the context of the era, “decent” also used to mean generally dressed or presentable. (ie: “don’t enter the room, i’m not decent” meaning im not wearing all my clothes).

But obviously, when Heathcliff is saying this, he is not naked, just in his normal, every day clothes that have been dirtied with mud and all sorts of stains associated with stable work. In this scene, for the first time, Heathcliff has come to perceive his default appearance as unsightly, but not something that can just be done away with a new set of clothes and a shave,, because part of his indecency, he realises, are his innate features. His status of birth.

The concept of people of color having to be “trained” or “tidied” or “cleaned up” to match their ‘betters’ has been around since forever. They have been told their appearances are inherently inferior. They can be helped with some grooming,, like clothes, and hair and a bath,, though it’s been hammered into them that will never measure up to the “real deal”. They can only ever afford to be “decent.” Not great, not beautiful, not handsome— just decent.

Nelly make me decent as in: Nelly tame me.