I can’t remember if I’ve said this before but I think that if you make a Batman 1920s AU then you have to take into account that Bertie Wooster often spent time living in New York and Gotham City is just New York Noir and Bruce Wayne would probably cultivate the acquaintance of Bertie Wooster because Bertie is exactly the sort of person Bruce wants people to think he is, so it’s both birds of a feather camouflage and because he wants to observe Bertie for behavioural ideas.
Bertie, ray of sunshine that he is, thinks Bruce is jolly good fun and really quite barmy, but he already has a friend called Barmy and he can’t manage two Barmies so he affectionately dubs him Batty.
Consequently Bruce exists in a state of nagging uncertainty as to whether Bertie is the golden-hearted silly ass he so transparently appears to be, or is in fact one of his villains, knowing who he is and taunting him.
this is so good......
It's the spooky season...! To celebrate, please enjoy this 7-page horror comic featuring Brook that I made for "WHAT LURKS BENEATH", a One Piece horror zine full of incredible talent. After sales are only open until the end of October so please consider checking it out and grabbing a digital copy absolutely PACKED with amazing art & stories, and some of the nicest merch I've seen from a zine!
Okay, we all are sure that Pepa and Bruno drifted apart after her wedding day, but just imagine Bruno already feeling somewhat distant from his sister.
Like, he’s just started getting blamed for his visions. And he really needs to let all his strange emotions out, but his mom is off the table because she would HATE how he feels and lecture him about it. Julieta, though kind and loving, wouldn’t really understand. So that leaves Pepa.
But who is he to bring up a bad gift to Pepa? Who is Bruno to complain about his gift when he can just… turn it off. Pepa’s gift literally manifests clouds over her head and ruins days, crops, and clothing. Sure it’s still beneficial to the community, but he can tell that it makes Pepa stressed out.
And then after he tries to get her to calm down she blames him for making her gift act up. She claims that she hates him, and shuns him. Now the only person who could understand… is gone.
Their relationship is so tragic, and I love it.
Commission for my friend @nikodavisartwork !
Summary: A single note topples down the stave, and the symphony descends into a cacophony. When the theories are correct, gravity is a harness. But one note out of place turns the harness into a cage. Dr Siebren de Kuiper is no stranger to cages, but he never though his life’s work would turn against him so.
—✧—
“I’m starting to consider you something of a hypocrite, Dr De Kuiper.”
With a sharp inhalation and a painful jolting of his back, Siebren lurched up from where he had evidently fallen asleep at his desk. His face twisted as he stretched out the stiffness in his spine from having been hunched over, bones popping and reminding him that he really wasn’t of the age to be sleeping in his lab anymore.
A lithe hand quite unlike his own reached out to peel a stray document that had stuck to Siebren’s cheek — his rather poor excuse of a pillow for the previous night. “How many nights have you chased me from my research to go and sleep, yet here you are. Drooling into,” his research partner glanced at the paper she had removed from Siebren’s face, “…my research paper.”
“Hmm, then the blame lies in your writing, Dr O’Deorain,” the man offered by means of rebuttal. “I did not mean to fall asleep in the lab. Your research paper sent me to sleep, no?”
Moira O’Deorain was not a scientist who accepted constructive criticism. Siebren had been told this years ago when the 25-year old brilliance had applied to the role of research partner he had posted out into the scientific community. Apparently, this included criticism in jest.
A single eyebrow arched. Despite having worked together for three years now, Moira had not warmed much to Siebren’s humour. She often told him she did not laugh simply because “you’re not funny, Siebren, you’re rude.”
“I could hardly expect an astrophysicist to appreciate the finer details of science a little closer to home,” Moira noted curtly. “Not all brilliance and beauty must be found in the stars, Siebren. There’s universal wonder to be found right within the human body too; a whole universe of potential.”
“I hope that there is,” Siebren smiled, trying to smooth over the jagged edges of Moira’s frayed patience. He shoved his feet back into his shoes, having kicked them off the moment he had sat down to work the night before; a habit of his whenever he was working that often irked Moira as well. The man then got to his feet, stretching out the last of the restless and uncomfortable sleep he had subjected himself to. “Or I will have wasted your time bringing you here.”
더 보기
Encanto Spoilers!!!
.
.
Okay, I promise this will get to Bruno’s room but for starters, I think I should talk about how the casita’s rooms are implied to work. Sorry but it’s important!!
In both the film and the concepts, it very much seems that the casita’s rooms reflect a combination of who their owners are to others, and who their owners want to be. We only see a small handful of rooms in the film but this is best seen in Isabela’s room, which is a perfect, flowery, empty room. There isn’t any furniture that we can really see besides her hanging bed, the rest is all for show, literally advertising how perfect she is with topiaries of herself making “perfect, practiced poses”. This is who she wants, and strives to be for others, but secretly worries that she is lacking in identity outside of what she portrays to others.
Why is this important? Because her room changes with her. In “What Else Can I Do” her entire room shifts and changes just as she does– the more she explores herself and the freedom and passions she never knew she was capable of, the room grows more colorful and wild and more difficult to navigate with her.
The concepts for Luisa’s room were similar– her room concepts consisted of various training areas with a secret room that led to an amusement park– a place where she could just relax and be a kid, but that she felt the need to hide it from others to appear strong. Jared Bush also recently confirmed that Pepa’s room never had “a place for her to let loose”, that that was “part of her problem”-- insinuating she’s been taught to compartmentalize and suppress her emotions instead of letting them go.
So firstly. No way did Bruno’s room always look like… that. Casita would have never given a five-year-old that room. And it logically doesn’t make sense!! We know from extra content that when Bruno first got his gift he was the “golden child”-- that people were impressed by his gift to see the future, it was only when they believed that he caused bad things to happen that they rejected him. Does Bruno’s room really reflect that golden child?
One thing I noticed was that the wood to Bruno’s room is… hardwood. Underneath all that sand and rock is the remnants of the beginnings of a normal room. It seems like such an odd choice and detail to put there when the rest of the room is all built into natural surroundings. It looks like the remnants of a living space that’s just been covered up to the point of becoming unlivable. And when we examine the specific ways this room has become unlivable, it starts to paint a very interesting picture about Bruno and how he perceives himself.
So we know that over the years Bruno’s reputation has shifted from the “star child of the family” to the Madrigal that no one talks about except in hushed whispers– the one that people are afraid of and dislike. We know from implications as well as discussions from Jared Bush that Bruno had already started isolating himself long before leaving to protect Mirabel.
So what better way to isolate yourself than a literal mountain of spiraling stairs?
They’re so impossibly long that it’s clearly meant to keep most sane people out (sorry Mirabel, it’s true). And we know he didn’t have a shortcut, he used the excuse of the tower having a lot of stairs as a reason to not live there. But again, and I can’t stress this enough, no way did casita give a five-year-old that amount of stairs (and in such a dangerous fashion!).
They’re there to keep people out. Now whether this is because Bruno just wants to avoid them and keep people away from him, whether this is to keep people from harassing him for visions, or maybe (and likely) a combination of both, isn’t explicitly stated. We know that Bruno’s visions can be both emotionally and physically exhausting and draining– to the point of physical pain and weakness. It isn’t much of a surprise that he would want to avoid people asking for visions.
But personally? I think it was also out of a desire to protect people as well. He really starts to internalize this idea that he makes bad things happen, so the more he can avoid people, and the visions, the better. The more he hides away, the more a burden it all becomes, the longer and longer the stairs get.
They’re eventually disconnected completely from the door with an enormous gap. I think this was the last straw when Bruno broke the vision and left, and his door stopped glowing. It disconnected from the inner sanctum completely and the entire room disconnected from the casita. When Bruno disconnected from his family. When he rejected his gift, and with it, himself.
Mirabel knows the casita to the point of even being able to understand its non-verbal communication like she would anyone else, and she seems shocked that it cannot help in Bruno’s room, implying that this isn’t the norm for the magical rooms. His room is cut off because he is cut off. And the deleted scene “Chores” contributes to this idea. Félix says that “his room turned all rotten and gross and Abuela was like ‘no one is ever allowed in there again.’” We know that Alma forbids anyone from going into Bruno’s room because it’s ‘off-limits”, and we can clearly see how dangerous and unstable the room has got, so this isn’t out of the realm of possibility for film canon either. Like Luisa said, his room is off-limits for a reason.
His room refused to let anyone find that vision.
AND NOW FOR THE BEST PART. THE INNER CAVERN.
So after Mirabel risks her life to get to the inner part of Bruno’s room, we finally see these relief sculptures of Bruno on the walls. There’s no beating around the bush, they are terrifying. Empty eyes, blank expressions, gaping mouths. (And they pretty much prove that Bruno’s room didn’t look this way because they display the steps of his ritual, which Jared confirmed he invented himself later on after receiving his gift.) It’s a terrifying depiction of himself, meant to scare people away. He’s considered a curse, treated like the village bogeyman, and he’s clearly internalized these ideas about himself because his room reflects it so much here, in the same fashion that Isabela’s room flaunts the topiaries of her perfect posed stature.
But here’s something I have to mention. The designers did not simply pull this design out of thin air. It is heavily inspired by existing Colombian architecture… specifically burial tombs. The Tierradentro tombs, located in the southwest region of the nation in the Inzá municipality, were made somewhere between 600 and 900 CE and served as a burial site for elite groups. Their structural and decorative features are entirely unique and not found anywhere else on Earth, and the geometrical patterns within them signify the individuals buried there.
Bruno feels that he, or at least the version of himself that his family wants from him, is dead. The star child. He had tried to cling to this idea, to be someone they could be proud of, but he just doesn’t know how. His family no longer understands him. He feels like a stranger who has replaced the person they used to love, who’s now buried in a literal tomb of self-doubt.
A tomb that Mirabel almost dies in because of how unstable and disconnected it has become. A tomb that follows an infinitely long spiral staircase up to a room filled with spiraling imagery– all to find a man who truly has spiraled. And one who isn’t there because he is so terrified of hurting people.
Bruno’s room looks the way it does because of his warped self-image that has become so twisted over the years. This internalized perception that he hurts people- that he causes these twists of fate- and while I think he knows on a logical level that this isn’t how his gift works, clearly doubt has infected the way he feels. We can see it in the way he treats Mirabel, wanting to push her away at first because he’s scared he’ll somehow hurt her, refusing to do visions, refusing to help until she tells him that the family needs him. And that’s all he ever wanted, really.
they probably need to talk
so gemma was orpheus all along. when she looked back, called mark’s name, and asked him to come home.. innie mark realized he had no feelings for this woman. if she had stayed facing forward maybe the allegiance to his outie would have won out. but gemma turning around made him hesitate long enough for helly to appear. and when she called his name.. it was game over. eurydice embraced the underworld with open arms.
I think everybody has felt the punch of feels because of Bruno’s plate drawn on his little table, but there’s something that caught my attention since the first time I watched the movie and I wanted to talk about it: where he drew that plate.
Bruno’s table is a direct extension of the family table, it’s in perfect alignment with the one his family uses every day. And he didn’t draw the plate beside that crack in the wall to actually see his family while he’s pretending to be sat with them. He didn’t draw it at the head of his table to face the wall either, which would be like sitting right behind Alma. He drew it on the right side.
Except Alma, who always occupies the head of the table (obviously), there’s no way to know if they always sit in the same order or not. We only see them eat two times: breakfast in the morning of the fateful day and dinner with the Guzmán for Isabela’s proposal, and both times the table has a different arrangement. But I think each Madrigal has indeed a specific seat assigned, and their usual order is this:
Antonio, Dolores, Isabela, Camilo and Agustín at Alma’s right, and Félix, Pepa, Mirabel, Luisa and Julieta at Alma’s left (let’s remember that in this moment abuela had moved Mirabel to her side, but she was originally sat between Pepa and Luisa).
During the dinner, there’re guests there occupying two extra seats and altering the order, but each movement can be easily tracked.
Mariano and his mother have to sit next to Alma, and Isa has to sit beside Mariano, so Pepa and Félix move to the opposite side of the table. Julieta, as the bride’s mother, sits in front of Mariano’s mother too. Luisa could’ve kept her seat, but Mirabel has to sit in front of Dolores to keep an eye (or both eyes) on her, and Agustín sits beside Mirabel for the same reason. But everything else is more or less the same. Camilo, Dolores and Antonio remain in their side of the table, as well as Mirabel; in fact, Camilo is occupying his seat, he hasn’t moved at all.
During the breakfast outside (and during dinner), they’re not using their plates, but we can see Mirabel setting the table with them at the beginning of the movie, right before the Family Madrigal song. And she’s arranging the plates in the same order. More important: in this moment, after the disastrous dinner, we can see the plates arranged in that same order again.
Those plates are there for no reason, the Guzmán just left, everything’s a chaos, it has no sense that the family has removed the dinner to set those plates and leave them there. This is just a narrative device, because Mirabel is peeking through the crack from Bruno’s hideout, she’s seeing what he sees, and she’s seeing a table in which every member of the family has a specific seat with their name.
And what’s Bruno’s seat?
At Alma’s right. He has always sat at his mother’s right, and he has kept doing it even from inside the walls, because that’s his seat (probably the one Antonio occupies now).
To be honest, it’s not just about Bruno’s plate. What I love the most about this thing is all those combos with the rest of the family: if that was Bruno’s seat, that would mean Dolores used to sit right beside his tío; Dolores and Isa always sit together; Antonio always sit beside his big sis; Pepa and Félix always sit side by side, and Julieta and Agustín always sit face to face; Mirabel always sit beside Luisa. Agustín was the one who took care of Camilo when they were eating, and Pepa was the one who took care of Mirabel. And I think every single one of these combinations, as a reflection of their family life, is just wonderful.
The AU-blog Ankh-Morpork University is on summer hiatus, but I couldn’t resist making something for it and agentsandyquinn (whose art style I dearly love you should maybe follow them).
A la Colour of Magic, Rincewind has maybe kind of accidentally stolen the final exam answers, and is fleeing with his loyal Lug-gauge bike*, given to him by the exchange student Twoflower in his freshman year.
*Which is on a personal best this term of breaking seven legs of enterprising thieves, causing a few hundred shin bruises and severing one toe with the bike chain. This is a malicious bike ok. Rincewind always gets it back, because no one else can touch it without causing themselves injury.
What if…