#[ who would've expected it

[zazikels]

worst downgrade in the history of downgrades

[fromtheseventhhell]

Imagine being 9 years old and asking your dad about the things you're interested in doing when you grow up and he's like "No ❤️! But you can get married, have babies, and then maybe your sons can do those things ☺️🫶 "

[murdockhawkeye]

this is *maybe* a bit of a stretch but i still find interesting to think about? don't know if i have everything right

but

i feel like with the elemental opposite duos - emma & rikki, cleo & bella - you could reasonably say their arcs'd mirror each other in a way

like

emma and rikki have issues with responsibility/expectations but on opposite ends of the spectrum

emma was a gifted child, everyone had high expectations for her and she tried to meet those expectations the best she could. she’s responsible emma, who makes sure everyone is looked after, and everyone “knew” was going to become a top athlete, because look at all those trophies on her shelf

and then rikki on the other hand, was alone for “her own good.” she admitted to elliot that no one really liked her growing up, so when somebody did, it made her feel weird and she pushed them away. she stayed away from other people, made sure they never had any expectations of her

they both avoided disappointing others, by going to opposite extreme lengths

and then they overcame these issues, with emma facing a sudden change in her life (becoming a mermaid) that meant she had to give up her swimming dreams and disappoint the people in her life (that had to suck for her, honestly.) she had to come to terms with that - but then, she also found a whole new world that she’d never have been a part of, if things had gone the way she planned

and as for rikki - her biggest change wasn't the tail, but becoming friends with emma and cleo. had she'd her way and zane’d never gotten cleo stuck on that boat, she’d never become friends with them. rikki had to learn the hurdles of friendship and of keeping them, like when she mistook the different kinds of fish, when cleo and emma didn't support her relationship with zane, etc. they had their issues - but in the end, they were there for rikki, and rikki was there for them back. she'd have never gotten that kind of solidarity, had things gone the way she thought it would

and then there’s cleo and bella

bella - unfortunately, didn’t have much in terms of development, since the writers prioritized will’s relationship with her over expanding her character background+ for some reason ??

so i'm just mostly going to talk about cleo here first - but i'll get to bella in a second

cleo by s3 is a very confident and self-assured person; but she didn't start out that way. she was insecure, somewhat naive. she grew up overshadowed by her two best friends, the both of them being gifted in their own rights - emma, the young up and rising athlete, and lewis the science genius, they were sure to go places. cleo, on the other hand, was overlooked. she didn't have much going for her - except for adequate grades and a love of the marine life that was hindered by her fear of water

and then cleo became a *literal* mermaid. either she was going to avoid it or overcome it. in the end, she didn't just overcome her fear of water, but she also took a risk by taking that job at the marine park, where she'd be working right by the marine animals. she let her fear control her before, and she wasn't going to let it stop her from wanting to pursue things anymore

(funny, she started out with a fear of water, then became a mermaid. she struggled with her grades, then became a science genius)

bella, much like cleo - had her own issues when it came to the kind of attention she got, but the other way around. her first appearance, she was being catcalled. same ep, nate is drooling over her. they've made her beauty a point throughout s3. even cleo and rikki's brought it up. it. could not have been easy for her to deal with that, especially with her secret in mind

seeing that, even with the different issues when it came to attention, i think they'd still have had the same feelings about it. a younger bella, probably would've been similarly insecure/anxious as cleo had been - until she learned to be more sure about herself and grew into the bella we know and love today

(we should've gotten way more lore and background about bella, agh)

tldr; emma and rikki have same feelings but opposite reactions (people pleasing and people avoiding.) cleo and bella opposite situations but same feelings (overshadowed and center of attention)

yk, rikki was right in a way i think about the "universal law," but like, more about keeping in balance and not about trios. emma and rikki balance each other out, cleo and bella were *meant* to balance each other out. but in s2, bella wasn't there - charlotte was

do i blame the antagonizing of charlotte and cleo's out of characterness on the writers, or do i blame it on some magical semi-canon mermaid universal law about balance

blaming it on a mermaid universal law sounds more fun, and could have interesting implications. (though the writing grates me, still)

[konigsblog]

some people when the dark content is in fact, dark 😱

[5-turtleducks-in-a-trenchcoat]

I just started another relisten of rqg and I thought it would be fun to animate that moment from episode 4 when Bertie drops a piano on a guy.

The audio of the piano falling down is piano crash.wav by CGEffex on freesound.org because apparently I'm not allowed to throw my mom's piano out of the window.

I also put just the backround under the cut because I do kinda like it.

[romanticatheartt]

Anti Amren crowd are the most unserious people ever lmao

[psychomusic]

so. I've been reading some posts on the jedi order tag AND i won't talk about my opinion on "are jedi good or bad discourse" BUT i wanna point out some lore to everyone who's complaining about the jedi taking kids into their order: (in the EU) it wasn't always like this.

if you take swtor era (more than 3000 years before the prequels) there were many jedi who joined at an older age. like, for example there was a guy who broke his engagement to become one. most jedi remember their families because they were old enough when they decided to go.

THEN in darth bane's book trilogy (circa 1000 yesrs before the prequels) there is a passage where two sith lords are talking about taking bane, already an adult, to study at korriban. one doubted him because he was too old, ans the other told him he sounded like a jedi, and that ONE DAY jedi will have to accept only kids into their ranks if they really want to find "pure" people that can learn their lessons quicker.

one day!! so it wasn't always like that!! the ongoing wars with the sith, who corrupted and killed many of them, had pressured them into taking always younger people into their ranks.

also, consider a thing that this video explains super well: training to become a jedi is not like exercising, because there is a transformative lesson at the end of the training that changes everything. you can't just do as much as you can, but not finish.

the transformative lesson, as the video explains, is that through the force, everything is the same - from rocks and ships to life and death. at the end of the training you have to understand this fundamental truth.

yoda says "you have to unlearn what you have learned". during times where they were constantly killed off or corrupted by the dark side (and if you haven't learned this lesson you are more susceptible to this corrupting), younger people were taken in to actually finish their training (a training that was ultimately about being a good person AND that you could leave at any point if you weren't sold on that, too)

(remember that for the sith failure = death. like. that was the alternative for force sensitive kids. it's not like sith had any moral problem with taking kids away without consent. sith don't have moral problems: they believe that them being stronger in the force means they can do whatever they want as long as their strong enough to go and do it. there are MANY passages in many different star wars stories, even in different mediums, that say this out loud)

AND (this is more of a critical thought than just stating the lore) the fact that they started doing it out of necessity doesn't mean it's 100% good BUT you know. the whole set up of the prequels is that we're starting off the story in a period of crisis and decadence all around. most of the systems of the times were about to fall. OF COURSE they had problems. if they didn't, we wouldn't have the story to begin with.

that doesn't automatically mean jedi = bad and sith are better, tho. you wouldn't take the last, chaotic and decadent period to jugde something, would you? it's like deciding that the athenian democracy sucked because people at the times of Demosthenes failed at recognizing the new schemes in which the world was evolving into, and still believed that their city would be important as it had been in the previous century. They just didn't fucking expect the Macedons would conquer half the world known and more, and have the subsequent political power. Still, their experiences in the 5th century with democracy were very good, even better than ours on many fronts, if you contextualize a little. the jedi had flaws, and most importantly, they didn't fucking know the future and everything that ever happened, ever, so they made mistakes. that doesn't automatically make the system ill, or bad, or not-working. systems can have setbacks when the world changes. (just like athenian democracy had one when they lost the empire that was funding the democracy. they even had a tyranny for a while and then fixed the problems. that doesn't diminish retrospectively their democracy)

[kivaember]

i just wanted rusty to yell worm

-

Rusty paid little notice to the PCA's System droning over the spaceport's failing network, its feminine voice rasping with static and its syllables stated with clinical flatness. He was more focused on his heart beating rabbit-fast in his chest, uncomfortably hot as his body came down from the adrenaline rush of going toe-to-toe with the PCA's most cutting-edge mech.

He'd grown too reliant on STEEL HAZE's nimbleness. The 'HC' he had fought had been just as nimble and precise, its feet never touching the ground as the gigantic boosters installed on its shoulders gave the mechanical impression of wings, elegant and authorative when combined with its sleek body.

He wouldn't be surprised if the PCA named those mechs 'Archangels' or something equally pretentious, Rusty thought darkly. Their cold guardians wielding burning blades of plasma, and cutting down the innocent sinners fighting to survive in a scorched eden, condemned for the simple sin of living.

"Tired," Rusty mumbled, realising the caustic poeticness of his own thoughts. He always did find his mind travelling in odd directions after a hard battle. "But at least that should be the end of it."

The PCA's System had finally shut up for once, leaving a ringing silence in its wake. Rusty cast a quick glance over his HUD, seeing nothing but the blinking blue dot of Raven's AC somewhere out of sight. The battlefield they had fought the HCs was a twisted maze of two collapsed warships, debris crafting towering walls of bent metal that threatened to topple over from a too-powerful gust of wind. Rusty's HUD indicated Raven was somewhere slightly elevated. On one of the crashed ships?

He activated their comms, wondering what Raven was up to. Maybe it was a little self-centred to point it out so bluntly, but after a successful shared sortie, Raven usually came gamboling up to him with a muted sort of eagerness. It was odd for him to simply wander off without (figuratively) saying a word.

"Hey, buddy," he said. "What're you-"

The ground trembled minutely, and a few of those towering metal walls shuddered warningly, their shrieks drowning out his words. Rusty tensed, but his HUD didn't indicate an artillery strike or an orbital bombardment. Tectonic activity, maybe? The Central Ice Fields were prone to devastating earthquakes every few years or so. They had caused the earth to swallow up more than a few old cities, the capital included.

Another tremble, more violent, and one metal wall collapsed with a tremendous crash. One of the shipwrecks started to peel apart as well, its broken skeleton causing the already split hill to fall away from the continuous vibrations.

"Buddy, we need to go," Rusty said, keeping his tone calm but threaded with a taut urgency. STEEL HAZE leapt upwards in a boost-assisted jump, and he chanced a glance towards Raven - seeing his AC standing atop of the sturdier shipwreck, staring East-Northeast.

"Buddy," he said again when Raven stayed in place. He made STEEL HAZE hover, a hint of impatience in his voice as the vibrations grew worse: "This place isn't tectonically safe. We need to-"

«Worm.»

What?

Rusty stared at that word blinking across his HUD in open bafflement. He opened his mouth slowly, wondering if the vibrations had Raven mistyped, and asked: "W-"

The ground exploded in a shower of frozen rock and cement, a metallic groan-shriek reverbing through the air in deafening volume. The snow that plumed upwards with the explosion created a brief obscuring haze, but it quickly thinned, revealling something huge- no, massive, towering, jet-black, rusting metal coated in permafrost, its flat head bending low towards them, a great, massive, unearthly-!

"Worm?!" Rusty blurted in disbelief, and was very nearly crushed as a result when said worm promptly bellyflopped at them.

-

Later, far later, after the pang of terror at coming face to, err, face with an ancient C-Weapon capable of squashing him like an ant unintentionally had faded, and a sharper, colder fear at realising the entity was utterly impervious to any and all weaponry, Rusty was forced to sit in a dark meeting room with the other Vespers where they reviewed the Ice Worm's first appearance.

Forced to sit there, and listen to his past-self's high-pitched, comically startled shriek of "woRM?!?!" echo over his combat log's recording, as said worm aimed a deadly bellyflop his way.

He hadn't died, obviously... but it would've been one embarrassing way to die, in retrospect.

"...worm," Pater mumbled under his breath. A muted, not-quite titter rippled through the rest of the Vespers - sans Snail, of course - and Rusty had to fight the urge to sink low in his seat until he disappeared entirely underneath the table.

Would've been even more embarrassing to have 'worm' as his last word, though.

[nobodyspecialhereblog]

ARTFIGHT #4, MANAGED TO GET IT BEFORE IT ENDED WHEW BOY. I honestly didn't expect to be able to get this done but sudden post of energy and motivation near the deadlines made me make a piece I'm actually very happy with.

if not obvious i had fun with the brushes.

Characters are Xewka and Liv

Extra WIPs:

fun fact about the second one! I was planning to leave it only at that since I genuinely didn't think I would've completed it! :0 who would've guessed slowing down a little makes it feel more doable ahaha.

[acheronidae]

I finally drew the gays :3

[creaturefeaster]

Any tips on raising animals, specifically dogs? Just had a puppy today and named it after Frigus lol.

Long paragraphs below, hiding under a readmore. Also I absolutely love that. There's a real freakin' Frigus out there..... wow...

There's a lot of common sense things you could probably easily find online, but something that I think is always very swept under the rug is pure consistency. That goes with any animal. An animal is not going to be able to learn to be comfortable around you, if it doesn't know what to expect.

If you are tipping your toes around trying to avoid scaring a flighty dog all the time, you best be prepared to do that the entire time you own them because that is what they will learn to work with. Otherwise when you try acting normally, it will confuse and stress them out. If you just behave as you will from the start, not compromising your way of life for the sake of your pet, they will adapt and be happier for it, understanding you at your most you, knowing what to expect.

I grew up around a lot of dogs, big and small. Cats too. My first real pets I raised myself were chickens, ducks, and geese. I have a rescue dog now too. Chickens become very flighty of you and any other human if you don't hang around them enough, touch them, hand feed them. Bother them all their life, they get used to it and sometimes even learn to love it. At the very least they grow up to tolerate it enough for me to be able to look at them when they are hurt. They know what to expect from me, after all.

My geese become agitated around other people, because those people (understandably!) clam up and act awkwardly. They change and stiffen their body language. If there is anything I've learned from my geese it'd be to never waver. Don't aggress, of course, but a lot of animals in the pet world have different levels of "how much can I get away with?". Geese have very high levels, and the second you let them know they've scared you, they take fullll advantage of that. They like to have fun bothering things if they can get away with it. So being consistent in your body language is key. And I'm not going to work around the lot constantly being stiff. I'm going to walk like me, and they understand that because I've never done anything different.

Dogs, for instance, may see you giving into their stubbornness every now and then-- they are sitting down when you don't walk they way they want to walk, so you end up going they way they want, for instance-- and double down each time you try to correct this behavior. If they know they've gotten away with it in the past, they will probably be able to get away with it again. It can be awkward, or boring, but if you're consistent about not giving in (or at least not rewarding them in any way if you can't get them to behave), they won't know that the probability exists to begin with.

Other than that... respect boundaries. Learn their body language in turn. A lot of sites will tell you what to look for in dogs in terms of fear, stress, early aggression, body tension, whatever. They're good starter points, but every dog is different. Every animal is different. Some are easier to read than others, and some tolerate things better than others. Some have different histories and backgrounds and past experiences that shape their reactions. You have a puppy so hopefully this part won't apply to you. But some dogs, they'll show those whites under their eyes even if they aren't stressed. Some dogs are growly but they don't mean it in an aggressive way. Like I said, it can be hard to correctly read some dogs until you get to know them.

Always familiarize and reinforce handling them-- if you want your dog to like pets as an adult, of course you always reinforce petting as a puppy! That mindset goes for everything you want your dog to tolerate you doing in the future, but sometimes dogs also just don't like certain things, and if your dog ends up hating their paws played with no matter how much you've tried, you shouldn't do it more than necessary if you can tell it stresses them out. Or you try and make it fun, which can work (as long as you're consistent, which is basically the theme of this ask at this point)... but it still might not always help. Depends on their temperment. It's good to try offering treats and other fun stuff while enforcing behaviors that are a little scary or stressful for a dog, to see if it helps. But if it doesnt, just learn to respect them if you can't buy their tolerance, lol.

And also if your puppy is a purebreed of anything, I hope you read up on their energy levels and temperments and proper coat care and the like, and that you're prepared to match those needs. It's too sad seeing people get border collies or other high energy dogs, but they live in an apartment or they never give them anything to occupy themselves with. It's sad to see very busy people getting breeds that thrive best in human company. Sad to see dogs with high maintenance coats being neglected the amount of time and care they need.

Okay okay okay very wordy I'll end it here, but those are just things I always wish more pet owners practiced and considered. 🪿🖤

[worstloki]

Avengers genderbend where every member backstory or appearance is SO DRASTICALLY different due to the gender switch. except Loki who is exactly the same

[batsplat]

kind of recently clocked that marc took caseys honda seat coming into 2013 (not saying he didn’t deserve a factory seat immediately bc he obviously did, kid went and podiumed his first and won his second ever race on that bike but it somehow never crossed my mind and it’s kind of insane to imagine now that a rookie would get it) and i was wondering if there was something To Know about that mid to end 2012 season, about vale back to yamaha and casey retiring and casey and danis teammateship and how dani reacted to marc getting that seat etc i love love love your rambles so if you got thoughts please share?

y'know what. let's do this one with bullet points

at the start of 2012, retirement rumours were swirling around two riders. one was casey stoner.... the other was valentino rossi

valentino was entering year two of a miserable stint at ducati, trapped on a bike that was *checks notes* shit and that was still several years away from making the kinds of improvements that could make it championship-winning machinery in anyone's hands (remember, even casey wasn't anywhere close to fighting for the title in 2010). it had also been a rough couple of years injury-wise for valentino, with 2010 bringing the shoulder injury courtesy of a motocross accident, followed by him breaking the leg at mugello. the painful shoulder problems persisted even upon his return from the leg injury, not exactly helped by his decision to delay shoulder surgery until the end of the year, and he remained hampered in 2011 while he was trying to adapt to the new bike

probably the main reason for the retirement rumours, however, was the death of simoncelli in an accident valentino had been involved in. the rumours basically started the day after the accident, and did not stop even when he showed up at valencia and raced (for about one corner until he was caught up in an ugly multi-rider pile up... kinda set off by dovi but anyways)

the rumours persisted in 2012. valentino became increasingly irritable about them.... meant that both valentino and casey were going into round three at estoril having to address the retirement talk. casey denied that he was planning to retire in the estoril pre-event presser (and he'd already kinda hinted to honda he was ready to sign a new contract)

this all led to some pretty silly drama, where the journalists were less than impressed when casey did announce his retirement two weeks later at le mans and casey went 'well I hadn't decided to retire yet back then!'

anyway, more important is the retirement announcement itself. casey made a statement at the very start of the le mans presser. here's the text:

he was the championship leader at this point, and the favourite to defend his title. of course he took a bunch of questions at the presser about the announcement, and cited several other reasons for his decision to retire, like people's reactions to his mystery illness in 2009, or too many people criticising the current racing being boring, or how they let CRT riders into parc fermé (let's not get into that)

now it's important to note that this was round four. which meant that the entire rider market was about to be spiced up... so let's backtrack a bit and talk silly season: historical edition!

okay, so marc could have feasibly moved up to motogp a year earlier, and for a large chunk of 2011 there was pretty frenzied speculation he was going to do exactly that. in october, between the phillip island and sepang rounds (where he had the crash that gave him diplopia and prematurely ended both his season and his championship bid), he finally announced he was going to stay in moto2

so, in late 2011, speculation was already of course starting for what the grid would look like in 2013, with a lot of big name contracts expiring at the end of 2012. both factory yamahas, hondas, ducatis, amongst others... you know how it goes. the expectation was broadly that casey would stick with honda and dani would be protected for at least another year by the rookie rule (more on that in a second), that jorge would stick with yamaha and... well. at this point, it was plausible valentino might sign at least a one year contract extension with ducati, with just enough glimmers of progress and signs that things might be headed in the right direction for him to want to continue building that project up

early 2012, around the time of the first race, and actually it's looking plausible that none of the six big factory seats are going to be changing hands. jorge and casey seemed the most certain ones, valentino too committed to ducati, and dani likely to sign a one year deal until marc swoops in at the end of 2013 to take his place

then casey announces his retirement, and silly season properly kicks off

first order of priority is of course the vacant repsol honda seat. now, the main thing stopping marc from getting that repsol honda seat was never actually going to be a lack of space - it was the 'rookie rule'. in 2010, a rule was introduced to stop rookies from joining the factory team. the idea was basically to help out satellite teams by giving them the chance to house a young star rider, give them publicity and results and so on (face it, how much would any of us be talking about tech3 this year without the pedro acosta factor?)

this was likely never to really work like it was supposed to, because if you're one of the factories, you can basically set up... teams that are only very theoretically 'independent'. another factory team in all but name. remember how valentino technically won his first title at a satellite team? well, that was essentially a shell team set up as a way to have somewhere to put valentino for two years while repsol honda was full. not the same team (and indeed, valentino and jb did sometimes look over at the chaos at repsol and go. good lord. what's going on there) but full factory support

in spring 2012, dorna was still adamant this rule would remain in place:

should also help explain why the general reaction to suzuki suddenly pulling out in 2022 was 'shocked but not that shocked' lol

but of course by mid-2012 this rule was facing another serious test: where do you put marc marquez, especially with this vacant repsol honda seat just sitting there? now, the valentino model did seem like a reasonable one in this situation, where you put him into an existing satellite team with heavy factory backing or even just create a new one to house him. which is something valentino himself talked about:

except, it wasn't quite that straightforward, because from 2013 onward manufacturers were limited to supplying bikes for four riders, two in a factory team and two in satellites - so you'd have to take away one of the bikes from the existing two honda satellite teams, gresini or lcr

one of the reasons why putting him in one of the existing satellite teams was a bit of an issue was that he was already backed by repsol, which could have caused sponsorship conflicts if he'd been housed with one of those other teams. but also, by this point ezpeleta was sounding rather less committed to the whole thing. from june 2012:

which.

my man

if you KNOW that the most prominent rookies can be put into shell satellites anyway and you are openly joking about it then WHAT was the POINT of any of this

by the end of the month, they gave up on the whole thing. as it happens, it wasn't even repsol honda who asked for the rule to be dropped - it was the satellite honda teams who were like 'yeah we don't actually want this kid for our team, way too stressful to make this all work for a single year before losing him anyway'

not a universally popular decision, it has to be said

it's quite likely that if casey had stayed and the rookie rule had still been dropped that hrc would have immediately taken in marc and not renewed dani's contract, which would have been a wee bit awkward given dani's late season form, but. you know. so it goes. anyway honda didn't end up having to make any tough calls

about two weeks after the rookie rule is dropped, hrc announces the two year contract with marc

by this point, valentino has had another miserable start to the season with ducati, save for a fun little wet podium at le mans - you know, the race where casey announced his retirement... they had their last ever duel there, with valentino snatching second place from casey on the last lap

photo abbove not representative of the general tone they used to discuss each other in that time period

anyhow, these rare bright spots weren't going to be enough for valentino

"There was a lot of expectation from me and from Ducati to win, but unfortunately I didn't have a good feeling with the bike, especially with the front," he said some years later. "When you are in that situation it's very difficult because you lose motivation and you lose the joy of going racing. When you start the weekend you are already in a negative way, so it's difficult, because if you don't have fun on the bike everything becomes heavier: leaving your home, all the travelling, speaking with journalists, everything. Also it becomes difficult to sleep. You are in a tunnel. When I was with Ducati I thought about stopping many times, but in the end it was a very good decision not to give up. Because if you stop and you don't have a bike then it's very easy to find yourself out of the business." - from Oxley's 'Valentino Rossi: All His Races'

he began openly talking about a return to yamaha in 2012 to replace the underperforming ben spies (though as late as july, publicly he was still talking up the chances of him sticking with ducati)... which was not a prospect welcomed by all in the factory - who saw his initial move to ducati as displaying a lack of loyalty. there was also of course the issue of yamaha wanting to avoid a repeat in the dramatics with jorge, which was certainly a topic in the negotiations. valentino's new deal with yamaha was eventually announced in august

so yes, obviously pretty qualified enthusiasm from jorge's side. it helped that it was made clear that, at the start of 2013, this was very much jorge's team, something which valentino had to work to change as a result of his level of performance (after 2013)

which left dovi to take the ducati factory seat. though he too maybe had to do a little bit of... smoothing over past comments in the negotiation process:

and that's that! there was a brief period in which honda and valentino rumours were a thing... always unlikely, given the long-standing mutual animosity there, and valentino claims he was never in contact with them. dani's contract was signed when marc's was, so that put an end to that. there was also serious speculation jorge would take casey's seat at honda, which was ended by him signing for another two years at yamaha in june. everyone sorted

dani and casey had a pretty cordial teammate relationship - though of course by this point it was already no longer really a team organised around dani as it had been in the late noughties. from late 2011 (shortly before simoncelli's passing):

and from the mind games post:

he also says the following in that passage: "some days [dani] beat us but to be honest I always felt like I had the measure of him over the course of a season"

more to be said about that relationship, of course, but it was basically harmonious on both sides, and they parted on good terms. as for dani's response to marc's signing, it wasn't like he was in a place within the team to complain too much - though his position was strengthened by his late 2012 form, where he won six of the last eight races. both of them mostly just stick to saying the standard respectful pr stuff about each other

though this is pretty funny in retrospect:

"I know nothing about pedrosa's goals" my man I think you can probably guess

[dolokhoded]

my one season 4 complaint is Where The Fuck Was Aneesa

[moongothic]

We all know how a lot of Luffy's opponents have been in some ways premonitions of the type of person Luffy could end up as if something went wrong in his life. For example Moria is what Luffy could've become had he truly lost his entire crew at Sabaody if Kuma had not saved them

And we know Crocodile is what Luffy maybe could've become had Luffy given up on his dreams and become jaded after losing to him. But like, when you think about it, that's not the only dark reflection of Luffy in Crocodile, is it

'Cause Crocodile, despite employing people for Baroque Works, did not trust anyone around him and did not considder anyone to be anything else but an employee to him. And we know he had been planning on taking over Alabasta for like 14 years (at the very least), BW being a thing for only the past four (pre-timeskip)

So like. Did Crocodile spend the last 14 years alone

Like yes he had his workers at the Casino and Robin etc, so he was like, around people, he wasn't like Brook who was in Total Isolation. But on an emotional level, has he not spent the last 14 years all by himself, completely detached from anyone, unable to trust or rely on anyone else?

That is sad as fucking shit, holy hell

'Cause then you compare him to like Luffy and like

Our sweet baby boy was so afraid of being alone that Luffy literally went through hell just to gain Ace's approval despite Ace trying to signal to him he wasn't interested befriending him

And through out the whole series Luffy reiterates time and time again how he needs and wants his friends around because he literally can't live without them, both on a literal "he can't cook or navigate or have fun by himself" level but also on that emotional level

And Crocodile just. Spent 14 years of his life, if not longer, alone.

Sweet jesus what happened to this man

And that just makes me further wonder, what the absolute fuck were Crocodile's Rookie Pirate days like?? Like did he have a crew or was he just yolo'ing it by himself???

Like. Mihawk's never been on a crew as far as we know. Kuma was a Revolutionary, not a pirate, but he wasn't like alone still. Doflaming, Hancock, Jinbei and Moria however have/had crews of their own. So what was Crocodile's deal? Did he have a crew before? Was he a captain or was he on someone else's ship? (Although surely the Government wouldn't offer the position of a Shichibukai to a cabin boy or the first mate, right)

And if he did have a crew, the hell happened to them??

Like we know Crocodile got his ass kicked by Whitebeard, I just find it unlikely Whitebeard would've pulled a Kaidou on Crocodile's crew and slaughtered them, that's not a very Whitebeard-y thing do, right?? ...Unless Whitebeard was just different 20+ years ago and was willing to annihilate entire crews. We don't know. Or maybe Crocodile and his entire crew were like Turbo Rotten from the beginning and Whitebeard figured they deserved to get wiped out, much like how we saw Shanks wipe out Kid's crew at Elbaf. Or maybe Whitebeard saw no reason to have mercy on someone affiliated with the World Government.

That all said, if we wanted to assume Crocodile had somekind of trauma that lead to him viewing people not only as disposable but also untrustworthy, then maybe losing people dear to him like that wouldn't lead to that mindset. Like Moria witnessed his beloved crew die and that caused him to want to create a crew he couldn't die, so he wouldn't go through that emotional trauma again.

Which leaves me to wonder. If something caused him to lose his ability to (emotionally) trust people, and if Whitebeard broke his dreams... Maybe Crocodile had a crew. And maybe they abandoned him when he lost to Whitebeard. Figuring they didn't need a weak captain who was probably going to bleed to death anyways. Or maybe the crew tried to take his head (after Whitebeard kicked his ass), after all, he was already a Shichibukai, anybody who took Crocodile's head could maybe attempt to take that title for themselves if the Government allowed it, and if not, at least gain more fame for themselves.

Either of these scenarios would certainly result in you losing your ability to rely on others. And leave you willing to spend the rest of your life alone. Who would have in them to go through that again.

Or maybe he came out of the womb unable to trust people and he was just yolo'ing it by himself like Mihawk right from the begining, who knows

Regardless I'm just

[yakny]

"NUNCA APRENDES, PLATITA."