#“You say the whole world's ending”

[one-strugling-bean]

Been thinking abt Lord Peepers recently...

[insomaniacat]

orv spoilers

tbh I'm so happy there is no explicit romance in orv (minus the brief stuff that happens with jhw and lhs) and because of that I feel like I've been able to appreciate kdj in such a profound way as a character

like sure i like joongdok and yoohankim but to me at least kdj has this level of asexuality to him that I don't usually associate him with anyone that romantically. And their relationships are still as complex and has such a great depth that they are like THE foundest of families and I can return to the kim dokja company at the end of the day as all of them being my comfort characters. you know that saying like 'i love you so much i'd make the world burn for you'? it's meant to be this dramatic line about how much you love someone (romantically), but kdj's company fully encapsulates this in a platonic way that just isn't cringey or anything like that

they are all so platonic but they love each other to such an unconditional way that they ALL decide to relive through all the scenarios again in the hope of finding kim dokja again. and later, they all help to write and spread a story - stories, the thing the reader loves - again, in hopes of bringing kdj back home. they aren't sure if it'll work, but it is through this love they all have that they don't give up and put their hope in this seemingly impossible method

and this is also what makes them fundamentally different from kdj. unlike kim dokja in the apocalypse, they do not have any sort of proof their methods will work. kdj has twsa - the novel he grew up reading, the novel he fantasized living in, the novel that he's spent 13 years following, learning every nook and cranny and probably even planning out his own way to survive the apocalypse from this lengthy novel. he has some sort of assurance his methods will work, with the amount of time hsy put into describing the settings (remember that twsa was not popular and one of the complaints was that tls123 put too much emphasis on the settings that deterred people from reading it, when really, that too was a way to ensure kdj survived the apocalypse later on). he has had time to reassure himself and plan for it, and probably had yjh case test them all

but kdj's company had no assurance - they did not grow up with a book that confirmed their methods of bringing kdj back would work. they did not have any 'third plans', no 'ressurections', no 'restarts', that kdj had in the apocalypse. all they had was their own hope - something kdj didn't have when he was fifteen sitting in that hospital bed after that failed suicide attempt, feeling like the whole world was against him. Until he searched up those three words on his phone. Those three words that were probably 'Ways of Survival'.

And then he found his hope in twsa. he found his hope in yjh, the protagonist made just for him. he found hope in the story that he believed in for the next thirteen years. the story that got him through high school, the CSATs, the military. his hope was in this tangible book that carried him through the apocalypse.

kdj's company had none of that. they only had their hope in kim dokja - the man they survived the scenarios with. they could only put their hope in their memories of surviving with the man that saved them, even though there was no evidence he lived in their world anymore. they had to put their hope in the fact that they remembered he existed, even though they had to acknowledge that they didn't know everything about him.

sing shong touches upon this idea a lot throughout orv - does something really exist if no one knows about it? or, in a more modern saying, did a fallen tree in a forest really fall if no one heard it? what proves the existence of something? what proves that something truly happened? sing shong seems to make it pretty clear that the existence of something can be represented metaphorically like a 'story', and stories need a 'reader', some sort of spectator that witnesses it, for the 'story' to exist.

for kim dokja, his final sacrifice, where he split into infinite little pieces scattered across the universe, was to ensure that everything existed. that open ending, as tragic as it was, was meant to be comforting. that his sacrifice was supposed to be so existences like you and me, are real. no matter how lonely we may feel throughout our lives, a metaphorical 'kim dokja' is looking at our own stories, spectating our own stories, even living our own lives himself.

and what i hate to say sometimes is that kim dokja is not really a character - he is an idea. he is an idea of some being affirming our lives, that it's real, that what we do from day to day, even something as simple as getting up in the mornings and brushing your teeth, or thumbing through a store catalog, matters. and this is why kim dokja sacrificed himself. for all the stories that may have not 'existed' if no one was watching it.

and it's out of love. this tragic, terrible love for the world, that eats away at yourself until you are nothing. but at least you exist.

[amaltheas-garden]

people still shocked that in the year of our lord 2024 some of us don't want to see Dany get her 'happy ending' by becoming the white savior who was promised

[reversatility1]

Warrior Nun: Beatrice’s journey reconciling the mission with her love for Ava was beautiful to behold

[sakurm]

well while yall gripe with jjk's ending i shall continue my sashisu kaisen. remember: if youre unsatisfied, fanworks are your saviour!

[gurggggleburgle]

SY picking up a fluffy ball of fur: what a cute fluffy pomeranian

3 weeks later crushed under the weight: oh no. It's a Chow!!!

[thejasontoddarchives]

52/WW III Part One: A Call to Arms #1 (2007)

You know you’ve hit rock bottom when you’re standing naked in front of a monument meant to honor a dead version of yourself while you’re alive, holding the Nightwing suit in one hand and the pill helmet in the other

[belliesandburps]

Interactive - Favorite Burp Scenario

I need something to take my mind off the fact that we are home to the dumbest, most bigoted fucking assholes on this planet, and I feel like a lot of you probably feel the same way right now. So, how about another interactive game? Send me character requests via my askbox here and I will respond with my favorite burp scenario to imagine for them. (Note, ideally, keep it to characters I know or that you think I may know)

[spearxwind]

Idk if this counts as spoilers but if Adri is essentially like a computer virus where did he get a physical body from?? Did he steal it from someone or was it provided for him to he put into??? So much to think about........

GREAT QUESTION! He stole it :)

He stole the body and the body's name for himself, and then fabricated an appearance and personality and mannerisms.

His body is one of the previously many nanomachine systems set in place in the Old World to safeguard and maintain both people and machinery. They were known as Guardian Arrays, but now they are referred to as Angels. Only two are currently known to still be fully operational, Adri being one of them.

The Fall (Otherwise known as the literal end of the world) was an apocalypse event where a system bug caused every advanced enough AI to go rogue and turn on mankind. It started small, but spread far and wide exponentially and it irreparably changed whatever it infected. The Arrays, being as important as they were, had more safeguards in place against this stuff but it still didn't stop them from becoming infected. Especially ADRIEL. The corruption inside it became severe enough that it first became a virus, and then grew into a full fledged self compiled AI that was notorious enough to be given its own name "Usurper", though you know it as "The Hydra".

The only way to avoid being completely wiped out during this event was to mass purge absolutely EVERYTHING (so humanity lost basically 99% of their tech and their knowledge). Did this work? kiiiind of.

Because of it's self compiled nature, ADRIEL was never able to be properly purged, so instead it was (after a monumental, worldwide effort) put to sleep beneath the earth, never to be disturbed again.

Until....

[zishuge]

Mysterious Lotus Casebook (2023) | Ep. 19

[arashi-no-saxlphone]

as much as I would like to believe that Frederick and Asuka could be friends again, like, Freddy is building that rocket as fast as he can to kick his ass before the residual FoC and Gear power leaves his body. I'm sorry. I know I'm the Asuka apologist but dude. Nearly 2 centuries of the most unimaginable agony and festering sense of betrayal, compounded by Asuka goading him intentionally on multiple occassions (his reasoning behind all this goading aside) he is not just going to be able to let that go.

Asuka's crimes against humanity are one thing, you can argue til you're blue in the face about that and there's actual ground to cover there, but what he did to Frederick and Aria is like... damn dude. You, without their consent, turned them into gears. You lied about it to their faces too. Aria, someone who is cited as having her identity and who she is as a human being be one of the most important things to her, trusted you to put her into cryosleep because you said you'd find a way to save her so that she could be with Frederick. She didn't want that, she wanted to stay and spend the time she had left with Frederick instead, but she let you convince her cause she trusted you. And you took away her body, identity, and autonomy. You took Sol's humanity from him following that, lied to him about it, and then spent 200 years pissing him off so bad on purpose to make sure he'd always be there to help you fix everything. Oh, and then you made him kill his wife that you mutilated. Twice, essentially.

I love you Asuka, but shit, that's all kinds of levels of fucked my man. Frederick justifiably hates you really REALLY bad. I hope we get something in Dual Rulers settling this, cause Frederick just letting that go even following the events of Strive is just kinda unrealistic.

[dearly]

I wanted one last chat, I do not want this show to end.

FITFWT, Mexico City, 1/6/24

[sunburnacoustic]

Silver foxes

Matt and Dom's bold predictions for Muse's future, including a stellar moment where Matt asks a young and thoroughly confused Australian interviewer if he feels sexy, as well as Muse's predictions for how hot they're going to be aged 45. Safe to say, those predictions were absolutely true ;)

[essektheylyss]

re: the fiction/nonfiction kinsey scale poll. just know that I am barely restraining myself from giving nonfiction book recs at all times. there is SO MUCH FUN NONFICTION THAT IS SUPER READABLE AND INTERESTING take my hand we can go pick out some books together

[relaxxattack]

can you imagine if they left the epilogue as it was without adding hs2. like if they leaned more into the “fanfic parody” aspect of it.

imagine if you read the homestuck epilogues and instead of being forced to contend with fascist jane for the next five years, the epilogues just ended with dirk saying “Oh and this was all a dream. Btw.”

like i think that would have been insanely funny. there would have been so so many memes about the officially licensed homestuck parody where rose and jade cheat on their marriages and dirk makes davekat kiss. i think everyone would have found that to be such a riot

it would have been way more fun to analyze too because instead of being forced to take 40yrold divorced dave seriously everyone could be like “what does it mean when on page 42 dirk described him as a white lanky bitch… what level of irony is this… what does it symbolize”

instead it feels like we got told a joke that we weren’t exactly in on, felt hurt about it, and now we’ve all been sitting around for half a decade waiting for a punchline that might never come

[sulky-cabbage]

The sukugo fight can't get animated any sooner I'm craving sukugo tiktok edits