#AND THAT'S WHAT MAKES ME INSANE ABOUT THIS IN PARTICULAR

[harrows-soup-kitchen]

ooh these are both really excellent points!!

in particular the first para reminded me so hard of that bit htn where the narration says something along the lines of “Sometimes you would forget who you were, and at recalling yourself, weep like a child.” and crux’s line in ntn where he talks about how Harrow had “gone away again” which makes me wonder just how many times crux had to see Harrow cry at remembering herself. and how many of those times did he blame Gideon for?

I also think his pretty blatant desire to see Gideon dead is really interesting because despite how clearly Harrow seems to understand crux, it betrays a big misunderstanding on his part of Harrows attitude to Gideon.

because Harrow does not want Gideon to die, she takes a lot of solace in knowing that one of the 201 is alive which is what makes Gideon’s death so gutting for her. her abuse of Gideon (and by proxy the abuse she allowed crux to enact in her name) were for the explicit purpose of goading Gideon into murdering her, not because she wants to die (she had cost too much to die) but because she feels it’s what is just and she finds the thought a relief.

but to crux it just looks like Harrow really hates that the annoying ginger is hanging around and reminding her that she’s daddy’s little warcrime so Gideon has to go.

Harrow even subconsciously acknowledges Crux being like that in the au chapter:

(the implications of the dash before the non-committal “anyone else” also make me insane fyi but that’s a whole different text post and this one is already so long)

I don’t really know what my point here is really other than they make me want to gnaw on bricks

I think about Harrow and Crux a lot actually and I need to talk about it a little bit or I might scream. because like- Crux sucks right?? we all agree on this, he is an awful, wretched old man who was abjectly abusive to one of two little girls left in his care after the deaths of their primary care takers.

but then his relationship with Harrow in specific makes me insane bc he loved that girl SO MUCH. that was his daughter!!!! maybe even more so than she was Priamhark and Pelleamena’s she was his!!!

and HE KNEW just like they did exactly what had to be done to create her, he watched her grow up reviled by her parents and he looked at that little girl and just… loved her? no questions asked, no morality hang ups, she was worth every sin committed to get her.

because that’s the thing about Crux i think for me, the moment he conceived of Harrow’s existence she was what he was loyal to, not the ninth or the reverend parents or even god just his kid; the rest of the ninth loved Harrow because she was The Reverend Daughter, Crux loved Harrow because she was Harrow. and because she was Harrow she was literally more important than anyone else.

and what does that do to a person? because I can guarantee right now that it was not good for either of them, like at all. Harrow was traumatised, fundamentally hubristic and a literal actual child, with a very confused moral compass, who by age ten had become fully complicit in the abuse of the only other child she had ever met!!! she did not need yet another grown adult enabling her to become worse!!

not to mention that he did abuse his position as the final arbiter of her reality to lie to her on more than one occasion, including but not limited to that one time he deadass killed two whole people for going even slightly against his special little lady (not to mention the several times he seemingly tried to kill Gideon without Harrow noticing)

an idea I see thrown around a lot when discussing the potential kiriona-John dynamic that I think works really well and is also interesting when applied to Harrow and Crux, albeit in a slightly different way is : what if your dad was the worst man in the universe and also literally the only person who really wanted you? how do you contend with that?

ALSO the fact that in Nona we find out that half his grudge with Gideon is that she didn’t die for Harrow!! her parents fear it but Crux is BITTER about it!! he’s so angry that she, in his eyes, has been failing to do right by Harrow her entire life because she could never die right!!

anyway, all this to say I can’t wait to see Harrow try to navigate her grief over Crux’s death in AtN while contending with the fact that he was fundamentally complicit in her continued abuse of Gideon for years and years, which ultimately led to gideons degradation of self and set the groundwork for her sacrificial suicide.

not to mention yet another person she desperately loved dying in a way that is unquestionably in service of her continued existence, unasked for and without giving her a snowflakes chance in hell of saying goodbye. again.

[imminent-danger-came]

IVE ONLY SEEN ONE PERSON POINT THIS OUT BUT MK TRIES TO PUNCH MACAQUE DISGUISED AS WUKONG BEFORE HE EVEN REALIZES ITS WUKONG. I CAN FEEL THE MK AND SWK FIGHT IN MY BONES. Also can you imagine with like that one art post Mei asks MK who HE wants to be, not a reflection of somebody, not the Monkie Kid, not the Harbringer of Chaos and HE REPLIES WITH HIS REAL NAME I WOULD GO INSANE

I'm like. 85% sure that person was me afasdfafsd. I know I've mentioned it before somewhere!

Because it's like, MK feels extremely abandoned and hurt by Wukong during s2. MK's line of "Fine! Then just leave! At least my friends will never abandon me!" in 2x01 Sleep Bug is VERY telling, and it also makes me sob when put together with 3x10 The Samadhi Fire:

MK: "NO! Mei is my best friend—I'd never abandon her when she needs me! We're heroes! It's what we do!"

And 4x02 New Adventures:

MK: “You don’t know! We’d risk it for sure! I won’t abandon them when they need us.”

MK's own low self-worth combined with Wukong's tendency to leave in the worst way possible, which was only further exacerbated by the Lady Bone Demon's manipulation.

And I think MK's experiences and feelings throughout s2 made him resolve to never make his friends feel abandoned.

But of course, since this is Lego Monkie Kid, it's more interesting than just that—because MK leaves at the end of s4. It was out of fear, sure, but so was Wukong leaving in s2 and at the end of s3. MK does exactly what he set out not to do, making the same mistakes his mentor has, literally going to isolate himself on Flower Fruit Mountain for an undetermined amount of time.

It's things like this that make the question of "Who is MK" so intriguing, because that's who MK want's to be. He want's to be himself. But who is that person?

Is MK just like Wukong? Is he a harbinger of chaos? Is he just a noodle delivery boy? Is he Monkie Kid? What if you remove all those labels? What's left? What is he?

(Plus the whole "I just want to be me—to be MK!" "Yeah well...we all know where that leads." interaction between MK and the curse in 4x07)

And now that we've thrown MK's mysterious past and ominous future into the mix, we are in for a FULL on identity crisis spiral next season.

And well, when it comes down to it, MK was willing and ready to fight Wukong in s2. The lmk writers are fantastic at paying off several arcs all at the same time (see all of 3x10, which literally had the culmination of Mei's, MK's, Wukong's, and Macaque's arcs all in one. It's fucking phenomenal), and this is partly due to the time constraints of the show as a whole, but it's also just damn good writing. MK's past, his identity, the hurt he's experienced across every season—that's all going to come to a head. I also imagine it's going to happen right along side Mei, Wukong, and Macaque's arcs once again, because that's just how this show do. It do insane shit.

I also happen to be a believer in "Samadhi Fire Part 3", in which we get another 3x10 and 4x08 parallel to round it all up, and I am waiting, WAITING, for Mei to repeat MK's words back at him:

“Mei! You have to stop. I know you’re upset, and that’s okay! I know what it’s like to have a power you don’t know how to control—to feel like the fate of the world is in your hands and you have no idea what to do! But you always have my back, and help me through it. We, will figure this out! Together!” (3x10 The Samadhi Fire)

((Which, MK himself is repeating Mei's words back at her, with "But we're going to figure this out." I NEED A POSITIVE FEEDBACK FRIEND LOOP BABY))

But yeah. I'M WAITING MAN. WE HAVE THE SAME BONE FEELINGS.

[egophiliac]

Final manifestations for Book 7?

I'm trying REALLY hard not to build up any solid expectations, because I wanna go in ~fresh~! they're already so far away from anything I thought would happen (not in a bad way, I'm just accepting that I'm on Miss Yana's Wild Ride at this point and we're seeing this thing through 'til the end, by gum). so it's nothing too major, but:

they've been handing new crying expressions out like candy lately, I want to see some delicious Malleus tears.

honestly I want everyone to cry buckets. their tears sustain me. the more Silver angst specifically I get the happier I am.

SILVER!!!! 👏 VANROUGE!!!! 👏

just let him have this. the poor boy's been through so much. let him have his big "I'm proud of you, son" moment with Lilia.

I'm 100% expecting Grim's arc (and probably whatever's going on with Crowley) to be its own episode, but a nice hook to leave us hanging on would be good!

a nice hook though, please, I don't think I can take another "Grim is attacking us! now wait eight months to find out what happens :)" cliffhanger...

some Meleanor? as a treat? just a little bit, a tiny quick flashback or something, please Twst I just, I just want to see her again. let her have a little ghost cameo like Dawnathan Knight got. Lilia and his kids are all having their big group hug or whatever and she can gently fade in to be all like

(turning asks off until I'm done playing, SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE Y'ALL)

[art-soboro]

a flood of miracles wouldn't be enough because you called my name

[inanimateinsanitywiki]

it would be really funny if mephone's intent with knife was that he was gonna be the type of "bully" character who gave people wedgies and shoved people in lockers and that was it, but then something went horribly awry and the bit went too far and now knife is concocting all of these mechanisms and schemes for the sole purpose of torturing and killing people in the most painful way possible because he thinks it's funny and is constantly being tormented by the uncontrollable urge to cause immense amounts of violence even when he tries to stop doing that in the future. "we could have been anything but you made us broken" mephone did not tell you to put marshmallow in the brazen bull. you did that of your own volition.

[lord-squiggletits]

The other day I saw something that actually made the fandom's complete lack of acknowledgement towards Megatron grooming/brainwashing Tarn make a lot of sense, which was essentially a comment that implied something along the lines of 'Tarn made himself worse.'

Which like, I guess makes sense as a justification? If you just write off Dying of the Light and Tarn's entire existence as him just "choosing" to be "worse" I guess it's easy to just blame Tarn and coddle Megatron as the victim of the whole thing.

As opposed to the actual truth of canon which is that Tarn was not always Tarn, Tarn used to be Damus, Damus was nothing like Tarn at all, and it was Megatron's direct, malicious, targeted intervention that took Damus (normal guy) and made him into Tarn (zealot freak). And that the DJD wasn't Tarn's creation, it was Megatron's creation, because Megatron not only wrote the DJD rulebook but also directly trained them (at least the initial members of the DJD, including Tarn) to be brutal, sadistic killers. And that Tarn's mental breakdown in Dying of the Light and subsequent deathhunt on Megatron was just Tarn continuing to fulfill the role Megatron assigned to him, which was to hunt down traitors to the Decepticon cause and make them pay in pain and death. In other words, that Tarn was literally carrying out the exact purpose that Megatron groomed him for, in service to the ideology that Megatron shaped to be centered entirely around ruthlessness, cruelty, and subjugation. And that everything Tarn did as an evil person was merely a logical extension of the ideology Megatron brainwashed him into carrying out, not him randomly deciding to "make himself worse" one day bc he was angy at his daddy.

But sure. I guess, from a certain, very zoomed in and granular perspective, Tarn is evil because he just chose to be that way and no one could've possibly predicted him turning on his master who reshaped his entire life to serve his will and then abandoned him. It's not like Megatron radicalized him for no reason and then built him to be a ticking time bomb or anything. No, Tarn just... decided to make himself worse. One day, for no reason at all. Mmmkay.

[isalabells]

- And we pulled that stupid prank on you. - Wiener schnitzel and sauerkraut. - Yeah, we thought we were so clever. Eva von Braun, right? But you– you just set it aside, and you put your head down and got to work.

FOR ALL MANKIND 1.02 He Built the Saturn V || 3.03 All In

[ccbatman]

actually so sick how they made steph into a martyr for everything wrong with gotham when she lived her whole life trying to prove that she was everything right

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

sometimes i wish i had just imprinted on some regular modern IP characters like a normal person instead of rotating medieval irish figures in my brain at all times like a freak because it makes it really hard to explain a bunch of things about me. like. i'm starting a new type of therapy soon. and it is absolutely going to come up. and they'll be like "do you ever use fictional characters as a proxy to think about this" or whatever bc that's a question therapists ask in these kinds of situations. and i'll be like. yeah but it's fucking cú chulainn so uhhh here's a primer and a bibliography so you can understand exactly why this is an unhinged thing to say

[sandinmybed]

some of yall are incapable of simply saying you dislike something. you have to dress it up in social justice language and make it into a Moral Issue rather than just owning and acknowledging that it's not your taste even though other people like it. which is fine btw.

[smile-files]

i continue to find ii3 baffling. why did they make it (this isn't to hate on the season, i'm genuinely curious)

[literaturess]

Very funny when I'm reading a book written from a (hetero) woman's point of view and when a male character appears at the beginning I can immediately tell that they're going to get together at the end. And I'm always right. Like wish you heteros invented something creative. Have you heard of friendship perhaps?

[widevibratobitch]

laalalalala another vent post because i have no therapist to pay for listening to my bullshit

[quatregats]

I am kind of fascinated by the Hornblower-not-matching-his-setting, though. I think that's actually been one of the things that I've thought about the most, especially in books where it's been particularly egregious (Beat to Quarters/The Happy Return, Ship of the Line, etc.). Did Forester just happen to stumble upon a brilliant character and, not realizing what a brilliant character he was, just carry on unknowingly writing him into his Swashbuckling Adventure Stories? Did he know that Hornblower was so delightfully complex but didn't know what to do with him? Did he know what to do with him but couldn't? It's also interesting to think about in the context of canon—how much of the Hornblower we see is also distorted through the lens of being a Hero of Our Glorious British Empire? How much more cruel or ignorant does he become from other perspectives? Yes, he has moral dilemmas, but if we step outside of the moral dilemmas as the books present them, what other narratives might we see?

[xoxo-ren-xoxo]

it's controversial to say this i guess but i genuinely believe last life was the least interesting life series season and youre all lying to me about enjoying it

[musical-chick-13]

Actually for real what if I deactivated my blog lol.