#God is the course of life

[bixels]

In the past, people in the Animal Crossing community would make fun of Tom Nook as a sleazy landlord. Since then, he's really rehabilitated his image as this 'heart of gold' businessman (he's the one who puts bells and furniture in trees for you to find! he adopted orphans! he donates to charity!), but New Horizons genuinely paints the most devious version of him.

He's successfully privatized settler colonialism: you pay HIM to move to a "deserted island" (which apparently the oceans in the AC world are just full of) and start a colony that he is directly invested in. At best he's running a weird vacation package scam (you arrive on the island with no money and in debt for "using his services"). At worst, he's using you to set up company towns. For god's sake, he literally has his own fake currency that he forces you to use to pay off your debt. But don't worry, he's repackaged it in a way that definitely doesn't sound like an MLM scam: the Nook Mileage Program!

You're no longer just his tenant or his temporary part-timer, you're his business lackey. The entire tutorial section of the game has you spending actual weeks running around completing tasks and doing hard labor to set up his colony. You're even tasked with preparing his properties and finding buyers for them. No, you aren't a tenant anymore. You work for the landlord. You are directly responsible for finding tenants for him. And he doesn't even fucking pay you. Not for setting up town hall and museum, or his nephew's shop –– which is the ONLY store on the entire island that sells necessities –– or bringing KK Slider to town, or helping populate his town. Not a single cent. No, actually, you have to pay HIM to BUY infrastructure like bridges and stairs and park benches. And all the while, he's telling you're the "resident representative"; you get to call the shots! That the reward is the community's progress. That what you're doing is in everyone's best interest (but most importantly, his).

Since NH's release, people have done a lot of legwork to say that Tom Nook isn't a capitalist while the game shows him at his very worst. He owns the only general store in town. You're forced to use a phone that he modified and branded as his own. Buy Nook-branded furniture and merchandise at the self-serve kiosk in the town hall, a governmental building! There's no conflict of interest here!

But hey, if you're tired of being the landlord/business mogul's goon, you can also find work as a deluxe resort home designer for a company that also pays you in their special company currency that can only be used to buy their products instead of a real salary! Because that's what the Animal Crossing franchise needs! More vacation homes!!!

[kensatou]

you think YOU had a bad day at work?

bonus: sid shrieking "no!!!! NO!!!!!" loud enough to be heard in the stands and on camera

[agnes-come-back-challenge]

I love that everyone in TMA is just. Unremarkable. Jon isnt a heroic character; he's self-loathing and depressed and he exhibits the same self-pity as I do when I'm self-loathing and depressed. He doesn't stand out for his strength of will or quick-thinking or virtue. He's a good person but he stops trying to stay human when it gets uncomfortable. He's everything that a regular person is when theyre trapped in a horrible situation and it's ugly and insufferable and Real.

[satansleftnutcheek]

Bitches will create the MOST DEVASTATING STORIES KNOWN TO MAN out of 2 besties playing Minecraft together what the FUCK did they put in the water why are people making work about GoodTimesWithScar and Grian as if they’re Penelope and Odysseus the boys really saw a silly comedy and said no not sad enough we MUST fix this

[gunstellations]

boop! 💙🤍

[annabelle--cane]

crazy how people will say "there's a trend of bi women dating misogynistic/homophobic men who are really weird about their queerness" and follow it up with "this is bi women's fault and I should make fun of their sexual practices" instead of "bi women need more support and outreach aimed at them about recognizing domestic abuse."

[stormyoceans]

actually one small rant and then im shutting up but it just doesn't sit right with me that people talk about portraying 'the reality of gay life' only when it's miserable and full of angst

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about not only the specific people lucanis pulls in to represent the 'locks' in his psyche, but the storytelling that happens in the structure/order of them. the underlying ideas are presented something like:

the lucanis who went into the ossuary never came back out again; he died down there (the boy caterina raised is gone forever) -> you're putting yourself in danger doing this (by being close to me), you should leave because I can't bear it if you get hurt because of me -> it doesn't matter even if we do try this, it won't work anyway (again because of me) ('you know what he's like, you can open the door but he won't walk through it' :'( oofie doofie) -> what if the real secret is that there was never anything but the monster in here from the beginning. you should leave, there was never anything here worth saving in the first place. (implicitly: what if I deserved what happened, all along.)

it runs pretty cleanly from outward-oriented attachment anxiety ('caterina won't even want me back like this, she won't recognize me (the same way I no longer recognize myself)) and gradually deeper inwards until we reach self-image and self worth. or you know, the harrowing basic lack of it lol.

"careful -- they'll know we're not right," spite says in one of their first scenes... but clearly, some very deep part of lucanis has feared or suspected for much longer than that that there's something inherently not right at the core of him, way before any demon entered the picture. and the voice he gives those lines to is the person who should know him better than anyone in the world, who he has loved more than anyone in the world -- and who deliberately chose to hurt him so horrifically anyway. 'It's better if I'm just a monster and deserved what happened than it is to allow for the idea that the brother I love doesn't really exist and maybe never did'. it's better if he's fundamentally flawed in some way that needed fixing to help him survive, and that's why caterina chose to hurt him again and again -- out of love. (this one I think he might have a very sad wakeup call on one day if he ever ends up with the responsibility and care of a child of his own in some way and realizes just how alien the idea of ever intentionally hurting them for any reason is to him. oh buddy. also interesting that he keeps caterina as the outermost lock -- there IS a distance he keeps there that he hasn't with illario. he doesn't resent her 'anymore' he says, but he also keeps her carefully further away from his deepest self.)

as far as I could tell the only note in the mind prison that's fully hidden and needs to be uncovered is the sad painful helpless stupid little truth that even after all this, even knowing what happened... he still loves his brother. is there anything illario could ever do that would make lucanis completely stop loving him, do you think? sometimes the trouble with unconditional love is that it is, well. unconditional, even when some terms and conditions probably would have been in order haha.

that's the pattern you see there again and again; he would rather destroy and abandon and imprison himself at every turn than let go of love, even when it's just scraps, even when there's only ever enough of it to hurt him. it's only when rook shows up and as it were takes his hand and walks along with him that he can entertain the idea of changing the story of what walking out the door might mean in the end.

[asavt]

leshy freaking cat

The fact that we all (or almost all) took one look at the yellow cat and went "yeah sure lets go with that" will never not be hilarious to me.

[usertoxicyaoi]

"The parts deep inside of me that even I don't know of. I don't mind it if you're the one exposing them."

TAIKAN YOHOU (2023). EPISODE SEVEN.

[frankingsteinery]

walton is a stronger man than me because if i found the man who was the culmination of my lifelong dreams of true connection and everything i could possibly want in a friend, who talked to me about my interests at length and encouraged me and told me i would be successful in my endeavors, who wept for me after i confided my deepest desires and ambitions to him, who used the language of my heart, who sympathized with and loved me, and who told me all of his greatest flaws and mistakes and his harrowing several-hundred-pages long life story including the murders of his entire family, upon which i treated him with nothing but understanding and kindness and would do anything to return him to happiness and shoulder his woes, all while tenderly nursing back him from the brink of death while expecting nothing in return, even despite my growing concerns of a mutiny going on, and after all this he told me "I thank you, Walton [...] but think you that any can replace those who are gone? Can any man be to me as Clerval was?" i would just walk off the boat

[goddessofbees]

More pretty Aphrodite Danny! @that-weird-thing-in-the-woods

[canisalbus]

Would Machete still be Catholic in modern!AU?

He was raised in a very traditional household, went through a fraught crisis of faith in his teens, became a disillusioned atheist and then eventually more or less made his peace with the whole thing and slid back a little bit to the secular/lapsed catholic territory.

[teethcollection]

im not gonna apologize for this one

[whereismyhat5678]

I have a confession to make.

And you can bash me all you want about it. BUT I STAND FIRM ✊✊

*clears throat*

I’ve had a crush on all of these men.💀

Edit: HOLD YOUR HORSES- I forgot at least 2 ✌️ I fixed it now!

[marcygoo]

uhhmm redraw of a screencap from ep 7. idk