#I also saw Venus!

[insaneillusionist]

Something about being with people and seeing the wonders of the world. The joy as you gape at them, and the get to watch other people be shocked too. When they show you their favorite parts and teach you. And when you get to marvel in silence and realize that this is living. If I could, I’d light up the sky every night so that we could gaze in wonder for hours and be satisfied with the other’s presence.

[jamnsketch]

venus // pluto

[yellowvixen]

Sonic symphony very very fun 👍

[elijahwoodnot]

saw the Mountain Goats in concert semi recently and stood maybe ten feet from the stage and during Heretic Pride tumblr’s beloved Mr Mountain Goat himself John Darnielle and i met eyes and absolutely belted the chorus together and tbh i don’t think i’ll be getting over that anytime soon

[vvenuspng]

human stolitz bc i felt like it

[focsle]

Aaa Dreadnoughts, long time Beloved Band which also now contains my Beloved Person. WHO’D’VE THOUGHT.

[supergraphicultramoderngirl]

oh i am soooo gonna get an i liked this before it was popular complex abt chappell roan

[jakeperalta]

have quite literally never been less excited about a taylor announcement in my life

[starry-bi-sky]

catch me looking up nightingale symbolisms for tales of the passerine. if danny's using the name of a songbird for a hero name, regardless of familial connections, i will utilize the symbolism tied to the bird. Anyways general gist of the nightingale symbolism i've seen, other than what wikipedia told me, is that nightingales were frequently symbolisms of spring renewal, loss/death, love, etc. catch me about to incorporate music into Danny's character

[statementlou]

forgive me if this is too serious for an anon ask.. feel free to ignore it..

but this week shook me in ways i didnt see coming. i wasnt a one direction fan growing up.. tbh im still not, i listen to only a few songs. im same age as louis. so, i found one direction through him.

i have great affection for all of the boys though. and even in my short time in fandom, i've always been surprised and saddened by the bullying liam has gotten.. he just always seemed like a good person with really poor communication skills. to understand his point, you had to give him some space and context.

but this year has been a constant worried watch over liam. it was so plain things were desperate.

stan twitter got to me so bad that i left twitter the day louis' tour ended. so i was very peripherally aware of his recent harassment, but i did worry.

and now the unimaginable has happened, i am just at loss. not just in the sense of how to make sense of this loss, but also the complete lack of empathy for him still? even for other boys' fans.?? after they've seen how all of the boys' are hurting?

and just in the bigger picture.. how is this real? what loving god/higher power/whatver has allowed this to be the state of the world? he was so kind, so generous, just a boy. JUST A BOY. just trying to find a place to fit and feel safe. why was he dealt such cruelty? just while he was pursuing something he loved? something he was gifted with? in life and in death?

im just at loss. heartbreak doesnt even begin to cover it.

for me I've felt it was a constant worried watch over Liam for many years now, but other than that, yeah. It's hard to feel hope or faith in the face of so much senseless cruelty and pointless loss; all I can say is I would hope the millions of people who are shocked and saddened by this take away something lasting both about the fact that there are real people on the other side of the computer screen and cruelty has a real impact, and that addiction can afflict anyone. Nothing can make this other than tragic and regrettable forever; but I would love to see the amazing power of fandom mobilized to support programs for addicts and to fight stereotyping and dismissing of people who use drugs in Liam's name. To see people use this as a realization to really understand that it wasn't strange or exceptional that someone talented and worthwhile could succumb to addiction and ultimately die of it, but rather a plague that our society is allowing to run unchecked because of stigma. IDK, maybe I'm just grasping at straws trying to find something remotely positive that could come out of this situation but what else can you do? It's just so sad.

[fredbydawn]

realized it's funny that i watched these two after falling down the rabbit hole and gave them the same rating when they're very different movies, like one is about a character getting to explore taboo elements of their sexuality and desires that most people sought out cuz of a scene which is centered on the ass of a male Saw actor, and the other is Delta of Venus

[new-world-mutation]

Walton Goggins and Jonathan Nolan interview for IMDb, Fallout press junket at SWSX 2024

[thinkin-bout-milgram]

Hello! If it’s okay, I’d like to know your thoughts on the Trikoto theory (3+ alters). I think it’s a cool theory! And pretty likely, honestly. (Here’s a document about it in case you don’t know what I’m talking about. I didn’t make it, and I unfortunately don’t know who did, I just found it in another blog)(I really hope that link works lol)

Hey FF! I was wondering when you might send something in. Not the topic I expected, but I'm here for it!

I've definitely heard of this theory before. I can't say I know for sure where it originated, but I've always been under the impression that a blog called @bertrandcaillet started it as they're the first one I saw talk about that theory and they told me about it a while ago. They've since deactivated, though, so I can't really check with them to see if that's true.

I think the trikoto theory is interesting, and I fully agree with what's said on the document about how it would be nice if Milgram is showing a system with more nuance than just having two alters.

That being said, I personally don't believe this theory for a number of reasons. I'm going to do my best to explain why here. I do want to say going into this that while I do have extremely minimal psychology teaching (as in, undergrad psyc MINOR), I do not claim to be that educated on DID or similar struggles. So, anything that I say will be focusing much more on Milgram as a piece of media from a writing standpoint, because that's what I have much more extensive experience in.

I will say that I am very aware that most systems have more than 2 alters. That being said, I think I also remember from my psyc class that the average number is, like... 16? I'm not at my dorm right now and that's where my notes are, so I can't check, but I remember specifically thinking about it in the context of Mikoto and trikoto theory, so I'm pretty confident it's Above Three. That means that either way, it's not like we're doing The Most Common Number, so I think two versus three is largely irrelevant on that point.

For the sake of clarity, I'll be using the names in the doc (Akakoto, Midokoto, Aokoto), but I only personally believe that two of them (Akakoto, Aokoto) exist. I've taken to calling them Orekoto and Bokuto, but for this post, Akakoto and Aokoto it is.

At its base, my problem with trikoto theory is that I don't see a lot of evidence for it. Most of what I've seen has been talking about the implications of it if you assume it's true, but I've just never really been convinced in the first place. I'll just go through some of the main reasonings real quick:

The RGB Colors

I do acknowledge that I'm very much not a visually oriented person, so the color shifting is something I'm less inclined to notice. However, while the background of the room is blue and the train station and apartment are pretty green, I don't feel like there are ever really any red backgrounds (other than when the headspace becomes red as ooposed to blue). Because of that, I have a hard time believing that the backgrounds themselves contribute to the idea that there are three. I definitely think the red/blue coloration in the eyes and such are indicating different alters, but I don't think that specific fact supports there being three of them.

The Voice Changes

This might be a me issue, but I only really hear two different vocal inflections. I understand the point about there being some harsher (?) sounding vocals that don't have the growl, but personally, I still think the tone matches the one described as Akakoto enough to count. Similarly, the parts towards the end that are picked out for Midokoto ("I'm probably not to blame," etc.) actually sound more like Aokoto to me even if I do try to track the three voices.

I'm hesitant to go too hard in believing the different voices because to me, doing so would severely limit the amount of control Natsuki Hanae would have over the emotions he wants to put into the song. The vocalists in Milgram do a fantastic job at using specific vocal intonations to convey deep layers of emotions in their songs. I feel like it would be very limiting to only be able to use certain vocal effects (ex. growl) in specific places due to the limitations of the characters. If there are two, the two voices are far more separate, which gives more space for customization within the bounds of each voice.

This is also a little bit iffier on evidence, but there's the Es cover of MeMe. I don't know how much Yurina Amami knows about Mikoto's story and the entire video is in grayscale, so take all of this with a grain of salt, but to me, I feel like Es uses two voices here, not three. Notably, they even have a bit of vocal growl on the "switch" and on "split and half, make that heart beat," which are both squarely in the Midokoto tone. They do still have the two voice split, sounding a bit more apathetic and aggressive in the Akakoto parts and cuter in the Aokoto parts. To me, that signifies that there's suppose to be two voices going on, not three, but you could argue that that's just Es' perception of Mikoto, so it's not decisive or anything.

Mikoto Fighting Es

Yes, in his first audio drama, Mikoto is able to beat Es up until Kotoko stops him. Yes, that's inconsistent from what we've seen from Futa and also t2 Amane. I agree that that's because the Milgram rules only apply to one or more alters, and thus any others that may exist can get around the rulings. We saw this between trials, too, with how Mikoto (seemingly Akakoto at the time) was able to avoid being restrained despite his guilty verdict, likely through the same loophole.

(Side note: this implies to me that Milgram's system for restraining guilty prisoners is, like the protective barrier around Es, somewhat magical and isn't a physical thing. Thus, if we were to, say, vote Amane as guilty, I am fairly confident she would be unable to harm any other prisoners, as we've already seen the barriers are able to prevent her from attacking others. I still lean Amane innocent anyways, but I wanted to point this out.)

Anyways, I don't think that this is actually evidence towards trikoto theory because it works perfectly fine with just the two of them. Aokoto is the prisoner in Milgram and Akakoto isn't. This doesn't necessarily mean that Aokoto is the one who was fronting while the murder happened, though; the rules of Milgram just necessitate that the prisoner is involved in/related to a death. It can be indirect.

I think that that's exactly what Milgram is asking us with Mikoto. The question is, how do you fairly hold a system accountable? Can you blame one alter for the other's actions?

Milgram loves to complicate these, and I can see the appeal of a complication being learning about a third alter. Personally, I think it's much more likely that the route Milgram is taking is looking at how much knowledge the alters have about each other and asking how much Aokoto would have to know to make him an accessory to Akakoto's murder plans. It could go either way, though.

Some Bonus Points

I think the strongest piece of evidence brought up is the use of threes in Mikoto's design. Other than "they just liked it aesthetically," there isn't much of a counterargument I can make about it. My best one would be that they might be going for a "switching between black and white" type of thing, which would work better with more stripes, but that's pretty weak. I also had the idea that the first character of his name looks like three stripes, which might be a better or worse explanation! You get to decide, I have no idea.

The cake sells me less, though. It's true that Kazui's is a perfect 50/50 and that Mikoto's isn't, but that's because they're representing different things.

Kazui's is half and half because his song is called half, and it could also be a sign of how he and his wife didn't actually connect more in a marriage sense; they're still two fully separate people rather than being a unit.

Mikoto, if he has two alters, is still physically one guy. Mikoto is mostly sitting on the flower designs. I'd argue that the flowers are meant to show Mikoto as a whole: the connection point of the two alters.

That's pretty much all of what I have to say on the doc (in terms of the trikoto aspect, whether I believe it or not there's some good work done in character/lyric analysis that applies to two or three alter theories), but I'll go over some of my reason for why I actively believe there to be two, because there are some reasons.

Reason 1: The Song Titles

The doc explains what the meaning of MeMe is in trikoto theory, but it definitely still works with two, more obviously so. That's not evidence, though, because the trikoto theory has a viable explanation too.

I have no idea what they'd be doing with the song title Double, though. I guess it would be a play on somebody being someone else's double, meaning they're someone like them, which is no doubt part of the song title either way, but I think it's difficult to ignore the meaning of Double that means, y'know... multiplied by 2, or:

But that could very easily be a diversion and we haven't seen the second video, so I'd let that slide. However, that brings me to the bigger problem:

Reason 2: Upright Versus Reversed

AKA, the tarot cards.

Tarot cards can be read two ways, Upright or Reversed, based on the orientation of the card when it's placed/picked up/whatever. I already went over in my original theory (which is pretty outdated, I could do a way better job but I wrote that one literally first out of my milgram thoeries and I hated not having a good name scheme for the various alters) why I believe Akakoto to be the Hanged Man (Upright) and why I believe Aokoto to be the Hanged Man (Reversed).

I struggle to imagine why the devs would pick tarot, something that clearly has two meanings to it, when there are actually three alters. Maybe it'd just be to throw us off the scent, but it feels a bit too intentional to me.

Plus, if it was meant to throw us off, I'd expect we'd get a different metaphor/symbol for the second MV (as we have been with pretty much everyone). However, the association between Mikoto and "reversible" things has continued into trial 2, even before his MV has come up.

I say this because of his trial 2 cover song: Reversible Campaign. Funnily enough, I actually thought this song would go to Kazui before it was announced as Mikoto's, but then I looked again and understood why they wanted it for Mikoto.

My thoughts get confused and fight with each other

Very Mikoto, works for either two or three alter theories. However:

I just want to waver between black and white

It's turned me upside down

There's more that seems to paint Mikoto's mind as a dichotomy, not a... trichotomy? Is that a word? I don't actually know.

The Song Lyrics of MeMe

This is sort of an extension of the above part, but there are also definitely song lyrics in MeMe that sound like they're heavily implying two. Again, you could argue that that's trying to throw us off the scent, but some of them are, in my opinion, actively difficult to justify for trikoto theory.

Split in half, Make that heart beat

I cannot for the life of me understand why any of the three alters would say "split in half" if there are three. I guess if any of them were aware of one of the other alters, but not the other? I don't think that's what was being argued, though, sorry if I missed that.

I’m already the fake one

Little harder to argue this one because I don't know how definite versus indefinite articles work in Japanese, but saying the fake one really sounds to me like there is one fake and one real. If you were just having a moment of existential crisis, in most situations, I think you'd opt for "I'm already fake."

The Mirror

This is sort of the same argument as the tarot cards, but there's also the use of mirror imagery in Mikoto's MeMe MV. Mirrors have two sides and are a reflection. You could use Haruka logic and say that it depicts self reflection, I guess, but considering the reflection acts differently, I think it's much more likely that this is meant to show the two alters.

Conclusion

Hopefully this all made sense? I respect trikoto theory and I could easily be super wrong about it (see also: my original opinions on gay Kazui theory and police Kazui theory), but I've just never really been sold. It's possible my opinion would change if I saw evidence that I felt worked better for trikoto than... twokoto? theory, but personally, I feel like most evidence I've seen for it is still better explained by there being two alters. Let me know what you think, though :)

[born-to-lose]

You could see Mötley Crüe for $20 at the Troubadour in the year 2024???? Tell me why local cover bands want double the money from me

[uwu-scraptrappy]

Consider the Venus Flytrap and the Eye Vacuum. Both traps have to do with the eyes, but one must sacrifice the eye, while the other must save the eyes. Why are we not shipping the guys in the traps.

Consider this; Michael (Venus Flytrap) entrusting the janitor (Eye Vacuum) with the knife to cut out the key in his eye. As the janitor saws away at Michael's eyeball to get the key, Michael is flicking the dial to break the janitor's fingers, and through them begging the other not to die, to just hurt them because if they don't they both die, they survive. Can you imagine that. Come walk with me. I'll guide you.

[thebirdtatts]

Valarie is on Niall’s preshow playlist. He said ot5 forever