#I do believe I have a problem with rambling…

[noihavenosanitythanksforasking]

so this is based on my ramble in the byler discord but im gonna try and compress it into something readable n shit

So in the recent panel with my king Finn Wolfhard, my boy dropped a hint. A very important hint.

"The differences? Mike's a lot more brave than me. I don't think I'd be out there in a different dimension trying to save my friend and be in gunfights and stuff like that. Yeah he's way more brave than I could ever be."

A different dimension??

So Mike is going to the UD in S5. Im very unsurprised and im sure you are as well but lets fuckin talk about it bc holy fuck.

So I know this is the byler community but listen to me when i say, hold my hand and look me in the eyes when i say, I highly doubt that this friend Finn is talking about is Will. ESPECIALLY if byler is canon. Finn is very media trained and you can read legit anything he has ever said about the show and know how good he is about keeping secrets. If this friend was will we wouldn't have mentioned it. It's too close to the danger zone. He would have said something like 'i dont think i'd be out there fighting monsters and risking my life' or something like that. Which is much more vague and can apply to all seasons.

My theory is that this friend is max. CALL ME CRAZY. it could be anyone and I dont have exact reasoning on why its Max other than the fact that shes the only friend actively in danger rn and i adore madwheeler friendship with my heart and soul. But imo its def not Will and its not El.

Now if you go through the main characters there are only (if my memory is correct) 3 characters who havent been to the UD yet.

Lucas, Jonathan and Mike.

Other Characters:

El- Season 1 during the school battle (possibly sooner in the lab idk)

Will- all of s1 duh

dustin- season 4 with eddie

max - season 4 when she was vecna'd

nancy- season 1 in the forest or in s4 with robin and steve to kill vecna

steve- watergate and with nancy and robin

robin - season 4 with nancy and steve

hopper- im p sure hes been more than once but season 1 to find will

joyce- same thing i think shes been more than once but to find will in s1

So Lucas, Jonathan and Mike.

What do these 3 characters all have in common.

They are all a part of one of the main relationships that had issues in season 4. And what are these problems? Lets assess.

Jonathan is stressed because he doesnt want to go to the same school as nancy. He wants to tell her but he knows that she'll give up what she wants to be with him. He doesnt want to hold her back. Nancy feels shut out and afraid that Jonathan doesnt love her anymore. She wants to be together but she doesnt want to put Jonathan in a situation where he has to choose something over something else. They are having issues communicating.

Lucas is stressed about max because he wants to be there for her. Max is shutting him out due to the fact that she feels unworthy of his love or because she is scared of getting hurt and attached to someone. Lucas is hurt because he feels max doesn't trust him. They are having issues communicating.

Mike is stressed about about two people. El and Will. And for this brief moment we're going to look at this in a non byler pov. Mike is stressed about El because he doesn't know what she wants. He wants them to be happy but they aren't and he's not sure how to fix that. He also doesnt ask. Communication issue. Mike is stressed about Will because they aren't talking the way they used too. They dont tell each other anything anymore. They've drifted and Mike doesn't know what's going on anymore. Communication issue.

Interesting.

Thoughout the series the UD has been used as a symbol of all the hard things. Depending on what theories you believe (*cough* lonnie *cough*) this can have more or less meaning but lets assess how going to the UD has affected two of these relationships so far.

Jancy-

Jancy in season one was very tense. they were not friends for a good part of the season. They had constant issues with each other and fought a lot. Then barb goes missing. Will goes missing. They go to the forest in an attempt to figure it out. And Nancy ends up in the UD. Her going into the UD and making it out alive is the catalyst for her and Jonathan to get past their differences, to see each other for who they are and to put their pride aside enough to work together and appreciate the other as a fellow person.

Lumax-

Lumax had a lot of issues with communication and not being able to understand each other in the beginning of s4. They couldn't see eye to eye no matter what lucas did and max was very shut out. Then Max get's vecna'd and comes back. And then lumax finds the strength to communicate for the first time in the season, to see where the other is coming from and allow the other to be there for them.

So what does this mean for Mike. Well, both nancy and max had something that they we're struggling to overcome. A fear that they couldn't escape. Nancy's was barb and Max's was billy. Jonathan and lucas both have something they are afraid to express. Jonathan's is that he wants something diff than nancy and Lucas is that he wants to be there for her but doesnt want to intrude. All of these characters were pushed to solving these issues because of the Upside down (well jancy's recent issue hasn't been solved yet but ykwim).

Mike is going to go to the UD. Which is going to push him into a state of giving in on holding back his feelings. He's going to have to overcome something

El wants to be together, to be happy.

Will is afraid of his feelings, afraid of letting himself want what he wants and being hurt. He feels unworthy of love.

And Mike doesnt want what El wants. Mike loves Will but he is afraid of intruding.

So anyways thats why mike going to the UD means internalized homophobia thanks for coming to my ted talk i'd love to hear yalls ideas :D

[dapper-lil-arts]

I find it kind of funny how, when you really think about it, Celestia is a really complex and layered character with a lot of emotional depths to explore (the pain she endured from having to banish her own sister, the pressure and responsibility she bears as the ruler of a kingdom, the betrayal she felt at Sunsets turn, etc.) and yet all of that is overshadowed by how easily she gets bodied at every possible turn.

Like, out of every major villain encounter in the show, she was really only helpful in like, what…Two of them? Maybe? The rest of the time she just shows up for a split-second and then *BAM* instant knockout.

I understand that from a writing perspective you have to find ways of removing her from these conflicts so that the main characters can have the focus (that’s also a major problem that Discord has post-redemption) but at a certain point it just becomes a thing of “man, you really can’t do ANYTHING on your own, huh?”

It becomes clear that the show didn’t quite know what to do with her once Twilight became a princess, and so they leaned more into her goofball tendencies (which I personally loved, but I could see others being annoyed by it) and it just makes me wish we could’ve gotten at least one more episode for her to really shine, like in Celestial Advice.

Anyways, ramble over, just wanted to say that I have nothing but respect for our dearly beloved Princess Fraudlestia 🫶💛

I think the showrunners lacked imagination and creativity regarding her and whenever they wanted to prop up a character, they preffered to knock down another character for that to happen. For example, everyone loses to Chrysalis off screen just so starlight can beat chrysalis with a few friends, it just isnt very creative or compelling Celestia suffered from this long before Twilight became a Princess, too. Hell, on episode friggin 1 Nightmare Moon returns amd Celestia doesn't show her face until she's been defeated, on Discord's episode she decides to literally only send letters to twilight instead of tryin to face discord herself in any way lmao. She's smart for that, thats for sure

I've written Celestia a couple dozen times, but I never ever want to just cut her out of a fight or a struggle just to make another character look better. And hell I don't even use the old superman excuse where she 'doesnt interfere bc if she goes all out she'll be too powerful and kill everything' she's a thousand years old! She's had centuries to refine her power and capabilities!

But I digress. My response to "This show does a character dirty" is never to take that in face value and interpret them as dirty too. Like, just bc the show tells me Cozy Glow deserves to be in Tartarus, doesn't mean I'll blindly believe them >:/ Just because the show tells me Celestia is useless doesn't mean I'll blindly accept it! After all, useless fraudlestia ran Equestria for a 1000 years. Perfect Twilight Sparkle didn't even canonically last 100.

[exposingthemonster]

I thought I would be making this at a later date, but I’m going to state it now. This blog is not gonna continue.

I will leave it up as an archive, though I do not know how to deactivate side blogs, so as of now it will remain active until I figure out how to deactivate it.

That being said, through one of the victims, I wished to stand up for I learned about a blog that has actively been actively targeting Cerberus in a harassment campaign.

Do I support the things that Cerberus did over a year ago? No. I find disgusting. However, I am aware that they are trying to recover from this, in which I support the recovery from what they did in the past.

That being said, from what I have seen, the blog has consistently moved the goal post further back after each time it was met. If I am correct, this is a manipulation tactic (please do correct me if I am wrong on this. I do not wish to spread misinformation.)

What I do know is that they have been publicly spreading misinformation about ikamigami knowingly supporting a groomer. If any evidence to support the claim can be provided, then please provide it as it is necessary in cases like this to provide the evidence, whether it be in a Google document or just sharing the screenshots.

But I also know from what I’ve seen is that they used a manipulation tactic when bringing this up, which already makes me cast outs on the claim ikamigami supporting a groomer knowingly, especially when it has been pointed out that said groomer lied to the public

I also want to mention that this account seems to go against the wishes of one of the victims. the victim had mentioned that they aren’t happy with the fact that the document was being used to tear others down & being used as other people‘s moral high grounds.

I will admit I have gotten emotional looking through that blog as they seem to brush off any criticisms or concerns about the victims, when brought up by others, along with reading messages from the victims they made their account for. I am doing my best to keep those emotions separated from this blog, though I do apologize if they have slipped through.

For the victims that I wished to stand for, I apologize as I believe I have unintentionally harmed you. I went into this project, mainly with emotions without thinking of how it would affect my mental health, or a proper understanding of everything that has gone on in the situation. I do believe the blog that I am talking about here is in a similar situation to me when it comes to the creation of our blogs.

With That being said. I thank those who have come here to vent to me, give evidence, or just stood by my side and trying to help others. I’ve let you all down, and I apologize for doing so. And for the victim who had dm’d me, I’m sorry people are using the document from a year ago, along with what you experienced in the past in a way you are uncomfortable with. I do wish I could stop it for you, but I do believe I am powerless in this situation.

And with that, it’s farewell everyone.

[novantinuum]

steven quartz universe is a wild character because never before have i simultaneously had various facets of imagined scenarios in my head where a character is either: cis+, nonbinary, a trans boy, OR a trans girl before

like you could genuinely go ANY direction with this character and still come up with a satisfying and interesting bit of character work for Why gender is the way it do be

[pyrepostings]

imagining a defiant interrogation whumpee who gets sick of saying "I'm not telling you" so they start going into what sounds initially to be them finally telling whumper what they want to know, but ends up being whumpee wasting time by just quoting a song.

[yumeurl]

sometimes i read drarry posts and i actually think people would enjoy tomarry much more than drarry MFKSMFMFK like i feel like dracos sins get conflated sm like...les just go to tomarry my bro im sure toms there w actual grave sins right there😭

[timeisacephalopod]

The type of Christian who asks atheists how they don't like, murder people on the reg are so funny to me because they seem to think their religion makes them the Peak of Morality when statements like "if you don't believe in God how comes you don't do X thing" all but outright state they have no idea why shit like murder and rape is bad except that God doesn't like it lmao. Like way to admit you have no intrinsic sense of morality and need to be afraid of a higher power to be a decent person, but I promise if you're not a piece of shit it's actually very natural not to want to do heinous evil shit all the time potential punishment from a higher power or not 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

[kyouka-supremacy]

---

[purgemarchlockdown]

Hm...

[brittlebutch]

it's actually so fascinating to me that Brennan has created a character that maintains a pretty relaxed and mild-mannered demeanor and has said multiple times that the absolute Core of her is "FEAR" and how often we see this Fear manifest specifically in Avoidance; it really nails a relationship to that mentality where your brain fully Stops recognizing the emotion properly out of like, sheer self-defense from the stress of having to carry it all the time

I think this is also perfectly showcased in the way we tend to see Tula swing so suddenly from 'level and steady' to 'snarling Panic' and then back again - Just because your brain has detached itself from the Conscious Recognition of the emotion doesn't mean it can Actually stop itself from experiencing it. So the Fear is always there and always acting as a stressor, but because of that inability to Identify it there's no way to recognize or address it before that final straw hits and your bodymind jumps Straight into Full Meltdown Mode; but then once again, once you drop even a Little bit below that Peak Terror your brain ceases to process the emotion; it's like the most exhausting form of Poor Object Permanence in the world

And even if Tula is aware of this happening to her, that doesn't really make it any easier to deal with / address. Even if you're able to spot the symptoms Around the emotion -- chest pain, irritation, nausea, whatever -- because the Emotion Itself is basically impossible to find, you can't really Successfully Pin Down what the problem is OR a way to cope with it. If you can't figure out That You Are Anxious, then figuring out What Is Making You Anxious is impossible, which makes Find A Way To Make Peace With That incomprehensible. That's where the Avoidance comes in: you can no longer identify what might be a Dangerous Situation, which means that Anything New has a big potential to be Really Bad in a variety of ways (ranging "I don't Feel Good" to "Fully Lashing Out bc you've entered Fight/Flight and can't get out of it" to "Actual Outside Danger This Time") and that means the Only Way you know how to be Safe is to just Avoid Doing Anything New and Only stick to Familiar Situations, because anything unfamiliar is a monster of a gamble you don't know how to prepare for or cope with

[ghosts-devilman-wip]

Dumping out devilman thoughts today.

I know I'm far from the first person to think about this, but I don't feel like it's given enough attention. What I'm talking about is the really noticeable lack of discussion about god as a character/driving force throughout the story (and I mean the lack of discussion on the fandom's end as well as within the stories.)

Like, you really have the all-powerful being who is the only thing in existence with the true ability to completely stop the war - to completely halt the cycle of violence. But they never intervene. Not until humans and devils have all destroyed one another. Not until Lucifer has finally killed Akira, and he's all that's left, alone on a rock on a decimated earth, watching the stars and expounding on the concept of love to a cooling corpse.

THEN god intervenes. To scorch it all and start it over again, only for the same story to play out time and time again. The only consistent exception to this, really, is whenever divine force is shot down in the beginning phases of the war. Though usually, this just ends up causing destruction in a different way. It never saves anyone, it just overpowers a show of force from the devil's side.

You could make the argument that god isn't the same all-powerful being here that he's seen as being in a larger cultural sense outside of this story. But I'd both disagree and say that's a bad take. He clearly carries more power than anyone else, as again, when he does intervene it overpowers everything else. And yeah there's the idea that he didn't make devils, but that doesn't make sense to me either. So much of this story is based both on christian mythology (or dantes inferno, but still).

To rewrite the concept of god in this way. And to practically ignore this character's existence. ESPECIALLY in a story that is so much about the cycle of violence and the failings of humanity. It does the whole thing such an injustice.

In devilman, the war between devils and humans is ultimately constructed by god himself. Because it all comes back to the fact that he had to have created the devils in some manner - how else would they have come about? - and then tossed them aside to make room for humans. Running parallel to the way he tossed aside one of his own angels for going against god's authority. An angel who then went to the devils, joined with them and led them toward liberation.

What else were the devils supposed to do? What else was Lucifer supposed to do?

God is absent from the story until there's nothing left. Then he does it all over again. For what? To punish lucifer and the devils? Again and again for their refusal to lay down and die quietly? And it's not to protect humans - how many human lives are destroyed in the process?

God is absent from this story and we continue to let him be. We focus so much on Akira and Ryo, and on trying to save them and rewrite their connection into something that can be saved. We try to rewrite it so Miki lives, and the war is averted. But that doesn't make sense to me.

This story has already been written to be a tragedy. The omniscient, all-powerful god of the story has decided that's what it's meant to be.

As long as lucifer lives to the end of the story, it will be scrapped and retold again and again. And if lucifer were to die? That would still be a tragedy, let's be honest.

The cycle of violence has already been set in motion, and it will not be stopped so easily. That's important to me. Because ultimately, erasing the tragedy of it suggests there would be an easy solution to the world's problems - that escaping oppression is as simple as being kind and quiet in the face of your own eradication, that stopping a war is as simple as crying in front of the right person, and that making the right choices are as easy as listening to what you're told is "good."

Devilman is a tragedy, but I don't think that's inherently nihilistic. I think it can make you think and ask questions and consider layers to the problem. It will not give answers, because it's not that easy - because if we had those answers then the world wouldn't be the way it is. What we see at the end isn't meant to be a prediction, or even a threat. It's simply null - this is complex and painful, and our characters were not able to figure it out, because of that. Possibly, very likely, because they were not able to see outside of their own perspectives and drives (who could? At a certain point, that would mean abandoning feeling. There's a reason Michael is the most unsettling character in any of the stories to me.)

I mean, sure. God always had an easy answer. He probably wants the story to go this way.

[sebek-zigbolt]

I don't think I'm strong enough not to pull for bday sebek even tho I want to save for ch 7 cards...... bcause yea........

[transmasc-rose]

One more AU to propose: at the end of Brotherhood, taking ac3's declaration of how the Apple works as fact, Desmond sees the satellite not working, sees Abstergo failing--and rather than kill Lucy, either manages to turn and kill no one (unlikely, given Juno's influence) or ends up stabbing Shaun and/or Rebecca instead, with the idea that maybe, if he talked to the Templars, he could make them understand, that their plan is flawed, that they need to try something else--

Because if the Templars, in all their money and planning and resources are failing, how could the Assassins succeed?

(This would royally piss off Juno.)

I don't think this would go well. I think, even if he and Lucy succeeded, made the Templars change plans, and that worked, the result would be bittersweet at best. A lot of people dead or under their control, with the Assassins being in an even worse state. Power granted to the Templars that make them rise even higher.

There's a good chance they don't succeed at all.

But he'll never know if things would go better if he'd chosen the other path.

(Maybe there's a world where he does convince the Assassins and Templars to work together on this. But that's a much kinder world than the games see fit to give him. So that is out of his grasp.)

[stardusteyes]

I have to say, I did have some doubts about Ariana Grande's casting as Glinda at first, (though I was always certain that her singing would be killer) but after watching the trailer, I am now more or less convinced that she will do a great job

[yellowloid]

only way i'm accepting the apology video that's no doubt going to come from watcher in the next few days is if ryan and shane decide to throw steven out altogether

[callixton]

i genuinely don't know what changed where i experience active romance repulsion so much now but like. goddamn that shit is not for me. good to know! important to know these things about yourself!