#I don't use reddit

[pastelsugar6w6]

[skull-pun]

Literally my biggest problem with the current state of things.

Atrocities and corruption are just met with a "eh" and that is just insane to me.

Like, have people always been this way? I really don't think they have, it really does feel like Trump and the pandemic caused the vast majority of people to become apathetic to the most inhumane shit.

Also we don't talk enough about how actually fucked up it is to have a generation of kids who have instant access to porn and gore and how that may have a negative impact on shit like empathy.

I grew up with best gore, I've seen some horrible shit, and I can tell you that it has definitely desensitised me.

But whenever you try to address the issue you just get called a boomer or a pussy or you get accused of trying to censor the Internet, like, what? No.

I'm not trying to censor the Internet I just don't think kids should have access to videos of factory workers being turned inside out.

*sigh* Idk man

[rednightmare18]

arthur is rude to that one sex worker because the guys are fucking around as they oughtn't be and he actively wants the source of their distraction to go away. that is how he operates through the entire game: deliberate, utilitarian intimidation and strategic unpleasantness to achieve a goal. it is an early game commentary on arthur meant to position him as a big dog that barks. it is not a commentary on his views about women which are clarified many times afterward. you guys realize that right

[black-and-yellow]

Grump doodles for your viewing pleasure

[beargregor]

wait i'm curious, what makes you say that gregor doesn't like everyone else (if i read that post right)? just curious since i've never seen anyone else say that

i don't necessarily think gregor dislikes everyone else at lcb but i do think that gregor is an incredibly petty person that isn't nearly as close to the rest of the sinners and even outright dislikes some of them cough cough rodya cough cough which a lot of people just Refuse to see because he's as much of a doormat as he is. there's several examples i could get into to try and prove my point however i'll just focus on what i personally think to be the biggest ones.

additionally, this is going to be kind of long, so i'm adding a read more. read more! read it. sorry for being so wordy. i have several diseases.

Pt1. gregor is the type to try and get along at least decently with everyone, especially if he gets a good first impression from them.

this is less a point in favor of gregor's distance w/ the rest of the sinners and more just a contributing factor to it. once again there's several examples i could point to here but i think the most in your face one happened in canto I with yuri, as several people have pointed out. even before gregor comes clean about growing attached to her as quickly as he did because she reminds him of his sister, we get this interaction.

i'll go ahead and make the disclaimer now that i don't necessarily think gregor is the most reliable of narrators, especially when it comes to his feelings and interactions with most people, but from the way he acts when the topic of yuri comes up (and the way we still see him act even all the way up to c7, nearly a whole year after yuri's death) i don't see reason to question his sentiment here. gregor immediately got that aya and yuri were close, potentially even taking note of their traded belts, and went out of his way to get something nice for yuri despite hardly knowing her.

i feel like a lot of people have forgotten as much, especially since it's been so long since c1, but gregor actually spent a good bit of season 1 doing the exact same thing with the other sinners! gregor reads a connection between him and ishmael pretty quickly despite getting off to a rocky start

mostly because gregor can tell that ishmael is pretty sardonic in a very similar way to him. there's been multiple instances where ishmael and gregor have essentially expressed the same sentiment at different moments, most notably gregor's little argument after ishmael got shot with a decay ampule in c4

and ishmael's response to pilot talking about self-sacrifice in c5

i could go ahead and pull up more examples, but in general pm has gone out of their way to show us that gregor and ishmael are pretty similar, so it makes sense for gregor to assume that they're friends, right?

this will be pushpin 1. keep note of this for Later.

ishmael's only the first sinner we see gregor trying to do this with in s1, we also see him try it out with heathcliff, sinclair, and ryoushuu

he's tried to get along with charon, being one of very few sinners that we've seen actually try to establish a connection with her at all

even rodya, despite my insistence that gregor doesn't like her nearly as much as the fandom thinks he does

all of these seem pretty fine and dandy, right? sure it frequently leans towards self-degradation, micromanaging, and commiseration, but gregor can at least be pretty chummy with most of the sinners, can't he?

Pt2. hell's chicken was more than just comic relief guys please

i'm fully aware that this is quite the hot take, but i think hell's chicken deserves a lot more credit for character writing than the fandom gives it. hell's chicken gave us foreshadowing for several events, such as the donqui bloodfiend reveal

heathcliff's distortion in c6 (as well as hong lu's highly speculated distortion at some point in the future)

and ryoushuu and sinclair's continued connection by making him the odd one out on her team

which, hey! that implies something about gregor's odd one out, don quixote, too, doesn't it? yes. yes it does. that's pushpin 2. keep note of that for later.

speaking of pushpins, hey! that's pushpin 1!

splitting into teams is one of the major events in hell's chicken, and most of the sinner's choices are either motivated by very little, backhanded, or motivated primarily by not wanting to be on the opposite leader's side. i didn't include all of the picks, just because i feel like including most of them already gets this across, but i think gregor took one major thing from this: most of the sinners, when push comes to shove, will only side with gregor when they refuse to or can't take his opponent's side.

now, don't get me wrong, i'm fully aware that this is primarily intended to be comedic relief, but when gregor is being described as having his trust broken by ishmael or nearly crying because no one on his team properly sided with him for him, i feel like it's pretty fair to read into this.

something that i think is pretty important to remember in conjunction with this is that we know that gregor is the type to hold a grudge, both from his general attitude towards the G corp soldiers in c1 as well as his continued distaste for vergilius

even beyond the splitting into teams of hell's chicken, the sinners have given gregor plenty of reasons to feel bitter. i feel like this is something people have noticed but haven't really put a finger on, but it's kind of wild just how often the rest of the sinners make gregor the butt of the joke

and sure, we could argue that a fair few of these aren't really made with any ill intent. quite a bit of it could have been meant as harmless teasing, but with gregor being more sensitive than most, it coming from nearly all sides, and as often as it does? yeah, i think he's prone to taking it a bit personally.

Pt3. yes i do still think gregor was the third most important character in canto VII you guys gotta hear me out okay

of course, all of this leads up to the bit of the story i highlighted, doesn't it? c7? i totally get why people haven't really picked up on all the gregor things i did in it, seeing as they were mostly not *directly* said about him or by him.

personally, i think that gregor's distaste for talking about himself on any serious level and thus leading to him getting sort of "sidelined" narratively (which i take issue with that claim, but still. it's effective for getting what i mean across atm) is supposed to lead players to take a deeper look at the times gregor gets held up to other characters and compare and contrast what's being said about them by the matchup. as i showed earlier with his immediate latching onto ishmael, i think this is something gregor himself is at least partially aware of too.

so, that begs the question, who was gregor compared to in canto VII that makes me think it's one of the most critical pieces in understanding his character?

really, i'd like to avoid getting too lost in the analysis of this canto specifically, since i'd like to do a proper post about this later, but i figure i can bury the lede a little before doing it properly.

c7 features several characters being made to perform in sansón's play, acting out the relevant backstory for this segment of the plot. a lot of these characters have rather direct, degrading reasons for playing the roles they do.

outis, a character with an inflated ego who wants her journey to have a purpose, is made to play an aimlessly wandering villager with a single line.

hong lu and ryoushuu, two characters for whom families and the expectations placed upon them are likely going to play a major role, are made to play bloodfiends.

rodya, a character who resents her lot in life and is constantly shown to be eager to leave her destitution behind her and become someone special, is made to play a helpless villager that's too poor to even offer any money to the hero that saves her.

heathcliff, a character that has spent most of his life getting dehumanized by comparing him to beastly animals, is made to play a literal bear whose sole purpose in the plot is to get beat up and then quickly left by the wayside.

sinclair, a character that has two opposed parties essentially treating him as a macguffin to procure for their side, is made to play the character who was arguably the catalyst for this entire canto, not to mention playing a decently major role in ruina.

our star don quixote is made to play her father, the first kindred, but there's someone by their side the entire time, isn't there? don quixote's dear, steadfastly loyal companion. a character which don quixote has tasked themself with getting to come out of their shell?

hello again, pushpin 2.

gregor has been made to play our unreachable star, sancho. someone had to, of course. you can't really tell a story without it's main character, now can you?

now, i should once again give a disclaimer. i am not trying to say that i think adapting what happens to donqui/sancho in c7 to gregor is the road pm is going to take here, not only would that toe a bit past the line of foreshadowing, but it'd also just amount to rehashing that plotline again, which i don't think would make for a particularly exciting story.

what i DO think is that we can take a lot of the things that are said to either directly be the case for sancho and use them to inform how we see gregor.

and god, does playing sancho have some fucking implications for our favorite ossan archetype.

starting off, the earliest moment we get to see of sancho is quite literally her just waiting for death to take her in a pile of ashes.

which, i should remind everyone, is actually pretty damn close to what happens to gregor's literary counterpart at the end of the metamorphosis. gregor samsa experiences one final breaking point that pushes him over the edge and makes him decide to just wait for starvation to take him.

gregor and sancho both consider themselves to no longer be human, something which sancho goes out of her way to highlight repeatedly throughout the canto and gregor is quick to get defensive on her behalf for when outis starts really tearing into her

sancho spends quite a lot of this story denying herself the joys of community and friendship, despite knowing that, even with the rest of the sinners frequently making jokes at her expense and outright insulting her, they were things that she desperately craved.

and, while this is getting into my "outis is a red herring meant to distract us from gregor's eventual betrayal" theorizing, i also think it's worth noting for this discussion that sancho's fellow kindreds, her family, all seem to be under the impression that she dislikes them and ultimately her departure was an act of betrayal

and that, despite gregor being one of LCB's resident mood makers and attempted conflict de-escalators, one of the sinners that's most prone to making appeals to the bonds they've all forged together, only him and faust remained silent during everyone's speech

so yeah, i think there's quite a lot of little details and hints building up to the reveal that gregor's not quite as fond of everyone as he presents himself to be. i do think a lot of this ultimately comes down to gregor getting in the way of his own happiness, similarly to donqui, particularly because he's been frequently portrayed as something of a self fulfilling prophecy, especially by giving him as many christ allegories as they have by way of priest and garden of thorns. gregor is convinced that the rest of the sinners don't like him because he's not convinced anyone could like him, so he convinces himself that he hates them because why should he care if someone that he hates hates him too?

a lot of this ultimately ties back to my personal interpretation of what happens in the metamorphosis as well as my own theories regarding all the times gregor has made weird callbacks and references to lobcorp and ruina, but yeah. i think about this guy and his deeper characterization a fairly normal amount, i think.

to end this off i'll highlight one of my favorite little "gregor is fucking seething and trying so hard to keep it cool" moments, in the credits CG for c7 we see rodya teasing him by drawing a little horse on his window and actively pointing and laughing at it, which gregor really doesn't seem all too pleased about.

i personally think this ties into the other cruel part of sansón forcing gregor to play rocinante, which is the more literal "he's actually just straight up playing rocinante" side of things. gregor was quite literally made to play something less than human, less than even animal really, as he was reduced to nothing more than the shoes don quixote wore as she got to play the leading role. sansón directly makes jokes about gregor being nothing more than shoes in the play twice, which adds to this reading, i think.

this, imo, really plays into the adaptation of the metamorphosis! i've seen a lot of readings for the book that posit that, despite being the protagonist, gregor samsa can't really be considered the main character due to nearly everything he experiences in it being used to further his family's character development at his expense, which i think fits nicely with limbus gregor seemingly having the most said about him through indirect means by holding him up to other characters. also it's rodya carelessly making fun of His Big Major Insecurities™ again like she did in c1 which i always find fun. rodya i love you but god you're the worst.

[renthony]

The term “filler episode” is blatantly misused in fandom spaces and it's really goddamn annoying.

In the book "Manga and Anime Go to Hollywood: The Amazing Rapidly Evolving Relationship Between Hollywood and Japanese Animation, Manga, Television, and Film," by Northrop Davis, Davis explains the that concept of a “filler episode” in animation comes to us from anime adaptations of manga. Anime is frequently produced at a faster rate than manga, which means that anime adaptations of manga often have to come up with their own “filler” stories to slow down the pacing of the main narrative, because the manga isn’t finished yet.

"Filler" does not mean "low-stakes episode that doesn't progress the main plot." Filler does not mean "character moments that you did not like." "Filler" does not mean "anything that isn't breakneck-paced main plot."

It's a specific term and you are misusing it.

[memen18-m5r3]

hello surviving centricide fandom...I bring you some wacky food

(i'm also animating a small portion of Centricide 3.5 but since I can't tell how much more time it's gonna take I'll show you some sneak peeks! :3)

((since I'm a certified yapper, I added some additional info + translations to all the images descriptions! not sure if it qualifies as ID so feel free to add upon it if necessary))

[misaerabl]

i just read dumbass reddit posts of people saying abby definitely used steroids "because there's no way women be built like that". just because YOU can't be built like that (probably because you're a stinky man who hides behind his computer and lives in your mom's basement) doesn't mean women can't, you fucking incel

[so-am-art]

my fraind 🎃

I love him so much you have no idea

[phanbeats]

lol. lmao even ✌️

[keysports]

You know how it goes when you're the older guy. You try to keep it light. I think we got a great group, it's a lot of fun to be in there. So just trying to keep the energy high and you feed off a lot off these guys. I mean, there's— Everybody's so excited to be here and there's so much energy in the room.

[asleepinawell]

snake eater theme music playing in the background

[vadersaber]

tumblr being the chillest & nicest place that shows support & love for bella fills me with so much joy. every other platform is a fucking plague (instagram, tiktok, facebook, twitter, reddit). the fucking incels are just so vile, it makes me so mad.

and it's not just the harassment or bullying or making fun of bella's appearance, but it's the going out of their way to publicly post death threats or shame them. like fuck you, I hope the worst happens to you

[boykingscourt]

houses of the holy is a SAM EPISODE. don't even mention the other guy's name

[lbulldesigns]

r/parentingadvice

How do I tell my adult children that they'll have a new little sister?

16th of December, 2023

I (45 M) have found myself in a position I didn't think I would find myself in at this point in my life.

It has been a while since I last posted on this site but the last time, I posted I was met with some really good advice, and even made a few friends, so I'm hoping I can get some really good advice now.

The title is self-explanatory. I have four children already, all adults now, and recently, a social worker contacted me to inform me that I possibly have a five-year-old daughter, now six as I write this. To say I was surprised was an understatement, I actually sat for hours racking my brain trying to remember who I slept with in the last six years, I'm not very active in the dating scene and can only remember having a one-night stand once which lines up with my new daughter's age.

There wasn't any actual confirmation that I was the father, and the worker was asking for a paternity test to locate this child's biological parent. I readily agreed to the test, and the results came back positive. It was then that I learned that my new daughter, who I'll call Kitty because she reminds me of one, had recently lost her mother (I wasn't given any details) and the man who had been raising her up until now had learned that Kitty wasn't his biological daughter and doesn't want anything to do with her, and neither does any of Kitty's maternal family after learning she was born both out of wedlock and is a result of her mother's infidelity.

I want to put out there, that I was under the belief that Kitty's mother was single at the time, I can't even remember her name (although the one given to me by the social worker didn't sound familiar in the slightest) and the number she gave me that night turned out to be for an 80-year-old woman who managed her social groups Tupperware "store", I think I was stuck on that phone call for two hours listening to this kind old lady go through her Tupperware sales speech, forget said speech and then rinse and repeat. And yes. I bought a lot of Tupperware that day. My daughter Pow (20) mocked me endlessly for doing so but had a blast baking to fill those containers.

It goes without saying, but I decided to get guardianship of Kitty, I've already met her. She's weary, which is fair she's going through a lot of changes at the moment and is silent which is a result of her being nonverbal (I've been told that she possibly has autism but hasn't been assessed yet) and strangely enough is already confirmed to be a Shifter; usually, people don't find out they're a Shifter until they become teenagers but she's an early bloomer.

Right now, she's in the hands of Janna's Temple until the transfer of custody can be finalized, I have set up appointments to go visit her so that she's used to my presence in her life and so that her transition into my home can go more smoothly.

My biggest worry at the moment is how my kids are going to react. They're all good kids, minus a few hiccups growing up, and I trust them to act accordingly with her but I also can't help but continuously imagine the worst-case scenario.

Has anyone else been in this situation? And if so, can you offer me any advice on how to navigate it in a way where I don't end up horrifically traumatizing my new daughter?

[trashcanwithsprinkles]

This might be a bit random but would you say you have any thoughts on Neurodivergent readings of Zhongli (more specifically autistic)? I was thinking about it in the latest chapter of JG amd even before then too. as an autistic person myself i feel he reads very heavily as such, especially when talking about his human mask and feeling like he doesn't need to force it as much with childe, and his issues with human expression in smiling etc. but I think it's then an interesting debate between that and the fact that, well, he's just not human. that all comes from a place of being an entirely different species, unevolved and unrelated to human brains and how they think and read social patterns, and I feel we don't really have any way of telling if ZL has any divergent tendencies among dragons right? and even then he's half, too, so that affects things.

anyway sorry for the ramble I was mainly wondering if you had any opinions on the matter, or if you intended the parallels I definitely see while reading your Zhongli! love your work as always <3333

i think i might've commented on this at some point but never directly, so here – i do have thoughts on the matter!

as you mentioned, it's difficult to tell with characters that aren't human, because you can't call something 'neurodivergent' if the bases for their neurotypical-ity are not the ones by which we measure this stuff. so, to me, ALL non-human characters are neurodivergent-coded. they may not be neurodivergent, technically speaking (like how you mentioned, maybe all dragons are just like zl), but to us, they read as such. so, coded. ultimately i do think there is merit in labeling them as neurodivergent because, even if they, again, technically aren't; we are going to run into problems if we attempt to treat them as neurotypical, so we might as well say yeah, neurodivergent. it is also kinda correct anyway – they do diverge from us. that's a fact. it's like saying dogs are colorblind. if all dogs see in the same range, then you can't say your dog in specific is colorblind (unless it actually is but that's beside the point); but compared to us, from our perspective, for what it matters to us and how that will translate into how we treat them then yes! dogs are colorblind! i think i mentioned it once in conjunction with characters like alhaitham. to me, zhongli is neurodivergent-coded, while alhaitham is neurodivergent straight-up. because (as far as we know) he's human, so his brain should, in theory, be like ours.

as for which flavor of neurodivergency zl is coded to have in specific i would agree with you on autism! but then again, i'm not an expert on these things, i don't know the exact ins and outs and the specific characteristics that constitute an autistic character – i just write them the way i perceive them, with the quirks i perceive them to have. not to get preachy but i think that's the better way to write characters in general, since that's how real people work, after all. people with autism aren't born fitting some parameters that will make them autistic – they're born with specific quirks that we then interpret as autism, and even then you don't necessarily get two people having the exact same experience with this. most of these terms are umbrella terms regardless as to how well-defined or how big or small the umbrella is.

so yeah!