#I guess?

[maxhpart]

I couldn’t help but see a little gremlin >:3 face in the top right one, which made me look twice at the others, and… well, it snowballed from there.

nanami__hair on ig

[beepsheeps]

is this anything

[killl-ka]

Nothing in here is real but you (I beg god for you to be true)

[mellosdrawings]

Hey~ Welcome to "Mello thinks too much about Jamil at 5am coz they can't sleep!"

Today's subject: Pride!

I've just been obsessing over it for a while and had a random enlightening last night.

So NRC is a school full of prideful students who know they're hot stuff, right? Aside from maybe Trey and Cater who are more mild mannered and don't boast much like others, and maybe Rook who is more interested in others than himself, Pride is the one sin that is common amongst all the characters.

Jamil's case is pretty singular though, especially amongst the overblotted gang. Because while others' pride usually comes from knowing they're hot shit, Jamil's is a defense mechanism against the fact that he's nothing.

Yes I'll be especially harsh against Jamil, but that's kind of the truth.

Riddle is one of the greatest mages of his generation because of all the work he's done since he was basically born, he knows he's hot stuff.

Leona is just... OP. Canonically the cleverest in all NRC, OP powers, the one guy even Idia doesn't understand why he overblotted in the first place, he's even royalty. Like, if it weren't for his bro he'd have everything. Leona might be self depreciating a bunch, he still knows he's hot stuff and his pride comes from that.

Vil is both powerful and one of the biggest stars worldwide. He's the same as Leona, while he has his moments of self hatred his pride does stem from just being that bitch.

Will it surprise you if I also call Idia prideful? Sure, he's meek and introverted and has too much anxiety for his own good, but he did get his Housewarden position because he thought he was better at the job than others. He knows he's a technomancy genius and one hell of a gamer. What little pride he shows comes from those talents.

And Malleus, well, he's just the devs darling so he's even more OP than Leona.

I purposefully skipped Azul because I think his case is more similar to Jamil's than to the others.

Azul and Jamil's pride are artificial. It's here as a defense mechanism, either to be perceived as better than he thinks he is (for Azul), or to convince himself than he is more than what he actually is (for Jamil).

Sure, Jamil is clever and pretty strong and has lots of qualities. But 1. He's far from the genius he thinks he is. And 2. As soon as people point out he's a fake he immediately goes into depression mode.

Book 6 was a very insightful moment for both Jamil and Azul. They both get paired with people who (not so) accidentally chip away at their pride until they have to face the fact that they are just not as great as they think.

And that's where Azul and Jamil differ.

Because Azul knows he's "not that great". Or at least, he thinks he's inferior to others. That's why people he considers above him punching down on him hurts so much (plus the obvious bullying trauma he's got).

Jamil genuinely thought he was better than everybody else until Book 6, where Leona knocked him down a peg. He convinced himself through inflated and artifical pride that he was more competent than his peers. And the second he realized that wasn't the case, he started flipping back and forth between self depreciating and trying to inflate his own pride again. As a defense mechanism.

Because for someone who's always been pushed down to take the least amount of space possible, for someone who's always known he had the possibility to be/do better but was never given the occasion to shine, admitting that he's mid hurts.

He needs to make himself useful and show off to Leona, not just because it's a reflex ingrained in him since forever or because of the repercussions that could befall him should he let royalty get hurt under his watch, but also because he needs to reassure himself that he is something.

Because he's been nothing his whole life.

And that hurts.

That's why it was so hard for Leona to get through to him, while Riddle and Azul managed to work together midway through their descent into Tartarus. Because for Jamil to accept criticism and help, he'd first need to drop his pride. And he just can't do that.

Even by the end of their descent, Jamil still found a way to twist Leona's preaching in his favor. Even then he still managed to put his pride up to reassure himself. He has more potential to grow than others, sure. That's a first step in accepting his mediocrity, but that's also very validating for his pride. He might not be the best now, but just you wait-

And that's why Jamil was all talk and no show before that point. Because unlike the others, his pride is artificial. He has nothing to back it up.

I'm sorry if I repeated myself a lot or didn't make much sense. I'm afraid me trying to explain my thought process tends to be stunted by the fact I don't have enough vocabulary to back it up :'D (And the fact that I'm writing all that while sleep deprived doesn't really help lol)

I usually tend to obsess over the 'sin' of Envy for Leona, Vil, and Jamil, coz it's one hell of a sin, the only that brings no pleasure whatsoever. And I just love watching characters make their own lives miserable over the pettiest things.

But damn is the subject of Pride interesting. I see most people, myself included, tend to tone down the Pride aspect of NRC when writing fanfics or drawing fanarts, even though it's one of the core points of the story.

And as said earlier, it's hard to make a character change and develop when Pride is in the way, so I totally understand why people downplay it for the sake of narrative.

Coz otherwise we'd only get tragedies.

And I love tragedies~

[dufferpuffer]

'Age gap' isn't a real thing. Not in this sense. It's a fetish term people label regular relationships with - and it's insulting. 'I'm just worried about power dynamics-' no y'all're not. Age doesn't give people power. It just fucking doesn't.

Money, class, race, education, language, fame, citizenship, trauma, disability, life experience, vehicle licenses - all these can cause a difference in power within relationships. None are tied to age. What is the power difference between a 60yr old electrician and a 30yr old doctor? It isn't that one of them is twice the age.

If a 23yr old looks at a 35yr old and says 'wow they are so grown up I gotta follow what they say' - that has nothing to do with age and everything to do with the 23yr old making themselves weirdly vulnerable by infantilizing themselves.

The REALLY scary thing about this is that people will call a 'relationship' between kids and adults 'age gap', too. They'll say shit like '15 years difference between 25 and 40? That's just like if they dated when they were 15 and 30' ???surely I don't need to outline how horrifying that is??? To misunderstand so heavily the specific issue with kids dating adults vs adults dating adults - watering it down to 'feels icky'???

90% of age gaps don’t matter when you’re a grown adult as long as you don’t have a repeated pattern of dating people barely legal. I would date someone 30 years older than me if I liked them who gaf

[jaguarys]

I find it fascinating (derogatory) how the general fandom conversation has shifted from "this woman is getting in the way of our gay ship and she's USELESS and ANNOYING and WE DON'T LIKE HER!" to this weird "no actually she's just not involved in her own relationships because she's too cool and special and awesome and a girlboss". But the problem is that there's not actually a veritable difference there. People still aren't engaging with her as a fully-fledged character. Like sure man calling her a girlboss is fine it's whatever but let that lead somewhere else. Engage with her. Can you actually name any of her character traits or are you just blindly praising her so that you can focus on shipping the guys in the background without feeling bad about it

[squiblysabre]

It’s so funny to me that we as the Star Wars fandom will see any young man vaguely Luke’s age and go “yeah he’d make a good boyfriend for Luke”

[drowsyfudge]

I’m not really proud of this but I’m posting it anyways yaa

[strawberrymeatloaf]

😊👋🐝🐞☀️

💯🙏💛🟨👍

[offkilterkeys]

Hi best friend :D

If you do not want carcass to HACK SLASH and KILL the poor Jardley smash that like button and subscript you’reself into my army of Jadekat warriors.

[thedissonantverses]

Hi other Veilguard lovers! I did delete the weird hostile anon I got(don’t worry I keep receipts) cause ya know we all don’t need to see that shit. I’ve been called worse and will be again probably I’m not shy about my opinions. It’s fun to dunk on weirdos but also eh? The vitriol to this game is disproportionate to what it is and I am going to combat that where I can but I am more interested in building up a fandom community that’s actually fun.

I do want to say that if a queer positive game with a diverse cast is making you so angry ya gotta call people names and go out of your way to fight them you should probably unpack that offline I don’t think social media is good for you. That’s not snark I mean it! Protect your mental health!

Anyways thank you to the friends I’ve made here and I’m looking forward to making more!! Gonna do that Rook Storytime Ask by the lovely @hyperions-light a lil later so if you want to send me more asks go for it!! Or if you wanna send me writing prompts in general I’m so down.

Keep an eye out for my writing challenge tomorrow and there’s a super special fan event coming up I cant properly announce just yet but if you’re a Davrin, Bellara, Taash, or Neve fan I think you’ll be very happy in the coming weeks! Let’s keep creating and keep our chins up!

[spearslug-box]

Icons.. Maybe I'll do the others later

[areallyhappyperson]

I must have this

enough paintings of saints where they're looking heavenward in ecstatic agony or down with love and mercy on their onlookers as they ascend. we need more paintings where the martyr is looking accusatorily directly at the viewer.

[numpobumpo]

yeah idk.

[bat-snake]

A thing about Aaravos that I don't think gets talked about a lot, but I like: How is bookshelves are (dis)organized:

They're not just neatly lines up, but they're allowed to lean sideways/at angles/be supports for other books.

Even this early on before losing Leola, it's pretty clear that he may have never liked the idea of "perfect order" and saw necessity for chaos where possible. Also note that in his rearrangements, as you would probably do between 2000 years of time, is that books have mostly just been shifted around, and he moved plants just slightly behind shelves

(6x01, 6x09)

Into Crazy Headcanon territory, I think it's pretty likely that he penned and bound a great deal of these books, depending on the era.