#I love all this speculating guys

[diaz911]

So this is what I'm confused about the cast are definitely in their costumes in these pics, but I'm finding it hard to believe they are all dressed for the wedding.

Hen is in very appropriate wedding attire and so is Athena, and the guys are all dressed nice but are you telling me none of the boys are in the wedding party??? I kind of thought they would all be groomsmen, ESPECIALLY Buck. Like, he's one of Chim's best friends and Maddie's only sibling. But he's in a kind of casual suit instead of in a full tux like Hen? That seems impossible. Gavin is also not dressed for a wedding at all.

To me, the guys are all dressed for a fancy bachelor party, or maybe rehearsal dinner, and not a wedding. A bachelor party is also more inclined to shenanigans which would explain why Ryan and Oliver are all messed up. Just my thoughts. My excited excited thoughts.

[butterflysonnets]

yes i'm rooting for m*leven breakup because byler is neat but mostly? i'm rooting for m*leven breakup for the sake of el and mike.

to me, their romance was always a puppy love born out of a combination of social pressures, naïve curiosity, and a lack of true understanding regarding intimacy and romantic love and what it really is. it was real in that they do truly, deeply care about each other and they are close friends, maybe even shared an attraction, but a maturing romance is so much more than that. they've grown up and out of being boyfriend/girlfriend, and that's okay! i think television/film needs to show more often that most of us don't have definite "soulmates" or first childhood loves that we spend our whole lives with. it doesn't mean these relationships meant nothing and didn't impact us, it just means they've run their course and that something else is in the cards, and this is part of life!

i've always felt el was at her best and most confident self when broken up with mike, discovering who she was and what she liked alongside another girl her age instead of just relying on mike for mentorship on how to live in the real world. she deserves more of an opportunity to find herself, her autonomy, and her independence, and to love who she is, and she's made it clear she's felt insecure in the relationship with mike because she isn't being loved and understood the way she wants, needs, and deserves from someone who is her partner.

also, it's okay if mike doesn't love her in "the way he should". he is not obligated to love her romantically and stay in a relationship with her just because she's a girl, because she "needed someone", or because he cares about her a lot. he shouldn't be pressured into a romance if it's not truly coming from his heart. he deserves freedom to find out and honour who he is, too, instead of just staying in his non-functional first relationship — one he got into as a child, essentially — and defining himself that way because it's what's expected when a boy and a girl are close. he loves her in some way, yes, but it's okay if he doesn't feel comfortable or secure being her boyfriend anymore, for whatever reason that is. he's felt insecure too, and that's valid and it matters.

they are their own people and are steadily growing and changing every day. they need time to figure out who those people are, and it's become clear (at least in my opinion) that those people aren't meant to be a couple at this stage.

they deserve freedom. they deserve to grow up and be authentic to themselves and not feel like they need to lie for the sake of a relationship. they deserve to move on from this version of their relationship that isn't making them happy and rekindle the best part of their bond: their strong, beautiful friendship. they don't have to be a couple if it doesn't make them stronger and better and happier people.

i think it would be healthy and wonderful for a show, especially one consumed frequently by young adults, to show a relationship starting, progressing, and ending on good terms in this way. sometimes things don't work out, and that is okay.

[chirpsythismorning]

What they're saying is s5 is going to have Hawkins High School as one of the locations for the plot. What I'm hearing is jealous Mike opportunities...

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

some alien fish concepts for my headworld. well. one of them. the dragon one! well. one of them-

tiny note that these are not to scale compared to each other <3

[ctadiablotin]

POSSIBLE SPOILERS ? don't read it you aren't at all familiar with iwtv/how it ends and are going into the rest of the season blind.

guys hear me out what if in the show the whole igniting fire thing between louis and armand and how it's decided louis starts fires from anger like wHAT IF HE JUST PUTS THE THEATRE INTO FLAMES WHEN CLAUDIA DIES ???? no need for kerosine, no need for a candle to light the fire, like he does it all himself out of the insane rage he feels for loosing claudia. 2x04 made it seem like louis doesn't remember the fire, what if he thinks claudia just like ran away?? i'm sure he knows claudia is dead but,,,, he definitely doesn't know that armand knew what the coven was planning and allowed for claudia's death to happen (i might be wrong about that i've only watched the 90s movie and read a bunch of fanfic, i haven't read the books yet) ?? and what if armand made louis forget about the fire because he doesn't want louis to remember the consequences/ability of his rage being able to burn down the theatre, and he doesn't want louis to realize the power he has ??? i dunno. but with all the fire stuff they did this last episode i am seriously suspecting that louis is gonna burn that bitch of a theatre down all on his own 🦹‍♀️🦹‍♀️🦹‍♀️🦹‍♀️🧛🏻🧛🏻

additional thought i had while doing the tags, yknow the part in the new trailer where some of the apartment crumbles around daniel, what if that's the moment that louis finds out the truth about the fire and about claudia ?? and then louis and armand brawl 🦹‍♀️🦹‍♀️

[orcelito]

Gotta love that we have nearly all the named konoha kunoichi (minus Tsunade, Kurenai, and a few other even more minor kunoichi)

AND YET. the guys still outnumber them.

Still. 5/12 is still way more than we usually get (since it's normally teams of like 1/4 to 1/8 or so)

Wow the female characters ratio in naruto is absolutely atrocious.

[anxiously-sidequesting]

So I don't know if it was ever revealed how Duncan felt when we killed Malistaire all three times but I'm wondering if maybe some part of him could hate us for that too. Like you hear that and you go "but why. Malistaire was terrible and even Duncan knew that(?). Why would he hate you for getting rid of him."

But like I think it's so....... interesting in a very, very, very sad way how Duncan so easily latches onto anyone who directly feeds into his delusions of grandeur. And that's no fault of his own that he was manipulated by the nasty Schism but when you think about how desperately clung to the idea that Malistaire, easily one of the greatest necromancers any of us had ever heard of (at that time), somehow actually recognized Duncan's talents (even when canon supports that Duncan wasn't all that talented, at least no more than the next necromancer) and then praised him for it so often that Duncan believed that he would be the next Death Professor is. I mean ☹️

So like with that mindset I unfortunately feel like it would be quite easy to twist even Malistaire's death as something that's horrible and awful and all our fault. ESPECIALLY if the Schism was feeding into Duncan's already broken mind and shattered ego and was constantly telling him that everything bad that ever happened to him ever in his life was Our Fault. That's like a realistic conclusion that someone like Duncan could come to

And like, at this point in time, are Malistaire's crimes even a factor in how he thinks????? Was Duncan ever able to separate Malistaire's talent and skills and prowess from the terrible and awful things he did? If Duncan wasn't able to consciously tell that distinction in the first place I can't imagine it would be any better during the years he was being manipulated and isolated and lied to

Like in Duncan's mind it probably isn't, "maybe I shouldn't idolize a national criminal, or idolize anyone at all for that matter, and aspire to be like someone so harmful when I can recognize my own talent and build from there" it's probably more like, "you (the wizard) permanently got rid of a brilliant mind, an innocent person who just made a few mistakes, and someone who believed in me no matter what just so that you could be the better than me and loved by everyone else" and that's! very sad actually!

[dr-shortsighted-owl]

I have missed the unhinged speculation and brain storming and linking to past episodes and possible foreshadowing - I’ve missed this creativity, seeing everyone chatting away in posts and tags about ideas, and being a part of it

[istherewifiinhell]

tips head.so far nothing moon and chime do has reached passed just kinda. adorable? to me. just a sort of mutual. aw this guys kinda pathetic i have to help him out. moons just like. damn. he doesnt know how to do anything. i have to help. i have to dunk him in the water. i have to give him nooggies (voice of a man who is NOT getting attached) and chimes like. FINALLY someones whose not weird about me. and he has to listen to all my infodumps cause hes like a newborn baby bird

that said. moon is hot when hes beating ppl up. so. u know. got that going.

[threewaysdivided]

The Shaper of Minds and its possible consequences for a certain character

I have finally joined the rest of the internet in losing my mind over a D&D Podcast - in my case, the wonderful Dan Jones & Dragons.  With Episode 26 due to stream on Dan’s Twitch this week, I really want to talk about some of the stuff that came up across the just-finished Gala sessions because the fallout from that has the potential to be incredibly fraught.

THE SHAPER OF MINDS

The relic the Flower Crowns were going after this mission – The Shaper of Minds – is a potentially fascinating narrative device that might as well have been lab-engineered to be my exact brand of personal nightmare fuel.   It’s a small, ornate brass key that can alter any part of the target’s mental faculties/thoughts/memories at will should the wielder touch it to any part of their victim’s skin.

Now, on one hand, there are a heap of interesting (and even benevolent) applications for a tool like that.  It could instantly grant access to skills, languages and knowledge that would otherwise take a person years of study to learn.  It could be used to sort through and resolve memories that had been faded by time, muddied by trauma or forcibly supressed by magical/medical means.  But on the other…

As described and used in campaign so far, the primary function of the Mindshaper is to alter memories (and the attendant personality) with the target having no awareness that their mind has been changed.  It’s basically gaslighting on steroids, except that where a gaslighting victim still retains their original recollection – and has to be manipulated by their abuser into doubting their own perceptions and instead accepting the alternate telling of events (a cognitive dissonance that can eventually lead the person to recognise the manipulation) – the Shaper of Minds entirely replaces the original recollection of events with the version the wielder wants their victim to perceive.  There is no internal conflict between accounts, no inconsistencies that could alert the victim that someone has broken into their head and rewritten their perceived reality.  The person they reshape you to be is the person you believe you always were.  And all it takes is a single touch.

That is a brand of existential horror that had me on edge all throughout Session 24 (basically from the moment it was implied the key was in play).   Reality may be objective, but each individual person’s internal reality is governed by their perception – their memories – of the events in their life, no matter how incomplete, biased or otherwise skewed that personal perspective may have been.  You have value just by being you because you are not replaceable, but the thing that makes you unique is, in large part, the sum total of those inimitably specific personal memories.  No-one else will perceive the world in exactly the same way you do, and even a few minor changes to just a few of those perceptions can flow on to massive differences in ideals, values, priorities and future choices.  In that regard, the use of the Mindshaper Key isn’t so much an alteration as an obliteration of the victim’s former self and replacement with someone new; even if that new stranger is largely indistinguishable from the original.  And, again, all it takes is a single touch.

[Sidenote:  This made Mister Wick an especially effective antagonist to wield the key, since his Galas functionally trap even targets who are aware of the threat within the rules of high-society behavioural expectations.  Otherwise-innocuous actions like a handshake or private conversation suddenly become incredibly dangerous, while being nigh-impossible for the Flower Crowns to extract themselves from without committing an atrocious faux pas and potentially tipping Wick off.  Perfectly designed stage for a psychological horror-thriller encounter.]

Which of course, brings us to a certain character who fell victim to the key in Episode 24…  [put under the cut for spoiler reasons]

MORENTHAL

This poor Drow, he can never catch a break…

Morenthal may not have been the most mechanically dangerous party member to fall victim to Mister Wick’s manipulations although, given that the key was revealed to let its wielder read existing memories during the alteration, and that all of the Flower Crowns were fully briefed on the locations and nature of the Eversteel artefacts, him getting a hand on any of them could have been very bad plot-wise but from a character point of view I think he’s the one who the key’s effects had the potential to be most personally devastating for.

The way things ended up playing out across Session 25 was precisely the nightmare scenario Gamb was fretting about out of game: Mister Wick forcibly implanted Morenthal’s mind with false memories of being his lifelong trusted confidant and supporter, then – before the Flower Crowns could reverse the key’s effect – Morenthal discovered that Mister Wick had been killed in combat with Coil and Preston, leading to the Party having to physically restrain him so they could use the key to undo the damage, thus confronting Morenthal with the realisation that not only was everything he thought he knew about Jonathan a lie, but in actuality Jonathan had committed possibly the most invasive violation he’d ever been subjected to in order to forcibly make Morenthal into one of his loyal tools.  That level of emotional and mental whiplash would be rough on any character, but for Morenthal it’s particularly brutal because…

Based on what’s been revealed in-game so far, the core of his character is that Morenthal is an abused child.  This most-clearly came up in his conversation with Gelnek in Session 14; he was a child who grew up with nothing, raised by the Bloodletter Mercenaries as a tool instead of a person, and taught to see faces only as targets – with him also mentioning to Hobson in that their “combat training” involved being relentlessly beaten down until he learned to fight back.  During his Session 21 visit with the Nightmother, he openly admits that “nowhere feels safe”.  From that it’s pretty clear to read that Morenthal has never felt unconditionally loved, safe or respected around other mortals.

(This also helps contextualise why he’s so devoted to the Nightmother.  From what little we have seen of his visits to her, Iris is a fond “adult” figure, who does not threaten, does not judge, asks nothing of him aside from his company, and cares equally for all the souls that pass through her domain.  For a child “growing up with nothing” but violence, that would have been everything.)

But then, enter Jonathan fucking Wick.  And now, just for a short while, Morenthal has all these “memories” of Jonathan being there to confide in, encourage him and support his escape from the Bloodletters.  Suddenly he believes someone was there for him and, while the memories might be fake, the feelings of unconditional safety they would have brought were very real.  Little wonder that he started acting like a Trilby-level naive goober around Mister Wick to the point of accidentally snitching on the rest of the group.  Only, then it turns out to be a lie and those memories are gone.

For me, I think one of the worst things Morenthal might end up dealing with in the aftermath of having his memory fixed isn’t the specific feeling of personal betrayal or the potential shame at having been caught: it’s the realisation that he was always alone.   That there was no mortal on the outside who cared or came for him when he needed them – just him and the distant fondness of a Divine.  That would be awful beyond words, and yet the Flower Crowns were forced to inadvertently inflict it upon him in order to restore his mind.  No wonder he wouldn’t look any of them in the eye before the session closed.

Worse still, the nature of the key makes it incredibly hard not only to trust others, but to trust your own mind.  The players and audience above-table know that Morenthal is back to experiencing and remembering reality as it happened, but the question could very well linger for him, bringing with it a hefty dose of paranoia.  Sure, Morenthal correctly remembers that Coil is a straightforward, loyal person who wouldn’t be tempted to tamper with his mind beyond undoing Jonathan’s manipulations… but he “remembered” that about Mister Wick too, and wouldn’t that be a beneficial thing for the Party to have him think?   To Morenthal, people were already Not Safe™, but now the one person he ever believed might be had actually violated him worse than anyone else in order to force and abuse that trust.  How is he supposed to trust anyone if he can’t trust the authenticity of his own recollections.  (I get the feeling that Morenthal probably isn't going to be capable of relaxing until the Shaper of Minds is confirmed to either be locked back safely in the Vaults of Eversteel or fully removed from the Mortal Plane by Six).

It makes it really tragic that all of this came directly on the back of Episode 23, where Gamb revealed during the above-table break chat that - even if Morenthal didn’t recognise why – he unconsciously trusted Trilby and Gelnek enough to jump off the airship without checking that his rope was secure, because deep-down he knew they would catch him.  To go from that high-point to the whiplash of him first thinking the Flower Crowns had killed the only person he was ever “safe” with, then them inadvertently subjecting him to the most painful realisation he could ever experience and potentially leaving him wondering whether he can even trust his feelings about them is absolutely gutting.

I think the thing that scares me most about how the aftermath could potentially play out is another trait that Gamb and Dan have established for Morenthal: he's a flight-risk.   He shies away from letting people get close and, if he feels unsafe enough, he runs.  It’s already been mentioned/implied that he’s considered fleeing the group at multiple different points across the sessions.  And with him likely not feeling safe even in inside his own mind right now, that risk is probably at an all-time high.  The poor lad is staring down the barrel of a potentially-impending multi-level emotional crisis, where a lifetime of instincts will probably be urging him to run hard and fast because People Are Not Safe™.

And the thing is, that instinct isn’t a good one for him either.  Morenthal might have gotten by on his own “just living to be” up until Filgrove, but that feels a lot more like surviving out of necessity than having an actual life.  It’s pretty obvious that he pushes people away as a defence mechanism:  if you don’t care about anyone then you can’t be hurt by them or have those people used against you.  But if you don’t let yourself care and feel things, you’re not really living.  The truly tragic part of his running being a potential foreseeable outcome is that the Flower Crowns are good for Morenthal.  (I doubt Morenthal realises it and can’t speak to Gamb’s above-table thought process but it’s interesting that one potential interpretation of Morenthal’s cynical, faux-apathetic, “stinky” behaviour is that of a former abused child quietly testing the boundaries of whether he’s allowed to exist in a way that’s inconvenient for others, to which the answer from the Party has largely been yes provided he isn’t actively encouraging Trilby to get himself killed, or killing people without explaining himself).  He survived alone before because that was all he knew, but I get the feeling he wouldn’t do so well if he tried to go it solo again after being with people (he’s already confessed that the idea of Feyli being gone makes him miss her).   That’s not a road to walk on his best day, let alone with his current headspace and tendency towards self-destructive choices. 

It reminds me a lot of this article:

“Still, it’s easier for us to keep blaming ourselves because it’s preferable to facing the unthinkable: the fact that our parents don’t love us. …  Most people would rather do anything than accept this as the truth. Not only is it painful; it’s humiliating.”

So yeah, suffice to say I am incredibly concerned about how Morenthal’s arc is going to play out over the next session(s).  Here’s hoping that Gelnek and/or Coil have enough emotional savvy to keep an eye out, and enough patience to stick to him even if he lashes out in attempt to drive them off.  Even if it all works out okay, I get the feeling that this one’s going to be ugly.

Can’t wait to see how everyone chooses to play it ❤️‍🩹

[chibishortdeath]

Yippie! So silly (kinda sad) idea I had I while ago that I need to draw about again aaaa— Anyway, there were a lot details that had me thinking about stuff in certain games. Harmony of Despair has the “Helmont/Shiimon/Simon Wraith” enemies that have this ominous description of “some say this is what happened to Simon Belmont in the end”, and it’s just never mentioned again. Like damn ok that’s uh some interesting information wow uh— Also that coupled with the hanging skeletons being a reference to Simon in CV4 and also being in the hanged man position, the family heirlooms in the ghostly Dracula’s castle in Harmony of Dissonance, and the quest for Anna in Order of Ecclesia about helping her cat protect her from dark spirits that’s ended with a really sudden line about her having nightmares about a man with a whip fighting something scary, my guy is haunting the narrative and doesn’t sound like he’s doing so great 💀.

So the Ghost Simon concept was born and uh here he is I guess lol. Part of it also came from the idea that we’ve already seen a ghost companion in the series in Wind (if you know you know), but what if there was one you had to help that was a little more uh what’s the word… tormented? Vengeful? Upset in general? Yeah. He’s kinda just a mix of a bunch of different ghost lore, not one in particular. Fun fact: Dulahans sometimes use their own spines as a whip :3. And in a lot of folklore Strigoi often prey on their own family members, especially the younger girls in the family. But yeah, he’s just kind of a nuisance, not really like ‘evil’ or anything. Breaks things sometimes, generally pesters people, only occasionally a minor threat. Maybe leaves bloody footprints sometimes, turns paintings crooked, writes omens on walls, ya know, average ghost activities. I like to think that the boss rush with him in HoD is what he’s been doing for a while. Maybe Juste unknowingly takes him home with some of the furniture, probably the grandfather clock lol. Idk it’s just a fun what if idea for fun tho mostly d(^^ ).

[deus-ex-mona]

day 1000-something of wishing that this had been added to honeypre before it eosed

[orcelito]

minor details, but in chapter 68 of trimax we do see this bit:

the items that vash kept in his coat.

a "funbari doll" (which i cant find anything definite online about what that is with just a cursory look, so im going to run under the assumption that theyre some kind of collectable in-universe) & it's a red one, which is apparently rare. he still has the same pen radio that connects to his earring that's used waaay back on the sandsteamer. a swiss army knife, a random key, a used tissue (?), and...

a lighter? blow torch? i still cant tell what that last bar thing is tho. & i guess he had some kind of (normal) coin too? but Only One.

love the characterization implications for this lol. definitely the kind of pocket contents i'd expect from a silly immortal with a big coat

[sysig]

Party (group) party (celebratory)! (Patreon)

[dirtbra1n]

it’s always when I have things to be doing that this happens but it’s like. I don’t know I’ve gone so far into weird love territory and I’ve been here so long that when I go back and really look at canon it’s like it’s new to me. because like do you ever think about how hanzawa masato just sort of DECIDED that tashiro would be the next captain of the ping pong club. like it wasn’t a recommendation or anything that decision was made. and absolutely if tashiro genuinely GENUINELY didn’t want to do it nothing bad would have really happened, someone else could have done it, sure. you know? but at the end of the day tashiro, in the midst of his running away, had that thought, like. not in a thought bubble but in a b Hold on

in the narration box. like it’s not a fleeting in-the-moment thought like the whole poor shmuck thing. I’m not explaining this well. it’s just you get the impression that tashiro thinks about things a lot and also tangentially kind of thinks about his hanzawa senpai a lot and that realization of burden is so significant to tashiro that he takes on the position of captain

and he doesn’t look him in the face when he does it, and I love it. I love when things are indirect and subtle and sort of reluctant because it’s human and speaks to sincerity and tashiro’s grounded…ness that he isn’t unflinchingly happy to do it. he still doesn’t really want to do it. but he will. and he’ll do it WELL. because and this so matters hanzawa masato just sort of DECIDED that tashiro would be the next captain of the ping pong club because he knows tashiro and has been watching tashiro as a fun kouhai who he likes a lot and who makes him laugh like literally no one else in the world, and he knows that he would be a good president because he is, amongst other relevant things, a good person. the right kind of good person! he wouldn’t have forced tashiro to do it because frankly he couldn’t REALLY force tashiro to do it, tashiro has a way of getting around things (pudding head….) but he decided tashiro would be captain, because he knows tashiro, and tashiro decided to take that on, because he sees hanzawa. he decided that tashiro would be captain, and tashiro decided to accept that decision because hanzawa decided correctly.

and tashiro cares, and encourages his senpai to rest, and we get the FUCKING.

that just speaks VOLUMES. hanzawa masato who notoriously stays busy for at least one of two known reasons that sound a little contradictory but aren’t actually is resting right now. hanzawa masato who is so weird and so unknowable to his juniors is wearing a small smile that, unlike so many of his other ones (ominous as they are, usually), shows for only contentment. he’s resting right now. like the tashiro gonzaburou hanzawa masato dynamic IS so weird I’m not delusional for that. but my favorite thing that I think I do a really bad job of showing is that their exchanges go back and forth and are so much fun for the both of them, and it’s exactly like PING PONG. well matched and silly and hanzawa masato knows tashiro gonzaburou and if tashiro gonzaburou doesn’t know hanzawa masato he sure as hell sees him, and wants to know him, just a little at least, and it’s all so much. I’m resting right now. fuck. anyway

[bereft-of-frogs]

I finally did it, I asked someone on reddit WHY they think Indara faked her own death in the first episode. Because I don't see any evidence of it and idk I just don't get the sense they'd throw out that much of a curve-ball without any foreshadowing? I feel like she'd definitely be coming up more. They almost never mention her except in the list of targets/the bit where Jecki is arresting Mae. But this theory keeps popping up and it's on my list of 'things that would tank the ending for me' if she turned out to have faked her death in some bizarre 5D chess match that hasn't been telegraphed in any way in the text. It's definitely way more foreshadowed that one or more of the witches is alive (see: 'my mother could do that' from last episode).

I get too wanting more Jedi Master Carrie-Anne Moss, but I think she's really just going to be in the second flashback episode and I'll take what I can get even if that ends up being a combined total of like 20 minutes of screentime XD