#I’d also like to add here;

[ut-reblogs]

I think a better way to word this is ‘romance’/‘having a crush’, rather than ‘love/being in love’.

I understand the point, which is the prospect of Robby or Mo developing a crush, and it being experienced by the Terrans, etc.

However, there are multiple kinds of love/attraction, and the Terrans already have experienced some of those different types of love. Being familial, and platonic, and I dare say they’ve also experienced emotional attraction.

They’re obviously all siblings, and they consider Dot and Alex their parents, and know they love each other. They passively experience familial love daily, like any close knit/loving family.

And it’s obvious to a degree, during Swindle’s EP, Thrash seemed to have to some amount at first experienced emotional attraction, and became attached and trusted him in some amount.

During the Wheeljack EP, Twitch was obviously experiencing emotional attraction, got attached, and definitely trusted him, and quite possibly a squish/platonic attraction. She really wanted to be his friend.

In JB and HT’s starring EPs, we saw they have fairly strong relationships with their siblings, and definitely love, care, and trust their parents a lot.

During Tarantulas’s EP, Nightshade clearly experienced very similar to Twitch, just with Tarantulas instead of Wheeljack.

During EP 18, all that familial/sibling love was directly emphasized onto Hashtag to help her.

The Terrans have experienced love. What they haven’t experienced, is a crush, romance, romantic attraction, sexual attraction, etc. which are different forms/types of attraction/love.

I understand that it may be ill wording, and trying to get a different message across, but as an AroAce, I find it a little shallow to imply that romance is the only type of love, when that’s really not the case, and this actually just a really allonormative idea.

I apologize if I’m wrong, and I have the incorrect idea. I just felt a strong urge to point that out, as it quite bothered me.

Will the Terrans know what love is?

Taking into account that the Terrans and the children share an emotional bond. How will the Terrans react when the children feel love?

Throughout the season, we've seen children Robby and Mo experience various emotions that are unknown to Terrans.

An example is the school chapter where Robby and Mo start school. Twitch and Trash tell Bumblebee that lately they are experiencing emotions they don't know about, this is caused by children.

Now, my doubt is the reaction that the Terrans would have when the children fall in love. In this case I see it more likely from Robby, that he falls in love with someone at school.

At some point Robby will fall in love and although he doesn't want to admit it, his emotions will be reflected in the Terrans. As we well know, Robby is going through puberty as he often tells his family that he no longer plays childish things.

Terrans will not know why they experience these emotions. If you ask Robby he will deny it, while Mo would not understand what they are talking about.

At some point Robby will confess that he is in love with someone. Although his family is excited by this news, the Terrans will continue to be confused by what they ask about "love".

The Maltos give them a brief explanation about love. The Terrans will ask Bumblebee if the transformers feel the same when they are in love.

Bumblebee wouldn't know how to answer them since it's not something common in his species. He is aware that there are couples between transformers but he is unaware of those emotions. Terrans would wonder if they felt love for someone.

Hashtag seems to be the only one who knows this topic of love thanks to her knowledge acquired on the internet.

Robby's crush would complicate his life since he is now aware that his emotions will be reflected in the Terrans and this will probably affect him in the long run.

[edsbacktattoo]

i wanna talk about the ‘treasure room’ because i think it does a really good job of summarising what’s happening between ed and stede at the moment.

stede ‘takes the initiative’ (or acts without discussing what he’s doing) and puts all of ed’s remaining treasure in one room that’s completely hidden. his reasons for putting it away are:

it was all over the place

he was tripping over it

some of it is quite ugly :/

and instantly ed hits him with the “excellent. a reminder of all my guilt. a guilt room. 😔🤘”

they’re not being subtle about it. this is a physical representation of their guilt and they’re demonstrating here exactly how they’re taking care of it.

ed is living with it. it’s in his space. sure it might be in the way but where else could he possibly put it? there’s so much of it and it’s his. there’s no use in just palming it off to someone else. no one wants this much treasure.

but stede can’t stand it and he has to deal with it now or he’ll die. so he just crams it into some hidden space and considers the matter resolved. it’s out of the way. it can’t hurt them if they don’t think about it. and it’s ugly! no one wants to look at something ugly, especially when they’re trying to rebuild their space.

but that’s just the thing. neither of them are actually dealing with or addressing the problem. stede has just. put it away.

WITHOUT ASKING ED WHAT HE THINKS THEY SHOULD DO WITH IT.

so they decide to just use it to throw this big party because surely that will fix it, right? that will get rid of the Treasure Issue.

WRONG!!

because they still didn’t talk about any of it. yeah they talked about “turning poison into positivity” and “giving some of it to the less fortunate” but they didn’t deal with the root of the problem. how did ed amass that much treasure in the first place? what’s the ideal way of getting rid of it? is there anything they want to keep?

they’re on such uneven planes this season because they can’t communicate to reach a common ground. ed is surrounded by his guilt and wants to leave it all behind. stede has just hidden the guilt and wants to pretend it isn’t even there.

[emily-mooon]

To make up for the fact that I didn’t do anything for them for Christmas, here’s another fake shoujo magazine chapter cover :]

pose ref ↓

HAHA ITS FROM ITAKISS!!!! Naoki and kotoko are nothing like the blorbs but I thought this pose worked for that scene (it’s apart of a much large page split into two images, but I decided to crop it cause the rest of it doesn’t matter tbh)

[koivoid]

Koivoid's Chapter 2 Murder Theory: AM vs PM

After episode 12 I have come up with an insane theory on how the murder happened. It's... really unlikely, but I wanted to share it here anyways on the rare chance that it's right. However, please note that this isn't a guess as to who the culprit is, more of an analysis on how the murder was carried out and how all the evidence fits into the case.

drdt spoilers of course!

I believe that @1moreff-creator’s (hope you don't mind the tag!) pulley theory was the murder method. Please give their post a read, they explained it way better than I ever could. Anyways, this post hinges on the fact that Arei's neck was broken using a pulley formed by the ropes, the carousel, and the ceiling beam.

In the newest episode, Teruko concludes that the murder must have been done in the morning because the body was still swinging. However, if the pulley was used, the culprit could have easily killed Arei at another time, then activated the mechanism to make it seem like she was killed in the morning! Since the fact that Arei’s body was swinging is the only piece of evidence that Arei was killed in the morning, this means that Arei could have been killed at 7:30 AM OR 7:30 PM. 

“Wait, but didn’t the cast spend half the episode talking about how Arei could have only been killed in the morning?” That is true! But they have never considered the method of murder once in the entire trial! The pulley theory could easily disprove the literal only piece of evidence that the murder happened in the morning, which is that Arei's body was still swinging! Either way, her body would be cold, because as J states, the culprit could have poured water on her to cool her off, and the fans would quickly dry her off. So her body being cold cannot be a piece of evidence to prove that she could have only been killed in the morning.

Personally, I think the culprit killed Arei at nighttime, and tried to make it seem as if the murder happened in the morning to disguise her time of death.

But then what about the fish water? Didn’t the culprit take the water from the relaxation room to make it seem like the murder took place in the night when it really was in the morning? Well, there’s actually another possibility as to why they chose to use that water. If you look at the map, the relaxation room is the only room with water on the second floor.

The culprit probably didn’t want to risk getting caught using the sinks on the first floor, because that’s where most of the other students are staying. Therefore, the culprit used the water from the relaxation room to avoid leaving the second floor, where they could get caught.

But wait! Wasn’t David in the relaxation room at 7:30 PM? He would have seen the culprit then!

About that… David never actually confirms the fact that he met with Arei at 7:30. Ace is the one to say that he heard David and Arei talking at 7:30. In fact, David outright says this:

And since David clearly isn’t the murderer, Ace could be lying about the time of their meeting! So it’s entirely possible that Arei could have died at 7:30 PM, because that’s not actually when she met with David.

With that aside, let’s return to the actual murder method. In FF’s theory, Arei’s body was weighed down by the water jugs filled with the fish water, and the motion of her neck being snapped also caused the water jugs to break at the handles, spilling the water and the fish all over the floor. If this is true, then the murder could only have occurred at nighttime. If Arei really died in the morning, then the water jugs would have been broken when she got her neck snapped, which would remove the only source of water for the culprit. J claims that if Arei really died in the morning, the culprit would have used the water to cool down her body. However, if the water jugs broke and the water spilled, then the culprit could not have done that. Because the relaxation room opens at 8 AM, and they would not be able to retrieve any more water. They couldn't have cooled down the body before her neck was snapped, because, well, she wasn't dead then, and her body would probably warm up before she was killed. Then, Arei’s body would still be warm. But if she died at night, there would be no need to douse her body in water, and the jugs could be used in the contraption. 

What if the jugs weren’t used in the contraption? See, that’s the confusing part, because otherwise why would the jugs be broken at the handles? To douse the body in water, they could have simply opened the cap on top. So that’s why I’m inclined to believe that the jugs were used in the contraption.

Wait. If the pulley used to break Arei’s neck was only activated in the morning, then how did she die at night?

And here I steal (/j) another popular theory: Arei was waterboarded to death. 

At night, the culprit could have gone to the relaxation room to get more water, so water isn’t an issue. Or maybe the jugs in the trash were originally filled with regular water, so the culprit had to use the fish water for the contraption after using the original water to drown Arei. A cloth could easily be obtained from the dress-up room. Additionally, this could explain why Arei’s hands are tied; if she was being waterboarded, obviously she would be struggling and trying to fight for her life. Finally, Arturo probably couldn’t diagnose that she was drowned, as it has been proven many times that he does not specialize in analyzing dead bodies. (Also… does drowning leave any physical evidence? I didn’t get many helpful results when I searched it up…)

So here’s my proposed timeline so far:

Arei meets David in the relaxation room before 7:30 PM. They argue, and Arei runs out of the room in anger. David chases after her and leaves the relaxation room.

At 7:30 PM, Arei returns to the second floor, going to the playground thinking Eden needs her help.

The culprit ambushes her, somehow tapes her hands together, and waterboards her to death.

After Arei dies, they head back to the relaxation room to refill the jugs of water. In the process, some fish enter the jugs as well.

The culprit sets up the pulley, taping up the carousel. They throw the ball of clothes over the ceiling beam, hitting a light in the process. (Massively oversimplified, go read FF’s post linked in the beginning lol)

They leave the pulley, along with Arei’s corpse, in the playground for tomorrow.

They rip up the fake note and put parts of it in the trash can, purposefully leaving out the part after “7:30”. The other scraps are disposed of elsewhere, possibly even dissolved in the relaxation room’s pond.

The next day, the culprit wakes up early, around 7:30 AM, and heads to the playground.

They tie the rope around Arei’s neck with the jugs of water, and use the pulley to break her neck. The jugs of water break and spill the water over the ground.

The culprit takes Arei’s body and hangs it on the swingset, then take down the ropes on the pulley, hiding them under the carousel. They also hide the ball of clothes in the changing room.

At 8:00, they finish cleaning up the crime scene, and head to the movie screening room as per MonoTV’s demand.

I’ll admit, it does have some plot holes. But Chapter 1’s murder did as well, so it’s not too big of a deal.

(Update: a last minute thought: I just realized that the culprit could have broken Arei’s neck at night, and simply hung her body up in the morning. Oh well, my point about her being killed at night still stands)

Well, now that we understand how Arei was killed, let’s get into the why. Why did the culprit choose to go through the extra step of breaking Arei’s neck in the morning?

I think this was to disguise the time of her death. The culprit was trying to frame Eden, as evidenced by the note to Arei. But Eden had an alibi in the nighttime. But if the culprit made it seem like Arei was killed in the morning, then she wouldn’t have an alibi, and could then be easily accused. Not just Eden, actually, the culprit could easily frame anyone in the morning who didn’t have an alibi, because they would most likely be asleep. At nighttime, however, the students were all hanging out with each other, making it much more likely that they would have an alibi. 

Oh, and one more thing: since we haven’t had a scrum debate yet, the AM vs PM argument could be the scrum debate topic. There isn’t much else the class could be split on, at least not yet. (hopeful)

In that case, the night alibis are still pretty valid, as well as the morning alibis. This is a bit of a stretch, but...

The people with night alibis are Arturo, J, Charles, Whit, Hu, Eden, Veronika, and Teruko.

The people with morning alibis are David, J, Veronika, Hu, and Nico.

That leaves Rose, Ace, and Levi without an alibi at both times.

Think of this as you will. ;)

But that’s just my own thoughts. In the end, this theory seems pretty far-fetched, and heavily relies on lots of small details that could easily be waved off in the grand scheme of things. We’ll probably find out whether or not my theory is correct this Friday (or maybe next Friday). Guess I’ll see you then!

[vinelark]

hello good morning i read the fic The Long Way Home by itsnatalie this week and finished it at 1am and had to stare through the ceiling processing for another full hour having emotions over tim and jason and a sentient labyrinth and the concept of choosing kindness when it would be so much easier to choose cruelty at every turn and NOW i am stumbling back here to recommend it to everyone who might want a tim & jason (& batfam) psychological horror longfic that will knock your socks off

testimonials once i was semi-coherent (mild spoilers):

[honkceasar]

Wiwi supersuit but I swagified it

[glass-noodle]

I am also a “Connor flat ass truther” but only because that is literally the only thing “wrong” with him. He needs at least 1 flaw so it’s ok lol

Also, will there be more Merman comic for MerMay?

Yesss!!! Exactly!! It’s not even a “flaw”, per se, it’s just something that wasn’t created to be a perfect human “ideal”; something that wasn’t designed to be aesthetically/sexually pleasing to humans like the rest of him is. Hank loves when Connor isn’t perfect, when Connor can just be Connor, so it stands to reason that he’d love his very minimal, function-over-form lil pancake, lol.

And the short answer to the lab merman AU comic question? Yesss. 👀🩵💕

[ails-of-ardor-au]

Would this au rewrite or add to Bloodclan? While I like the idea of Scourge forming it, it often seems unnecessary cruel? Like how it's described and how Scourge is described. I thought that, due to what he went through, he created the group as a way to help those who suffered like him.

The only reason he agreed to help Tiger, was to betray him, and also gain more resources for the clan. It would be interesting if Bloodclan ever had an alliance to the clans as they can get items the clans otherwise wouldn't have. Plus, gain more new blood to prevent... the dreaded family tree

I agree heavily with your view here! It was so odd to me that, after experiencing such traumatizing violence, Scourge would then go on to… create a system that idolizes violence. Of course, this can happen as a means of a victim coping, but it’s just odd to me that Tiny, a young cat who was shown to be very curious and with a thirst for knowledge and to make himself be seen as “great”, would go on to make himself into a monster to achieve that.

I have some ideas on how to restructure BloodClan, but I think that, ideally, Scourge would focus more on the “blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb” thing. The streets are a cruel place with a very heavy “only the strong will survive; the weak have no place here” mentality… So Scourge comes in and pointedly MAKES a place for the “weak”, the forgotten, the alone — so that no one else will ever feel as he has.

Sure, he’s nowhere NEAR a perfect leader; he’s got a short temper and a sharp tongue and a tendency to leap before he looks, but… he didn’t even really want to be a leader in the first place. And he’s pretty young, as well; no one blames him for his flaws. He’s almost heralded as a god by his cats, who he has gathered, sorted, and protected fiercely… but he’s always held a grudge on the Clans of which he derived BloodClan’s name to spite them. His Clan is the greatest, one born of true loyalty, community, and protection…

The Clans of the forest should learn to take a page out of his book… But Scourge won’t be the one to take that first step.

I like to think that Tigerclaw, here, is a bit more paranoid and with clearer motives (though that’s another post for another time). He keeps his cards close to his chest, and keeps his enemies far and his allies further; he might seek BloodClan out specifically because it’s hard garnering control over the amount of cats he suddenly has under him, and harder still to earn his loyalty… but BloodClan is twice the size of TigerClan, and yet still thrives even in the worst of places. He might have sought advice, initially, and then an exchange of resources, an offer to merge and share… and Scourge takes his time deliberating on the offer of the tom who scarred him and clearly doesn’t remember him.

I’ll come back to his and sort it into more sense later 👀

[clegfly]

Small thing I’m cooking for idksomethingclever99’s fic MITPP!! For some reason I’m having trouble tagging them but here’s the fic!!

This seemed fun to do… probably won’t get more done than this page though…

[candycryptids]

Hiya! I hope you're doing well today! I love your characters and how you've structered their bios! Since Chuusday is listed first, is she technically your official WOL or is it someone else? Do you canonically have a WOL in the first place?

Also, I find it SO sweet that you and one of your partners both play FFXIV and have characters paired together ;w; Did you meet ingame or long before either of you started playing? Either way I wish you both the best!!! <3 - gardenofballads 🌻

Awaaaah! Im doing pretty ok!!! Taking time to answer this as a wind down from Emerald Weapon Ex Brain Soupage. And I’m so glad! ;W; I think I butchered one of those “Get To Know An OC” thingies- uhh… oh [this one] actually! I chopped a lot out and I think added a couple different thingums instead because there was so much to that that it felt overwhelming to try to look at let alone fill out LOL but it was a really good jumping off point uvu;

And!!! Hilariously Chuu was my First XIV Character, so she’s dear to my heart for being the first one- but she very quickly made it known being the WOL even as an AU was something of a Joke (Her character showed great reluctance and even frustration at having to do So Much World Saving, maybe a side-effect of me rushing through MSQ to catch up with my other spouse [Who plays Talia, though they’ve got less time for XIV these days ;0;] and the rest of my friends who were all EndGame already at the time in Shadowbringers fhdjfjsjfs.) So I made…… many alts. Throwing spaghetti at the wall but I have SEVERE side-character/NPC brain and kept making “supporting cast” types =w=; it actually took me like. 3? Alts before making an ACTUAL WoL with my husband (Ishi’li and Kizuna) (as of Right Meow, they’re in post ARR, but we’ve been working on Keathan and Tuesday together because Keathan was… Keathan’s first character in xiv XD so we’ve been jaunting through the story together and experiencing every inch of it so we can pick and choose what The Boys™ get up to when we wanna focus on them x3)

🥰 I knew both speece during at least high school- but I actually knew Keathan as early as Elementary school hehe 😌 tho the speece didn’t proper marry until… i’unno, 2017? (For frustrating legal reasons, I’m not legally married, but. As it goes. Someday we’ll have money to visit the one state that has legal poly marriages. Also I struggle to remember our wedding year 🫢)

Since managing to make a Co-WoL with my husband I’ve managed to make one other Alt meant to be a Solo-WoL (Mochiie) but I have to really wrinkle my brain to sink time into playing him, since I’m trying to take screenshots throughout the story at what I find to be inspiring beats xD And even still he has an alt-universe where he’s just a side-character for the ‘Main Timeline’ (where there’s a bunch of spaghetti and like 8+ confirmed WoL’s and the Msq entourage looks HILARIOUS in canon, someday I’ll get all the data together and take pictures, but I think it’ll cook what’s left of my brain x’3) [it’s less concrete than anything I’ve posted about before or I’d try to explain it ;v;’ it’s just interesting mostly to see how the story gets stretched to fit around a larger community of heroes than a solo guy shouldering the whole burden lmfao.]

🌸🌸🌸…. I also hope you’re having a lovely week @gardenofballads !!!! I am tossing flower petals into the air around you !!! Thank you for the ask and well wishes n kind words 🥺💖 🌸🌸🌸

[hellsvestibule]

Seee if nobody else got me I know @zeravmeta got me. Please please pleaseee….I…insane clown p-ussy...

I think in his interactions w Anyone really. he needs to be read as pretentiously playing the “devil you know.” Like, as you mentioned here for Jeanne this takes the form of like, an unhinged desperate man turning to her for forgiveness. But he changes his personality up a bit w everyone he talks to in a way that mirrors their perceived insecurities. All of its genuinely Him because he has a strong personality, but he also has very strong paralels to every character I can think about him having any sustained interaction w. I can’t even really get into all of them cuz I’d be here forever but I’ll rant a bit about some scenes he has w Jeanne, mash, the one valentines scene w Kama, his general shtick w nursery rhyme. And how murder at the kogetsukan is actually imo important to understanding who he is at heart.

The thing is in each case I can think of where he does this, the reality is he’s more similar to the person he’s trying to disturb than the person whose evil behavior he’s imitating. Or is equally similar to both and kind of bridges the theological gap between them a bit maybe. Like, w jeanne, it’s not just that he’s behaving like Gilles, he is also situationally a lot like Jalter, he himself is some weird horny old man’s botched lab experiment out to avenge himself and others like him, but also, his approach to this feels more abstract and inhuman than Jalter , more adjascent to jeanne herself, and I think that’s meaningful bc she sort of theologically distances herself from Jalter but here is a guy who is batshit in both ways. He enacts good will through force of evil deeds which distance him from being able to hold normal relationships, the type of morality I don’t think Jeanne who holds tight to goodness for goodness sake, or even most normal people, can really begin to comprehend, but it’s also, the same way others can’t comprehend her insistence that she’d hold tight to goodness no matter what is done to her. Both are simultaneously, totally reasonable for latching onto the abstract concepts of good and evil within their own perspective. But totally incomprehensible to anyone who isn’t also. like that. Sure Mephy may have the “selfish” Jalter adjacent motives of a victim lashing out to avenge himself in an undignified attempt to gain dignity. But also, like, fatalistic understanding of the will of god as something he serves at his own expense, means he kind of is a saint and martyr in his own weird way. When I say serving the will of god I don’t mean happily so, he even says to guda he wants to help them kill god, bc. Well, he’s the worst Big Daddy upstairs of them all. But he’s still a big daddy who can smite you like an insect, so you have to play by his rules. Mephy wants to make everyone think he’s evil, bc he wants to become a real devil, bc that’s what he thinks he exists to be, what will give him power to avenge himself, and so he’s purposely denigrating himself to an inhuman construct to achieve it, and a portion of the audience apparently buys it, bc just being an arrogant asshole dressed like a creepy clown is enough to rub a lot of people the wrong way. But imo he holds a similar type of arrogance as Jeanne’s in this regard. He’s holding himself to an impossible standard of both good and evil so he kind of had the right to call it out in her even if he’s a hypocrite, which he is in every interaction w everyone. And also, even the parallel to Gilles has multi tiered meaning, since Faust is often portrayed as a child abuser, and so is mephisto in the Goethe play, and he sort of ends said play lamenting his obsession w innocence and purity and inability to ever possess it being his downfall... and like, our Mephy, i would guess, despite the conflicting framing of him, probably doesn’t want to become that, but might sort of think this is his natural disposition or fate, simply bc the things he’s implied about Faust or at least how he perceives him. So only Jeanne can save him from becoming and committing evil like that right? But like. No. She can’t. Bc he’s not her devil. And she shouldn’t even really be held responsible for Gilles, or any other unhinged guy needing her forgiveness. Mephy is pointing out how many people approach her w this whim that she can make them fucking normal if she just hits them hard in the head w a brick. This is normal to her but it’s pitiful it’s normal and she accepts it as such, which he probably wants her to admit, bc his repeated theme across these interactions is that he just wants people to be happy and reject creeps like him, but tells them in the cruelest way possible. which brings me to. Mash!! Bc it paralels his behavior towards her too.

When he first meets Mash in garden of order, he says a bunch of things that are brought back as specific notes of contention within her dynamic w Beryl during the lostbelts (and also Pepe and Kadoc to some degree) He says he’s like her big brother in an attempt to get her guard down, which Fujimaru chips in instead of letting it fly as ironic or cruel like yeah yeah, you’re like her big brother, encouraging him in a positive way bc Fujimaru believes in everyone’s capacity to be equals, flying in the face of mephistos assumptions Fujimaru only likes mash bc her lack of agency and rebelliousness, so they would consequently hate him for being. Not a nice sweet submissive person. This is true of Mash in this point of the story, she has little agency in the earlier chapters, and if you understand his character you understand he actually relates to this and is genuinely horrified on her behalf, but is phrasing it more like it’s in a pitiful inconvenience than w the kindness it actually needs to be said, the same thing kadoc did which is why I point out it’s not just beryl even if it’s mostly beryl.

Bc he also says he watched his roommate repeatedly sever the arms of his family members every night, and due to his conditioning by Faust sacrificing humans (supposedly to aid in his creation) doesn’t know if this is done as an act of abuse or love, specifically adjascent to what beryl does to her and what she asks after. At this point in the story you haven’t met Beryl, but Mash still clearly dislikes this, she becomes visibly uncomfortable and for a short bit after that is slightly hesitant towards mephisto, but she also like, gets over it really quickly after she sees him attack his “bad” selves, stepping in to be like, oh, ok, I see you are trying to become a better person despite having been mislead and used as a proxy for other peoples violence. She Gets it. She’s the first to sort of commit to the repeated theme w Mephy, that everyone he attempts to harass is actually hesitantly accepting and compassionate towards him and willing to relate to him, he’s the one who most struggles to accept this possibility of having normal loved ones who care and understand him and not just bc they are naive and mislead by him. Bc if everyone trusts him not due to naïveté but due to recognition of everything he embodies. He loses power as a (theoretical) devil. He is obviously, regardless of his status as a know it all, mostly just a petulant traumatized child, with no real power over anyone. That’s both the sad and hopeful thing. Power is bad for him, it’s the corrupting force which will help him actualize into a real devil. But conversely he’s the easiest villain to defeat and in some ways purposefully so, because deep in his heart he doesn’t actually want to win. He just wants to be innocent, if someone does not give him any power over them by reacting with violence or hate, he utterly flounders. Devils only exist if you will them too, but nobody here wants the devil, they want Mephy to be whoever Mephy actually is, some sort of, weird pathetic clown guy who is sort of sweet and sort of an asshole? and that’s incredibly agonizing to him bc he doesn’t know who the fuck that is without Faust. He has very little personhood outside of Faust and yet constantly boasts his independence and freedom, for understandable reasons.

Preoccupation with avenging lost innocence is a good segueway to the valentines scene with Kama I think. Also note, I use Kama and Sakura sort of interchangeably here but I recognize they still separate characters. To me this scene reads as the character Kama wanting to offer something nice to the character child Sakura. But I sort of mush them together when discussing them.

IMO if you don’t understand these characters backstories still haunt them, this scene might fly totally past the radar as anything important, because Kama is trying to downplay her engagement in any of these scenes, so it’s played for silly and awkward in context. But that’s just any scene Mephy is in, and you have to look past it for what it really is. Kama is pretending to be a child at the park w her dad, sort of, mimicking maybe one of the last happy memories of childhood Sakura has, and Mephy is clearly here to play the villain, he doesn’t even really have to Try to be sakuras devil bc he’s already at glance an amalgamation of the worst traits of all the family members who hurt her but. Also. He’s a stranger,,, or more so, they sort of imply they concocted this scenario ahead of time and are just really bad actors motivated by the same wants, who are using each other as pawns for each others evil ends (showing the hypocrisy central to their approach).

However. Your feelings of dread are kind of mitigated by the obvious fact no one here wants to play out a depraved or traumatic scenario bc it clearly hits them too close to home. I think the implication given by their backstories is they are waiting to see if you are a creepy or innept dad towards child kama, because Mephy as we know from how he talks about Vicky Frank in London, is basically itching to smash literally every shitty dads shitty face in. but of course guda isn’t a shitty dad, so they’re left w nothing but a really awkward setup they’re trying to play off as meaningless that kinda screams like, this isnt meaningless and petty at all actually, both really wish their fucking parental figures had taken them to oniland instead of committing human rights violations. They did not get to have normal childhoods and so they implicitly. want this nice little fantasy to play out for child Sakura. without phrasing it as such bc that kind of open admission of vulnerability is forbidden, so mephisto, as usual, will play the villain to his dying breath, bc he won’t ever directly admit he’s traumatized. Neither will Kama of course, but this is -their- valentines scene, which necessitates them revealing more than he does. It goes to show how hard mephisto will self denigrate until the other party confronts their inner demons, and that’s bc the clown in him that exists to be humiliated and despised, which Kama has to give in to bc a god of love can only go so far in that capacity. So it feels like Kama is both. Irritated by the pretentiousness of this . He ends up being less like shinji or his father or zouken and more like Kariya, and that’s still shitty and traumatizing in its own way. Mephisto prefaces this scene as him being creepy but what he’s really doing is going oh poor baby whatever you’re going through is more important than having my own similar problems be understood. And of all things, that’s what fucks this scene up. She’s trying to brush off why this scenario or any of these scenarios exist bc she’s never dealt w this pain and assumed she could preface all of this w ironic detatchment. But still! Going to a park is something kariya and her mom used to do w her and her sister, showing she might not have actually totally forgotten what this type of thing means and holds sentimental attatchemt to the idea of it (a theme park just ups the ante and the fantasy aspect of it) But also do you really think Kama would admit they want this sort of sentimental thing unironically? So Mephy the clown must prove he is a worse more traumatized asshole than Kama , so she can admit by proxy she just wants to act like a normal innocent kid for a day, she doesn’t have to thank him for this role or even care about him, but she still points out hes not evil, that he does this as a pretentious part of being what he is, and she focuses on the one thing that’s Not familiar. Clown. he’s sticking to the act of a horrible despicable clown, even on Valentine’s Day, bc hes a very pathetic man scared of being loved, and would probably sooner die than admit that. kama does the big person thing, accepts the shallow pretense they brought you here w for the paradoxical depth it has, this is a normal scenario of a little girl at the theme park with her dad, who had a brush in with a creepy clown and just wants to feel protected and loved. Both of them are too detatched to tell Why you any of this was necessary, it’s the context of what they’ve said and done before now you need to read into, It actually makes me really sad to think about.

Also this is why I’m convinced Mephy is concious and self aware in murder at the kogetsukan. Even the naming convention and setup follows everything you see from the established patterns of interactions, the names of the violet family have a lot of biblical conventions which feel too convoluted to ignore the symbolism of. (Also, that dancing with Eve and Lilith is something he and Faust do in the play, and gorgon taking Margaret’s face in the same scene, there’s just a lot of weird little meta bits in here) Mephy’s character is named Cain, which imo gives him an excuse to break the fourth wall 4th wall and literally just be a self possessed actor rather than narratively lacking self awareness. Named after Gods grandson, whom God dismisses because his sacrifice of plant instead of meat is deemed less significant, and so he becomes possessed by the devil and enraged, and imo this is paraleling mephistos preoccupation w his doll body, how it implicitly makes him feel inherently objectified and worthless and inhuman. Like. Valentines day he gives you a pet which will explode and simulate artificial death, and tells you he wants you to see it as a mascot more worthy than fou. Or when you give him chocolate he’s like (clown screech) my heart valve is pumping. Constantly reminding you he isn’t human and feels awful about it. He thinks his own life and death is meaningless because he is artificial which is why he’s a self sacrificing individual. While maybe not concious and self aware. Ignore everything Moriarty says abt the faces not being significant? They are, Lancelot is cast as and is subsequently the perfect father to this stand in for mephisto bc he’s also struggling w these same feelings and told it all to kariya back in fate zero, and he’s worried he’s a bad dad who would objectify or traumatize his kid, something you see Moriarty needle him for in grand carnival albeit played for laughs at the fact that usually Lancelot is the one who ends up objectified, but Moriarty is also someone who needles peoples trauma when trying to help them. But Lancelot’s like, not what people assume him to be, he’s a genuinely loving person, and so is his character by proxy, so the second “Cain” realizes this, he has a massive sentimental breakdown where he says he loves his family and wants to save them, and I think this is important not to distance the characters 100% from the npcs in this moment bc it shows major facets of Mephisto and Lancelot that often get ignored or misunderstood, and lets mephisto actually commit to his genuine issue of just wanting a dad who loves him normally and showcases that Lancelot actually is so good he wouldn’t care if he’s in a family unit wher he’s a cuckold or his kid is a crazy loser like him, the things people sort of assume he’s preoccupied w being like the possession of another man’s wife or having the perfect child, but like, no, he genuinely just wants to love the people he’s with in the moment but is hesitant to attempt it. the event isn’t totally uncorrelated to the faces the npcs have at all. For some people at least (Mephy, Lancelot, Moriarty, and Mordred off the top of my head) all had some deep seated desire or other fulfilled by this scenario . (Sherlock npc dies, mordred npc has a dick) I can’t really rationalize the others but these 4 at least are super obvious, and it’s part of why I want to “blame” mephisto bc I think out of everyone his reasons for wanting this and ability to put it into place as a mythological wish granter who concocts dreams, makes the most sense motive wise, and also, the deadly fever guda falls under as well as the fantasy concocted are both things mephistos poison is capable of in faust. But I might be missing something, it’s possible like the drama Cd or something I don’t remember revealed a culprit behind the “it was all a dream” thing, but I just think it’s notable that for mephisto there is no barrier between dreams and reality.

Also I should probably mention the importance of his dynamic w nursery rhyme mirroring the absense of what he and Kama don’t have? She calls him uncle mephy and is clearly like, trying to talk him out of his nihilistic suicidal outlook of reality. Bc well whatever, they are both helpless broken dolls but also, she has reason to form sentimental attatchment to clowns, they -are- familiar to her, Faust was one of the first plays put on by pantomime, clown theatre, as was the goose that laid the golden egg, a story about sacrificing something loyal to you so you can reap the immediate benefits of its labor. and I think the latter was one of the performances where mother goose went from a folklore figure to having a canon physical appearance (and you can see as of fgo she still does not, she’s still using Alice’s appearance) and there’s even more nameplay going on w the paralels to kariya she’s invoking w the uncle Mephy shtick making them like kariya and Sakura, kariyas name means “wild goose” and being sent on a wild goose chase is a euphemism for becoming lost in pursuit of something you desire. Mephy doesn’t seem to accept anything in reality as anything but nonsense and farce, yet he constantly imbues every attempt at nonsense and trivializing peoples problems w a huge load of painful sincerity. mother goose is, itself, a book of mostly nonsense. But its sentimental purpose as a familiar children’s book and folklore brushes against his, saying “you have a home here” something he’s obviously in severe denial of wanting but also manages to make 90% of his personality. Mephisto at the start of faust is literally just a lost dog looking for a home. @zeravmeta mentioned how little of Mephy is even allowed to be himself, and he exists mostly through others and like, yeah! There’s more paralels than there is Mephy at a certain point. every “joke” scene Mephy is in is actually majorly sad and fucked up the moment you take a minute to dissect it. Bc he’s convinced trauma makes him funny, when it only paradoxically makes him funny by sheer force of how unfunny he is.

[inktheblot]

It's my 10 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

[pumpking64]

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[kayayeteae]

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[canarydarity]

how about 🌻 for the hc10 ask game? :]

Howdy !! :)

🌻 which povs will you be watching the most this season?

My go-to’s season to season are usually tango and scar ! So I will definitely be keeping up with them as usual,, and so far ive also started with gem pearl and Joel and I’d like to add skizz to that since its both of their first season and that’s exciting :))

[ask game]