#I’d love other opinions

[ashadeintheshade]

I would really like to see more fanfics about Erik and Reza. Their relationship was probably the most heartwarming and wholesome part of the book to me. It really brought out the best in Erik and it reminded me of the saying "the person you are right now is the person you would have felt safe with as a child"

What an interesting take. I think the Reza relationship is so heartbreaking and really complicated. I absolutely do NOT want to get tagged for these opinions because they are opinions within the world of this novel and are NOT meant to be taken as universal commentary on sticky social issues.

With that out of the way, I’ll say that it’s fascinating that Kay gives Erik a small boy to care for who is already doomed. You could have said that Erik was healing his inner child by caring for Reza, but what does it do to his psyche if that inner child is dying and there’s nothing he can do to stop it other than provide death? (Kay is so devastating…)

In any case, I think a lot of us gravitate towards the idea that Eriks in general are kind to/have kinship with animals and children. That Erik, because he was abused as an innocent, has a very deep and treasured soft spot for others without a voice and without protection, and that they also have an otherworldly affinity for him. Kerik has horses who follow him without a bit; Kerik has Ayesha who loves only him; Kerik has Reza. I think there is a lot to explore there in fic between the two of them, specifically because Reza is blind and specifically because Reza only has the Now and not the future. I’m not sure how much Kerik exists in the now; his trauma likely created a person who tries actively to avoid living in the now. With Reza he has no other choice. The end is always coming.

Ideas ripe for fic!

[volitioncheck]

nvm this is still on my brain. kim does not like to watch harry suffer… to say that kim takes satisfaction in harry’s pain is a huge misconstruing of his character.

the “getting thrashed like a schoolboy” line comes from a board game, lol. it’s a tease, not a cruelty. there’s never any line that implies that Kim enjoys seeing Harry taking actual morale damage.

he can be amused if you fail a check, but the check is always relatively inconsequential, and again, Harry isn’t taking damage in these.

Failing to pry the trash bin open:

Failing to shatter Ruby’s lorry window:

(also in both of these examples he only responds smugly if you choose for Harry to stubbornly dig in his heels. if Harry gets huffy, Kim teases. If Harry backs down right away Kim won’t rub it in, which feels significant to me! it reminds me of that recent post goin around about Kim meeting your energy!)

and here’s some reactions to failed checks where he does take damage.

Failing the jump to get your cloak:

Failing to break down Plaisance’s door:

he’s not laughing if Harry’s taking damage because he’s not a dick lol.

aaaaand here’s some other instances of morale/health damage and kim’s reactions.

alternate dialogue for failing the harbor jump:

after the call with precinct 41:

seeing bullet holes in the wall:

most significant examples to argue this point for me come when harry has done something to jeopardize the RCM’s image. which kim goes on and on about the importance of maintaining— and yet even here, he still extends worry and assurance.

telling Billie about her husband and handling it badly:

hardie authority check failure cock carousel:

aaaaand the car. this line is one of the most mask-off kim moments we get in the game in my opinion, honestly.

tying this back to the schoolboy line— that line doesn’t show up if you have a negative reputation with Kim. if you have <1 rep, it gets replaced with him calling it “about four hours of our lives that we'll never get back,” lol.

it’s affectionate ribbing!! twisting it into anything else is bizarre 2 me lmao!

anyways. kim is a foil to every other cop we meet in the game specifically because he doesn’t view harry as a punching bag or a lost cause. gottlieb does nothing but sling jabs and glib jokes about harry’s health. torson+mclaine and the others laugh at harry’s panic attack over the radio. in response to harry’s suicide-by-car attempt(!!!!) jean yells about RCM budget. all kim’s lines in response to harry’s check failures and health-damage are consistent, explicit textual contrast against the callousness of the rest of the RCM. twisting kim’s character here requires a bad faith interpretation of the whole game.

[musicalmoritz]

It’s totally fine to dislike ships but I will never understand how some ppl make it their entire personality. You can’t ALL be the “#1 skk hater”

[ivys-head-is-spinning]

good people of tumblr I have a question. out of disney’s sensational six (which is the like main Mickey and friends characters) who’s your favourite???

let me know in the tags who you picked and I’d love to hear why :D

[person25]

i keep seeing people talk abt atla again, specifically zutara. Thought i’d share my opinions bc i can ig

When i first started atla back in like 2020 i think? i looooved katara and aang, honestly would murder for them😭 anytime i saw her being shipped with zuko my blood would genuinely start to boil

while my opinions aren’t as strong now and i’m more open to things i still don’t see the appeal🤷‍♀️ i get enemies to lovers, trust me. I just don’t see it with them tbh

[edwardbabygirlteach]

Okay so I wanna share my thoughts on this scene cause I’ve seen lots of posts about it but I haven’t seen any that really match the thoughts I’ve had about it. (If anyone’s posted similar please let me know, and I’m so sorry I haven’t seen it 🥺)

So the first thing we see is a very concerned looking Stede. He’s clearly afraid that Ed is not going to be okay after whatever has happened to him. We can see pretty clearly Ed has taken some decent physical damage after fighting or possibly after being thrown off the ship in the storm we don’t know just yet, but I feel like he’s definitely clearly hurt. My assumption is he had passed out from said injury or had been knocked unconscious and Stede was very worried about this.

I say passed out because we clearly see Ed wake up in a moment of adrenaline and panic. Hence the reason he immediately headbutts Stede. His body is still in fight mode so his fight or flight response was to attack the person who for all he knew was trying to hurt him further.

We see pretty quickly that he relaxes after a few seconds and lays back against the bed Stede’s possibly laid him on. Presumably after he’s able to process that it’s Stede who is leaning over him and he’s not in any immediate danger anymore.

Now! For the hand! I think personally Stede is applying pressure to a wound of some kind. Gun or blade I couldn’t say but what I’m thinking (hoping) is that the rest of this scene is Stede gently helping Ed from his jacket and lifting his shirt to attend to the wound.

Much in the same way I think Ed did for Stede early on in season one when he’d been stabbed. I know we never see Ed attend to Stede’s wounds physically but I think is kind of unspoken in the way Ed watches over him and cares for him until he’s better. I mean Ed even asks Lucius to bring them a wet cloth. You know that Ed sat at Stede’s bedside and used the damp cloth to clean the sweat from his forehead, that he used it to try and keep any semblance of a fever down. He hardly moved from Stede’s side until he was awake and able.

So I don’t think it’s a leap to say Stede is going to do the same even if Ed protests saying he doesn’t need Stede’s help or how he’s fine without him, has been…is….has to be…right?

I feel like this scene could really pose as a turning moment in them reconnecting and coming back together, a small bridge to rebuilding Ed’s trust in Stede.

I think, Ed is gonna be situationally forced by his injuries to accept help and care from Stede.

[mixisua]

so uhhhh round seven happened right guys??

for the record the two of us are absolutely still processing what’s going on so this might be completely incoherent 😭

i don’t even know where to start. artistically it was AMAZING. like the animation?? the lighting??? the MUSIC???? blink gone #1 on my Spotify wrapped fr

but now comes the. plot. bc SORRY WHAT. we are flabbergasted ALL OF THAT FOR TILL TO JUST DIE BC OF MIZI??? like Ivan died for what fr, it didn’t even seem to change a thing. I don’t want ivantill canon - I think it’s better if till doesn’t love Ivan, the yearning and reaching for a god is a core theme of alnst and it can be seen in r7 - but I want till to feel EMOTION???

like. i get he saw Ivan in Luka, but then it’s all forgotten when he sees Mizi once again. he’s the same person he was in round 2 ffs, and with everything that’s happened I want change for both of them. like Mizi should be different, till should be different, not even in a ship way just in a TRAUMA way

idk man. maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and realise this was a stroke of genius but for now I’m just. sad.

[louferrignojrofficial]

what do we think tommy’s birthday is? what’s his zodiac sign??

[persona-brainrot-real]

Actually I think that what we see of Akechi in the third semester isn’t an entirely honest reflection of who he is. He’s not a ruthless bloodthirsty finds-power-arousing (pre-showtime dialogue) nor in most other aspects of the game does he mention how openly and explicitly fascinated by Joker he is, the way he does in the third semester. Yes he is fascinated by Joker yes he finds him attractive yes whether you ship them or not there is undeniable homoerotic subtext in their relationship and akechi is queercoded.

This might not be too coherent bcs it’s like 2;30am rn BUT I think one of the most important things to consider is that the Akechi that gets brought back isn’t the same level of Brought Back that Wakaba Isshiki was, or Haru’s father. You can bring back Wakaba because she had all of these connections, all of these people who knew her and loved her. She had a job, a reputation, a social life, and even if Futaba hadn’t wanted her back, Sojiro would have. Her other coworkers, her friends. The point I’m making is that Wakaba, much like Okumura, and on a smaller scale Madarame with the way his personality changed, were social people. To be brought back, Maruki could have used these different understandings of them to bring them back as they were perceived and understood. Wakaba is crafted out of Sojiro’s memories of her as a person, out of Futaba’s memories of her as a mother. Okumura by how he was to Haru as a father, turned into a polished version based on what she wanted him to be.

Those who were alive were changed by the people around them, too. Sae by Makoto, Madarame by Yusuke, Shiho by Ann, even the rude teacher whose name I can’t remember is likely changed because of the wishes of the students, who Maruki heard complain about how cruel or mean or rude he was.

And that brings me back to Akechi. The only person who got close to him for who he actually was, is Joker. The only person who got to peek past the walls he put up, even in a controlled way, is Joker. The only person he was honest with, chose to surround himself with, and opened up about his life with, is Joker. As such, it’s Joker who wants him back when he’s gone (shown by Joker staring wistfully at his ceiling after their fight in Shido’s palace and finding it hard to believe he’s gone) and it’s Jokers wish that brings him back.

And with Joker’s last experience with Akechi being this sudden reveal for what his capacity for violence is, with little time to process, probably spends the next while of his quiet grief trying to wrap his head around this sudden change and it warps his perception of Akechi. It’s not that he’s ruthless, unwaveringly bloodythirsty and takes sexual pleasure from killing people/shadows necessarily, but that as Maruki was pulling from people’s memories and experiences for this, he pulled a warped and slightly inaccurate version of Akechi from Joker’s mind.

And that’s how we end up with a version of Akechi who is attached to Joker at the hip, who is unwaveringly allied with him, who constantly says things like “jokers mad. I kind of like it, but it’s not you” or only gets the ability to throw himself in front of a fatal attack to protect joker/to endure a fatal hit because of his closeness to Joker AFTER he’s brought back in 3rd semester. He isn’t incapable of putting himself at risk for someone if he wanted to, but he has too much to do. He has his plans, his goals to become more powerful than Shido, and for that reason he can’t afford to risk dying.

But when Joker needs him to come back, to be his friend rather than his enemy, to use this tenacity and determination he has to aid the Phantom Thieves, he gets what he wanted and what he needed, and in doing so pulls out and exaggerates a worse side of Akechi because of how his own infallible memory has warped his memory of him.

So he gets the Akechi he wanted (passionate, dangerously loyal, allied to Joker and Joker alone, therefore connecting him with the Phantom Thieves too) while also getting the Akechi he never saw and never wanted to see (ruthless, bloodthirsty, capable of immense violence and capable of enjoying said violence) but being just submerged enough in Maruki’s reality not to properly question how or why he’s back, but indulging in his own feelings and choosing ignorance so he doesn’t have to doubt the one person who listens to, believes, and trusts him, when everyone else (even without knowing better)turns their back on him. That’s what I find so captivating about the third semester and their dynamic within it. I don’t think it’s accurate to Akechi, not even his own deepest and darkest desires, but those aspects of a personality are forced onto him as a result of Joker’s grief.

And that’s something I wish Atlus had been able to delve into in a little more detail.

[puppyocto]

I need more people to talk about that in last life Jimmy from what I can tell is the only yellow that doesn’t ever properly get to green. He’s the only player to actually play with 2 lives. It’s not like he didn’t try, he very much did but I think it like highlights Jimmy’s main weakness in the game, he’s a fine fighter, he’s alright at the game but he struggles at the social aspect. Which is weird cause like you look at Jimmy and you think his strength is his charisma which is true but just not with lying or deceit or even persuasion. He’s loveable but for some reason you don’t even want to give him anything because of it

[justascrollingghost]

I’m sorry but Onyx Storm is the worst book of the series so far - don’t get me wrong it wasn’t bad but it’s certainly not Fourth Wing or Iron Flame. There was no point in the book that I actually felt anything other than the hype of the book. Fourth Wing was exciting and heartbreaking and Iron Flame was a book I physically could not put down but this one? I could take it or leave it tbh.. Either I’m a complete genius and have the power of unlocking book plots or everything about the book was a predictable filler..

[musicalmoritz]

I’ll never understand how ppl hate any of the canon tbhk ships. That’s like being cooked a full course meal by a five star chef and saying “nah, I’ll pass”

[wow-an-unfunny-joke]

I don’t like hanahaki disease for the same reason I don’t like soulmates. It removes the choice. All the love and feelings feel instantly dampened by the lack of choice. I mean I get that with hanahaki disease there is technically a choice, but “love me back or I’ll die” isn’t really a choice, and the other options aren’t much better either

“Either you love me back or I loose the ability to love/ loose all my feelings for you/ forget about you entirely”

“Love me back or I’ll live with this chronic illness forever”

These aren’t good alternatives, if still feels forced and one sided

[sadquickchristmassnowman]

random community rankings (because if there’s one thing I love it’s a good List)

(disclaimer just because something is ranked last does not mean I think it’s horrible!!! (although sometimes it does.) it just means I like the ones above it more.)

christmas episodes

1. 2x11 abed’s uncontrollable christmas

2. 3x10 regional holiday music

3. 1x12 comparative religion

HUGE fucking gap

4. 4x10 intro to knots

halloween episodes

1. 2x06 epidemiology

2. 3x05 horror fiction in seven spooky steps

3. 1x07 introduction to statistics

4. 4x02 paranormal parentage

paintabll episodes

1. 2x23 a fistful of paintballs/2x24 for a few paintballs more

2. 6x11 modern espionage

3. 1x23 modern warfare

4. 4x13 advanced introduction to finality (this one barely counts as a paintbal ep but I’m including it)

birthday episodes

(this one was really really difficult I would die for all three of these)

1. 5x11 g.i. jeff

2. 2x10 mixology certification

3. 2x19 critical film studies

animated episodes

1. 2x11 abed’s uncontrollable christmas

2. 5x11 g.i. jeff

3. 3x20 digital estate planning

season premieres (is that what they’re called? whatever. you get it)

1. 3x01 biology 101

2. 1x01 pilot

3. 6x01 ladders

4. 5x01 repilot

5. 4x01 history 101

6. 2x01 anthropology 101

season finales

1. 6x13 emotional consequences of broadcast television

2. 3x22 introduction to finality

3. 2x24 for a few paintballs more

4. 4x13 advanced introduction to finality

5. 1x25 pascal’s triangle revisited

6. 5x13 basic sandwich

seasons

1. season 3

2. season 2

3. season 1

4. season 5

5. season 6

6. season 4

pls rb with your rankings (of any number of these categories or add new ones!!) I would like to start some Tumblr Discourse™

[share-the-damn-bed]

what do u think ‘their song’ is?

(for clarity, the song that they associate most with their relationship. for example at a dance if it came on theyd say ‘this is our song’ and dance to it. maybe its a stupid question idk.. jancy4ever)

This Must Be the Place -Talking Heads

Hands. Down. “their song” imo