#Time for mindfuckery

[becauseimanicequeen]

Yesterday, I wrote that I might expand on my "dream world" theory in 4 Minutes (which I've had since I reacted to the trailer and teaser) and here I am doing just that because I can't seem to get it out of my head (and I need to get this out of my head so I can focus on the Olympics, lol).

I also mentioned yesterday that I should've called it something better than "dream world" because it doesn't really encapsulate what I mean by it.

Does it include Great's dreams? Yes. His visions too. And perhaps everything else going on as well.

As I wrote in my post yesterday, the visions Great has at the end of the first episode (the visions of Tyme and himself together) are his future self's memories. The reason he has those visions (which are clearly more than 4 minutes into the future), is because he's been sent back in time. Not in a time-travel kind of way, but perhaps an out-of-body experience kind of way as he experiences a cardiac arrest in the present time (the patient at the beginning of the episode).

(That 4 above his bed is deliciously placed, btw. And the flashing red lights mean things, which I might expand on in a separate post. But, you know, the Olympics...)

This also ties in with my theory that Great has gained his precognitive ability to redeem himself from a past mistake/transgression (the past being the events we see play out throughout most of the first episode). The cardiac arrest is the root cause of it, but the things he sees and can change are the things he needs to change to have a different outcome in the future. Perhaps to save Tyme from being killed. Perhaps to save himself from dying. Perhaps both. Perhaps more.

If this is true, I think we'll see a mix of "the 4-minutes phenomenon" (which it said on Den's board) and Great's other visions from his future self.

I don't know about you, but I'm excited to get more of this mindfuckery from Sammon. Thank you, queen!

Is it Friday, yet?

[welcometogrouchland]

I just think Hunter was obsessed with Willow and didn't even know it during the period from any sport in a storm to labyrinth runners. They maybe don't talk as often as they could, they're both busy and have conflicting schedules, so when they do talk, Hunter absorbs everything she says.

After roughly 3 weeks of texting (hexting? I feel like the kids would call it hexting), He knows that her favorite colour is orange, she likes her tea with extra milk and a bit of honey during winter, she likes working out to the noisiest angriest music in her playlist, her dad Gilbert is a construction witch who specialises in pottery, she used to listen to breakup songs and think about her childhood best friend (Hunter doesn't know it's Amity) and she actually has a mild pollen allergy despite being a plant witch and has to take potions for it.

He casually drops all this info piece by piece during their stay in the human realm and willows like. Well I can't not marry him. It'll have to be a winter or fall wedding to account for her allergies </3

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

What are some instances of retconning in animorphs that you have noticed? (aside from the first book)

Honestly, Animorphs is not bad. Compared to Sherlock Holmes or Percy Jackson, there's hardly any retconning at all. Compared to series like Dune or X-Men that built in-story retcon mechanisms because of the infinite overlapping retcons, Animorphs is practically airtight. Not Harry Potter or Mistborn airtight, sure, but better than any other multi-authored 20+ book series I know.

However, there are some. Ax's mention in #8 of occasional hork-bajir wars doesn't fit with Hork-Bajir Chronicles showing they have no concept of violence before andalites arrive. Cassie's line about "my niece" in #37 is not in line with her saying her parents are her only family in #49. Rachel suspects at times that Jordan's a controller (#12, #22) but in #49 Jordan's dismissed as even a potential threat.

And then there's the absolute clusterfuck of Tobias's parentage.

In #3, he says "my parents died." In #13, it's "both my folks left a long time ago." In Andalite Chronicles, when Elfangor asks about Loren: "She disappeared. When I was just little... I guess she died." In #23, he says "both my parents are dead." But also DeGroot says "Your father... who died? That may not have been your real father" implying a stepfather we never meet. After Elfangor's will it kinda falls into place, but even then...

Elfangor says he and Loren were ~14 mentally, ~18 physically, when they got to Earth, and that "when she was ready by human standards, I married her." He mentions getting multiple college degrees, but that it's only "three years later" that the Ellimist abducts him back to space. No one apparently notices he was gone — Ax has no idea Elfangor lived on Earth, and didn't notice him missing (#8), so... he time-traveled back and lived those three years twice? And no one noticed him being seven years older because... Ellimist fuckery? There's mention of Loren dating someone else after Al's "death", so at least the random step-dad is consistent. But Loren doesn't mention him in #49, so I guess she got remarried and rewidowed between Tobias's birth and his third birthday, and then she forgot him.

Anywhoo, it kind of lines up sorta if you squint, but I'm 99.9% sure that there was some degree of retcon somewhere in there.

[quietwingsinthesky]

(Fobwatch anon) you take AS MUCH liberty as you want !! No one else sees this vision. Can you believe that

i really can’t, it’s brilliant. it’s exactly the kind of fun mindfuckery that i love to play with <3 i have Ideas. i have angst brewing. sexy angst.

[rottenseaweed]

so I started watching Bocchi the rock

if anything happened to this tiny pink haired bean I would kill everyone in this room and then myself

[cereal-abyss-mage]

man i somehow ended up listening to white night just now and it reminded me how fucking good penacony was, like it was literally peak, i don't think any other planet we get will top it for me. like ever

[muchanmocha]

My hot take is that Luka didn't actually impersonate Sua

And here's why.

Ok let's start by making this clear — Luka canonically knew about Sua and has analyzed Mizi and Sua's relationship to hell and back based on their My Clematis performance before Round 5.

"In the interview, Luka responded as if he had no interest in Mizi, but in reality he had thoroughly analyzed everything about her after watching her duet stage with Sua. In her confusion, Mizi becomes a mere plaything for Luka."

— Director's Commentary, ALNST Artbook

He precision-designed Round 5 to systematically push Mizi to her breaking point by using Sua and her death in Round 1 — everything from the performance, his expressions, his intonations, his timing, the choreography, down to the very song choice (he presumably didn't pull out ROMH for Round 4, and he didn't save it for the finals/Round 7 as he may have intended).

However, what wasn't on that list, was impersonating Sua.

Let's take a look at what happened on stage:

Luka opens up the sequence by catcalling her right off the bat, abruptly intruding her personal space in the first of many moments to come.

"You're the perfect subject, with the whole world in your sad eyes."

"My savior, beautiful soul..."

He proceeds to condescendingly give praise to how beautiful she is in her broken state, glorifying the trauma that made her perfect.

"I don't believe. You're a liar."

All the admiration of which, they both know is just a pretense.

Then comes the most important part.

Sua's hallucination appears.

You tell me, is that a Sua expression?

No! In fact! Sua resembles Luka here.

So what's actually happening in this scene?

Well if you look at the lyrics when she appears, you'll find this:

"When our darknesses overlap, let me take it all away."

Sua appears because Luka is directly addressing Mizi's "darkness" here, aka her trauma aka Sua, and offers to take it away. Therefore, Mizi is the one doing all the heavy lifting of hallucinating her.

Again, is this an expression that would remind you of Sua?

What he DOES do here, is continue to invade her space and touch her intimately like a lover would, which he had been doing since minute one.

Remember: the theme of Round 5 is contract marriage.

He touches her not as Sua would, but as a lover would, because that would be the easiest way to provoke Mizi, who had just lost the love of her life and is now "tied" to him.

If you check the timing of Sua's hallucination's appearances, you'd find them not when Luka "admires" Mizi for her beauty, or when they sing "ruler of my heart" as you'd expect if he was actually trying to echo Sua, but when the lyrics address the despair and trauma Mizi is facing.

Ironically, the only times in this performance that Luka plausibly resembles Sua, is when he adopts his blank doll face away from audience eyes.

Yet you can see that Sua never appears in any of these shots because that's not how Mizi would've remembered her. We can confirm that with which real memories appear in Round 5, specifically behind Luka in the theater scene and during Mizi's breakdown.

(Can you tell I've long reached my photo limit and had to make cuts)

Mizi remembers Sua at her happiest, because Sua was always her happiest when she was with Mizi.

And this is exactly the loss Luka effectively spits on.

Mizi: My world is collapsing

Luka: Lol yeah whatever

There is such a purposeful, derisive mockery embedded in how Luka treats the subject of her loss.

"Make me your god, I can give you everything."

Not, "I am your god," but "replace your god with me."

You'll notice that what he offers here isn't a new "replacement Sua," but the audience.

Catcalling, smirking, manhandling her like a ragdoll, condescendingly looking down at her, overt mockery, revelling in the cheers of an audience that's crazy for him. There is nothing he does in Round 5 that even remotely resembles Sua or is meant to resemble Sua.

Where would the resemblance be? His pretty face and white clothes? White was, and has always been his signature outfit color. Round 5 wasn't a special occasion for that.

So.

Tl;dr Luka did not actively impersonate Sua. But he did commit mindfuckery on several levels.

-

Bonus:

Luka -> Mizi [Intimacy 0%, -]

It's stupid and foolish to not be able to control even one of your emotions.

[villain-in-love]

Ha... haha...

Hahahahaha!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

I'M BAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[abusivelittlebunny]

Baby Pierce being his stepdaddy's pretty little substitute wife and the rural middle of nowhere Texan town's favorite whore is at this point Canon in my mind. He was a fragile little doll that wanted to kill his past so bad he thought taking Transigen's offer was his chance to erase the weak little toy he used to be but his facade keeps cracking painfully and no matter how much he tries to hide it the people around him can practically smell what he is. And there's nothing that mortifies him more than the fact that deep down secretly his treacherous body and subconscious likes it.

The way I get so feral when I remember that this guy

is the same guy as this guy

[kirstythejetblackgoldfish]

🐟 Pollock, AKA coley, AKA saithe 🐟

[rofefetasprite]

fantroll art dump because i love her and i get to post about her a little

[candiid-caniine]

my favorite thing about denial is the opportunities for mindfuckery. gaslighting and emotional manipulation, in particular.

"if you want to cum so bad, why do you get so wet when you're denied?"

"you came just now. yes you did. are you such an edged-out slut that you don't remember what it feels like? i know you came, and i didn't give you permission, so now you're in big trouble."

"but your hole feels so much better when it's denied. don't you want to make me feel good?"

"if you could just stop touching yourself so much, maybe you'd be able to prove you deserve to cum."

"every time i tell you 'no,' you get wetter. i don't care if you don't believe me, i can feel it."

"your orgasms are so special for me, and i don't want them to lose their specialness. don't you want to save them for special occasions? if you just cum all the time, i'll get so bored of it..."

"if you won't give them up for me, you don't really respect me."

"only sluts cum every day. do you want to be a slut? because i have no problems treating you like one."

"when you stop being so pathetic, maybe i'll let you cum."

fuck. when they say shit like this to me,,

[transformers-spike]

Knockout, Ratchet, Megatron, and Optimus with taking care of a/their pregnant reader? Are they cuties?

Ohhh boy, mixed reactions all around

Knock Out has more trouble than the others. He may be a soldier, doctor and part time scientist, but he is not good at dealing with the human fluids involved. He is horrible at comforting you during morning sickness. It disgusts him and he can't shut his intake. He wants to help you obviously, but for now he's just as likely to empty his fuel tanks. So he's literally doing this:

After the first phase, it gets a little better. It truly starts to hit him how you're carrying his offspring and the mindfuckery of it all. He does care, he's just much better at checking in on you and ticking down the checklist of your needs than dealing with the gross stuff. He will cuddle you tho and give lots of praise

Ratchet is doing pretty well all things considered. It's just the stress that's getting to him. Ironically enough, taking care of you means he also needs to to take care of himself. Someone has to be here for you and the offspring, so he's going to do his best to make sure he doesn't work himself to scrap. He can be quite annoying when it comes to checking in on your wellbeing. He is a doctor dammit and he wants to make sure you're getting the necessary human analysis (government sponsored obv bc you broke all natural laws carrying his spawn) - and also his own because he's the only Cybertronian doctor around. He's going to rest with you on his chassis, holding onto his child's developing EM field, unable to process being a dad until his kid is actually born. He will cry Megatron is... very outwardly affectionate about the whole thing. Nuzzling his human and telling them how their spawn is going to lead the Decepticons to glory. He is very proud of you for carrying it, and he's very likely to stroke your growing belly with a digit for hours on end. He's got Knock Out (maybe even Shockwave if he's around) carrying out medical tests to make sure things are going well. You are held 24/7 for safety reasons, and he is not grossed out by morning sickness. He's going to rub your back while you puke and say it's only a small price to pay for what you're creating. Although, he is very irritable towards everyone else during this. He worries terribly for the birth, but he doesn't even fully realize it. Also impatient as all hell looming over you poking at his child's EM field. He cradles it and reassures his spawn it has a bright future in front of it. Megatron keeps you to his chassis at all times, right against his spark. Knowing him, he'll try to establish a spark bond with his kid even before it's born. Not sure if it works tho Optimus is coping. Maybe it's the other Primes inside of him, but he's handling your pregnancy quite well. Yes, he is very busy - but he does find the time to watch over you. He's very likely to just lie down and let you rest in his servo. Just covering him in pillows and getting comfy. He's very gentle with you. Willing to give you privacy during morning sickness or rub your back with a digit while you're dealing with the worst time of your life. He desperately wants his child to live in a world without war - and this may push him to uh... be a lot more aggressive towards Megatron. This bot is determined to protect his kid and make sure his offspring lives a happy life. He's going to press you to his cheek and just... cuddle you this way. Because he is overwhelmed with emotion and loves you so very much. He will also carry you a lot btw, especially during the third trimester.

[linkcharacter]

What is your interpretation of the blood and ladder thing? Like, did Curly really see that at the time? Is it a way to convey his anxiety? Is it how he remembers the moment?

As I see it, I'm treating it the same as Jimmy's, as their subconscious and state of mind depicted and visualized for players in a cool asf way. It's a creative and visually impactful way to tell the story, the characters' thoughts and what's going on in their mind. Therefore I'm willing to accept that it is actually something Curly 'felt' in the moment. Up to you to interpret how vivid or conscious he was of it happening, it is simply where his mind was at.

Same question can be asked about all of Jimmy's mindfuckery too, with no clear indication on whether or not, (for example) he actually thought he was being hunted by a long ass horse while searching for mouthwash for Daisuke. If we accept, that Jimmy's walk in the Polle corridor after crashing the ship was what he 'felt' while sitting on the floor head in hands, If we don't doubt, that the judgement and other encounters are something that's representing Jimmy's mind state, then I don't think there's reasons to doubt Curly's too (and vice versa). It does blur a line between in-game reality and metaphorical symbolism shenanigans tomfoolery to the player and I think that's the point. It's for the story.

The vision itself comes out as extremely foreshadowy but it's something that's been on his mind. It is Curly having an existential crisis about the career ladders that reach above the Ocean Of Blood, with him "reaching the top" and safe from drowning in it. It is Curly's subconscious screaming at him about the danger in the cockpit, how he keeps on walking "ignoring all warning signs". This sequence implies so much, especially if we assume or consider that Curly has been aware of what Anya told him for a gooood while. Anticipating the doom Jimmy will bring with him by walking into the giant star (that, by the way, locks your camera on it, unable to turn away) that is leading into the cockpit where Jimmy is seated. Because that's literally what happens, Curly walks into the cockpit and gets incinerated later, because of Jimmy and Curly's own negligence and compliance. Feeling helpless in the wake of an inescapable gravitational pull is how Curly felt (whether he actually was helpless is up to debate, but it is how he saw it). He may have know OF the dead pixel but ignored it, as the warning signs were there but kept on acting like it wasn't a big deal. Until the deadly star that grew out of it consumed him.

[kazz-brekker]

truly think the worst thing about sauron's mindfuckery with celebrimbor is that he keeps making him choose, over and over again, to work with him. he manipulates celebrimbor into keeping the forge open, into making the nine rings despite his concerns, into continuing the work even when it's taking such a toll on him, and the whole time makes celebrimbor agree rather than intimidating or forcing him. he makes celebrimbor feel like this is the right and only thing to be doing. celebrimbor's being manipulated, of course, but when the moment finally comes when he realizes annatar's true nature and feels like he willingly agreed to everything that he was coerced into doing, the guilt is going to be HORRENDOUS

[kaesaaurelia]

I also think it's pretty common to read something that's intentionally fucked up, understand that it IS fucked up, but not realize the author meant it to come across as fucked up, especially if you don't have a lot of experience with nuance or are predisposed to think less of the author for one reason or another. It's something I've definitely done in the past -- the specific instance I can recall was when I was 15 or 16, I read an anthology of SF/F that included a really broad range of mostly stories from the '60s, '70s, and '80s. I have incredibly low expectations of male SF/F authors from that era writing women, so when a super creepy story focused on a heterosexual relationship had a happy-creepy ending I was like "Wow I can't believe he thought that was a good and happy ending! Wait, actually I can." It was an early GRRM story, and I had never heard of him at the time, so I wasn't aware that Well, That Was Fucked Up was his whole brand. (Also I was 15 or 16, and pretty dumb.)

It's harder to do that in good faith if you're reading fanfic that's thoroughly tagged, but a lot of people just fucking ignore tags and then are mad when there's something in the fic that was tagged for. (I frequently don't see tags and then go "oh wow that is not for me, I wish it was tagged," and then it absolutely was, I just missed it. But I'm not looking for a rage high. I'm trying to be better about looking at tags, and the tag limit AO3 imposed after the Sexy Times with Wangxian debacle is actually really helpful for me because there's fewer big walls of tags my eyes glaze over at.)

I do also come across enough stuff that's got like 5 different "consent is sexy"-type tags that are clear-cut ravishment kink that I know sometimes fucked-up stuff IS in presented positively. I don't think this is malevolent, I think the author just doesn't know they have a kink and is tagging their fic with all the Good Wholesome Fic For Good Wholesome People tags, because they're a good person and would never write dubious consent and they've never heard of ravishment. (In this instance, as in all of them, the antis are not fucking helping.) I find this VERY annoying, but I just mark the fic as read with my kudosed/read plugin, never look at it again, and move on whine constantly about this specific problem without making it the author's problem, because I like a good kvetch.

Also, I think the way anti ideology categorizes most if not all people writing about fucked up scenarios as "trying to normalize incest/child molestation/rape/abuse" encourages a reliance on explicit "this is bad and unhealthy" markers to tell what the author is trying to do, as opposed to understanding from context that fic about a sexual/romantic relationship between two canonically fucked-up people who are canonically brothers is probably intended to show this incestuous relationship as fucked-up, even if they're taking surface-level comfort in the fucked-up relationship and no one does a speech about how brotherfucking is wrong.

But yeah, I think a lot of it is mental health issues and a lack of adequate mental support, which makes me sad. Happy people mostly don't keep engage in self-harm by reading things they find upsetting, nor do they go out of their way to harass people, and while I was never an anti I've definitely done the "self-medicating with a rage high" thing and a lot of the Argumentum Ad Trauma Dumping is unfortunately pretty familiar to me.

A common anti talking point is that "problematic" content is fine as long as it's portrayed in a bad light, and I know this is mostly a way for them to say "porn bad", but, like... if we exclude stupidity, is this even a common issue at all?

I try to think of what they could otherwise mean, because I read a lot of things they'd hate, but even the cutesy stuff has dark undertones, or is clearly done with the reader meant to understand that at least one character involved is a freak. Even with porn, I'm not sure I've seen many that didn't lean into how taboo it is. The closest trend I can think of is age gap romances where the protagonist is 16 and going for someone in their 30s, but even those make sure you're extremely aware of the age difference the entire time since that's the appeal. Or an anime where the siblings are REALLY close and no one comments, but as a viewer I can still clearly pick up that these are codependent freaks.

Is this a me thing? Do I just not see these swarms of insidious positive portrayals and they're actually everywhere? I don't doubt there are bad writers that fumble their stories, and I'm less likely to read those long enough to find out, so is that what they're referring to? Or is it really always just porn is evil?

--

No, people being dumb as a box of rocks and not grasping that weird internet porn is not a how-to manual is not that common a problem.

However, being traumatized and having zero useful mental health support is.

A lot of anti talking points are coming from a place of toxic coping. mechanisms where someone thinks that if they can just control everything around them The Bad Thing can't happen again, to them or to anyone else.

Blaming the influence of bad fiction is a very common step for people who haven't had enough time or safety to accept that, no, actually, the person they trusted hurt them on purpose because they felt like it, not because Media Made Them Do It.

Or that maybe their dumb teen self handled some situations badly, but it's because teens often do that and/or because no decent adult was around to ask them why they seemed upset, not because it was fiction's job to teach them boundaries. It's a lot easier to blame the concrete experience of reading something that modeled bad behavior than the highly amorphous negative space where good offline role models who paid attention and gave a fuck should have been.

--

Some people are self-medicating with a rage high. A few are nasty ringleaders trying to power trip. Lots are just scared dumbasses who haven't grasped that it's okay to have dark fantasies.

A lot of it is just people with the hubris to say "Well, I have decent reading comprehension and can spot subtext, but what if all these other people can't?"