#What on earth. Wow wow.

[magnusbae]

Never in my life did I watch something quite as ridiculous, pointless, without any coherent sense of direction or self as The Acolyte. Start to finish it created its own 'threats' and 'issues' to artificially stimulate a plot that never had a single point to be made. What on earth were they thinking? Nothing in this series follows its own internal logic. The character motivations are all over the place and often simply contradict themselves within the same episode. The intrigue and the foreshadowing all come to a null when the reveals literally are not in par with what was implied and just generally--- what on earth? You cannot say I did not come open minded. Watched all the episodes, given it grace and opportunity time and time again to prove itself but--- no, no it's actually just the worst tv show I've ever seen, and that's a serious claim as I watched quite a few bad ones I enjoyed more than I did this one. Don't even get me started on how fundamentally lacking they are in understanding what the Jedi are and who they are as an entity, there was no idea of the self or the values or even codes of the Jedi in this show. Something that could have been such a wonderful and intriguing show, with visuals we all were craving (Jedi Temple) it ended up being below mid-show, shot almost in its whole entirety on a planet that looks 100% like earth with zero intriguing visuals or anything to justify the monstrous budget they had to burn through. Wow, kudos on creating something so empty of meaning I am not even angry after watching it, only baffled that someone actually wrote it and someone actually thought it was good enough to film. Damn.

[itsthatlake]

“Icarus.”

it's all about freedom really

Credit goes to An Sifakah for the poem. Enjoy!

Support me on Ko-fi maybe?

[bet-on-me-13]

Technically a Cult

So! Danny has been hearing through the Grapevine that a large Cult has been Summoning all the biggest Magical Creature's for some reason. Demon Lord's, Fae Kings, even a few Gods. Clockwork was summoned a little while ago, and so was Fright Knight and Pandora

And he has been patiently waiting his turn for a while. Apparently everyone they summon has gotten a really good deal from them, all in return for a few favors, sometimes a promise to not go to a specific place.

Danny really wants to strike a deal with them. He wants to ask them for a favor so he can get out of work for a few weeks, he's been planning on taking a vacation with Sam and Tuck, but the Eyeballs are being annoyingly resistant.

He feels the familiar pull of Summoning, and realizes that it's time. Awesome, time to meet this mysterious Cult!

...

Why is the JLA standing in from of him?

[shanastoryteller]

The day his deal comes due, Sam goes missing.

Dean tells himself it’s nothing, that he’s gotten caught up in some research, some last ditch, hail mary nonsense and that he’s just turned his phone off and everything’s fine, that he wouldn’t do something stupid, that he wouldn’t break his promise.

He tells himself that for the first two minutes after he cracks his eyes open and sees the empty bed across from him, and the first time his call goes straight to voicemail, and not much after that. Sam’s broken his promises over things significantly less important to him than his brother’s life.

Dean is dressed and in the Impala five minutes later, heart thudding wildly in his chest. He calls Bobby, Ellen, everyone he can think of, but none of them have heard from Sam, none of them have eyes on him. Sam was with him last night, even if he boosted a car, there’s only so far he can get.

He keeps calling, keep searching, desperate to stop whatever he’s trying to do, to find him, to see his brother one last time before he’s dragged to hell. To make sure Sam is going to be okay after he’s dragged to hell. But the hours tick down, the sun sets, and he can’t find a trace of him. He’s so exhausted and heart sick that when he goes to call Sam again it takes him a long time to read the number on his phone, eyes swimming, the time not making any sense.

1:03

That’s not possible.

That’s not –

His phone rings, blocking out the time with Bobby’s name across the screen, and he answers it but his throat is too thick to say anything.

“Dean?” Bobby says tentatively. “Are you – I got an email from Sam. It just said, I mean, did–“

“What did it say, Bobby?” he asks, even though he’s sure he knows.

Bobby sucks in a breath at his voice, because he knows just as well as Dean that he should be screaming in hell right now, not answering his phone. “To take care of you.”

Dean drops the phone, hears Bobby still talking as he grips the wheel and presses his forehead against the back of his hands. This is what he’d been afraid of. This is why he hadn’t wanted to mess with the deal in first place. This is the one thing he’d begged Sam not to do.

It's easy to find a crossroad.

The demon is laughing at him when it shows up, wicked grin in a pretty face. “That didn’t take you long, boy.”

It’s a different demon than the one he delt with, obviously, but Dean figures they all know the same shit, since demons are a bunch of gossips. “This wasn’t the deal. My brother lives and I die.”

“You traded your soul for your brother’s life,” she corrects, so amused by all this that all he wants to do is kill her, to exorcise her, to make her scream. “Just like your father traded his for yours. There’s no reason Sammy can’t make his own trade. Man, but is your family fucked up. Maybe if you’d just settled down like little Sammy wanted, you wouldn’t all be bargaining for each other’s lives like haggling at a flea market.”

“Untrade it,” he snaps. “My soul for him alive, come on, no year, no waiting, you bring him back and take me to hell right now.”

She laughs in his face. “You don’t have anything to bargain with, boy.”

“My soul,” he repeats, “That’s what this is about, isn’t?”

“Oh, it’s what it’s all about,” she says. “But Sammy’s a clever boy. You know that, don’t you? He didn’t trade his soul for your life, he didn’t have to. You didn’t die. No, he traded it for your soul. Sorry, honey, but your credits been declined.”

At first he doesn’t understand. Sam traded his soul for Dean’s, exactly, so there’s no reason he can’t trade it right back. Then he gets it.

She sees the exact moment it clicks, the moment despair and horror sweep across his face too quickly for him to stop them. “That’s right. Little brother owns your soul now. For some reason he didn’t think you’d take proper care of it. You have it because that’s where he wants it, but no one will be making any deals with you, Dean Winchester. You can’t sell a soul you don’t own.”

“You can’t,” he has to clear his throat, “you can’t just come in and change things at the eleventh hour-”

“Eleventh hour?” she interrupts. “Sammy made his deal eleven months ago.”

His mouth is so dry he can’t speak.

“Isn’t it funny?” she asks, head cocked to the side. “All this time, the deal he’s been trying to get out of wasn’t yours, but his own. Maybe the two of you might have even managed it, except you just wouldn’t help, would you? Insisting that he not research, that he not look for a way out, and he spent so much time trying to convince you, coaxing you to talk about your feelings when he knew you were safe, all he because he thought it would make you feel better when he was gone, because he couldn’t tell you the truth and talk about how scared he was, so talking about your fear was as close as he could get.”

Dean’s going to be sick. “Don’t – please, please, I’ll give you anything-”

“You don’t have anything,” she says, gleeful. “You want to know why I agreed? The thing that made it just too delicious to refuse? Sammy’s down there, just starting in on an eternity of torture, and all he has to do get out of it is give up your soul. It’s his, after all, and he can put the original deal back in place any time he chooses. Just one moment of weakness on his end and his beloved big brother will be on the rack instead.” She sighs happily. “It’s almost as good as anything we’re doing to him down there, the knowledge that if he slips up for even a moment then it would all be for nothing. I couldn’t have found a way to twist the knife deeper if I tried.”

There’s vomit crawling its way up his throat and he has to swallow it down before he can speak. “I can’t – I’ll do whatever you want, please, there has to be something.”

She leans forward, cruelty and delight shining in her eyes. “The only thing you can do is what you’ve been telling your precious baby brother to do for the past year. Accept it. Move on. Live a good life so his sacrifice isn’t in vain.”

God. How can she – how can Sammy expect him to –

He’s doubling over, finally upchucking what little he’s ate today, and he’s dry heaving on the dirt when he hears the fading sound of her laughter.

This can’t be real. This has to be Hell, he has to be in it right now. He has to be.

[thedaythatwas]

on nagito komaeda and love

I just think it’s sort of funny that for a character whose (arguably) most well-recognized CG is this: 

komaeda’s narrative so heavily centers love. and I don’t just say this because I’ve had komahina brainrot for years (though this is true!!). even if you don’t care about komahina, it’s tough to deny komaeda is a walking tragedy in large part because of the role that love plays in his life. his characterization is driven by the way his luck has denied him love, and how he seeks it out regardless. in that sense, I think that without understanding komahina as at least one-sided, you miss out on one of the juiciest, most miserable pieces of komaeda’s character development.

tldr; a love-centered reading of komaeda makes sense, recognizing komahina as “a thing” in DR2 (whether you ship it or not) is pretty important to understanding how komaeda operates, and I’ll try to prove it right here under this page break!!

Part 1: Komaeda’s Love Life (or, his life without love)

I think it’s safe to assume that if you clicked here, you know about komaeda’s absurdly miserable, tumultuous childhood, but I’ll do a quick recap just in case! meteor kills his parents on a plane, he inherits a ton of money. he’s kidnapped by a serial killer, he finds a winning lottery ticket in the garbage bag he’s thrown out in. he’s diagnosed with terminal cancer and dementia, he gets into hope’s peak.

in his free time events, komaeda *explicitly* frames his luck cycle as something that takes away the people he loves. it only “takes action” against him after his relatives have died (for the sake of this essay, let’s assume that komaeda loved his parents, or would have at least been hurt by their passing). by way of other close connections… well, his wording here implies that by the time of his diagnosis, he didn’t really have anybody in his life. 

either komaeda didn’t allow himself to get close to anyone after the meteor incident, or he did, and they were taken away by his luck. at some point during his childhood, komaeda learned he should view himself as a death sentence.

so, how does this loss of love shape the komaeda we know? I’ll talk about this in terms of four of his defining (and connected!) traits in DR2 canon – the ones that really make his actions make sense: his self-loathing, his hope-seeking, his learned helplessness, and his certainty that his existence poses a threat to those around him. komaeda’s experience with loss makes him view himself as a source of death, which in turn fuels these tenets of his character. ultimately, his loss and the complexes that arise from it give him good incentive to push people away.

his self-loathing

komaeda hates himself. he views himself as worthless outside of his potential to serve as a “stepping stone” for the hope of the ultimates. he claims that this is driven by his beliefs around talent, which are in turn linked to the way his worldview rests on viewing hope as “absolute good.” the talentless (himself included) are only good for advancing the hope of the talented. still, his self-loathing is a bit more personal than that. take what he says and dig just below the surface, and it’s a clean cut trauma response all the way down. which leads us directly to…

his hope-seeking

komaeda is willing to do literally anything to serve hope. on the island, this (in short) means dying. this is where I prod at komaeda’s reasoning a bit more: komaeda’s willingness to act the way he does in canon also stems from his belief that his dying would be a net good for the world. his existence kills the people around him. his illness will kill him anyway. he has less than no value, and hope is invaluable. to go out for the sake of hope would give his wretched life purpose; it’s his dream come true.

and it’s no mystery why komaeda cares so much about hope: again, it’s a coping mechanism! komaeda’s belief that all bad luck is a necessary precursor for good luck and that hope will always triumph over despair is (as he himself says!) the only reason he’s managed to stay alive. I’ll say it again because I really can’t emphasize it enough – komaeda thinks that just by existing, he kills the people he loves. ouch!

learned helplessness / his existence as a threat

komaeda has, essentially, learned to submit to his luck cycle. all bad luck is good luck in the end – isn’t that amazing?! almost paradoxically, he’s hyper-vigilant about the negative impact his luck has on those around him. this is a tricky one. I make sense of it this way: komaeda’s perception of how much his luck impacts the people close to him isn’t inflated, like, at all. the supernatural way the world bends around komaeda to screw him over really does pose a danger to himself and others, and he takes measures to minimize that danger. his stated acceptance of his luck cycle is… well, again, he’s coping. 

if komaeda really thought that all bad luck is ultimately good luck, he wouldn’t try to protect his classmates from his bad luck. but, as we see in island mode, he does!

but really, who could blame komaeda for lying to himself? I’ll restate the facts. komaeda thinks that luck is absolute power. he says that he’s powerless against it. his luck has taken his family, and it’s left him with nothing but money that he doesn’t want. he’s certain he’s a curse, and there’s no end to that in sight: so long as komaeda exists, he’ll keep on losing – murdering – everything he loves. 

in the face of all of that despair, what can you do but abandon your self-esteem and pray for something good to come out of all of it? how else could somebody possibly survive carrying that burden, truly believing that load will never be lightened?

tldr; komaeda thinks his existence is a threat, and a big chunk of his personality is a frankensteined way of surviving the pain that comes with that. still, we should question how much of his worldview komaeda has really internalized without inner conflict. 

Part 2: Enter Hajime Hinata

we get some answers on that front when we see that despite the clear and obvious danger it poses, nagito komaeda still finds himself falling hard for hajime hinata. that’s really, really loud.

I’ll preface this part by saying that you don’t need to actively ship komahina to understand what I’m trying to get at here. this said, I’ll be recapping an argument you’ve almost definitely seen before: komahina is definitely “a thing” – at the very least as a one-sided thing. to this, I’ll add the (perhaps bold?) claim that without recognizing that much as true, you’re missing out on a big part of what makes komaeda so interesting.

komaeda’s FTEs make it abundantly clear that komaeda has feelings for hinata. apart from his famed failed love confession, the fact that komaeda is willing to allow hinata to get close enough to learn about his views on hope and luck is telling. 

(the smoking gun here hinges on trusting that komaeda was telling the truth during the time you spent with him; in so many words, that he only lied about lying. so, for the sake of argument, let’s assume this is true! there’s good proof for it, anyway.)

if you read his final FTE as komaeda flashing his soul to hinata and making a decision at the very last second to retreat, turning to old coping mechanisms to protect hinata from his luck, it’s sort of a komahina bombshell. that capitulation spells out for us that komaeda understands sharing his life experiences with hinata to be one of the most intimate things he could possibly do.

he recognizes the exact moment he lets hinata get too close – when his life story is finally told – and he does what he’s learned he needs to do to get them both out of that situation safely: he tries to make hinata hate him, and tells himself (and hinata!) that he did it for the sake of hope.

(and yet, komaeda let hinata approach him every FTE, knowing damn well that they were both playing with fire… very interesting.)

now, let’s say you don’t consider the FTEs to be integral to canon. I mean, you can really easily miss out on all of komaeda’s content if you choose not to hang out with him in chapter 1! so, for the skeptic, in the unskippable main story, komaeda tells hinata this:

komaeda cares about hinata despite everything. and I really, truly mean despite everything. at this point in the story, the fact that he still cares about hinata calls into question basically every single one of his core beliefs. he’s read his final dead room prize – not only does hinata not have a talent, we can presume that komaeda also knows hinata became ultimate despair along with the rest of them. 

hinata has continually sought out komaeda’s company, even though komaeda knows himself to be worthless at best, lethal at worst. komaeda was willing to let him get closer, even though he knows how dangerous that is for hinata. he can’t help but let hinata try to know him. 

isn’t he awful? to want what he knows he can’t have, even though that wanting has never done anything but cause pain? he’s really the lowest of the low, to love someone who destroyed the world, who makes him question the views that will allow him to do the only good thing he’s ever been able to do for it: to die for hope. 

and yet, it’s a nod to how incredibly capable of love komaeda is that he’s still willing to reach out for it, no matter how many times it’s burned him in the past, and how much it hurts him in the present to want it. he understands more than anyone that his feelings can only result in disaster. reading komaeda as someone who can’t help but go on loving anyway makes his story hurt so much worse. 

but, you miss a whole lot of that without an eye for komahina. seeing hinata as the eye of komaeda’s emotional hurricane (and keeping tabs on their connection accordingly) allows us to glimpse past the cracks in komaeda’s front. we see that komaeda’s worldview is less stable than he presents it as – hinata is where komaeda’s coping mechanisms, for better or worse, run up against a wall. that tends to be uncomfortable for a guy who’s just barely coping in the first place. then again, growth is supposed to be uncomfortable, isn’t it?

Part 3: The Future He Chooses

so, all of this considered, I think one of the most interesting ways you can flesh komaeda out post-canon is by asking how he’d find himself willing to accept love. whether that love is from hinata or the ultimates, whether it’s platonic or romantic, love is the thing that komaeda wants AND fears in equal measure more than anything. it’s the source of his self-loathing and his obsession with hope. it’s the reason he’s lived the way that he has for so long – lonely, and afraid of being anything but.

getting into a relationship wouldn’t solve komaeda’s problems for him, and that’s a good thing. it would force him to confront old ones, and probably create dozens of new issues for him, too. writing him through that makes for great character study!

hinata (or anyone else, for that matter) can’t love komaeda into loving himself, but he can give him a shoulder to cry on while he works through 22 years of fear and sorts through the wreckage of a worldview that’s long since stopped serving him. I don’t think his progress would be linear. but, I think that he could do it. komaeda learning to accept care is what his healing looks like. 

(well. and physically recovering from cancer and dementia. but that’s neither here nor there!)

a post-canon komaeda learning to love narrative is also in line with the themes of DR2. hinata leads the survivors out of the neo world program because he makes the decision to choose his own future, creating a new version of “hope” for himself and his classmates. likewise, komaeda can make the decision to save himself. that is, if he trusts himself enough to actually touch and hold the thing that he’s never been able to stop reaching out for, anyway.

after all, hinata is lucky too. (and if it turns out he isn’t… y'all like angst fics, right?)

(shoutout to @cynopter for looking this over and confirming that I'm not spouting nonsense <33 thank you for reading my thesis of the week <33)

[numberonetribble]

When your love for each other is so great and it becomes something bigger than either of you, oh that's family baby!

[toubledrouble]

You know what we should bring back?

Older christianity. I mean the anti government, anti military, community based christianity. The one that cared the most about peace, equality, mercy, kindness, and radical love. The one with shared property. The one that didn't conform to society but instead existed mostly outside of it. The one where noone considered one sin worse than another because in the end, we are all sinners trying our best to be better.

[mentalmilkshakes]

The only thing I can focus on is his hair?!!

[ariaofblue]

Delico's nursery episode 9.

And what if I cried like a river now?! What if I huh?!...

This episode and the previous one had me crying and emotional, like the depth in this story is so good to the point I'm obsessed with this series.

Also the OSTs!!! Hello?!! It was so touching and moving.

Can't wait for the next one even though I'm scared of what will happen......

[icewindandboringhorror]

indeed my exact process once every 8 months or so

[rayofmisfortune]

BRINGING IT BACK Y'ALL

SUN 👏 NEEDS 👏 THERAPY 👏

[softness-and-shattering]

So I put on this netflix show, in their tradition of being extremely obvious with names its called Mech Cadets, and its an alien-mecha human-pilot fight-the-giant-bug-aliens story. My first complaint is that the alien mechas are called Robo's. Wow exciting /sarcasm. Anyway thats totally forgiven because 1 the story actually makes choices and puts the characters through consequences instead of like hinting at oh it something bad gonna happen psych we dont have the guts for that. Its a kid/teen show so its not super dark but it follows through and goes the places it needs to.

2, and maybe most importantly, I gotta talk about the disability rep. There's four teens chosen by the alien mechs to be their drift-compatible pilots (I think im using that correctly? Im not super informed on the genre but I know some), and we see straight away that one of the guys has a prosthetic leg from the thigh down, and uses it as an example to tell the main protagonist, hey none of us are perfect we dont have to be perfect we just need to be human. The next episode the mechas are given human-designed weapons to fight with, and the disabled kid gets these flippy sticks I cant quite work out. One of them gets a staff, the other gets this glove for punching, story moves on. Then a bug-alien-antagonist gets into the teens dorm and while fighting it, the alien dismembers the guys prosthetic. He immediately grabs his crutches and goes to town on it with his crutches, and balancing on them to kick with his one good foot*. Then they disconnect the rest of the prosthetic and use its sharp edge to kill the alien. And then he just moves around on his crutches with no comment and Ill cut myself off there so I dont spoil the whole thing.

Except, a couple episodes later, Im watching him in the mech fighting and moving around, and I realise that his giant fuck-off monster attacking weapons ARE A PAIR OF CRUTCHES. Theyre his fucking WEAPONS. Thats cool as fuck!

[swoo0zy]

for this 11th woy anniversary i have a grand total of nothing please emjpy ur meal woy fans 💖💖💖💖

[lightbulb-warning]

i used to freehand comics all the time as a child and since the part i liked was the drawing part i would just draw panel after panel because i didn't want to stop drawing to think about icky icky words, plus the story TOTALLY still made perfect sense! to me! and noone else, but 'whoooo caaaaares omgggg its not like comics and sequantial art are a communicative meeediummmm lmaoooooo'. i spent my entire childhood telling myself stuff like "oh pfft I know this story by heart- ill SIMPLY remember the dialogue and write it later" ...and. I can't help but admire baby maiora's (call that a minora ba tm tsk) fucking audacity? hubris? confident wrongness? kid couldn't even remember to finish the comics in the first place? INCREDIBLE levels of unearned self assurance, wish that were me, genuinely- what an icon!!! anyway i think i have forever cursed myself

[moeblob]

Amazing, take some of the side character demons from Evil Bound.

Vincie is a menace to Chuck and Chuck alone so in Hell, Chuck hexes his hand behind his back so that he isn't grabbed as much (and it's harder to pet him). Chuck is like the most irresponsible older sibling ever to demons though so Kelvin recruits him (as an older sibling vibe) to go help him get his ACTUAL older sibling from Earth. Chuck agrees. And then drags Vincie from Hell with them because no one else wants to babysit him and he refuses to unbind the hex just to re-hex when he returns to Hell.

In Hell, Kelvin actually doesn't appear much different than his human form! Like Kronos, the lines under his eyes are red in Hell but black on earth. Chuck however? In Hell he has wolf-ish ears and has a fur lining his neck (note the neck scars in human form). In addition to that he has four eyes in Hell (note the scars under his eyes in human form). Vincie just has horns in Hell. And! In Hell the hex doesn't have a silly looking "tied up" look, it's invisible unless Vincie strains it with movement and then its red text. But it shifts on earth to be visible.

Vincie's biggest agony for the entirety on earth is "dude it's colder here than in Hell I want a jacket to slip my arms into BUT I CANT BECAUSE IM BOUND".

[offorestsongs]

being in my little carefully curated fandom bubble makes me genuinely forget that some people still think that oc x canons or self-shipping or x reader fics or whatever are 'cringy' or 'embarassing'