#You cruel cruel subject...

[dykedvonte]

I think depictions of Anya being cruel to Curly or drawing out his suffering are artful and chilling but completely miss the point of the story and her character.

I'm not saying she doesn't deserve to have that "I told you so" moment with him but not in something callous or cold. Even if that is how it happened, she'd immediately feel guilty cause at that point she's not tormenting her tormenter or even the person truly at fault. She's doing something cathartic, similar to how Jimmy likely hits Curly to release rage he can't against the rest of the crew. She'd see herself as no different when she'd come back from the moment and see Curly cowering at her. She wants someone to take responsibility but how does being cruel to the defenseless help? Why would she want the power Jimmy has over her over Curly?

The idea of her extending someone else's pain is just so against the struggles she already faces and how she can't even bring herself to cause someone pain even to help them. Her very desire is to release herself from her own suffering and I doubt she'd even fine some sort of guilty release in being cruel to another.

[canisalbus]

To me, Machete kind of has the energy of a secondary villain/coldhearted side character in someone else's story that a lot of fans latch onto, moreso than the protagonist. Question is, would he be the villain in anyone's story?

Why, thank you! I'm actually glad to hear he gives off that vibe. I don't think he set out to become a villain but a lot of people certainly view him as one.

[theweeklydiscourse]

Fake Enemies to Lovers Enjoyers: Enemies to lovers only works when [insert thinly veiled description of their fave ship’s dynamic]! Otherwise it’s abusive and toxic!!

These types want so badly for their preferred ships to be the exception to their sweeping generalizations and arbitrary limits on what can, and cannot be explored within the trope. They’re such hypocrites that want to have their cake and eat it too, they want the pleasure that comes from lording one’s perceived moral superiority over others while also enjoying the things that are so similar to what they condemn.

I beg of you…spare me the inane moralizing of your fictional preferences and please just sit down. Stop trying to move the goalposts to suit your specific preferences, stop ostentatiously moaning about what constitutes as what in regards to a broad trope like Enemies to Lovers. It’s a futile game and you look stupid trying to impose moral judgment on what is just a matter of taste

[betterbemeta]

@rawliverandgoronspice said:

#the conservatism of totk is staggeringly obvious #its values advocating for an impossible inhuman reality where people don't get to act or feel beyond their prescribed role #nor have personal or even communal feelings about said role #when botw was all about this very conflict #duty and personhood and responsibility and the shadow of the past burdening the future #Choices all the way down

I think what's happened here is that BOTW also had a conservative tone to it... but:

established these themes you mention almost by accident, as a product of explaining why all of these cool weapons of the past Failed (but are available now) and why Zelda didn't Solve It from the start (but needs our help now) and it all relies on Link to save Zelda (but she didn't need saving yet in the past, etc.)

made the miscalculation that after 100 years, Hyrule isn't actually there anymore to 'revive.' People have been living without it (contrast: OOT or TP where only a few months to ~7 years passed) for generations in relative peace and Rhoam's ghost disappeared before he could actually direct Link and Zelda to 'make a new kingdom' like Daphnes does at the end of Wind Waker.

Zelda in Breath of the Wild must fail at first to explain why Hyrule fell so it's in the state Link navigates later. Zelda's powers being unavailable are the source of the conflict you describe: about duty and personhood and responsibility and burdens. But at a critical moment the divine legitimacy suddenly develops, revealing a solution to a near-hopeless situation.

Zelda embraces those suddenly-developed powers completely, despite suffering about their absence before. She doesn't for example, decide to use the chance her powers gave her to harness a personal interest in ancient technology to take control of the Guardians away from Ganon. Awakening her powers means pursuing a very specific solution: one she even seems to 'get' from the Goddess/Master Sword answering machine. So it may not even be her 'decision' or 'plan' at all, but instead the right answer beamed directly from heaven.

It's like a negging situation where Zelda is told she is not good enough up until she is in crisis and most of her support network is gone... only then is given this One Golden Option that proves why This Power She Despaired Over And Could have Rejected Was So Important After All-- a message that justifies her father King Rhoam's cruelty to secure this golden option. That way the King can present as a regretful but still justified and noble ghost instead of a jerkass ghost.

so the conservative message in BOTW is more 'have faith in the system's role for you, because only it can save everyone in a crisis.' But to establish that message, the 'reasons why someone might lose faith in the system's roles' part had to exist.

And TOTK is almost like an over-correction of that oversight as well as how BOTW leaves the land in a 'peaceful' state but without Hyrule's Authority or Zelda's Divine Legitimacy-- 'if you could choose to leave the system's roles behind when there is no crisis, here's why you shouldn't. In fact, it's predestined you can't.'

[rats-and-robots]

More corrupted heinrix and uralon because I cannot be stopped

[uncanny-tranny]

A really sinister aspect into how people view children and parents is the idea of children being a replaceable commodity.

I've seen this in the way people talk about parents who have lost children but have surviving children... "Oh, at least you have other children," as though a child is just an interchangeable tool, a machine that dispenses what you want from it without it being sentient, whole, and feeling. The fact that people say that in order to comfort somebody shows, to me, how deep this mindset is engraved in people's brains: children are interchangeable items, and they do not fundamentally matter.

[lady-harrowhark]

I would love to hear the megatheorem

It's not ready for full publication and won't be for a while tbh, but like, maybe before the end of summer? If I'm being optimistic? It will definitely go up here when it's finished, although probably in parts because it's an absolute beast, currently weighing in at over 25 pages and nearly 13k words.

Here's a sneak peek at the table of contents though 😎���💀

Also I'm just now noticing that I have "Empty's as Good as Clean" from the draft version of the poem instead of the published version as a section title, whoops. Pretend that's on purpose. Maybe it's a nod to the like, three hours where we thought @torbooks was speaking to us in code. That sounds like both a regular thing to happen as well as to reference, right?

Some segments have stuff I've pulled in from things I've posted here before but off the top of my head I don't think any of the sections are fully anything I've posted here. That is to say, as the draft currently stands, every section has new analyses in addition to anything pulled in from previous posts, though I'd say most of the sections are things I've haven't posted. I believe the sections that have the most pulled from "old" content are Lyctorhood Lite, Resurrection vs Waking Up, and A Cavalier by Any Other Name, which would all be under my "tlt meta" tag - I'll tag this one for ease of navigation if you want to poke around.

But don't worry, when it's ready, I will make sure everyone is subjected to my theories.

[harrowscore]

why are you, as an adult in 2024, still hung up on reylo. why are you still mocking the shippers. why do you believe yourself to be superior only because you dislike a stupid ship from a fucking space fairytale. girl (gnc) get a grip

[dykedvonte]

I beg people in the MW to think very carefully when they talk about mental illness and physical disability cause it’s not as straight forward and easy to diagnose/depict as you think…

[larrythefloridaman]

I am not a prismdani guy in the sense that I dont think that could ever have a happy ending even in theory without altering or disrespecting their characters in some essential way and i dont think a fully tragic and fucked up ending for a character like dani with no light at the end of the tunnel really suits cpuk's tone or themes in the grand scheme of things

but i am in the sense that i understand and am compelled by it in like a horror movie way.

In a 'dear god dani get the hell out of there' way.

In a 'hey that scene in orange looked almost like a date before the arm thing, (the most flagrantly horrifying red flag yet at that point and what made most of us fully turn on her after some hesitation about fully condemning her when she gave cobalt a crisis instead of advice and shoved folk and treuse around before the Kicker that was her killing crimson onstage) that, as a flashback, was immediately preceded by Crimson (literally a walking red flag that somethings deeply wrong in Prism's metaphorical house, Noone Really Acts Like That For No Reason,) asking what Prism's been doing and saying and followed within said flashback by Quadratic (Mr. Character Arc Revolves Around Healing From A Relationship With A Character He Goes On To Explicitly Compare Prism To) carefully soft-confronting Prism so as not to make a scene while checking in with Dani to make sure shes okay and to let Prism know he has his eyes on her and isnt afraid to bluntly and unambiguously leak information to the audience she wants to keep secret while theyre on camera so she better not pull any shit' way.

In a 'the butchest girl twitter can handle without getting scared and me, the sunshiney eccentric femme she serves and obeys onesidedly like a dog, her own character subsumed into an aesthetically cute complimentary nonthreatening opposition to mine :) (dani cannot bring herself to admit shes grown afraid of setting her off or disappointing her or disobeying and being made to feel that oppressive crush of obligation as Prism manipulates her, struggling to realize and process the idea that Prism is a threat to her because an Abuser™️ (as per popular cultural portrayal) is supposed to be an obviously evil physically threatening bastard mcbadguy not a 5'0" nothing bible camp counselor that uses pressure, guilt, information control and other such tactics to creep into your thoughts to rewire your behavior to her liking if you don't have the means to reject what she imposes on you.) look at us we share a character flaw we're foils arent we charming :)' kinda way.

[undercover-grisha]

Cardan, before the birth of his child: “if you say one fucking word at this ceremony you’re not going to have a tongue anymore”

Baphen: “hey, i had NO fucking way to know about that snake thing dude”

[deadbaguette]

And if I said this is Zagreus and Hades?

[genshin-projection]

i don't think i can be normal about Sunday guys

[reticent-hush]

I think I saw it mentioned that Sukuna’s shadow puppets are the inverse of Megumi’s and…

Nue…

Divine dogs…

Even holding up different fists for Mahoraga…

Furthermore, it’s strange how half-assed they are, especially considering Sukuna has all of Megumi’s memories/muscle-memory. Like, he does not want to extend those fingers at all. I wonder if this is another way to show how superior he is to Megumi when it comes to jujutsu.

Like, I’ve always been curious about this dialogue here. We understand that Megumi is talking about his domain expansion, but it really seems like it extends to his entire technique. The Ten Shadows has always seemed incredibly rigid to me, you get ten shikigami by performing ten(~8 without dogs) rituals and that's it. Except…

It's really not? Being able to walk and store things within shadows, WHATEVER the hell is up with the shadow clones, even (not pictured) creating duplicates of his shikigami. Like, all we know about his domain expansion is that it powers up his techniques, which really means anything we've seen him do within it is something he can do outside of it. Megumi's chronically bad at thinking outside the box, and Sukuna is NOT.

He's got the skill, the power, and the imagination to use Megumi's own technique better than he ever could, as much as it pisses me off. We're literally watching him breeze past imaginary barriers Megumi set up for himself. Why hasn't Nue's size changed? Why hasn't he summoned multiple of the black divine dog? If this is just based on cursed energy, there's no reason for Nue to still be the same size after ~200 chapters at what is basically the end of the series. Megumi just doesn't have the imagination to see how his technique can grow, and so he restricts himself to what he THINKS works.

I think you can see this all in the shadow puppetry tbh. Megumi's form is perfect, there's no reason for us to believe he is doing it wrong when he's our primary example. Meanwhile, Sukuna's is sloppy (Nue's wings are folded, Divine dog has no jaw, Mahoraga doesn't even look like he's holding his arms up) and yet it still works. It really brings into question how necessary they even are, whether Megumi is putting too much emphasis on things that don't matter and may actually hinder his growth.

All this to say, Megumi's been handicapping himself for a while and he needs to get his shit together if he's gonna stand any chance at holding back the King of Curses from murdering his sister. Plus, there's one thing Megumi can do that no one else in his situation has been able to, and that's perform a domain expansion. We know Sukuna could drag Yuuji into his innate domain, so I'm hoping Megumi can finally do something unprecedented, perfect his domain, and contest Sukuna's control of his body. I heavily doubt he could win, but perhaps he can stalemate Sukuna long enough for someone to land a killing blow.

[seiya-starsniper]

.

[starryeyed-seer]

Unfortunately for everyone, I'm still thinking of that fucking crab