#also unrelated to literally everything else but

[conkreetmonkey]

I mean it wasn't really "in disgrace" he never apologized for anything lmao Anyone else remember his YouTuber-ass "hi guys, I screwed up" apology video from a few months(?) ago where he literally did the *walks into room, sits in chair in front of desk-mounted camera to try to appear candid* thing (during which he never actually apologized for anything and kept insisting he HAD avoided a recession and saved the economy, despite his failure to do that being what he was "apologizing" for)? And then he very transparently tried to buy our votes by announcing he was getting rid of sales tax out of nowhere, and then just... resigned anyway?? Has he ever had a plan??? Is he flying by the seat of his pants???? Fuck, the conservatives are gonna win, aren't they... all but like one party is conservative anyway, so it's all but guaranteed. How do we have so many parties and ALL of them suck, like come on is ANYBODY EVER going to address the housing crisis and admit the economy isn't "booming" and the job market isn't "soaring" and there is no "labor shortage" but actually a WAGE SHORTAGE and MONOPOLY PROBLEM, and that the current immigration system is extremely exploitative in that it relies on luring people in with false promises only to trap them in shitty abusive low-wage jobs in a country where a shoebox studio apartment with mold is optimistically $1,250 a month before utilities, and a basic fast food combo is $17.50 before tax??? Sorry to rant. Just... ugh. I really thought Singh would be alright, but apparently he joined up with Trudeau, so now like... at the polls his year, do I pick: 🍁the "everything will continue to slowly fall apart while we twiddle our thumbs and insist everything is fine" party 🍁 the "we will accelerate the rate at which everything falls apart lol fuck you I hate you" party 🍁 the "we're GREEN but not really, and also like we're actually the "make everything Christian" party but don't really say it out loud lol" party 🍁 the "please let Quebec be its own country please oh please oh please oh ple--" party (Americans, think Texas seperatists, but with a bilingual twist) 🍁 the "we're the people's party, we're for the people! Anyway so like first we need to bring back conversion therapy, completely disregard the environment, fuck immigrants, fuck trans people, also we need to restart the abortion debate guys--" party This country is fucking BONED. Like, we're not actively death rattling and hacking up chunky blood like America is, and I think we tend to rest on our laurels because we'll always look good in comparison to that, because... we're almost just as fucked. Just absolutely "maybe it can theoretically be salvaged, but at this point it'd take a miracle" tier, double-decker triple-bypass FUCKED. Every one of these parties will make things far worse if elected. There are no good options. It's going to be 4 years of decline no matter what, the only question being how far and fast we go down into the sewer. ...unrelated, but any Europeans looking to marry a stranger rn?

[tiredandoptimistic]

Wait now I’m so curious on why you don’t like the Sebastian demon blood plot line !!

I mostly find it frustrating because of how it intersects with the overall themes of TMI.

Jace spends a lot of the early TMI books being treated as though he's some sort of villain because he's Valentine's son. Even Maryse, his adoptive mother, basically throws him out because the memory of Valentine is more powerful than the seven years she's raised Jace for. (She of course comes around by the end of COA, but that initial reaction was still there, and it still hurt Jace deeply!) Valentine himself did everything in his power to increase this feeling in Jace, and tried to position himself as the only one who could possibly understand and love Jace, while also setting Jace up to see himself as a monster because of his attraction to Clary. (There's literally a scene in COA where Luke says that Jace visiting Valentine is proof that the rest of them failed, because Jace clearly feels that the closest thing he's got to an understanding parent is the genocidal maniac). All of this is compounded when Jace learns that Valentine treated his son with demon blood, because suddenly he's got this proof that he's tainted not only by Valentine but by Hell itself. I haven't read COG in a little while, but I remember there being a scene where Jace and Clary make out, but Clary realizes that indulging in the incestuous relationship is basically Jace's way of punishing himself. Being into his sister is just a natural extension of being part demon, and if he allows himself to embrace his worst instincts then he won't have to worry about trying to be good anymore.

And then of course, we learn about Sebastian.

Jace was never the baby with the demon blood, that was Sebastian. Jace gets to learn that not only is he unrelated to Valentine and Clary, he's also got angel blood in his veins. Suddenly he doesn't need to worry about his girlfriend being his sister, and he's safe from the inherent evil that he thinks must come along with demonic contact.

While I do find Jace's internal angst and the ways in which he responds to be very interesting, the thing that bothers me is that rather than accepting that it's not his blood that defines him, he learns that he got good blood instead of evil blood. Sebastian on the other hand did get the evil blood, and so he is inherently evil. The story could have been about how the way that you treat a kid does more to determine their behavior than the way they were born, but instead it seems to reinforce Jace (and everyone else's) initial assumption that whoever has demon blood must be cruel and unfeeling.

Now, I know that a lot of people will claim that Sebastian wasn't inherently evil because of the demon blood, and that it was Valentine treating him as a demon that caused him to turn out that way; but that's just not how I remember it being treated in canon. Again, I haven't read the relevant books in a couple years, but I'm pretty sure that Sebastian is said to be the way he is specifically because of the demon blood. Jocelyn held him in her arms after giving birth, and saw something evil brewing in the eyes of her newborn. That scene could have meant that Jocelyn saw how Sebastian resembled Valentine and reacted in horror because of her feelings towards her husband, but I don't think that's how it was intended by the author. I also remember specifically that "True" Jonathan Morgenstern is treated as a different character in several instances (such as having his own flower card), and this "True" version of Sebastian has green eyes like Jocelyn and Clary and also isn't a terrible person, because he's not influenced by demon blood.

So basically, what I'm saying is that the demon blood storyline bothers me because it takes agency away from the characters. Sebastian is evil because he has demon blood. Jace thought he might be evil because he might have demon blood, but he doesn't have demon blood so he's not evil. It all seems to go against the main thesis of TMI, which is that children are not defined by their parents (and are in fact very capable of rejecting the bigotry their parents believe in). Everyone in the TMI gang is treated as a foil to their parents, and because we know that their parents bought into bigotry at a young age, we know that the kids could very well make the same mistakes. It's all about free will, and how they learn from history to do better in the future (Robert, Maryse, Luke, and Jocelyn all became far better people in middle age than they ever were as teenagers, but because Alec, Isabelle, and Clary have them as examples, they don't have that dark era at all. Stephen died before he could change though, and Valentine lived to prove that he didn't want to change. This puts Jace in a far more complicated position, which is why he clung to the Lightwoods as his true family to guide him towards the person he wants to be). That's a side tangent but I typed it out so I guess it's staying.

Anyways, yeah. I think Sebastian is one of the least interesting villains in TSC, because he isn't given the free will to choose villainy. (This is also why I'm less interested in demonic villains like Belial and Asmodeus). I still do enjoy how he acts as a foil to both Clary and Jace though.

[sangrefae]

theyre doing the emotionally closed off middle-aged man equivalent of parallel play with each other

(aka i think estinien final fantasy 14 and mithrun dungeon meshi would Get each other as mentally ill, white/silver haired elves with a fixation on revenge as a result of their traumas)

[humanundead]

fuck it sakana doodle dump

[acaciapines]

rereading random bits of descendants of olympus (as one does) and. vera <3 still soooo obsessed with how she takes lupa's divinity. like MAN.......there is something to how shes had to scrape and claw her way into every single good thing shes ever had. that she's never just been able to KEEP these things, that she is always always always fighting for them. and so of course she takes divinity. she wants to LIVE. and in this world where the fates themselves are trying to control her, its like--yeah. maybe you do need a gods power to finally get like, at least a year of the life you want. the life you werent supposed to have. forever thinking about vera's one line in her chapter thats like 'of course the fates are losing power. because they'd never let someone like leo into my life.' YELLS. FOREVER.

also have we talked enough about minnie I THINK WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT MINNIE--

[poppyseed799]

btw I don’t know if this is a thing anyone is thinking about but I’m not gonna stop drawing Jimmy as a canary. It’s a lovely bird. It’s still something that’s been really important to his series. There’s no reason to drop the canary headcanon just cuz Lizzie fell into the void.

[talkorsomething]

I have Got to get more transgender

[krytus]

i know tdp doesnt give an actual shitt abt the character dynamics what do you mean you have a scene of ezran and zym sitting in the rain and the dragon doesnt spread his wing like an umbrella over the kid he allegedly loves so much. why are you telling me this show is about love then. die.

[girlivealwaysbean]

it would feel so nice to work towards a career that has meaningful impact and makes millions of people happy

[stunfiskz]

i do think that the fact that rouxls puts on a faux shakespearean accent while being such a theatrical/performative character is very fun to me... like obviously its all joke shit and im probably thinking too hard about it sfdjkn but it is fun to me

[anonprotagging]

WEEPING AND WAILING AT THEIR PROGRESSION AAAAUGH

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[pallases]

okay guys i have calculated it all out and even if i get a big fat zero on this race i will still earn a b in the class assuming i get 100% on the other remaining three assignments two of which are a given for 100% and the last of which is like. even if we get a 75% on it (which i do not really see happening) i can still scrape by w a b-

[coolcoelacanth]

the feminine anxiety to think about studying for your exam that you don't care about on monday versus the feminine urge to play stardew valley for 12 hours straight

[musical-chick-13]

You know...normally the "guy is sad and murders people over it because how dare other people be happy" archetype is very annoying, but I think they made it work this time.

[networkunsupported]