#am i overthinking this? probably yeah

[r-aindr0p]

Uhhh Elias stuff, twisted from no one, he's just a guy !! Since I draw my twst ocs once every century each I'll link his introduction here

Basically an ignihyde student w/ a prosthetic arm (upgraded by idia) and a nature based unique magic + something something "I'm the better hunter here !!" (he is miserably failing at it) Trying to step out of my comfort zone in art context wise and mere text makes my whole being cringe and retract on itself like grafield's face after unsweetened lemonade... So I left it in French, ough

[quinn-pop]

let’s do some autistic meta knight headcanons!! over explaining my interpretation of meta knight yet again wooooo

this orb has NO idea how to talk to people!!! outside of work anyway. a lot of this is partially due to upbringing (suppressing his emotions all the time) but he does not know how to express emotions, like…at all.

this goes into a few things

1. yeah talking is hard. even after figuring out what he wants to communicate he will struggle. conversation can be so overwhelming, especially under pressure. he will need time lol

2. because of that, forming connections is hard. i really don’t think meta is much for shallow relationships, and certainly not early in the timeline. which also means he has very little experience with friendship. so a lot of the relationships he did have went kinda neglected, and issues that probably could’ve been worked on by talking became…*cough romk* escalated.

3. honestly i wouldn’t be surprised if meta convinced himself he couldn’t feel emotion (anymore) until like. katam-ish. he tried very hard lol

vulnerability is terrifying. (though this gesture here is also just comforting, like his little cape cocoon thing he does.)

unmasking—yeah im taking the mask thing very literally here—is a big deal and a very slow process for mk. i’m sure he has a lot of feelings on that lol. it served as a way to ensure no one could ever, y’know, see him.

i can’t say i think he’d ever fully ditch it—there’s always gonna be some days that are more stressful than others and if having it could help him get through it, it just makes sense. mainly when working.

it really is about vulnerability. granted, i don’t think he has the most expressive face (in my head every astral just tends to stare at things) but i doubt he has much control over it. can’t fake a smile but also can’t hide it. probably blushes easy because yeah, astrals; just look at kirby’s face.

just the idea that someone might be able to read his expression and know what he’s feeling before he’s ready for them to (or even understands it himself…) yeah he doesn’t want that

but emotional turmoil aside, i think his mask also hides a lot of his stims

remember that whole “suppressing your feelings” thing? yeah turns out that ignoring half your instincts isn’t a good idea. so in true meta knight style, he tries to stim as subtly as possible

1. he has the least control over his wings, so they will flick and twitch on their own. they’re usually a good indicator of how he’s feeling, not unlike the body language usually seen in cat ears and tails lol. flapping is also an extension of this of course, though he probably suppresses it more.

2. this also effects when he takes his wings out. pretty much every time he’s excited or nervous it just happens. kinda makes me wonder if his wing cape ordeal might also go into the suppression thing… (i’d say yes, but using a cape is also very comforting so it’s not necessarily a bad thing)

3. going back to the mask thing; he stims a lot underneath it. think like biting or pursing your lips. he bites his tongue and clicks his mouth. that sort of thing. his mask also makes it harder to notice that he is constantly sighing, humming, grumbling…all that

one nice thing about the mask though is that it helps a little bit with lights!!! woo

(look at him and his magically floating glasses)

sensory stuff—i think he’s mostly bothered by light and sound. maybe a bit of texture. he’s pretty sensory avoidant and perfectly happy standing off to the side not touching anything.

the one exception to this is physical affection, which is, despite all of this, most of how he shows affection. it’s a lot easier to hug someone than to try to explain your feelings for them, after all.

i think he would like pressure though. so that’s probably part of it. and i’m pretty sure there’s some connection in here to fighting (dang, is that the only way he knows how to get his energy out?)

anyway, pretty much all of this is in contrast to kirby, who i would gladly nominate as the champion of Doing Whatever He Wants. he might pick up a few bad habits, but he will never mask the way meta knight does. he might not understand how he feels, but he’s in tune enough to express it…usually.

this is a very good thing for meta because it helps him to do the same thing. kirby’s so energetic, it’s hard to not want to stim with him. it reminds meta to be kinder to himself and explore his own emotions. he can also help kirby understand themselves, so this connection is very important.

yeah, at the end of the day, everything kinda just boils down to kirby and mk as parallels

this is the conclusion i promise

to me, meta’s arc is about growing stronger by growing kinder, and this is mostly by learning to be kind to himself. letting himself be a person again, loving and understanding other people, and eventually, letting go of all the expectations placed on him and doing the things he’s always wanted to do…

autism headcanons are fun for me because it’s cathartic to write, but at the same time, it just makes sense in this sort of narrative. meta is, to me, inseparable from these things. and so is kirby! that’s a dynamic that’s a lot of fun to play with, and it’s at the heart of my kirby interpretation.

if you actually read all this WOW thank you

[phantazesthai]

Shokra toh ebra: communal collectivism vs individualism

You know, at first, I felt a bit underwhelmed by Taash's story in DATV. But then I realized this underwhelm was because their story is the most realistic of all the companions. Griffons, demons, titans, lichdom - these are all very compelling allegories, sure, but are ultimately not as easy to relate to as Taash's multicultural identity is. Their story is not executed as well as it could be, but it is trying to communicate some fascinating concepts.

For instance, Taash's constant referencing of shokra toh ebra may seem a bit excessive, but of course it is! It's a phrase that haunts Taash, colours their sense of self and influences their behaviour. It serves to highlight how Taash's story is just as much about their understanding of the cultural perspectives they grew up between as much as it is about their gender identity. The two concepts are inextricably linked for Taash.

The Qun has the potential to be such a complex fantasy sociopolitical structure. It's rigidly practical yet oddly poetic in it's religiosity. Each role is connected to the "whole" creature that is society: the priesthood (scholars, Ben-Hassrath, Tamassrans) is its soul, labourers and workers (those who keep society ticking over as artisans, farmers, and so on) are its mind, and the Antaam (soldiers) is its body. The Qun is profoundly communally oriented: under the Qun you sacrifice individuality (a source of chaos) for order (stability and supposedly, equality). The health of the entire creature (society) is the priority - individuals are just drops of blood in its veins.

The constant refrain of shokra toh ebra from both Shathann and Taash, and how differently both characters understand the phrase, is a compelling way to illustrate how this communal ideology can be either beneficial or harmful, depending on a person's cultural upbringing, what they value, and their personality.

Taash translates shokra toh ebra to mean "you must struggle against what you are." Whereas Shathann translates it to mean "through struggle, you find what you are."

For Taash, shokra toh ebra means they're destined to struggle because they are chaotic in a way the Qun dictates must be tamed. They will struggle against themself until they make a black and white choice: man or woman, Qunari or Rivaini. But they fundamentally cannot choose because they are neither and both, they are vashoth ("grey"). When Shathann references this phrase, Taash feels like her acceptance of them is conditional upon them rejecting their greyness in favor of living in denial inside a neatly labelled box... which Taash is brave enough to refuse to do. Taash also grew up in a culture more individualistically minded than the Qun, so their need to define themself as a "unique" person is driven by this. Rivainis are free-spirited, individual freedom of choice is a core value for them. Taash admires this and wants to live "freely," like a Rivaini.

For Shathann, shokra toh ebra means that struggle is how someone accepts who they are: struggling is an essential part of bringing order to chaos. Making peace with one's lot in life is a struggle, but that struggle of acceptance is worthwhile if it helps you find your place within your community. Shathann sees that Taash is struggling to understand themself, and attempts to help by using a cultural moral she likely also used to comfort herself once too, as a refugee in a new, unfamiliar culture where she no longer "fit in." For someone who seems to prefer orderliness, who grew up being taught that everything has a role and a purpose in life, even things that cause pain, this idea that struggle is necessary and beneficial to the "whole," would be comforting to Shathann.

Shathann didn't intend to make Taash feel dismissed by using binary terms like aqun-athlok, or the phrase shokra toh ebra. She was trying to help her child with the ideological tools available to her, it just fell flat because their cultural perspectives are different. Exacerbating their cultural misunderstanding is the fact that they're both strong-willed, stubborn people (like mother like child!) Who aren't good at being vulnerable enough to meet each other halfway. Isn't all that very familiar? How many of us have been in the same position with our own parents and family members? Be it because of generational, cultural or socio-economic differences, we've all had experiences where we found ourselves incapable of reaching understanding with someone in our family.

That being said, however... the Qun is not at all an ideal reflection of real world (non-Western) collectivistic cultures that value community over the individual. And Taash's story ends up being so disappointing because the Qun remains (as it has been throughout the series) a maligned ideology in Veilguard because the player has to push them to "embrace" being either Rivaini or Qunari. The implicit suggestion being that if Taash were to embrace more Qun-aligned (less individualistic) beliefs, that they would be less "free," felt, well, problematic to say the least (especially considering how each game ascribes its qunari characters "animalistic" traits which is... yikes, just, deeply racist.) Positioning one culture as a "healthier" choice for Taash than the other felt simplistic, even a little cruel, and is likely the result of the limited cultural perspective of their writer.

In reality, there isn't a right or wrong cultural mindset to have. Taash is both Qunari and Rivaini! They didn't need to choose. Neither option is necessarily better or worse, they're just different, and are equally flawed in different ways. I get that the choice mechanic is baked into the gameplay element of giving the player input in Taash's narrative, but making Taash choose at all undermines the whole point of them learning to accept their greyness - and aren't we all, in reality, grey? Both in what we believe and in how we act?

While this insistence that the individualism that plagues Western cultures is the more freeing ("superior") ideology is not at all limited to Western media like DATV, the presence of the Qun within the world of Thedas, a fantasy culture that so clearly references the communalism inherent to non-Western cultures, makes this bias much more egregious. The Qun offers an allegorical opportunity to uplift a different, chronically vilified cultural perspective: a chance to underscore how both individualistic and communal viewpoints can coexist. But they squandered this chance with Taash. Which is such a shame because their story is so human at its core.

[tittyinfinity]

Cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool

[amarcia]

kind of sad skeleton crew keeps portraying Wim as an incompetent child that just gets all of his friends in trouble and provides no further input besides making more problems for them along the way.

Yeah the lightsaber scene was funny but what its saying is that you can dream all you want and at the end of the day you are no hero. pretty bleak message to include for laughs

[l0stw00d]

Also yeah uh I have a friend coming over but like, this is a Grown Up friend that I made as an Adult. And I'm the only person home. So suddenly this is less "bringing a friend round after school" and more "welcome to my humble home :) I am a human person who Lives Here :)" and let me tell you I am overthinking this in like. 8 different directions

[moeblob]

Chris works in a different room than Right, Brent, and Karen so he just pops in and is like "Karen why does it feel so tense in here and it's dead silent please help me" and Karen is just done with the two guys so she's just "this is my work environment now thanks for noticing".

[blackcurrant-juice]

back in septmeber i got some kind of attack in the middle of lab so they sent me to the ER because they didn't want to take chances with me dying from chemicals but still made me pay the hospital fees myself. then i still had to go back the next week to finish my lab. then bad news happened last week and my. lab report is so fucking late. all these penalties. it will be worth fucking nothing. what did i go to the ER for they should have just let me die there #tbh

[morningmask27]

Tonight, right now, not even ten minutes ago, might have been the closest I got to an outright hatecrime

[gob-lob]

me when someone talks to me online: yay!!! yippie!!!! hi!!! :D friends!!!

me trying to talk to someone online: hello. hi. sorry if I'm bothering you. I think you're the coolest person ever. anyways sorry for existing. yeah you can kill me if I'm annoying you I don't mind. sorry. my bad.

[calthepal]

Just finished s11 ep17 and is no one gonna talk about how Dean just knows what kind of drug can kill him? I mean realistically it's not that surprising in the context of his job but it's not usually common knowledge (at least I dont think it is) and even then it's still suspicious he knows at all

[wereh0gz]

Ok. Y'know I don't talk abt current events and stuff all that often. The internet has always been a sort of escape from irl stuff for me, plus i'm not an activist or anything. I'm just Some Guy. But with what's happening rn with Israel and Palestine and how staff keeps doing shady shit both in regards to what's happening rn and with other stuff they've done before, it just makes me feel uncomfy even being an active user here

I've never given them my money or anything, but just being here is starting to make me uncomfortable. They haven't said anything abt these things outright as far as I know, but knowing how things are going on other socials (like deviantart, which I stopped using bc of the blatant pro-israel shit staff there posted recently among other issues, or youtube being. Y'know. Youtube) I have no doubt they're very much pro-israel as well. Stopping Palestine related tags from trending and nuking pro-palestine blogs might as well be a statement on what their stance is even if they try to hide behind technical issues

I just don't want to feel like I'm inadvertently supporting genocide just by being here and using the site. Maybe that's a bit of a reach bc I don't support them financially but idk. It's not like I'd really have anywhere else to go anyways since pretty much every major social has gone this route. My mutuals are all here too and I don't wanna leave y'all. This is like 99% of my social network

Idk if I'm just overthinking. It's late, I'm tired and I'm rambling and I should be sleeping bc I have shit to do tomorrow but I can't stop worrying abt it. Idk

[hashimasims]

Another randomness post while I wait for my lil minion to quit playing with their food and actually eat it but . . .

I randomly went and looked and gen 1 = 34posts, gen 2 = 37, gen 3 = 30, gen 4 = 52, and gen 5 = 67. And gen 6 now has 237 at the time of making this post with SOOOOOOO many more on the way - oh boy.

[deemee-ed]

alright, Jinx theory suckerss

this is probably a pretty basic theory, but I'm convinced Jinx will be the main antagonist in Season 2. And not just any antagonist, I believe she has it in her to be the VILLAIN. Hear me out:

Jinx may not have been the main antagonist in season 1, but we already know enough of her to understand her personality and motives

First of all, Jinx loves being a joy hunter. She's the opposite of Scratch in this: if she has a job, she's gonna do it. And she's gonna make sure to succeed. She even has her little army of sadfuckers sobgoblins following her orders. She loves her job. With Scratch as the new Chairman and going "yeah, y'all do whatever you want, I don't care" Jinx lost all her worth in the Ghost World. It doesn't matter how good she is at being a joy hunter, her role isn't needed anymore. I hardly doubt she enjoys this new government

Second, she is VERY determined to carry out her plans. And by that I mean she has no problems hurting others. She was willing to kill Molly (A CHILD) without hesitation, and right after Scratch revealed his friendship with a human Jinx immediately took him away to send him to the Flow of Failed Phantoms. She even sent Geoff in there because he was helping Molly. Yeah, she's not messing around.

Third, she HATES Molly and Scratch. Sure, this wasn't said out loud, but c'mon. Who wouldn't hate the people who basically got you fired? The people who got rid of a ruler you actually enjoyed following?

Fourth, we gotta look at a bigger picture for this one. So...

According to Bill Motz (one of the show's two creators), ghosts can become corrupted because of many reasons, one of them being focusing too much on themselves and their desires (↓his explanation↓)

Jinx suddenly finds herself in a completely different society with different rules that don't make her role relevant anymore. SHE is not relevant anymore. All the power she had is useless now. All her skills, all her gadgets. They are useless. SHE is useless. And I think this will get to her... What I'm trying to say is, I believe Jinx will become corrupted. We may see her normal self again first, but eventually she will be corrupted.

And... remember how corrupted ghosts change their look? Yeah... there's a certain ghost that caught my attention from the Season 2 trailer...

Let's assume that this is Jinx's corrupted form. Looks a lot like the Chairman, doesn't she?

Based on the look, I believe Jinx will not only come back as an enemy, BUT she will also become the new Chairman. Or at least she'll try to become that. A Chairman that wants to spread misery out of pure enjoyment, a corrupted ghost desperately trying to destroy joy.

Yeah. I believe Jinx will be the villain of this show.

EXTRAsss

If I'm wrong, Future me don't you dare making fun of me for this theory, you know we both want it to be true

I'm so hoping that we'll get a villain Jinx song UGH that would be SO COOL

Also Jinx literally appears in the Season 2 poster so she HAS to come back

she's judging the disney logo

[moodr1ng]

one weird and annoying effect of me spending so much time on mainly american social media and watching all these american shows and movies and reading books by american authors and having all these online friends from america etc etc is that like.. when i write i no longer feel like i can set my stories in france? like, bc i write in english it feels like i need to set my stories in an english-speaking country, and the us is the easiest one to set up (i think in a way it kinda feels like the "default setting" of western media?). i feel like if i wrote a book set in france itd be weird or confusing to people, and also im always bugged bc like.. the stuff i write in english cannot be directly translated into french, like it doesnt correspond 1:1 to french sentences, and so if i set a story in france im always bugged bc i think "but that cant be what the characters are actually saying, because theres no equivalent to this in french". so i end up setting a lot of my stuff in the us, except ive only been to the us once and not long enough to get a good impression of what living there is like (not to mention ive only been to nyc), so i also feel like when americans read my stuff theyre gonna immediately go "huh? thats not how things are here. this author is a hack who cant do research." .. so then sometimes i set my stuff in fictional countries or in an ambiguous impossible setting which mixes stuff from various english-speaking countries + france, but then that makes my story immediately less grounded. this is such a big issue that it blocks me from writing entire stories i wanna write bc i just cant even begin to put them somewhere 😔

[good--merits-accumulated]

On the dead poets using a very British genre, it's so British I legit forgot they were American, and was so shocked when I heard them again. Probably doesn't help I'm British, but still, you're right that they are very 'merican and also right that its a very British genre. So British I British-washed the poets in my head.

Super interesting ask, thank you! That makes at least two people who Brit-washed the film - no such thing as a global experience :P

Boarding school films/books/etc. are definitely very British; there's the stereotype in there of rich people sending their kids to boarding school to dispose of them, which creates an ideal setting for any sort of teen drama. And of course this is true of DPS! Which is why the American-ness always catches me off guard. My personal take right now is that it uses this very British setting in combination with American transcendentalism (thanks to the person in the tags of the original post who shared this info!), + what I think is a pretty American focus on "every man pursues his dreams at any cost" to create something that... well, feels very American, but at the same time makes people forget it is! (But then the American Dream aspect doesn't even justify itself, because Neil's story ends in tragedy? Argh. Must think more about this!) Part of it is probably the setting of the cave... idk, harsh natural settings always feel foreign-ly American somehow. (Spot the West Country guy, lol. I plead the fifth.)

But I'd be very interested, if you're up for discussing, what makes it American for you specifically (other than, like, accents and place names and etc.) - and furthermore what about it isn't American enough to stop you from perceiving it as British?