#and how deeply i feel
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Don't mind me, I'm just being Completely Normal about one Camilla Hect and her Nerdy Ass Necromancer.
#camilla hect#palamedes sextus#pal and cam#palamedes the sixth#camilla the sixth#I'm fine#I'm completely normal#definitely not getting sad#about how love looks so different#between different people#and how deeply i feel#about them choosing to be together#even if it means they lost what made them individuals#to love someone so much#that to exist without them is simply unacceptable#god#I love camilla so much#i love palamedes so much
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dragon meat, you, and me
#marcille donato#falin touden#farcille#dungeon meshi#delicious in dungeon#tw blood#tw body horror#tw gore#as a normal farcille fan this revival has been on my mind since i first read it and getting to watch it is like yippee!!#like messy revivals are everything - the consequences that will haunt u for the rest of the time they are alive#the initial hopeful moments where it all seemed well but quickly descend to That not being the case - losing not only the bit of evidence#evidence that your dream may work out but also someone you deeply care about in the processā¦ marcille my Beloved#ofc wholly thruout the journey - at the forefront of it - getting falin back was the most crucial point but so wuickly :(( it was lost#on the other end its crazy to think about the compoments of falin now - human - dragon (dungeon) - marcilleās magic and desperation#the food the crew cooked (digested) - she is made of many parts!!#also i did not realize how medical it feels to draw smth like this. i dont usually explore the inner parts or use a lot of blood#in my work so rendering everything and looking up refs it felt quite magical (?)#ruporas art
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The tac net crash chapter is one of my favorites so far~
Ah and. Guess what. I just discovered that including this post, I made 50 pieces of fanart for Mistakes on mistakes until.. Iām so sane and normal about this story can you tellš
#maccadam#transformers#fic fanart#momu fanart#jazz#prowl#jazzprowl#considering the speed and the amount of fanart#ā¦.yeah I can see why tumblr thought I was a bot lmao#also#I mostly read during night and then drawing from memory during day so uhhhhh the accuracy is questionable haha#mainly I feel like half of the time I donāt know how tf Jazz looks. The guy switching between his looks so often jdjfjfj#IM. SO GLAD THEY RESOLVED THEIR DRAMA EHEHBJGJ#The scene in medbay was so damn cute#oh my goddddd#the scene of the tac net crash#muah#loved it~#you know the thing is - I'm a biiiig fan of mutual feelings and actions#the scene of the kiss was absolutely great but it was a bit one sided#Jazz cared about Prowl but Prowl was far more concerned about information safety and strategy and stuff#but this?? mmmm~ Them caring for each other#Prowl using his last moments of consciousness to ask Jazz if he is mad at him#Prowl actually deeply caring of what Jazz thinks about him now when he knows Prowl killed his friends#i don't know how to explain#kisses are great but this (points) this is my favorite five star meal right here#also there is something so funny about Prowl slowly discovering fow fucked up Jazz is and just accepting it#but being so scared when Jazz discover how fucked up he is. Only for Jazz to be like āboo I knew about your fuckedupness from the startā
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I donāt talk about my love for Kira Nerys too often because. Look. I think if DS9 handles anything well, itās Kira, hands down.
Her character development is a work of art. She is so traumatised, so angry, so beaten down and STILL FIGHTING at the start. She struggles so much with her PTSD, with the idea that she is ever allowed to be in anything but attack modeā¦
And then, slowly, gradually, she becomes a whole new person. She laughs, she smiles, she makes corny jokes, she does dumb fun things for the sake of enjoying herself. She has friends, she has a family, she is surrounded by love and joy and HOPE.
Even in the middle of second war, sheās DIFFERENT now. Sheās not the same miserable angry person she was, afraid to let go of the vigilant surivival instincts that kept her alive for so long. Sheās come back to life as a person who has something to live for.
She has done terrible things. Her hands are stained with blood. She is never going to be able to forget her trauma or the suffering, both her own and that of her people, nor the suffering she inflicted while fighting for her freedom. But she recovers. She heals. She carves out an existence where she is truly, genuinely happy to be alive.
I donāt need to talk about Kira as much as some other characters because this all happens on screen. Itās right there, and itās beautiful and perfect.
Kira Nerys goes from a person who cannot conceive of herself outside of the horrors she has suffered, inflicted, and fought against, to someone for whom her trauma is just one part of the larger picture, a piece of a rich and vibrant tapestry that is now filled, overwhelmingly, with joy.
Kira Nerys is like, hands down, bar none, one of, if not THE best characters Star Trek has ever created. I love her so much. She is just, completely and utterly perfect, especially in her flaws.
#stella talks#star trek ds9#star trek#kira nerys#.but see I donāt feel compelled to write fics about Kira.#.because I think her writing on the show is already pretty damn close to perfect.#.thanks in no small part to Nana visitor absolutely locking in on exactly who Kira was and should be.#.like she isnāt perfect because sheās flawless.#.sheās super fucking flawed.#.but sheās perfect because she is so flawed and so human and she grows so much and learns to thrive again.#.and god her whole character is justā¦ sheās perfect okay.#.I love her so much I love her I love her I love her I love her.#.like the reason School Live is my favourite manga.#.is because it takes these deeply traumatised kids and then slowly. gradually. shows the#.shows them finding hope and reasons to live and learning to thrive in an absolute nightmare.#.the epilogue made me cry because it showed that they had found ACTUAL HAPPINESS after the hell they endured.#.I am such a sucker for stories about people learning to heal from trauma okay.#.and Kira Nerys is built on a foundation of trauma and she goes and builds a fucking castle on top of it from all the love inside her.#.I canāt emphasise enough how much I love her.#trek meta
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why is it "this is what happens when you tell white boys they're devils :(" when it comes to the white male alt right pipeline but no one calls for empathy for uneducated right wing white women. what about the high school girl to isolated stay at home mom pipeline. where is their loneliness epidemic
#how come i never see ''this is what happens when you tell white girls they exist to give white men sons :(''#it's ''how do we reach today's young white men :(('' but no one has tips for reaching right wing women#why is that i wonder#i feel deeply betrayed by female class traitors and have done my best to understand why they are the way they are#but they're a lost cause and white men aren't because women are not complex human beings#and men are just so sensitive you don't understand
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web weave of processing heartbreak
#all of these I feel so fuckimg deeply#my personal favourites#words better than my own to describe how Iāve been feeling#breakup#t4t yearning#yearning#heartbreak#web weave#web weaving#webweaving#grief journey#mlm#mlnb#heartache
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Jayce and the fallacy of the butterfly effect in Arcane's narrative
If Jayce's symbol is the butterfly, then my theory is that we're going into a full "butterfly effect" narrative in Act 2. Either we'll watch it happen, or we'll only see Jayce come out the other side of it changed by the experience, knowing - or more importantly, THINKING he knows - what to do to change the future. Literally, to "defend tomorrow."
tl;dr: Jayce will encounter the butterfly effect in season 2. Viktor and Mel both foreshadowed this in season 1. I think Jayce will fixate on Viktor and will believe that stopping or changing Viktor either in the past or the present - most likely the present - will mean he can save the future. I believe this will lead to an even worse tragedy and may have the same effect as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ekko's approach to changing the future by sticking closer to the present - considering only tiny increments of time to alter more immediate future outcomes - will be the superior approach. I also think that Jayce attempting to change the future will create the conditions that push Viktor to become the Machine Herald.
One of the most common reactions even the casual viewer had to Arcane season 1 was this: "If [character] had just done this one small thing a little differently, [tragic event] wouldn't have happened!"
Arcane has been called a Greek tragedy for the main reason that because of how well built up the characters' personalities and reasonings are, there's no other way season 1 could have gone. There was no stopping the multiple tragedies that occurred, because with one event leading to another, the chain of seemingly inevitable events goes too far back to identify what one singular event caused everything, what one character made what one decision to put our characters on the terrible paths they walked.
Arcane is about to investigate this idea in its own narrative, and I think that Jayce will be the character to stumble into the flawed idea that you can change one event, or stop one character, and change the future for the better. This is because Jayce struggles with a few very interesting character flaws, one of them being that he believes himself to be the main character, and it is therefore his responsibility to intervene, be a hero, and fix things.
Viktor and Mel both foreshadow Jayce's future encounter with the butterfly effect.
Recall that Viktor said: "There is always a choice."
Jayce sees choices in black and white, believes that he has no other options but to go along with what he's persuaded and pushed into, and acts too boldly with too much power multiple times.
Recall that Mel said: "We can't change what fate has in store for us, but we don't have to face it alone."
Jayce tries to solve big problems on his own, and though he delegates to Enforcers and the like, Jayce relies on his reasoning and his alone to make important decisions if he doesn't simply become persuaded - usually through strong emotions like fear - by other characters. In addition, since Mel is specifically talking about Viktor's plight here, it's worth mentioning that while Jayce did say that he would help Viktor in acts 2 and 3 of season 1, Jayce does wind up leaving Viktor to face his fate alone. When Jayce tries to change that fate in s2 ep1, ep2 shows that only tragedy can come of this as well.
Viktor and Mel's statements here are not contradictory. Viktor makes the point that you can always make a choice. In context, he's literally referring to the classic "secret third option," because given a choice between aggression and passivity, war and surrender, Viktor chooses to defuse the bomb instead. Mel, interestingly, seems to believe that destiny is fixed in a broad sense, and she operates as a politician and diplomat and investor who navigates that line of destiny in the most optimal way possible. In reality, in context, she is referring to the fact that Viktor can't change the way he was born and so he has no way to change his fate and therefore must face it, which is true - she's only missing the information that Viktor actually does have the means to change his illness and his body. Her wisdom still applies however, because he'll have to accept the hand that fate deals him after he makes that choice. Will he face it alone, or not?
There is always a choice, there's even secret third options, because having a fate doesn't mean that you are doomed to make only one possible series of choices. What it does mean is that each choice comes with a hand that fate deals you. It is impossible to know what all of these branching choices and consequences are in advance, and it is just as impossible in hindsight - the branches are too complex and the end outcomes are all equally meaningful, just different. If Arcane season 2 is to be a tragedy, it may show us that each possible outcome is still tragic if you fall for the fallacy of the butterfly effect.
Jayce is counseled by some of the wisest, cleverest characters with the deepest life experiences in Arcane, but he hardly ever takes that counsel to heart. If he does, he still acts on that counsel in flawed ways that have unintended consequences. This will come to a head in season 2.
Viktor and Jayce both have a butterfly following them around in season 1. The butterfly effect refers to one small seemingly insignificant event changing the course of history, and changing that event therefore changes history. Viktor bled over the railing of a Hexgate in season 1:
And Heimerdinger sees what we can only assume is Viktor's blood contaminating (?) the Hexgate in s2 ep3:
This might be the seemingly unimportant "inciting incident" that Jayce (and Heimerdinger and Ekko) settle on as something that should be avoided or erased by changing the past (if they time-travel with Ekko, for example).
I doubt that, if this is what this crew chooses to fixate on, it will be the only event that is considered as something to change. But let's take this and run with it for the sake of discussion.
As silly as it sounds, how do you stop Viktor from allowing his blood to come into contact with the arcane? Stop Viktor's involvement with the Academy entirely? Don't invent Hextech at all? But what if someone else invents Hextech besides Jayce? What if future tragedy befalls Piltover because it didn't invent Hextech?
The possibilities and what-ifs could branch on forever. But because Jayce is who he is, and because his tragedy with Viktor is still raw and recent and frightening, I think Jayce's butterfly effect experience will have to do with Viktor.
My personal prediction is that the timeskip between s2 ep3 and ep4 will be Jayce experiencing a timeline where Viktor, taken over by the Hexcore, brings about an apocalyptic event similar to what Heimerdinger experienced in his past. Either Jayce and co. can't go into the past to change the present, or Heimerdinger and/or Ekko advise strongly against it to avoid a paradox. This will lead to them re-entering the canon Arcane timeline before this apocalypse, but still after the timeskip. Jayce, believing that destroying Viktor and his cult will save the future, and believing that resurrecting Viktor was Jayce's mistake to fix, attacks him. But the consequences don't unfold the way he hopes, because trying to change fate once the cards have already been dealt has led to tragedy before.
The butterfly is a symbol of something other than just the butterfly effect - change, evolution, and rebirth. If the butterfly symbolizes the butterfly effect for Jayce, then I think it has a different meaning for Viktor - the change and rebirth meaning.
I've always found it very interesting that we see a similar-looking butterfly on Progress Day... but made of metal.
Every time Viktor's situation changes, he adapts and evolves. If Jayce attacks him, if his cult is destroyed, if the Hexcore is causing Viktor to decay, if all of these things happen at once - he'll just evolve again, and I think the Machine Herald is the next step. And the Machine Herald will be a triumph for Viktor, but Jayce will believe that he's created something even worse. The resulting feud will be a personal nightmare for both of them.
I think this still allows Viktor to use his own agency to choose to become the Machine Herald (the MH will probably be the "secret third option" that saves Viktor, or there will be a secret third option that ends the feud) while still allowing Jayce to be offended and horrified at whatever the Machine Herald represents or is trying to do in the undercity. Introducing the element of time travel allows Arcane to explore the meta concept of tragedy and fate that season 1 was built on while showing that you can't "solve" a tragedy, because there are other terrible possibilities lurking behind alternate choices. Especially if what you're trying to change is singular people or events and not systems of power.
This is why Ekko's approach with his Z-drive will be superior to Jayce's sweeping attempt at changing the future. Ekko's goal has always been societal change. He creates his own punk society in the undercity, more progressive and successful than anything Vander or Silco ever created, and a better bastion of safety, hope, and progress than what Heimerdinger founded in Piltover. Trying to change systems by going back in time is most likely futile. But taking what Ekko has already built in the Firelights, curing his tree, and fighting for the Firelights' survival bit by bit by optimizing the present with the Z-drive shows that:
It's more worth it to focus on becoming wise (Ekko's mask is an owl) and making choices you won't regret
It's best if you don't face your fate alone (act as a collective and take care of each other)
Consider every option, not just the obvious black and white choices
Maintain and fix what you've already built instead of abandoning it once things get difficult
Adapt as needed if the choices you made lead to dark consequences, and once again, stick together and take care of each other when the bad times do come
That's my Act 2 but, ultimately, my season 2 prediction based on the butterfly symbolism we've already seen. Ekko's involvement is what will give the series the at least partial happy ending that the creators have referred to. I personally don't think that the Viktor/Jayce feud will end quite so well, but maybe, they will still survive.
#arcane#spoilers#arcane s2#arcane spoilers#jayce talis#ekko#viktor#viktor arcane#long post#meta#jayvik#arcane meta#heimerdinger#I'm positive that Mel will be deeply involved with this too considering her comments on fate#honestly the thought of her being caught in the Viktor/Jayce feud is terrible to contemplate so I'm just gonna pray for my girl#I did not like the time travel implications when i first watched act 1 but after thinking about this i feel way better about it#Another reason I think this will come down to Viktor is because Heimerdinger has distrusted Viktor since season 1 and he will focus on him#Ekko will see the faults in focusing on one person#Jayce is least likely to survive all this considering how fast the consequences of his actions are catching up with him#but there could also be a chance here of viktor choosing to spare him - if only to curse him with the Defender/Herald feud forever idk#anyway i am feral for season 2 so far can't you tell
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Bonus 8: How met your mother (CSSR design by @qourmet!)
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#poorly drawn mdzs#mdzs#cangse sanren#wei changze#jiang fengmian#It was important to me that WCZ had the hereditary mole. I will die on this hill.#I have been *waiting* for the day to finally arrive when I could finally make this comic. It's been marinating for months.#My mission is to redraw all of qour's character designs one day. They are just *that* good.#CSSR has the vibes of a wandering menace who shows up in towns like a stray cat arriving at a new doorstep for treats. 10/10.#While YZY strongly leads us to believe that JFM was in love with CSSR and that's his whole motivation behind taking wwx in-#-I do think this is (once again) rumour being presented as reality. It's the juicer story to tell after all.#It is still possible that he did love her! But I think that story undercuts the relationship he also had with WCZ.#Yall ever think about how JC and WWX parallel their fathers? How Wei Changze also left the Jiang Leader's side? I do.#Unlike JC though It is far more hilarious and plausible to imagine JFM begging to be CSSR and WCZ's third. You know he would.#My wild headcanon is that JFM and YZY are in a mlm and wlw arranged marriage situation. Deeply unhappy as partners. Better as friends.#they care for each other and I'll admit that there is a beautiful tragedy in them having romantic feelings for each other the whole time.#But I am also here for the gaffs. Let them be unfulfilled homosexuals together.#Meanwhile cssr and wcz are having incredible hetrosexual sex in a bisexual way that WILL leave him pregnant by the end of it.
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Never thought i'd see or hear the day where movie Mike would say "Ight bet"
I love making Mike talk like this
#ask reply#itās both like out of no where but also deeply correct#my man would talk like this if given the chance#I donāt know how to explain it#it just feels right for him#ITS ALWAYS funny to do cause people point it out but get it#silly Mike š©µš©µ
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it's SO funny that when asked what he had to do to prepare for his role in IWTV Sam Reid says he had to learn how to play the piano, learn to speak French, Italian, and English with a French accent. Bailey read IWTV religiously and added her own comments, and kept an actual fucking journal she wrote entirely as Claudia. meanwhile Jacob Anderson, when asked the same question, just responds with āoh nothing, i was already emoā. icons and legends only
#I LOVE THEM SO FUCKING MUCH YOU DONT UNDERSTAND#JUST TO BE CLEAR#I don't think Jacob didn't put a lot of effort into his Louis he's an incredibly talented actor and makes Louis everything he shouldve been#he's legit amazing and the way you as a viewer get a very clear sense of who Louis is and what's he like IMMEDIATELY after meeting him#not to mention how fucking HARD it is to play a deeply repressing character without making them feel actually emotionless.#and Jacob fucking nails it#NOT TO MENTION THE AMERICAN ACCENTS????? TWO DISTINCT ACCENTS THAT ARE BOTH SO PLAUSIBLE I WAS SHOCKED TO LEARN HE'S FUCKING BRI'ISH?#I JUST THINK HIS RESPONSE IS FUCKING HILARIOUS#IWTV#Jacob Anderson#Bailey Bass#Sam Reid#interview with the vampire#iwtv cast#amc iwtv#my posting#wow it's been a while#3rd degree failpost#didn't even notice this broke 1k ššš
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my martha knight au in a nutshell:
Danny/Martha: see up here?
Danny/Martha: *taps skull*
Danny/Martha: intense psychological damage
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Danny/Martha: *upon finding out she's pregnant*
Danny/Martha: oh my god i cant be a mom, I'm fifteen and homeless--
Danny/Martha: im going to be a terrible mother--
Danny/Martha: i live in a cAR--
Danny/Martha: what if the baby inherits my powers? Oh no--
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Danny/Martha post giving birth: i've only had Bruce for a minute and a half but if anything were to happen to him i won't even need to fuse with Vlad, I'm razing this goddamn planet to the ground myself
Danny, to Baby Bruce: you are the last remaining thread of my sanity. I'm going to give you the world :)
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Danny/Martha prior to getting pregnant: Fuck it, if everything in my life has led to this moment, i'm allowed to make one stupid decision. I'm getting drunk and getting laid
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Danny/Martha while Bruce was a toddler: i swear to fucking god i am going to kill the next person who talks to me--
Bruce: hi mommy!! i brought you something!!!
Danny/Martha, immediately flipping on a dime: hi baby!! what do you have?
Bruce, a weird child like his mother: a spider :)
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Danny/Martha, talking to Falcone after he made an unsavory comment at her and Bruce: If you ever come near me or my son again, I will dig up your shithead father's corpse and make you eat his skin.
Danny/Martha: do you understand me
Falcone:... crystal, ma'am
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Danny/Martha new in Gotham: *getting mugged*
Danny/Martha: *grabs man's arm*
Danny/Martha: I AM GOING TO BREAK YOU IN HALF LIKE A TWIG, FUCK BOY, DO YOU HEAR THE WORDS COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH--
(she then proceeds to terrorize Gotham's night life for the next extended period of time, mostly unintentionally)
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Danny/Martha: Danny Fenton?? No. you must be mistaken, my name is Martha Knight.
Danny/Martha: this here is my littlest knight, Bruce.
Danny/Martha: I made him all by myself :]
#if martha could become the joker in one timeline if bruce died then she had to have SOMETHIGN going on up there mentally. im all for it#im a 'martha wayne may have been secretly batshit' truther. subscribing to bruciemilf's portrayal of the wayne parents#danny fenton is not the ghost king#dpxdc#fem danny fenton#female danny fenton#martha knight au#dp x dc crossover#dpxdc crossover#dpxdc au#dp x dc au#dp x dc#giving danny fenton psychological issues since 2022 folks#points at marthadanny: she's a hot mess with unprocessed trauma and psychological prblems. she's hanging on by a thread#LISTEN TO AFTER ALL BY CHRISTINE EBERSOLE THAT SUMS UP MARTHADANNY ENTIRELY#bruce your mom is even crazier than you. how is that possible. her trauma has trauma.#marthadanny: i dont wanna talk about my feelings OR my trauma i want to raise my son. go away#martha: who knew that being a child hero without any support would result in deeply rooted psychological issues and paranoia in spades#marthadanny: im fine (<- experienced liar. is not fine. please god someone restrain her before she claws someone's eyes out)#she has eyebags the size of the savanna and wields red lipstick like a weapon. she's going to rob a rich man blind. she has a baby to feed#what would a mother not do for her child? what heights would a mother not climb.#and you're shaken to your soul with an ache that you cant erase. like the tears you never cried but still keep scrubbing off your face.#there's a pain you cant imagine. the little talk that keeps you wide awake that somehow turns to bold determination that you wont ever make#the same mistake. so you've got to feed your little future and ensure her talent poise and charm might just grow up and save you after all#fun fact bruce and danny's birthdays are exactly one week apart. danny is Feb.12 and Bruce is Feb.19. take that as you will :)
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Captain Francis Crozier, at Furthest North.
#the terror amc#francis crozier#my art#can't believe it took me 2 rewatches AND getting refs for this to realize it's the hungarian state opera house. girl i was there last month#anyway yeah i was looking at gifsets of the last shot of the show and feeling nauseous with emptiness etc etc when#the thought struck me that it looks an awful lot like the tableau vivants from the ep1 flashbacks in its stillness#i have no idea whether that was an intentional reference (a sort of twisted mockery of how that scrubbed and polished portrayal of history#contrasted with the deeply sad and inglorious reality#or some sort of meta about storytelling itself. i'm not really smart enough to say lol) but i made this anyways. enjoy#pattern recognition go brrrrrrrrrrrrrr#i bent over backwards trying to make this symmetric and harmonious. it isn't but if i don't post it now i never will
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Youāve heard of t4t now get ready for:
āØ C4C āØ
Aka ācreature for creatureā meaning only date creatures in the foreseeable future
#this was sparked on me by remembering how when I tried telling the first guy I dated about my kinnity he laughed in my face#and didnāt take me seriously whatsoever#also just because I honestly donāt feel like I could connect to someone deeply if they didnāt also experience being La Creatura#like howāre they gonna understand my little creature noises and mannerisms???#otherkin#alterhuman#godkin#dragonkin#nonhuman#caninekin#therian#<ā not me but it applies for em so#kras rambles
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shut up I'm on my drawing kisses arc
#hey person in my inbox who asked for more tsundere Joel in exchange for voting smallidarity on a poll this is for you#I deleted your ask like an idiot. And then I pressured myself into drawing this as a consequence as if to say sorry for deleting your ask#Ive been feeling daring lately can you tell. fuck drawing kisses but I need more kiss art it makes me feel alive#<- projections of an asexual yet unfortunately deeply romantic single person#smallidarity#Ive talked at lengths about my smallidarity thoughts before but. Yeah Joel wanting something with Jimmy that isn't just a joke but#he doesn't know how to handle or initiate that cause he's very closeted -> lots of gay panic#trafficshipping#tubby art
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Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will
#svsss#scum villian self saving system#shen qingqiu#shen yuan#the fact that people think scum villain#-a series that examines and criticizes common tropes in fiction-#is somehow against criticism or being a little hater is wild to me#especially since shen qingqiu never gets punished for being a hater#heck- he's still a little hater by the end of the series#he mostly gets punished for treating life like a play and like he and the people around him are characters#(or in other words- he suffers for denying his own wants and emotions and his own sense of empathy)#I think some of y'all underestimate how much writing/art is inspired by creaters being little haters#like example off the top of my head-#the author of Iron Widow has been pretty vocal about the book being inspired by their hatred of Darling in the Franxx#I think my interpretation of Shen Yuan's transmigration is also supported by the fact that this series is an examines writing processes#side note- though i understand why people say Shen Yuan is lazy and think its a valid take it still doesnt sit right with me#i am probably biased because my own experiences with chronic pain and depression and isolation#but ya- i dont think Shen Yuan is lazy so much as he is deeply lonely and feels purposeless after denying parts of himself for 20ish years#like yall remember the online fandom boom from covid right?#being stuck completely alone in bed while feeling like shit for 20 days straight does shit to your brain#the fact that no one came to check on him + he wasn't exactly upset about leaving anyone behind supports the isolation interpretation too#+in the skinner demon arc he describes his life of being a faker/inability to stop being a faker now that he's Shen Qingqiu#as āso bland he's tempted to throw salt on himselfā and āall he could do is lay around and wait for deathā (<-paraphrasing)#bro wants to be doing stuff but is stuck in paralysis from repeatedly following scrips made by other people#another point on āShen Yuan isnāt lazyā is just the sheer amount of studying that man does#also he did graduate college- how lazy can he really be#he doesnt know what hes doing but he at least tries to actively train his students#and he actually works on improving his own cultivation + spends quite a bit of time preping the mushroom body thing#+he's experiencing bouts of debilitating chronic pain throughout all this#but ya tldr: Shen Yuan's transmigration is an encouragement to write and not a punishment and also i dont think its fair to call him lazy
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It's interesting (if often frustrating) to see the renewed Orc Discourse after the last few episodes of ROP. I've seen arguments that orcs have to be personifications of evil rather than people as such or else the ethics of our heroes' approach to them becomes much more fraught. Tolkien's work, as written, seems an odd choice to me for not wrangling with difficult questions, and of course, more diehard fans are going to immediately bring up Shagrat and Gorbag.
If you haven't read LOTR recently, Shagrat and Gorbag are two orcs who briefly have a conversation about how they're being screwed over by Sauron but have no other real options, about their opinions of mistakes that have been made, that they think Sauron himself has made one, but it's not safe to discuss because Sauron has spies in their own ranks. They reminisce about better times when they had more freedom and fantasize about a future when they can go elsewhere and set up a small-scale banditry operation rather than being involved in this huge-scale war. Eventually, however, they end up turning on each other.
Basically any time that someone brings up the "humanity" of this conversation, someone else will point out that they're still bad people. They're not at all guilty about what they're part of. They just resent the dangers to themselves, the pressure from above, failures of competence, the surveillance they're under, and their lack of realistic alternative options. The dream of another life mentioned in the conversation is still one of preying on innocent people, just on a much smaller and more immediate scale, etc.
I think this misses the reason it keeps getting brought up, though. The point is not that Shagrat and Gorbag are good people. The point is that they are people.
There's something very normal and recognizable about their resentment of their superiors, their fears of reprisal and betrayal that ultimately are realized, their dislike of this kind of industrial war machine that erases their individual work and contributions, the tinge of wistfulness in their hope of escape into a different kind of life. Their dialect is deliberately "common"āand there's a lot more to say about that and the fact that it's another commoner, Sam, who outwits themābut one of the main effects is to make them sound familiar and ordinary. And it's interesting that one of the points they specifically raise is that they're not going to get better treatment from "the good guys" so they can't defect, either.
This is self-interested, yes, but it's not the self-interest of some mystical being or spirit or whatnot, but of people.
Tolkien's later remarks tend to back this up. He said that female orcs do exist, but are rarely seen in the story because the characters only interact with the all-male warrior class of orcs. Whatever female orcs "do," it isn't going to war. Maybe they do a lot of the agricultural work that is apparently happening in distant parts of Mordor, maybe they are chiefly responsible for young orcs, maybe both and/or something else, we don't know. But we know they're out there and we know that they reproduce sexually and we know that they're not part of the orcish warrior class.
Regardless of all the problems with this, the idea that orcs have a gender-restricted warrior class at all and we're just not seeing any of their other classes because of where the story is set doesn't sound like automatons of evil. It sounds like an actual culture of people that we only see along the fringes.
And this whole matter of "but if they're people, we have to think about ethics, so they can't be people" is a weird circular argument that cannot account for what's in LOTR or for much of what Tolkien said afterwards. Yes, he struggled with The Problem of Orcs and how to reconcile it with his world building and his ethical system, but "maybe they're not people" is ultimately not a workable solution as far as LOTR goes and can't even account for much of the later evolution of his ideas, including explicit statements in his letters.
And in the end, the real response that comes to mind to that circular argument is "maybe you should think about ethics more."
#i had a whole 'nother tangent that i split off into a separate draft#but i've been thinking about why the 'but shagrat and gorbag are still BAD people' thing seems so inane and missing the point#but yeah. i feel like people desperately want to find some justification in tolkien (and elsewhere) for the idea#that doing something wrong to a person will become doing something right if you can find someone who 'deserves it'#and that literally anything can be justified if someone has been defined as a valid target (i.e. less than a person)#(you see this a lot in the whole twitter main character of the day thing - the idea that the problem is directing the firehose#against the wrong person by mistake rather than the firehose itself)#but it's super weird for a novel built on a metaphor about how using the tools of evil for a good end or against existential enemies#is fundamentally corrupting and only further props up what it's meant to oppose#and i mean... the character most like tolkien literally says he could not morally justify lying to an orc and rejects the ring#it's not exactly a deeply buried theme of the book#anghraine babbles#long post#anghraine rants#legendarium fanwank#legendarium blogging#shagrat#gorbag#tv: lotr#jrr tolkien
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