#and if you're not this is mostly for me anyway. but also i want more than 5 people to read it if i bother to post it. y'know

[strawberrymoosetracks]

I read this as if it were in the modern day, and that the aforementioned God of War has taken on the modern form of someone who would be consitered the most powerful soldier, or the epitome of modern war. To me, the epitome of modern war is just a relatively fit guy who sits in a room with a PC. Heres my take on it, I didn't put much effort into this so sorry if it sucks :)

I've got to hand it to humans, they are great at making things efficient. Their innovation is beyond any other species I've encountered. One of their favorite things to make more efficient is war. Back in the old days, they trained young men, put them in armor, gave them a sword, and marched them thousands of miles for a fight against other young men who were similarly armed.

They started including horses, which sped up the transportation process. Then they came up with guns. A marvelous invention really. It made war much quicker, but it also forced armor to get better. As much as I liked the shiny armors, it was always too loud. It was nearly impossible to sneak anywhere, and seeing was a nightmare.

Nowadays, the most powerful warmonger is a guy at a desk. One may think that is crazy, but in all fairness, that guy has the ability to shoot a thousand suns at whoever they want to. I've had this job for eighty years, under three seperate faces.

I love efficiency...but the God of War gets bored when the people capeable of war are too scared to fight eachother. The Cold War ranks the lowest out of all the fun wars. Sooo, I look for fun in other ways. I started in the eighties when I could find someone who wasn't an anti-war hippie, but wasn't a complete jerk. That was when I realised my love language. I love physical touch. It's like my kryptonite. Maybe it's that it's been years since any soldier was willing to hug, especially in high war time. I had forgotten how great it felt to hug.

And now we get to the modern day, I have a girlfriend. She's super sweet, but sometimes she has some...interesting ideas. We get into conversations and find out that she has the strangest ideas. We go to the bar with friends and get into conversations about the romans, and as someone who was there, I have to set them straight. They always brush me off, saying that it can't be true. Maybe in my next iteration I can become a historian and set these lies straight. Anyways, we were at a bar with some other soldiers, and we were talking about Ares. That used to be my name, but I have been though too many lives since then.

"You think you can buy the loyalty of the God of War with something as small as affection? Don't be stupid." Leah said, taking a sip of her drink.

As the others seemed to agree, I just had to intervine. "As the aforementioned God of War, she's wrong you can absolutely do that. I'm basically a cat; pat my head and l'l be your loyal servant for... five minutes, give or take?"

The group was completely silent. They all stared at me, trying to work though it. Leah started laughing, "You're funny, Levi. You don't even get in real combat. Like come on." She slowly stoped laughing as my face continued to be serious. "You're not joking? You really think you're the God of War?"

"I don't think, I know." I said, staring into their blank faces, "Ok watch." I looked around the bar and eyed two guys who were friends. I pointed at them, and they immediately became enraged. They yelled at eachother, mostly nonsense. There was no real greivance, just some pent up anger I was using. One was about to swing when they suddenly stopped, sitting down and continued to talk as normal. I turned back to my drink and took a small sip.

I took a deep breath in and out, my shoulders dramatically rising and falling. It had been centuries since I told anyone I was the God of War. Since the romans went out, people stopped believing in pantheon gods. I would have shown the middevial europe my real self, but I had inconveniently been turned into a woman at that time. Calling myself a God was an easy way to get burnt at the stake, and getting out of that was too much work.

"No way..." My girlfriend muttered, staring at me.

I slowly turned to her, "Well, do I give loyalty for head pats?" She nodded slowly, her mouth agape.

My buddy next to her slowly leaned over and patted me on the head, "Please don't kill me."

I smirked, "Wasn't planning on it." I drank the rest of my drink and set it down, not really knowing how to start back up the conversation. It just became dead silent, everyone grapling with my revealed identity. Well I just ruined the night with this again, teaches me to never reveal myself with my close friends. So many centuries into this, and I apparently still have many things to learn.

—"You think you can buy the loyalty of the God of War with something as fickle as affection? Don't be foolish." —"As the aforementioned God of War, she's wrong. You can absolutely do that. I'm basically a cat; pat my head and I'll be your loyal servant for… five minutes, give or take?"

[vice-like]

just saw this one in the main tag and it got me thinking... "wanting to do the right thing but having your actions distort your goals" is obviously about natori, he even reflects upon it directly more than once during the chapters BUT even tho world unbent is from natori's pov, i always thought it wasn't just about him but also about matoba and the exorcist world. for me it was clear that midorikawa wanted to expand upon the exorcists and thought natsume's pov wouldn't have been enough for this case (i also think she always wanted to expand upon natori's and matoba's younger days as well)

so with that in mind i tried thinking if that could apply to matoba too and it might be a stretch but i think it does, but in the sense that "the right thing" for matoba and natori are two different things and matoba might not even think abt doing it along those lines

like, from what we've seen, i interpret that matoba genuinely thinks the matoba clan has a responsibility to protect ppl, regardless if they can see yokai or not and he takes that very seriously, most recent example being what he said abt a previous matoba head being unable to protect the miharu; also to achieve this the clan must be powerful above all others and for that he needs to do anything and if he has a limit we haven't seen it yet. we see that during world unbent ("i won't let us fall"), but most recently during homura arc when he was willing to bet his own life just to be able to control a powerful vessel (being shortsighted enough abt the possibility that natsume had to snap him out of it), he's power hungry, but weirdly enough he's like that because it's "the right thing to do" or what he must/needs to do, the matoba must be powerful to be able to protect anyone and anything ("you can't protect anything if you're not powerful, shuuichi-san")

so "having your actions distort your goals", how does that apply to matoba in a world unbent? midorikawa was merciful enough to let us know his initial goal (or what he wants ppl to think his goal is?): "i'm looking for allies i can use" and at first he was definitely testing if natori could be that, but by the second part (that tellingly starts with a companion matoba artwork to natori's in the first part) i think he wanted to work with natori so badly simply bc he was a peer his age, probably the first and only in the exorcist world and for this interpretation i have no evidence just vibes lol besides this part in midorikawa's afterword from homura arc

anyways, for me this conversation during the second part of world unbent is the best example of matoba's actions distorting his goal:

in my interpretation matoba's goal here was to be picked by natori to be that person, to be his peer, to be the one that teaches him and works with him and "he's better" bc he's more powerful than takuma-san and that's a fact (also idt he wanted to be his "mentor" per se, i think he wanted to be closer than that but that's my bias lol). as i see it, matoba was not trying to bad mouth takuma (and i think natori understood that too), but simply stating what's most important: power, which is ultimately very different from the things that natori puts first, even tho he's also seeking to be a more powerful exorcist

another thing that is also funny about these two understanding but mostly misunderstanding each other is that natori wants to become powerful so he could be needed, so he can protect ppl, "do the right thing", which is the same but also different from the reason why matoba seeks power and the kind of power they seek is also different but the same in one aspect, natori wants spiritual power but also "power" to better himself, to be a better person, while the power matoba seeks is spiritual but also a power that will make the matoba clan unbeatable which can be power over ppl

the way his actions distort his goal here is this: natori focuses on the fact that matoba values spiritual power and the power one can have over another more than someone's character and what natori wishes to learn from ppl like takuma is how to be better as a person so he can carve his own path or at least finally find what his path even is and how to set himself in it. this blinds him to anything else, him and matoba are fundamentally different, end of story. and so from his pov he can not see what matoba is offering which was actually matoba's main goal in this conversation: "I can teach you, I can work with you, I can protect you, I can help you become more powerful, I can protect ppl, so you should stick with me, you sould use me instead of him" and matoba's shocked reaction is proof he was misunderstood and natori's reaction to this conversation was unexpected to him, if my interpretation of what he meant is right or not is up to debate tho

so if natori realises and reflects upon his "actions distorting his goal" does matoba do the same? and that's what intrigues me a lot here, because honestly i don't know, we are not shown that ever. does matoba realise how his actions can hinder his goals? does he care enough to reflect on it? does he care abt how he's perceived? does he care about how natori perceives him specifically? and honeslty the way he gets "worse" abt this in the present timeline (being an unsettling little shit especially towards natsume) makes the interpretation that he doesn't care enough to change and so doesn't reflect upon it seem plausible but when it comes to matoba maybe it's simpler that that:

from afterword for chapters 52-54

he's just like that, he is who he is, the matoba clan head but also matoba seiji and he's not afraid of his mistakes, he'll face them head on even if they distort his goals. most interesting tho, while i do think he's like that partially bc he's a little shit and likes having fun ruffling ppl's feathers, i think it's interesting how there's a possibility of him seeing that habit as a mistake, idk if that interpretation is right but matoba is a character that is difficult to interpret especially bc we dont get his pov, he's a confusing character and the fact we never get into his head makes him even more multifaceted. now that we're getting more into matoba clan drama maybe someday we'll get his pov, but until then ig it souldn't be too hard to think a person notices and reflects upon their mistakes right? well, unless the person is matoba seiji, then i dont know.

there's other things i want to talk abt here, especially the fact that natori wants to be needed and current timeline matoba might actually need him, but does natori know that? you think the "a burden can be shared" bs might be an indication that he does, but i don't think he actually does lol also the fact matoba was seeking someone to use but ended up wanting to be used instead to this day (and is ecstatic abt it during homura, one of the many reasons why he looks like he's having the time of his life during those chapters imo), idk just the fact natori recoils at the wording of "someone to use" but wants to be useful himself and matoba ends up wanting to be used by him so badly it's funny (and also a little sad). just these two always wanting the same thing but mostly not and understanding but mostly misunderstanding each other more than anyone ever could for one another, how they could go together seamlessly but mostly don't yet i dont have the capacity to expand upon those right now, midorikawa gotta give me more so, anyways

[thunderlina]

In the wake of the TikTok ban and revival as a mouthpiece for fascist propaganda, as well as the downfall of Twitter and Facebook/Facebook-owned platforms to the same evils, I think now is a better time than ever to say LEARN HTML!!! FREE YOURSELVES FROM THE SHACKLES OF MAJOR SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS AND EMBRACE THE INDIE WEB!!!

You can host a website on Neocities for free as long as it's under 1GB (which is a LOT more than it sounds like let me tell you) but if that's not enough you can get 50GB of space (and a variety of other perks) for only $5 a month.

And if you can't/don't want to pay for the extra space, sites like File Garden and Catbox let you host files for free that you can easily link into NeoCities pages (I do this to host videos on mine!) (It also lets you share files NeoCities wouldn't let you upload for free anyways, this is how I upload the .zip files for my 3DS themes on my site.)

Don't know how to write HTML/CSS? No problem. W3schools is an invaluable resource with free lessons on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and a whole slew of other programming languages, both for web development and otherwise.

Want a more traditional social media experience? SpaceHey is a platform that mimics the experience of 2000s MySpace

Struggling to find independent web pages that cater to your interests via major search engines? I've got you covered. Marginalia and Wiby are search engines that specifically prioritize non-commercial content. Marginalia also has filters that let you search for more specific categories of website, like wikis, blogs, academia, forums, and vintage sites.

Maybe you wanna log off the modern internet landscape altogether and step back into the pre-social media web altogether, well, Protoweb lets you do just that. It's a proxy service for older browsers (or really just any browser that supports HTTP, but that's mostly old browsers now anyways) that lets you visit restored snapshots of vintage websites.

Protoweb has a lot of Geocities content archived, but if you're interested in that you can find even more old Geocities sites over on the Geocities Gallery

And really this is just general tip-of-the-iceberg stuff. If you dig a little deeper you can find loads more interesting stuff out there. The internet doesn't have to be a miserable place full of nothing but doomposting and targeted ads. The first step to making it less miserable is for YOU, yes YOU, to quit spending all your time on it looking at the handful of miserable websites big tech wants you to spend all your time on.

[vamptastic]

dgaf about egg jokes they're harmless and at worst mildly stereotypical do your thing im sure ive made one before. however. i do feel like the whole discourse was kicked off by that "egg behavior to wear women's deodorant as a man" tweet and we all collectively need to agree that that tweet was dumb & stupid and women's deodorant is objectively superior to men's. actually men's hygiene products in general just suck more except razors. apparently its manly to smell like shit and have dry skin. if i had my druthers id force every cis man to use dove deodorant. id mean id still do it if it made them transgender but i see it as more of a public service in terms of smell than in that regard.

[losersroom]

do people read character studies that are at least 50% omegaverse worldbuilding in this day and age or am i going to have to throw a pointless sex scene in this to keep everyone's attention

[deoidesign]

I’m a trans man that recently got diagnosed with hyper mobile eds, so now seeing Steve makes me extra happy, because cool disabled ftm rep. Thanks for making the radical dude bro, he’s funky.

same disability (waving hand emoji)

Always extremely fulfilling to know my work makes people happy in some small way, it means a lot. Thank you for sharing with me

[icewindandboringhorror]

currently at That Point which occurs once every few months where one briefly begins pacing around the house teary eyed contemplating selling their own organs or becoming an online scammer or getting on anxiety meds so you can bear the risk taking required to be a hitman or so on and so forth.... why must everything so Expensive... Surely all would be healed in life if only I had one big plate of lasagna and a simple loan of $40,000 ... auoughhh....

[eru-iru]

I just realized the two fandoms I left are all because of the fandom itself and how miserable it is there. ppl just can't respect other ppl's boundaries and would throw in words that they don't even know the meaning of. I mostly keep to myself but some of it was so loud I'd heard it from other ppl and would sometimes end up seeing it. like some artist would leave and sell all the merch they bought just because ppl bullied them so bad over being a fan of a character. or you just ship smth and ppl would bully you for it. like these are simple ships and some got driven out coz of how hostile ppl are. seeing all that shit really is just demoralizing and not make me want to put content for those fandoms anymore.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

omgg lol [guy who won't stop going "more like scapeGOATED" voice] now hold! on!! lmao [same guy just saw encanto voice] Hold on!!!

[melverie]

Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh today I've been constantly experiencing the urge to un-private today-in-the-devildom & start writing for it again

[tenok]

.

[babacontainsmultitudes]

Not much has been shared yet for the Nicky day of the week which has me thinking that *I* wanna draw a Nicky to share but... That would require... Drawing and... Liking what I draw...

[glittercorvid]

uh oh besties, i've worked through enough of my shame that the inner diva siren's call is getting louder and louder... girlies i think we're about to enter our flamboyant era

[indi-glo-archive]

guys.

[medicinemane]

And maybe you'll be like "but if you don't trust businesses, how can you trust welfare?"

I fucking don't. My mom trying to get on food stamps fucked me up because a lady I never met without my permission got my SSN from my mom and started editing my files. My heart still races to this very second whenever I think about it, it kinda messed me up bad and I'll never ever ever see any kind of recourse

And I'm terrified that I'm gonna lose my medicaid just cause I inherited some money from my grandpa

And I've never even applied for disability cause it kinda doesn't matter finding out if I'd qualify or not cause of my depression, when the rules are so restrictive I don't know if I've even be allowed to keep my house

I do not fucking trust these things on a personal level. I feel like out of a lot of people I have the most to fear from them cause I'm on the edge of having things work, and that gets you punished

...but I need medicaid in order to have insurance (and when you strip out the finance side of medicaid, I love medicaid... they're honestly incredible insurance... I just... I just... dental is like 90% of why medicaid is so important to me, ever since I found out this state pays for it I've actually been able to do cleanings which is important to me cause I can't always get myself to brush)

And I think things like disability and food stamps are pretty damn important on a personal level, and honestly are also good for the economy cause they get people spending... it's practically a free cash infusion into the economy, cause these are people who need to buy stuff

There's just so much important stuff welfare does that it's worth dealing with government

No, what I want is more accountability so if someone gets my SSN from a 3rd party like my mom they're held to HIPPA styles standards where that's not ok to access my files without my permission (She changed my fucking address and tried to get medicaid to investigate me for fraud! Never even met me)

Like have some accountability there and in every situation

Secondly I want less punitive focused rules. I'd frankly prefer bezos get on disability than smack down some poor sod cause they got $2000 in the bank or cause their friend lets them live with them for free

If there's gonna be a cut off on these programs, it needs to be a solid step above the poverty line, cause... by definition I assume poverty line denotes kinda the minimum expected income people can reasonably live off of, and if you take away benefits people are gonna lose a chunk of money to covering that stuff themself, so you need a buffer before you kick people off

I don't fucking trust the government for a second, I've actively been fucked by them and on a personal level I avoid everything but medicaid and only that cause everything but the money is pleasant to deal with and I kinda need it (honestly if I was rich I'm not even kidding that I'd rather give medicaid like $400 a month than some insurance company, I sincerely like them as insurance)

But I'd trust them a lot more if they were less punitive, less out to hunt me down and gut me cause someone handed me a fiver or cause I started to get on my feet, and if government employees had concrete rules they had to follow that were actually transparent and enforced

Like 90% of my problems with welfare go away if they're held accountable and there's less "catch the welfare cheats" mentality going around

I don't trust the government in the slightest, but sadly there some jobs it kinda has to do, so I'd just rather force it to be an open book where the public can keep an eye on it and if they step out of line there's consequences (sort of like I don't trust most mega corps but happen to sometimes need stuff from them... did you know literally every cell service provider has been illegally selling shit like your location data to random people like bounty hunters, and the FCC just slapped them with a fine that's 0.02% of their yearly incomes and debated even doing that? I even can offer a source on that)

...I don't trust much of any authority cause they constantly fail me and kinda screw me. Don't trust doctors either, but I still gotta go to them, you know? ...they're just... they're real bad at listening... so many systems need systemic change

(You know who I really don't trust is the cops. I could point to so many examples. My uncle doesn't trust cops either, and he's an ex Fire and SWAT paramedic, he worked with them and we still got into a long conversation where he basically tore into them far better than I can)

(I don't trust authority that's not accountable)

[rotisseries]

omg guys my narines playlist fucks so hard