#but also because the people controlling it don't give a shit in a political sense

[sherlock-is-ace]

.

[four-ravens-in-a-trenchcoat]

Fuck this shit

Now Sweden gives thumbs-up to chat control 2.0, an awful proposition which would require digital communication providers to allow government access to encrypted private messages ("but only photo, video and links now :):):) not literally every digital communication you do :):):)"). This is a massive invasion to personal integrity, a fucking data security risk and an "'accidentally' surveilled the groups I like to opress or my political opponents a bit, oops" risk, especially in the more authoritarian countries. All to find, you know it, child porn and grooming (this will of course not catch teens sending consensual nudes, vacation pictures of babies on beaches sent to family members or normal porn and waste massive resources on scanning and processing "suspect" content).

Did I mention this sucks yet? They didn't even ask the government people supposed to decide our stance on EU politics, just the justice committee. During a single meeting, no debate. Sweden's desicion means a larger probablility that this passes in EU.

And you know what? Two parties which my views generally align with, who before the election NOT EVEN TWO WEEKS AGO, one of which I voted for partly because of their stance on this (no to mass surveillance, personal integrity is important) BOTH DID A 180 AND VOTED FOR CHAT CONTROL. One thing if parties I don't like and don't vote for do this, but I trusted these fuckers to have at least a little backbone/common sense. Also why did the nationalistic and generally shitty party SD vote no to this. Why do only they and C think this is a bad idea.

In other news, I've written to my first representative today to express my disappointment. I hope this doesn't pass silently.

[olderthannetfic]

Ayyy, there seems to be a lot of older people among the regular commenters of this blog so I'm gonna shoot my shot and ask for advice.

Idk if it's just the clinical depression but I can't help but feel like I'm never gonna find love as a straight girl. I don't hate men at all -- I've been very lucky to be surrounded by decent dudes growing up but shit. Lookin at the state of the world rn... Gen Z dudes chugging misogynist bullshit at alarming rates, women like Gisele Pelicot going through unspeakable shit from their own husbands... it's hard not to feel cynical. On top of that the decent dudes I know irl are all taken, I don't wanna go on dating apps, and as much as I wanna fuck an older man no decent one is gonna settle for a depressed young woman who's a 4 at best...

It's not that i don't have fulfilling friendships or that I don't value them, I just want to love and care for (and get dicked down by) a decent guy who feels the same way. I've always wanted that and I don't think it's changing anytime soon. Feels impossible though. I'm not sure if I'm the problem (I'm plain faced at best, no fashion sense or charm to speak of, though I do my best to be polite and kind) or there's just shit going on I've no control over.

--

People will give you a lot of placating nonsense, but the reality is that the supply of reasonably okay straight women is much higher than the supply of reasonably okay straight men. Finding a fulfilling long-term relationship is always hard anyway, but man... straight guys really need to step it up.

That said, a lot of people in general and straight guys in particular learn a lot from the breakdown of their first marriage/long-term relationship. Just because a guy is listening to godawful manosphere podcasts today doesn't mean he's never going to be dateable later.

Research on dating apps suggests that your average guy responds to pics where women have a lot of makeup on by looking for a hookup, passes by the ones with no makeup, and finds the ones with a little lipstick or something but not heavy makeup the most dateable.

While it would be nice if appearance didn't matter, if you're really worried about this, there are some basic things you can do where you'll get a lot of bang for your buck: Find one lipstick you can stand and learn to apply it. I like Bésame Cosmetics because I am a nerd and they sponsored a local film noir festival. Peggy Carter's lipstick was from them. They have the advantage of being intensely pigmented, so a quick swipe gives full coverage. I hate having shit on my face in general, so that's helpful. If eye stuff is less bleurgghhhh than lip stuff, learn to apply eyeliner instead. There are some liquid ones I really like even if it takes some practice to get decent at painting them on. You don't need a full face of makeup or really much of anything to read as Hot Girl™ to people who don't know anything about makeup and aren't paying much attention. Yes, even if you're a 4 and it's not just the depression talking.

Charm is hard. Some things can be taught, but a lot of that's innate. Fashion, however, is not. You don't need to be a fashionista to look better than a lot of the people around you. Save your money for fewer, better outfits. Buy things that fit well and get things tailored. Don't settle for ill-fitting clothes that don't make you feel good. Look for natural fibers and clothing that will last a long time. (And if you think you have sensitive skin that cannot handle natural fibers, you need to go up several price points on your cotton. Just saying.)

You can also increase your chances by doing activities where you meet more people who might be a good match. This means finding hobbies that actually have straight guys in them and going to in-person things where you meet new people. (This sounds obvious and pedantic, but I cannot tell you how many women I know who want a boyfriend but only do social things that are 95% women and 5% gay men.)

But the biggest thing you can do to stand out is... well... work on that depression. Self confidence and obviously being in a good place in your life are very attractive. Also, the good catches who haven't been snapped up tend to be the quiet, shy people. If you have your own shit together enough to detect and pursue them, you have a better chance of finding someone great.

I get that ~fix your depression~ is not helpful advice, but working on yourself in both important and relatively superficial ways is something you can control. Meeting the right person is not.

It might help to look at this as a 5-10-year goal and/or a lifetime goal, not a "Oh my god, my life sucks this year" problem. Yes, there's shit going on that you have no control over, but if that's your career and mental health and so on, you can work on that and be in a different place in a few years.

Frankly, I think a certain amount of cynicism is warranted, but that doesn't mean there are no decent guys or that you'll never find one.

[brw]

It baffles the mind to me how people will insist Ben Percy's Beast is right and correct and is the natural end version of Hank and that since day one he was always going to end up like that, not just because it implies absolutely nobody has actually read Hank in any pre-Bendis comic ever, but also because Evil Hank as Percy writes him makes everyone look massively incompetent, and I'm not even talking about just X-Force, I mean the entire larger X-Men community.

Emma Frost. World class telepath. Repeatedly is shown to not have that many qualms about digging into people's minds if they're hiding something from her. Confronts Hank at least once directly, and yet did not actually care enough to do anything other than act huffy when confronted with his actions. At most, she was pissed at him ruining her party. You can torture whoever you want, old buddy, but causing an inconvenience at my party? Now I'm mad.

Jean Grey. Even greater telepath. Was on X-Force herself, even, and also does not have many holdups about tearing down people's walls if the needs be. We even see her do just that, but her problem is him keeping things from her, and not the actual content of most of his actions. And after she leaves, she just seems to plug her fingers in her ears and go lalalala? The stuff at the Hellfire Gala, keeping Wolverine as clones, she doesn't care, she's too busy X-Mening.

Wolverine. Epic cool warrior guy who is supposed to be the best there is, whose talents Hank clearly admires enough to clone repeatedly to do his bidding, who is simultaneously a lone wolf and also the guy everyone wants to have on their team, who is the only guy who can see through Hank or whatever. Not competent enough to kill one big blue furry man who has spent the last 5 years at a desk job. That completely alludes him.

Domino has luck based powers that are supposed to help her in any situation, but I guess getting rid of evil blue man is too much to ask. Couldn't even get a bucket propped up under an open door. "He was always like this, he was always evil" she insists, but after learning he's controlling a small nation with plant people at the Hellfire Gala she still busts out the Cha Cha Slide with him on the dance floor.

I guess neither Jean nor Logan bothered to tell Scott his old friend was committing war crimes, because he doesn't seem to know or to give a fuck.

Kitty and Kurt know enough to joke about it, but do they actually confront him? Does anyone care enough to actually try to put a stop to it directly, if they're all seemingly convinced he's beyond help and fundamentally evil? No, they've got other shit going on. No time to care about Hank making a future where he is God-King, we gotta stop Sinister doing that same thing, but I guess when Hank does it, who gives a shit.

Quinten Quire is an omega level telepath who apparently nobody thought to say "hey man, can you use those Phoenix-level abilities to get Beast to stop killing people?". He was too busy giving himself a bigger dick in resurrection protocols, I guess.

I could go on, but point is, I genuinely don't know how you insist that era made so much sense and was the perfect version of Hank and everyone was simply too naive to see that this was who he always was, because it makes everyone look like an incompetent moron! They can't kill one fat blue furry man??? He hasn't done field work in years! And yet that's too much to ask! The only reason he died was because he was in gay love with some fuckass actor from New Jersey. It's deeply embarrassing for everyone involved if that's the reality of things, and I have no idea why you want all of your favourite characters to be incompetent dipshits who think "Wow, isn't Hank evil?" and then refuse to actually do anything about it.

And all this could have been averted if Hank was, you know, Hank. Hank isn't charming and cultured and well-read and funny and polite because he's a good person, those are his innate traits, and as we see with Dark Beast, they can twist in the opposite direction. That would literally be all it would take. I mean a lot of things would still suck, but at the very least, it would make everyone's inability to do anything a little more understandable, and allow things to feel tragic, like that Hank becoming increasingly evil and separated from his ethics is a loss and one we all mourn, instead of the insistence that he was always going to turn out that way.

Emma walks in to try and set things right with Hank, but gets distracted by good conversation and jokes and the same man who treated her as a member of the X-Men when she first joined and not as a heartless monster, who built her piece by piece back together when people were joking that finding out her murderer would be too much work, because everyone wanted her dead. It's hard to connect the evil actions she's heard Hank doing with the kind and charming and personable man in front of her, who matches her intellectually and well and truly respects her, and so she accepts that things are either exaggerated or that Hank will ultimately come back into himself, and that she can trust him not to disrupt her party.

Just a few little moments like that would have gone so far. An evil Hank McCoy is ultimately still Hank, and should still be funny and dropping Aristotle quotes and Shakespeare and being a good friend, because those are not traits exclusively to moral people, and it would make everyone's seeming incompetence a little easier to swallow. It's harder to see the evil actions that Hank is doing for what they are, when he's making you laugh so hard your belly aches or pondering intellectual questions with you, rather than just repeatedly saying "I'M THE BASTARD YOU NEED" before making a torture station in outer space.

There's so many ways this entire arc could have, at the very least, had some intrigue and actual character work to explore, the ways Hank has always used a larger than life persona to deflect and hide, and how that could become increasingly warped if you're dead set on having him be evil, and make the whole thing feel less like a character assassination and more of a tragedy. Hank McCoy becoming evil should hurt. It should feel like a great loss that someone who had been so kind and empathetic and nurturing became increasingly amoral and evil and even sadistic, and all the characters involved should feel that loss, and that even could be why they struggle to actually do anything for so long; they're so loyal to the Hank that once was, they can't see the Hank that is.

But all that is lost when the only character suggesting that something else might be to blame is Colossus, who immediately gets shut down as being ridiculous and silly, and everyone else stands and nods that Hank is really evil now, and isn't that a shame, and maybe he was always like this, but are we actually gonna do anything about it? Nah, we got a party to throw, we gotta get our fancy dresses on.

The entire thing is so unbelievably infuriating, because all it would have taken for someone to actually not even like Hank, but just want to be consistent with prior characterisation and have him be fun. A villainous Hank should ultimately be fun. That's probably the main reason why Dark Beast has endured for so long; he is fun to see and be around. He's a fun character to see on your page. That's what Hank needed. But I guess Sinister was taking that place so instead we got blue Kissinger and it is genuinely such a travesty that this dogshit is celebrated by comic fans who throw up in their mouths if you suggest reading an Avengers comic to broaden their horizons.

[a-loose-collection-of-ants]

Ok. Shit.

I get the feeling I'm not gonna sleep tonight, and who knows, I might regret this tomorrow but I need to get some thoughts out.

I've tried to retain this idea that most people are inherently good. Some of this is the remnants of whatever religious faith I was brought up in, and some of it is just what I tell myself to stay sane. It's getting harder to think that way, but I am trying to hold on to it.

There's this image I keep replaying in my head. My dad and I were visiting family down south shortly after he had wrapped up his cancer treatment. We stopped by my aunt's house in South Carolina, and she told me with tears in her eyes about how she had started gardening again after my dad's diagnosis. There was a Trump flag flying from her roof.

On another visit to the same family members, we were visiting a college and walked by a gender neutral bathroom. My uncle made some off-color joke about it and then quickly moved on when nobody laughed. My sister (a sort of closeted trans woman) looked at me with an expression of both deep sadness, and whatever face you make when you watch a bird fly head-first into a window.

My point is, I know these people aren't filled with hatred and malice. It's not constructive to waste your energy hating them when their greatest sin is ignorance.

I barely remember the Obergerfell decision, but I remember being in middle school around the time it happened. Attitudes towards queer people weren't great, but they changed so rapidly that I barely noticed. Maybe the fact that this was when I realized I was queer gave me a false sense of security when it came to the "moral arc of the universe", or maybe it's the example I have to hold onto about how fast things can change.

It's easy for people to fall into patterns of hate when they lack exposure, and the media landscape right now is making easier to avoid that sort of exposure. The basis of the fight against extremism is education, and I think it has to also be compassion.

Don't get me wrong, I also have family that are more than likely not worth the effort ("they" control the weather and all that), but those aren't most people. Most people are exhausted by politics. They see the price of groceries and vote for the other guy regardless of who's name is on the ballot. Or they're like a classmate of mine, who didn't really like either candidate and was having trouble just voting for the "better" one.

If anything, I guess this is a reminder to myself to hold on to empathy despite everything. It's fine to feel angry. Hell, it's probably good if it gets you moving. But we cannot respond to dehumanization with more dehumanization.

I'm not really all that religious anymore, but I hold on to some things. One of them is this: All things, by virtue of being crafted by God's hands, have value. Or, as my dad said it "God don't make no shit". This goes for yourself, as well as everyone else. I can't let myself lose that right now.

I don't want to belabor my point too much, but I do want to say that I saw people saying things like "it's all over if trump wins". I'm not going to lie, it's bad and people are going to get hurt and die because of this. America was waiting for the results of it's biopsy and we found out it's cancer... but we're not dead yet. I don't have a specific action I can advocate for, but please, don't give up. Authoritarianism is a longstanding wound on this country and it festers in apathy.

Take a deep breath. Regardless of what happens, time moves forward and the sun will rise in the morning. I am going to go to work, make some dinner, and hopefully find some way to work volunteering into my schedule.

Recommended listening if you want to cry right now

[cadej0]

I was pretty mad at the ending on the first watch. I'm still pretty upset by it, honestly. But after watching it again... I really can't be. Or rather, I don't feel like I have the RIGHT to be angry at the ending.

I feel like cQ is very, very personal to ccQ. In the most naked and vulnerable sense. And speaking from the perspective of someone who is latino, there is this reasoning I understand on a far more personal level. This deep resentment, humiliation and agony only comprehensible through the lens of a Latin American or a Latine in the diaspora.

People from the first world don't give a shit about you. And if you live in the imperial core, they still don't give a fuck about you. You are nothing to them. A caricature. A monkey for entertainment and cheap laughs. A foreigner. An exotic thing to sexualize and gawk at.

I'll never forget that wilbur stream when he visited Las Nevadas and immediately assumed that cQ was the valet or the concierge. You know, the fucking Help. Even at his peak, as president of a nation, he was still regarded as a stereotype. The way cWilbur pursued him. The same way cSchlatt pursued him.

cQ was never respected, he was never going to be at the level of the others no matter how powerful or wealthy or opulent he became. Because to them, he was nothing but a joke. A weakling.

And when he finally got the riches and the power, who the fuck was left to witness it? Not a damn soul.

That ending was so fucking harrowing, but I fucking get it.

Any resolution with other characters; fundy, foolish, charlie, bbh, even Schlatt, it wouldn't have made a difference. He left an unforgivable wound on all of those people. He is a victim, but he is also such a huge piece of shit and he knows it.

Even at the very beginning, after the elections, he tells the audience that his alliance with Schlatt was based on a mutual understanding. They both wanted power. He said, flat out, that they could stab each other in the back at any time. There was zero trust in their politics game. This has been who he is since the very start. He may have been naïve and far too into his feelings— with Schlatt, with Wilbur, with Karl and the other one. And Charlie. But he's always been this ambitious threat who would do whatever it took to have some modicum of power. He knew he had no shot going after Technoblade, but he did it anyway and it cost him his life and his dignity. He knew torturing Dream would have its consequences. It ruined him mentally and emotionally. He stopped caring about the revive book and tortured him because he felt in control for once in his life. This was him. It all just backfired eventually because he had no respect for his own wellbeing and he hurt everyone he loved and loved him.

It's easy to imagine him running off and joining the clingies and jack, but those three have been through enough. They are not obligated to mend the wounds of a profoundly broken man. Q loved them and he wouldn't have subjected them to his agony anyway. They're kids.

He could have gone through his own redemption, but there wouldn't have been anyone left to forgive him. Not a damn soul.

[not-goldy]

God I can't really stand JK anymore.

Everything regarding him went a downhill since 2023. The way he behaved changed a lot.. LIKE A LOT now he's way cockier as if no one in the whole world can top him and he doesn't need to listen to anyone giving even good advises, how he used to present himself and looked changed drastically now he looks like a junkie, how he used to perform changed so much now he doesn't half half the energy or stage presence and doesn't give af about making mistake a ton times while before he used to perform with extreme perfection. He's listening to their PR teams too much like where did I go live when I miss fans went ? Now he's listening to their cheap promo tricks. His work ethics is completely opposite from what BTS was.. he's working with payola king of the whole industry and buying success. Releasing a 100 version and a western collab with some B grade pop artist. The songs he releasing are basically shit now when he used to release magic shop, film out, your eyes tell and still with you kind of gems.

The ONLY thing connecting me to him now is Jimin. There's no way to avoid JK when you are a Jimin stan. But i'm WAITING for the day Jimin finally open his eyes and get out of this toxic relationship so I don't want to put up with him anymore.

You see, your problem is that Jungkook is not Jimin. That's your problem. Half way through your comment, I smiled to myself and I thought well this Anon would certainly love Jimin then if these are the qualities they looking for in an idol. only to get to the end of the Ask to find out you actually do like Jimin💀

That complicates things for me.

Where should I even begin

There's nothing wrong with having a preference. There's nothing wrong with having a bias.

I'm not gonna come for your throat on this.

You prefer Jimin's work ethics and prefer how seriously he takes his public relations, how he puts on effort and that's alright.

BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO HATE JUNGKOOK just because he's not YOUR PREFERENCE.

If you keep that up you and I gon have a problem.

Do I think Jungkook can take a page or two out of the Jimin idol manual? Sure.

As much as I looove seeing Jungkook live his life on his own terms not giving a fuck what anyone cares- some times, in certain areas I do think he could use that self regulation.

Yet on the other hand, I don't find Jimin's over regulation appealing either. I've ever said his kumbaya persona, caring too much what others think, trying to be perfect, self regulated, evolved, controlling his words, his attention, being overly polite, smiling when he should be cussing people out all in the name of his consciousness of the fact he is an idol really REALLY FRUSTRATES ME.

Jimin struggles with this. The never mind tattoos, the song lyrics yearning for freedom, set me free- where do you think that comes from?

I don't know how we can call ourselves stans and not sense some of these things: the members constantly telling him not to care what people would think, to do whatever he wants,- even Jungkook openly reminding him HE IS AN ADULT and shouldn't care about certain things.

Jungkook is good for Jimin and Jimin is good for Jungkook.

Jimin is the leash and restrain Jungkook needs and Jungkook is the freedom Jimin craves.

Please don't come for jikook I'll paint you and it ain't going to be pretty.

Also remember, this is a human being you are talking about. He is not an alien. He is human just like you. That vitriol and animosity towards him is so not necessary.

I can't help you unhate him.

But please, be a good human.

He is a relatively young man navigating overwhelming situations. I personally think going solo has taught him so much and there is much more he'd learn along the way.

And please, it's slander to say he half ass his performance- have you seen his tiktok? THE THIBGS HE CAN DO WITH HIS WAIST- MY GOD!

Oh and did you see Tae's smoke challenge? I may or may not be addicted to the part he wines his waist- lolay lolay lolay

Sorry I had to go and watch that clip again.

Liste, the point I'm making here is, It's his journey and his choice to decide the type of idol he wants to be. You may like it or you may not. That's a you problem. However he's responsible for his own reputation and his own success in the industry and I think he is still learning to hone his values and filter his choices through those values.

Give that man a break .

AND FREE JUNGKOOK.

Peace out

[torque-witch]

Long post ramble

The diabolical update about my parents post-election, or more-so my dad is that he did apologize to me for texting me to sign up for Musk's petition + money giveaway "without speaking to me first" but low-key he was calling because it's his birthday today and probably because my mom yelled at him about it, mostly because it sent my sister into a panic. He said he was mostly just trying to give me an option for free money, and he is definitely money obsessed (and poor at handling it) so frankly I said I figured that was the bulk of his reasoning. But...also never actually went into talking to me about it at all. Hence, why I just say thank you and go on with my day because I know he doesn't actually want to have conversations with me about how politics affects MY life. I digress.

But then it got worse as he went on more rambling about his health and his business and a) mentioned that he believes vaccines cause autism and that he was sorry that he just trusted medical professionals when I was a baby and b) that he is now using AI to help process film to digital files in order to clean up the distortion from older film.

First of all, I said obviously it wasn't your fault for following baby medical regimen??? And mentioned that I tested pretty high on the RAADS-R and had a referral to be clinically tested so I'm already like fully totally fine with this outcome because it makes sense. It doesn't make sense because of vaccines though - it makes sense because HE is autistic. He can recognize it in my older sister because she has a lot more trouble socializing and gets visibly over-stimulated and agitated as a result, but is a lot better now at recognizing it. My dad, however, said "I don't think you seem autistic" and I had to explain that it presents a lot differently in afabs and that I still experience similar things that my sister does, but I am very good at controlling my reactions in public. No one has seen me have agitated meltdowns or the inability to speak because someone didn't understand my needs, I can't rip checks properly or because my clothes all feel like ants or hay or just that everything feels WRONG except my husband because I trust him to sit with me and not judge me for it. I still also get extremely overstimulated in crowded places which results in tachycardia, nausea or echolalia (which is often really really offensive because I mimic people's noises in the stores or phrases they say and I have to be super careful to catch myself or be super quiet because it just...comes out and I don't plan for it at all).

Anyhow I digress again, but secondly the AI shit is just like double diabolical because he specifically said he didn't tell his client (he owns a photography processing lab that he runs by himself and has for many years) AND he specifically had to buy a secondary processing chip and power source to run the program. It's bad for the environment/energy. He then asked if I've dabbled with AI and again I had to explain that I can't even post about it in a haha funny way because it's not allowed in curated art spaces and I could lose opportunities!!! "Ohhh...because you didn't do the work."

hmmm dad, hmmm.

Like...legitimately these people are supposed to have more wisdom than me. Somehow I follow Jesus' teachings better and somehow I have better empathy, and somehow I can connect with other people on more than a surface level and somehow I can sift through information on the internet and still remain somewhat cognizant of what is reality. I'm obviously not perfect, and I see so many of his mannerisms in me that have led him to become so enraptured in conspiracy. And it's 100% OCD and autism. And religious guilt/cult.

I'm grateful that all I got was stress that's eating my insides alive through the form of disease and probably autism, but my sister is the one who is suffering deeply from both a lack of educating themselves and genetic predisposition. It's not haha funny anymore, it's like oh...unfortunately my autism is pattern recognition and it's very clear how we all got here and why this family is so dysfunctional. And it didn't even have to be that bad either. The damage is done. Some things were out of everyone's control. But watching your childhood slowly turn into more of a nightmare as an adult isn't the best pasttime. I'm glad we didn't have the internet for a minute there.

Though, my mom was also deep in her fad diet era too which may have also contributed to malnutrition (we were all forced to participate as children, as in I grew up vegan but in a poor person way so it was all canned food). We did Atkins at some point, Whole 30 or whatever. Now she's gluten free and something else but not celiac. Lots of jazzercise lol. But mostly it certainly contributed to my body image as well. Even my dad pointed out that I had cellulite at like 13 as if I could do anything about it.

Anyway. Long trauma dump aside.

Why did these two get together? We will never know. I actually do know and it's not a happy story. For another time.

weeeeeeeee

[box-architecture]

OK hear me out

A kingdom is originally "ruled" by Dream. Formed under him. Everything's cool.

Wilbur wants his own little dictatorship and he has like double Dreams charisma even if he has none of his integrity. So to do damage control, Dream agrees to have Wilbur rule the West side of the smp, while Dream rules the East side. They can't make changes about the whole country without both agreeing.

Wilbur wants all of the smp though so, after a bunch of bullshit, Dream has to go marry the president in the desert to the south (Quackity) for Political Reasons that Wilbur has so charitably constructed. With Dream unable to personally oversee his side, Wilbur can take over.

What he didn't account for was, halfway on the ride to Las Nevadas, Dreams carriage would be violently attacked, and Dream himself to have been kidnapped by a mysterious mercenary group.

This of course, leaves Wilbur in a bit of a bind. He did in fact promise Quackity of Las Nevadas a husband.

On the other side of this, Punz has been playing mercenary for a long time, has connections spanning international level. However, he personally likes to stay on the east side of the smp. There's a pretty man in charge there, you see, who deals fairly and gets way too much shit for all the good he does.

And it doesn't seem very fair for a man who does so much Good to have to get married to an asshole who doesn't even know the meaning of the word. Not to mention he'd be essentially trapped in a country he knows nothing about.

Punz is going to accost the wedding carriage

On yet a third side of this, Quackity is basically drowning on the inside, inheriting a country from his dead husband, changing its name and its structure and trying really hard to be drunk with power but instead he's just narrowly avoiding becoming actually drunk. He doesn't know what the hell he's doing, and the marriage play was supposed to help solidify an alliance, and now it looks like he's being screwed over. What the fuck do you mean "kidnapped?" That just sounds like them going back on their deal. He's going to go have a personal talk with Wilbur and kick his ass if he thinks he's going to pull one over him.

But also most importantly, Dream and Punz very much had sex before this. Dream has been known to see sex workers and go to brothels, because trying to run a country is exhausting and sex is a good way to briefly relax. Punz was working out of the brothel at the time and he was Very Happy to sleep with a handsome man

Sometimes you have to do your duty and get on your knees to serve your King, Punz says, very normal, 10 minutes before tipping over Dream's carriage

-

"Shall I start a coup for you, my King?" Punz panted as they hiked his leg over their shoulder, quickening their thrusts. "Give me the word, and I'll do it."

Below them, Dream gave a punched-out moan, shaking his head and turning away, even as he left small, bloody crescents in Punz's back.

-

Listen. Listen i think they should be so fucking abnormal. Like i think Punz could have just ignored all this and nothing would have changed for them except the people they were working for. But they don't want to work for other people. They want to be Dream's. Punz is incapable of not being horny about being Dream's tool.

Also, they were like, friends in the sense of being friendly and having good camaraderie, but Punz doesn't actually work for Dream. He's head of a mercenary network and Dream is a King, so of course Dream hires him on occasion, but that's like, individual contracts. He isn't a general or a soldier or a servant/attendant. Punz is just Like This

My King has called on me, had need of me again, to be his operative in the shadows, to serve him as only I can serve him - Punz's internal monologue as they kneel and pull Dream's hand into a kiss that they 100 percent didn't need to do.

My Mercenary, my ally in the shadows, the one I trust most to fulfill any job I need. They may one day betray me, blade at my neck, but my fondness for them is beyond measure, a friendship I hold close to my heart, and I would accept death if it was at their hand. I'll miss them the most, I think, when I am in foreign lands. I could never ask them to leave all they know behind to serve me, for I've already asked far more than a King should, but I long for their familiar company even now. - Dream, riding in his carriage, unaware of what's about to happen in 10 minutes

Like the ending of this story would probably be Dream regaining total control of the country with his shadowy mercenary right behind him, while Quackity marries Wilbur and fucks him until they're both mellowed out enough to get therapy

But it's about the Yearning, most importantly.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Hi. :D

Regarding the ending, it seems like the fandom divided about Marinette's decision to hide the truth from Adrien. I've seen group of people believing the lie is the result of her being manipulated by Gabriel, there's other who said that it's in character for Marinette to control information and compare it to what she did in Bubbler episode and there's also people who believe that the lie is a result of the wish that make Marinette's memory become blurry hence why she believed that Gabriel and Monarque are two different people.

What about you? What do you think about Marinette decision? What could be reasoning?

Thank you and I'm sorry for grammar error. ;;

My personal opinion is that it's all the result of bad writing, making it impossible to guess Marinette's motivation. If/when her motivation is revealed, I'm guessing it's going to make about as much sense as Alya knowing who Ladybug is and still believing Lila. To show you what I mean, I'll just go through the arguments you bring up one-by-one and explain why they don't hold much water.

Gabriel Manipulating Marinette

For this point to make sense, Gabriel needed to actually manipulate Marinette, but that's not what we see. He makes a dying request of her, but nothing in the fight or the season backs up her caring about that request. The lead up to the wish is largely Bugnoir and Monarch in a verbal sparing match that looks something like this:

Bug Noire: You'd know this if you ever took an interest in him. But in reality, Adrien means NOTHING to you anymore! You've locked him in your house — LOCKED him in your Alliance rings! Locked him into a life that allows you to hide behind him in order to justify YOUR madness! Lucky Charm!! (summons a tube of glue) Monarch: All I want is for him to be happy

Oh yeah, she's being so manipulated here! Gabriel is totally changing her mind about everything! That's why the fight literally ends with Gabriel changing his mind and making a different wish than originally intended! That's how manipulation works, right?

If the message of this fight was supposed to be that Gabriel manipulated Marinette and not the other way around, then it would need to look something like this comic where he guilts her into keeping his secrets. It would need look like this because Gabriel and Marinette have nothing close to a positive relationship. They hate each other. They also know next to nothing about each other, which is why the fight's dialogue is nothing but exposition and squabbling over who knows Adrien better as Adrien is literally their only connection.

This is why the only manipulation that would work on Marinette is guilt tripping her about the reveal hurting Adrien because Marinette doesn't give two shits about Gabriel. But Gabriel doesn't do that. He just politely asks her to not tell Adrien:

Gabriel: (turns around to Marinette) Marinette, make sure that Adrien never knows about the villain that I was, (puts down the twin rings on the ground) but instead, that he remembers the times I tried to be a good father. (turns back to Gimmi)

This is not manipulation. He's not messing with her emotions. He doesn't say anything like, "telling Adrien will hurt him immensely Marinette. If you love him, you'll let him remember me as a loving father." He just makes a request of a young woman who hates him and hopes for the best.

If Marinette loved Gabriel and was heartbroken that he was her enemy, then his dying wish could be argued to be a form of manipulation because he knows how much she cares for him and how much his actions hurt her and how much she doesn't want to remember him as a villain, but that's not what the writers wrote. Instead, they gave us things like the pancake scenes and Gabriel trying to break Adrienette up with magic.

Marinette likes Controlling Information

I've talked about the scarf thing and Marinette's general tendency toward secret keeping before. My general thoughts are that there is no point in the show where Marinette is shown to like keeping secrets or controlling information. She only ever keeps secrets that arguably should be kept. The show has also never put her in a situation where she has an ongoing lie that actively hurts someone.

You may be thinking about the scarf thing as a counter argument, but for that to be an indication of how she handles ongoing lies, it would need to be an ongoing lie in the actual narrative and not just the fandom. As is, the scarf appeared in one episode and was then forgotten by the show. The scarf lie was also a split-second decision made without any knowledge of why the lie even happened.

If Adrien wore the scarf all the time and talked about how much it meant to him that his father had gotten him such a wonderful gift, then I'd agree with you that the scarf sets Marinette up as the type of person who might keep the senti thing a secret. But that's not what the show actually does. She's never confronted with this lie again. At this point, it would honestly be weird for her to bring it up.

I'm sure someone is reading this and thinking about the Chat Blanc thing, but the narrative treats that episode in such a confusing way that I don't even know how to approach it. A lot of people thought that it was the thing driving the season four conflict, but that doesn't actually seem to be the case because revealing it wasn't part of resolving the season four conflict. Marinette also doesn't seem to have any trauma around Chat Blanc. Instead - somehow - Adrien does even though he doesn't know it happened and I just... what?

At the very least, I think that we can all acknowledge that telling your partner that he ended the world in an alternate timeline that will now never exist and whose cause you do not know has, at best, questionable benefits. The only reason I wanted Marinette to tell him was because I thought that it was affecting her and because, in certain circumstances, telling him could have lead to Gabriel's defeat and I like poetic justice.

But if Chat Blanc isn't affecting Marinette, then telling Chat Noir is kinda pointless since there's nothing that he can do about it as far as she knows. It could even be arguably seen as cruel. I don't think that Marinette needs to tell her partner every awful thing that he does when the akuma of the day controls him because none of it is his fault and he can't change the past. Telling him just feels like guilt tripping. Given canon's wacky writing, a Chat Blanc reveal is just that on a larger scale.

I honestly can't think of anything else we could call an ongoing lie outside of the secret identities and general miraculous stuff. The senti thing is Marinette's first real harmful ongoing lie and it's one that she actively planned, too, since she would have had time to gather her thoughts before she sees Adrien. I truly don't think that it fits her character, especially since Adrien isn't shown to be in mourning.

I'm not saying that this would be an easy thing to tell him, I'm just saying that it really doesn't fit her character to choose to lie. Even if you disagree with my above arguments and say that the scarf and Chat Blanc were setups for this, canon itself has given Marinette an arc about being less controlling.

In season five we have the stuff with Lila where the whole "high road" thing was proven to be a bad call. And, Chat Blanc or not, season four ended with her saying this:

Ladybug: Why don't you just give up on me? I've lost ALL the Miraculous! I'm the worst Guardian EVER! I wanted to control everything, I didn't listen to you, I lied to you, I kept you at a distance! Every time you offered me a helping hand, I never took it! I really made a mess of EVERYTHING! (continues sobbing)

So what was the point of that if she still "tries to control everything"? (Even though I'd argue that she didn't. A lot of this rant isn't actually backed up by what we see happening in season four, but it's still the lesson that the writers chose to have her openly state she learned.)

In summary, Marinette has never been big on lying unless she has to and she's supposedly had an arc about not being controlling, so either this isn't it or she's learned nothing and season four was an even bigger waste of time than I already thought it was.

The Wish Did It

This is arguably the most plausible scenario, but if we go this route, then it's still bad writing because the wish rewrites the universe so there's no way to discover "the truth" because it isn't the truth anymore. Whatever Gabriel changed is now reality and the only way to make that not so is to retcon how the wish works. And if they're reconning that, well, how can you trust anything the show tells you about the lore?

The reason why consistent world building and characterization are so important is because it's the foundation on which stories are built. The puzzle pieces that fit together to create the cohesive whole. If your puzzle pieces don't fit together, then you are telling a story that the audience cannot logically follow and that is generally considered to be objectively bad storytelling unless you're writing literary nonsense like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. (Yes that's an actual genre.)

In Summary

Like I said at the top, this all just feels like bad writing to me. It's not the natural next chapter in the story. It actively goes against past characterization and supposed character arcs, but that's hardly shocking. Throughout the show, we've seen the writers do whatever the hell they want to make a plot work, ignoring their own lore in the process. I don't expect that to change and neither should you.

The Alya and Lila thing is my go-to example because it's the most glaring indication of what you should expect to see in this show. If a reporter who actively reported that Lila is Ladybug's best friend will not be swayed by learning that Ladybug is someone who actively hates Lila, then it is pointless to try to make sense of the writing. Trying to logically guess where it's going next or what a character is going to do is an exercise in madness because that's not how Miraculous works.

It's why I haven't weighed in on what the wish will mean for season six. The wish will mean whatever the hell the writers decide it means no matter what the previous five seasons contained. It's also why this blog largely focuses on discussing canon's existing flaws and ways that you could potentially fix them. That's the stuff I really enjoy and find value in. Theory crafting only works for media that is logically solid and consistent. Asks like yours are still welcome! Just know that they're going to bring out my most cynical, judgemental side.

[goldstar-rage]

I'll be honest and I need to ask. What exactly IS comphet supposed to be? As someone from a homophobic 3rd world country, I can atleast agree that heterosexuality is basically forced upon you but what is comphet supposed to be personally?? I can't get behind people saying it exists or doesn't exist because I feel like whatever definition google is giving me isn't making enough sense (it's all examples)

"Comphet" was invented by Adrienne Rich, a "feminist" political lesbian who was actually bisexual and didn't believe homosexuality (or even heterosexuality) existed.

Basically, it means that heterosexuality is a social construct of the patriarchy forced upon every woman to control them, and that lesbianism (a term she didn't like and called "clinical", by the way) is a feminist act of resistance against that. For Adrienne Rich, lesbianism isn’t about "genital activities" between women, but about "resistance against compulsory heterosexuality and the patriarchy". She believed that lesbianism was a feminist act, that all women should adopt it and described lesbians as women who prioritize women and are independent from men. She said that many women may not have a "preference" for heterosexuality but "chose" it anyway because it's forced upon them everywhere since forever, and encouraged women to fight this by adopting the lesbian experience. To her, we need to stop seeing lesbianism as "mere sexuality" ; once that's done, more and more women will embrace forms of "primary intensity" between women.

So : homosexuality doesn't exist and is an act of resistance against the patriarchal social construct that is heterosexuality, and lesbians are women who succeeded in fighting heterosexuality, and now prioritize women over men, as a feminist act that more women should practice.

It's easy to find a PDF on the internet if you wanna read that shit.

Also, now "compulsory heterosexuality" or "comphet" is used by modern days homophobes to say that heterosexuality is forced upon everyone since birth, which can lead lesbians to have crushes on men and sleep with guys because they've been programmed to do so and don't realize they're lesbians. Bullshit.

[katyspersonal]

What are your opinions on our Lord and Savior Gywn?

He didn't save SHIT!! He took the perfectly (?) functioning humanity and ruined it! Look at it, it got Hollowing!!

Okay, I am making the 'Marika is a MILF Gwyn' jokes here and there, but 1) Marika is a bit more of a straight up cold and mean person, all things considered 2) Yet she still has enough nuance, and a lot of her actions might be written on reasonable fears and 3) Gwyn is even MORE nuanced than Marika, from what I have concluded so far! Laurence is a similar kind of sinner too. Comparison of the characters that share a trope is helpful for my thought process, so bear with me a little! With Marika I see a more direct disdain and fear before the very nature of life, cyclic and treacherous, uncontrollable, being meant to perish one day but with new life sprouting from it, and thus doing lovely things like shunning Crucible-related lifeforms. With Laurence, we have enough evidence so far that beasthood was not created by Healing Church but something already lingering in the human code after Pthumerians and Loran, so ambition to seize and control it it was risky but understandable!

But with Gwyn, we are confirmed that human nature itself is dark, undesirable an terrifying, as well as how he sorta had the chance to see it 'in action' during uniting with humans to take war on dragons. And also in Dark Souls the cyclic nature of Ages is just a fact, and it would make sense that should Age of Dark come, he and his family would be the first to go as beings of Light. It is a combination of things: his kind being in true danger and not just "risking to lose power", the treacherourness of how political allyship simply works (your today's ally country against the common enemy could tomorrow ally with someone else to start the war on YOU) and simply the not-so-metaphorical horrors of the Dark itself! is not a speculation, the dangers are RIGHT here!

Gwyn messed the natural order of humanity in a way that I personally dislike and express it on multiple occasions: trying to get rid of what's barbaric and dangerous yet natural and not accepting that there is no light without shadow, or life without death. But I also feel sympathetic because he had a legit reason to fear the darkness within men. In is not as much philosophical but a literal concept in Dark Souls lore. He acted out of fear, backed up with a precedent, and it brought the ruin to himself and everyone else. Writing this I'd say he sorta falls for the type of a person I can only like in fiction but resent in reality. I guess I don't need to explain what kind of people this is, paranoid "but for a valid reason", being "preventive" with their drastic measures.. Good intentions path to hell self-fulfilling prophesy blablabla. His specieism doesn't help his case in the slighest. Ironically, all extremely human behavior of him!

(LOL thank you based Goldmask as usual xddd) At the same time, he is not entirely corrupt with the power he seized and used to strip humanity of what was natural for them; he, in the end, committed to what he believed was better for everyone and sacrificed HIMSELF too. I can respect the cunning and machiavellian person who, in the end, is above the vanity of a 'savior' and can give themselves too, not only others. He also did share his power with some humans, showing that he can take kinda benevolent choices even with those he fears. Yeah, part of calculated risk could be there; dude gave the city and his daughter to the Pygmy to, again, preemptively avoid some animosity. But in the case with the four kings, did he HAVE to? Or Seath for that matter, who is a dragon, another species he doesn't like?

I find it hard to detect 'truly' corrupt people in Soulsborne setting in general, and yeah we can fiddle with 'nuanced character' and 'everyone is morally grey' forever and never discover THE big bad we'd love to hate. But, out of those big bads, I think he deserves the benefit of being seen as a way more nuanced character than the corrupt leader the most! It is the case where he should not have done anything, but also should not have NOT done anything.. Soulsborne is eager with placing characters in a position and knowledge where every choice is wrong and they just pick a poison for themselves (and everyone else xd). Jokes about "haha people in power moment" are still mostly jokes for me. He is sympathetic in a way not like I think I'd have done the same (let's be real, I revel in darkness gfjjghk) but in a way where I understand too much to feel negative 🤔

[roborabbitart]

Potential hot take for Magic: the Gathering's Commander format, but I'm starting to think CEDH and Casual Commander should have two separate ban lists.

Now hear me out. I don't personally play CEDH because the concept of it simply doesn't interest me, but from what I hear, it's effectively an entirely different game in practice. Gone are the alliances, the negotiations, the room for errors. It's whoever does their thing the absolute fastest or stops the other players the best. Politics and generally having a good time, on the other hand, are the priorities of Casual Commander play, even to a degree at high power non-CEDH levels.

So as I think about this, Emrakul being banned for "not being fun to play against" makes no sense for CEDH. As a game, CEDH primarily revolves around combos and control, and while Emrakul is nothing to sneeze at, you either need to cheat it out or have an infinite mana combo, and with the former probably being most common, you're most often not going to get the cast trigger. I genuinely cannot imagine her making a splash in CEDH compared to the utterly deranged things people pull off there.

Casual Commander, on the other hand, is an entirely different beast, rule zero conversations can be difficult to bring up, and there's ALWAYS that one guy that brings the degenerate shit to a casual game, anyway. Banning based on fun value is a much more reasonable option for a specifically casual format. Banning things like Karnlock for slowing down or outright halting the game (or really anything generally deemed "unfun" by a majority of casual players), especially in a format that already tends to be slower, makes sense in a more casual setting. It's a bit more difficult of a thing to judge, as it's rather subjective, but other common examples seem to be fast mana and land destruction.

I'm admittedly on the fence about fast mana, but my big issue with it is that there's simply no middle ground. You either pay 2-3 mana for 1 mana, or you pay 1 mana for 2-3 mana. The only guaranteed "break even" mana rock I can think of is Timeless Lotus, which is legendary, can only be used in 5 color decks, and costs 5 mana to play in the first place, or Springleaf Drum, which is solid but has a pretty rough additional cost that already requires you to have a board state. A set of simple "break even" rocks and/or tapped mana-positive rocks would lessen the power gap between someone with fast mana and someone without. As it stands, with the possible exception of Sol Ring, if only due to how many precons include it, I do think fast mana would be worthy of a ban in a proposed Casual Commander banlist, simply due to how significantly it widens the gap between decks with or without it and how inaccessible it is. However, there's no denying fast mana is a staple of CEDH and seems to have plenty of counterplay, and from what I hear Sol Ring isn't even good there.

Overall, I simply think Casual Commander needs a separate, soft ban list to give a baseline for the most common rule zero discussions, while also leaving CEDH intact.

[bookishfeylin]

I love how feyre outright states that she wants to settle and learn to paint and "set down that savage, wild part of me that had only survived hour to hour" for Tamlin to then get shat on cause he wanted to give feryre the life she wanted...

I was talking about something similar here and here and here. As a big disclaimer for this post, it is WRONG for Tamlin to coddle and confine and control Feyre against her will in ACOMAF. I am not going to argue against that, because it is clearly wrong. What I will discuss is that it makes no sense for being coddled and whatnot to make Feyre feel like she's "drowning" and to be what triggers and compounds her trauma in the first place. It's a critique of the writing, not Feyre herself. With that disclaimer out of the way, let's begin.

Firstly: While Tamlin DOES NOT, as I've outlined in the first post, fall for Feyre because he sees someone dainty and feminine he can protect and provide for, you're correct that Feyre does explicitly want that type of life. @katymckateface pointed out that ACOMAF tries to retcon this and turn her into an adrenalin junkie and that it makes no sense, and I agreed, in particular because of what I wrote about how terribly Feyre's trauma is written (see the third link above). But we'll discuss trauma in a minute. For now, let's focus on ACOTAR 1. Feyre is her family's provider, the 'man of the house' as it were, so she's naturally tired. She doesn't want to be responsible for caring for others, wants to be able to enjoy life for herself and have someone else take care of her. This makes her suddenly hating this idea in ACOMAF very... strange. The book tries to argue that it's because of her trauma that she changes, but that excuse just doesn't work for me.

Secondly: About Feyre's trauma. The way Feyre's trauma is written makes no sense. After dying... shouldn't that have made her more scared of doing things? Of getting hurt? Of dying again? Logically, it makes no sense for her to desire danger and desire going on missions, when being in danger last time, and killing people in particular, is the main source of her trauma; and it makes no sense that being coddled and protected makes her feel overwhelmed like she's "drowning." Again, this is a critique of the writing, not with Feyre herself. I just don't know why it never occurred to Sarah that almost being killed and being forced to murder others traumatized Feyre UTM, so it makes no sense that going on dangerous missions where she's almost killed and murdering others heals her in ACOMAF. I do wonder if her original arc in ACOTAR 2 was about her withdrawing from the world and wasting away because she's so traumatized, and Tamlin, her family, and any new friends she makes were the ones who helped her out of that. If her original arc was that fear of death shouldn't keep her from enjoying life; that maybe she was originally going to learn to live, laugh, and love in spite of how dangerous the world is. At any rate, we live in the timeline where ACOMAF was published so we'll sadly never know. Anyway... The fact that going on life-threatening missions and doing dangerous shit in general is what Feyre finds healing as opposed to like. Living the soft life or whatever is interesting as she's apparently about to get this "soft life" anyway in ACOSF. As I said in my second linked post, do the stans actually like her arc in ACOMAF, or do they like that it's what Rhysand wants Feyre to be at the time, which is why when he wants her to play housewife they're fine with her throwing all her goals and desires and political aspirations from ACOMAF under the bus? And if, again, getting that life was "overwhelming" to her in ACOMAF and it made her trauma worse, shouldn't she also find this traumatizing now in and post ACOSF? Why wasn't Rhysand's overbearing nature and incessant coddling during her pregnancy to the point of putting her in a freaking shield triggering? And now post ACOSF, if being coddled and taken care of triggers her, how is she going to heal from the reproductive trauma she endured at the end of the book? Unless Sarah does a u-turn again in the future and decides that actually Feyre does find being coddled and whatnot healing. In which case I give up.

Thirdly and finally: again, the main issue with Tamlin is that he forces these things on Feyre without it being her choice to do so. He was rightfully called out for it, and I don't want anyone to think otherwise. But it doesn't change how bizarre it is that Feyre's character flips between wanting and loathing that life, seemingly for no reason other than the convenience of the plot, sadly doing a real disservice to the discussions of trauma these books attempt to have.

[sweaterkittensahoy]

why do you still talk to your parents if they hate you so much? i understand that's a very personal question, but you seem to get pretty personal on this blog, so.

I'm assuming this is based off my latest retelling of my dad and I getting into it when I was a teenager and feeling his apology was genuine and true versus a semi-recent event where he was a real shithead, and I had to learn to deal with it.

I don't know your relationship with your family, and I don't know your age, but here's what I know about me, my family, and my age: I'm 41. The only person I can control in any situation is myself. My parents have failings and fuck ups that pain me, but they also grant me access to my only living grandparent--my grandmother--whom I adore to my bones. If I cut them off, I lose her. Not because she is easily swayed by bullshit but because she's 90 and they live in the same town, and it's easier for her mail to go to them than for her to get to the post office. She hates talking on phone and email. She is not here to be judged. She rules.

But also, there are positives to my relationship with my dad that I find worthy of keeping. He and I are further apart politically than we've ever been. But all Dad wants when his kids are home is to watch movies, make food, and listen to us talk about our lives. Would I like him to apologize for calling me a disappointment? Yes. Absolutely. Is it going to happen? Fucking no. Would I like him to use my pronouns? Yes. Is it ever going to happen? No. Can we talk about the six movies he watched last week and have a good time? Yes.

Will my mother ever admit she's a severe alcoholic who has abused me for my entire life and continues to do so with her drinking? Nope. Not fucking ever. And my dad would drop me in a second because he would see my hardline on my mom as disrespectful, and then my mom would make SURE that anything I send to my grandmother via the mail would get lost.

I am 100% aware of the ways my parents come up short and fail me and try to cut me off at the knees (my mother especially). It's my job in taking care of myself to look at their actions and my own hopes for the relationship and decide how to adjust.

While it may seem odd to you, to me, I am literally in the healthiest version of my relationship with my parents I could be for what I want. I am very aware of where they won't meet me halfway. I know they will say things like "we never had expectations; we just wanted you to be happy" even when I could pull out a list of receipts a mile long.

I don't need their love to be validated. I have so many people in my life who give me that without struggle. I keep them in my life for a variety of reasons of varying weight and understand why I have made that choice.

At the end of the day, it'd be way easier if my parents just said, "We hate you. Stop being so you." But they don't. They put up a show of loving me exactly how I am while also failing at that, but again, I don't need them to love me exactly as I am. I am happy with who I am and how I live my life. Their power in my life and my sense of self is what I choose to put on it, and that power at this point is zero.

I enjoy my dad. I adore my grandmother. My mother exists. My MIL lives two hours away, so there's no way to avoid them if we're in the area. We went down in April and there were moments of deep annoyance, but nothing I wasn't expecting because I am clear-eyed and very accepting of what I'm walking into, and honestly, it's gotten fucking funny how right my guesses are.

How I handle my shit isn't for everyone. But it's my shit. And it's how I handle it. And every time I follow the path I've carved, I feel sure about my decisions.

[themanwhomadeamonster]

oh my GOD i deleted my rant by accident im gonna cry lemme try to remember what i wrote but tl;dr not really a theory but me trying to arrange my understanding of albrecht and tmitw

i title this: wallbrecht is everything everywhere all at once

also i wrote this at 5-6am and didnt sleep so shit's probably messy

ok so a major theme in warframe that recurrs in warframe is the loss of identity or sense of self. natah/lotus/margulis, erra becoming pazuul, teshin being controlled by the worm queens, the operator dissociating and believing they're our warframe, then the operator losing themselves to the worm queen and the operator (+rell) confusing ourselves with tmitw himself , the drifter in duviri, warframes themselves losing their sense of self (umbra at some point, and potentially arthur and aoi down the line), albrecht worrying who really left the void dimension, the remaining entrati family themselves!. we're also told many times that the void gives but it also takes, and that it's heavily influenced by strong emotions

in cosmic horror stories usually the horror is a representation of something else. in lovecraft's works it's often his disgust with people of colour, viewing them as something completely alien. in bloodborne part of it is the fears of pregnancy and dealing with offspring. i haven't played darkest dungeon but i've heard that it's about trauma and how the overwhelming traumatic events become too much to bear that people go mad. in the lighthouse, part of the horror is that people will fight and kill just to know the truth, or what they believe to be salvation

so i think albrecht's horror was his fear of losing his identity. we knew from the clock's archives that his experiments hadn't been going well prior to the bell incident. he was losing respect as an archimedian, maybe he lost respect as a father and husband too. i think a lot of us theorise already that albrecht IS the man in the wall, not a doppelganger like tmitw literally was with the operator. but tmitw being omnipresent means that they can freely simultaneously be and not be other people, the paradox of eternalism. albrecht is now the void, he knows every timeline and every outcome and potentially every person (except operator/drifter because they're already void in multiple senses of the word) but he is also still one human. the human mind can't reconcile knowing everything, that's just madness. lucky that kids aren't as self aware as adults!

the void isn't evil nor good. it gives and takes merely because that's the way the universe works, very vaguely dare i say the law of conservation in (a very sci-fi way) action. the void is in the grand scheme of things is just a natural phenomenon of the universe. but the overwhelming emotion present during the 10-0 accident (if that even was an accident) and albrecht's own experiment just happened to be fear, so the void literally embodied the concept of fear and became a person, vecause that's just what the void does. it became an unknowable being behind a veil just beyond our perceptive reality that understands the plights of humanity a little too well. it could have manifested into something friendly and offered us and albrecht a deal in a polite way if the circumstances were right but it wasn't. tmitw is a manifestation of the void so whether the man - albrecht - wanted to or not, he had to approach our operator in their greatest moment of fear. what he did have a choice in, though, was to offer a deal. and what better way to secure a time loop, multiple ones even, that will guarantee your becoming wally than to be a time-space hopping entity who can exploit a bunch of scared kids who didn't know any better.

i don't know what we'll be using the vessel for but i don't think we'll be using it to fight a giant wall (and if we are it won't be the climactic final fight). i don't think we'll ever overcome the void, and we don't need to. the void just is. but the man in the wall literally is just a man. and i know people dunk on bad cosmic horror when the spooky thing is actually just a person or has sympathetic motivations but i think here warframe may be able to pull it off well. it's a cosmic horror that's made life miserable over multiple lifetimes, but the horror simultaneously is just a victim partially of his own doing because the cosmic horror never was alien, it's just a person who's scared of losing himself, just like the lotus was and just like our operator was. the cosmic horror IS the person in the stories who faced the horrors, who faced themselves in the seriglass bell - all it took to differentiate us and albrecht was an *accident* (though at this point it was probably intentional)

we need to confront albrecht/the man in the wall and try to stop his madness. but like many cosmic horror stories go, i think he's trapped no matter what. he'll either overcome his fear of losing himself and become one with the void, leaving us for good, or he'll try to return to gomaitru. but the fact that he's not the same as he was before and neither is gomaitru, with what he's seen and experienced as tmitw will be so maddening that he'll have to leave for the void once again in a suicide mission if he still can't reconcile with *what he is* now. in true cosmic horror fashion we will probably never fully know his motivations till the end, being a greater being than our scope of thinking - and with eternalism in place, maybe albrecht reconciling with himself was what already happened back in the seriglass bell