#but also i acknowledge his sacrifices

[problemduetest4life]

Say what you want about Nicky but he is seriously the strongest soldier. Mans gave up his whole life to take care of his two cousins, one of which is openly homophobic and the other being Andrew Minyard. That's love bitch.

[raining-its-pouring]

Five Pebbles is so funny. Shoutout to characters who learn to prioritize compassion but still have the same deep-rooted self-actualization and self-worth issues they always had. Shoutout to characters who use compassion as a bludgeon to hurt themselves with under the guise of self-sacrifice. Shoutout to the guilt that drives one to heap blame upon themself until they feel the only way to atone is through punishment. That’s just as much about inflicting misery upon yourself as it is about helping the person you hurt. Get therapy king.

[rainofthetwilight]

I think we should acknowledge the fact that when kai comes back from the nether-space, dude is probably not gonna be okay both mentally and physically

like, being trapped in a place like the nether-space that has so many identical shapes everywhere, basically a maze that has no way out, with no food or water for what seems like a few weeks will definitely drain him by alot. plus, if he also fights the forbidden five while in there, he'll just drain himself even more. there is no way he's gonna come back out of there without atleast being a bit tired physically and mentally

[tritoch]

wild to me to see posts like "wow everything in the tempest is named after shakespeare...emet you melodramatic bitch you sure loved theater". because the prospero-emet thing gets played up so hard in the english script and you can carry it so far!

like prospero is an asshole magician who, after being deposed by his brother as duke of milan, settles himself and his daughter on a remote island, enslaves the local spirits using his magic, and bitterly plots to reclaim his past glories. he rules through violence and deceit, and only survives and is reconciled when his plots reach their fruition and his brother is taken to his remote island and plots ensue and everyone decides he was totally right all along and they were huge dicks to him and they're sooooo sorry and he gets to go back and be duke again wow! and it's okay because he's like "i was only doing mean magic to get my rightful spot back and now i'm giving it up because magic is evil. :)"

the tempest is what emet wants his life to be. prospero is not a villain in the text of the tempest. he is barely treated as antagonistic by the text and framing of the play itself. all his abuses, his neglect and control of his daughter, his enslavement of caliban and ariel (local spirits/monsters/people of the island), his deception and plots against his brother, his abuse of magical powers (not awesome, from the pov of the contemporary audience), all that ultimately gets swept aside in the rightness of his return to milan and the warm feeling of the world being set to rights. prospero can't undo the years he spent on the island but they are ultimately a blip in his life before he returns to the rightful state of affairs. his abuse and enslavement of caliban, easily the worst thing he does in the play, is totally set aside when caliban goes "wow now i see how truly benevolent my master is. i love him and see the ways of christian good and i'm so, so appreciative he chose not to kill or beat me even though he totally could have and would have been in the right. he's so just and intelligent." everyone loves and forgives him and they all agree both his management of the island and his ultimate return are so good and so wise and so right.

emet comparing himself to the tempest (or being compared to it, depending on how you want to read the diegetic status of the place names) is absolute wishcasting. it is an attempt to manifest the happy ending he will never, ever get because his sins cannot and would not be forgiven in the way he wants. he wants to imagine himself as the righteous returned duke whose crimes, including the enslavement, abuse, and exploitation of those he saw as his rightful inferiors, were totally worth it, i promise. and if emet is prospero, the warrior of light is his caliban.

[fluffypotatey]

Macaque would be happy if his final death was due to wukong turning around.

Macaque main motive is that he wants to be important to wukong, friend or foe, he wants to matter to him. I truly feel that in canon, macaque is less mad about his death, and more mad that in the end he was nothing to wukong. Season 5 he hears indirectly wukong trusts him, he matters to him, and he jumps to the rescue. So yeah, having evidence in the end that he matters, would comfort him.

yes, it would comfort him, but Macky is also way too aware of the other relationships Wukong has compared to their own. he would be comforted by the fact that he is still someone Wukong would fight for and turn back to, but by s5, Macky recognizes and respects Wukong's relationship with MK

[clowndensation]

there’s a question to be asked i think about to what extent “getting out” can be conflated with “being saved” in this show, and what freedom actually means to any of these characters.

like you can argue that shiv saved ken by voting against him on gojo, but what if your intent behind saving someone is to inflict a worse punishment than if you’d just left them trapped? can a child weaned on poison survive on milk, or are you just sentencing them to a death by inches, starved of the only thing they know? and if you save someone specifically because you know that being saved is the worst thing that can happen to them, is that kindness or cruelty? at what point does a good thing become a malicious act?

and you can say that roman is finally free, but what exactly is he free from? the company? his father? does unlocking a cage mean saving a dog, or are you allowing him out on the street knowing there’s a kill shelter nearby? if the driving anxiety behind roman is that he’s an idiot and a failure—that he’ll never amount to anything, and trying will only lead to pain—and he’s finally cut loose once all of those anxieties have crystallized into cold hard fact in his mind, what has he actually escaped from? if the cage is in your mind, is it even possible for somebody else to unlock it?

the fundamental truth of a tragedy is that even being saved can be a death sentence, if the characters are incapable of escaping the thing doing them the most harm (themselves and their childhoods)

[in-fair-verona-we-set-our-scene]

I genuinely think that Lae'zel would be Ulder's biggest hater out of all the companions.

Like, her big thing is that she believes the figures of authority should have faith in and reward those who follow them, otherwise they do no deserve their followers. It's the main reason she breaks with the Vlaakith so readily--the Vlaakith betrayed Lae'zel first by not holding up her end of their relationship as god and devotee so now Lae'zel will join a rebellion to overthrow her with a new, nicer god-king to devote her life and spirit to. She's pretty firmly in the camp of giving your entire self to a person or cause, but only if that person or cause gives something back and respects the sheer entirety of what you're giving.

We also see this with how Lae'zel often comments approvingly of other companions breaking with their own abusive mentors/parents/gods and is often openly critical of those authorities exploiting their underlings. I think her belief in this best exemplified by her dialogue when Gale is asked by Mystra to blow himself up. She essentially says Mystra does not deserve Gale because she lacks faith in him and that Gale deserves better than a god who returns his devotion with the callous dismissal of his life.

(That dialogue is also when I began loving Lae'zel despite her abrasiveness. She respects herself and knows her own worth so well, and thinks others should see it in themselves too, to the point of dismissing the demands of a god because the god clearly doesn't respect the life and worth of their follower. For her, the idea that a mortal life is worth little to a god and can be treated as such is not a given, and in fact is an injustice)

And the problem I'd think she'd have with Ulder isn't anything he did during the game, but prior to it. Because Ulder's reactions are, I hate to say it, reasonable if harsh if one truly believes Wyll is a power-hungry warlock (or perhaps just an idiot) who made a deal with a fiend (though, considering the kinds of people Baldur's Gate welcomes on the regular, what Ulder himself has done in the past, perhaps the exile was a major overreaction). But what it took to reach that conclusion, that's what I think Lae'zel would have a problem with,

Because Ulder has no real evidence either way what motivated Wyll to make this pact and we know that devils often prey on the desperate. Raphael outright states that they often go after people who have no choices left and offer them one. It shows a startling lack of faith in Wyll that Ulder would just assume he had no good reason to make the pact. Because he's just assuming! The only people who knows what happened are Mizora (a devil) and Wyll (who's not talking, who can't talk about it), and his son who so far has been nothing but good and loyal to his father and city shows up with a missing eye, a pact with a devil, and an empty field that is quite frankly suspicious in how Wyll clearly was trying to show him something that's no longer there and he's not explaining despite clearly wanting to--

Lae'zel would be absolutely incensed at the lack of faith Ulder demonstrated in his son in that moment, at how Wyll's love and fidelity was repaid with doubt the moment things got hard. All Ulder had was very suspicious circumstance and the word of a devil and suddenly that's enough to banish his son? No, fuck that. Lae'zel knows Wyll as a good and noble man, knows that even his new devil-like looks were gained through selflessness and nobility, knows that Wyll loves his father even now even if she thinks Ulder lost the right to that love. She would rip Ulder to shreds in her usual blunt and direct way and it would be glorious to witness.

[zeb-z]

Foolish and Cellbit lore makes me crazy because their characters are very much influenced by the entities they each have chosen, and it comes in to play in key moments. It influences their desires and their actions significantly.

Foolish, who makes sacrifices to the Chaos entity constantly. Who is his usual silly, impulsive self, and then takes it a step further, thinking ‘what would Chaos enjoy?’ Not looking twice before jumping, living and thriving in chaos and unpredictability, even if it is at the cost of his health and well-being. Especially if it’s at the cost of others. He tries to play each side of the conflict, sometimes for whatever will benefit him directly, the rest of the time just by seemingly flipping a coin and going one way or the other for shits and giggles. He starts conflicts and he fans the flames because he wants to see the fallout. He leans into the chaos without a second thought.

Cellbit, who’s a little more subtle, but the effects are still there. He cannot find a single thread on the island without having to find the other end. He takes on the problems and mysteries of everyone else on top of his own. He keeps back to eavesdrop at any opportunity when he says he’s leaving a conversation. He digs his grave as a double agent in the federation, not only to sabotage, but because he cannot stand the idea of a mystery being out there that he can’t figure out. It costs his sanity, it costs his time, it gives him gray hair and puts him in constant danger, it piles on so much work and responsibility on him, it’s a large part of why he feels so alone on the island - and yet he wouldn’t have it any other way. Because who else would know what to do in the face of such puzzles?

The knowledge entity pushes Cellbit to seek that knowledge, damn the cost. His biggest weakness is that he cannot let anything lie - he has to solve whatever is put in front of him, because he has to know, it doesn’t matter what or why in some cases. Just as Foolish is always pushed to leave things to chance, because the unpredictability is exciting, enticing - even when the answer to a problem is obvious and he could easily take action to get the best known outcome.

[astarlightmonbebe]

slightly hot take (?) but personally i felt the reactions in ep 17 were all in-character and justified... don't have the time to get into it, but it boils down to the fact that knowing something logically =/= knowing it emotionally

[peony-pearl]

Me connecting invisible dots that weren’t meant to be connected at all: Maybe another reason Sokka is really firm towards Iroh when he asks for help to save Zuko from Azula in BSS is because Iroh had pointed out to Yue that she had been ‘touched by the moon spirit’, to which was the catalyst of Yue sacrificing herself to give that life back. While Sokka hates to think of his sister or family or new friends dying because of the loss of the moon spirit, he still lost Yue, and there’s a part of him in his young heart that resents Iroh for bringing up Yue’s gift, because it was the moment that led to his loss of her.

[ngmn2002]

about your pinned post, specifically this part: "he [tsuchigomori] can change amane's future but chooses not to". where did you get the idea that tsuchigomori can change amane's past from? unlike the clock keepers, tsuchigomori's powers don't grant him control over the past, present, or future. he is able to know everything that has happened and will happen, and is able to use that knowledge to intervene, which would change the future. but we have no reason to think he can alter the past. now that it's happened, there is nothing tsuchigomori can do to help. the only way tsuchigomori could've possibly helped was if he'd noticed that amane's future changed back when it happened, when amane was still alive, but tsuchigomori had no reason to think amane's future would change back then. so, i don't think it's fair to say that tsuchigomori is choosing not to help amane, when it's impossible for him to do anything at this point.

I was using his own words, the ones he voiced out to Nene himself.

About Amane's future:

Well, he said he pretended to care for student Amane to keep his 'human image', but we know deep down he did care. But that care was not enough for him to pay much attention to what was going with Amane, thinking it all will end well and that's it, reading his future part in his book. Seeing the moment Amane's future changed, while he didn't (maybe didn't manage to) do a thing had him regretting it, the moon rock became his yorishiro and he became No.5.

Hanako is another issue, the talk there was about alive Amane, we don't know if he might actually be able to give Hanako a future if he wanted. Maybe he can't, but if he can, then well, his care and regret together are also not enough for him to give up on himself, yet again. But I assume it's the first case. Either way, it's his right to choose, no one forces him to give up on himself for someone.

And certainly, according to his words to Nene, he might care for some people a lot, but not enough for him to give on his own existence to change their future.

A best example after alive Amane's case, is Alive! Nene's herself. He knows about her future

and "fatal/as he puts it" death,

can do a thing about it, according to his own words over his power of changing a person's future, he cares for her,

But simply, not enough for him to step into changing her future, and giving up on himself.

Unlike Amane's case, he knows death, no future, await her really soon.

Although I assume, AidaIro won't leave such power for No.5 to hold hanging in the air like that with no use. Maybe at some point, he will find it in himself to sacrifice himself to change one's future, maybe Nene's, resulting in changing many others to the better in the progress, Amane's and maybe Tsukasa's included, since they are deeply affected by Nene. He'll be saving many, with choosing the right one future to change.

This, is just a thought, it might not really happen, but I'm sharing it, for nice Tsuchigomori's sake. To be fair to him. Even when the words he voices show such uncare, we will say we see deep down into him, and find him to really care.

[bruciemilf]

I think one of my fav fics had Jason like loving his mom deeply right- but also had him being like , that was not a good place for a child and she made some mistakes but she loved me and I love her ,

Cause like that’s what growing up is.. seeing your parents as humans ya? (Plus it paralleled his relationship with Bruce and stuff v good)

YES! EXACTLY!! everyday I'm.begging dc stans to understand imperfect parents shouldn't equate bad parents.

[eldragon-x-moved]

Ford and Stan and Bill are all characters of all time to me in different ways

[guitarnacle]

this man named micheal on jstor is claiming that igor golomstock one of the most seminal and well respected scholars on totalitarian art is entirely wrong about there being a hereditary link between earlier futurist/avant garde movements and the development of total realism. like what the explanation golomstock provides is clear cut and logical and is backed up by historical evidence. revolutionary trends in art are co opted by the developing state in order to sway public opinion and then as it gains control it starts to dismiss this progressive style as immoral and fearmongering, and turn to conservative methods (ie. realism in every case) to legitimise itself by co-opting the longest and simplest artistic tradition AND to bypass cultural boundaries as the most literal expression of totalitarian goals. like the change is traceable and representative of how the totalitarian state develops... micheal i think you have egg on your face... his only evidence is "futurism and realism look so different!" hes totally ruined his previously very interesting study of popular perceptions of islamic art. SAD. oh well there are other articles

[zaldrizescrowned]

What are you the patron saint of?

patron saint of blood

patron saint of the life that flows through our bodies. patron saint of violence. patron saint of love. something that does not watch over but exists within: not for protection but for vitality. there is no passion without a beating heart at its core. when that heart breaks open, someone has to be responsible for what it bleeds.

tagging: whoever wants to

[nomaishuttle]

tbh im kinda mad i wasnt the one to end things bc now that i dont have rose tinted glasses on im looking back on some of the shit he did and said and im like genuinely pissed off