#but also i might have to kms

[violinfantasy]

yelim officially out of university games haha this is fine

[momozilliness]

guys should i break my fast and omad till new years or just keep going bcs like ive been fine until yesterday when i got a lil too sillycidal and made bad decisions and now everything hurts and ive been passing out like every two hours-

[serpentface]

What’s the Janeys/Brakul death scenario?

So like upon review I mostly just was going to kill them off for Couya + Faiza + Hibrides’ character development (#FEMINIST WIN!!!!!!!).

The background situation of their death scenario is something that will happen either way:

Throughout the story, the pilgrimage requests tribute from the towns it passes through (mainly food and other supplies). This is a common practice for pilgrimages and the travels of royalty, and Imperial Wardi civilians are used to the concept (just not so much during a famine). Some people give fully willingly (a lot of people believe in the pilgrimage's goals/and or the necessity to keep its high status participants fed), most are at least partly coerced (usually not via direct threats, but the pilgrimage contains a couple hundred soldiers, the Usoma, and Odonii leadership. The threat is implied), some are Fully coerced via threats.

In the latter third of the story things are not going well. There’s been a lot of internal struggles among the soldiers and dissatisfaction with pilgrimage leadership (mostly Stavis), men are starting to defect and a large body are getting outright mutinous. The group has also lost much of their food supplies and things are getting desperate (they've been starting to eat their own pack khait and oxen)

With this going on, the pilgrimage sends three soldiers to exact tribute from a farming village in the province Lobera. They meet a group of men acting as representatives for the village, who flat out refuse to give tribute. Things escalate into an outright fight, the soldiers are better armed but few in number and are killed.

One of the village elders finds out that this happens and panics, knowing that the men who killed three of the Usoma’s soldiers (one of which is her son) have signed their own death sentences, and possibly that of others. She attempts to persuade the families to preemptively flee, and then takes the village's one remaining skinny old plow ox to carry the bodies of the dead soldiers back to where the pilgrimage is camped. She supplicates herself before Stavis Amanti and begs for mercy, saying they don't even have enough food stored to feed themselves, much less to give, and that the men thus considered the killings righteous self defense. She shows that she’s returned the bodies for rites as an act of goodwill, and offers the ox in tribute, the most valuable thing she can provide. She begs that the Usoma accepts this as tribute and spares the men's lives, and that the pilgrimage moves on without taking anything else.

Stavis bids her safe passage away from the camp (without confirming or denying that he's accepted her plea), and the heads of pilgrimage confer on what to do. The killing of the soldiers is a violation punishable by death, but this would be like, a notably bad PR move. Meanwhile a contingent of soldiers (including some major side characters I haven’t introduced) break off and lead a raid on the village to avenge their fallen brothers and loot supplies. Others get drawn into the fighting, and it devolves into a full on massacre.

A couple families had fled at the elder’s suggestion, but most refused to leave their homes. Some of the villagers believed they would be left unharmed if the killers were given up, others had been preparing for a reprisal and armed themselves with everything available. But they have few actual weapons and none are trained combatants. All of the remaining men and adolescent boys get killed, one woman manages to take out a soldier using a shovel but is killed, most of the other women and girls are spared murder but several are assaulted. The village is looted for supplies and kindling for funeral pyres.

Stavis Amanti has no fucking idea what to do. The soldiers defied orders and killed Imperial Wardi civilians, but the current climate amid the pilgrimage would make it EXTREMELY Bad for him if he demanded their punishment (but also potentially very bad if he didn't- not all the soldiers participated in the massacre and many were horrified). Faiza encourages him to exert authority in a measured response by having the ringleader of the mutineers killed but sparing the rest, and offers to publicly back him in hopes of avoiding full on mutiny.

The raid reveals that the villagers had been hiding more grain than they claimed they had (as in like, enough to feed their people on starvation level rations for a few weeks). Stavis takes this as an opportunity to justify not punishing the mutineers (as the villagers DID technically have something to give, and execution IS technically the punishment for refusing the order of tribute (though not execution of the entire community)), but insists that their Galenii bless the village dead and their men build pyres for the civilians as is honorable conduct. (This attempt to make amends is not particularly appreciated by the survivors.)

The pilgrimage holds a funeral for their own dead soldiers. The village ox that was given in tribute is killed and butchered for the funerary feast.

----

In the Bury Your Gays route, Brakul is one of the three that gets killed during the tribute extraction. Janeys loses his fucking mind when his body is brought back, and tries to slit his own throat on the spot. Couya stops him by wrestling him to the ground while Janeys screams threats at her and the old woman in a very pathetic public spectacle. He is deprived of all sharp objects.

While the pilgrimage leaders are conferring, he hovers miserably around Hibrides (who is also not feeling so great about all this). He's suddenly very interested in her pregnancy for the first time ever, asks to feel the baby (which has been just starting to kick). She's like "fuck off", but he strongly implies he's planning to commit suicide asap and she concedes and then is like Okay I Let You Feel The Goddamn Baby Now Leave Me Alone Holy FUCK.

Janeys turns his attention to fucking murdering anyone tangentially involved in this happening. He’s among the initial raid party, plays a major hand in it turning from its ostensible 'find and execute the ones responsible, subdue the rest, steal their food' directive to a full massacre by directing his men to immediately attack the first man he sees. He and his group capture three young men as prisoners and demand that they be slain at the soldier's funerals as is wartime custom (this isn't wartime). Janeys additionally demands that he should get to do it, as the only kin of any of the dead men. Once that's done he immediately cuts his own throat and bleeds out. They wind up getting cremated at the same time so things work out how Janeys wanted it.

At one point I realized that this is kind of just The Iliad?

----

So like obviously whether they die here or not has little impact on THESE events, but a lot of the endgame revolves around Couya Faiza and Hibrides and these deaths would be very significant to THEM in varying capacities. It affects the trajectory of the final stretch of their arcs and adds a lot of layers to the ultimate Couya/Faiza conflict. I also liked their deaths being kind of random and shitty and meaningless because that in of itself is kinda ~thematically resonant~ with the story. (A lot of tension between the lack of intrinsic meaning to events and the profound levels of meaning ascribed to them).

I'm almost definitely not going with this version of events though. Janeys and Brakul don't have much active involvement in the endgame and don't Really need to be alive for it as it stands, but I think the version where every main character (except Faiza she's doomed) survives to see What Has Been Wrought and living to experience the fallout ultimately works better.

[transxfiles]

we need to abolish the sex binary now and i mean it

[falling-hand-in-unlovable-hand]

i'm fucked up man

[bulbabutt]

giving your own iteration of the ninja turtles a mental illness is fun but watch out! you might be self diagnosing!

[wizardyke]

ive had multiple people tell me that the mid 1500 - early 1600 british accent sounded like a texan/southern usamerican accent and thats why shakespeare sounds better in a southern drawl but i fucking refuse to believe that bc theyre all quoting that tumblr post 😭 ive been googling variations of this factoid for a while with only quora questions coming up

[teenagefeeling]

i love being mentally ill. accidentally did too many things today and haven't eaten lunch but now im just in my hotel crying about how i don't want to go get food and i wish i had someone here who i could either just go to a sit down restaurant with so i wouldn't feel insecure or just. i wish i had something here or i could just remove the necessity of eating altogether. i feel like shit. i don't want to do anything i wanna go home.

[alukaforyou]

omg stop wait i am obsessed w this acne studios musubi bag noooo

[tastycitrus]

why the arcane river story had to focus on only one (1) adversary

Black Mage: Adversary. So you've finally come. *there's actually 15 Explorers instead of 1 dude* Black Mage: Huh? *there's also 6 Cygnus Knights (including Mihile)* Black Mage: Wait— *and also 4 Resistance classes, as well as the Demon and Xenon* Black Mage: There sure are a lot of you— *and 6 Heroes, and 4 Nova, and 4 Flora, and 2 Anima* Black Mage: Hold on— *and the two Transcendents of Time and some random telekinetic dude from another world* Black Mage: There's an entry limit— *and if you want to count them, two people from ancient Japan, a forest guardian with her animal friends, a kung-fu master, and formerly some dude with a gun, a space cowboy, and a little girl with her animal friends* Black Mage: WHY ARE THERE SO MANY OF YOU?? *the Black Mage gets obliterated by the combined force of, like, fifty people ganging up on him*

[pvrrhadve]

.

[drc00l4tt4]

Sobbing over John Cazale dont hit me up

[maxterclass]

I love that Max is becoming more and more vocal and critical about Red Bull's slow progress this season and nearly casual approach to other teams catching up with them. I think the time to wake up and start making serious strides forward is now because otherwise the points lead will start slipping through their fingers. I don't have an ounce of doubt in Max's abilities to extract everything from that car but if other teams become outright faster, like McLaren already kinda is, he can't perform miracles forever.

And for Horner or Marko to then go 'oh the convergence is normal, we expected this' or 'we hope merc/ other teams keep improving so they take points off each other' like????? Are you trying to say that you've got nothing left to offer but Max and vibes?? So yeah, kinda glad to see Max speaking up about the complacency of it all and calling for improvements.

I'd be lying if I said I'm not worried... I don't really care about the constructors' tbh but to secure the wdc he needs the car and good developments. Realistically, I don't think he will rapidly lose all his lead but it's not slam dunk either, the season is not even halfway done yet.

[bisexual-slime]

I'm well aware the pain I'm in is self inflicted. but that doesn't mean I know how to or even want to stop :)

[mothpdf]

crying on the public transport

[medusa-is-hot]

Sleep Deprivation has Taken Over.

it's goal? to make me write something more traumatizing than i love atsushi.