#but i totally agree

[casper-ry]

I'd like to add something to that last part, because I totally agree!

Mainly, unlike the samurai, the Medicine Seller has to have a Reason to use the sword.

Sure, he could threaten people with it, he could hit them with it, but ultimately, he cannot use/unsheathe the sword to harm anybody, unless he has a Reason for it.

So these three principles, Shape, Reason and Truth, are things the samurai don't even care about. They raise their sword against anything and anybody they don't like, to threaten, intimidate and "punish", despite supposedly having a sort of honor/codex/rules.

But the Medicine Seller, even if he'd want to, couldn't do that.

He couldn't harm a living being of a human Shape, whose Truth and Reason are not evil in nature.

The Medicine Seller is far more qualified to wield a sword than any samurai, because unlike most of the samurai, his sword is actually bound to (magically enforced) principles, that aren't just the loose and bendable words of the samurai codex.

One thing about Mononoke that I find kinda funny is that the samurai in the series are always pretty useless.

A lot of anime present samurai as these, like, hardcore unstoppable badasses, but whenever a Medicine Man runs into a samurai, they're either stupid, cowardly, or they just get in the way. At best, they're portrayed as being in way over their heads. Even the evil samurai in the series aren't particularly badass. They're just portrayed as thugs and lowlives that happen to have swords.

Not only is this funny, it also ties into the feminist themes of the franchise. A lot of Mononoke has to do with the hardships women face in a male-dominated world. That an exalted, all-male class like the samurai are in reality a bunch of losers helps show how bitterly unfair the gender dynamic in Edo society is. A lot of these guys are just allowed to fail upward because of their connections or social status or whatever while lower class women who are braver and more competent than them just get crushed by the system.

One thing that's never said outright but is still clear from the reactions of the characters is that only men of the samurai class are allowed to carry swords. Legally, a merchant like the Medicine Man isn't allowed to have one. However, not only are the swords the samurai carry completely useless against mononoke, but none of the samurai are even good swordsmen in the first place. Whenever they do use a sword to kill someone (which is rare), it's usually an unarmed civilian that can't defend themselves. These aren't hardened warriors; they're just bullies with a title. The Medicine Man is way more qualified to carry a sword than any of them.

[10001gecs]

one 100 word email written with ai costs roughly one bottle of water to produce. the discussion of whether or not using ai for work is lazy becomes a non issue when you understand there is no ethical way to use it regardless of your intentions or your personal capabilities for the task at hand

with all due respect, this isnt true. *training* generative ai takes a ton of power, but actually using it takes about as much energy as a google search (with image generation being slightly more expensive). we can talk about resource costs when averaged over the amount of work that any model does, but its unhelpful to put a smokescreen over that fact. when you approach it like an issue of scale (i.e. "training ai is bad for the environment, we should think better about where we deploy it/boycott it/otherwise organize abt this) it has power as a movement. but otherwise it becomes a personal choice, moralizing "you personally are harming the environment by using chatgpt" which is not really effective messaging. and that in turn drives the sort of "you are stupid/evil for using ai" rhetoric that i hate. my point is not whether or not using ai is immoral (i mean, i dont think it is, but beyond that). its that the most common arguments against it from ostensible progressives end up just being reactionary

i like this quote a little more- its perfectly fine to have reservations about the current state of gen ai, but its not just going to go away.

[tizeline]

Draw rottmnt donnie and rottmnt leo fighting

The word “fight” can be interpreted a number of ways, so you get one drawing of the two of them doing some friendly sparring and one where they’re just having a stupid sibling fight

[uselessgay10101]

I desire angst that makes me feel as if my own heart were breaking

I wanted to end every chapter crying as if I knew these characters in my daily life

can i speak my truth ? can i keep it real ? there shouldve been more in-party conflict in blades 2. like obviously mc should’ve gotten to cuss mal out in particular when he was like You Dont Know What We’ve Been Thru as if getting kidnapped and forced into a magically induced coma and getting your blood stolen and having constant benadryl nightmares is a walk in the park lmfao, and also just gotten to talk more about what they went through and how it’s impacted them

but also there should’ve been way more beef between the other party members. like girl if i’m nia and i’m spiralling scorning sleep and food constantly hunting for a way to free MY GIRLFRIEND (!!) from the clutches of some goth elf cunt on top of making the fantasy catholic church christlike again and repressing my inner shadow demon and one of my friends is like “hesdeadjim.png give up also fuck you” and then fucked off to be an alcoholic pit fighter, i wouldve actually just thrown hands when we saw each other next. no magic no nothing just me and my nasty little fingers (covered in paper cuts from all the arcane shadow tomes ive been reading) coming straight for her eye sockets. staff of silverlake should’ve been nia’s weapon and she should’ve leapt into the pit in chapter 4 and clocked imtura in the skull with it.

like you bitches should be CRAZY!!!! you should all have DISORDERS!!!! you should be begging ravens perched on busts for RESPITE AND NEPENTHE from your memories of me !!!!!! the moon should never beam without bringing you dreams of ME and the stars never rise but you feel MY bright eyes. tyril should be half-mad with grief and stress he should be mumbling to himself and seeing mc’s silhouette in dark corners. nia should be clearly and obviously off her fucking rocker and constantly on the verge of self destructing and taking us all out with her. imtura should be constantly blind drunk so she doesn’t have to feel her grief or anything at all really. mal should have been in the wind the second it started looking like mc wasn’t coming back and nobody’s heard from him in months. kade should be in a bottomless pit of grief bc when he was stuck in the shadow realm we never gave up hope and we went to rescue him but now that the tables are turned he’s slowly losing hope and day by day and night by night we recede and he becomes more faithless. threep and loola should be inseparable sleeping in a pile together never beyond a wing-length from one another and keeping obsessive tabs on all the other party members no matter how far-flung across morella they are because they’ve already lost everyone and everything they knew to the shadow court once and they’ll be damned if they lose anything else. also kade and aerin should’ve built up a weird semihostile rapport bc once everything fell apart and everyone went their separate ways it was just the two of them in the whitetower palace and kade would go to his cell and sit out of arm’s reach to vent about his time in the shadow realm and his grief and hopes and fears. they both knew and loved mc, in their own ways, despite how aerin hurt them, and now they’ve both lost them, maybe for good. maybe one day aerin starts talking back

where is the SPICE where is the FLAVOUR? where’s the DRAMA where’s the OOMPH where’s the PANACHE? you cannot look at me and tell me these dysfunctional bitches wouldn’t fall back into their worst habits once the one person who held them all together up and vanished into the void. why am i not ending each chapter feeling like i’ve just gotten punched in the dick bc the love is so obviously still there and that’s why it hurts so bad. they should’ve put their whole budget and pussies into forcing the party to fit themselves back together even though they’ve all grown new sharp edges and keep cutting each other up. they should’ve gone full dark no stars about it. grief is an amputation but hope is incurable hemophilia you bleed and bleed and bleed, plants that are split down the middle dont heal they die, you are a language i am no longer fluent in but still remember how to read, what lived and died between us haunts me still, if someone asked me at the end i’d tell them “put me back in it”, i care what ghosts think of me, come back even as a shadow even as a dream, someone has to leave first this is a very old story there is no other ending to this story, etc, etc, you get it you understand. also the mc should’ve come back WRONG.

[bigskyandthecoldgun]

steddie fake dating au that starts because robin’s mom keeps pushing for her and steve to get together and robin gets so fed up that she yells, “it’s not gonna happen because some people are gay, mom!”

and upon seeing the utter horror and fear on her face, steve swoops in and says he’s the one who’s gay. cue mr. and mrs. buckley, local hippies, attempting to show how supportive they are, and all the while steve gets eddie to agree to fake date to get the buckleys to prove they’re safe, so that robin will feel comfortable enough to come out to her parents.

[mroddmod]

little scrapped comic bc it felt a bit ooc to me in hindsight

[imvec]

Sequel to Sunshade

[invisiblearsonist]

underrated supernatural duo — sam and rowena

like come ON. they are actually everything to me.

[counting-stars-gayly]

This might be a hot take, but I actually like that Percy figured out Luke was the traitor at the last minute. There were A LOT of clues that would’ve been hard to ignore, and he ignored them for as long as he could. And it’s clear that even after accusing Luke, he’s still surprised and heartbroken at Luke’s confirmation of his suspicions. He was holding out hope, guys!!

Also, the Betrayal Scene flows better as an exchange of dialogue and a swordfight than it did, in the books, as a monologue and a scorpion sting. This also leaves a bigger impact on the viewers and characters because it’s more emotional.

[ramblerogue]

See you next year.

[libelulx]

keep warm

[glitter-stained]

Being a Jason fan is hilarious because ever so often you'll find what I call a jason roulette post where the author could have just as well been a jason todd fan, a jason todd hater or certain iterations of jason todd himself. Such examples may apply:

> Have people all collectively forgotten all the shit Jason's done? Like, that guy is legitimately a mass murderer how do we keep forgetting that

> Jason Todd should have stayed dead

> I feel like Jason Todd should kill himself

> Since Jason thinks Batman should kill murderers maybe Bruce should just kill him

> God I hate dc comics and what they've been doing with Jason Todd

> Jason Todd should have remained a villain

> Jason Todd should hate himself tbh

> *Surprise tentatodd screenshot sneak attack*

[bluerosefox]

Dinner?

Feeling a bit Spirit Halloweenish.

Danny blinked, stared blankly, blinked again before slowly very slowly closed his front door.

A few seconds later Danny opened the door again and once again meet a certain tallish young man, around his age if maybe a few years older, in front of him...

Who was it?

Bruce Wayne....

Bruce freaking Wayne, someone according to what he heard from Sam telling him from what she heard from her parents had apparently just dropped out of med school and was 'in the wind' according to rich elite gossip talks, was at his front door.

........

Why?

Wait... Did he just ask Danny out on a date?

-x-x-

Bruce Wayne has just dropped out of med school and is beginning his training into becoming the person his city needs him to become. While looking into where he can he remembers how in his teen years the planet was almost destroyed but was saved by a ghost teen hero and looks into it. He digs deep to uncover what happened, uncovering impressive firewalls Amity Park has, etc and finds out about Danny Fenton/Phantom.

He decides to go visit the younger man, who is just about to start college himself, and ask a few questions.

He uhhh... Bruce just wasn't expecting to find Danny very cute (even though he was pretty certain Phantom had been his first male crush when he saw a photo of the teen years ago), and adorable with his owlish stare, and well the first words out of his mouth was

"Would you mind joining me for dinner?"

-x-x-

[lgbtlunaverse]

So I've said multipe times now (here and here) that thinking nmj is just so blinded by privilege he doesn't undertand that acting out of line gets people killed is, in my opinion, a misunderstanding of his character that ignores the part where he's, you know, actively dying the whole time and thinks that's a good thing. But that doesn't mean I don't think privilege plays no role at all in how he views the world.

Specifically, his view that death (at least premature or violent death) means something.

Death isn't always a tragedy to NMJ, but it is always meaningful. If you kill an evil dangerous person for your righteous cause, that death had meaning. There was evil in the world and now there is less of it. Similarly, if you die in the pursuit of your righteous cause, that death has meaning, because the sheer dedication you gave to it that you were willing to die for it will further that cause, and your bretheren will be invigorated by your sacrifice to fight even harder.

If a death isn't meaningful, that's an injustice and it is up to the living to give it meaning. That's what cuts so deep about his father's murder. There were no consequences, no changes, no meaning. Wen Ruohan was just going to get away with it! He fights and wins an entire war to make it mean something, to make it so that the unjust murder of Nie Mingjue's father is part of Wen Ruohan's downfall.

But this is a view he can only hold because he's the kind of person who's death will be meaningful. Most ordinary people's deaths are meaningless. Not ontologically, not inherently, but they are made meaningless because no one cares. For death to be meaningful you either have to be so powerful that anything you risk your life for will be impacted in some way. (Like, say, if you sacrifice a long life for immense martial power in a faustian bargain with a blade) Or if people with that kind of power care enough about you to do so for you. For most people, this isn't true. A starving street kid has no power to change the unfair world that put them there, even if they risk their life trying, and no one will do it for them once they die.

Nie Mingjue knows this in abstract, and of course rightfully believes it's wrong. But all that does is make it yet another righteous cause people should be willing to die for. Everyone's deaths should mean something, we'll make it so or die trying!

This is what the conflict between nieyao is about at its core. Because Jin Guangyao, fundamentally, cannot conceive of his own death as meaningful. Nie Mingjue grew up around powerful men who could change the world but refuse to do so because god forbid they risk a single hair on their perfect heads. Meng Yao, on the other hand, grew up in an environment where no one of importance would blink twice if you died. He was surrounded by meaningless death. Indeed his entire early life is defined by that lack of care.

Meng Shi dies and no one cares. Meng Yao gets thrown off a flight off stairs and no one cares. He has to be the one to do the caring, and once he's gone no one else will do it for him.

So he has to live.

Jin Guangyao eventually gets far enough that he actually does aquire the power to change some things... as long as he's alive. If he changes too much, holds on too tightly to his ideals, he'll die and it'll all be for nothing. He can't sacrifice himself for his goals because doing so would immediately render those goals unobtainable. No one will care about what he tried to do. He won't be a heroic sacrifice, he'll just be trash that finally cleaned itself up.

And well... Nie Mingjue dies, and someone makes it mean something. Makes it mean so much that the entire story of mdzs would not exist without it. Jin Guangyao dies and it doesn't mean anything. Most people are glad to be rid of him, and the few that are not don't do anything to change that.

[quigzahhutt]

"I'm Mr. Franco. ....Mrs. Alex?"

*Alex nods*

🤨🤨🤨

[archivewriter1ont]

Bad Batch Incorrect Quotes

(After rescuing Echo from Purkoll, the Batchers are alone on the Marauder....)

Hunter: I found Crosshair's old armor....Echo can wear this on the mission, until he gets his own.

Wrecker: Cross, quick! Paint a skull on it!

Crosshair: *holds up paintbrush* Already on it, Wrecker.

Hunter: Uh, why?

Crosshair: So they know he's ours now, di'kut.

Wrecker: Everybody else gets new squadmates. Now we can, too.

Hunter: I'm pretty sure we have to check with Rex on that first. He's still his CO, I think.

Crosshair: Well, you're our CO and I don't think we asked you, either. Did we, Wrecker?

Wrecker: Nope.

Tech: I agree with Crosshair and Wrecker. In this case, I believe we should abide by the proven, inter-planetarily recognized law of FINDERS KEEPERS.

Hunter:

Hunter: You guys just ruined my kidnapping plan. I had the getaway figured out and everything.