#but neither of those are the point

[emoclowncircus]

quick little rant thingy because DMC reddit just pissed me off

I hate how so many people in the DMC fandom fall for Dante's party guy shtick and genuinely believe him to be as dumb as a rock . For example an argument i see often for this is his inability pay off his debts/rant . People believe he's simply too dumb to manage any money when in reality it's stemmed from the fact that he has little to no consideration for his well being and puts others' needs before his,rather than his own lack of intelligence. Like Grue's daughters,whom he sends money to support them--or Enzo,his ex middleman. Even in the anime he goes on his way to save his client's brother,without getting proper payment.

Other than that,again in the anime he proves himself to be a worthy-occult detective and how great he can be at reading people. His office also has a decent amount of books lying around showing that yes,he does read and value knowledge

Not saying he's smartest out there,but he is in no way as stupid as people make him out to be.

[loumandforyou]

Do you want to hear my story?

[rattsin]

Fury made Alanna gasp for breath. How could anyone get well in a menagerie? How could Jonathan breathe? This went against all the commonsense rules Maude had taught her for healing: clean air, quiet, absolute cleanliness, calm and reassuring voices. Didn't these people know anything?

[ruporas]

happiness today and tomorrow (ID in alt)

[jodijadekat]

DAY 11: Frames

[one-paper-bag]

it’s always so crazy to me how much weight is put on John and Paul’s romantic relationships and how they affect the Beatles, not Ringo or George’s.

I feel like it’s always “John fell in love with Yoko”, “Paul fell in love with Linda” and that’s why the band fell apart. Which - aside from being absolutely crazy conclusions that lack the nuance of, y’know, acknowledging Ringo and George (and also the whole host of other problems the band had) - is so fascinating to me because what do you mean it all hinged on John and Paul being together? What do you mean the band was absolutely peachy when Ringo or George were in love but as soon as something serious drives a wedge between John and Paul it’s all over?

There’s something in stating they found other people so they couldn’t be together that implies such a toxic codependency but also an insane jealousy of anything that takes the other’s attention away. Point is I think their devotion to each other made the breakup worse.

[carthonasi]

It’s been like a week now but I can’t stop thinking about what could have been going through Moldaver’s head when she saw Lucy and Norm for the first time in years when infiltrating Vault 33

[parab0mb]

Maybe its silly to shave when you're already about to molt, but there's no harm in looking sharp as a pendulum before transcendence.

(she'll probably be fine don't worry about it).

~~~~

A really dumb joke that I spent way more time on than I should have.

[neversetyoufree]

I've been thinking lately about Vanitas and Noé's first "what is salvation" fight at the bal masqué and what it means about their individual definitions of the concept, and I've realized something about Vanitas.

Noé's definition of salvation is the obvious one. It feels natural. To save someone is to keep them from dying. But in a way, his understanding of salvation is also almost selfish. Noé's foundational trauma is the constant loss of his loved ones. He is the eternal sole survivor. So of course he wants to keep people alive—he wants to "save" the people he cares about in the way that keeps them by his side this time.

It's not wrong to want that, of course. I don't mean "selfish" as a condemnation. It's just that the definition of salvation that Noé starts the series with is inarguably the one that best serves his own happiness.

And it's the same with Vanitas.

When Vanitas kills the little girl Catherine by restoring her true name, he tells Noé he doesn't know what salvation is. He might be lying there, or he might be telling the truth in that he's never put his definition of salvation into words or acknowledged it on a conscious level. Either way, though, I do think he has a definition of salvation somewhere in his mind, and it's a very personal one.

Vanitas sees salvation as the preservation or restoration of one's true self. You're saved so long as you can preserve your essential self, uncorrupted by outside forces. Even if the price of that selfness is death.

While Noé's foundational trauma that informs his worldview is the loss of his loved ones, one of Vanitas's foundational traumas is the loss of his bodily autonomy. Through Moreau's experiments and Luna's mark/bite, he has been transformed into something no longer fully human, and he hates it. From the moment Luna told him he was dying, he said he wanted to die as himself rather than live as their kin, and he has been denied that opportunity.

Nothing is more important for Vanitas than being able to dictate the destiny of his own body, and malnomen are the ultimate corruption of bodily autonomy and selfness. Altering one's true name warps not only their physical body, but their very being on a metaphysical level. The curse takes everything a vampire is and changes it, and doing that to an unwilling victim is the ultimate horror for Vanitas.

Given that context, of course Vanitas thinks that killing a child to restore her true name counts as saving her. He's restoring her essential self and un-corrupting her body and being, and even if her self is only returned for an instant before she dies, it's preferable to living on as something warped by an outside force.

Vanitas absolutely starts the series with a definition of salvation, and like Noé, it's the one that best serves his own happiness. He wants to be saved. He wants to be returned to his human self, and failing that (since he knows it's impossible), he wants to wipe out all traces of the force that changed him and then die without going any further down the path of inhumanity.

Vanitas might not be able to admit that definition out loud (or even to himself directly), but it's there, and it guides him early in the series as much as Noé's own definition of salvation guides him in turn.

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

Sasha using the title "Lord" in RiAAU after taking over Toad Tower and presumably killing Grime and stealing Barrel's Warhammer from him, and other political and military leaders assuming she's a man because, well, Sasha is a gender neutral name, so they hear Lord Sasha and assume they're talking about an adult male toad warrior. The second most powerful person in the known world and only real threat to the Leviathan reign!

Cue princess Marcy fleeing Newtopia and her father seeking refuge with his worst enemy hoping to offer information and political levarage in exchange for protection, perhaps even offering herself in marriage to transfer eventual inheritances and whatnot, and she finds out that Lord Sasha is not, indeed, a dark and domineering toad warlord, but a beautiful, terrifying girl her age that looks like her and oh god her poor little lesbian heart can barely take it.

[mohntilyet]

Personal headcanon about the "you picked the wrong dellamorte" line, I don't think illario actually likes rook outside the context of them being someone close to lucanis. Like rook on their own isn't much to him, but when they meet it's yet another person talking about his cousin (why isn't he good enough for whatever job they're hiring for?) and on top of that they somehow bring him back from the dead (another whole can of worms for illario). Now he starts turning on the charm, but whether he's actually interested or this is just one more thing his cousin has that he doesn't and it gets under his skin, who knows. Either way, rook ignores illario, the guy who lives off his charm, and is instead interested in the guy who's never even dated before and thinks giving someone a knife is how to flirt. Infuriating

NO THANK YOU !! i am genuinely sorry if i have ever implied illario is into rook like i see some takes about it and unless it like ties into your rook's personal backstory i don't seriously think he's romantically jealous. at all. my enjoyment of that line stems from illario's pathological need to make it about himself and not see his strengths but what lucanis has, and therefore what he doesn't. he's annoyed enough to try and goad you in the middle of a fight about the 'wrong' dellamorte and completely blind to the fact that the venatori are at best, a stupid fucking alliance, and at worst, a cult that will devour the crows from the inside out and illario would have been the one to give them the keys. he sees lucanis make allies, needs his own, and instead of charming the other talons/houses as he should, he (probably spitefully) picks the venatori. or maybe he just thought it would be easier. ugh he makes me want to telekenetically throw him around

[novelconcepts]

There's something really fascinating about the duality of Van and Lottie. Two kids who opted into stories to keep going, to keep everyone else going. Two kids who told themselves what they needed to make sure they could arrange an inherently nightmare situation into a home they could all stomach. Van with fiction; Lottie with faith. Neither any truer than the other, neither any greater as a lie. There is no such thing as false hope, just hope. Tell it to them all to make sure the despair does not win.

And then the loss of that faith, of that fiction. How it shapes them both in shades of depression, distances them from the others. Lottie speaking less and less; Van joking less and less. Lottie no longer having the trust of any of the others; Van no longer even trusting herself. Both of them striving to rework the narrative and not quite, not quite being able to grasp hold of the threadwork anymore.

Van with scars on her face she wears for the rest of her life. Lottie with a scar on her forehead that is totally invisible in adulthood. Van going off-grid, distancing herself from everyone until given no other choice. Lottie going off-grid, returning with as many people surrounding her as she could manage. Both knowing in their bones the Wilderness, It, is not real. Both falling back into the Hunt anyway. Both staring it in the face, getting dragged back to who they were at seventeen. Lottie embracing. Van rejecting. It makes no difference either way. They follow the same path, the same road, the same endless trail to the same heartless end.

Lottie dying meaninglessly. A murder. Lottie, going back to the vision of fire she's had since she was a teenager. Lottie, who wanted so badly to be useful, to have a purpose, to mean something, and who dies alone.

Van dying meaninglessly. A murder. Van, going back into a house filled with smoke, just as she's feared since she was a teenager. Van, who wanted so badly to have a purpose, to find a reason, and who dies alone.

The story doesn't save either of them. The story only keeps unspooling. More tragedy. More meaninglessness. More stupid death, as all death is stupid--as Travis and the button, Natalie and the needle, Jackie and the snow, Ben and a fabricated trial were all stupid. Meaningless. Unnecessary. But always, always coming for them. You don't actually cheat death. You can't. You can't make meaning out of nothing, but it won't stop you trying. You have to try. That's all we have, all we are. We are all stories in the end, and we are trying so desperately to make that matter.

[vargaslovinghours]

Say it like you mean it

[sleepyvib-es]

Just having thoughts about the og series starting with Luke, Thalia, and Annabeth's promise to each other about family and Nico making Percy promise to protect Bianca, his sister.

Annabeth to Luke:

"Family, Luke, you promised."

Nico to Percy:

"you have to promise to keep my sister safe." "I… that's a big thing to promise, Nico.." "Promise," he insisted. "I'll do my best. I promise that.

Both promises being broken.

Also this part:

"You promised you would protect her," Nico said. He might as well have stabbed me with a rusty dagger. It would've hurt less than reminding me of my promise.

_

The dagger mention here ?? And Annabeth's dagger being the cursed blade part of the prophecy that Luke used to stab himself with that was cursed specifically because he broke his promise.

Nico's fallout with Percy being the catalyst to Percy accepting being the Hero of the Prophecy because he wanted to spare Nico from suffering more pain. And because he felt he owed it to his sister.

Annabeth's reminder and unwavering faith leading to Luke's sacrifice, completing his role as the hero of the prophecy.

Both promises being everything but also not enough in the end.

Neither of them getting back the family they wanted.

Both of them healing and making bonds that they let themselves have despite all their heartbreak and pain and fear of abandonment.

Annabeth finding a family in Percy and Grover (and Sally).

Nico finding a family in Hazel, never seeing her as Bianca's replacement. Nico eventually being able to accept Jason and Reyna and Will's friendship and love for him (don't think about reyna and bianca hunters of Artemis parallels or jason dying).

Just... both Annabeth and Nico desperately wanting to preserve their families.

Both Annabeth and Nico being so full of love.

Love being why Annabeth's faith in Luke never wavers, which saves them in the end. Love being the reason why Nico wanted to resurrect Bianca and also why he respects her wish to be let go. Love also being why he helps Percy and why he doesn't give up on Hades making amends with his family, which ultimately helps save them in the end.

[swan2swan]

Brooklynn: "Wow, Darius. Look at you, all uniformed up! Looking real...mature."

Yaz: "That's a...word choice."

Darius: "Why, thank you, Superstar! Love the new hairdo!"

Yaz: "...that's how friends greet each other."

Brooklynn: "Well, you know me...can't stick to the same thing for too long!"

Yaz: "......uh oh."

[wildsaltair]

BONUS