#bye!! this is not up for discussion

[xxplastic-cubexx]

what other silly little antics do you think charles and erik got up to in that cube besides play chess because my money's on book discussions. like them book clubs with suburban moms where you drink wine and talk about books you read except theres no wine i dont think thats permitted in the plastic cube prison and theres not even a club its just two old men

[slavhew]

Be nice

late addition. existentialism

[psychomusic]

so. I've been reading some posts on the jedi order tag AND i won't talk about my opinion on "are jedi good or bad discourse" BUT i wanna point out some lore to everyone who's complaining about the jedi taking kids into their order: (in the EU) it wasn't always like this.

if you take swtor era (more than 3000 years before the prequels) there were many jedi who joined at an older age. like, for example there was a guy who broke his engagement to become one. most jedi remember their families because they were old enough when they decided to go.

THEN in darth bane's book trilogy (circa 1000 yesrs before the prequels) there is a passage where two sith lords are talking about taking bane, already an adult, to study at korriban. one doubted him because he was too old, ans the other told him he sounded like a jedi, and that ONE DAY jedi will have to accept only kids into their ranks if they really want to find "pure" people that can learn their lessons quicker.

one day!! so it wasn't always like that!! the ongoing wars with the sith, who corrupted and killed many of them, had pressured them into taking always younger people into their ranks.

also, consider a thing that this video explains super well: training to become a jedi is not like exercising, because there is a transformative lesson at the end of the training that changes everything. you can't just do as much as you can, but not finish.

the transformative lesson, as the video explains, is that through the force, everything is the same - from rocks and ships to life and death. at the end of the training you have to understand this fundamental truth.

yoda says "you have to unlearn what you have learned". during times where they were constantly killed off or corrupted by the dark side (and if you haven't learned this lesson you are more susceptible to this corrupting), younger people were taken in to actually finish their training (a training that was ultimately about being a good person AND that you could leave at any point if you weren't sold on that, too)

(remember that for the sith failure = death. like. that was the alternative for force sensitive kids. it's not like sith had any moral problem with taking kids away without consent. sith don't have moral problems: they believe that them being stronger in the force means they can do whatever they want as long as their strong enough to go and do it. there are MANY passages in many different star wars stories, even in different mediums, that say this out loud)

AND (this is more of a critical thought than just stating the lore) the fact that they started doing it out of necessity doesn't mean it's 100% good BUT you know. the whole set up of the prequels is that we're starting off the story in a period of crisis and decadence all around. most of the systems of the times were about to fall. OF COURSE they had problems. if they didn't, we wouldn't have the story to begin with.

that doesn't automatically mean jedi = bad and sith are better, tho. you wouldn't take the last, chaotic and decadent period to jugde something, would you? it's like deciding that the athenian democracy sucked because people at the times of Demosthenes failed at recognizing the new schemes in which the world was evolving into, and still believed that their city would be important as it had been in the previous century. They just didn't fucking expect the Macedons would conquer half the world known and more, and have the subsequent political power. Still, their experiences in the 5th century with democracy were very good, even better than ours on many fronts, if you contextualize a little. the jedi had flaws, and most importantly, they didn't fucking know the future and everything that ever happened, ever, so they made mistakes. that doesn't automatically make the system ill, or bad, or not-working. systems can have setbacks when the world changes. (just like athenian democracy had one when they lost the empire that was funding the democracy. they even had a tyranny for a while and then fixed the problems. that doesn't diminish retrospectively their democracy)

[syn4k]

area man somehow stumbles into the mianite fandom, does a triple front flip, accidentally introduces 2,000 people to the series, sticks the landing, and is basically singlehandedly responsible for a miniature fandom revival in the year of our lord 2024, illustrated

[riacte]

how it started:

one ren peeing twaddle conversation later:

[vanweezer]

no pressure to rb im just fuckign crayceeeeee im doing this for a laff

[icewindandboringhorror]

I have a big google doc thing where I keep track of media and stuff (putting everything in loosely ranked categories), which is mostly just for my own reference so I know what tv shows I've already seen before, etc. and I never really look back through it, typically just a quick "okay, watched two movie in the past 8 months, need to quickly slap them somewhere in the lists. okay. done. save document. exit". But today I was actually reading through some of the old notes and there are like... MULTIPLE places where my comment is basically "It would have been good if it were about elves" or "I wish there was a fantasy show made in this same style" or "It's well made, but I just keep thinking about how I would like it more if everyone was an elf or was in old 1700s costumes" or etc like...... lol.... Most biased media ranking system on earth blatantly made by someone with an extremely hyperspecific range of narrow interests. It'd be like if a food reviewer only had 5 foods they actually liked, so they'd just go to a pizza place and be like "eh, the pizza was okay, but I just think it would be better if it was cereal instead. :/ ...2 out of 10"

[spaghett-onaplate]

i need to pack my bags and get the hell out of frown town

[saltinesinsoup]

aughhh the hell of like. being sick but feeling decent like i could go to class. and the knowledge that like. probably shouldnt. and also my class is in half an hour and i havent had lunch

[xxplastic-cubexx]

what is your favorite thing about charles and your favorite thing about erik? separately, as in what you like most about their characters :]

a devious question this one is, my friend!!! it's hard enough for me to explain my thoughts cohesively, but having to pick ONE thing i particularly love is difficult. with characters like charles and erik, theres been so much done with their characters over the decades and so they have so many components to them that make them so interesting and fun to observe. BUT I TRY FOR YOU TODAY. under the cut i kinda ramble and the size of this text box makin me anxious

i think if i were to be simple and broad, what i enjoy most about charles is his determination to help others, even if he isn't really thanked and/or if people don't even like him. ofc, this isn't to say he hasn't done wrong- to be honest, the fact he does wrong/questionable things at times is another aspect of him i really enjoy, maybe because- broadly speaking- he's meant to be altruistic (intent vs outcome and all that). i don't know if that's super exciting to most people, but it is for me

as for erik, my reason for liking him is easier to explain tbh. To Be Simple And Broad, his progression from villain to antihero over the decades has been fun to observe (as much as i have so far anyhow) and analyze. i think to be a bit more specific, him using his rage and pain as justifications for his villainous actions is definitely what compels me the most: hurt people hurt and the sort, an idea i've always found interesting (something something vicious cycles and the like). yet now, he recognizes this wasn't really. A Just Thing To Do and is beginning to change that, which i enjoy

[raetttriestowrite]

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Thank you TK for the ask!!!! Fanfic Writers: Director’s Cut - author's pick!

So author's pick is a cruel cruel joke bc as soon as you sent that my head emptied of like. everything ever that i wanted to talk about 😂 and i could talk about a lot of things.

So! i'm going about this bit from Take the Photographs (and then like. The Bleeding Effect as a whole):

"[The animus] doesn't work like that," Desmond disagrees, shaking his head. "To pick up the skills you have to synchronise, and to synchronise is to invite them into your head to Bleed. Can't have one without the other."

So! Okay!! My kinda headcanon kinda How It Works in BTMTMIM for the Bleeding Effect, and the reason Desmond's all kinda fucked up about it.

There are 2 ways that the animus could work:

you watch your ancestors memories as like. a movie. 3rd party observer style

you experience the memories as though they're your own.

Rebecca is trying to move the animus towards the first way, to reduce the Bleeding Effect. But. okay. how much do you learn if you just watch someone else do a thing? i could watch martial arts videos all day and at the end i'd still be just as incapable as i was when i started. SO. Realistically the first way would achieve nothing to help train Desmond into a better assassin, which was the whole point.

Therefore, the second way, where you experience the memories as though they're your own, would be the way to gain the abilities of your ancestor. you'd build muscle memory off of their actions bc you're remembering them as your own actions. so it'd be functionally the same as practicing for the amount of memory-time that pasts. Kinda.

Which is where i come in with the sync thing. So obviously there's sync rates - higher is better, lower is worse. So the way i'm thinking of it is like. the more you can immerse yourself in the memory, the higher the sync and the more effective it is for learning shit, bc you move away from the 3rd party observer thing. but like. a memory is not only actions. it's thoughts and feelings. so the more Desmond sync's the more he feels like you is his ancestor, bc he's remembering the events as Altair or Ezio or Connor would remember them, and he remembers being Altair or Ezio or Connor. He remmebers being them. In that memory he stops being Desmond and becomes his ancestor.

And that? that lingers. right. so sure there's 25? years of memories rattling around in his skull in which he's Desmond Miles. But there's also like. a decade worth of being Altair, and fucking. 4 decades of Ezio and another 2? or Connor. and there's a part of him that is convinced that he was that ancestor for that time. they're his memories.

(Which is what fucked up Clay so bad. He could remember too many people and couldn't figure out who was who was when.)

Anyway. So. Desmond achieved high sync which meant lots of memories of not being Desmond. and so the Bleeding Effect is just. when his memories of Alltair or Ezio or Connor are more who he is than Desmond. for that brief instant. So now he's desperately trying to organise the memories into some kinda way? and hoping that if he can box it all up right, acknowledge each memory as whose it is as Desmond and make it Desmond's memory, rather than his ancestors, he'll manage to curtail the Bleeding Effect personality shifts he's dealing with.

And then there was this bit from You'll Find a Man:

"It's good to meet you," Booker says perhaps halfway down. He's moving better now, easier, the drugs having worn off a bit. "And no offense, Jack, but I'm glad to be out of your head." "You as well, fratello mio," Jack says, crooking a smile at the pale blue-gold figure. It's as good a name as any of his others.

which long story short, and was not have been 100% clear in the story, but Des got a new personality wholesale bc like. He's wildly fucked up and Desmond couldn't deal with being in That Room in Abstergo. Self preservation kicked in and he ended up just. remembering everything from everyone, (where usually the Altair/Ezio/Connor shift's only remember themselves) and accepted the new name bc he wasn't really any one of them, but all 4. bc all memories.

and That. spoilers. is going to eventually lead into my Fix for Desmond's fucked up brain problems, where he does get a handle on the Bleeding Effect. bc like. Clay did it... (Clay doesn't count he rend himself down to code and could rewrite his whole being if he wanted.)... actually. there is a hint of this eventual solution in When The Lonesome Whistle Cries. kudos if anyone can pick it out and draw the correct conclusion. I've been building towards this for fucking ever and cannot wait to get to it proper in the fic.

i'm actually fucking pumped to get that whole bit out, even though it's. uh. ???? idk when it's gonna happen but it's there. it's one of those threads i've been carrying along from the start. Apologies if any of my readers wanted to wallow in the uncertainty and angst of the if Des will ever fix his brain. spoilers, i guess?

Anyway. there you go. that's my mildly incomprehensible and incoherent rambling thoughts on the Bleeding Effect, as it exists in Bless This Mess This Mess Is Mine 'verse. Thanks for letting me talk about it!! <3<3<3<3

[sunburnacoustic]

Girl. Girl what.

[inferencesarchives]

solo rank is abt to become my villain origin story

idk how much longer my sanity can take this

[tracle0]

These characters will not show up again but LOOKIT WRITING

[tripably]

.

[tutuandscoot]

Um, ok but why does this (if you would allow me to momentarily don my tin hat) explain like… everything to do with VM/Canton/everything leading up to 2014 ???