#can we be so real if the average guy did any of the things i believed god was doing even the most conservative relative would have qualms

[gideonisms]

It's so wild to me how I will open up to certain types of xtian about something I'm struggling with and they'll immediately be like "the world seems so nonsensical doesn't it" or "life feels empty and meaningless right" and then they are always surprised when I say that actually lots of things about the world make more sense to me now and I do find meaning and joy in my life. I'm just not good at socializing or making money ❤️

[greaseonmymouth]

I saw this shared around on Threads (why do I go there, I hate it) and commented on as 'this article is so good' and 'must read' including by a few people whose opinion I normally respect, and seeing as monsterfucking and monster everything is like a special little interest for me, I of course instantly clicked through to read it

and I have to say

what the everloving heterosexual fuck is this

two fat paragraphs about omegaverse that don't even mention its origins - I mean - I just - gaze upon this phrase, and despair:

During estrous, Omegas’ vaginas ooze with “slick,” responding to the Alpha’s intoxicating pheromonal perfume.

IT'S CALLED "SLICK" BECAUSE IT'S FROM SELF-LUBRICATING ANUSES. THE REASON THE OMEGAS NEED SELF-LUBRICATING ANUSES TO BEGIN WITH IS BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE VAGINAS.

I. have been rendered figuratively speechless. the straights don't know what slick is. the. i. how. how did we end up like this

their dicks swell at the base, creating a “knot,” which lodges them inextricably in the Omega’s slick-soaked (I am so sorry) vagina.

"(I am so sorry)" girl you're writing an article about monster smut and then you have the gall to be embarrassed by the this tame ass (or should i say vagina?) heterosexual omegaverse?

okay, okay. deep breaths. we've only just got started. we started by covering Morning Glory Milking Farm, a minotaur/human erotic romance novel, which well - I've read it, and it's not a bad book by any means, it was actually very very good, a solid story with a great cast and perfectly paced and satisfying romance and loads of sex - is very straight. it's just a minotaur. it's a big guy with a big dick. it's your standard gentle giant/normal sized girl romance. it's not very freaky, but you know, I don't blame the average reader for coming into this thinking this is some out there stuff. gotta start somewhere, right? we didn't all come up through draco/the giant squid crackfic in 2005, you know? and now we've covered Sarah J Maas and we're entering omegaverse territory, this is getting knottier now, right, freakier? this article is going somewhere, right?

you can imagine the intrigue, enemies-to-lovers, and other story lines involved as each captured female eventually finds the member of the barbarian tribe who is destined to worship and fuck the living daylights out of her for the rest of their lives. Oh, and their dicks have a sensitive spur on top designed for clitoral stimulation. It’s just as blue and velvety as the rest of their big alien bodies.

okay so the minotaurs aliens are blue now, i guess.

It seems, also, like the romance genre as a whole is being pushed by monster romance to make things in human-human books as freaky as possible.

ohh?? are we finally getting a proper freak on now??

This genre, “why choose?” or “MMF” (or sometimes even MMMF or MMFM), and also known as “reverse harem,” always features a heroine who is showered with sexual attention by men who are also sexually involved with each other.

having a thousand yard stare moment over here

this author seriously thinks that all these heterofied monster romance tropes are paving the way for the real freaky stuff that is, checks notes, "two hockey players fucking each other while the heroine calls the shots"

this author is positing that human queer erotica/romance are freakier than monster erotica/romance. like. she said that. with her whole chest. black on white.

on one hand a monster, an inhuman being, and on the other, a queer person, a human being. and apparently the real freak is not the minotaur or the blue alien. it is the queer human.

is this satire? it has to be, right?

because if it's not satire, this article is an entire case study in itself on the monstering* of queer people. stunning.

*academic term

[growling]

*average self-proclaimed safe space tumblr blog voice* I soooooo support people with schizophrenia that must be so hard to you anyway I just saw some weird looking woman talking to herself right outside my house im fearing for my life should I call the cops. Yeah dude I support all the adhd havers in the chat just try to pay attention when I talk to you it's not that hard it's like the least you could do to show some regard for the other human being in front of you. Like it's fine to have memory problems but why did you forget this one thing in particular that was important to me do you like not care or anything you should try harder. I am one of the only real mental health advocates to still exist in this world I hear your struggles that being said I hope I never get to meet one of those irl sociopaths or people with aspd whatever they call them now they're so freaky and they can blend into society so well you might never know if you're actually face to face with an actual socio i mean person with aspd in the store absolutely one of my biggest fears what if they torture me in their basement. I absolutely empathize with all the people in here suffering from delusions as long as they like, don't actually show it or have one concerning me that'd be highkey uncomfy leave me out of this dude im not talking to you until you get help, anyway my fav character from my anime just presumably died but i still think they actually survived im sooo delulu lol. We should push for more wheelchair accessibility in our cities I agree but like it's so difficult to tell how many people are actually disabled and who are actually faking it, like, ummm why did that "wheelchair" "user" guy stand up just now cover blown lmaoo…. Yeah I support people with facial differences but I still have a right to be disgusted you can't control my emotions anyway can you tag your selfies as #body horror this deeply triggering to me. Speaking of triggering can you also pleaseee hide your scars or at least warn us beforehand jesus do you know how many people genuinely do not want to see it. Here is my extremely fast strobing lights and flashing gifset #epilepsy. Yeah I loveee girls with bpd beautiful princess disorder am i right they're so interesting the stigma sucksssss i'd love to get to be one's favourite person as long as they don't actually have any of those weird or violent symptoms or don't go into any of their "episodes" near me like that's a bit dramatic….. I deeply feel for those who had underwent narcissistic abuse from the hands of an npd I think my shitty ex boyfriend was a narcissist too tbh #surviving narcissism here are 10 signs you are dealing with a narcissist and here's a tutorial on how to trigger a narc crash to epically own them anyway does anyone else think we should start enforcing mandatory castration of all the newly diagnosed narcs like you know what happens when they reproduce right. But I am willing to support them as long as they go to therapy to get that fixed it's just you know. Anyway sometimes hospitalisation is fine if they're genuinely a danger to themselves like what do you want them to go live on the streets or actually get help?? I support all the people dealing with being a professionally diagnosed disordered system and I think it's sooooo terrible how literally 99% of the youth population nowadays is purposefully faking it for attention I did my research (1 minute google search, 2 minute r/fakedisordercringe scrolling session and consulting a single system that agrees with me). It's just not believable to me that there's really that many people with it isn't it supposed to be rare… Also are we really sure all those alleged people in their heads are really real or just their imagination maybe all of them are actually faking it huh food for thought. I am very uncomfortable with nonverbal high support needs ppl actually having sex like consent is supposed to be explicitly verbal only and, are we really sure they can even consent arent they like basically children. You can't call me ableist I'm literally autistic

[cy-lindric]

I wanted to vent, but also ask an honest question. Since I was a teenager, I always wanted to work on character design. And one thing that always caught my attention was how I always preferred male character designs over female ones. My first thought was that I was always more into androgynous fashion and more masculine styles. But time passed and I came to the conclusion that it wasn't just that, and it seems that male characters can always be different things: fat, thin, handsome, ugly, short, tall, young, old, etc. and female characters, for the most part, fall into two categories: cute or sexy. I wanted some tips on how I can make female characters with more interesting designs, without having to fall into those two categories. I love your work and you managed to make someone else like the three musketeers <3<3

Hello ! That's definitely a good question and something I think about a lot. The bias towards beauty is very strong in character design and it takes a conscious effort to diversify output in that regard.

That sort of advice might be a bit obvious, but one habit I picked up from the director on my first feature film gig was to actually "cast" characters. Without reference, we tend to go for the kind of symmetrical face and "average" features mostly out of stylistic habit. I like to look at character actors with distinct faces (I like this pinterest page that has a lot of faces in one place) but also just acquaintances or pictures of random crowds.

When designing a character, at first I'm always building a big reference board trying to decide what Type of Guy (gender neutral) I'm going for, trying use photos rather than other people's art, because I want to rely on automatics and graphic symbols as little as possible. Whether I'm designing a man or a woman or other, I use references of fashion styles and people across the board in terms of gender so I keep the scope open. Sometimes a character ref board for me will be a picture of one of my aunts next to a bunch of screenshots of Columbo. In my experience, a lot of the times, it's mostly about going with styles and archetypes the same way you would for a male character, and switching it up somewhere along the way by looking at real women in your life and beyond as a grounding mechanism. Sometimes that will mean changing almost nothing, because the borders between genders and how you characterize them is blurry and fluid, and sometimes it will mean using features that are uniquely tied to some sort of female experience.

I enjoy realism and I think getting more proficient at it did help me diversify my designs (I find that more difficult to do with more minimalistic styles). Still, I am mostly a fantasy artist and in my case that comes with some amount of stylization and idealization of shapes and looks. I'm far from perfect in my biases and I'm not going out of my way to draw "ugly" characters because that doesn't mean much to me ; I try to draw inspiration from the faces of every day people and I associate it with my love for fashion. It's also worth noting the work I post here for fun is a lot more hash tag aesthetic than the stuff I do professionally where diversity is much more important.

I don't know if any of that is relevant but that's definitely an interesting topic ! I'd love to know others' perspective and tips on the matter.

[olderthannetfic]

I'm forever intrigued by people who get mad any time Nick Fury is written as a bottom. They always say it's racist, then go dead silent when I say, "I'm black and gay. Is it racist for me to bottom? I have to top, no matter what I actually WANT to do? There's a racially mandated position for me?" They're always so confident prior. There's always capslock and accusations of fetishization and depending on the situation either calling someone a fujoshi or a gooner. Then I ask the very natural question. If it's bad for a black man to bottom, does that make me bad if I want to? And suddenly it gets quiet. Suddenly they're not confident in yelling at strangers online.

I'm fucking TIRED of every black guy having to be a top. Because that's what this boils down to. It's never about canon personalities or anything like that. You're black, you're getting written with a big black cock and you're topping. Period. It's boring. It's unengaging. It's vaguely dehumanizing. And I am no longer going to be nice about this. If I have to make people uncomfortable to get them to think about this, I WILL.

Some part of me wonders if these people actually mean well. They claim they do. They claim to be fighting black fetishization. But if we can only ever be one thing and fill one purpose, is that fighting anything? Or is that just "don't like a thing I don't like"? Because in the end they're asking people to write a whole race the same way. And that doesn't seem very woke or social justice-y to me.

But even if they DID mean well: if your idea of equality means a race can only do one thing, maybe you might wanna rethink that. Look up what equality means. Because this ain't it.

A thing I do with people I know in real life is, "would you be comfortable with someone saying this about your race?" I think people, especially alleged allies, need to do that here. Would you be comfortable with someone saying white people always top? Would that not feel a bit reductive to you?

--

I... what...? Both versions of this are stupid, for obvious reasons, but I'd have expected yelling about him exclusively topping, to be honest. I've seen the equivalent in quite a few fandoms.

Given fandom's penchant for having the character with more narrative focus and interiority bottom, I'd think, on average, it would be positive to see a black character bottoming. But, really, like you say, can we make black characters the unmarked default who can do whatever instead of Very Special Tokens?

[luffyvace]

helooo can i request saiki x reader bf texts please? thank you so much !! anything is fine honestly as long as its saiki content i miss him 😭😭😭😭

ooooou I haven’t got a request like this yet and it seems very fun!! No problem hun <3

IKR after you finish the anime it feels like such limited content is left for the saiki k fandom!! 😭😭

💓💗 Saiki and his boyfriend~ 💗💓

“Wanna go get some coffee jelly”

“This is oddly specific but can you tell the magician outside to leave please?”

”can you keep aiura and torisuka distracted so I can leave school?”

”thanks I’ll pay you back in (favorite thing)”

”let’s meet at the arcade”

”I’m annoyed my mom is forcing me to go outside but I know I’m gonna run into kaido”

”please come with me to make this more bearable”

”don’t forget to study for that test”

convos :3

”how do I make friends with that average guy from the other class without seeming weird”

”Kusuo idk just go up to him and talk to him 😭”

”yeah but if I don’t have something to talk about it’ll be awkward and my likeability meter will go down”

”can you figure out his interests for me so I can talk to him?”

”what? YOU do it 🤦”

”no i can’t the nuisances will find me”

convo 2 ;P

“Do you wanna come shopping with me?”

”your not gonna invite the nuisances too are you?”

”no kusuo 😭”

”oh okay well no”

“I'm NOT!”

“I know but nuisance number 4 just showed up”

”at your house?”

”no at the mall”

”ohh well fine 🤦”

convo 3

”can I borrow your bike nendo broke mine”

”HOW?”

”idk he sat on it”

”WHAT LOLL”

”I need it so I don’t have to go shopping with my dad”

”why is that so bad?? 😭”

”because he starts begging for things at the store”

”??”

“Isn’t he a grown man?”

”yeah I know that’s why I need to borrow your bike”

”sure babe..😭🤦”

convo 4

”my mom wants you to come over for dinner”

”oh alright!”

”no”

“??”

”say your sick”

”kuu why? 😭😭”

”can’t I come over??”

”no my parents are embarrassing”

”LOL”

”but I’ve come over plenty of times before tho”

”I know but, please just don’t come over”

”what’s happening??”

”fine. My dad wants to play a prank on someone because when he try to scare me it didn’t work. So I need you to come over and pretend to be scared so my mom doesn’t kill me”

”what?? So now I’m supposed to come over?”

”let’s just get it over with”

”you go through so much I swear 😭💗”

convo 5

”when you come over and my mom asks if you wanna meet my brother say no”

”whaaat but I kinda wanna meet him”

”say no”

”for both of our sakes”

”if you don’t go I won’t have to either”

”fine 😒”

convo 6

”goodnight kuu”

”goodnight m/n”

convo 7

“I hear nuisance number 4 isn’t showing up to school today”

”no she isn’t”

”rejoice. God is real.”

”KUSUO 😭😭”

convo 8

“your driving home today right? Can I hitch a ride? Nuisance number 1 is here”

”wait which nuisance is that again?”

”how can you forget? It’s the second most terrible one. Nuisance 1 is nendo”

”OHH YEAHH”

”hurry he’s coming”

”YEAH MEET ME AT THE CAR LOL”

convo 9

”come with me to nuisance number 2’s house so I don’t have to go alone”

”kaido right? he’s not so bad right? I can’t I have homework”

”no he’s just really weird and cringe and awkward”

“I’ll wait”

”okay 😭”

convo 10

“can I come over and we can watch that show you recommended me?”

”yeah sure any time kuu”

”you really don’t have to ask, I could get you a spare key if you want”

”yes an emergency escape route in case of nuisance surprises”

”WOW OK”

”and you ig”

convo 11

”that was sweet. what you did for them”

“Yeah I guess they’re not so bad for now”

”for now Kusuo?”

”you sound like my mom”

”actually, that’s not an insult I love your mom”

”I know”

”WYM 😭”

”you hug her more than I do”

”well that proves smth 🤨🤨”

”eh. I’ll get her a gift”

”good cuz she’s awesome 😙”

convo 12

“let’s finish playing that game you have”

”NO”

”WHY IT WAS SO FUNNY”

”you have never even played it he’s so annoying”

”LOLL YOU DIDNT HAVE TO TELL HIM TO DIE THO”

”you wouldn’t even think it’s funny if I hadn’t have told you”

”come on at least least me see the chapter you said you hated”

”you just wanna see me suffer”

”If I did I wouldn’t have distracted hairo for you earlier”

”FINE”

”LOL YIPPIE I’m coming over as soon as I’m done with my homework 🙂”

”😒”

convo 13

“How do I transfer to class 2”

”you just wanna be with satou don’t you”

”you don’t know how?”

”no kuu, I don’t 🤦”

convo 14

“I have to go visit my grandparents and my granddad is really awkward come with me”

“I’D LOVE TO MEET THEM”

”why do you love my family so much?”

”they’re strange”

”I love YOU 😒”

”are you calling me weird”

”in what way are you normal mister magic powers with weird friends and family who also has to stop a volcano from erupting yearly”

”those are just ordinary daily tasks”

”now your coming right?”

”I should leave you”

”you wish you were normal so bad”

”when are we going”

”on second thought you can stay here”

”STOP BEING SALTY IM COMING”

”NOW TELL ME WHEN”

convo 15

”let’s reschedule the coffee jelly date for Sunday”

”it’s too chaotic”

”it’s Friday”

”I know I’m dreading the weekend”

”my poor kuu 😭”

”stop”

”you sound like my mom again”

*read* 1:39pm

LOL I LOVE CONVO 10-15 😊😈 (it got more chaotic as it went on- 😭)

muahahahahhaha hope you enjoyed! these were quite fun :3

[fuji-sen]

Hello I was wondering if you could write some scenarios for some hsr men, if you've ever watched Inuyasha and seen Kagome telling him to sit I was imagining that the reader could do that too, I don't really have any specific characters in mind but if you could please include Boothill because ngl that'd be insanely funny, if you're not comfortable with writing this that's completely alright and I wish you a good morning/afternoon or goodnight ☺️

HONKAI STAR RAIL ; "Sit down!" Headcanon.

credit: from pinterest, Sorry this was criminally and unfashionably late!

synopsis; x reader headcanons and scenarios. Based on the request above. characters: Boothill, ft. Herta, Trailblazer, Asta. (longer than the rest since this was the one mainly requested, whipped Boothill.) Argenti, ft. boothill (slight jealousy from reader. third wheeling Boothill.) Jing Yuan, ft. Yanqing (Yanqing being like you and Jing Yuan's son, mentions of Yunli, post Wardance trailblaze continuance quest.)

🦈 It was just your average day in the Herta Space Station, sure there were explosions from tests and experiments, as well as the constant frolicking of the creations left by one of the genius members that resembled numerous real life characters, but those were all the normal.

🦈 well I lied, today wasn't 100% normal. Not with a very much wanted space cowboy swearing up a storm, was it swearing? considering the numerous censorship bugs programmed into him?

🦈 "I swear to fudge, something is definitely mother-fudging wrong with me!" the said top most wanted guy by the IPC expressed.

🦈 Herta, or one of her puppets looked at him with a frown and almost indifferent expression. She scoffed, offended at the suggestion that her check-up missed something. "The only thing wrong with you is your language module. I did not see any other bugs on you that explained your interesting circumstances."

🦈 "Then you're wrong little missy! how else can we explain this!" he waved his arms which did nothing to helped the trailblazer who had returned to Herta's lab having finished their Divergent Universe farming.

🦈 #83 of the genius society ignored the metal cowboy, "Trailblazer, how dare you bring him here?"

🦈 The trailblazer had simply organized a discreet meeting with the wanted Galaxy Ranger and someone who could help with his so called problem.

🦈 "Hey! I was just the messenger here, I don't even know what's happening." The gray haired trailblazer raised their hands up in defense.

🦈 "I guess i should tell you, but I swear if you tell anybody" Boothill ended up making a heart with his hands, (he was planning to do the neck slitting gesture) ". . . don't fudging point it out."

🦈 "fine, call Asta or whoever for another perspective." Herta sighed, waving her hand dismissively at the duo.

🦈 and so Boothill became to recount what had happened that caused him to ask for this meeting with, in his words 'motherfucking sons of a nice lady geniuses'

"Good" and you smiled. And like a well trained dog or a well made clock, he moved as instructed. Body turning quickly and making quick strides as he sat down on the seat in front of you."I swear you muddle-fudger, I'll make you choke on your own shirtballs if you don't walk away right now!" Your partner was practically barring his teeth at the guy who decided to make an unwanted comment towards you. The two of you were in one of the few areas he could stay at without the IPC coming to hound him, at least not as quick. It was a bar really, shady as it was, it was decent compared to the other places you went with the ranger. The poor man was shaking at his knees like a newborn deer. He'd probably pee on the spot by now which made you feel sorry. "Boothill." "Hold on sweetie," the black and white haired male said, stepping closer and closer to the frozen male "let me just deal with this son of a really really nice lady." Any other day you'd have root him considering the man did deserve it, but time was precious with a wanted man like him and you wanted to spend it by eating and chatting rather than watched him terrorized some bigot. "Boothill." "Patience Sweetie." his hand was hovering above his gun, his precious and most trusted ally. Other than you of course. "Let me just. ." "Boothill, sit down." you sighed, fingers tapping on the table.

🦈 "See! I bet one of those fudging IPC shirtballs messed with my synthesia beacon again!"

🦈 the ranger was met with silence, the trailblazer looking at him with disgust (jealousy and disgust at being third wheel with just a story), the pink haired chick feeling embarrassed and Herta looking extremely disappointed, like she was looking at someone stupid.

"er..." The trailblaizer coughed, looking away.

Herta had straight up turned around and left the lab.

Asta then helpfully suggested "I think you're just whipped for [name]."

🦈 Boothill then just kinda accepts that you have a strong hold on him, he had been worried it was honestly because of someone tampering with his synthesia beacon again but now knowing it was all because of you, and his feelings for you, he's accepted it, and even flaunt it sometimes.

🦈 of course at the start he'd be pouty if you do it in front of his enemies. "C'mon sweetie, you gotta stop doing that in front of those fudgers! I have a reputation to uphold"

🦈 but he then kinda remembers, he can just kill anyone who gives him crap about it. Plus he loves flexing that he, a very much dangerous and wanted man, is in a very healthy and committed relationship that his enemies could only dream of.

🦈 like saying,, "the only one who can boss me around like that is [name]! not some fudging shirtball!"

🌹 being with Argenti, is sometimes like babysitting a kid. Argenti is a knight of beauty, a devoted follower of Idrila. Perhaps it was the way of the knight, or simply being himself. But he was and is always an admirer of beauty.

🌹 the rose colored haired knight would often become distracted when something beautiful catches his eyes, be it a plant, or a sign, a particular poster or a person, you'd often find him no longer by your side on days you'd decide to walk around or travel together.

🌹 often times you find it amusing, humoring him as you listened to his rambles. sometimes a part of you couldn't help but be saddened or disappointed at how easily he could pull away from you.

🌹 the two of you found yourself in Penacony. Penacony was crafted and built to be a dreamland for most, due to the hardwork of the creators and the dreamweavers, it was no doubt beautiful. Like a bustling city filled with dreams and creativity.

🌹 your partner seemed to agree as his eyes glanced at every other direction but you.

🌹 "he's like a kid on a fudging sugar rush." Boothill who you had bumped into had joined you, watching how your partner seemed to be currently drawn in by some origami birds who were soaking up his compliments.

🌹 "I know" your short response had a salty tone that was beginning to build up, one that the ranger could easily pick up on. "Woah there lady, I'm sensing some aggression."

🌹 you glared at him, not appreciating his teases as he grinned, showing off his sharp teeth.

🌹 his eyes glanced at Argenti once again, "you want that knight's attention right?" you didn't have to answer because he knew, so he gestured for you to sit down at the nearby cafe "why don't you tell him to sit down."

🌹"he's in one of his admiring beauty moods, I don't wanna bother him." you said, taking a menu from the waiter, Boothill remained standing, "Trust me, that knight's going to sit down as soon as you tell him too."

🌹you looked at him skeptically, "nothing hurts with trying." he shrugged. Sighing, you decided he was right as you turned to Argenti, calling him with a wave of an arm.

🌹"Yes beloved?" he asked turning away from the origami birds that fluttered off, perhaps returning to their nests amongst the others.

🌹You gestured to the seat beside you, "why don't you sit down?" "Of course!" You blinked, he had disappeared from sight, and you only turned, hearing the sound of a chair being pulled up.

🌹Argenti had taken the seat you had gestured to with speed rivalling that of the hunt. "Is there anything you want love?" he asked, eyes finally gazing upon you.

🌹your cheeks begin to flush a rosy pink, as you smiled.

bloopers another chair had been pulled back, as feet were put up the table. "Now how about we start ordering, I'm famished." "Oh you don't say?" your smile twitched as Boothill flashed you a grin. Of course he'd third wheel you and your dear partner.

⚡being one of the generals of the Xianzhou Alliance, there were very few who could probably order Jing Yuan around on the Luofu. Those he was familiar with could, or those who were more serious like Master Diviner Fu Xuan made a few comments or suggestions time to time that the Arbiter-General followed.

⚡ Still, for Yanqing, it was hard to imagine someone being able to make the dozing General do something. Well until now that is,

⚡When even the advisors or the Master Diviner failed or gave up in, there you were, easily making the General do something with a surge of energy never seen before, only with a few words.

⚡ Now, the young boy was trying to find his master, his teacher, who seemed to have escaped his office to do something else. Perhaps doze off or sleep, or even play chess with the other natives.

⚡ next thing he knew, he had come across you and Jing Yuan on the way back. "Please finish your work." you'd said and he'd sit down and finish all of the paperwork for that day, he'd rarely slouch or doze off as his usual sleepy and relaxed looking eyes look sharp as if he was staring at a prey.

⚡ that was a few days ago, now Jing Yuan was now training Yanqing, it was probably reaching dark soon but the both showed no signs of stopping. The younger of the duo felt like his knees were ready to give in, but he persisted as he gripped his sword tighter.

⚡ "Boys come sit down! I prepared some snacks!" and then you arrived, with trays of food and drinks you balanced with ease. "Just a min-" "Alright dear." Jing Yuan smiled softly, lowering his weapon and the lightning lord disappearing.

⚡ "Come on Yanqing," he offered his hand to the younger boy, and he took it. Both of their hands were sweaty and covered in callouses but they didn't mind as the duo walked towards you.

⚡ "it's good that I came. It looks like Yanqing's about to collapse." You'd say, bringing out a handkerchief as you began to wipe the dirt away from the younger boy's face.

⚡ "I could handle it!" he pouted.

⚡ Chuckling you kissed his forehead "sure you can, but at least have some snacks, You two missed dinner." "Thank you my dear," The general came and placed kisses all over your face.

⚡ "Of course, anything for my two boys. Now sit down and eat." you chided and Yanqing watched as his mentor took a seat on the plush cushion you had also prepared.

⚡ You'd soon leave, thinking that the food wasn't enough and promising to bring more, their favorites. Yanqing then asked, "Master, why do you listen to her? you know you don't have to."

⚡ "I know." Jing yuan took a sip of the tea you had prepared, perfect as always. "I want to."

⚡ Yanqing was confused, "why?" he curiously asked. "I understand in the domestic setting, but even in work she tells you what to do, and you do it. But your the general of the luofu. ."

⚡ The General wasn't offended or upset by his questions, if anything he seemed amused and delighted he had asked as he began to answer in a soft tone, softer than his usual tone that he'd use every day.

⚡ "It is because I don't have to, that I do. My feelings for [ name ] are sincere and passionate. Even if I have the higher position than her, or even if I was stronger. I listen to her because she is my equal. She is the person whom holds the most power over me."

⚡ Still Yanqing seemed confused. Unable to quickly process his answer. And then you had came, and he decided to not press on. Thinking it was rude to ask in front of you.

⚡ "Perhaps in the future you'll find that someone, and then you'll understand."

⚡ "someone?" you curiously looked at the two of them, but as Jing Yuan shook his head, you decided it was better not to ask. "Ah by the way, I received word from the advisors, it seems like Yunli is going to participate in upcoming war dance."

⚡ "really?" Yanqing looked up, asking while his mouth was full of food.

⚡ 'perhaps he had already found that someone', Jing Yuan shared a knowing look with you.

divider credits: @enchanthings

It was hard to think of other characters that worked well with this idea. Boothill was kinda funny, but I think theres an underlying trauma or like worry of someone tampering with his syntesia beacon again without permission.

Argenti, he's a gentleman but I kinda think with how he's an admirer of beauty I think he'd really be like a kid with an attention span of one that you'd have to call him over a couple of times to get him to focus.

Meanwhile Jing Yuan kinda strayed far from the idea with Inuyasha and Kagome since Jing Yuan is known as the dozing general, it'd be more rare to find him out of the chair or somewhere since he's usually lounging.

So really, Boothill was the most accurate to the request, then it goes farther away from Argenti and Jing Yuan HAHAHAH Still I hope Anonymous is pleased with this.

[love-byers]

Hi! Not gonna lie I was a bit disappointed that you believe the birthday gate stuff... The Duffers wouldn't have admitted to have made a mistake if that were the case. And most of all, it would've come up in volume 2! Now if something happens in S5 it would just feel like they came up with it during the 3 years between S4 and S5. They can say it was planned all they want, people would call bullshit, and rightfully so. I'm sorry I can not believe how anyone can think birthday gate could be a real thing. Not to mention it doesn't even make any sense. Please bylers let's just accept the Duffers made a mistake!!

i disagree with everything you said

1. "the duffers wouldn't have admitted to have made a mistake if that were the case"

they lied.

the duffers are sneaky snakes who want us to analyze and always be looking for little details. they have literally said there are no coincidences in the show.

so yes, i completely believe that they would go out of their way to lie in order to save the surprise for s5. i mean actually think about it, if it really was just a mistake, why would they not just fix it?? they have the full power to just do a little voiceover edit and boom, problem solved. they explained exactly how they'd do it. but they didn't. 2 years have passed and they still haven't changed it when that little tweak would literally solve all their problems if it really was a mistake.

they lied. they're liars.

2. "it would've come up in vol 2"

since when does every single problem have to be solved in one season?? do you know what show you're watching??

there are hints and foreshadowing all over the seasons. vecna is foreshadowed in s1 ep1 when will's door was opened with telekinesis, and we had no idea he existed until 6 years and 3 seasons later.

in s1 they don't fully explain how will was communicating with joyce. but after s4 everything clicks into place.

they show us that will can clearly hear her and is finding a way to make the lights light up. then in ep 8 they show joyce and hopper making the christmas lights light up as they walk through the byers upside down house. jonathan sees this and asks if it's joyce, and joyce hears him.

that isn't addressed AT ALL in s2 or s3. it is fully explained and explored in s4, when nancy steve eddie and robin are stuck in the upside down. they fully show us how it works and acknowledge that it was how will communicated with joyce.

the creators knew exactly how the light upside down stuff worked the entire show. but it wasn't time for it to be explained just yet. it was meant to come up later on. it's a masterful way to write a story with longevity.

stranger things teaches you to never just write something off. everything is important. don't let it go just because it hasn't been fully explained. there will be payoff.

3. "now if it comes up in s5 it would just feel like they came up with it the 3 years between s4 and s5. people would call bullshit."

respectfully i think you're projecting a bit.

the average viewer who does not spend their time on forums is not going to think that whatsoever. the average viewer is going to think "wait what?!", go back and watch s4 ep 2, and think "holy shit it was planned all along that's so cool!"

like that's such a dumb way of thinking. you have to be a master level hater to see a well written plot twist and think "they just did that to cover their asses" like that's some next level hating

and i guarantee you once s5 comes out the duffers will be like "yeah of course we had to lie you guys were too close to figuring it out!"

david harbour has talked about how hard it was for him to flat out lie to people about hopper being dead. it's really not that crazy to think they lied

4. "it doesn't even make any sense"

....it does.

i don't know how you could think it doesn't make sense

rink o mania day was march 22nd. will's birthday. they have not changed his birthday. his official canonical birthday is still march 22nd.

but no one mentions it. even will doesn't seem to know it's his birthday.

s4 is all about memories and trauma and feeling isolated from others. we also literally learn there is a powerful monster man who can read minds and enter other people's memories, just like el can. so i don't see how it's so outlandish to think there's some memory fuckery going on.

of course we can't explain exactly why or how, because it hasn't been adressed yet. you have to wait for the pay off.

5. "just accept the duffers made a mistake"

i would accept that they made a mistake if they actually fixed the mistake LIKE THEY SAID THEY WOULD. they said "we are going to edit the episode and change it to say may 22nd" and then DIDNT. EVER.

and not only that, they wished him happy birthday on march 22nd 2 years in a row. noah schnapp posted a bts photo on march 22nd 2024 with the caption "Do you know what March 22nd is? It's your birthday. - Joyce Byers"

they are saying "yes it's still his birthday so get hyped for s5 where it'll be addressed" every way they can without spelling it out for you.

i really don't know what more you need

[starreyblueberry]

Whenever people compare Hazel and Timmy its like why r we making two bad bitches fight, they could easily be best friends guys, like I fully think Hazel would help Timmy kinda think his actions though and help him actually process his emotions while Timmy would help Hazel to try not to overthink things and that everything will be ok in the end. Cosmo and Wanda love BOTH of them guys, yes there's a difference in status (IE. Hazel doesn't need Cosmo and Wanda as her parental figures, being more like aunt/uncle vs Timmy who kinda does, and has more of an adopted kid vibe with them) but that doesn't make Timmy or Hazel bad characters!! Nor does it make Timmy or Hazel a worse godkid, I legit just think they both show different styles of godparenting respectfully, and I think that's perfect? It was obvious that Cosmo and Wanda were doing something different with Timmy, Him being proclaimed the favorite, as well as the amount of time they spent with him in general. Timmy was a lot more neglected then Hazel, and I think Cosmo and Wanda had more of a parental attachment to him.

Hazel though has different problems, she has more severe anxiety and is in a new place that she's having trouble adjusting too! and unlike timmy, she experienced a loss of a caretaker when she was a kid, which is a different type of pain than having no caretaker. Comso and Wanda don't try to be Hazel's parents though, rather just another adult figure in her life that she can go too!! Yes I think that Hazel is a lot more fortunate than Timmy and I won't lie one of my criticisms for the new show is the fact that she too happy, which contradicts a lot of the OG's shows' logic that Godkids have to be miserable, but I think this was done for a writing shift, so that so much humor wasn't focused on the cynical tried to be funny outlook they had with Timmy, but actually focused on the fun a godparent CAN be! Hazel is still an amazing protagonist and cause of her we get more fun adventures with Cosmo and Wanda, and adventures in her world too!

I also think that Timmy in general is a more compelling main character but that's cause of my own preferences and beliefs. Im sure there are so many kids rn who watch A New Wish and see themselves in Hazel, like how so many of us saw ourselves in Timmy! I think there's a lot of misinformation and mischaracterization between both of them, and it sucks ALOT!! Im not super into a new wish as I am compared to the old show, but I can respect both protagonists without trying to make the other one seem any less. Saying that Timmy is worse then Hazel just feels like were writing off his characters to the bare bones that were kinda fucked up by butch Hartman himself. If you actually watched and took time to see his character, you'd see how he always just wanted to be a part of his family in the end, that a lot of his wishes were suppose to be somewhat selfless, and meant for the people he loved to be happy!! The "selfish" wishes he made were made out of emotional distress, which, what 10-year-old isn't experiencing at all times??? He had severe circumstances that its hard to draw the line as to what was just cartoon exaggeration vs what his reality is, cause as the show went on his parent's disdain for him felt very real.

He still stood up though, and he put his fairies safety above all else at times, and its so sweet, and shows how much Timmy really was part of their family. He is very much an average kid who no one understands and its sooo funny that it ended up being like that in the general public as well. Timmy did the best with what he had and tbh it was amazing!! I really loved the found family of it all and I do think he belongs with Cosmo and Wanda <3 BUT I THINK IN TERMS OF SHOWS, THEIR BOTH GOOD PROTAGS!! they just have diff storytelling/different circumstances and both are experiencing a different style of godparenting

im saying this as one of the top 10 Timmy Turner fans ever btw

[thecoolerliauditore]

Pls tell me about Scott's views on women in general pls I'm begging you

o7 and I'm sorry

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

fyi, the post itself isn't NSFW, but I'll be getting all gender theory in this bitch so I'll be referencing a lot of things and putting in pictures of naked ppl sometimes. maybe skip this one if you don't like that

(long post)

Disclaimers

An explanation for the tweet up there

I usually don't write these because I assume the people on my blog have enough sense to realise when I'm talking about the characters vs the CCs or are comfortable enough being a little confused, but I feel the need to extra-clarify here and expand on how I specifically view C vs CC because I think it differs a little from the average person.

To me, C and CC are two separate entities but not entirely disconnected. What differs (e.g. the exclusion of irl relationships -- their wives, kids, etc.) is poignant enough to severely detach them from the people they originated from, at least in my eyes, but there's also the fact that these are not scripted characters, just creators being themselves with a hint of behind the scenes drama-adding and improv thrown in.

For example, CC Pearl is a car nerd. So I assume her character is too.

This is where I state very clearly that yes, a lot of these thoughts come from things I've seen on Scott's twitter, which is undoubtedly the CC and not the C. However I, to me, am still talking about the C because any observations/judgments I could make on actual irl youtuber CC guy Scott Major would be tabloid at best and slightly invasive at worst. I'm seeing these statements within the context of "the death game guy would say this too and I'm writing this based on that", not "this is the inner psychological workings of the youtuber because I, as a fan, can totally tell".

TLDR I don't consider this post RPF but you might. This is a little more RPF-y than my usual stuff. If you don't rock with it we cool.

Everyone is weird about women, and that's okay

One short-hand I've used in the past to talk about Scott and women is just by saying that he's "weird about women" which I'm sure isn't exclusive to him.

(shitpost I made awhile back)

I see a lot of people now who love "villains" and "evil" but when it comes to any traits resembling real life evil (e.g. misogyny in this case) they suddenly become insecure. Just a couple of days back a saw a post on twitter essentially asking for permission to continue liking CC Scott in spite of the "bad things" he did.

And I think, in order to present an analysis like this, I must address that mindset first.

This is not a judgment on Scott's morality, nor is it trying to dissuade you from liking him. This is not saying that he is any more misogynistic than any other player in the series. This is just me pointing out Scott's attitude towards women and what I read it as, nothing less or more.

The feelings that me pointing these things out - be they apathy, disgust, anger or, what I would hope to see most, interest - are your own. I'm not here to tell anyone how to feel and never will try to police that on my blog.

Scott's Relationships with Women

aka. oh yeah this is about minecraft.

Scott and Cleo || "Yeah, you can kill me."

Scott and Cleo's alliance is arguably the strongest in the entire series, spanning through all five seasons and remaining unbroken with no (serious) drama attached. You'd expect from this that they two have a very settled and stable understanding of eachother, yet this isn't a case.

Their power dynamic shifts dramatically from one season to the next.

3L's initial Widows Alliance began on fairly equal footing, built on the mutual agreement that they were waiting for their respective partners to die. Both understood they were eachothers' "plan B" and felt comfortable in that arrangement.

Come LL, Cleo does what she couldn't in 3L, and initiates that plan, going to Scott after her last alliance, the fairy fort, fell apart. Scott requests nothing from her in return.

DL is the longest the two spent as eachothers main ally. Cleo is the one who initially proposes teaming up to spite their "cheating" soulmates and Scott agrees. Cleo admits to Martyn in private that she's aware she's taking advantage of Scott (which I've always interpreted as her talking about all seasons, not just DL). Due to the time they spend together, it's here where it becomes apparent that their initial assumptions during 3L were not entirely accurate, as Scott shows a level of gameplay competency much higher than Cleo's (e.g. teaching her how to axe-crit) but despite this Scott never berates her or thinks any less of her value as his ally.

LimL is probably this pairing at their most unhinged, as Scott, despite once again asking for nothing (or very little -- I'll be honest I'm a bit fuzzy on this) in return from Cleo, allows them and their allies to butcher him repeatedly for time. He gives more time to the Clockers than he does to Martyn, his closest ally that season. Despite this, Scott is never ever considered as a "family member" by the Clockers, despite them giving that title to even temporary allies (like the Bad Boys being their cousins) -- even Martyn gets a title with Scott completely unattached.

SL is relatively more chill, but shows that the two inevitably end up teaming together even despite their oath to avoid eachother that season.

The point being -- again and again, we see Scott literally and metaphorically making sacrifices for Cleo, with the only real transaction he requires from her being that she continues having his back when times get rough. This is despite that he's aware she isn't any more capable than he is and the fact that so far it has only been Cleo in rough times (LL, LimL and SL) and never Scott.

Speaking from a purely transactional perspective, Scott is not getting a bargain here -- and even Cleo seems acutely aware of it, judging by her comment during DL as well as the way she tends to speak of her survival capabilities very lowly in general ("rubbish pvp skills and spiffy one-liners"). I'm speaking in this sense because I've seen discussions in the past about the transactional way Scott views relationships but rarely does Cleo get brought up.

This is at stark contrast to how he treats Jimmy, whose predicted death was what spurred on Scott and Cleo's alliance in the first place.

Scott assumes Jimmy is "incompetent", where he assumes Cleo is capable. When Jimmy messes up, he reprimands him, when Cleo struggles to crit him, he patiently teaches her. When LL begins, Scott's first instinct was to look at Jimmy's lives and note that he was "useless to (him)", but holds no objections to Cleo joining his alliance despite her already having enemies being a potential liability. In SL, he jokes about how Cleo and him being allied is a given and pretty much expected of them, whereas in LimL he explicitly requests from Jimmy a recognition that he still cares ("say love you back!") before he will help him.

Scott and Gem || "You HAVE TO kill me, Gem,"

In SL, Gem settles in very easily in a leadership position within Gem and the Scotts due to her trying to live up to her reputation but also due to Scott and Impulse's more laid back, passive playstyles.

Both Scott and Impulse let Gem kill them for extra health this season, although Scott is arguably much more subservient than Impulse is, with him not only insisting that she kill him in the final episode but also not fighting back (and only yelling for her to stop) when she starts hitting him with a sword during the episode where her task was to literally kill everyone on the server.

Once again comparing her to Jimmy, Scott in 3L had a tendency to brush aside Jimmy's concerns over alliances (e.g. Jimmy questioning if they could trust Cleo) while in SL Scott runs his plans by Gem (and Pearl and Impulse) in terms of who he wanted to team up with (specifically excluding Joel from the potential mounders alliance) implying he held her opinion in some form of regard.

Before this becomes less of an analysis of Scott's treatment of men vs women and more of Scott's treatment of Jimmy vs everyone else, I think it's notable enough to mention that he and Martyn also lacked this sort of communication in LimL. He would inform Martyn of his plans, but rarely was it ever framed as a request.

SL almost feels as if Scott has slid Gem into the slot he had previously designated for Cleo in 3L (his girlboss ally) as he provides her and pretty much forces onto her by the end the acts of service he'd become accustomed to performing for Cleo.

Scott and Lizzie || "You killed her! I don't.. I don't know what to even say!"

Relatively shorter section because this is the one woman he hasn't teamed with, but there's still some interesting stuff I wanted to touch on.

In LL, one of the first thing Scott does is yell at Pearl to revenge-kill Joel for boogey-killing him. Pearl does as she's told and Joel's wet miserable pathetic LL life gets worse from there.

Several episodes later, the roles are reversed -- Lizzie lies to both of them and manages to isolate and boogey-kill Pearl. Scott, instead of reacting with the anger he had for Joel, is almost in a state of shock as he asks Lizzie to let him down so he could collect Pearl's belongings. He doesn't act aggressively towards Lizzie at all, with his most antagonizing act against her being to lie about his intentions when giving her a wither skull.

In SL, he's the only one aware of her early permadeath, but keeps quiet about it almost as if he's in a state of shock akin to when he saw Lizzie kill Pearl in LL. It's not until the others have noticed when he finally brings it up.

Scott and Pearl || "Tilly death do us 'part"

I wrote a whole post just for their relationship alone so for the sake of my sanity I'll be leaving this here.

So now I get to dedicate this section to the meat of this post -- how the way Scott treats women in general impacts his relationship with Pearl and how I view his heel-turn on her as seeping with relevance to Pearl's perceived gender.

In all three of the previous sections, the running theme is that Scott is 1. kinder and more patient with women, regardless of their competency and 2. someone who likes to be in a supporting role to women, occasionally aiding them more than he aids himself and his closer male allies (e.g. Jimmy and Martyn). As shown with Cleo, he assumes that girls have it together, but even if they don't it's not a big deal. When a girl's actions are truly disastrous, such as with Lizzie's, he goes into a state of shock and doesn't really react, preferring to swallow it down and not acknowledge it.

With the amount of times he sacrifices himself, I don't think it's a reach to say that Scott values his own life less than he values the lives of his (female) allies. This specific point actually does extend to his male allies too, shown when he's happy when Martyn literally backstabs him in LimL, but just as with the Martyn post where I point out his victim status-ing doesn't end at only women but includes all the women, Scott has pedastal-ed all the women he's teamed with.

Lizzie is, once again, the exception here due to his limited interactions with her. However that's actually somewhat patched over if you look at adjacent series (such as x-life) where he definitely shows her a level of admiration and respect.

Back to Scott and Pearl.

Their relationship during LL is very standard of how Scott treats women. While the power dynamic between them is obviously more caused by the initial life trade agreement, I don't think it's a far reach to say that Scott is somewhat comfortable in the arrangement.

However, this is also the first thing that sets their relationship apart from Scott with Cleo or Gem -- Pearl is the one making sacrifices, not Scott. She is the one "sacrificing" her lives to him, just in a more non-violent way as allowed by the season's mechanics.

When viewed through this lens, Scott trying to make it up to her and wanting his effort acknowledged makes even more sense. This is suddenly uncharted waters for him. His assuming that Pearl doesn't value him as a person goes hand in hand with him valuing himself less than her.

What Scott has with Cleo or Gem, situations where the other party is clearly uncomfortable with how he treats himself (Gem) or actively aware they are taking advantage of him (Cleo), is equalized to him because he is inherently worth less. What he has with Pearl, on the other hand, looks more equal to most people (lives vs labour) but is wildly imbalanced to him.

It's one of the many factors I see going into Scott's weird decision to abandon her in DL.

An Interlude, Before We Get to DL

La Pieta, Michelangelo

So this has been a lot of words so far and some of you might be wondering at this point: why say Scott is "weird" about women when so far this has been describing how he values women more, is kinder to them, is more patient with them, etc.? How is any of this behaviour remotely misogynistic?

And I would feel horrible if I forced you to read through all of my DL thoughts before I clarified this -- Scott is not your classic wifebeater "women are lesser" misogynist, Scott is someone who subscribes to misogynistic schools of thought and probably considers himself an ally to women, when in reality his beliefs are still rooted in dehumanizing them and these beliefs end up harming the women around him as well as himself.

After all, seeing women are your superiors is still not seeing them as your equals.

I know it's a bit of a meme on this blog at this point. But. Sigmund Freud identified what we know refer to as the "madonna/whore complex", which he described as a pattern of behaviour in men who separated women into being madonnas (pure, holy and admirable) and whores (debased, sexual, deviant). We'll be focusing on the former, the madonna, as it is more relevant to Scott's character.

Freud proposed that the madonna figure was something men projected onto women as a replacement for maternal love. These women are sacred and untouchable, literally as the projection of the maternal role onto them also makes it so that the sufferer cannot feel any sexual attraction towards her (keep this in mind for later).

Scott projects the madonna figure onto his female compatriots -- they are to be protected, served and supported. They are goddesses, queens, but they are never human. The madonna role in of itself is not inherently harmful to the woman, as seen with Cleo who takes control and advantage of it. However, it is enforced, as seen with Gem who at first revels in the superiority but almost breaks down when Scott offers him up as her sacrificial lamb one last time.

I linked this Utena AMV awhile back when vaguely talking about Scott and women, and this was the point I was alluding to.

Girls are beautiful and pure. They don't spit on the street, they don't piss on the street, they don't build hierarchies -- they subvert all the expectations of masculinity that I hate having to deal with. They are my escape.

But what about the girls who do spit on the street? The girls who piss on seats? Who build social hierarchies, who size up their competition?

The girls Scott interacts with are all painfully human. Cleo weaponizes his beliefs and take advantage of him. Scott is smart enough to know and accept this. Gem's playing into a role she has been assigned into by not only Scott but everyone around her. Scott supports the character she plays. Lizzie reflects traits he hates in Joel and Jimmy, but for her, he looks the other way.

Are they "demons", as the song says, or are they no longer girls at all?

(demons, gods, but never humans)

Weaponized Femininity and Women In Total Control of Themselves ;)

Hylas and the Nymphs, John William Waterhouse

Historically, weaponized femininity I'd argue is one of the oldest tropes in storytelling. Whether it's nymphs or sirens or witches or succubi or even more roundabout cases like Helen of Troy, there's countless stories of men's sexual attraction to women leading them to disaster.

One way to view these stories is to see them as warnings, don't let womens allure be the end of you.

There's a lot of good writing done on the femme fatale trope both in the context of weaponizing femininity and as a sexist way to argue against victims of sexual assault, as these stories often say that men who experience attraction to these "evil" women no longer have agency over their own actions.

Look at the painting above, for example - is it the nymphs who are responsible for drowning Hylas, or is Hylas climbing into the lake of his own accord?

Despite the fact we all know sirens, nymphs and succubi aren't real, the belief that men will simply lose control of themselves when encountering a particularly alluring woman persists to the modern consciousness. That there's something inherently dangerous about women and attraction to them.

(this is not 100% applicable to Ninja saying he won't stream with women, but it's the real life example I felt most comfortable putting in here)

Now, let's combine this with what's been said so far -- let's say you don't hate women. You love women, in fact, and you hate the way men treat women. You hate men, in fact.

Yet, you still believe in this inherent power women hold by being female and the loss of agency that men experience when attracted to them -- how disgusting.

It quickly becomes easily to not only demonize men for sullying the holiness of women, but also men, masculinity and attraction to women as a whole.

(apologies for using twt discourse in the meta post but this flew by my TL and i had to grab the irl example of mens non-violent attraction to women being used to frame them as misogynistic before the stupid app refreshed and i lose everything forever)

"To Venner" is a student film exploring a world set within this belief, where all the women have vanished and the men have become monstrous figures as a result of their pent up sexual frustration. fyi this is one of my favourite student films (and ive watched a bunch), but I do think its messaging is worth breaking down (especially its juxtaposition of dirty horrible monstrous sexuality vs pure and beautiful romantic love)

NOTE: this film is super graphic, lots of violence and nudity. have fun. or not

I admit this section is a bit hard to gauge as everyone in the series is gay as fuck. The closest in-series example I can think of is Scott reacting to Martyn's antics in DL with a sort of indigence but otherwise I can't really think of an example of a man expressing attraction to a woman at all, let alone one Scott reacted to. However, I do think it's still worth talking about because it opens up some interesting trains of thought in regard to Scott and Pearl.

For Scott, he himself has never been part of the picture. He's gay, after all, which gives him an edge over the bad straight men who objectify and assault women. Likewise, there's little evidence to suggest he finds the expectations of masculinity frustrating, but I don't think it's too far a reach considering how common of an experience that is for gay men and his adapting of more feminine mannerisms.

Double Life and Corruption

As mentioned in my previously linked post about Scott and Pearl's relationship, I do think Scott experiences what he would name as attraction towards Pearl, so my writing will reflect that.

Pearl is. ahem. not like other girls.

Not actually. But to Scott, she probably isn't like other girls.

She remains unaware of his different standards for her (how could she when she had nothing to compare them to), she acts out, sometimes violently, against Scott's urging (such as when she stole from Scar's wagon). She maintains their already irregular dynamic, and while she appreciates his care for her, she never quite falls into seeing him as a source of subservience the way Cleo or Gem do.

At the end of LL, right before the 1v1v1v1, she monologues to herself that she no longer has to feel bad for killing Scott. Which, in turn, implies she expected Scott to give it his all against her as well.

She entirely fails to embody the madonna with her immature naivete and her questionable morals. She is unpredictable, she doesn't take what she is owed, she is a monster in a lot of ways.

Scott, too, is a monster, to himself, for how he feels about her.

The very foundations of your understanding of yourself being ripped apart aside, let's rewind to the madonna/whore complex. To sexualise the madonna is to corrupt her and make a monster of yourself. Suddenly, you are no better than the men around you, the ones you've grown to hate. Suddenly, you are the grotesque figures in films like To Venner. You are Hylas and she is the nymph. And you are so stupid. Your worldview crumbles around its flawed foundations.

Scott is, however, immune to this corruption. This is a theme that appears in Empires as well, but throughout the traffic series he's prided himself on being loyal and kind and good. His monologue leading up to LL's 1v1v1v1 summarizes it quite well.

He can't let himself or anyone else see this side of him, but the energy needs to go somewhere. To defy fate, abandon your soulmate, is to admit you had a fate in the first place, is to acknowledge that she was your soulmate in the first place.

I've previously talked about how fate and romance are very ingrained in Scott's belief system, if it was anyone else it would've been amazing. He could've been like Bdubs and Impulse or Ren and Bigb, diving into domestic life and performative romance with a stranger. Or the world could've made his happy ending from 3L real, as he got to be Jimmy's husband all over again. I think it says something that he accepts Cleo as a "soulmate" before Pearl.

So what do you do with all that energy and tension, clearly apparent to yourself and everyone else, when you can't let them observe your feelings?

You project them.

Shout-outs to @/legally-allowed-to-slime for pointing out Pearl's comment early on in DL that she "feels like (she's) been broken up with" confirms she never saw Scott in a romantic sense. The "crazy ex-girlfriend" and "this is why I'm gay" comments really did come out of thin air, or perhaps insecurity.

Pearl is the crazy one. She's insane, because she wants me. She wants to be with me, so she does all this crazy stuff. She's lost control of herself because she wants me. She's disgusting.

I mentioned before that Scott is not your classic misogynist, but this is where the gears start turning. Scott's views of Pearl echo that of other players, most prominently Ren and Martyn, that Pearl has been overcome with some sort of corruption. She has become the witch, the demoness, the whore, in their eyes. Scott does not want to be the same as these men and I think his overcorrecting his behaviour in SL makes sense when you view it from this angle, but for now he has to rely on more traditional misogyny in order to navigate this new obstacle.

"Corruption" also implies that she had to have been pure (or at least pure-er) beforehand, something Scott personally knows is not true, but it falls in line with defaulting women to being "madonnas".

This is a Scott post but. shout outs to Ren for being all of this about Pearl but without the complexity of Scott like he literally accuses Pearl of seducing Bigb what the fuck man.

Pearl is, of course, none of that. But she plays into the role of being the witch much better than she fared playing into the role of the madonna.

Sidenote: I know I'm looking at this from a Scott/Pearl POV but I do feel like you can omit Scott's attraction if you look at it from a purely "pearl not performing to standards of femininity I expect and she makes me realise I don't view women as a whole as human which makes me feel weird so now we have to do this" POV. Like idk I think the exact reason he abandoned Pearl is going to be lost on everyone forever so any analysis I could perform is going to suffer at least a little bit of making-shit-up-itis.

I do also think there's something to be said about Pearl being pushed until she performed a role, any role and generally failing at Being A Girl tm but that's another post i think. yknow shes um. a bit. 🏳️‍⚧️ (but also very much not at the same time idk that's gonna need its own post)

anyway yeah uh the minecraft movie looks crazy huh

[tavina-writes]

MDZS Society! aka: there's a lot less killing than you'd expect

This follows from this post and also the recent translations of MXTX’s most recent interview (which I can now no longer bother to find bc this has been sitting in drafts for like, siiiix months? More? Oh god anyway.) which reminded me about my feelings regarding MDZS society and how different it is from the martial societies we see depicted in typical modern wuxia. (Small disclaimer, I am a wuxia genre fiend and I love like, thinking about fictional societies so this is like, “AHA! You’ve unlocked my trap card!”) 

For the purposes of this, I’m going to be looking at MDZS/CQL’s depiction of the jianghu (which I think is fairly similar! I don’t actually think the show writers made CQL’s jianghu/martial society more genre typical than it was in the book) and comparing that with modern classic wuxia (mostly Jin Yong and Gu Long works.) For this comparison, I’ll be looking at a Jin Yong book — Legend of the Condor Heroes (which is widely considered the starting point of modern wuxia as a genre) — and one Gu Long book — Dagger Li/Sentimental Swordsman, Ruthless Sword (widely considered his most popular work) — and seeing how their societies differ from MDZS society. 

This will likely come in two parts because this one was already getting long, and I don’t think we can fit “how often does nobility exist in a typical jianghu and what do bloodline sects look like normally versus what they look like in MDZS” in this post along with the main topic of “is MDZS society a particularly physically violent place?” 

This post discusses how often cultivators are socially expected to kill people. Like, actual living human beings instead of, say, monsters or ghosts which have been categorized differently than like, human beings. 

EDIT: I forgot to talk about Dagger Li but this was already much too long sorry. Feel free to hmu for more thoughts though.

Now, it might be easy to think that cultivators killing actual people is a really common thing in MDZS/CQL universe! After all, they do have martial arts training and one of the prominent things about the first life is just how many people die both in the Sunshot Campaign and the fallout afterwards. However, I would argue that a lot of the traumas and related issues and reactions that happen in MDZS happen because cultivators are, by training and education, not actually prepared for killing actual living breathing human beings! (And also that the morality of this world prevents it for the most part) 

Now, we do actually get a pretty good window into what the typical training is like for young cultivators in MDZS, because we get a fairly well defined schoolhouse scene where LQR is asking them questions about "how do you tell the difference between various different problems we have to solve?" and "how do you go about fixing this problem?" and none of those include the moral quandary of "if I, a young cultivator out in the Jianghu, see a guy who is doing something I morally disagree with, under what circumstances do I beat him up and/or kill him." This does not appear to enter the curriculum at any point, leading me to believe that the morally correct number of people not like, ghosts or ghouls or fierce corpses, a regular average MDZS cultivator is supposed to have killed is approximately 0.

Which. Is a thing you get in a normal martial arts wuxia jianghu. There is generally the threat of "oh yeah this that or the other faction will be doing shitty things and thereby try to murder you." Instead, in MDZS/CQL most of the heirs of sects are...attending school together. Doing teenage things like partying and gossiping and attending classes.

And sure yes, there was a case of WWX and JZX trying to beat each other up. But the sects did sure let their kids stay at Lan summer camp for months on end (sometimes repeatedly, see NHS) without fearing for their lives or that anyone would steal another sect's techniques or otherwise causing real havoc or intersect warfare etc.

Which is infeasible in any other sort of Jianghu situation. For example, contrast this scenario with this scene from LOCH where Guo Jing's shifus are giving him advice since he is newly 17 and about to set out by himself into the great big world:

Guo Jing therefore bid farewell to his teachers. They had witnessed his battle against the Four Demons of the Yellow River, and were not too greatly worried. The young man had proved that he knew how to use the skills that they taught him. Therefore they let him leave alone. On one hand, the meeting of outlaws in Yanjing worried them greatly, so that they could not ignore it; and on the other hand, a youngster always had to travel the jianghu alone, in order to learn lessons that no teacher could pass on. At the moment of parting, each made their last recommendations. As usual when the Six spoke after one another, Nan Xiren was the last one to express himself. "If you cannot defeat the enemy," he said. "Flee!" He knew that given Guo Jing's dogged character, he would prefer to die rather than to surrender, if he met a master, he would certainly fight to the bitter end, even at the risk of death. That was the reason Nan Xiren gave him this common sense warning. " Martial arts have no limits," added Zhu Cong. " As the proverb says, 'For every peak there is one yet higher', so for every man there is one stronger. Whatever your power, you will always one day meet a foe stronger than you. A true man knows to retreat when necessary, when facing grave danger, it is necessary to contain one's impatience and anger. This what is meant by the adage, « If one preserves the earth and its forests, one does not fear to lack firewood ». It is not therefore not cowardly to take good advice! When the enemy is too numerous and that you cannot face them there, it is especially necessary to avoid being too reckless. Keep in mind Fourth Shifu's advice!"

Does this seem like the sort of advice that any Young MDZS Cultivator would get? "You're a good kid, but when you go out into the world, there will be people who straight up want you dead even though they met you 15 minutes ago, you cannot persist in fighting with these people because they will want you dead and you are a baby cultivator who needs to learn to run away when shit gets rough or you will be dead."

And again I come back to how MDZS cultivators are more like occupational ghostbusters because this really does inform how their society functions and runs and how everyone reacts so badly to the Sunshot Campaign beginning and its aftermaths and possibly explains how JGS could get his way after Sunshot.

Because what happens when you get a society that does train heavily in martial arts and have Able To Kill Real People Weapons who spends most of their time solving very black and white situations of "okay is this ghost whose eating people's livers good or bad? y/n?" and a clear hierarchy of "how do we get rid of the ghost eating people's livers in town x" instead of say "is it morally correct to kill this group of bandits who's been threatening the town" or "is it morally correct to kill this shitty businessman who's been holding people hostage and threatening to hack off their limbs" you have a reduced level of philosophical musing on like, "what is the purpose of martial arts, which is designed to kill people and what do I use martial arts for?" and "under what circumstances and situations would I personally find it morally correct to kill a man?" Which are all questions that Wuxia coming of age stories typically have, and I think MDZS does have, but expressed differently.

Again, it appears that the number of Real Live Human Beings that it is morally acceptable to have stabbed in your life is approximately 0 in this universe, and the expectation that you, personally, might have to fend off people trying to stab you over brunch is also approximately 0.

This also leads to a situation where like, questions of vengeance have very difficult escape hatches! If your parents are murdered on the job by an evil rampaging ghost, this is very sad and tragic and now you're an orphan and of course that's not good, but this is a occupational job hazard, not like, "Yeah Joe Bob from the sect down the street murdered my dad because #Reasons~, and now it's my legacy to grow up to murder Job Bob from the sect down the street to avenge my dad."

(I have a whole essay about how this pertains to both of the Nie Brothers, and how it pertains to JGY and also Jin Ling, and how this seems to routinely fuck people up in MDZS in a very specific way we don't typically see in other wuxias, but this is getting SO long as it is).

But yeah "the socially acceptable number of real living people (instead of ghosts or demons or fierce corpses or whatever) to have killed in your lifetime as a cultivator is approximately 0" means that the Sunshot Generation gets really really fucked up by all of this "killing real people" they did.

Which! might be why JFM was so slow to move on "yeah the Wen are threatening to kill your heirs." <- socially inconceivable behavior. Why society in general is so shocked by Xue Yang and the murder of the Chang <- which would be bad normally but not quite like this. And why no one did anything specific about JGS even if they felt he wasn't entirely correct. What are they going to threaten him with? Death???? A trial of his peers? Social Shunning??? Public shame???

"But Tav how does this relate to CQL!Su She's morality?" I hear you ask. Well you see, the question of "he should've been ready to die for his sect!" is utterly baffling in a society where nobody is expected to be ready to die for their sect on a regular basis because the idea that you should be ready for someone trying to stab you before brunch is utterly nonsensical in a world where most people expect that the baseline number of murders a cultivator does in their lifetimes is 0. That's the world he lives in.

On this regard CQL!Su She is utterly blameless. Nobody handed him a rulebook or expectations sheet for "the sect down the street will try to kill you" nor SHOULD they expect he'd be ready to die at a drop of a hat when no part of the education or social expectations include "ready to die for your sect because it's routine for people to try to kill you."

If you don't even expect to be stabbed and possibly die at a discussion conference where there are lots of cultivators from many sects why on EARTH would you expect to be facing down death in your own home when there's. cultivators here to kill you, this situation is so out of left field?

[serpentface]

Faiza: how did you come to believe your philosophy on your religion?

"I was introduced to the concept by my tutor. Shiyabi Erunara? You may have heard of him? He was one of the founders of the royal Couyinnacame* in Godsmouth. Disgraced himself in a scandal with one of his co-founders' wives, haha, sooo... Wound up on the opposite side of the empire, tutoring us little Haidamane brats and being exceptionally overqualified for it. And he absolutely knew it.

So he would expect a lot from us, you know? When he tested you, you wouldn't just let you give answers by rote, you had to explain in detail how you got to your answer. You can't just say 'because I know', he wanted to know exactly how you knew. He wanted you to justify it. Even if you had the right answer- any flaws in your reasoning? Nope. Mister Erunara wouldn't have it. You had to go over it again and again until you could explain it inside and out. It made lessons very, very long. I always thought he was just milking the hours for pay, haha. Probably was, but-. His convictions were sincere enough. I think.

So of course, when he'd teach religious studies, he'd make you work through that too. You couldn't just explain a rite to him, you'd have to explain the theory of the rite, the underlying logic of what makes every little minuscule step work. I mean, from personal experience, the average PRIEST doesn't even really think about that- like, we know, but we don't really have to know. We just do.

And there was this one time he was working through a lesson with me. We were discussing the rites of expelling dagi from the body of a child with the red fever. And I had it all down, I could explain every little detail, all the theoretical angles, everything. And I finish and he says, "Correct. And then it doesn't work. The child dies. Why?"

And I was at a loss. Because that happens of course, yeah? Sometimes you do everything PERFECTLY, immaculate, and it just- doesn't work. So I work through every step again in my head, and I'm drawing a blank. I don't have an answer besides, 'well, sometimes people just die'? And he's not going to take that. And I'm frustrated, and just want to get this over with so I can go play with the dogs, so I finally just throw my hands up and say "I don't know!". And he just- just kind of laughs and pats me on the shoulder. And then moves right on to the home economics lesson.

So, you know. I was a kid, I just thought this guy was an annoying, pedantic hardass, and that was about it. I was inducted not long after that, so the rest of my schooling was at the temple. I didn't see him again for a long time. But that stuck with me, you know? Why DOES it go wrong when you do every single thing right? And you can just say, "hey, this discussion is in a theoretical space, in real life conditions are imperfect. Your actions were right, but something was just a little off, and so the child dies". But it just nagged at me, it felt deeper than that. It was more like something was missing. Something about the theory itself was wrong.

I got in contact with him again after I was fully initiated. I wanted to keep pursuing my studies, get a little fresh air from the temple atmosphere, he seemed like a good option. So we started writing letters back and forth, just here and there. He'd send me old books now and then. Trade me for stuff I stole out of the temple library- Uh. Don't tell anyone. It'll be bad for you. Haha. And one year, he came back into town for the dry season festival, so. We met up.

And we were just chatting, you know? Nothing serious, just what our lives are like now, what we've been up to since he was my tutor. And I offhandedly mention the red fever lesson to him, how much it stuck with me. And I had always assumed he'd been messing with me back then, you know? I was champing at the bit to be done, so he made his lesson as meandering and frustrating as he possibly could. So I'm trying to laugh with him about it, how he was so successful at tormenting girlchild me that I still think about it- what IS missing? Haha. But he just looks me in the eye and says "You're trying to treat body with spirit. Body can only interact with body."

So we started talking about it very seriously. That's where I was introduced to the concept. And I mean, it's not that I'd never heard of the idea. I was mostly interested in political philosophy, but I'd heard of it in the abstract. Arguments that the cycling of God's spirit is false, coming from pseudo intellectuals with their heads so far up their own asses that they can't recognize the sun. But when we talked about it, it was just like, Oh. This isn't just - edgy philosophical masturbation, this is a theory. This could be what's missing.

I didn't come around to the notion immediately, of course. We said our goodbyes and I went right back to being a priestess. But that kind of only made me more convinced, you know? Doing the same sets of rites, over and over and over again. Sometimes they seem to work, yeah, and most of the time I have no way of knowing. But then sometimes-. I give Odomache's blessing to a pregnant woman, yeah, the strength to fight through her woman's war, and I do so impeccably. The sacrifice takes, the signs are good. Every little detail is right. My actions are unimpeachable. And then a month later I find out she and her child both died in labor. I bless a man and his sword, and that very night a robber takes it off him and sticks it in his gut. He drags half of his innards out before he manages to die. And I could just say, "Well, that's not really supposed to happen when you bless someone. Something must have gone wrong. I don't know!" and move on. But it kept nagging at me. It wasn't that something went wrong, it was more like the rites themselves were wrong, they were incapable of the material effect they intend.

So I thought about it a lot over the years. Did a lot of reading. Wrote to Erunara now and then, until he died. And it's just- with everything I've seen, everything I know, this is the only model that makes sense. Only body can interact with body. The nature of cause and effect is physical. Dagi must enter the body for disease to take hold. Rain must soak the ground for plants to grow. The realm of spirit- thought, willpower, belief- it has nothing to do with it. I can't make a barren field sprout by pretending to be the rain. And isn't that all that most rites are, when it comes down to it? Demanding for spirit to interact with body, and then throwing our hands up and saying "I don't know!" when it doesn't work?"

---

*Couyinnacame is the word for Wardi institutions of philosophy and academia, existing as physical meeting places. The Couy- root is the same as the name Couya and comes from an antiquated word for mind/spirit. -Yinnacame is an adoption of the Burri word for schools (Yiñacami), carried by a lot of Imperial Bur era institutions and their descendants

---

A little more elaboration- Burri-Wardi (proto)materialism generally acknowledges that both Body (matter) and Spirit (the soul, thought, willpower) Exist, but denies the notion that Spirit has any capacity to influence Body. This extends to God- God's physical corpse exists and can be interacted with in the form of the world, but Its spirit (the aspect that the Wardi Faith is BASED upon interacting with) is severed from the body in death and is thus noninteractive. (Some schools closer to actual materialism deny the existence of the soul/spirit itself, but these are Very niche (like on the level of a few singular philosophers on the very peripheries of the scene)).

This school includes like a proto-proto theory of the atom, positing that there is are fundamental, invisible states of Body that give different types of matter their properties- this is explanatory for plainly material effects that have no obvious material source (wind is an example), or questions as to how, if the Spirit is noninteractive, the Body of a living being is animated.

Common Wardi belief includes evil spirits called dagi that are the cause of disease, which are tiny and both spiritually and physically enter the body. This meshes very well with the materialist outlook, which would describe dagi as the Body of disease. Some variants posit that the fundamental Body that animates living beings can exist and act on other matter aside from living beings. This is also what allows for someone fully following this philosophy to believe in interactive evil spirits and even ghosts- just that these are ultimately composed of material Body rather than immaterial Spirit.

[urlocalnonbinarybastardwrites]

the gang + socs + shepherds and how they flirt (pair them up in all your silly ways)

How the Outsiders Flirt

Ponyboy Curtis

-dude flirts with the nerdiest history/literature/media reference pick up lines

-he does it ironically. Mostly.

-“Hey y/n, you won’t need the Rosetta Stone to translate my love for you.”

-“Hi, I’m babe Lincoln, and I’m about to give you the Gettysburg undress.”

-“Call it manifest destiny, but I truly believe it’s my God-given right to acquire you.”

Johnny Cade

-I think a lot of people think Johnny is a bad/nervous flirter

-which is true if he’s trying to flirt with someone he actually likes

-I also think he would be amazing at text flirting

-but, to the gang? He’s smooth as hell

-doesn’t need pick up lines to make any gang member flustered

-Gang: “Hey Ponyboy, did I ever tell you how damn handsome you are in that?”

-Crush: “Uh- hi Y/n… *tries to muster up courage to flirt but ends up looking at invisible watch* O-oh guess I’m late gotta go!

Darry Curtis

-I think he’s awkward at it

-OKAY SO

-a lot of people think oh he’s so experienced he would be so smooth

-but let’s be so fr I think Darry maybe has the least experience in romance besides ponyboy

-because he’s juggling raising two damn children

-if that doesn’t hold you back from flirting idk what will

-but anyway

-he’s very awkward at it but the gestures are sweet and he eventually gets help with lots of coaching from soda

-“Uh-Yeah! You’re really pretty Y/n!” *insert awkward finger guns and mental facepalming*

Sodapop Curtis

-rizz king

-I’m sorry but he knows how to pull

-like the best out of all of them

-he perfected the art, he can flirt kinda dirty or innocent in a perfect balance

-but either way you’re going to be blushing 2 minutes in

-seriously he’s charming af we know this

-idc how “tough” you are you will turn into a giggling schoolgirl under his words

Dallas Winston

-he’s not respectful

-catcalling/blunt remarks about your body

-invades personal space

-dirtiest mf pick up lines

-“Hey Y/n you work at Kentucky Fried Chicken right? Because whenever I’m done with these breasts and thighs, can you give me a greasy box to put my bone in?” (Afab ver.)

-“Hey Y/n Are you an eco-friendly kind of guy? The condom in my pocket goes expires tomorrow, so why don’t you help me use it?” (Amab ver.)

Two Bit Mathew

-CHEESIEST PICK UP LINES EVER

-ARE YOU FROM TENNESSEE BECAUSE YOU’RE THE ONLY TEN I SEE TYPE SHIT

-LIKE ACTUALLY MAKES YOU LAUGH FROM CRINGE

Steve Randle

-he’s a pretty average flirter

-I think it’s like a 50/50 chance of you being either charmed or disgusted

-definitely more explicit/implying pick up lines

Cherry Valance

-sweet and wholesome

-compliments and things like that

-“Hi Y/n, you look so pretty today!”

-“Y/n that too is stunning on you!”

-“I could get lost in your eyes.”

Marcia Don’t Know Last Name

-I think she’s pretty blunt

-“Hi Y/n I really like you. Let’s date.”

Tim Shepard

-okay so you know how Wattpad men flirt? That’s this man

-flirts like he already owns you

-“His gaze darkened”

-“his voice drawled out”

-“Darling..”

-Allll that shit

-if you can imagine how a mafia boss flirts that’s him

Curly Shepard

-okay I feel like he would kinda make fun of you flirt

-like banter flirting

-tease flirting

-like you both mutually make fun of each-other and bite your lip type shit

-or it starts off teasing quickly goes to flirting

-or real spit-out-your-tea blunt shit

-“Damn, Y/n. That shirt is ugly as hell. Put it on the floor.”

Angela Shepard

-kind of like cherry but a lil more spicy

-“Damn Y/n if you wore that everyday I don’t think I could survive”

-“I like to be ontop of things. You can be one of them if you want.”

-“Y/n you’re making the sun jealous walking around like that.”

[anonymousgayrobot]

bestie you're the only person i agree with about the finale of the penguin

everyone seems so surprised that os is a villain and im ????? did everyone miss that time he set a guy on fire in front of his mother??????? did everyone miss him leaving sofia for dead after she found out he was manipulating her????? he's been a monster all along, that doesn't make him any less of a layered character

i really wish vic hadn't died but his death didn't feel like a revelation of how evil oswald is to me. i think this episode was more about the lies that os tells himself to feel better about his life than it was about "he was evil all along and you too fell for his manipulation". why else would he say all that as he strangled him? vic was dying. if it was about getting rid of him because he didn't need him anymore, why would he bother saying anything?

also that last scene with os pretending to dance with his mom was fucked up but it also seems to me like another way of showing how he's choosing to live in a world of his own lies. he can't deal with the truth, so he doesn't. it's easier that way. and this doesn't make him any less of a monster; it just makes him a complex one.

anyway your analysis is on point and i can't believe they killed off vic to progress os's character

HI! YES i totally agree; please don’t mind my lengthy yapping— i have sooooo much to say about this show

one thing I noticed predominantly throughout the show is the level and intricacies of complexity the characters were given, which you typically don’t see in the average shows pumped out these days, where good and bad is black and white and behavior will always be ‘straightforward’ with the character, unlike in real life where a person’s true nature will more than often contradict their actions, whether that be in acts of denial, or repressing something. whether large or grand, we all do it—so I kind of disagree with people only seeing this finale at surface level.

I really do think Sofia kind of ‘cracked the egg’ with dismantling or at least shaking loose oz’s denials through aggravating the unhealed wound of his brothers and the unspoken wounds between him and his mother; i saw that scene as sofia trying to force out feelings of remorse from oz, which I believe he repressed x100 after his brothers’ deaths, as seeing his expression struggle to remain stoic and continuously denying the truth even if it cost his mother her finger (if he did lack any true guilt, he would’ve admitted it much sooner with indifference ; and if he didn’t feel guilt but never admitted the truth to solely benefit his mother, he would not have hesitated to admit the truth with that priority over his mother. But he doesnt) . But by ‘dismantling’ oz himself, she unleashes this newer version of himself—she showed an opportunist what happens when he slips up with his greed and pauses to care for someone other than himself/guard. before sal and sofia find his mother, sal angrily comments that oz has no one—no one they could weaponize. family is weaponry, a step above simpler loyalty. someone can have as many allies as they want, but it doesn’t mean anything if they’re expendable. oz has viewed all of his allies as expendable, like sal, sofia, and the rest of the gang leaders. victor was an ally initially expendable and a failsafe for alberto’s murder, but upon becoming his protégé, an emotional tie was thrown in.

So in order to fully prevent his guard from ever slipping up again (caring for his mother despite the endangerment), he cannot similarly care for anyone else again (caring about victor despite the endangerment). so vic has to be shut out completely now both for oz’s self-preservation and possibly vic’s ‘preservation’ in a more morbid sense, by knowing his life is now endangered by his own care for oz likewise. who knows what sofia could do to him and what she could wrench out to harm oz again. and when he ‘shuts’ vic out, he has to shut out any sympathies/empathies that follow.

when he steals the money from his wallet, I saw it more as a not-wasting-resources gesture (sewers blown up + crown point hideout raided) rather than genuinely-indifferent disrespect, which goes in hand with that ever-prevalent opportunistic characteristic. “it wasn’t for nothing.” throwing away his ID also appeared disrespectful, but with how his expression froze, it was clear he was shutting out unwanted feelings of regret, perhaps a rogue emotion (seeing as he expresses nearly no remorse for his actions and lies his way around it to avoid it altogether), and threw it away briskly. He needed that reminder gone before the feeling could settle in. (a lack of expression does not always mean a lack of feeling)

If anything, killing victor could also symbolize oz killing his former self—tragically fitting for a finale and change of occupation/direction. it was obvious that he saw himself through vic, or at least began to until it reached a point of no return. That idea could also be applied through vic finding strength in family—oz realizes that was his own undoing, family, and that vic was officially non-expendable. It’d already been basic knowledge that non-expendable people are lethal tools of manipulation (using taj to also kill nadia, and their deaths against sal, alberto against sofia even if it was pinned on the maronis anyways).

And you’re right about him killing vic differently. In the beginning of the show, if he’d done what was expected and had shot vic while his back was turned—it’d be quick and easy, indifferent like everyone else. Same with the second time he nearly killed vic, Oz gives in and spares him, giving him yet another chance even when it didn’t benefit Oz at the moment. Oz centers those around him with how they benefit him, so choosing to spare victor despite the potential burden is an obvious sign of care. Although it makes it much more twisted, oz killing victor the way he did was the furthest thing from indifferent. He could’ve lifted his hand at any moment, but didn’t until the end, further exposing his need to snuff out his own weakness, his care for victor. its the ultimate and worst father-son moment— oz recognizing his care for victor as his protégé to be non-expendable, and the recognition that he couldn’t let himself genuinely care for another person again. i see a lot of people saying that there was no reason for oz to kill victor after everything he did for him—but that’s the exact reason why he needed to. Vic did all of that because he was just that close to Oz, not even taking that exit when given, his loyalty had become familial which could become just as dangerous as Oz’s love for his mother. I also think Oz’s care for vic was similar to the nature of his lies regarding his brothers—not it being a lie itself but rather getting caught up in the short term benefits and attention while blocking out the long term consequences waiting—perhaps distracted by becoming this fatherly figure as a fatherless son himself to a fatherless boy, and avoiding the inevitable pain at the end of the road (their criminal circumstances/predicament) until it’s too late and boils over from his mother’s incident. its also important to note the unique situation this is and how heavily survival and preservation is involved here. Oz can’t care about anyone, it’s dangerous and just as dangerous for everyone else involved in crime (alberto to sofia, nadia + taj to sal). its why he was untouchable when his mother was still hidden, he had nothing to lose—but after sofia, oz learned his lesson the hard way about exceptions, urging him to turn his attention towards vic for the last time.

It could also be similar to how he never returned his brothers despite having time and even staring out the window (slowly killing victor with time to change his mind). It could be that in the moment as a child he was accepting the situation for what it was, he’d killed his brothers and needed to assess what to do, but us the viewer have to keep in mind his opportunistic personality (hinted by oz’s admiration of rex despite his older brother’s moral aversion) and the possibility of shock feigning as indifference (i say this because of the severity of oz’s denial reminds me of a trauma response). as many children do, he sought the short term benefit—the short term benefit was keeping his mother’s affection over disrupting that current peace and causing long term harm. (i don’t really believe the real reason was to have it solely for himself, mostly because it was only from his mother’s bias/pov and then by sofia who was only out to hurt him—but i think he just wanted to sustain it). by seeking the short term benefit of saying nothing and sharing a nice moment with his mother, it also further highlights, as you said, his inability to deal with the truth and the lies he upholds to keep his own peace (something his mother also did by constantly lying to oz that she didn’t know what he’d done and actually loathed him for it instead)—a ticking time bomb which sofia uses and demolishes completely, or at least enough for the viewers to realize the severity of oz’s delusions, which as you said, had been prevalent since the beginning, but never quite the full depth or scope of.

[applebuttercringe]

Episode 5 immediate thoughts

Spoilers ahead!

-Oh hey it's the big guy who used to be on Caitlyns strike team.

-Get em Vi

-Jinx is betting on Vi's fights

-Average lesbian breakup experience

-Did she dye her hair black? Or did she just cry enough eyeliner onto herself that it turned it black?

-THE SISTER REUNION

-Vi is reminded by the shimmer tear that Jinx isn't fully in control of herself.

-Proud of Jinx though for being able to be in Vi presence without a breakdown

-Last time they saw each other Vi was fully ready to kill Jinx. Most brutal fight in the series. Now they can work together? Thats kinda rushed.

-Caitlyn using her detective skills again!

-"Peacekeeping operations" Yeah right Caitlyn.

-Caitlyn is full on racist

-Full on fascist

-The Caitlyn stans are gonna be fighting for their LIVES trying to defend her.

-This is the first time we've seen Mel not collected, or at least put together and considerate.

-ELORA!!!

-Mels brother?

-Mels brother!

-Well Vi got over basically all the Jinx stuff pretty quick.

-I mean this is basically what both of them really wanted, to be a family again, and it was achieved with very little ceremony.

-Did Jinx find out the mushroom aren't toxic by eating them? Does she eat every new thing she finds just to check?

-If Vi thinks this is Jinx lying why would she follow her?

-"BITCHMITTENS"

-Typical sibling behavior

-Vi is a child hitter confirmed. Considering Jinx's lingering trauma from Vi's reaction to the explosion in S1 Ep3, I'de think she would have a worse reaction to Vi hitting Isha.

-Whaarwhick is more savage than any beast in Noxus? Knowing Noxus from league I find that hard to believe.

-Wait, did Silco kill Vi and Jinx's parents? Is that why they split? I need to rewatch this frame by frame.

-Singed holding his daughter

-Singed real name is Dr. Reveck

-If Mel and Kino are surprised Ambessa has a love child, were they her hatechilds?

-Mel herself is a magical maguffin for the cult running a foreign nation. I thought she was just a super cool girlboss.

-Jinx is a jacket sniffer.

-Was Vander in love with their mom? I thought he was their adopted dad, has he been their bio dad the whole time?

-Vi defending Jinx 🥺

-Is that Singed daughter on the record Felicity is playing.

-Oh no young Silco is hot

-Felicity sounds like Jinx when she says "working up the nerve"

-That one tweet was right, Arcane music is horrifically literal.

-I don't care if it's rushed. This scene is straight out of a feel good fix it fic and I love it. Happiness and family for the Zaun sisters!

-Is this Salo after being healed by Viktor?

-Knew it

-Jayce, where ya been buddy?

-Viktor broke Jayce out so he could come see him. I mean it is probably not Viktor, it's the hexcore taking people over, but still.

-And once again the dynamic is reversed

-Just leaving Ekko and Heimerdinger in their huh?

-JAYCE STRAIGHT UP MURDERED HIM! HOLY SHIT! WHAT!?

-I THOUGHT HE WAS JUST GONNA BONK HIM TO KNOCK HIM OUT!

-WTF HAPPENED TO HIM!

Overall: Ok, so this felt rushed. The last 4 acts have been tearing these sisters apart, entirely centering on the traumas and outside forces that keep them from being a family. Then Jinx shows up and it takes one sentence to get Vi back, granted Vander being alive is big news, but Vi thinks Jinx is lying to her. Why wouldn't she be mad at Jinx?

Jayce straight up murderred a guy, I wish we got to see more of how he got to this point.

Caitlyn is still as much of a dictator as she has been all, but she does get consistently worse.

Mel is in a totally different story now.

Things are only looking up for Jinx and Vi.

Even with it being rushed I do like Jinx and Vis story here, I want happiness for them , sue me. But I don't see how they could possibly meaningfully redeem all the other characters in the 4 episodes left. Which means I think Arcane season 2 might not be peak anymore, entertaining? Yes. Interesting? Yes. Exciting? Yes. Peak? Maybe not. I still love it, but the cracks are showing.

[etherealhoneybee777]

The Tragedy of Teru: An Unnecessarily Long Thesis

I’ve seen some people ask: why the sudden change in Teru? Why did he suddenly go from a total menace who was okay with choking Mob to unconsciousness to a good guy/best friend type whose moral axis now completely revolves around Mob? I’ve seen some people claim that Teru’s redemption was so sudden that it’s unconvincing.

I don’t think the redemption was a sudden shift in Teru’s character. Actually, it’s the most natural progression for him. Consider Teru’s life circumstances. His parents completely abandoned him with no remorse. It wasn’t even because of Claw, they were just “busy” and moved overseas. He has no one to look after him at home. His relationships at school are largely superficial. He probably has severe attachment issues because of childhood neglect. He has no connections, no one truly rooting for him.

It’s an extremely shitty situation—but Teru convinces himself that he’s okay. In fact, he’s better than okay. He’s doing great. He’s doing the best because he’s better than everyone else—he has psychic powers, he’s popular, he’s talented in pretty much everything. Why would he need people to love and care for him when he has everything else “average” people dream of?

And so Teru’s entire emotional state revolves around a shaky thesis: that he’s better than everyone else. The main character. Main characters don’t need families. They don’t need love and support. Teru’s too superior for those things. And he HAS to be superior, because if he’s not, if he’s like everyone else, then he has to acknowledge the facts: that his parents left him, that there’s no clear cut purpose for his life, he’s completely alone, and there’s nothing he can do about it.  

If Teru’s the main character, then trauma and abandonment are just part of a tragic backstory---necessary hardships that will pave the way for all the great and superior things that Teru is destined to do. Whereas “average” people don’t have tragic backstories. When “average” people are abused and abandoned, it’s not part of some epic tale. It’s just sad. If Teru’s average, then the trauma is meaningless. Purposeless. 

And the weight of that is just too much for him to bear.

And so he dates girls he doesn’t like, and he cheats on tests, and he wins at sports, and he runs a gang. And he copes. For a while, it works.

And then it doesn’t.

Enter Shigeo Kageyama.

Mob’s existence rocks Teru’s world. The idea that there’s another natural child esper as powerful as him shatters his core belief that psychic powers made him the main character. Not only that, but Mob withstands all of Teru’s attacks, and refuses to fight back--a move that Teru finds insulting.

When Mob insists that psychic powers are average, and that Teru’s average, Teru is enraged. (“You’re the only one who can make that point. And that’s why your very existence pisses me off!”)

Finally Mob puts the nail in the coffin: “You and I are the same. We both have no self-confidence.” Up until this point, I believe that NO ONE has genuinely seen through Teru like Mob does, or, at least, they didn’t point it out. Mob sees Teru for who he is: a sad and insecure kid with no real connections. And THAT’S what makes Teru put him in a chokehold.

In a move of infinite kindness, Mob refuses to use his powers against Teru. Only when Mob is knocked unconscious are his true powers revealed. Teru then sees how outmatched he was from the very beginning, and how intentional Mob’s pacifism was towards him.

Teru did nothing but try to hurt Mob, but Mob refused to hurt him back. This is probably the most intentional love and care Teru’s received in a long time.

It’s a turning point. Because here’s the thing about Teru: he latches on to any gesture of genuine kindness and holds onto it for dear life. Mob’s kindness is enough to make Teru completely reject his old ideals.

Teru’s emotional state depended on the idea that he’s superior, but now that this belief has been dismantled, he needs a new life purpose to fill the vacuum, something else to distract from the loneliness in his life. And Mob has given Teru a new purpose: to be a good person. A kind person. Teru wants to be Kageyama’s rival—not in terms of psychic power—but in terms of kindness. (That’s why Teru claims to have won against ???% even though he’s clearly overpowered. He was talking about winning a contest of kindness, about repaying the kindness Mob showed him when they met by refusing to use his psychic powers to hurt ???%---even when ???% was hurting him).

So, Teru’s new purpose: kindness and doing good for the world. It’s a good purpose to have. And Teru is good at being kind. He risks his life to fight Claw just because he cares about Mob. He takes down Claw’s splinter organizations all on his own. He fills in at spirits and such for probably negligible pay when Mob trains for the race. He gives advice. He practices intentional humility (sometimes). He always says thank you.

And, of course, he puts his life on the line to stop ???%’s rampage and get through to Mob. He almost dies to save every last civilian.

Teru is good at being good. He is the type of person who spins every stray thread of kindness he receives into gold. He multiplies every rare gesture of love tenfold. It’s a beautiful example of how the human spirit can withstand so much neglect and agony and evil and still come out good in the end. Teru’s name means “brilliance,” and his whole character is about shining a brilliant light into the darkness that surrounds him.

As much as I’d like to believe that’s the whole picture, it’s not. There’s a darker, sadder side to Teru’s redemption

Don’t get me wrong, I believe that Teru cares about his friends very much and is a genuinely kind and good person. BUT that’s not the only reason he’s kind and good. I believe that Teru is so obsessed with being good/putting Mob on a pedestal because “being good” is his new coping mechanism.

See, his coping mechanism before was being superior and having refined psychic powers. But, since Kageyama dismantled that, he found a new purpose: being good. And he uses the pursuit of being good to distract from his empty apartment, neglectful parents, and lack of personal connections.

And isn’t there something so utterly heartbreaking about that? Think about Teru single-handedly taking down all of Claw’s splinter organizations. Think of him spending constant hours refining his psychic powers to be able to beat the bad guys. Going into the forest to meditate to “improve” himself. Training the awakening lab kids. Working out until he is more ripped than any 13-year-old should be. All of it, he probably enjoys, but is it not also a distraction? Is he doing these things solely to become better or also to busy himself and fill the days? Anything to not be by himself, tiny and alone in an empty apartment with strange noises and the bleak reality that there is no one, no one who will even know if Claw sneaks into his house and kills him.

Teru is a tragic character. At the beginning of the story, he is a menace who is completely alone. He is then redeemed. He orients his life towards being good--and gains some meaningful connections, but at the end of the story, Teru is still functionally alone most of the time. Though they care for each other very much, Mob and Teru don’t really hang out in canon. (Fanbook) They’re not even on a first name basis. Teru comes by Reigen’s office sometimes, but not often. He still has no one at home to care for him.

At the end of it all,—months and months later—Teru still has to ask for the occasional hang out with Mob. He is sipping tea sadly when Mob talks about his friendship with Tsubomi, jealous. And then he will go home to an empty apartment, alone. There is no one to take care of him when he is sick. There is no one to discipline him, or tell him “no,” or to prepare him for his first date, or to help him apply for college.

And doesn’t that go against the usual abandoned child narrative? Where the abandoned and neglected child ends the story with so many deep connections and so much love pouring into them that they can barely breathe? Where is that love for Teru? He is doing everything right. He is repaying all of the love and kindness he has ever received, so why is he still alone?

Teru never talks about any friendships besides Mob or adult influences besides Reigen. I truly believe Teru is still relying on his sparse interactions with Mob and Reigen to stay afloat emotionally. And he’s not used to kindnesses---when Reigen takes him to the amusement park, he’s overly thankful (”Reigen-san, you went to all this trouble”) And Teru literally idolizes Mob for the kindness Mob has given him. But this is kind of heartbreaking too.

No child should have to subsist on stray inklings of love and support. Love should not be a limited resource. One of the reasons that Teru treasures kindnesses so much is because he knows that gestures of love towards him are few and far between.

It’s no life for a kid. Teru should have a support system that gives him so much love casually that he’s not afraid to let it slip through his fingers. He shouldn’t have to be overly thankful for kind gestures, he doesn’t have to say “you went to all this trouble,” after someone takes him on a fun summer excursion. Teru should be loved so much that he forgets to say thanks. Love should be an expectation, not just a treasure.

Maybe this is why I’m constantly reading fics where Teru is adopted or where he spends a lot of time with the Kageyamas. Because in canon (especially manga canon), Teru’s ending is incredibly tragic. I really love the way ONE wrote him, and I’m not complaining about the ending---I think it’s great. But I want to see this boy happy. There’s something so sad about someone who loves so much but never gets what they deserve. 

But fanfiction exists! So write him having happy moments. Write Teru at the water park. Write Teru being hugged by Reigen before his graduation. Write him planting a tree. Write him having his first kiss in the rain. Write him going to cosmetology school and becoming a hairdresser. Write Reigen saving up for Teru’s college fund. 

Write Teru experiencing all of the love and joy and beautiful things because he deserves them. I will read all of your fic just put it in my inbox. I will do anything to see this boy be loved.