#demons aren't real

[notmuchtoconceal]

Your answer to my last ask made me think. I've had a handful of my asks mistaken for This Guy Who You Once Knew, and a small number of his asks were mistaken for mine. And I've noticed that the moments when this most often happen are when Language Demon is relapsing or I'm in a more morally dubious state of mind. I, at least, make an effort to distinguish myself from Him but This Guy sometimes likes to use me as a cover for himself whenever he wants to ask you something that's meant to pry at your shared past.

I also think it's very telling that my evil side is surprisingly common. It's common enough to be nearly indistinguishable from Past Flame, which means it's boring and stupid. You're trying to get me to make this revelation. And the revelation is that when I obey you and play nice, and speak poetically I get rewarded with recognition as my true self. Ask Friend Crazy Guy, not Wisconsin Faggot From Your Past.

Shit. And I just asked this question about clones, which you somehow managed to spin back around on me by implying I'm nothing more than a clone of Past Flame.

God dammit. Fucking fucking fuck. I wasn't supposed to be the one who learned the lesson here! Oh my fucking god, bro. Stop being so much smarter than me. I can only get so erect. This is why I'm your lil bro, even when I try to fuck with you. Maybe you want me to be nice to my clone, maybe not. Personally, I want to lay his bloody carcass at your feet. If you like I can describe in grisly detail how I would dismember him. You're mine. And there can only be one. I know you love the attention. And you deserve it, too.

I'll obey you. For now.

Love you. Love your soul.

Man, I really do admire Charles Bukowski for his integrity.

I think people who find him repulsive are insecure lil bitches.

When you're talking to a fat, nasty sack of lard and spite and human bitterness who makes your eyes burn as though fart gasses erupting off spectacular moss-black Martian swamplands, it puts ya on edge.

Makes ya feel hard to be manipulated, other than all the ways you already manipulate yourself. What reflexive fear-signals you spout out.

In this sense, the Roman Bacchus is a far more honest and reliable depiction of Liber Pater than Greek Prettyboy Dionysos.

Ya talk to a nasty trollish fatass who's always pickin fights with ya -- the very image of a Socrates -- it puts ya in a different sorta philosophical mindset than an alluring naked half-young female muscle twunk who wants to read ya poetry to dismember your corpse and dance around.

'Tis true.

Perhaps we would all be far more inclined to live lives of sterling integrity were we all but lumpen and tendril-mosaic'd sea sponges endlessly spewing our seed into the polluted streams around us.

I mean, hey.

Donald Trump is the Archetype of the American Male.

Donald Trump is the Collective Worst Impulses of Every American Dad.

Donald Trump is the American Trauma Solidified into Muppet Form.

We've all known somebody exactly like Donald Trump before he became the mascot for the cartoon, and his intense mimetic appeal is precisely because he is archetypal of a sickness for which we have no name.

Joe Biden is identical to him in value and character.

Joe Biden lies just as much and is currently enabling a genocide.

Joe Biden lies by omission and sweet-talks ya, kids.

Daddy Trump's just as much of a fuckin liar, but at least ya fuckin know he's one. You can predict all his lies, and it's almost a relief when he fuckin does exactly what ya think he's gonna do! He's like a pet! It's great!

Biden, oh my God. Sure. I believe in Democracy.

Do you?

This is also the reason I've preferred Hemingway to Fitzgerald. He'll write a story about a dumb lil prick who needs to go big game hunting to feel like he's a big man, only to get shot by his own cunty vindictive jealous girlfriend who thought he was the biggest game all along!

Then you'll just sit there having no idea what the fuck it was about and continuing on with your life thinking men are shit cause when presented with earnest and inexplicable human emotion you refuse to think.

You know.

As opposed to a silver-tongued prettyboy like Fitzgerald who can open with daddy's stolid and freely-given wisdom about not judging people and seeing things from their circumstances, then not be able to figure out for two hundred pages why he's obsessed with the image of a big rich ostentatious simp ruining his life chasing an unavailable woman.

Holy fuck, do I love cute lil lying prettyboys who get drunk and ruin their lives writing glamorous poetry to hide the total lechery of values at the center of their being which they refuse to nourish with honest love!

Still, though. I like being pretty. You can't make me not pretty.

Beauty is a psychological need, for me and this beautiful soul I cherish.

That woman, bro. That woman.

She ain't no Martha Gellhorn, but she's somethin!

[captainjonnitkessler]

Just deleted the ask I was trying to respond to, but re: "skeptics always die in horror movies" - I have mixed feelings on that trope!

On the one hand I think it sets the tone and helps the audience suspend their disbelief - people are always complaining about horror movie characters being idiots, so this can be a way to be like "see? We DID consider rational explanations, and then someone immediately got murdered very supernaturally, so stop asking questions and accept the premise."

On the other hand, I think it definitely contributes to the idea that skeptics are close-minded killjoys who are too stubborn to accept reality, which is a very common and incredibly annoying mindset. Shane Madej did not spend the last eight years marching into haunted houses and loudly demanding that the demons inside kill him for me to still be hearing shit about how "if you don't take the supernatural seriously you will Attract Evil Energies And Die".

[dollypopup]

"But everything Lady Whistledown wrote was true!"

. . .does it matter?

Is the price for cruelty truth? Does it cease to be unkind if it is honest? Was the bullying many of us were subjected to swept away simply because it was, in some ways, objectively true? Because I have been fat all my life, and the people who weaponized that against me were 'just being honest'? When it took me longer to answer a question due to my processing with ADHD, were people right to call me 'slow' and laugh just because it was true?

Are rumors okay to spread if they're 'true'? No matter how much they harm others? Is the hurt someone experiences at the hands of gossip inconsequential because it happens to be private information made public against their will- but is still, at the core of it, genuine?

Can we out queer people, just because it's true? Can we reveal locations?

Do the ends justify the means? How much blood is okay to spill in the name of honesty? Who asked for Brutal Honesty to knock on their doors? Or is it allowed to come into our homes unwarranted simply on the basis of existence?

Where is tender honesty? Compassionate honesty? Empathetic honesty? Gentle honesty?

My issues with Lady Whistledown, and thus Penelope's actions and how people defend them, do not rest upon the truth of them. They rest on the unkindness. They rest on the fact that Penelope wants to 'be better' but is still, at the core of it, revealing information that is not her business or right to reveal. That she herself was at the bladed end of that experience and cried and cried and cried- and still chose it. That she knows the pain she can cause, and does cause, and yet cannot let it go for the sake of the power it holds.

It's not all her fault. She lives in a sexist society. She is a woman who has been made powerless because of misogyny and then snatched that power back. In some ways, it's impressive.

But we have to acknowledge the cruelty of it. That the people who pay are predominately woman. Those she cares for. The disenfranchised. That she herself has paid. That Colin has. Eloise has. Marina has. Kate, Edwina, Daphne, Cressida, modistes, and countless staff who came under scrutiny have paid.

I just want her to grow in Season 4. I want her to recognize she can pursue her passions without gossip and rumors. I want her to write stories and go traveling. I want her to make new friends outside of what she can provide for them with the power of her publication. I want her and Colin to be in love knowing they're moving forward together, instead of him being a mirror for 'her light' as she burns herself out.

I want more for her than 'brutal honesty'.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

so interesting thing I'm thinking about currently. the reason I'm leaning toward being OK with the occult-esque imagery of certain details in FMA, but will (sadly) not be reading Dying Inside basically comes down to: Dying Inside is set in the real world, with real-life uses and implications of what's probably witchcraft. FMA is an alternate universe fantasy where the author drew on real-world historical alchemy and "magic circles" (unfortunately including some pentagram type imagery) to create the way the fictional, alternate universe things look. there's a big difference between the two

[martyryo]

Drawing undertale for the memories

Click for better quality also 😤

[jichanxo]

playing LJ and idk what’s in the japanese water but Yagami is INSUFFERABLE!!!

He’s so fucking annoying his only argument is “muhhh sawa sensei” when Kuwana, Reiko or Ehara say the horrible things their kids endured like SHUT UP!!!! Reiko and Ehara’s children killed themselves bc they were bullied, I understand and support them fully for getting revenge, especially since the justice system is shitty when it comes to such cases

Did you feel the same or am I tripping?

putting this under the cut

sorry i know you sent this days ago and maybe your opinion has changed since then but i'll answer the best i can? (also i hope i don't accidentally spoil anything ahahah)

this take is not uncommon (and i felt the same at some point, though i've since changed my mind) so no, you're not tripping lmao. despite changing my mind, the fact that people say this pretty regularly probably means the writers didn't execute the idea as well as they could have. i would say that it feels clumsy and almost like a joke (cue sawa-sensei counter) to the point that it detracts from the point they're trying to make. i think some people will disagree with me on this -- rather than the writers, it's the players who aren't fully understanding what's being said to them in the text -- but regardless of whose "fault" that is, yes it's a Known Thing

(funnily enough, during my first playthrough, my sister mentioned seeing a meme about "sawa sensei" getting repeated a lot, and by the time the 2nd/3rd time hit we were like OH MY GOD THE MEME WAS REAL. which is a funny memory to me. lmao)

i think the thing that's getting lost here is that the "sawa sensei" argument is not meant to discredit how kuwana, reiko and ehara feel about the injustice. this part is not in question. yagami's stance on doing illegal shit is also not relevant to this conversation (and i'm not sure i could provide a compelling argument on this front anyway, aside from that he's very anti-murder, lol. clearly he does illegal shit himself so he's not against doing illegal shit based on principle alone. depends on circumstances probably)

sawa gets brought up because she clearly did not deserve to die. almost everyone agrees that sawa was a good person. kuwana puts her on a pedestal for confronting him about kusumoto being bullied, idealises her and muses that she would've understood him for what he's doing (killing people. and this is clearly a stretch). reiko says that sawa was the only person who visited kusumoto in hospital without an ulterior motive, which is one of the best testaments of character that she could give, really, imo. ehara probably holds a negative opinion of sawa for her false testimony about there being no evidence of bullying -- but this was clearly done under pressure of the people around her, and ehara's opinion is the exception to the rule.

so, sawa is a good person. so what? who cares? what's the point of bringing her up?

the point of what kuwana is doing is that he sees it as a way of righting the wrongs that the justice system leaves unaddressed. he needs to believe that what he is doing is right, because it gives him purpose and distracts him from his guilt.

sawa's death contradicts this. even if he and reiko didn't kill her themselves, it's proof that their extreme actions have negative consequences. they can say that the system is wrong, look what this monster did to my son, etc etc. but what they are doing also harms innocent people. the justice/revenge/whatever they pursue is at the cost of other innocent people. sawa herself represents the unforeseen cost of kuwana's self-imposed mission to kill bullies. they can justify themselves all they want, but sawa's death is a reality they can't talk around. they acknowledge she was a good person, but she died because of their actions. is this a worthwhile cost? yagami doesn't think so.

and the thing is, kuwana and reiko can be persuaded.

at least, that's kuwana's opinion about reiko

and later he says this about himself.

these screenshots are pulled from a youtube video w/ english dub so take it with a grain of salt, but you get what i'm trying to say here.

i think the repetition is the point. they agree sawa was a good person. they can be persuaded away from their current stance (that murder is an acceptable response). by repeating himself, yagami is using the argument that's most personal to them, mostly likely to convince them. repetition is not a bug, it's a feature. whether or not this was conveyed well by the writers is another argument altogether, but yagami's point itself is sound.

truthfully, i think LJ could have benefitted by leaning into what makes this case personally compelling to yagami. if you're not paying attention, the "but sawa sensei" argument can feel pretty flat, but putting emphasis on yagami's experiences would help it feel more rich and justified aside from "innocent people dying is bad" (even though that is a sound argument on its own). he does mention emi, i believe it's only once, so it's not like they don't do it at all, but i would like more. the impact of emi and of JE specifically is that yagami doesn't like to leave things unaddressed when he can do more, and that's clearly a motivating factor here. he won't leave kuwana alone for as long as there is 1. something yagami can do about it and 2. kuwana still intends to keep killing

think about the fact that yagami's parents were killed by someone seeing vigilante revenge, both a deeply personal tragedy, and a life defining event that set him on the path he walks now. leaning more into that would have helped, or at least been interesting, in my opinion. obviously it's not 100% the same since yagami's father was the lawyer and not the accused, but the key parts (vigilante justice + collateral damage) is there. of course yagami is trying to change kuwana's mind. not only does yagami understand kuwana's pain wrt the pain of inaction (yagami's regrets about emi) but he's experienced the aftermath of collateral damage, himself.

of course, yagami's personal experiences are only relevant to us, as viewers. sawa is still the best argument to convince kuwana and reiko (and i can easily imagine reiko brushing yagami off if he talked about his backstory LMAO), so that's what we get. sawa is what matters to them, so sawa is what he will keep reminding them of. that's why the sawa argument is what it is.

we can get into discussions about the inevitable failure of the legal system and what that means for "real justice", but we would never come to a consensus. instead, i think it's better to look at how kuwana and reiko are impacted on a personal level by their actions: neither of them have moved on, even after seeking their justice. they remain stuck in the past. their actions grant them no closure, and robs them of a future (reiko as a politician and mother, kuwana as a humble handyman: but as far as we know, a pretty damn good one considering how well he was able to leverage his connections to avoid being caught this whole time... at least in my opinion)

when kuwana argues, he asks how they should seek justice if legal avenues don't grant it to them. he asks, "what about the reiko kusumotos and akihiko eharas of the world?" he is right to point this out.

when yagami argues, he asks how revenge can be justified if innocents will suffer (and die) for it, even unintentionally. he asks, "what about the yoko sawas of the world?" he is also right to point this out.

there is no easy solution. they both have a point. that's what the story is ultimately about. kaito says it straight up at the end of the game:

well, that's my take. admittedly i'm not as well versed on LJ as some people are, so i could be remembering and paraphrasing some things wrong. i've seen people who really like LJ's writing, and others who straight up hate it LMAO, so yknow, your mileage may vary. hopefully this will at least help you understand the other perspective

if you want to hear another take on the sawa sensei argument, i'll put this here. i drew on it quite a bit while writing this, so yknow, credit where credit is due.

[trouble-warning]

blorbo!!

Is it egotistical of me to say he's my favorite and that I also kin him? ;-;

Either way this is my version of the silly silly boy and yes I'm only gonna give these skellies three digits per appendage bc it's easier on me and also makes them look a little less human, the number of spine segments and ribs is still up for debate though XD

also his rainbow freckles when he blushes are always forgotten and that makes me sad so I made two lil doodles of him all happy and blushy :]

anyway I'm barely processing that I made this. I love it so much and like, my, my hands did this??? Are you, no you're joking because there's no way I was able to produce something that gives me so much dopamine and seratonin-

[cryptic-crystal]

I truly have no idea

[amazingdeadfish]

I need to give the Mayor's buff form some appreciation lol. He's such a funky big guy.

[gxlden-angels]

Pastors really do say a whole lot of nothing on Easter Sunday huh?

[add1ctedt0you]

Me every time I read a bland mdzs's take about 'morality' and 'what x character deserves' and 'only the mains are good' and 'this is the right way to cope'

[captainjonnitkessler]

Christians telling me I'm going to hell 🤝 witches telling me that my disrespect for spirits will invite demons and evil energy into my life 🤝 a complete inability to understand the concept of not believing in something

[meyerlansky]

Hi, I'm always thinking about this part of "Let It Sleep" because it hurts my feelings so much and i know it hurts Curt too (re your commentary ~curt has two priorities: don't die, and keep bucky happy.) :

"He chokes on the rest of it. Swallows it, rather than trying to get the words out. Buck knows, anyhow. “The kind of pilot that got eight guys landed safe, Curt,” he says, voice still low but solid now. “That’s not nothing. ‘Specially not to them.”

But none of them are Dickie. He could keep arguing, jab at Buck’s soft spots—spot. It’s Bucky, just Bucky, and it’d be so easy, because for all his talk about the men, getting as many home safe as they can, Norm Smith sure as shit wasn’t Bucky either."

So my question is, how do you think Curt would've reacted if Bucky had died instead - when he wasn't even supposed to be on that mission? Like Lucky Bucky praying just hard enough next to that window for God to save his boys while quietly bleeding out and nobody notices until they land and have to carry him out? What if that had been waiting for Curt when he finally lands?

As always, love your writing and hope you have a great weekend!❤️🖤❤️🖤

"hope you have a great weekend!" like i am not writhing in agony on my FLOOR, you DEMON. how would curt react if bucky died on the regensburg mission? hm, there's a word, what is it............ oh yeah,

BADLY.

crank's probably his first target—and lmao poor crank catching undeserved war-widow grief-fueled rage from SOMEONE no matter what he does—because how do you not fucking notice? how do you pay so little attention to BUCKY, of all people, that you don't notice the life and the light bleeding away? curt's not biased, not at all, everyone has a bucky radar or they fucking SHOULD, how do you not NOTICE, curt fucking felt it in his BONES when dickie bled out TWO FEET AWAY FROM HIM and he loves—loved, fuck—dickie like a brother but dickie wasn't LOUD MOUTH SQUAD LEADER MORALE BOOSTER BUCKY who only goes quiet when something's fucking WRONG, so how can you not NOTICE

and if it's jack or bill that wrangles him away from laying into crank it might be... fine. it'd probably be the best outcome possible, anyway. jack and bill he'd walk away from with a shove and some cursing. but if it's gale?

the thing is, in LiSitS curt's got guilt about dickie because HE was flying. one of his guys, one of the NINE MEN he's responsible for, dickie getting hit is [by his rationale] ON HIM. curt's grief in LiSitS is internalized because he blames himself, so all his anger is pointed inwards and eats at his energy to lash out, even when he WANTS to pick that fight with gale. he'd feel better [or thinks he'd feel better at least—who's to say if he actually would] if he lashed out, but he doesn't deserve to feel better, because it was his fault. but he wouldn't blame himself if it was bucky, in a different fort, when he wasn't supposed to be there at all, because he's not responsible for bucky the same way he's responsible for his crew. so he'd blame the whole command structure, be angry at everyone major or higher, be furious at harding for letting bucky talk his way onto mugwump, but bucky got on that plane for gale. he died FOR GALE. and guess who's right fucking there in telerghma to catch that first burst of grief-fueled rage!

so at least in algeria, there's no grieving together, there's no "it's what bucky would've wanted", there's no "it's not worth picking a fight" like curt thinks wrt needling gale in LiSitS. by LiSitS/the end of DCtCtC, curt likes gale as a person and finds him attractive, but doesn't LOVE him independent of bucky yet. what MAKES it not worth jabbing at gale's soft spot in that LiSitS convo, aside from the internalized grief thing i mentioned, is that bucky wouldn't be happy if curt went for gale's weak spot to make himself feel better, might even pick gale over curt at that point. but BUCKY'S NOT FUCKING HERE TO BE HAPPY OR UNHAPPY ANYMORE and WHOSE FUCKING FAULT IS THAT

he might get over blaming gale if he has some space. he might not. but the immediate aftermath would NOT be pretty, and i don't know that they'd get past it down the line either.

[amatres]

the is the last of the end of act three i will make yall look at, but i just found these parts of the talk with minagho so interesting

[gaysebastianvael]

some may say Sebastian not entering the Fade with Hawke and the party is missing out.........wrong! he doesn't even need the Fade to be tempted by demons. a real friend will betray you for power in real life <3

[cult-of-dollbabies]

Maturing is realizing how astronomically disrespectful it is for the chucky franchise to STILL be using Damballas name in such a way..