#do not know how we survived

[buried-l0cket]

had my first dnd session and i ended up casting her little tiefling illusion spell almost every single turn instead of fighting 

[stil-lindigo]

Bisan is calling for another global strike!

I saw some posts just outlining Jan 21st, and wanted to clarify that Bisan has called for a full seven days of action.

What a global strike would look like is:

calling in sick to work

purchasing bare essentials ahead of the week so you can observe the general boycott of goods / buying as little as you genuinely can

putting in a concerted effort to elevate Palestinian voices and make it clear that this strike is in support of a permanent ceasefire!

For those who will have to purchase necessary goods during this time, please observe the brands that the BDS movement is asking us to boycott!

♢♢♢

Right now is also a good time to mention some better uses for your money during this week.

Available e-sims in Gaza are running low!!

Mirna El Helbawi and her team are working round the clock to continue to connect Palestinians as Israel does its best to cut them off from the rest of the world.

You can learn how to purchase and send e-sims here, and below you’ll find a list of what is currently needed (the areas in brackets indicate what region you should select to buy e-sims in).

--

CareforGaza is an organisation that does verifiably good work, distributing supplies directly to Palestinian families.

They have a Gofundme set up at the moment, but because of Gofundme’s poor track record regarding refusing to transfer funds to Palestinians, I’d recommend continuing to donate directly to their PayPal here.

Good luck to all of you. Don't turn away from Palestine!

[lotus-pear]

mourning black and the death of ideals

[jediexile]

I live in Western North Carolina. I have no idea if anyone knows what is going on here. I finally have gotten sufficient enough cell service to get online.

We are never going to fully recover. Whole towns are gone. My town was flattened. My street, a few miles south of town, was spared. We had no power or running water for four days. We lost hundreds of dollars of food from our fridge and freezers. We have no internet and no idea when it will be back. I work from home. My partner works two jobs - or worked, because one probably doesn’t exist anymore. My car took minor damage from the storm. Even if we had jobs, we probably couldn’t get to them. We got really lucky.

I so far have not lost anyone. Many of my friends are displaced. Some watched their homes be swept away. Some of them lost their pets. Some of them had to dig their children out of mud.

People - not organizations, not first responders, not the government - are clearing roads, doing welfare checks, forming groups of riders to take supplies up mountains on horses and mules. Private helicopters are landing in the middle of my town to drop supplies. They are doing this all over, all day, an essential lifeline for our cut off communities. The bigger cities are getting a more organized response, especially Asheville, which was essentially cut off from incoming vehicle traffic for a few days. Thank god the airport was spared.

I lost cell service, then internet, then power, from 7:45-8:20am Friday. I had no communication until Saturday. I was able to get a few texts out. I was able to get into town. Children’s toys were in the street. Some of my favorite businesses are gone. I saw a car part way up a house.

Please, send help. I don’t know what organizations to donate to. Any time I get online is spent networking relief efforts and getting the word out about missing persons. Keeping my family updated. Applying for FEMA assistance and mortgage relief. I have heard Blue Ridge Public Radio has a list on their website.

The death toll right now stands in the 50s. It is going to end up in the hundreds.

I am so heartbroken.

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

Today, the country indeed looks alien. The America many of us believed we knew now appears stranger in retrospect: The anger and resentment we may have thought was pitched at a simmer turned out to be at a rollicking boil. And one of liberals’ most cherished shibboleths from 2016—that Trumpism is a movement for aggrieved white men—unraveled in the face of a realignment that saw the GOP appear to give birth to a multiracial working-class movement. A second Trump presidency is the result of this misjudgment.

Democrats are a coalition party of the center-left

The Left has traditionally been associated with egalitarianism, which is by necessity concerned with the masses, the common people, the working class, but also the dispossessed, the marginalized, the disadvantaged

The modern Democratic party traces its roots most directly to the New Deal coalition of the 1930s, which it understands to have been a robust working-class and labor-rights movement

They also see themselves in the 1960s cultural revolutions and their repudiation of hierarchy, itself generally seen as the position of the common person, the masses, but also the dispossessed

The party takes its name from Andrew Jackson, great champion of the Common Man, at least as understood at his time, but it goes back to Thomas Jefferson, famous for declaring that "all men are created equal," and now excoriated for failing to live out that egalitarian principle

The Democrats are a party for the people, understood as capaciously as possible, the party that repudiates narrow nationalism and jingoism, in favor of spreading the benefits of American society widely, in opposition to favoring the privileged few

Why am I reminding you of all these things that you already know?

Because they believe so deeply that they are right in every way that matters, or at least incomparably superior to their opponents, they cannot begin to imagine repudiation from the very people in whose interests they thought they were acting, let alone in favor of the very person they swore was an existential, even murderous threat to those very same people

I think to appreciate the sensation, you might imagine a thief broke into your home, and then your family kicked you out in favor of the thief; someone broke in to ravish your spouse and they called the police on you; a sex offender told your children explicitly what he wanted to do them, and your children fought you to get out of your arms so they could crawl into the van knowing full well they'd never see you again

The shock is so existentially horrifying, such a betrayal of reality itself, that it would require rethinking all your most basic assumptions about the political order, human beings, and worst of all, yourself. Why would they do such a manifestly insane thing? Is there something I don't know? What did I miss? What did I do wrong? What do I do now?

Democrats cannot meaningfully internalize that they are the party of the privileged and the elite, by their own philosophy they are themselves the enemy, they write a blank check for the most lurid excesses of anti-colonial violence and call it "exhilarating" without dealing with the fact that given their assumptions, in this society, they are the power and not the resistance

But it's hard to ask yourself these kinds of questions and most people don't have the nerve for it, and so what we see instead, in another little paradox of human nature, is they're going to blame not the ravisher but the spouse

TL;DR, self-examination is hard, so now Democrats hate Latinos

[aethersea]

it is funny though how kids' shows are so so so careful about death, no one's ever killed except MAYYYYBE the big bad, all those random side characters are fine, here have a quick shot of them before we leave just so you know they really did survive that 50-foot drop into a stormy sea,

and meanwhile kids' books nearly all agree that it's not an adventure until it has a body count.

[the-dragon-hearted]

Part 1

There is a universe, somehow, where everything aligned just perfectly and left four desperate children on Silco's doorstep. A universe where Piltover is just a bit more ruthless: where Vander's connections aren't trustworthy and where his foolish sentimentality wins.

Vander's arrested, in Vi's place. He's so proud of her for trying to do the right thing - but he'll not make a sacrifice out of Felicia's daughter. The violence in the streets has to stop and Piltover won't stop until it has someone to blame for the theft. So the Hound becomes a sacrificial lamb.

But remember, his agreements are flimsier, and the trust between enforcer and undercity is as thin as the razor blade Mylo keeps in his pocket. The gold-trimmed enforcers aren't happy with a Hound dressed in wool - they want the girl. The one Jayce identified. Some pink-haired snot-nosed filthy brat. The thief. The terrorist.

They labeled her a terrorist: Vi. For a near-harmless explosion in a district she would've been beaten in, just for the grime in her hair.

And the Hound won't have that.

For the second time in his life, Vander's knuckles are stained with enforcer blood and the undercity begins to burn. Vi's next to him, eager to fight, but scared. She's just a kid after all. Always eager. Always scared.

Claggor, Mylo, and Powder come running as they limp back to the Last Drop. Powder's too busy crying into Vi's shirt to pay much attention to the screams outside. Reinforcements are just a few minutes away. The rats of the undercity retreat to spare themselves from the brutality beneath an enforcer's heel and the streets grow quieter and quieter. They all know how to slip away when the time demands it, but this is more than sneaking through the sewers and waiting for the storm to pass.

The enforcers, the council, Piltover: they'll keep coming. The blood on Vander and Vi's hands ensures that much. And they don't want him -

He looks to where Vi is hugging Powder back, a: "Sorry Powpow," being breathed. "Didn't mean to scare you -"

He can't let that happen. He can make himself the bigger problem - the biggest threat and that will buy the kids time and give those rich bastards a victory.

But then... it'll just be them.

Claggor's strong, Mylo's sly, Powder's clever, and Vi is brave. They're all tough as nails and they'll make it. At least until this underbelly starts ripping itself around. Vander's a smart man who knows what will happen in his absence, the cannibalistic tendencies of desperate people who need scapegoats.

And Vi's already willing to play the martyr. She proved that much. No, if he leaves he needs to leave them with something. Anything. Something that's as willing to fight for their future as...

That's when he gets the terrible idea. Right around the same time he hears the tell-tale racket of enforcers running down cobblestone. He grabs a bar napkin, and Claggor bars the door. He fumbles messily around for a piece of graphite or a damned pen.

Vi pushes Powder behind her and grabs a half-empty bottle from a table. There's a shatter as she arms herself with razor glass. These kids are well versed at making weapons, they have to be.

They'll only get better at it if he finishes this note. He's signing their lives away to a different demon. There's no guarantee they'll live long enough to give him the note. It's a terrible idea -

"I'll never betray Zaun's children"

Powder's climbing behind the bar with him, clinging to his leg. Mylo climbs over the other side, fiddling with a collection of rusty steak knives. Claggor's grabbed a chair and broke it, two wooden beams in either hand.

Suffocating in the streets is better than dying on a bridge.

"Take this," he gives it to Vi before slipping on his knuckles. "Find Silco. Ask around, and he'll find you."

"What?" it's a challenge from her. She's ready to fight to keep what she has.

She doesn't realize that every fight comes with a loss. And eventually, it's going to take everything from her. Once you bloody those knuckles you never stop - not really.

But not today. Today it'll only take him, and hopefully, she'll remember what they talked about. She'll remember that despite this shitshow - he's proud of her for finding a peaceful solution. He's proud of her for putting down those fists.

But there was no way in hell he was going to let her go.

"Take care of each other," he orders slipping on his other gauntlet. Mylo and Powder stare at him with wide eyes. Claggor's lip is trembling.

"Remember. Remember, to look out for each other!" he orders.

"No!" Powder seems to understand now as Vander pulls the bracings away from the door. She scrambles over the bar with a muffled wail. Mylo stops her right as Vander throws the door open.

"Vander!" Vi screams, but the hound is loose.

He's in the streets and he's set about making these fools remember why they follow the light. Why they fear the undercity so badly they chase its children to sate their fury. Dark things live in the undercity. Zaun's children are raised in air so heavy it turns their lungs to iron. Her streets sharpen their teeth and build calluses over their knuckles until the only thing they feel is the warm crimson in their wake.

Vander had hoped he'd never do this - be this. But jaws shatter under his fist faster than glasses fill with his whiskey. He's good at this. Always has been. The kids slip away - he knows that much.

Everything else is a bit of a blur. He glimpses Ekko, once, on the rooftops. The boy heads after the other four and Vander is thankful for that. Benzo didn't survive the first wave... he doesn't have much chance to reflect on that because there's another enforcer in his grip and a new scream in the air.

He buys the kids plenty of time. Too much time.

Enough time for all of Zaun to hear the news: the Hound's fighting back! Five enforcers are dead! Six! Ten! Enough time for Vi and Mylo to find their informants.

Silco isn't exactly a subtle name. He's well hidden, that's true, but a familiar blond limped his way over to one of the abandoned warehouses after Vi kicked the shit out of him. Word on the street is that he's in with someone named Silco. Doesn't mean much to the informant or to Vi.

It's enough. They slip into one of Zaun's many industrial districts just as Vander finally falls.

Piltover's attack dogs got him - they would eventually, he knew that much. A wild hound is fierce but numbers always win. Part of him's happy to die on familiar cobblestones. Better than the cool stone of prison - better than anything Piltover had in mind for him. This way, the kids would know what happened to him. They wouldn't do anything stupid.

Well... they'd probably still do some stupid things. He coughed out a laugh, blood hacking out of his lungs as it all began to fade. Good. They deserved to be a bit stupid. They were kids...

Just kids.

Hopefully, Silco remembers that...

Silco? Oh, Silco remembers. He'd been making a plan revolving around that. Kids are foolish. Kids are loyal. Children are painfully easy to manipulate and kill. Children are easy to make disappear.

Killing Vander and his children was quite literally on his upcoming schedule. It was going to be a glorious sort of revenge, making Vander watch it happen - helpless to stop it as he drowned in his own pacifism. It was going to be inhumane. The final nail in Silco's old coffin.

So pardon him for taking a moment to stare at the victims delivered to his doorstep. Half of him wants to laugh. The other half feels like he's been shoved back into that damn river.

The children only stare back, wide-eyed and curious. Scared too... haunted in some wonderfully poetic way.

"Can I help you?" Silco demands cooly after his disbelief has been satiated.

The pink one steps forward, naturally. She's Vander's little favorite, his poster child: basically a replica. Taking charge is probably laced in her veins.

She hands him a napkin.

"He told us to come here," she breathes, and it almost sounds like a prayer.

Silco cannot focus on anything but the napkin.

"Well... not here," the wily boy in the back disagrees slowly as he gives a scathing glance to a dead mouse in the corner. "He told us to find you."

Silco watches them carefully and then unfolds the napkin. If this is a trap it's ridiculous and definitely not Vander's idea. Perhaps these children are simply suicidal - or stupid.

He reads it.

Pauses. Reads it again.

He glances to that pink one again: Violet. Felicia's daughter. The other one is to her right, clinging to the elder's bruised knuckles. Powder... right?

Mylo. And Claggor.

Vander's children.

Vander's children!

He reads it one more time.

"It is kind of messy," Claggor's sheepish tone contradicts his appearance sharply. "He was in a rush -"

"I can read it," Silco snarls. He whirls around and plunges further into the bowels of the warehouse.

The children follow, blindly. Because they were told to. They follow the devil into his den because Vander told them to.

Why Silco let them, he'll never be able to explain. Never. Why he didn't finish was Vander started: destroy all remnants of their old life, including those damned children - he'll never say.

He can't. Because Vander sent him his children and a note. It changes nothing.

Except it changes everything.

[mediumgayitalian]

y’all i cannot stop fucking thinking about it. will with his big blue eyes, youngest of them all, completely musically untalented and rhythmically challenged but by the gods does he understand the human body. following lee around holding his quiver and rattling off whatever he just learned from watching michael in the infirmary. doted on by his big siblings. talking for hours about a galaxy far far away with heroes who choose to save the world, aren’t forced to, hey, they’re heroes, just like you, lee! and his siblings have dreams, they know the prophecies, they look at their little brother and they know he will be alone. they don’t know why or how yet but they can feel in their very soul that he will be out in the stupid world with all its hatred and violence and he will have to defend himself. and he can’t shoot straight and he cries when he hurts someone in training, and all he wants to do is help, and he doesn’t understand that people can be cruel and they will take his kindness and bleed him dry. and a war is coming. they can feel it. do you think they would be desperate? for themselves as much as will? i don’t know how long i will live. i don’t know how long i have left. but you will be there, son of phoebus. i know you will. remember me, okay? remember how i loved you. remember how we loved each other, remember how we healed and fought and cared. please. please, will, remember us. and remember how we loved you.

[lesbianredhoodedmercenary]

project moon is getting me with the girldads double whammy

ryoshu spider bud ego.... ryoshu getting the ego for the abnormality that's so fiercely protective of it's children to the point of murder... combined with how protective the artist is of his daughter in hell screen... she's the best dad on the bus

[arolegos]

piss on titans

[wonder-worker]

Thinking about Elizabeth Woodville as a gothic heroine is making me go insane. She entered the story by overturning existing social structures, provoking both ire and fascination. She married into a dynasty doomed to eat itself alive. She was repeatedly associated with the supernatural, both in terms of love and death. Her life was shaped entirely by uncanny repetitions - two marriages, two widowhoods, two depositions, two flights to sanctuary, two ultimate reclamations, all paralleling and ricocheting off each other. Her plight after 1483 exposed the true rot at the heart of the monarchy - the trappings of royalty pulled away to reveal nothing, a never-ending cycle of betrayal and war, the price of power being the (literal) blood of children. She lived past the end of her family name, she lived past the end of her myth. She ended her life in a deeply anomalous position, half-in and half-out of royal society. She was both a haunting tragedy and the ultimate survivor who was finally free.

[azaracyy]

a lesson on good karma digimon survive week 2024 day 4: supporting characters

[aquickstart]

ok sure i'll talk about farleigh start. i'll talk about his tragedy of never being enough as it were and then having to deal with fucking oliver. sure. disclaimer: it's about class (and race) and the horrible reality of the rich. the horrible reality of living as farleigh.

another disclaimer: i'm white! and poc definitely pick up on everything i'm talking about here as it is, and better. i was and am specifically interested in farleigh vs. oliver but it's impossible to examine without considering race. definitely let me know if anything abt this sucks!

farleigh and oliver are similar. it's annoying because every intruder that is not himself is annoying, partly because felix's attention swaying from farleigh is dangerous; there is always a threat of being discarded, even if no precedent existed. the potential is terrifying.

but you'd think he's seen this before, every summer (if venetia is telling the truth) or at least often enough to learn to recognize it fast, so he should know this will pass. part of it is i think still the deep anxiety, and i think he hated every boy that was there before, and it is sort of routine.

but definitely a huge factor in farleigh's annoyance is the fact that he's a biracial (black for cattons, that's all they see) man in a white rich household. he's alert and exhausted all the time. of course he's angry at oliver, regardless of whether he's the first to crash at saltburn for the summer or the fifty-first.

but the important thing is this.

farleigh is very jealous of and angry and pissed at oliver because farleigh sees all the similarities between them. outsider, in financial trouble, whatever it is, in need of cattons; and yet oliver is preferred. and farleigh seems to be the only one to really consider it. felix does not pick up on the hint when farleigh brings up the birthday party vs. his mother. felix's clumsy "different or... anything like that" is as much about race as it is about class, of course. the "we've done all that we can" bit is felix absolving himself of guilt because surely they had, surely the mysterious collective cattons that he's not really part of had tried all they could do. to him, farleigh is different from oliver, because farleigh has been helped. felix is rich and white and twofold uncomfortable with farleigh, even if he's nice about it, even if he genuinely enjoys his company; he doesn't look too close at farleigh because he feels too guilty to come too close. and farleigh can't do anything about it. he can't nice himself into it. the fucking tragedy of him is that he's never enough in the world of the ultra-rich white, even if (especially because!) he's born into it.

farleigh is very pissed at oliver because farleigh also sees all the differences between them. you know who can be nice poor white enough to fit in? fucking oliver. felix says "just be yourself, they'll love you" when oliver first moves in. farleigh was also probably told the same thing, and felix also probably believed that farleigh could just be himself, but even if the cattons were magically not racist at all (impossible), it wouldn't make a difference to farleigh. he would still self-censor, keep in check, be in dangerous waters (because racism is not just about the individual, but about the system). we see that he'd won himself leeway by years of trial and error by the way he speaks to the family, but it's still within the boundaries of acceptable, built by the cattons. he's part of them because they allow it, and farleigh is very, very aware.

the annoying thing is oliver can be himself. like, truly, genuinely, he can just be. and farleigh can't help but envy that.

as a side note, oliver is obviously jealous of farleigh in the beginning as well, because regardless of the reality of farleigh's situation, he was born into it, and hence, at least in oliver's mind, has his position solidified. oliver's whole thing is unquenchable thirst and hunger for whatever and everything the cattons have (including themselves!). he wishes to have been a catton from birth. to oliver, at first, there's nothing farleigh can really do to lose it. and until he figures out the cattons completely, he can't help but envy that.

but i think farleigh senses something different about oliver early on. at least on the level of the text, we have "you're almost passing [for] a real, human boy", which is so important because farleigh is the first to point out oliver's weirdness. the next to do so is venetia in the bath scene calling him a freak, but it's too late. farleigh is too early.

and i like to think he clocks oliver too early because he sees the jagged edges that he recognizes in himself. i think that one other thing that farleigh envies is oliver's freedom to let go. freedom to let go is very similar to freedom to be, but not quite the same.

to be is about perception: farleigh knows he cannot fall out of line, but would like to, and oliver does not have to worry about it at all (i mean, he does, because oliver also performs for felix, but farleigh doesn't know that).

to let go is about the self: farleigh is too scared to even want what oliver eventually does, to even consider the possibility. oliver can let himself want. oliver can let himself act. oliver just can do things and want things. i'm not sure farleigh can.

and so in this scene, when oliver's wants and actions have landed him nowhere with farleigh, felix, venetia, the cattons, of course farleigh gloats. he can let himself do that, because if the cattons are slowly discarding him, farleigh can allow himself this one small victory. he's relieved because despite the dangerous similarities, oliver is, thankfully, not really the same as farleigh, right?

but like. this movie is a love letter to all things gothic. oliver is a white man. he prevails. the brief performance that oliver put on did eventually end up more effective than farleigh's lifetime of constraint. my heart fucking breaks for him to be honest.

the issue that remains is the fact of farleigh's survival. i like to think that oliver came to respect him. oliver is smart, but farleigh is clever. he picks up on everything oliver does (to refer back to the karaoke scene, farleigh immediately retaliates in the cleverest way, in the moment), and he's the only one to do so consistently (venetia, again, for example, comes close, but too late; oliver doesn't like that, there's nothing to work with). hence, stay with me for a little longer, the paradox: farleigh survives because he was never enough for the cattons, but he is very worthy of oliver's attention. in his own freaky way, oliver wants him. look at that.

so. farleigh. farleigh might come back. he always comes back. and i think oliver wants to try harder next time.

[dykedvonte]

I hate the stretch lines in the front of Curly's uniform because that means the devs rushed to make a model in like a month or so and thought "They gotta at least know he has huge knockers, gotta know he's got back pain." Cause like what is the thematic importance of his tits having overhang?

What responsibility is that representing? Breast reduction? It shows an inherent greed in his character due to the excess and heshouldletmeholdone and that he clearly is blinded cause if he tries to look down his damn ladder all he's seeing is his own cleavage.

[eveningrainstorm]

People often talk about Rio Ranger as if he's the doll version of Sei but what I find super fascinating is that he isn't, not in the same way Fake Reko or the Dummies are replications of their human counterparts.

Ranger resembles Sei on a surface level — same physical appearance, just an unclear amount older; same way of speaking. But he is unmistakably different. Ranger is an incomplete being, missing his positive emotions, but even the true Ranger is Rio Laizer rather than Sei, because there's still something different.

Rio Ranger is, fundamentally, inhuman and yet desperate to be human. He was created to be jealous of humanity and despite his hatred for them, humanity is what he is always striving for. But it is something that he doesn't possess, and is forced to steal instead. He takes clothes from the dead and uses drawings on cards to feign emotion; he is the Dress-Up Doll, Rearranger, not possessor of anything of his own.

While the other dolls based on humans in the game have identity issues based on their personhood being defined by someone else, being merely a copy of another person, Ranger is not even allowed Sei's identity to base himself on — it's very likely he doesn't even know who Sei was. He does not have Sei's clothes — nondescript and tied to Asunaro as they are — and he does not have the capacity for expressing emotion that Sei had.

When comparing Ranger and Sei in terms of personality, differences are obvious. There are similarities, naturally — besides the abrasive way of speaking, there's the jealousy and desire for validation. But in Ranger, these are present to an extreme — they're all he has. (And, ironically, this is what Gashu claims to believe makes him so human, even when Ranger's inhumanity comes through most clearly in this lack of anything else.)

In Sei, on the other hand, these traits are tempered by logic, to put things in YTTD's beloved logic vs. emotion dichotomy. Despite his outwardly emotional nature, from what we see of him he appears realistic and focused on survival in a way that Kai isn't. He's aggressive and overly casual about killing people, but he doesn't express the glee at violence that Ranger does, only a fierce desire to prove himself and survive. Sei is jealous of Kai and desires Gashu's affection, but also has an understanding of the situation he's in that both Kai and Ranger lack — he can tell that Gashu doesn't care about him as much as he does Kai, and recognizes that the way Gashu treats both of them is wrong. Ranger believes Gashu truly loves him, a fact proven blatantly false by his eventual demise at Gashu's hands. Ironically, this blindness is more similar to Kai as we see him in his minisode, rather than Sei.

Of course, this understanding isn't simply a part of Sei's basic nature, but rather the fact that unlike Kai and Ranger, he has past experience to go on. Sei wasn't born into the Satou family — though his exact origins are unclear, based on his grief for his birth father and how he talks about Asunaro ("all this shady organization crap"), it's possible he wasn't even born into Asunaro at all. Before being sent to Gashu, he had his own father, one who we don't know anything about but whom he apparently loved. He doesn't accept Gashu's treatment of him and Kai the way Kai does because he has known a different father and a different way of life. This doesn't free him from Asunaro's influence — he still accepts the role of assassin they give him and resigns himself to becoming a killer. What choice does he have, after all? But he carries no illusions about Asunaro or his role in it. He knows that the training is cruel, that he is viewed only as a tool, that Asunaro is wrong even if they are also not worth resisting.

This is a major part of why Ranger isn't Sei, why he cannot be; because Asunaro is all Ranger knows. They are his creators, who he was literally built to serve. In Ranger's mind, he is not only Gashu's son and heir, but his creation, his masterpiece. And of course he wouldn't have been created with Sei's memories — why take that risk? Why give him any sort of knowledge of a life outside Asunaro or reason to be disloyal to them?

Ranger is not Sei — so why model Ranger after him? Because Ranger is the idea of Sei, what Sei was meant to be: a counterpart to Kai, a rival, a second choice. Gashu preferred Kai, once; Kai won out over Sei. But Kai has proven himself a failure and betrayed Asunaro, leaving Gashu with no choice but turn once more to Kai's long-dead competition. Ranger is, like Sei, the opposite of Kai, temperamental and vulgar while Kai is stoic and polite, and perhaps more importantly, capable of murder while Kai steadfastly is not.

And yet Ranger isn't Sei. Sei was jealous of those — specifically Kai — he saw as superior or at least as being treated as such; Ranger is this idea taken to its natural conclusion. Sei had lost everything he had outside of Asunaro; Ranger never had anything else to begin with. Sei was a human; Ranger will never be, doomed to forever long otherwise. Ranger is Sei only in the ways Sei was useful — desperate for recognition, willing to kill, a perfect rival to Kai — but something entirely different, an inhuman machine, in all the ways Sei was a liability.

Sei was human, and he knew that he deserved to have that fact respected. Ranger isn't human and gets only the wanting, desperate to be as good as a human even humanity itself is unattainable. Of course, it isn't being a doll that is actually Ranger's problem — it's Asunaro, who view humans and dolls alike as disposable. Sei's humanity didn't make him any less of a tool as far as Asunaro was concerned, it only made him more difficult to control. All Sei wanted was to be seen as an equal to Kai, a person worthy of respect — and this is what he gets, in the end: his face and voice used as a base for one of Asunaro's weapons, while his true identity and personhood remains forgotten.

Ranger has nothing to hold him back from doing his duty for Asunaro, nor does he have anything to hold onto outside of it. In that sense, Ranger is an ideal asset for Asunaro — at least until the very jealousy and hatred Gashu programmed into him goes too far, and he is, once again, deemed a failure. Ironically, Gashu shoots Ranger for attempting to kill a participant, when willingness to kill was perhaps the one true advantage Sei had over Kai.

In the end, Ranger is offered no more humanity in his death than Sei is — they are both merely pawns of Asunaro, set to die at its whims. But while Sei dies in the arms of his brother, receiving one final act of kindness as Kai refuses to kill him, Ranger has no one in either of his deaths but his creators: in his death as Rio Laizer the dubious kindness of Tia Safalin, making his final moments full of agonizing guilt, and of course in his first death, as Rio Ranger, nothing but Gashu's coldness, the bullet in his head a sort of culmination to the favoritism Sei found weighed against him, and a demonstration of just how far Gashu has come from the father who once genuinely cared for Sei. Sei was human, Ranger was not, but as far as Asunaro is concerned, they are exactly the same: tools, easily thrown away as soon as they stop being useful.

[crustyfloor]

Luka is very good at keeping himself composed on stage, mostly with the help of maintaining track of his heart rate, but during Mizi's attack in ROMH he seemed to slip up, not only was the red background a tell-tale sign of Mizi's violent intentions but it was a more symbolic way of showing Luka in quite visceral fear. Even if for only a second.

I'm not convinced Luka will be as continuously calculated as he normally comes off, it all seems too fake to me. Because it is. It’s a similar case to Ivan who can't feel, isn't normal, isn't human enough so he makes a persona to blend in. So Luka, whoever he is, makes this version of himself to cope with what he has to live through, pretending like he's on top of it all to survive in this world.

So in round 7, I think something drastic will happen to make him 'snap' in a way.

It's safe to say that we don't know Luka. We don't know who he really is. We don't know his real desires. But we do know one thing--he is scared. he is afraid of the aliens. That's why he appeases them--being their trophy. He's only kept around for his purpose as an entertainer and nothing else and he's very aware of that. He knows very well that a dented trophy will be discarded; with that mindset, he's been able to get so far, and he's scared of losing. That's why he holds any little thing he can get his hands on close. And an important extension of that fear is his fear of losing power.

Till should be the more likely in this position, given he's such a rebel. But isn't that just too predictable? Keep in mind, that Till is a strong person. Even after all he's been through, even after he's been beaten into something more manageable for the aliens--He still hasn't lost his spark. Till is a raging storm. subdued but nonetheless a force to be reckoned with.

Round 6's effect on Till is greatly ambiguous for now but at this point when the time for round 7 comes, Till has been put through so much hell. Whatever Luka does to provoke him probably won't work, he and Luka are equally talented individuals and will make for an intense battle, and at the end of the day, the numbers won't lie. Exactly that is what Luka is ready for but scared of--a worthy opponent for the throne. Someone capable of stripping him of his power. (Is fear what makes Luka so dismissive?)

It would be so aggravating that this 'pest'. who is so indignant, so rebellious (in a way Luka envies.), could so easily destroy everything Luka has worked for, disregard every pain Luka has been through to get to this point, and Till doesn't value this throne as much as Luka does, and Luka doesn't want to feel the pain of death anymore. If his facade is as destructible as I think it is, that will be what ultimately brings out Luka.

This idea may be flawed. Luka is so perfect, too perfect and confident and experienced for something as little as that to break him, just think of all the training Luka went through to get to this point. I'm positive he's very aware of what playing unfairly will lead to. But isn't there always room for a wild card?

Just remember what happened to Hyun-woo.

What happened here isn't fully explained (and probably will be in round 7) but imagine Luka: "Trophy child, goody two shoes" Luka possibly killing another human. Whether by accident or not, what happened?--what and how did Luka feel in the moment for the repercussions of whatever happened to be that bad?

A Luka that is secretly greatly insecure, pliable, and defensive enough that in a spur of emotions, he can’t help but lose his cool in a way he hasn’t in a while because he’s afraid—just to try and prove he is still valuable. That is the type of character I theorize we'll come to see in round 7.