#does this even make sense or am I just insane

[tiredandoptimistic]

I am forever haunted by Nate and Tessa's fucked up and terrible sibling dynamic. Maybe it's just because I related to Tessa too hard when I was twelve and heard "this is her older sibling who's the coolest person in the world and reuniting with him is her number one priority" and went "yup, makes sense!" but his betrayal is genuinely one of the defining aspects of TID to me.

Sibling relationships are such an underexplored way to fuck somebody up in fiction, in my opinion. Nate has been the one constant in Tessa's life, and no matter how aware she was of his flaws that could never overrule the fact that he's her person. She trusts him on a fundamental level that she just can't experience with anyone else, and part of it is because of how fleeting all her other relationships have been, but a lot of it is just the fact that he's her brother and she's loved him for as long as she's been alive. More than that, she idolizes him. Her entire life crumbles around her when Aunt Harriet dies and she ends up held hostage by the Dark Sisters, but Nate is still there and perfect in her mind. He's her anchor when everything else goes insane; if she can just find her brother then things will be okay again. She's more able to handle her world being shattered by learning about the supernatural because all that magic shit is secondary to the fact that she needs to save Nate.

And then of course she does save him and he turns around to betray her. And again, it hits harder than any other betrayal possibly could because he's more important to her than anyone else could possibly be. By this point she's built up bonds with Will and Jem and the other people at the Institute, and eventually they all become woven into her being, but not when she's sixteen and has known them for a week.

Looking at it from Nate's perspective, the thing that's always fucks me up is the way he tries to convince himself that he sees Tessa as a monster. He's genuinely just a shitty enough person that he set his sister up to be a child bride for a mass murderer because of the payout, but he can't handle thinking of it that way so he clings to this idea that Tessa isn't really his sister, isn't really human. And while yes, that's biologically true (they're not even technically related to each other), it doesn't change the fact that they're siblings in every way that matters. She'll always be his little Tessie, even if he doesn't want to admit it, doesn't want to let himself be the villain in this situation. He does the same thing with Harriet, arguing that she deserved to die because of all her lies because otherwise he would need to admit that he killed his mother out of pure selfishness.

Nate isn't the most evil guy in the world, but he is greedy and allergic to principles. It's so much worse than if he never loved Tessa, because he does love her till the very end and that love just isn't enough to override the allure of wealth and power. That's always the most painful type of relationship to me; the one where a person has just enough good to make it impossible to unequivicobly hate them.

Maybe Will could just write Nate off as a terrible person, but Tessa will always know every detail of his best and kindest moments. I have to believe that he haunts Tessa for the rest of her immortal existence, this knowledge that the person who made her life worth living for the first sixteen years was the one to sell her out. All the pain in the world isn't enough to erase that bond; she'll always have to live with the memory of him dying in her arms, the knowledge that his goodness and love was just as genuine as his duplicity.

Yeah this ended up being a lot longer than I intended, I just have a lot of feelings about the Gray siblings. Nate wasn't a part of the world where Tessa eventually found a home, she'll never have anyone else who understands the knot of emotions surrounding him. She can get sympathy but never empathy. Yes the rest of the TID crew are aware of him, but they barely met him and she outlived all of them too. Nate's so lost in her past, I bet that most people don't even realize that she used to have a brother, that she grew up as a sister, as half of a set. She carries the Gray name forward through her immortal life, and nobody else knows about the family that used to share it. She's still got Jem and Magnus who have been her friends since she was a teenager, who keep the memory of Will and the others alive; but no one else was there for her childhood.

I'm not quite sure how to end this, I'm just feeling emotions about Tessa Gray on this fine Tuesday and felt like sharing them.

[eternity-death]

I was rewatching the Sunday and Robin end scene and I noticed smthn small… I’m just hyper analyzing

[ruvviks]

we would sell anything just to buy who we're not // we kill our way to heaven

taglist (opt in/out)

@shellibisshe, @florbelles, @ncytiri, @hibernationsuit, @stars-of-the-heart;

@lestatlioncunt, @katsigian, @radioactiveshitstorm, @estevnys, @adelaidedrubman;

@celticwoman, @rindemption, @carlosoliveiraa, @noirapocalypto, @dickytwister;

@killerspinal, @euryalex, @ri-a-rose, @velocitic, @thedeadthree

[karkatting]

something important to me irt dirk and kankri is that dirk actually wants to hear kankri's thoughts and opinions on things, even if he doesn't agree or thinks its bs. he just finds it fascinating. like when they first talk dirk half finds him annoying and half wants to put him under a microscope and inspect him.

later, as they get closer, dirk becomes more genuine about it because he comes to realize just how isolated kankri feels sometimes, how nobody takes him seriously even when he's actually being serious and not hiding his insecurities and problems behind buzzwords and hypotheticals, and dirk just starts to like... care about him more. maybe a little too much (for his own comfort, anyway).

and kankri, who has only ever wanted someone to really listen to him, appreciates this way more than he lets on.

[narwhalandchill]

oh my fucking god i feel. SO stupid rn at How i didnt make the (super sane very normal just absolutely. Yes. Surely) connection earlier but uhh

so anyway im now like 89% certain that whatever the "traces" of the narwhal that remain on ajax and facilitate their (ever-growing) innate connection are like. an actually fundamental aspect of it (them?) more or less.

why? because if you consider its pov just for a moment. the narwhal was literally about to depart teyvat for good. it had nearly finished consuming the primordial sea and preparing to breach surface to finish the job by eating the french for the leftovers their human bodies were made from. its an interstellar voyager it does not linger on planets it devours. it goes glug glug and it leaves.

and like if it wasnt for traveler intervening its confirmed through narzissenkreuz and renes world formula that teyvat wouldve just been destroyed. no one could have stopped the narwhal not neuvillette not focalors not anyone.

so what was the one other thing it did right before going for that french brunch? calling for ajax. getting them reunited in the primordial sea. like all the possible implications aside bc theres many different ways to speculate on the exact reasons why and the nature of that link. the point remains.

it wasnt leaving teyvat without finding him.

like the narwhal is about to fucking Dip from this cringe planet and whatever part of it that ajax carries within himself his narwhal Absolutely wanted to be reunited with. what the fuck am i supposed to read from that. hoyo???????!??! answers?!?!?!

and its not only the calling from the narwhal side itself either bc this is ALL coinciding with the growth of a 'restless power' within ajax and his vision malfunctioning (the things celestia is literally confirmed to harvest energy thru to repair its damaged authority) and his connection with the narwhal reaching an actual conscious level (arguably subconscious n emotional too bc i find it Curious his mood is poor right as the narwhal is repeatedly described as positively malding to the point its boss fight mechanic is literally a rage meter). ajax' power is growing. his destiny is starting to shift and something is drawing him to fontaine... right as the narwhal is getting close to finished with the primordial sea. funny how it overlaps eh. how it aligns 🤨🤨 why are they orbiting each other like this (they should kiss)

(& not to even Mention how ajax just Happened to get that absolutely exponential and borderline unbelievable feat of power spike in extending his foul legacy endurance as massively as he did. while. within the primordial sea. with his narwhal. who had at that point all but incorporated the power of that sea into itself. i s2g if childe was getting passive home turf co-op bonus exp with a 4x multiplier automatically the whole 40+ days 💀💀)

[reesiereads]

Ranpoe is such a non-angsty ship that the only angsty shit I can find for them is one of them dying. Like they’re such fluffy married bastards that the best we can do is literally murder one of them.

Given that this is BSD and trying to kill your partner is a right of passage I feel as though this is a miracle.

[riddlerosehearts]

okay, i recently made a post about why i'm okay with the knight of dawn's design, and just now i made an addition to it that got me thinking about how like... people say that lilia may just think of the knight of dawn looking identical to silver in his dream because it's been hundreds of years so he can't actually remember his exact appearance, but the knight of dawn was a famous and respected knight who dueled against briar valley's queen and married into royalty, so is he not an important historical figure? are there not pictures and/or paintings of him that lilia may have seen, especially considering that one of NRC's own history books apparently has a picture of lilia himself in it (malleus mentions this in one of his lesson lines)?

but then i remembered this dialogue from book 7 and now i'm losing my mind thinking about what all of this is supposed to mean. like, okay, i guess some of this could have something to do with the desire to hide silver's parentage from him as well as just reluctance to talk about the tragedies that occurred in lilia and baul's pasts, but can that really be the entire reason behind this? behind silver and sebek, who are from briar valley, knowing so little about its history and its royal family, and there seemingly being so few books about it, and NRC just not teaching about/having any information about the history of such an important place? and also, if it's the case that so little is known or taught about briar valley, then how or why is there a picture of lilia in one of the history books they use in class? lilia himself was also the one to point out in the story that history often gets told differently across different cultures and can easily become twisted from the truth, and now i have to wonder if briar valley's history is being deliberately twisted or obscured. and also if crowley has something to do with that considering all of the theories surrounding him being malleus's mysterious missing father.

[spearxwind]

when people are like 'i love the ocean' when they mean 'i love going to the beach when its calm' drives me up the wall a little especially when they act horrified whenever they see aspects of the ocean that are NOT the beach. The ocean is massive, beaches are just the barest fringe on the outskirts of the sea, and even those can be and are dangerous as hell because people go there without taking precaution like its a theme park. The ocean is a force of nature if there ever was one. Its immensely pretty and dangerous and essential to thousands of crucial planetary mechanisms we're only now beginning to understand. Its just... such an interesting landscape by every measure, pirates during the golden age had it right painting it as the ultimate expression of freedom, it has captivated thousands of people for years for a reason. And yet all some people can find about it to love is the most tamed, commercialized, artificial (as are a lot of beaches nowadays) ledge from which to ignore the vast depths of life underneath them

[al-luviec]

still haven't moved on from zane in this episode (aka I hit tag limit again and am unhappy about it)

[meowsticmarvels]

i think i mightve talked abt this a bit in my longpost about how insane phi as a character is to me but yknow what i really wanna point out? all the nonary game shit she has to go through happens in really quick succession to her - she doesn't really get a proper "break" in between VLR and ZTD for her mentally. junpei and akane at least have about a year between the two, and sigma has 45 years (not that either of those situations were particularly good either though, looking at how sigma and junpei especially turned out, and sigma spent years WORKING on the AB game, just not participating in it). but for phi? she has a matter of DAYS in between the two. the time sigma spends she spends in cold sleep, so mentally to her, her consciousness goes from the events of VLR's phi end to DCOM almost instantly. dcom only ends up lasting for about 5 days, and even then the prologue states that phi/sigma/akane spent most of it worrying about radical-6 and the future + the flashback with diana shows phi is just so Tired after everything after just that. and then the decision game happens. my point is just that i cannot imagine being in a death game like that (not to mention everyone had radical-6, so she went from a body that Did have it to one that didn't, which i can imagine would probably a pretty weird experience considering one of its symptoms is messing up your perception of time. and also she was on the moon.), spending 5 days like god how did the apocalypse start i can't let it happen this time and then being in Another death game that is much more gruesome and violent. not to mention both of them in a way HAD to happen because of her (2074 nonary game bc it needed to train sigma and phi's SHIFTing abilities to a good enough degree and decision game one of the reasons was to ensure she and delta were born). in summary: i would fucking die at that point if i was phi dealing with that All At Once. in the span of a few days. and with the memories of my + others' deaths. what the fuck

[teddybeartoji]

PHOBIA OF SEAWEED IS AN ACTUAL THING?????????????????? you see i am not afraid of the open waters nor am i scared of the things that live there,, like i regularly spend time watching deep sea videos i think they're so cool but oh my fucking god the idea of KELP IS MAKING ME LIKE ACTUALLY TWITCH EEEEEEEEUUUUUUUGHHH okok actually looking at it is kind of fine but the thought of it touching my feet is genuinely making me wanna throw up😭😭😭😭😭

[untimelyambition]

i am begging on my hands and knees for jon matteson and bryce charles to sing a song together. since i first watched npmd, every single day without fail i have thought about their harmonies together in hatchet town (“if he gets me next i could be three” and “fits the bill, he fits the bill”) literally the sickest harmonies in the entire show, i turn into a little gremlin every time i hear them. their voices sound SO good together it actually makes me a little ill. my favourite song my favourite line my favourite harmonies, their voices blend perfectly and i am so desperate to hear them sing a duet to hear them singing together again pls pls please pls pls pls. pls.

[gayemoji]

this week on I DONT THINK HE WOULD FUCKING DO THAT: house ramming a car into cuddys house while she has guests

[featherymainffins]

Now this might be because I have issues but is it just me or does Slay The Princess feel like an allegory for a relationship?

[kingdomoftyto]

...BIG FEELS AND BIG PLOT DEVELOPMENTS AT THE END OF THAT BOOK, HUH

[arosnowflake]

It's pretty fun for me to play Zelda games in a manner mostly isolated from fandom opinions. Like don't get me wrong I've absorbed a lot of LOZ spoilers, headcanons, interpretations etc. via osmosis, I am not playing these games blind. But regardless of how many spoilers and fanart/fanfic I've seen going through the AO3 tag after playing BOTW was still an Experience because it made me realize that the way I interpret both Link as a character and the game as a whole is apparently completely counter to the majority fandom opinion. Something I was blissfully oblivious to while playing the game.