#how fucking stupid can you possibly be

[lilyfreshwater]

ELON MUSK PUT A LIMIT OF HOW MANY POSTS YOU CAN READ A DAY ON TWITTER????? IS HE FUCKING CRAZY??????

[feroluce]

Belobog was my fave main quest but a lot of it is so. Contradictory. It's like they had multiple groups doing different shit and none of them checked in with each other for consistency. And you see this so much in Gepard's profile.

So in the main quest, they made him unfailingly, unquestionably loyal to Cocolia. Gepard's character arc is him learning to question authority etc etc. And this isn't even a bad thing; that's a story worth telling! It makes good conflict between him and Serval! And I love that we got Gepard as a boss battle and I get to see him all the time in SU!

But then you look at his character stories and it's like. The complete opposite.

According to his profile, Gepard has already HAD this awakening, long before the Astral Express, and he'd already decided Cocolia sucks. Even outside of his stories, there's a pretty damning readable between him and Pela.

He even disobeyed direct orders right in front of her- he has been disobeying orders for a while now!

So I've decided I'm marrying the two different sides of this into a 1.5k fic-ish thingy, because I think there's some fun potential there with Gepard not trusting Cocolia, but still having to pretend to be a good obedient little soldier.

Anyway. I love to think of it as like. Gepard knows Cocolia has sunk into her apathy. He can see it in her eyes every time he looks at her. She doesn't care. Not about him, not about Pela, not about all his soldiers on the frontlines giving their lives to protect the citizens. And that's... It makes him bristle a bit, but ok. Gepard can deal with this. Even if Cocolia no longer cares, as long as she does her job then it's fine. Having compassion behind an action doesn't matter as much as the action itself. If Cocolia's heart is no longer swayed, then he'll just have to care twice as hard to pick up the slack. He considers it part of his duty as a captain of the guard anyway. It's fine. Gepard can deal with it.

And then, Cocolia starts coming down to the restricted zone. Issuing direct orders.

And Gepard realizes he is in way over his head.

Because Cocolia orders him to stay back and issue commands from the ramparts, away from all his comrades, away from where he can protect them.

Gepard had thought nothing could be as bad as watching a fellow guard die right next to him. But the first time he watches someone struck by a killing blow, so far away, it hurts. Every defensive scar across his arms itches, his fingers curl in want of a weapon, the cold cannot numb his hands enough as they desperately ache for his shield. It hurts.

Gepard tries to find any reason to stay. Because surely... He knows Cocolia has lost her love for her people, but surely... She wouldn't...

One day, Cocolia orders for their gunners to advance 20 yards. There are no survivors. She almost looks like she smiles.

Gepard doesn't sleep that night.

Pela brings him the report at the end of the first month; and then the month after that, and the month after that. A significant uptick in losses, and all of it started on that first day Cocolia started overriding his authority and issuing her own orders. The ends of Gepard's pens have all been nearly chewed off. Pela outright calls Cocolia an idiot, and Gepard corrects her. Cocolia isn't an idiot. Gepard had known her through Serval, knew her through all her college years and then some, and he knows how intelligent she is. It's not that she's stupid, and it's not that she's inexperienced, it's nothing of the sort.

Cocolia knows exactly what she's doing.

She must, there's no way she could make such a horrible mess of things so badly by accident. And Pela, quick as a whip, sharp as a tack, always too smart for her own good, catches onto the meaning behind Gepard's correction without any further prompting. The tent goes deathly quiet, nothing but the wind howling outside.

"...She's trying to kill us," Pela whispers, her voice swiftly suffocated by the silence.

Gepard swallows. He can't bring himself to correct her this time. There is nothing he could say that he would actually mean.

His gaze drops, back down to his desk and the reports on it. The names aren't listed, just the numbers, but Gepard knows them, knew them, and there must be something wrong, something he's missing, because why, why would she-? What could this possibly accomplish-?

“Gepard! Focus!” Something snaps right under his nose, and Gepard startles, eyes instantly honing in on Pela's irritated face as she leans over his desk. She holds his gaze for a moment before she huffs and begins to pace, wedges a knuckle between her teeth and bites like Gepard hasn't seen her do since cadet school.

Pela angrily strides from one end of his tent to the other, words hissed between her grit teeth. “What are we going to do?” In the dim lighting, Gepard can just barely see the damp spot of blood weeping under her gloves. “We need a plan.”

“A plan?”

“Wh- Yes, a plan! Unless you want more people to die!” Pela rounds on him then, all the wrath of a blizzard, winds roaring and snow sharp enough to cut.

“We don't even know-”

“What does it matter?! She killed-!!” Pela cuts off with a garbled noise when Gepard leaps up from his desk, hastily shoves his hand over her mouth. The prosthetic, not the flesh one, because he knows better than to assume Pela won't seize the opportunity to leave teeth marks in his skin.

“You're right. I'm sorry, I'm sorry; you're right. But you need to keep quiet.” Pela quirks an eyebrow at him and Gepard can read the question in her face. “Because we both saw what she did to Serval,” he hisses.

It's amazing the snow plains haven't thawed out yet, the amount of heat Pela can put behind a glare. The mere mention of Serval, and the smoking ruins Cocolia had made of her life and career, have her bristling up like a riled cat. The sudden hot breath she takes fans fog across his metal skin, and Gepard wisely keeps it in place until Pela finally sighs and reaches up, taps her fingertips against the back of his hand.

The second she's free, Pela bats him away and then her knuckle is right back between her teeth again, Gepard leaning back against his desk with his arms crossed to watch her resume her pacing. “If we spread the word, she'll have us discharged and make sure we can't even touch the frontlines,” Pela's voice seethes like an open sore. Gepard nods but keeps his silence. He knows better than to get in her way.

“And if you and I are both out of the picture, Belobog is fucked.” A little harsher than how he would have put it, but there's no denying that they're both important to the city's survival. Pela has the restricted zone running as efficiently as ever, and Gepard had become the youngest captain on record for a reason. “We need to keep this tight under wraps, at least for now… It can't leak to anyone higher up the chain.” Another nod. “Serval might know other discontents…” Another n-

Gepard's head snaps up. “No.”

“No what?”

“No. We're not involving Serval in this.”

Somehow, even the same tone that leaves entire squadrons shaking in their boots has never worked on her. “You're not deciding that for her, Gepard.”

Pela hadn't seen the worst of it, though, back when his sister had just been banned from the Architects. Serval's pride hadn't allowed it. Pela wasn't the one to find her passed out bottle still in hand, hadn't been the one to wash the sick out of her hair or carry her to bed. 

Serval still has trouble thinking clearly when it comes to Cocolia, still can't quite bring herself to be objective. And Gepard maybe doesn't want her to be purely objective- but he would worry a lot less if she thought twice before she acted more often.

“At least let me be the one to bring it up to her.”

“Whatever, fine,” Pela gestures affirmatively at him as she paces past, and Gepard sighs. Good, at least that's one thing he can help.

From there, it's a lot of hemming and hawing and frustration. Cocolia has them under her boot, and Gepard and Pela both know it. Even with the way she's been cracking down on freedoms lately, Cocolia is still, overall, liked by the people. It's unlikely anyone would believe them. They don't even have solid proof, because most people don't know Cocolia as well as they do and won't see the clues in the same light. 

The Fragmentum has been ramping up in recent years, too. Everyone is struggling just to survive as is, they can't afford a fight on two fronts. Gepard is a damn good captain, one of the best for that matter. But they're at a massive disadvantage, his experience is narrowed to fighting a defensive battle against monsters, that's all he's ever done. That's all anyone there has ever done. He has no way of finding first-hand knowledge for taking the offensive against a human opponent, and if he goes at this blind, there's no way he'll get everyone out unscathed. He's going to lose people. He's going to lose a lot of people.

He'd never thought before that Cocolia would have it in her to have someone killed. And with this new knowledge, he has no guarantee she won't go after Serval or Lynx if she decides to retaliate.

Gepard has to remind himself to breathe when he realizes this.

Pela writes down every name the two of them can come up with. Lists and lists of names and groups and anyone they can think of who might be an ally in all of this. They memorize every bit of it, make their plans of who to talk to and when. Gepard watches the sparks reflect off Pela's glasses as they burn the evidence together.

Pela finally leaves, far too late to make it home, but says she wants to stay in the restricted zone anyway to investigate. Gepard watches her make her way in the direction of Dunn's tent, watches her back until she's out of his sight and squashes down the urge to follow and keep an eye on her. His tent feels empty.

In the morning, Gepard is up before the wake up bells. He drags himself out of bed, leads his soldiers through their morning training. The same people gravitate to each other everyday. Friend groups and training partners. There's an ongoing rivalry between a few squadrons that everyone bets on. Some of them have lockets around their necks, keepsakes, mementos. Some of them wear wedding rings.

Gepard is suddenly, painfully aware of something acidic clawing at the inside of his throat, of a heavy weight low in his chest that blooms, takes up room until it threatens to spread his ribs. His mouth tastes of bile and blood.

He rearranges the schedules. Puts himself down for every open patrol into the Fragmentum, makes sure he'll be on the frontlines every single time Cocolia visits.

He only hopes that it's enough.

[mysticalcats]

ok fellas this post is really different from my other stuff so i'm putting it under the cut for people who don't care and also because i'm slightly embarrassed

ok so. is it unusual for a girl to want to have a deep voice and a flat chest and a more square face and also feel slightly jealous of men and want to sound like them and look like them

and also is it unusual to want to be all that, but also simultaneously not be very bothered very much by how you look right now or by being referred to with she/her except for sometimes when you think about it too much. because i usually don't think about it except for sometimes where i suddenly just get really sad about being a girl or i'll always have this faint feeling that i am just unhappy about it

and also is it unusual to try to ignore it and go about your life being unbothered by it even though deep down it does kinda bother you but you can't really. like. say anything to anyone because your family won't react well and neither will your friends because they'll think it's weird and uncomfortable. i feel afraid to ever feel this way because i know the people in my life won't react well to it

so like. genuine question please lmk wtf is goin on because i'm unsure if it's normal and i've felt like this for a long time and it's confusing me and i don't even know what i'm going to do with the information once i know i'm just sort of lost LMAO

[transmascutena]

thinking about how akio sees his younger self in utena and wondering if there's any fondness there. doesn't change the horror of what he does to her obviously but i do wonder

[b4kuch1n]

tdov was like a week ago already but I just wanna say when I came over to vacation slash help my sworn brother move flat he told me, "ever since you said you wanted to get top surgery I've been thinking about it. it's straight up number two on my bucket list"

[selfinflictedgunshotwound]

sorry for only saying this type of shit lately but i kinda wanna drive a car straight into a brick wall at the highest speed possible

[sunflowersandcherryblossoms]

Can't wait for the Anime only people to lose their collective shit over the dumbass, impossible plot point of something broken in the future to become retroactively broken in the present...

[oldtvandcomics]

I know that it is silly nonsense, but part of me seems to not have given up all hope yet regarding a repeat of the 2020 US Election Miracle, complete with random ships that no-one in their right mind would expect to go canon to actually go canon. Except that things really seem quite desperate, regarding the levels of apathy I keep seeing here. So, like, maybe Destiel is not strong enough to save us from this one.

No, we need something even more powerful. We need Stucky.

CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW FUNNY THAT WOULD BE?!

Save us, Captain America.

[creed-of-cats]

The amount of doomerism I've heard from fellow usamericn zoomers/millennials around me is starting to drive me fucking insane.

"We're all gonna die, it's hopeless, it's not worth doing anything. This is our penance as human beings/[insert other guilty identity]"

You know who you guys fucking sound like? Fucking Evangelicals.

Yeah it's fucking scary and big, I'm not trying to say it isn't. But what the fuck is your plan??? Sitting down and dying?? Are you really telling me that this world is not worth you even fucking trying?? That you're just gonna party it out until your miscellaneous end game apocalypse arrives?

This isn't the rapture. The apocalypse is a false concept. People have been living through "apocalypses" every day of their fucking lives for all of human history, especially during the past 400 years. Get up and stop the suicidal idealization of your own tragic death. Our lives in the first world are built off suffering. To lay down and say we don't have any power is to reject the duty we have as beneficiaries of that suffering.

If you are so convinced you're going to die young then die trying instead of baring your fucking throat.

[hecksupremechips]

Just the way Shin Tsukimi’s “mask off” moment is him becoming increasingly frustrated to the point of having a nervous breakdown where all he can do is laugh maniacally because he’s so done with everyone acting so incompetent and not seeing things “as they are” (aka how he sees them) is just. Mwah chefs kiss hes just like me fr 😰

[iguessitsjustme]

Hey, quick questions. What's worse? Violating a dumb clause of a contract that you signed (when the clause should not exist in the first place) in a way that is not harming anyone and filling the world with love in the process or....being a fucking narc?

or

[fridayiminlovemp3]

i’m gonna kill myself i can’t work customer service anymore!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[tittyinfinity]

when you're disabled, being financially abused by your parents never ends

[puppyeared]

footnotes arent enough I need you to talk to me like im fucking Amelia Bedelia

[lucyvaleheart]

.

[autumnrory]

ALSO when people are like "taylor is the straightest person" which always comes from people who don't know the lore but it's always like. okay it's because you think she's cringe-y. idk how to tell you this but gay people are not inherently like, cool and suave or what fucking ever lol 30-somethings who use embarrassing language on the internet can be gay. sorry if that's hard for you.