#i dont have thoughts very often

[mondaymelon]

vent

[hajihiko]

Hold me back 😡😡😡

[katabay]

THE JETSET LIFE IS GONNA KILL YOU, ERIC CARTER!

my laptop charger uhhhhhh. met its end in a very permanent, very fire hazardy kind of way last week. while waiting for a replacement I decided to try and get some work done at the library and was asking around for some urban fantasy (extra points for a mystery plot of some kind) recommendations to check out while I was there

the eric carter series was mentioned a couple of times, AND had the added bonus of having a necromancer for a main character. I love necromancers. someday I'm gonna play one in a game instead of immediately defaulting to vampires.

Fire Season, Stephen Blackmoore

[krikidilly]

In Bed The Kiss Rengiyu edition. :-]

[ganondoodle]

utterly random late night panic thoughts but

if you read my zelda comic and like it i love and appreciate you but i really do need to be upfront about it being very much a self indulgent enemies to lovers story with a villain at the center that has done bad but isnt bad at his core and is struggeling to come to terms with the fact that he doesnt actually want to be the evil beast he and almost everyone else believes he should be

yes im one of those people ... fake villain fans or something ... i think .. i dont know the rules to that ... q-q

[kheprriverse]

More doodles of the fire dragon variety :D

More details ab him and just general dragon behavior. And also a silly little doodle at the bottom right.

[ithinkthiswasabadidea]

"A book of fairytales and fables? A warm gift from our sun-walking friend, no doubt..." ✨️

[dailypokemoncrochet]

as a very socially anxious person i like having a button to press to express how i feel about your work without worrying about saying the right things :D

Yes that is another good reason I started using the polls as feedback!! Because personally I refrain from commenting as much on things I like when I don't have the energy to come up with anything to say (a lot of days feel like a 14-steps to make coffee kind of day).

The polls are great because they're guaranteed to be wanted responses! Bonus that they allow for anonymous feedback, which is another thing I value!

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

excuse me i need to Muse on something for a moment

so in Wally's secret 'vinyl' audios, specifically the last few (if we're listening to em in chronological order), obviously he starts to sound more strained/distressed. his breathing is more labored, like it's taking all of his energy to make contact.

but the audio that really caught my attention was the "But i still can't see" one. cause he just said he has more eyes than he did before. he knows We draw them a lot, and it's thanks to that that he can see. but he still can't see?

so my question is: where is Wally physically? cause although he can (assumedly) see the WHRP goings on, he can see through the eyes We draw, that could all be on a, uh... more Intangible level of sight. like the spiral pit is forming an eye, and then there's the eye on the ceiling in the secret Staff Only section - could Wally be in the pit, that space between his reality and Ours, "watching" through the eyes? but unable to actually see with due to the pit being pitch black nothingness? is he somewhere else? is he stuck? he can see, but he can't... see.

(or is he trying to explain an abstract concept - he's not actually viewing anything, but he can sense it. like how he knows We're there, even if he can't see or hear Us. but he just doesn't have the words to describe it other than using physical senses - see, hear, look.)

and him saying "...that I can see. But it is still... I can't..." but it's still what, Wally? dark? something else that he doesn't have the words to describe, so he just says that he can't see?

i know that in the Livestream Trivia Document (compiled by @/the neighborhoodwatch) there was something said about Wally being in a box. my first thought reading that was "oh, so he's in storage? the physical puppet, i mean?" which would make sense - show's over, there's no more use for him. pack 'em up and put him away. but that paired with the "can't see" audio makes both seem a lil... connected.

Wally can't see > he's likely somewhere dark > the inside of closed boxes are dark > Wally's in a box. (or maybe the Neighborhood is the box? it's a stretch, i know, but the map is a box. television sets are often set up in "boxes". maybe it's less of a physical storage box and more of a 'boxed in' sort of thing...)

one question i've had since the Start of my interest in this incredible project is: how is Wally communicating? how has he connected to the site? how does he connect to our reality? the pit almost definitely has something to do with it - most likely acting as a bridge, or the deteriorating of the barrier between our two 'worlds' - but if Wally is in a box and Not the pit or even just in the puppet's reality... how is he reaching us beyond just seeing through the eyes he's given?

or is he in their reality, and he can contact through the pit or something, but he can't actually see the other side? Our side? he knows it's there - that We're there - but none of it is visible to him. maybe his apparent disassociation in the 14 bug audios is a demonstration of him contacting Us. we can see through him, but it's a one way street.

and speaking of the pit - i just had a thought. his whole thing with Us letting him in, opening... the pit on the neighborhood map is getting bigger and clearer. but the presumed Other Side, the one on the Staff Only ceiling, is small. it's the size of a ceiling panel. it seems to me that Wally is chipping away at his side of the pit or 'portal', trying to reach Our reality, but he needs Us to do the same thing on the other side. the QA can hear him calling, but there's no phone on their (Our) side of the pit. how do We call back???

there's a fundamental barrier & lack of understanding between Wally and the QA/Us. he's trying. he wants to be let in, but what does that mean, really? let him in where? open what? he's desperate. he wants us to understand. he's trying so so hard Without the right tools to clearly communicate what he wants. he can't see Us, We can see him, both know the other is there, but there's no way to connect. and the attempts are hurting all parties involved, however unintentionally

[catboygirljoker]

Free Pass Ask to talk about In Depth Luxu Analysis in case of no one sending in the right question to go off with

ok! here's my ~1600 word post about That One Scene At The End Of Dark Road. grins smilingly.

You know the one. Right after we see Baldr easily kill most of the cast of the game, right after a boss fight against him, right after we witness firsthand how powerful he is, we see a flashback of him confronting Bragi with the intention of killing him. And Bragi just...casually flicks his keyblade out of his hand. Bragi fully knows what Baldr's actual deal is, knows that Baldr has killed people, and is completely unthreatened by him. For good reason, it would seem!

So, Luxu's a badass, obviously. He made the big villain of the game into a jobber. And I think that's certainly one of the purposes of the scene. Luxu is about to be one of the primary antagonists of the franchise, and this sets him up to be very powerful!

...But I don't think it's the purpose of the scene. That is, I don't think that's the entire story. Because there are a couple questions left by this scene.

What happens at the end, there, when Baldr runs up to him and attacks him? And why doesn't Bragi reappear until long after Baldr is already dead?

I think we can piece together at least part of an answer.

In the earlier montage where Baldr says he killed everyone, we see a brief scene of Baldr slamming Bragi down onto an island in the Underworld. I assumed that this was a visual representation of Baldr lying and claiming he had killed Bragi when he didn't. But Bragi is the only character in this montage who we don't see die on screen. I believe we're meant to understand that this scene actually happened, and that this is what immediately follows the Luxu reveal cutscene.

Which seems contradictory with Bragi being such a badass, right? Was Bragi disarming Baldr a fluke? The thing is, when Baldr attacks Bragi at the end of the cutscene, Bragi is completely off guard and unprepared for the attack. We already know that Luxu can misjudge people/situations, to his own downfall.

Consider in Dream Drop when he seems to fully believe Sora will join the Real Organization XIII, or Days when he's unthreatened by Xion right up until she knocks him out and leaves, or Re:Mind when he finds out Luxord decided not to simply obey orders without question this time. So him being defeated by Baldr doesn't necessarily mean Luxu is weak if Bragi was defeated due to hubris.

(As a side note—I do think that this would be part of the reason the cutscene cuts off when it does. Luxu still needs to be a threatening villain in the upcoming games, so the audience has to have a strong impression of how threatening he is. We get the full cutscene of Luxu being cool and powerful, and only little glimpses of the fate he meets directly afterwards.)

I think what happened is Bragi sauntered off all cocky and smug, not believing Baldr would attack him. Then Baldr attacked him, and Bragi, realizing what a threat Baldr actually was, pulled a trick we've already seen Luxu pull before. (Seemingly so well that Hades himself is fooled.)

Baldr believed he killed Bragi and saw no reason to be like, "yeah, and also Bragi said some weird mysterious stuff I didn't understand, but the point is that he's dead, too."

Now for the question of why Bragi didn't reappear until long after everybody else was dead. If he's such a badass, surely he could have helped stop Baldr and saved lives. Why didn't he?

From here, I can really only speculate. In my view, there are a few options:

Luxu didn't care about his classmates and left them to die as soon as he realized what a threat Baldr was.

This is...possible, but not very interesting to me. It's the option that results in the least emotional complexity. I think it's most interesting to read Bragi in Dark Road as the second-to-last step on Luxu's downward spiral, rather than just another point on a straight line—that his personality as we see him in the current-day games is informed by the trauma of him losing all of his friends to an opponent he could have stopped but didn't.

Also, maybe this isn't very convincing as evidence, but in his appearance in the graveyard, Bragi's attitude isn't smug or mischievous, it's somber, possibly remorseful. If we were meant to understand that he didn't care about his dead classmates, we'd get, like, a smug grin or something.

So the other options assume that he did care about his classmates:

Luxu sincerely cared about his classmates, and wanted to help them, but was injured so badly in his fight with Baldr that he was physically unable to come to their rescue.

Like I said, I think this is more probable and more compelling than if he didn't care at all. And there's potential tragedy in him trying his best and still failing, or having the best intentions and being unable to follow through on them, for sure. However, in general, I'm more interested in characters failing because of the mistakes they make and the flaws they have, rather than failing due to chance or unavoidable circumstance.

Also...we already know Luxu is the kind of person to stand by and allow terrible things to happen without doing anything to stop it. We know he has been specifically instructed to do so. I think it's more interesting and more consistent with his character if he could have saved his classmates and stopped Baldr, but didn't.

This last option, then, is my favorite, and in my own writing would be the interpretation I go with:

Luxu sincerely cared about his classmates and had the power and strength to protect them from Baldr but, through his own decisions or inaction, still let them die.

Luxu's classmates were all children or barely adults, younger than him by perhaps centuries. But he hung out with them. Actively participated in conversation with them, asked them questions, joked around with them. He seemed to like them. They were his friends. And he let them die.

There's variety in the potential specifics. Maybe Bragi fled and hid until everything was over just to save himself. Maybe he grit his teeth and made the conscious decision to do so; maybe he was motivated by pure animal fear for his life. In either case, he still had a role to carry out, after all. A role that, as I mentioned, has already required him to stand by and allow people to die. If he could swallow the keyblade war, he could swallow the events of Dark Road.

Maybe he believed he had an excuse to run away. In his confrontation with Baldr, Bragi says Xehanort is onto Baldr, and seems to believe Xehanort would be able to stop him. This is before Baldr attacks and seemingly defeats Bragi, but maybe even after that, Bragi still really believed in Xehanort, and believed he could let Xehanort do the rest—misjudging Xehanort's ability to stop Baldr before any more death could occur.

If you wanna get really angsty with it, maybe Bragi did try to save his friends. Maybe he rushed to the scene of Baldr's next murder and saw children with keyblades fighting for their lives, heard the clash of metal on metal, and was suddenly immobilized by the voice of his Master telling him to watch. And by the time he was able to overcome this trauma response, it was already too late.

Whatever the specifics would be of why he left his friends to die, I'm aware that this is the option that casts him in the worst light. If he didn't help them because he didn't care about them, then he's just a coldhearted villain and we can't expect much better from him. If he cared about his classmates and tried his best to help them but failed, then he's a sweet goodboy and uncomplicatedly sympathetic. If he, for any reason, decided not to try to save his friends from a powerful entity that has killed and will kill again, then he's pathetic, morally repugnant, a weakling or a fool or a coward or a combination of the three.

But I like when characters are flawed and stories are messy! I like that, even before you get to the events of Dark Road, Luxu is a messy, complicated, but still sympathetic character! Many of my other favorite Kingdom Hearts characters are messy and complicated in ways that I feel get frustratingly flattened by the fandom. I'm Team Messy and Complicated forever. I hope the games keep making Luxu even worse and more sympathetic and more tragic.

anyway thats my post i hope you liked it haha whee! i once again had to keep deleting detours and tangents about like. redemption arc flags, riku/terra/luxu parallels, luxu/MoM and luxu/xehanort parallels. but the were just that, tangents, and quite a lot of them were more headcanony/watsonian/speculative than i usually like to go with my Analysis. in any case thankyou for coming with me on this journey

[minophus]

THERE'S BEEN GRAPHICS UPDATES AND NOBODY TOLD ME !!!

[ferronickel]

Thinking bout the time someone yelled at me because they didn't understand butches.

[dan-whoell]

i keep thinking about a phandom book club, but i have no idea how to go about organizing it or if anyone would be interested or even where to host it

alternatively is there already a phandom book club i could join? because i would love that

[razzafrazzle]

hi there. heres your every-so-often reminder that incest and sexual abuse portrayed in a positive light is a bad thing and that should not be up for debate but here we are.

[sieglinde-freud]

project of insanity finally done. i can play the game now

[timeisacephalopod]

The type of Christian who asks atheists how they don't like, murder people on the reg are so funny to me because they seem to think their religion makes them the Peak of Morality when statements like "if you don't believe in God how comes you don't do X thing" all but outright state they have no idea why shit like murder and rape is bad except that God doesn't like it lmao. Like way to admit you have no intrinsic sense of morality and need to be afraid of a higher power to be a decent person, but I promise if you're not a piece of shit it's actually very natural not to want to do heinous evil shit all the time potential punishment from a higher power or not 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️