#i know this is a big contradiction yknow but im just thinking this is an intrresting direction to

[heshemejoshi]

octopath games have proved they suck ass at writing people who are othered and shunned and therefore i trust they won't do this concept or if they try they will fail horreondously lol but ok whatever

came up with the idea that i'd genuinely love for the next cleric to believe in whatever new Cartoony Evil God they come up with. because the story of a person who has been abandoned by the supposed benevolent god and/or abandoned by society as a whole and them interacting in the world as a believer of the Evil God is infinitely more compelling to me than 'guy from the Cartoony Good God church fights the guy from the Evil God group and proves the Good God is the Correct Faith to believe in this world'. which has sucked ass twice at this point.

but also it's a JRPG they have to make the cleric a pure healer who is Good and Has Good God Powers and most JRPG fans hate new shit they just eat the same damn regurgitated food over and over again . and they also have to justify the player fighting the Evil God Superboss at the end. so it's hard to balance that out from a marketing + game design standpoint. but i am cooking in my head

[doodler16]

"If anything Ozzie could’ve been the one who would ask where Stolas is, yknow an established character we already know and someone who knows the details and gave Blitzø the ozmedous crystal so they don’t have to travel illegally."

i think this is the exact reason viv wants to act like ozzie was incapable of doing anything by passive aggressively liking fans tweets that argued he couldnt have possibly spoken up. because if he had even tried to save blitzs heiny by saying truthfully, "hey, wait - i know that guy! my partner fizz is friends with him! and he didn't force himself onto stolas, stolas personally asked me for an asmodean crystal for him when he realized he had, and i quote, 'feelings' for the imp! see? look at his right forearm, that there's one of my crystals, legally approved of." then they all would've believed a seven deadly fucking sin over some pissy elsa rip off that's ranks below ozzie, who has NO evidence of these vile accusations, vs the literal asmodean crystal on blitzs arm that you can literally see throughout the entire the trial. it's not like they took it off or anything! it's still there! keeping in mind theres no such thing as bootlegs crystals, because every on screen depiction (and i think even on screen description) states that an asmodean crystal is a personal item tied to it's owner - it's LEGAL owner.

but if that had happened, then we wouldn't have gotten our stoliz climax where stolas shows he loves blitz by.. doing the bare minimum of NOT letting blitz die due to STOLAS'S DECISION in murder family to make them fuck for the book, instead of giving his "first ever fwiend" an asmodean crystal immediately. how romantic!

im just getting so sick of the parasocial vivziepop stans doing backflips in logic to justify the way the story is, without realizing that they could and SHOULD be given something better. they see the cracks, but viv just doesn't want them to, because it's her way or the highway - she's the biggest fan of her own show, so things happen the way she wants them to, not in a way that makes any logical sense when you put it under the usual critical eye the average writer (and casual viewer) would.

i mean, what if oz said that, but satan still deemed a punishment against blitz worthy for having the grimorie to begin with at all as an imp, still tried to execute blitz as a public display of power, and THEN oz texts stolas while notifications of fizz texting oz pop up? you still get your angst, have ozzie ACTUALLY be a good person who's willing to put his neck out on the line for someone lesser then him with no personal gain and not just be a canonical complacent royal fuck who was about to let his lovers reunited best friend die on public television, which is why i will never be invested in fizzozzie ever again tbh, and STILL have your big stoliz savior moment, without it happening due to just because of stolas just so happening to turn on the news that day. a text from oz could've given stolas a moment to very briefly consider if this is something he should intervene in, before realizing he has to, because blitz made him feel free for the first time in his life. now he can free him too, from the grimorie, and from suffering the consequences of his actions that put blitz in this position unfairly to begin with. also i wouldn't personally write stolas following this up with a song about how he's the mastermind behind a plan he knows nothing about or have him insult his "lovers" intelligence repeatedly within it, "that's the point," my ass, stolas could've just sung about the way blitz made him feel when they first met as kids and then again as adults, and why he gave him the grimorie because of that, contradicting andres imp rape claim and showing blitz that stolas DOES care in a way that ISNT self sacrifice, but nooooo, we need just one more song of stolas being a entertaining dick! no wonder she said this episode was self indulgent lol

Someone get rid of Vivziepop’s Twitter or someone on her Spindlehorse team get Viv a social media manager. 💀 The fact this woman is passively aggressively liking tweets in defense of her show is insane. And maybe just maybe Vivziepop should explain herself in the show instead of Twitter.

I don’t care what anybody says Ozzie could’ve done more and spoken up. He is one of the seven deadly sins and has the power to make a difference. If Stolas (someone who is lower than Ozzie in terms of status) can make a heroic entrance to save his booty call and talk/sing against Satan. Then Ozzie has a chance.

Anon why is your version so much better. That “Mastermind” song so unnecessary (it’s one of the few songs I personally don’t vibe with except the ending, I will admit Satan and other sins part is fire). Stolas says how he love blitzø yet uses any chance to insult and demean his intelligence in the most mean spirited way possible.

[wasyago]

I would like to know what your boundaries are when it comes to interacting with you.

are you ok with requests or questions that don’t have to do with your works

are you ok with receiving headcanons that are not relevant to or may contradict with what you already have 

how many asks are you comfortable with receiving at one time.

Are there other things that you want us to know about fan interaction that I didn’t think to ask about

hmm oh man no one has really asked this before... i think as a disclaimer i need to say that im pretty bad at replying to asks, and half of them get ignored and deleted because i either forget about them and get too anxious to reply, or just don't know how to reply and never do.

i dont really do art requests, so if anyone sends one it will most likely be ignored, and if its not related to what im posting it'll be ignored 100%. there are some exceptions of it, but i still don't appreciate people asking me to draw anything for free. i suppose i don't mind questions about stuff outside of my work! no one really asks anything so i don't have a good example of it, plus it all really depends on the context, but if its good I'll reply and if its something i dont like I'll just ignore it. so, same as with everything i guess, so those are okay 👍

about headcanons hmmm... not sure? i dont know how to properly reply to them if its not something im into apart from "oh thats interesting" and "nice". like, i don't really wanna say stuff like "that cool but i personally think that you're wrong and here are the reasons--" and take someone's headcanon apart? it just feels rude? even if i do process the headcanon in my brain and there's a thought process of how it fits or doesn't fit into my beliefs, i don't really want to say it out lound to not upset anyone? but saying all this, it is still nice to see headcanons from different people and different perspectives, to have some variety of views and opinions and more diversity. because you never know what you might like. so, i think all headcanons are good, if i know how to reply to them i will, and if i don't then i won't!

how many asks am i comfortable receiving umm, well, i don't have an exact number picked hsghd. i guess as many as you want if you really have a lot to ask? i do appreciate it when people keep asks topical tho. so, if you're asking about one particular thing, it'd be nice if it was all in one ask that is easy to reply to. and if you're asking about multiple different things it's better to send multiple short asks instead of a big one. because its hard to reply to billion unrelated questions in one post. so for example your ask is good because all the questions are on the same subject, but if you asked me about the weather halfway through and then swithed to an ask about jrwi, that i wouldn't reply to, yknow?

for other things... i already said about the art requests, which are like the main thing i really don't like. i guess some things are better asked in dm's than asks, if that's anything? especially if it's something more personal to you or requires an actual dialog, but i can see why it might be easier to send an ask first and move to dm's later, so its not a problem. hmmmm and i suppose just the general stuff, like don't send suggestive asks if i don't know you or you weren't clearly prompted to, don't be mean to me or others, even as a joke it doesn't feel good, remember that im just a random guy on the internet, im not a robot i have feelings, so talk to me like a person, don't spam the same question if i didn't answer it, etc.

i think that's it? thank you for asking!!

[littletealights]

let’s revisit this, i have more

first, a clarification: it is actually john (then ‘the entity’) who expresses concern regarding eddie when returning to their building. but, interestingly, it’s arthur who admits that there’s credibility in the man’s threat.

it’s interesting because arthur, at the time at least, has no memories? minimal guesses and vague ideas at best, i believe. He, virtually knows nothing about Eddie as a person. but he knows that he has a gun and Eddie is still an actual threat to his well being. hm.

speaking of eddie, this guy is your typical blue collar racist. ‘well i work with them coloureds so i may as well be civil cause i dont like to drink alone’ but when push comes to shove, he is more than happy to throw his weight around and remind everyone, and himself, that he is powerful because he is the ‘superior’ white.

okay, so now i have more examples, but i really dont want to explain all of them in depth so feel free to ask questions if you have any.

- in part 4, when they’re dropping off baby #2 and deciding where to go from that diner.

- the cop in the gun shop in part 6

- one thing to note is that it is also in part 6 that john proposes the idea that they are being hunted by the king in yellow through other people. but the people he lists…some of those things are not like the others. he also almost writes the entire theory off as a feeling of uneasiness. i personally think that that’s just him noticing/experiencing racism for the first time literally ever, but two things can be true at once, yknow?

- the man on the docks (part 6 as well)

i couldn’t get their whole conversation but you remember how aggressive this man was with his syllables? i felt like alex, ‘i am not your son’ type shit.

- and of course the cops in part 8

i was honestly surprised there wasn’t anything from the lighthouse keeper, even if it wasn’t a race thing. you had a british immigrant and a french man in a room together and they didn’t throw insults once? im shocked.

there is, unfortunately, one big thing that arthur does to contradict this whole thing. and that is that time arthur stole that boat. that is (i apologise) white people bullshit if i have ever heard it. but i’ll just chalk it up to a bleed over of john’s inhuman stupidity.

like i said, it’s not necessarily that arthur himself is written as a man of colour, it’s that everyone else around him is written like he’s a man of colour.

What makes you think that Arthur is a person of color? :0 just curious.

gladly.

so, at first, i thought it was me projecting but i think the first clue i got was eddie. yall might think i’m being dramatic but eddie was…suspicious from the get-go. in a normal situation like this, there’s actually 0% chance that it turns out the way it did for arthur.

but that’s beside the point. eddie knocks on the door and receives an unhurried response. he walks away to do.. whatever it is he was doing. arthur comes to the door, opens it, looks around and picks up some trash, muttering to himself. suddenly eddie has urgent business inside the office with a. flimsy excuse at best. strike one.

we, as the audience, know that arthur is being shifty because he’s just killed a man. eddie has been told, quite convincingly, that arthur was moving… boxes or something (im looking at the transcript, arthur just says ‘not furniture’ so…). and that arthur is working with sensitive documents. not sure if you know this but private detectives have to work with proper authorities to be allowed to operate legally. that means they work with the police and the courts. when a PI says a document is sensitive, they mean legally. they mean eyes only. they mean ‘come back later or i could lose my fucking license because you got the wrong look at classified documents.’ a building manager, especially their building manager, should know that. strike two.

he also asks for arthur’s partner, peter yang (who is, i can only assume, an east asian man). i should hope that i dont have to remind you that this is massachusetts in the 30’s we’re talking about, and what that means logically. but i will. america hated asian people the most they ever did until COVID in the 30s through the 60s. the only people they hated more were black and brown people. no matter how shifty and suspicious arthur was acting, eddie would’ve been… let’s just say ‘incredibly unlikely’ to ask for peter instead of the white man. strike three

there’s some little bits about subvocals and tone that i could say, but it’d be a lot and i don’t fully understand it enough to explain well why eddie set off alarms for me. because i dont have to. it takes 5 minutes (from 11:48-16:09 on spotify, so nearly exactly) for eddie to go from inconvenient, to annoying, to suspicious, to violent. and he ends the conversation with a very real threat of violence that essentially boils down to ‘don’t come back to the building again.’ eddie is a maintenance man. he did not have the power to evict anyone. unless, of course, they were a poc. so why was arthur worried about eddie when sneaking back into the building?

but, like i said, i thought i was projecting. projection and being-on-the-lam can easily explain arthur’s hesitance when delivering the baby and asking for a ride. or the gunshop in part 6. but the lighthouse? no, what really solidified it for me was the end of part 8.

here’s what officer collin knows so far: a visibly disabled man has stumbled, confused and upset, away from a lighthouse and a body that CANNOT have been killed by a human; and it is dark outside. that’s it. using this knowledge, he then proceeds to beat said man. brutally. repeatedly.

in part 9 they learn he is blind and when that timid little fucker (mitchell) expresses doubt, collin says this

this is something we like to call coerced confession. arthur did not kill that man (the lighthouse keeper). officer collin knows that arthur didn’t kill that man. (dont play, he knows.) but because it is convenient to say that he did, they’ll threaten and torture him until he says that he did.

now, friends, i’m not going to lie to your face and say that white folk are safe from the cops, youre not, i know. but what im also not going to do is pretend like there os any world in which this happens and arthur is visibly white. not in the thirties, not in america. despite being forgotten or unmentioned they are in the midst of the great depression, the exact last thing these small-town cops need is the arrest of a blind white man on their hands. regardless, i have never ever heard of a cop speaking this way to a white person unprovoked. i, on the other hand, have been spoken to this way myself.

this is already quite long and it doesn’t even cover the sheer magnitude of people who feel comfortable calling arthur (at his grown ass age of visibly-an-adult) ‘boy.’ or the wicked and downright racist way that larson says it, (genuinely. it sounds like he’s a middle school boy who discovered the word ‘fagg*t’ for the first time the way he says it. i couldn’t tell you how many times that word (boy) drove an ice pick through my fucking skull this season.) but i hope you can at least get the picture.

original post is here

[omegasmileyface]

What’s :3 architecture like?

OK SO theyre unified more by ideals than physical similarities, which means theyre pretty diverse in lots of aspect, which shows up in their architecture. at its core, its just "ghost architecture":

floating shit (if you try to make areas in the nonsensical infinite realms apply to physics, the realms will fight back)

shared spaces (if you want to be alone youll live outside of a gathering or live in your lair. non-lair spaces are almost never private)

(as an extension of that last one i want to point out that many ghosts who live in cities will spend like half of their time OUTSIDE of it and just kinda wandering about bc like. its the infinite afterlife. they dont need to sleep. they do whatever they want. this is Certainly true among the youthful and creative and curious :3 people)

few doors - this is kinda mortifiedverse lore, but doors are pretty much restricted to lair entrances - and solid walls - theres very little weather. windows are empty, columns are frequent, etc.

death themes. there's more of it among the Glom Psu than the others but i think its so fucking funny how in canon everybody has skulls and bones and bats and shit all over everything so im keeping it

stuff that super does not go together. depending on how devoted a certain ghost is to a theme it could be from a typical suburban tudor house with a single pool of lava to an absolutely nonsensical collage of various home-and-non-home architecture

each :3 cultural group has trends that are common among them and of course they mix into the blend of the area but ill separate them here for the sake of background

uwu:

glassy windows. i know it contradicts what i swaid earlier but they have both empty and glassy windows. think about it. thats free sunlight. for laying in. this city DOES have sunlight btw even though they dont have a sun

tall structures with platforms on the inside and outside. like yknow those cat athletic structures. the planks on the walls that kind of thing. catwalks! those. i would kill for that.

treeeeees. with bark.

lairs often have their doors hidden away in hard-to-access crooks

complex tunnel-like system closer to the ground

big public hearths with short, wide brick walls around them. also for laying on.

shallow pools

glom psu:

bright colors!!! the ghost zone in general is known for bright colors but these guys have RAINBOWS. and BLACK AND PINK. and PATTERNS. outside every fucking building

a lot of like...... big victorian houses except with walls that are more open

a few ppl have "intradimensional" lairs that manifest as like normal houses with normal, barely non-euclidean doors.

wings are very common, on buildings and stuff

skate parks :) they have roads designed for skating in addition to floating, with soft curves and rails and shit

suburban-looking parks with brightly-colored, spiky playgrounds and elaborate gazebos

actually yeah just keep putting spikes on things. they dont particularly hurt though its fine. theyre like. gummy.

cafes! these guys love eating but mostly sweets.

i guess cafes isnt architecture huh. well. its mostly just floating, column-heavy, more open victorian houses. just in general these guys love that

eebydeeby:

the architecture itself is pretty varied , with neighborhoods mostly sticking to general aesthetics. look up any -core tag on tumblr and theres a place with architecture like that. you know every 2013 "what if everybody on tumblr lived/worked/went to school together" fandom/aesthetic separation? yeah. thats real when you die

more closed off areas (both lairs and non-lairs). tumblrinas value their privacy. that being said it frequently results in big houses shared between 5-6 individuals. these shared-house groups have a term for themselves loaned from Uwu: öwôw ówuv

curving, vertically-varied walking paths. tumblrinas dont float all that much

There Is A Tumblr University.

every block or so youll find a message board with paper and pens and pins and stuff available where people """""post""""" messages and respond to others and such. tumblrinas have a potent historical tradition of recorded, written, public gradual conversation

extremely varied building purposes. there are libraries. there are restaurants. there are movie theaters. there are karaoke houses. there are sex dungeons. (ghosts have sex if they want to.) there are buildings purely for thinking. theres a building where someone puts a single doodle of a cat in the center of the floor once a day. theres everything.

the lack of consistency in architecture shows how varied and active the eebydeeby are. they thrive on differing perspectives

[inosukeslefttoe]

SO i just finished wonder egg priority and i think that with confidence i can say it has been one of my favorite animes like... ever ?? and not even from hyperfixation or obsession over it just... its so fucking real yet so simple in a way that i havent rlly seen shown in any other shows you feel ??

but first i wanna talk about how sexy the art and animation is real quick... HOMIE ITS SO GOOD LIKE EVERYTHING ABOUT IT JUST... serotonin... the characters are all so unique and iconic and fun but not over the top in their designs yknow ??? they seem like regular every day girls but they stand out and theyre all sO CUTE !!!! also i love how the style is like this soft bubbly slice of life lookin stuff with bright happy colors and the most beautiful scenes you could find but they also have the SICKEST fight scenes complete with whimsical animal helpers and terrifying villains and crazy weapons unique to each character. and the animation. god DAMN shawty i am obsessed with everything in this show. i might make a post solely about the art later lol bc i wanna get into the other stuff.

so the themes in the show right ?? it starts just as this cute lil magical girl kinda deal but within the first episode we see that like.. oh damn... thats kinda heavy... tbh i was a little shocked and thought about stopping bc yknow bad mental health BUT i was so intrigued that i had to keep going and i am SO GLAD that i did. because this show just so beautifully discusses all these heavy topics in such an eloquent and artistically expressive way. and also like, , the juxtaposition of the charming childlike vibe with bright colors and 14 yr old girl protagonists against the dark themes of suicide and so much else,, i think is just perfect. bc a lot of heavy animes are more of the seinen genre and have some middle aged dude as a protag or make the entire color palette dim or offer little relief to the pain of these heavy themes right ?? but NO not wonder egg bitches B) because these problems arent just things that ppl face later in life or just problems that need to be talked about among adults or the edgy seinen watching squad,, these are REAL problems that face people of every age, gender etc and i think its awesome that wonder egg addresses that. some may cringe at the thought of their high schooler watching animes that discuss sexual harassment, suicide, abuse, self harm, eating disorders etc,, but in reality it is the most comforting thing i have ever come across and is basically jsut free anime therapy. because not only does wonder egg present these themes to the viewers as something real that happens to all kinds of people (making said people feel heard in a way that maybe they hadnt before), but it also makes sure to vanquish all of these forms of trauma. and the way the trauma is vanquished isnt always beautiful and it isnt always just magically gone with a poof. the struggles of overcoming or living with that sort of thing are shown in such a real and relatable way that addresses every hardship trauma survivors have to go through. and i just. god i cry bro. 

oh m y GOD and the lgbtq+ rep in this show ?? like shawty... as soon as i saw episode one i was picking up on some gay/lesbian themes but then again im sapphic and project that a lot so i tend to see that sort of stuff like... everywhere... but NE WAYS... episode ten made me FUKCING CRY BRO LIke i cant believe there was a whole trans character with a whole trans pride hoodie like LKGHKDGH my heart is just so.. so fucking full thinking about him. bc like yeah i know there are trans characters in anime but i feel like theyre always very ambiguous about actually being trans or not or erased or portrayed as a harmful stereotype or theyre constantly misgendered and still refered to as their assigned gender at birth and i hate it. HOWEVEr... Kaoru.. *chefs kiss* it was so amazing to see a character straight up say “yeah im trans” in such a casual yet powerful way bc i personally have never seen that before. and i love love loved how he went into his backstory and talked to momoe about gender bc i think thats what she rlly needed and that it helped her find herself and it makes me so happy oh my god,, and the way they talked about it never seemed forced or like it was the focal point of his existence yknow ?? like yeah he existed to help momoe overcome some of her trauma but he also just existed to be HIM yknow ?? also... personally, i headcanon momoe as a trans girl even though i dont remember it being explicitly stated plus the school scenes of her and stuff would seem like they suggest otherwise ??but,,, SHAWTY THE AMOUNT OF SUBTEXT and her complicated relationship w gender is... something i feel like a cis girl would not go through so harshly yknow ?? with all of the questioning and feeling detached from femininity or feeling like ppl dont see her as an actual girl and only like her as a guy or for her masculine traits,,, but dont take my word on this bc i myself am a cis girl but that was just my take on it as someone in the lgbtq+ community trying to educate myself on the transgender community :) either way,, wonder eggs portrayal of momoe and kaoru and the way that momoe becomes so passionate about expressing herself the way she wants to as a girl is just... good lord im gonna cry its so perfect,,,.so ... i just love this show way too much. i also am honestly super lost about the relationship btwn acca and ura-acca ?? bc i was gonna mention ura-acca as a canonically gay guy bc when i was watching i interpreted ep 11 as him being in love with acca and being jealous of Azusa (bc i mean,, they lived together (i swear to god there was only one bed in that apartment) and had a daughter together and def loved each other and also when Frill said they were husbands and then when ura-acca said he wasnt attracted to azusa but he was def jealous of their relationship ??) but then i saw somewhere that theyre brothers ?? which would make sense ig since they look kinda similar and accas daughter called ura-acca “uncle”.. but at the same time its ANIME SO THEY ALL LOOK SIMILAR and referring to gay couples as siblings is an EXTREMELY common euphemism soooo... IM JUST LOST HERE... but yeah i tried doing research and found different things so i cant say anything for sure >:( however,,, if they are canonically a lil fruity for each other... when frill refered to acca as ura-accas husband i imploded dude you never hear that sort of wording in anime.. but if theyre related i am so sorry. 

god this is so much longer than i planned it to be oops but i also love the theme about like.. relying on friends to help carry your weight but at the same time not becoming completely dependent on those friends and using their support to learn how to love yourself and rely on yourself yknow ?? bc that is exactly what healthy friendships look like. bc i think ai sort of had a codependency thing goin on with koito maybe ?? but now she has a whole squad of funky friends that are so so different but all struggle with different kinds of trauma and although they fight over it, they always get through it with each other together. and they push each other no matter what to be the best versions of themselves and they teach other that getting hurt is okay because theyre always gonna be there to pick up the pieces no matter what happens. they can give each other space when they need and adapt to meet each others needs but theyre always able to balance it out with their own needs and thats such a beautiful thing in friendships especially at their age like damn i wish i had that maturity when i was 14 but no all i had was depression. another thing is that through these friendships you get to see all the different sides of each girl; you get to see them being strong or a shining light to their friends when theyre hurting but you also get to see them being hurt and weak and allowing themselves to be on the receiving end of the comfort. their friendships allows them to have weaknesses but it also allows them to highlight their strengths and thrive off of each others. I LOVE FRIENDSHIP DUDE

next i wanna briefly mention some of the themes connected to suicide that ive noticed. a big one is the survivors guilt that ai feels once koito is dead. several times she screams that she wishes she couldve gone with koito and she dreams of a “perfect world” where they committed a double suicide. one of the main reasons for her troubles is that she blames herself for koitos death and feels like it should be her thats dead... but at the same time she feels like too much of a coward to do anything now that koito is gone. she just has all these complex and contradicting feelings that wear away at her in ways that ppl that havent gone through the suicide of a loved one could never imagine. a lot of the times when things like this are portrayed in media i feel like its more in a way thats meant to guilt trip those that have taken their own lives and paint suicide as this selfish sin thats unforgivable but... not only does wonder egg reject that idea and instead portray it as a heartbreaking tragedy with,,, so so many terrible reasons, but it focuses on the feelings of ai separate from koito without blaming her in any way. not once did i feel like the show antagonized koito or that ai blamed koito for doing any of this, but they simply mourned her loss and touched on ais reaction towards the event but separate from koito herself if that makes sense. and i think that discussing survivors guilt without painting koito as the bad guy is something so beautifully done in wonder egg that can really resonate with those that have lost a loved one to suicide and have struggled with these same things.

okay i think this is the last thing ill mention,,, but HOMIE THE PARALLEL UNIVERSE BIT AT THE END. I AM. OBSESSED. i am such a whore for anything about the multiverse okay n e ways...,, not only did this make a super epic trippy ending of season one and add a little bit more magical girl whimsy to the show,, but it had such a powerful message. from the perspective of og ai,, finding out that you killed yourself in another world is... i mean its definitely not a surprise but at the same time it rlly makes you think how close og ai herself couldve been to that point and what decisions led her out of that dark place in her life. if i were in her shoes i would be terrified and id cry bc the thought of going back to such a dark place and actually going through with something like that is my worst fear and probably something that ai fears too. but at the same time,,, think from the perspective of ai two !!! like yeah its true that theres this awful terrible version of ai that dies but theres also a whole version of ai that is a superhero magical girl fighting off monsters to save countless ppls lives !! and she has a badass lizard and a gang of awesome friends !!! at first i was worried that ai two would be jealous of og ai and compare herself to her and feel inferior but like.. THEYRE LITERALLY THE SAME PERSON AND CAPABLE OF THE SAME THINGS !!! and ai two realized that !! just within the span of one episode, she went from the version of ai who took her life,, to the version of ai jumping in front of a friend to take a bullet for them and save their life. and that just inspired THE SHIT OUT OF ME. i think that ai was sent another version of herself to sort of beat her own worst enemy yknow ?? those doubts and fears that shes no good or that shes that same bystander from episode one and that she hasnt changed at all. but getting to interact with her parallel self and see her grow was just what she needed to realize that while yeah sometimes the worst thing can happen and things can be terrible but on the other hand sometimes the most wonderful thing imaginable can happen because she has the power to do either. 

so im gonna go ahead and stop rambling bc i got all my thoughts out that i wanted to for this post :D but yeah lol i might make another if i feel like it sometime. long story short: this show is perfect and it is going on my favorite of all times.

[gh0st-patr0l]

Alright yknow what this is just an expansion on my last post but Im Not Done,

The entire thing with the Butcher Army, Phil’s house arrest, and the new festival plan has been painted as Tubbo’s corruption arc by the fans, but yknow what? I don’t think that’s what this is at all. I think this is gonna be the climax of Possessed!Quackity’s corruption arc.

Let’s go over what happened on the sixteenth.

So, the Butcher Army got together, decided to hunt down Techno and publicly execute him for his crimes. People said that Tubbo going along with this is proof that he’s becoming corrupted, but I feel like this clearly says less about Tubbo than it does about Quackity- more specifically, how Quackity has gotten much, much better at manipulation as of late.

If you watch any of the army’s POV as they prepare to go to Phil’s house, and they discuss Techno’s execution, you can hear Tubbo say, “Finally, someone else is gonna know how it feels!”

I think this, along with how he treats the situation going forwards, completely contradicts the idea that this is about the violence or bloodlust. Tubbo made it clear in the beginning of his presidency, and has reiterated since, that he does Not like violence. It’s why he started his term with those ideals of peace and harmony, and why he’s done everything in his power to prevent war. He isn’t bloodthirsty, and he never expressed any interest in revenge without influence.

But that’s where Quackity comes in.

Quackity was the one who came up with the idea of the Butcher Army, and he’s the one who slowly convinces Tubbo to go along with it. Tubbo allowed Quackity to take charge to apologize for overruling the cabinet in the exile. He understood he’d made an unfair decision, and sacrificed his own authority to make up for that- another sign that he really isn’t dictator material. And Quackity- whether consciously or under the influence of Schlatt’s ghost- used this to take advantage of Tubbo’s trauma.

Tubbo isn't excited about killing Technoblade, so Quackity doesn’t use that. Instead, he gets Tubbo excited about the idea of justice- about potential reparations, and about the idea of not being alone in the suffering and trauma that he's had since the festival. Tubbo’s excited that he'll finally not have to be on the receiving end, that he’ll get some kind of closure for what’s been done to him.

As for Phil, I kinda went over this in the last post- again, Tubbo is letting Quackity take the reins. He expresses during that scene that he’s not Really into the idea of putting Phil under house arrest, but he also goes with it, because Quackity convinced him that they’re in the right- and besides, when has Phil ever done anything to make Tubbo feel loyal to him? Don’t get me wrong, I love Phil, but besides that one time in the emergency room, Phil has Rarely treated Tubbo with any kind of respect or loyalty on his end.

I don’t think that him assuming Tommy as dead will make him more corrupt. If anything, I think the emotional distress will just make him more pliable, willing to let Quackity take control more. And I think THAT is going to lead to the big return of Schlatt, however that manifests.

[mojaves]

🌹🌱🍀🌙🌈 for jason my beloved jason AND marcus

OURGRTGHF AAAA banner time again (^:< eheoeheehe

🌹- What's this oc's biggest fear

well one of them is definitely just. ruthie in general. she had far too much power over him + damaged him beyond repair so now he's just stuck with the pieces trying to glue them back together,, every time he thinks about her he's like a terrified little kid all over again. as big and intimidating as he is, she can very easily make him want to curl up in a ball and disappear completely from the world never to be seen again. he's not as brave or as confident as everyone thinks he is and he does NOT want people to know that. losing control of himself is another Big Fear bc there were many moments where he felt like he wasnt even part of his own body when ruthie was there, he was just a bystander who was frozen and couldnt do Anything which is <3 not very nice

🌱- Does this oc have any pets? Do they have any pets they want?

ALL HE NEEDS IS A BIG DOG WHO HE CAN RUN AROUND WITH AND HUG AND CRY INTO SOMETIMES. THATS ALL HE NEEDS

🍀- Around when does this oc get up in the morning?

he doesnt need to sleep so he doesnt really get up he's just On His Bullshit 24/7. but on the rare occasion he DOES sleep, it takes him a million years to Wake Up and Get Out Of Bed. and by that point it's probably 1pm and he doesnt know who he is or where he is. good luck trying to make him wake up early it wont happen <3

🌙- Does this oc have any unusual hobbies?

i think killing people is a bit of an unusual hobby. maybe. not for him though thats just Life baybeyy. he collects bottle caps but thats one of the more Normal things he does actually

🌈- What does this oc like and dislike about themselves?

GOING TO MAKE ME ABSOLUTELY INSANE WITH THIS ONE. the damage has already been done and it's taking Forever to try and undo it all, if it's even possible. so. he has 0 self esteem whatsoever. there is not a single thing he likes about himself. your bf cheating on you and then Killing You definitely doesnt do a whole lot of good for your self-worth. he's still trucking on regardless bc, if he doesnt wipe all these shitty people off the face of the earth, who will?? yknow. at least he's using the skills he has For Good instead of his own personal gain. he's got 0 sense of self preservation either so he just does whatever whenever. he acts confident and definitely Looks the part considering what he wears 99% of the time, but thats nothing more than a front he's putting on as part of the job - it lures in victims easier. like who's going to be drawn to a guy who is on the floor crying about how much he hates himself?? No One! anyway where was i going with this. Ah., yes he doesnt like himself. thank you

🌹- What's this oc's biggest fear

he doesn't want people to think less of him because he's kind of shy and very much Struggles to hold conversationd with people sometimes. yes he has a lot of self-confidence but he also worries Far Too Much about first impressions and other people's opinions about him. we love a walking contradiction <3 idk if this is even much of a fear but this is the only thing i can think of qjhfeghg. also public speaking. he can talk to a camera but put him in front of hundreds of people?? he will disolve right then and there thats TOO many people all at once

🌱- Does this oc have any pets? Do they have any pets they want?

not necessarily his pets bc they're lou and morgan's but he lives with them. so theyre basically his too. butterbean and barry are the cats. and they also have a lizard called walter. i KNOW their names have changed a lot over time but this is it now ive decided. im stamping it im sending it off theres no going back now. also he would like a small dog of some sort one day perhaps

🍀- Around when does this oc get up in the morning?

he wakes up around 8-8:30 he is a very Up and Go person he hates being in bed for longer than he has to be. earlier is good but any later and he feels like his whole day has been thrown off

🌙- Does this oc have any unusual hobbies?

not so much now but he and morgan used to collect worms. like actual worms. they had a little worm farm. now they both collect worms on strings instead

🌈- What does this oc like and dislike about themselves?

he likes his hair + his silly little moustache bc he pulls it off very well and he's SO SO SO happy about it. he likes that he's good at art and very kind. he does NOT like his laugh though bc he snorts but it's a fun laugh and everyone tells him that all the time but he is Still not convinced. also with what i said earlier he doesnt like that he's worried about what other people think of him because he knows it doesn't matter even a little bit but he can't shake it

[retroosquared]

hey! firstly i want to say that i love your art style and how you paint generally!! i'm fairly new at drawing and i wanted to ask if you have any tips on anatomy? have a nice rest of your day :]

aw thank u so much !! :’)

i dont know if i have any specific tips bc obviously a lot of it comes with practice, but firstly using references is definitely a good idea (although i will say you dont have to stick 100% to the reference, cause that could mess you up more than help you! i tend to just use them as a guide for where to place things and stuff as opposed to following the reference exactly)

the second thing is learn to work with shapes more!! segment the body into main parts - torso, waist, hips/crotch area, legs, shoulders, arms, etc. when figuring out the head/neck placement it helps me personally to draw the collarbones! with hands it helps me to focus on what i want them to be doing first before i try to figure out the anatomy, and also remember that hands are pretty weird anyway so dont worry about it too much (just think about the palm and finger joints and stuff)!! like i know this seems like im contradicting myself but i tend to think of the general shape/vibe of things like, the big picture, and then i go in with more specific details.

also i find it way more helpful to do pose practice on a much simpler program - like on a whiteboard with friends, or even just pen on paper irl - because then im not distracted by like trying to pick what tool to use and stuff like that, yknow? also also, find tutorials online - theres so many brilliant artists out there that have made countless tutorials on drawing anatomy and poses and p much everything u can think of, and theyve definitely explained stuff way better than i have LOL !!

most important thing is to have fun tho :DD get inspired by others, tell whatever story u want ur art to tell, get funky with shapes and colours and lines, etc! if ur having a good time and liking what u draw then i promise u it will show <3

[last-flight-of-fancy]

yknow.. i kinda wanna talk about the difference between a retcon and a reveal for a minute, just cause i see those words thrown around a lot (particularly wrt kh) and i think a lot of people don’t really grasp the difference between them sometimes, so i just wanna delve into it a bit if ya’ll don’t mind indulging me.

im also going to preface this by saying that none of these are inherently bad (yes even retcons). and all are probably going to be present in any story medium the longer it exists. all the examples are gonna be kh based bc that’s where my brain lives and bc it’s such a long running series it has plenty of examples of both

so first off. retcon

a Retcon is short for retroactive continuity. it’s when a writer explicitely changes past parts of a story to suit their current needs (or ignores them). this is the one that’s usually used with the most derision, and well.. it’s because yeah, the most glaring retcons tend to be handled badly. sometimes a thing needs to be retconned however. like tifa saying a slur in the OG ff7. we did not need that.

retcon example: in Dream Drop Distance, Young Xehanort lists the three rules of time travel, which is integral to the Big Villain Plot going forward. 1. you cannot take your body. 2. you will not remember your experiances in the other time. 3. you can only travel to points where some version of yourself already exists. however previously in kh2, sora visited Timeless River (Disney Castle in the distant past) and appears to have broken all three of these rules, having not existed on that world (or probably at all that far back), taking his body, and remembering it all afterwards (probably? i think).*

*this being said there remains every possibility that this could still end up being explained somehow. it’s kh it can do that.

A Reveal on the other hand is when the audience is deliberately misled about what is happening in the story, only to have the truth shown later on. Most people know this as a Twist, but many Twists i feel lack the buildup and foreshadowing a good Reveal has (imo). KH is littered with reveals, reveling in it’s winding and confusing plot (despite what people say, it has extremely consistent internal logic considering the length and breadth of the series, it’s just presented in a confounding and often nonlinear manner) to keep people guessing.

a good reveal example (and one that many accuse of being a retcon), is that nobodies can regrow their hearts, which was given in DDD. accusations that this is a retcon are innacurate due to the sheer amount of evidence from as early as Chain of Memories (where nobodies as a concept were first introduced, though i don’t beleive they use that name or explain what they are until kh2) that nobodies could in fact feel things. the reason this gets called a retcon is i think largely because many, many characters outright state it as fact that nobodies cannot feel, and the audience simply goes along with it. however, most of these characters, while they do beleive in their words, are wrong (yen sid, most of the Org13), and the remainder are outright lying (xemnas, xigbar). The key difference is whether clues were left for the audience to follow, or if in hindsight the new information makes perfect sense (which it does).

using old things in new ways is a thing i don’t have a snappy word for but i think is a further subsection of this, bc it’s neither really a retcon nor a reveal in that it does not have the necessary forethought to be a reveal but it doesn’t actively contradict anything stated previously either like a retcon. this one is also harder to pin down as it often requires Word Of God to be confirmed, and otherwise is mostly speculation. you can kinda get a feel for this sort of thing though, if you’re paying attention. some writers are better at it that others, and as always this can be subjective. (personally i think nomura is a mastermind at this sort of thing, incorporating old, completely innocuous things in incredible new ways almost seemlessly, and giving them a whole new context without breaking the narrative)

A good example of this would be the Hollow Bastion science pods, which existed in a single room in KH1 and were left completely alone for another 17 years (*17? ish). Given that the first game in the series is more or less completely self contained and the possibility of it’s continuation not at all a guaruntee, i am inclined to doubt nomura had planned that small detail so far in advance when khux probably hadn’t even been seeded as an idea yet.

and finally Not Anything Actually is when Word Of God says something one time in an interview ten+ years ago and then had a better idea later. that’s just called writing, it’s not a retcon stop calling it a retcon.

[stray-tori]

TPN S2E01 Thoughts (anime-only)

Watching with friends:

.

Opening thoughts so far

of course this parallel which i already cried about in its own post. I just. my emotions. AHHHH-

.

I’m not sure what it means but the cut from two hands forming a grid to the chains being aligned similarly and creating a chainlink fence. The hands covering someone's vision could be the deception of the farms or something of the like, especially since it comes after the shot with all the moms lined up. But those illusions are a prison, therefore the chains. I'm just not sure how it correlates to the post-escape. I guess the system/society overall

I rly just wanted to appreciate the smooth transition work haha

Another TPN server member pointed out its not two hands covering someone’s vision, it’s a demon and human hand, making a deal. I’m blind. Match cut still cool.

.

I also can't believe my prayer for empty space composition got real. I JUST LOVE IT BECAUSE I WAS SAYING IT THE WHOLE TIME I was like "I hope they do a thing on the poster or something, where its framed like the three of them are there but norman's is just empty space" AND THEY DID IT!! ONCE AGAIN MY FEELINGS. IM SO HAPPY THEY DID IT BUT ALSO OUCH 

.

The episode

A lot happened but it didn't feel rushed particularly for me personally, excluding the few shots it didn't stay on long enough to really make out anything (and you can pause on those so). They reference they've only recently entered this type of forest (implying they've been on the way for a while), and the forest before that wasn't as... "fantasy", they also referenced being up on a high point of view (likely the cliff they stand on at the end of ep12 or another high point they've been at) where they've seen the river.

The only thing that I feel could have used some time is Ray. Having him have that sort of resolution like 5 minutes in (when before he was sure he'd be dead and therefore didn't plan to take any responsibility for what happens after the escape) feels kind of weird, especially if we haven't seen Emma burdening that much by herself except emotionally and implied also for other activities (I feel that there's some setup missing for her leaving Ray to do the bait thing later in the episode).

I also think having a bit more time between the "oath" and him breaking down being like "I can't give up, I promised" (which was amazing angst, I approve) wouldn't have hurt, but it's also kind of a nice circle within the episode I guess.

Overall, they seem to be moving fast (although I'm not really bothered by it personally), but unless they directly contradict something from the manga, I think if someone wants more details, they can read the manga and add those informations into their experience! Not everything needs to be reiterated, sometimes. And so the anime can move forward faster, both for better and worse.

Haven't read the manga though so I don't know if that works the way I think it does.

But yeah. I feel like an earlier point would have been a good cliffhanger too, maybe around the time Emma faints?

.

[About the carving in the tree]

What I assumed was that Ray gave them the clear signal, but if he didn’t returne, they'd gone looking for him and get hold up. So he carved that, i assume, to tell them what happened and make them go the other way instead of looking for him. Not that they'd listen probably but YKNOW.

I'm not entirely sure.

My friends and I had this whole tangent about “it'd be funny if the demons saw it and just showed up at Minerva's base. Minerva dead”

though I also assume that the coordinates are minerva internal stuff but then again the one scientist did just randomly lose the pen for krone to find so. yknow. idk if their system is the most competent in being secretive and not having a demon pick one up at some point haha-

.

“ what do you feel about the general vibe of this new direction? ”

tainted anime-only but I'll try to give thoughts udsihsdj

Hmm I don't really have any particular feelings I suppose? I'm definitely excited though, I feel like even though the setting and feel has changed from kind of subtle thriller to like, out-right scary monsters and survival, the underlying kind of angst and sincerity stayed the same? I guess it could also be argued that since the anime put less focus on the internal planning and more focus on the character expression and stuff, it's not as extreme of a shift for the anime in a bubble.

I guess I initially thought TPN was kind of "grounded" - ..... aside from the yknow, big children eating demons - if that makes sense? But I think it's also interesting from a meta perspective that the outside or at least segments of the outside (since they said that the previous forest didn't have all those fish bugs and plants) are so fantasy based because in the bubble of GF house its kind of easy to assume the world is just kinda ours but slapped demons on top of it (so in a twist of events, the trapped children who grew up in a lie knew a lot more about their world than we did).*

So I think the fantasy direction is kind of interesting (i also find it interesting that it's only segments of the world, apparently, so I wonder if that has any implications for why the fish bugs and plants are limited to those regions aside from... I guess just natural territory).

* which i also find interesting, because apparently they had a book on it in GF. Which heavily implies that either those things existed before the demons or the demons didn't "take over" fast enough to stop the making of books that depict those things. So I guess really the fantasy elements for them in-universe aren't really surprising. It was kind of surreal, watching them talk about them so normally when so much of the setting up until now was very non-fantasy (again, demons aside of course)

I wrongly assumed the last book being from 2015 implies that the demons took over then, but that contradicts another observation I made before and I totally forgot about but I like it more. So I’m going to redirect you there: Year Count based on demons thoughts

It’s probably gonna go more into demon stuff and all that so that's cool and I'm curious. I'm still not sure if the two new demons designs imply that they're lesser or not, because they have those masks that essentially "fake" what other demons seem to have naturally (the multiple eyes, the horns) but I'm not sure if that means they use that to substitute or if it's the other way around. It kind of feels like paying tribute to those characteristics but I can't really... explain it well haha

[irnwithdiego]

omg pls rant abt Lila i also have.. a lot of issues with her and how ppl have reacted to her character

okay well first and foremost: i Love ritu. i absolutely adore that woman and im so happy that she's finally getting the attention she deserves, i support her and david dating too - so my opinions are genuinely not based on anything to do with that. just bc ive been accused of that by people who didnt realize ive been rooting for them since last summer lol.

anyway.

my biggest issue with lila is the fact that she was introduced as a chameleon. as brilliant or clinically insane as the situation requires. unpredictable. to me that sounded so incredibly interesting, because right from the bat i knew she was gonna turn out as the bad guy, or at least one of them and i was HOPING she would. i was really hoping she would be going batshit crazy on them, doing her thing as the evil person, then when s2 came along she got revealed to be the handler's daughter which to me made it even more exciting? because thats potential to get REAL crazy.

in the end, what we got was half-assed and incoherent and neither here nor there. we didnt get a chameleon, we got a mirror. lol. i expected her to be able to adjust to situations and people perfectly, charming them maybe, yknow. chameleon stuff. (would've loved it if she for example looked different to everyone and nobody actually knows what she looks like, alas. that would've been too creative i suppose)

and yeah her humor was "twisted" in a way, and she was charming... in a way. not to me, not to five, and i think the fact diego fell for her is really just him latching onto another problem/person/situation he needs to fix. the guy with the biggest trust issues on the show, openly telling her he prefers to know what people are even lying about, trying to cut her off multiple times the entire season, getting kidnapped and drugged by her to be shown off and introduced as "boyfriend" (??), turns out to be in love with her. okay. makes little to no sense, but i suppose you could partially blame it on her ability to be unpredictable and a chameleon (i still dont even know what they meant by that, where is the logic in calling her that-)

her undressing diego down to his underwear was creepy as hell to me, she knew exactly he’s only been stabbed and there was nothing else. she patches him up and climbs in bed with him as if they’ve known each other for ages. diego seems a bit "eh" at first, then just decides to fuck her. alright. a) diego, the guy with the biggest trust issues- b) i could see it as a letting off some steam thing tbh, just destressing or whatever. but he still had the stab wound that he allegedly almost bled out/died from so..... lmao. makes sense. in the end it wasnt just a quickie, it was ~love~ and that just doesnt sit right with me.

she lies to him from the get go, she manipulates his every move, she's invasive as all hell, she cant take a no in most situations, but sure. its love. sounds healthy.

the whole clusterfuck about their weird asylum relationship got completely drowned out by her "trying not to fall for diego", which essentially just made her character seem to be all over the place. she seems unfinished, like they disnt really know what to do with her, started off strong and then went off track and couldnt get back on. it seems like they changed a lot of things last minute and i cant make sense of her actions, especially not the way they wanted me to. its clear they were trying to keep up this guessing game about whether she would turn good for diego and his siblings or betray him. it was executed so poorly though, it just feels incredibly incoherent. she contradicts herself more often than not, and fine, lets say they wanted her to look confused about her situation and everything - it was still executed so poorly idk how else to put it. she was neither crazy enough for me to believe the character sheet we got beforehand, nor was she innocent enough for me to believe she really wanted to join them.

she literally tries to KILL all of diego's siblings and him in the end. she only seems to be considering joining them very last minute, like minutes before diego's little speech she was about to erase the entire hargreeves family. and she looked like she was having fun doing it too lmao. just doesnt sit right with me at all. diego proclaiming he loves her after all THAT doesnt sit right with me at all. like what, he tries to get away from her pretty much all season but decides she's worth it only after she tries to kill his family? diego??? im- come on.

i appreciate the thought of a redemption arc, but she wasnt nearly evil enough for me to even believe her original intentions, so i dont really know what her redemption would even look like.

and last but not least - the chameleon vs mirror thing. :) bro. that annoyed me so much. she essentially just goes and god-modes the entire season within 10 minutes, to say it with the words of a friend. like what was the point of that? the logic? how did they even know she could do that, if they allegedly dont know where the other kids with powers are? who did she train her powers on? plus, this is the oldest trope in the history of sci-fi/fantasy stories. someone turns out to be able to copy/mirror back the great powers of somebody else and overthrows everything. yawn.

what makes the others special if she can do whatever they do. maybe its just me being nit-picky at this point but i really dont want it. its so boring.

i had such high hopes for lila, i seriously was so excited to see her and it Still feels like such a let down just thinking of how s2 turned out. dont even get me started on all of them NEEDING a love interest apparently. because you cant be happy without one. thanks, but no thanks.

"s2 is gonna focus on the siblings' relationships!!" my ass. lila and diego's ~bond~ was as unnecessary and illogical as klaus' powers suddenly tenfolding and his paranoia of the spirits just lowkey vanishing with no real explanation other than "he's sober now ❤"

so yeah, all in all lila just seems the least fleshed out, randomnly thrown together and a Bit forced on the romantic part. i would've preferred her just being the big bad and going mental in the end. that would've been an interesting character choice for her.

from the bottom of my heart: why not.

sorry if this is too long, i couldnt help digressing here and there.

[twocubes]

So, for some reason Im reading Graeber’s The Utopia of Rules and he’s talking about, like, how structural violence (well, more generally, power differentials) have a tendency to lead to situations where the subjugated are very much capable of imagining how the subjugators think (since they, yknow, have to), while the subjugators basically have no idea how the subjugated think (since they, yknow, have no need to (this also tends to result in situations where subjugators think of the subjugated as having some weird magical source of knowledge, see: magical n■■■oes, “women’s intuition”, mystical natives, magical omniscient gay best friends, the “out of the mouth of babes” trope, computers doing stuff “magically”...))

and his point is, eventually, how bureaucracies (in his view) exist to take these power-differential-induced imaginative lazinesses and just, spread them into an entire system; like, the bureaucracy is there ultimately because there is a... thing of systematic violence there and thus those with power aren’t really in a position where they would be capable of understanding how their subjects think and thus, bureaucracies are necessitated, since they operate very much in a context where you make essentially no assumptions about how the other people you’re interacting with actually think, I guess?

(and I guess if follows that my objection to his objection to bureaucracy is that, well, at sufficiently large scales, ignorance of how people think is kind of, inevitable. Like, you’re an anthropologist, David; you study this stuff. that means that it’s stuff that not everyone gets to know. Only using modes of organizing where everyone involved has enough information on everyone else involved to imagine how they think has some serious scalability issues that bureaucracy should theoretically be more capable of avoiding. clearly we need some kind of hybrid form or something...)

anyways this doesn’t matter; i wanted to... work out my thoughts on the following chunk that I found really interesting, where he talks about the history of the concept of “imagination”

One of the reasons it is difficult to see all this is because the word “imagination” can mean so many different things. In most modern definitions imagination is counterposed to reality; “imaginary” things are first and foremost things that aren’t really there. This can cause a great deal of confusion when we speak of imagination in the abstract, because it makes it seem like imagination has much more do with Spenser’s Faerie Queene than with a group of waitresses trying to figure out how to placate the couple at Table 7 before the boss shows up.

Still, this way of thinking about imagination is relatively new, and continues to coexist with much older ones. In the common Ancient and Medieval conception, for example, what we now call “the imagination” was not seen as opposed to reality per se, but as a kind of middle ground, a zone of passage connecting material reality and the rational soul. This was especially true for those who saw Reason as essentially an aspect of God, who felt that thought therefore partook in a divinity which in no way partook of—indeed, was absolutely alien to—material reality. (This became the dominant position in the Christian Middle Ages.) How, then, was it possible for the rational mind to receive sense impressions from nature?

The solution was to propose an intermediary substance, made out of the same material as the stars, the “pneuma,” a kind of circulatory system through which perceptions of the material world could pass, becoming emotionally charged in the process and mixing with all sorts of phantasms, before the rational mind could grasp their significance. Intentions and desires moved in the opposite direction, circulating through the imagination before they could be realized in the world. It’s only after Descartes, really, that the word “imaginary” came to mean, specifically, anything that is not real: imaginary creatures, imaginary places (Narnia, planets in faraway galaxies, the Kingdom of Prester John), imaginary friends. By this definition, a “political ontology of the imagination” could only be a contradiction in terms. The imagination cannot be the basis of reality. It is by definition that which we can think, but which has no reality.

I’ll refer to this latter as “the transcendent notion of the imagination” since it seems to take as its model novels or other works of fiction that create imaginary worlds that presumably remain the same no matter how many times one reads them. Imaginary creatures—elves or unicorns or TV cops—are not affected by the real world. They cannot be, since they don’t exist. In contrast, the kind of imagination I have been developing in this essay is much closer to the old, immanent, conception. Critically, it is in no sense static and free-floating, but entirely caught up in projects of action that aim to have real effects on the material world, and as such, always changing and adapting. This is equally true whether one is crafting a knife or a piece of jewelry, or trying to make sure one doesn’t hurt a friend’s feelings.

So,

Graeber here makes this weird shift in the first paragraph, where he starts out contrasting “imagination” and “reality” and then later just keeps jumping between that and contrasting “imagination” and “reason”, right?

Which is weird, because... well, imagination and reason aren’t really contradictory, at least to me. Maybe it’s just the... dealing with math all the time that makes it obvious, but, like, that’s what math is. Imagining weird concepts and then developing them in this purely rational manner. Think about, idk, any of the weird math concepts people love to use in fiction. higher-dimensional space? tesseracts? fractals I guess? I think those are pop...

The point is... I tend to think of reason as being twinned with intuition. Like, reason is there to take statementy structures and check “does this make sense?” while intuition is there to just come up with stuff out of nowhere, after being carefully trained on a large corpus of examples.

They operate together, yknow? Each needing the other to even really... make any kind of sense.

So, ok, if that’s what those are... what are imagination and reality?

I guess, in my head, the way it works is,

Imagination is this canvas in your head. You can draw on it freely, but its primary usage is that you dump everything that you know about reality onto it.

In other words I don’t make any... fundamental distinction between those bits of the imagination that represent real things and those that don’t.

Like, if I describe to you a 14-story tall concrete apartment tower completely surrounded by 2-story tall quaint buildings with tiled roofs and it’s an eyesore to everyone around it but from the inside the view is great, because there’s all these nice houses around it and it’s near a big lake and on the other side of that lake is a big mountain, if I tell you that description, does it change at all if I tell you that it’s the place I grew up in when I was in elementary school, before we got kicked out because our landlord got kicked out of their apartment? Does it move to a different location, where the real things are stored? No.

You don’t perceive reality directly, you dump it in your imagination, where you also dump stuff that’s only been described to you, and your best guesses as to how some things work, and the sound of my voice in your head as you’re reading this (if you’re still reading this) and the plot to whatever the last harry potter fanfic you read was and the crude erotic doodles of me you make when you’re bored and in that space, you reason about it. You check it for consistency, you... make hypotheses that could then be checked, and so on and so forth.

You make up stories (guesses) and sometimes they turn out to be true, and sometimes they were never intended to be true, they were just exercises.

In a sense, I understand the medieval perception of imagination as a sort of intermediate field between “reason” and “reality”; the problem is that it only works one way. Your perceptions get dumped in your imagination on the way in, but your actions, on your way out, are mediated more by, well, reflex, which is close enough to intuition to feel like sort of the same thing.

If we pretend briefly that “the soul” contains, yknow, reason, and thus necessarily in my system, also intuition, it probably also contains reflexes, and thus contains the exit back out to reality. We can imagine the soul in the middle of a fog (that is, the imagination, on which we act freely) which is itself between the soul and the entrance, where stuff comes from reality.

or something like that idk.

[honeymoon-bear]

ALRIGHT SO

i have a ton of opinions i wanna share on each of the characters and i guess i will do that with this post!! id love to hear other peoples opinions as well tho so if you have any you wanna write down dont be shy 👀 

ill put this under a cut cause this is gonna be LON G

alright so!!! 

Taako: honestly a very complex and complicated character? Although he’s arguably one of my two absolute favs from the show, i dont agree with all of his actions while 100% understanding others. Justin actually keeps reminding us that Taako isnt a hero, isnt a good person which is good cause i tend to forget that a lot :^)) its hard to not see people as either good or bad and i think taako is a fantastic character to highlight this grey area. He has very strict priorities which are easy to understand once you know his past. What may seem out of character sometimes is actually just. taako and his different priorities. And thats very interesting to me? Like being able to have a character that does good while being conscious of the bad things theyve done and still do, while knowing theyre not a hero makes them very human in my eyes and thats what i appreciate about him the most. Also: hes just super fun!!! his iconic quotes really add to the show and so does his very non-heroic behaviour. it especially contradicts nicely with magnus’ personality while not making their friendship suffer!! Magnus: just a through and through good guy!!!! i love him!!! hes way more of a black-or-white character (100% lawful good) which isnt a bad thing per se, cause he still has complexity and depth to him. While im usually not a big fan of the whole “oh i lost someone i loved and thats what defines my whole life” trope, Magnus’ backstory doesnt feel like that at all. Maybe because I know its very much inspired by Travis’ mother which is also why i wanna be very careful about this topic cause god, what happened is an awful awful thing. But also cause Julia isnt just “the wife”, she’s a fantastic character in herself and thats what sets this backstory apart from most others of this kind ive seen. Magnus has more to him than just that tho and i think his friendship with Carey is especially outstanding to me!!! Its just so refreshing to see a friendship develop “””on-screen””” and this friendship having no ulterior motive!! they just really like each other platonically!!! hell yeah!!! But what i like about him the most is probably that while his looks may be the most “conservative” out of all the main characters with him being this big and burly and masculine fighter, he’s so caring and loving and compassionate. And thats just such a nice twist?  Lup: I love Lup. She is complex, has understandable motives and relationships and all in all is just a really good addition to the crew!!! Still, i think what made all of that suffer a little bit was her introduction to the show? I dont know, i wish we would have known she was there all along, cause just going “oops taako had a twin sister the whole time!!” was a bit?? sudden?? Also a weird thing for Justin I guess? Cause it interfered greatly with Taakos backstory and who Taakos was as a person. ALTHOUGH like Justin said, nothing really changed actually! I didnt change how Taako behaved or how he got to where he is, so thats all good i guess!! Back to her introduction: there was the whole umbrastaff spelling out her name of course, and the revelation was epic and i enjoyed it, but,,, idk!! it just felt like a shame that such a fantastic character was only added so late into the show through such a “”clicheed””” introduction idk!!! ANYWAY im super glad she’s here now!! Also, she really balances out taako (and the other way around) while not being a copy of him. Like, Im very glad shes not just Taako 2 while still having some of the same mannerisms, it sets them apart without setting them apart too much? She’s witty and confident and for a few episodes i was really scared she was just gonna be a manic pixie dream girl -like character for taako and barry hhh,, cause thats just how most pop media handles good female characters :^)) once again: really glad that didnt happen and Griffin let her be her own person with problems and worries and dreams and relationships of her own. i love her!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (kinda wish we knew more about her as a person and not just what she means to other people tho yknow??) Lucretia: Probably my other fav character from balance, and like Taako a very complex and complicated person (you can see a pattern here huh sdjskdj). In my opinion, she’s maybe even the best developed NPC, with a character growth unrivaled by any other character on the show. Her action of deleting everyones memories is such a grey area move but one thats just so understandable and human? She saw how much her friends suffered and couldnt take it anymore, so like Travis i very much think shes a tragic hero, not a villain. The isolation she went through following this decision was a sacrifice she willingly took to just see her friends happy again and i actually think thats very noble? She even stopped the war on earth around the relics that would have otherwise destroyed the whole planet. Still, making everyone forget lup wasnt. the nicest thing to do :^)) especially cause lup sacrificed so much to get to the point where the 7 had finally accomplished their mission of hiding the light, cause yeah, lucretias plan for that would have been fatal and while lups plan wasnt perfect, at least it meant life could continue on the planet below. So i can very much understand Taakos dislike of Lucretia now that he knows the whole picture. All in all tho, Lucretia is a fanastically written character, incredibly human in her actions and someone who put the happiness of her friends and the world below above all of her own needs. She’s a strong leader and has a heart of gold!!!!!!

[izraphaels]

6-10 for your pick of ocs! :3c

OGH FUCK FOR THE OTP MEME? beautiful mutual lexi i would die for you in real life just know this

im gonna do dante & beau (from my vampire oc collection)... i was originally going to do trevor n gabe but i dont think ive posted about them yet on the ol tungle and i dont give dante n beau enuf love as it is! so!

(im def gonna add trevor n gabe to my ocs page later tho i love them. Two Bros 🎶)

also im gonna interpret this as questions 6 thru 10 SO if i was wrong. dont hesitate 2 inform me

6. What is their favorite feature of their partner’s?

dante loves beau’s eyes. they’re always so expressive and he thinks they’re so RIDICULOUSLY cute... you can see them cloud over when he’s grumpy... beau loves dante’s hair lowkey (it’s floofy) and also his shoulders bc there’s still some freckles on them from back when he was human (don’t ask how he kept them shhhhhh)

7. What’s the first thing that changes when they realize they have feelings for the other?

beau, realizing he has Feelings for this absolute idiot vampire: [inhales] [DEEP SIGH] bartender i would like a glass of vodka

dante, realizing he has Feelings, 10 thousand metaphorical years after he gains them, possibly AFTER they date for a good while: 

EDIT WHILE I WAS FINISHING THIS UP: actually i took this more in a “how they react” way than in a “actual physical effects” way so: beau starts being jealous at dante’s SHIT TON of odd friendships and occasional flings and just being an extrovert w 80 close friends bullshit (unlike beau who’s an introvert who’s busy trying to learn how to levitate) and so he’s a little more grumpy than usual at dante’s party antics [tm]. He mellows down a while before they actually get together in an exclusive romantic full boyfriends package way but yknow. also theyre kind of friends w benefits at this stage so that ? goes awry too?

dante doesnt notice anything bc hes absolutely oblivious and by oblivious i mean at some level he knows hes crushing on beau but he’s like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ nothing in life matters! 

(”Jules your lore contradicts” real life lore contradicts too so im valid)

8. Nicknames? & if so, how did they originate?

beauregard thorpe please stop calling your boyfriend an idiot. We all know you’re just tsundere

(also dante was the one who started calling beauregard “beau” and it just caught on and beau was like. Ok fair eough. If dante calls him beauregard [not beauregard thorpe and not beau. just beauregard] it means danny’s in Quite an emotional distress pickle)

9. Who worries the most?

BEAUREGARD DEFINITELY dante does it for the vine and beauregard worries about his safety but he’s a little tsundere about it (just like “hmmmf. dante what did you do now” while like bandaging his skinned vampiric knee or something, just... just hold that pic in ur mind. it’s good) (”Jules does beauregard sound like solid snake or what” i dont have to legally answer this question. art can be interpreted in a multitude of different ways)

10. Who remembers what the other one always orders at a restaurant?

they both do and they both surprise each other with that knowledge but i think its more special w dante remembering? bc for dante it’s just a nice thing to do for him but beau at one point (before he actually started 4realz crushing on dante) thought dante was a total airhead which he’s? not really? and it actually made him think Deeper about dante when dante was like “oh yeah he wants this or other” and YKNOW. YKNOW i dunno they’re both kind of disastrous 

tl;dr: Gay

Thank U For the first ask sent to this blog btw actually. wow. Big heart emojis

[flamewyrmz]

a late night rant from twitter im putting in one place, because its a trainwreck of several threads there. mostly copy/paste and still not proofread, but a collection of thoughts on gender, sexuality, personal identity, and love and support within the lgbtq community. i do really lay myself bare here so id like to ask that if you disagree or have criticism you do so respectfully and with that in mind, thank you <3 and if this means something to you itd mean the world to me if you shared it

dunno if ive said this here before but like. if you think you might be bi/pan but youre on the fence cos maybe youve never had a crush on a nonfictional guy or get more crushes on guys than on girls and you find yourself tied up in knots like "well im gay but im also attracted to nonbinary people unless theyre mostly woman-aligned but i dont wanna say im bi/pan because then people will think i like girls and like i like them theoretically but--" let go. just say fuck it! im bi/pan! 

try it out and if it doesnt feel right it doesnt feel right and thats fine and in the end no matter what youll have learned a little about yourself. this is actually my advice on any gender/sexuality dilemmas you might be having. go wild. try it out. see how it feels. dont feel like you have to confine yourself to something just because youve stuck with it for some amount of time. 

if youre questioning dive right into the deep end! no matter how it goes youll be a better swimmer in the end. its all not quite rigid and a little fluid anyways (for some more than others obv) so if youre unsure, man... go for it. its ok to backpedal

--

this is important advice to me because ive struggled with it multiple times in the past and this has only recently clicked and i really wish it had sooner. first it was with being... not straight in general. like i was actively dating someone of the same gender and i never considered that that meant, uh, im not straight. always "do you like boys or girl?" "uhhhhhhhhh. uh. UH" 

then with being in the range of aro/ace spect. then with being nonbinary! then with being nb but primarily male. and then goddammit im just a boy. accepting that God I Love Men And Only Men (and with it that i *wasnt* aro or ace in ANY capacity) and then, very recently (like up until a couple months ago. like im p sure this year. not 2017), going back on that and admitting i was bi. it is so so freeing to just say "fuck it" and test those waters!

hell, you find something you resonate with but looks a little silly? go for it! use those bun/buns/bunself pronouns. go with stargender! ace-flux demibiromantic? hell yeah rock that shit! it can always change and you can always decide its not right and go back! h4y dudes

--

all of that especially goes for teens who dont know what the fuck theyre doing. im only 20 yea and barely 20 at that but man i wish id heard this sooner

and please dont take that as me saying "well if youre a lesbian sexuality is fluid and maybe youre actually bi"! hell no. if youre a lesbian and you KNOW youre and lesbian and couldnt ever be anything else then rock on you funky little lesbian! but if you id as a lesbian but are teetering on something like "well im attracted to some fictional and theoretical men but not any real ones and maybe its just compulsory heterosexuality but im not sure and--" dont be afraid to try a different label. its all what feels right to you and theres absolutely no harm

--

people bash on like. """mogai genders""" and nounself pronouns and the split attraction model and all that and like. yeah! those things can hurt people! personally i struggled with the split attraction bit combined with how broadly people define the ace spectrum. it can be used to hurt. and it is used to hurt. sometimes its deliberate, sometimes its not. but the hurt is there. but its not inherently good or bad. 

and yeah, some of it sounds silly. hell, it sounds silly to me sometimes! but to some people hearing that label makes everything click into place, even if just for a little bit, and i take that very seriously. it is one of the best feelings in the world and i want as many lgbtq people (of any age) to experience it. 

for some people it feels right to zoom waaaaaaay in and section it into lots of little bits and for others its "fuck it! i dont know shit! im just queer!" and those are both equally valid (that words been thru 12 garbage disposals but i cant think of a better one) maybe you go back n forth and thats fine too! as long as youre open to it changing or being wrong it cant hurt and, like i said, its one of the best possible feelings to have it click like that

--

as an aside: being bi can *totally* mean "im attracted to men and nonbinary people are long are they arent primarily woman-aligned" or it can mean "im attracted to everyone fuck it" personally? i use bi over pan because i feel like it better encapsulates that i *do* have preferences (i say this all the time but God I Love Men) but ultimately gender doesnt really matter to me cos everyones cute and hot and generally attractive and im not leaving anyone out because im just a little more inclined to kissing boys. but thats me!

--

as Another aside: i do still to some degree identify with uhh this is gonna sound contradictory but agender boy? or more like boy agender? boygender with left none? i just dont personally feel like its worth taking the time to explain over n over. but it used to be, for me, n i dont regret that a single bit! i wouldnt regret that even if i *didnt* still feel that way in any capacity. honestly? 

i dont regret any of the ways ive identified in the past even though feeling stuck and cornered into some got a little harmful to me (and if youve gone through somethin similar and DO regret it and wish youd never heard whatever term you used thats good too. im very strongly advocating for "use whatever labels you want and if it dont fit it dont fit" here but if they did hurt you and youre still hurting about it i understand 100% just dont use it to pull others down. if it concerns you say your piece and let them decide)

--

this is personally a little hard to admit so bear with me here 

honestly? ANY sort of strong identity didnt start developing in me until i was.... 14 or so? and very slowly at that. like gender evened out around 18 and sexuality just a few months ago LMAO. but up until i was a teenager i didnt really feel much of anything re: gender or attraction (and the attraction thing is pretty normal for kids and even teens tbqh!) 

and i just.... didnt really think about it! i had This Name and apparently was a girl and i didnt really get what it was like to BE a girl but thats what people said and i didnt know there were other options so i went with it! the name didnt bother me either (except for when people made jokes about a Certain Historical Figure with the same one. just thinking about that i get tired) 

and when it came time to actually grapple with the whole concept of being *into* people i just kinda... slunk away! no joke until like 10th grade if someone started a rumor that i was dating x or y had a crush on me i would start to avoid them entirely. lost a friend in 4th grade that way but then in hs hed turned into a TOTAL DICK so no loss there. i think part of that was also people making the assumption that i was straight though? big shrug! 

i didnt even realize attraction was a thing i had until i got asked out and just kind of "oh wow??? that sounds so nice??? i feel the same??? yes??" and thats WHY i went thru varying aro/ace labels. cos it unfolded slowly (which again is totally normal if youre a teenager, so dont worry about it if youre going thru that. roll with the punches. and if youre a teen and youve got it figured out? thats totally normal too!) 

and the gender thing was similar once i learned that it was an actual possibility (especially being nb, and ESPECIALLY especially being agender) i slowly just... poked at it until i figured something out (fun fact: what set me off to finally go "fuck it im not a girl at all" was being stuck in an awful hair salon chair while my mom got a haircut that took FOREVERRRRRRRRR and i was having godawful period cramps. like i knew not being a girl wouldnt DO anything about them but i made that decision then n there n didnt look back!) 

and then i kept pokin at it and watching it like the seed id planted finally started to sprout and i realized i didnt actually know what kind of seed it WAS. i guess ive always been very nebulous in those aspects and its just now forming into something solid. like i said, its a little hard to admit and i... dont think ive actually talked about this in this depth before to, like, anyone? 

because the "oh ive always known" narrative is the only one you ever see in popular media and sometimes even from the community itself! and theres nothing wrong with having always known! but theres also nothing wrong with being like me! but i still feel a little anxious talking about it like it somehow means im a sham. 

hell, id even go so far as to say i WAS a girl as a kid! i WAS varying shades of agender and nonbinary and ???? as a teen, and i AM, like, 95% a guy right now! maybe in a few years ill be something else. none of those things contradict each other. things like that can change! its not set in stone (but like i said: for some people it is! or, like, set in slime that you left out for 5 years so now its pretty much a rock but if you really try it still squishes into something else?? none of these things invalidate the others! were all unique). 

i wouldnt say that at any point ive been cis or straight, cos even when i just went with being a girl and stuff it was always a little ??? but, yknow. even if i HAD been those things at some point it wouldnt matter to me? things just are the way they are and were the way they were

--

im making myself really vulnerable here and my thought process is a mess and i ramble and repeat myself and my memory and attention span is like 2 seconds and i dont proofread but. its important i think. i dont have a lot of followers and fewer still thatre active but... that really doesnt matter. 

maybe someone will retweet at least one of these messy, messy threads. maybe link it to a friend. maybe screenshot it and post it on tumblr [note: LMAO YEAH AND ITS YOU DUMBASS], or to keep for themself. if any of my words help anyone out even a little then it matters and honestly? then its the most important thing in the whole danged world. if even one person sees any of the things ive said tonight and it means *anything* to them, even if just "oh, im not alone in this" then ive succeeded here. 

i dont want any of us to ever feel trapped or alone because shit! lifes too fuckin short for that! its goddamn hard being anything but cisgender and straight! sometimes it sucks! like really sucks! there have been so many times ive broken down completely over being trans and felt like, for myself, its the most awful thing in the world. its why prides so important. its why community is so important. 

because even when the pressure of the world brings you down so low you think youll never escape theres something or someone there to take your hand and pull you back up, put you on your feet, and say "i know its hard. and itll get hard again. but i believe in you, and youre strong enough for this, and im here with you through every step". that goes for anyone but especially goes for us. and im not just talking about lgbtq youth here. all of us. which is *why* im laying myself completely bare here. 

most of this stuff? ive either never talked about or only vaguely mentioned. but im putting it out there. because there was a point where i needed it but didnt have it, and even if its just one person, i want to give someone this advice so at least they dont have to deal with the same stuff i did. and if youre reading this? i love you. im here for you. im my dms are always open and if for some reason they arent its almost definitely an accident and if you say something ill reopen them. 

and if youre someone who hates me? maybe even mutually? if it came down to it id let you come to me at your lowest moment, no questions asked, no judgement held, and at the end of it still be the same kind of enemies we were before and never speak again. there are some exceptions of course but honestly ill forgive a lot for someone who needs that kind of support. and if youre one of the people this applies to, i know youll probably never take me up on it. i dont expect you to. i dont expect you to even for a second be comfortable with that idea. thats fine. but if for some reason you ever need it, its there. 

i can count on one hand the ex friends that i wouldnt give that to and thats ONLY because theyve legitimately hurt me and left lasting damage (and for some of them? its mutual. and im sorry for that, regardless of how i feel about your treatment of me im truly sorry for my actions. that probably sounds fake and anyway i digress) 

and if youre a complete stranger? someone who follows me but has never interacted with anything ive posted? a mutual i havent spoken to yet? im here. and im bumbling, and awkward, and not the best at comfort but you can always come to me if you need someone. im only one man and im under a lot of stress but i swear ill do the best i can, even if its only reading and replying 3 days later and even then just listening and offer whatever gentle comfort or reassurance youll accept. 

because thats important to me. thats the impact i want to leave on this world. i dont ever want anyone to feel as small, as scared, as worthless, as alone as i have. im no fighter. im not going to lead any revolutions and hell im too anxious to even go to protests but im here for support. im here to help and heal. and thats important too

--

and if you listened to that? thank you. if you just skimmed? thank you for that too. if you shared it with someone? thank you (so much). and if you dont? thank you anyways, just for the time

just know this: i love you. i dont care who you are, if youre reading this i love you and im behind you 100%. im here if you need it. stay strong, do something that makes you smile if only for a moment. take that leap of faith. dont restrict yourself for even a second

i meant to go to bed at least two hours ago so goodnight <3 be safe, drink some water, if you have any kind of pet give it some love. take care of yourself. youre the most important person in your own world and never forget that, even if you dont think you are. even if theres something or someone you treasure above everything else. dont diminish your own worth! you are alive, and you are here, and theres nothing more important than that, really. the things you love matter more than anything else. hold them close