#i really wanted to explain the ground my opinion is based on

[grison-in-space]

Hello!

Since my elderly cat just died, I’m starting to bat around the idea of seriously training an at-home service cat. Pesterbot, routine nudges, maybe as much grounding pressure as they can give me (time for a big fluffy boy?), and if they pick up on med-alert cues, great.

I’ve chatted with the local rescue already - I figure I want one cat whose early life and temperament have set them up for secure attachment and assertiveness, and another to be a buddy for them, ok if they’re more skittish of humans. Ideally ~6-8 mo so the adult personality has started to show but I still have some relatively early socialization window.

Any thoughts on rescue vs breeder, breed, how to look for a breeder who *actually* values temperament and health, the odds of known ancestors and a known-good early life making that much of a difference? I’m liking the look of the forest cats (especially NFCs and Siberians) but also, $$$$ (though with a purebred cost is probably just something to plan for)? Or anything I’m missing in thinking through this?

No, I think you've hit just about everything that occurs to me. With a purebred cat(s), you're dealing with a history of selection that might be a little curtailed, which means you'll want to look for genetic disorders known to run in that line of cats and also that you will want to cross-reference opinions from multiple people in the breed if you can. With a rescue cat, you're looking at a whole lot of unknowns that can be really hard to predict, especially with respect to temperament at maturity.

I am not sure that NFCs or Siberians are the best temperamental range for that kind of work, though: you want an opinionated and socially oriented cat, and my understanding of the reputation of the forest cats is that they're like... slightly more active Ragdolls? I'd ping in @pangur-and-grim and @followthebluebell for assessments of breed temperaments. You're also going to want a relatively active cat who is interested in watching what you're doing and responding to your environment: remember, you'd be paying this cat to come interact with you when you're stuck / when an alarm goes off, and you'll have the most success with that if your cat likes thinking and moving with you.

This is also the sort of cat my spouse and I like best--active, bold, interested in interaction, easily bored--and we've been eyeing up some potential purebred options as well as considering rescue after, well, my last rescue kitten developed severe pica at around six months. That's less likely to happen to you with a 6-9mo adolescent kitten--I got Arthur at 10 weeks and he was obviously neurodivergent in some way by then, if only by virtue of his blindness--but it was pretty catastrophic for his ability to have unfettered access to me, for example.

From my perspective, the biggest benefit of purebred cats are that a lot of the cat breeds have selected clearly for specific ranges of temperament over time. It's definitely going to be easier to find someone else going "a bossy, energetic cat who wants to be Interacting With You frequently? boy howdy, I'd love that!" among the ranks of, well, Serious Cat People.... which includes a lot of cat breeders, but not a ton of cat owners. A lot of people seem to pick cats based on color, proximity, and kitten cuteness, which still blows my mind a bit coming from dogs!

I can tell you straight up that the best way to pick a rescue cat by temperament is to (ideally) aim for a foster based rescue, contact an adoption coordinator directly, and explain that you are looking for a cat based on personality rather than based on looks, that you're looking for a fairly high-demand cat, and ask them if any candidates come to mind. (My experience is that not caring about appearance and being open to cats which are not very young kittens motivates those coordinators to think of their favorite individual cats to suggest.)

You could also look for local cat trainers in your area--a specialty that is getting increasingly popular! look near veterinary behaviorists or cat-only vets--and see if they have recommendations, since they probably have a lot of experience with high-demand cats and people who invest a lot into their cats in your area. Basically, find yourself a way to talk to people who have interacted with a lot of the cats locally up for adoption, especially because the ideal temperament for a service cat is not necessarily going to be everyone else's cup of tea for a pet cat.

I can tell you that a big chunk of the people I have found actively breeding for that kind of temperament are involved with the various wildcat cross breeds, particularly Bengals (which is where I'd start rather than Savannahs or Chausies, personally: it's easier to find F5+ individuals, especially if you're looking for people who are really interested in breeding for trainability). My sense with the purebreds based on my reading is that Abyssinians or, if you can find them, Havana Browns might also be worth a look.

Consider if and when approaching a breeder or rescue: what are you going to do if one or both potential cats wash out of service work? Would you rehome them and try again? (To whom?) Would you keep them as ESAs and add a third cat? The natural concern that a lot of people will have about being approached for a service animal, especially one like a cat, is "what happens if it doesn't work out?" I think your plan is to go "well then I still have pet cats," but that should be clear to your potential cat sources, too.

But anyway, that's why I tagged Greer and Bluebell: both of them have way more personal experience with cat breeders and purebred cats than I do, and I think they'd be good resources if you want to aim in a more purpose-bred direction.

[surielstea]

Tattoos older than you

Based off that Tik Tok trend: “I have tattoos older than you.” because age gap is everyone’s favorite trope, let’s be honest.

Pairing: Azriel x Archeron!Reader

Warnings: Age gap | suggestive | cute fluffiness

1.2k words

I peek my head through the door of a familiar Shadow Singers bedroom with a mischievous grin. "Love, not tonight," The male warns from his desk, giving me a pointed look. I enter anyway, closing the door behind me with a soft click.

He sighs in faux disappointment as I approach him, footsteps padding on his carpet as shadows swarm me, curling around my ankles, up my arms, into my hair. "They love me," I beam, looking at the dark tendrils.

“They do,” He nods in heavy agreement, as if they never shut up about that fact.

"And so do you," I redirect my attention to the winged male in front of me.

"Do I?" He tilts his head tauntingly and as my reply I straddle over his lap, mounting his hips with a knowing smile. "I think I'm too old, forgot how to love," He shrugs.

"Az you're not that old," I groan.

"I'm twenty-three times your age," He argues, and my amused grin returns.

"You did the math," I tease, leaning closer to him, and pressing a kiss to the corner of his lips.

"Of course I did, I can't get you out of my head," He grumbles as if it's my fault he's always thinking of me.

"Then why can't you admit that you're in love with me?" I cup his face in my hands, tilting his head and forcing him to look into my eyes.

"I do love you, and that's why I refuse to subject you to the judgment that us being together will bring you," He denies and my smile falters.

"I don't care about the judgment, I just want you," I confess, dragging a hand through his hair. "C'mon, Az," I huff, arching my back so my chest is pressed to his as I tease his lips with my own. His large hands come to my waist, his touch is tender and for a moment I think he'll give in, but instead, his grip tightens and he lifts me off his lap, placing my feet down onto the ground.

"No, the difference is too much," He rejects and I groan dramatically. The Illyrian stands, looking down at me with lowered brows. His height towers over me and his wings only add to the intimidating factor. Such an animalistic thing to do, making himself appear bigger than he truly is. He was trying to scare me off, and it wasn't going to work.

"You're fae, does age really matter as an immortal?" I take a daunting step forward and he mirrors it with a step back.

"When I'm old enough to be your great, great, great grandfather? Yes," He argues and I roll my eyes, such a stupid analogy.

"But you're not," I take another step forward.

"But I could be," He doesn't pace back.

"But, you're not," I repeat with another stride and suddenly I'm directly in front of him, chest to chest. He looks at me, his eyes swirling with both adoration and regret, adoration because he loves me, and regret because he allowed me to love him back. I stare with the most devoting and comforting gaze I can muster, I don't dare break eye contact, making it clear that my stance on the matter won't sway.

"I have tattoos older than you, love," He drags his hand through his hair, and I know in that movement that he's been defeated.

"Oh, I know," I bring my hand up to his neck, my nail tracing over dark ink that's lived there for centuries.

"You're like a friend to—" He tries but I cut him off, "That's bullshit, I could treat you better than all your previous lovers and you know it," I claim and he looks at me with those same hazel eyes I fell in love with.

He sighs, clearly upset because he's horribly losing this argument.

"Your five-hundred-year-old brothers are dating my twenty-year-old sisters. They can't judge and isn't it their opinion that matters most?" I point out and he slowly closes his eyes, needing a moment to think about the situation.

"They're mates," He attempts to explain but I don't buy it for a moment, I sling my arms around the nape of his neck with a troublesome smile.

"Are you trying to tell me you don't feel a connection between us?" I ask and he only stares down at me, knowing that if he spoke all of his truest intentions would come out.

"We're in love, let yourself be happy," I whisper, we're close enough so he can hear me. I lift onto my toes, our noses brushing and he doesn't have it in himself to back away. "Let me help you be happy," I murmur and his brows crease, in conflict with himself and everything else going against this, but I could tell by that look on his face that he wanted every part of this too.

"Do you know how helpless you make me feel?" He rasps and my smile widens.

"That's called love, Az," I explain.

"Is it always so consuming?" He asked, his voice tender and raw. My heart swells against my rib cage and I tilt my head, nose moving past his as I press a gentle kiss onto his lips then pull away as quick as I came.

“Yes,” I whisper, knowing the exact feeling he was describing. “And it’s not going to go away,” I smile softly. "Because you love me," I mumble, mostly to myself, the new confession will be at the front of my brain for the rest of the week.

"A little too much for my liking," He hums.

"Impossible," I shake my head with a grin and he leans in, pressing a hard kiss to my forehead, then one on the tip of my nose, and finally plants one to my lips. I pull him closer, my chest pressing to his as I smile onto his lips, my fingers twining into the back of his hair.

“I do love you,” He whispers against my skin as he begins to peck down the line of my jaw.

“I know,” I tease, dragging my hand from his hair and down the expanse of his tattooed neck. He pulls back only a fraction, narrowing his brows with a glare and I giggle.

“I love you too, Azzie,” I roll my eyes, pressing a tender kiss to his lips which he barely got the chance to reciprocate before I was pulling away.

“I hate it when you call me that,” He huffs.

“Would you rather I call you my great-grandfather?” I smirk and he playfully pushes me away, and I dramatically fall down onto his bed.

“I’m revoking sex tonight for that,” He warned and I smirked.

“Not even for the rest of the week? You must really love me,” I croon and he tosses me a glare before climbing into bed beside me.

“An unfortunate turn of events,” He sighed while slinging his arm around me and pulling me into him, as if it was torturous to be cuddling with me even though it was him pulling me closer.

I sling my leg over his waist and roll over, straddling his hips.

“I can’t believe you ever thought you could reject me,” I scoff and he looks up at me with a knowing expression.

“Shh, sleep now.” He pulls me down onto his chest, my chin propping up on his sternum to stare up at him. “You can tease me all you want in the morning,” He promises as I stretch out, my legs intertwining with his.

“Sounds like a perfect plan.”

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[hms-no-fun]

Hi! I just read your post about your opinion on "AI" and I really liked it. If it's no bother, what's your opinion on people who use it for studying? Like writing essays, solving problems and stuff like that?

I haven't been a fan of AI from the beginning and I've heard that you shouldn't ask it for anything because then you help it develop. But I don't know how to explain that to friends and classmates or even if it's true anymore. Because I've seen some of the prompts it can come up with and they're not bad and I've heard people say that the summaries AI makes are really good and I just... I dunno. I'm at a loss

Sorry if this is a lot or something you simply don't want to reply to. You made really good points when talking about AI and I really liked it and this has been weighing on me for a while :)

on a base level, i don't really have a strongly articulated opinion on the subject because i don't use AI, and i'm 35 so i'm not in school anymore and i don't have a ton of college-aged friends either. i have little exposure to the people who use AI in this way nor to the people who have to deal with AI being used in this way, so my perspective here is totally hypothetical and unscientific.

what i was getting at in my original AI post was a general macroeconomic point about how all of the supposed efficiency gains of AI are an extension of the tech CEO's dislike of paying and/or giving credit to anyone they deem less skilled or intelligent than them. that it's conspicuous how AI conveniently falls into place after many decades of devaluing and deskilling creative/artistic labor industries. historically, for a lot of artists the most frequently available & highest paying gigs were in advertising. i can't speak to the specifics when it comes to visual art or written copy, but i *can* say that when i worked in the oklahoma film industry, the most coveted jobs were always the commercials. great pay for relatively less work, with none of the complications that often arise working on amateur productions. not to mention they were union gigs, a rare enough thing in a right to work state, so anyone trying to make a career out of film work wanting to bank their union hours to qualify for IATSE membership always had their ears to the ground for an opening. which didn't come often because, as you might expect, anyone who *got* one of those jobs aimed to keep it as long as possible. who could blame em, either? one person i met who managed to get consistent ad work said they could afford to work all of two or three months a year, so they could spend the rest of their time doing low-budget productions and (occasionally) student films.

there was a time when this was the standard for the film industry, even in LA; you expected to work 3 to 5 shows a year (exact number's hard to estimate because production schedules vary wildly between ads, films, and tv shows) for six to eight months if not less, so you'd have your bills well covered through the lean periods and be able to recover from what is an enormously taxing job both physically and emotionally. this was never true for EVERYONE, film work's always been a hustle and making a career of it is often a luck-based crapshoot, but generally that was the model and for a lot of folks it worked. it meant more time to practice their skills on the job, sustainably building expertise and domain knowledge that they could then pass down to future newcomers. anything that removes such opportunities decreases the amount of practice workers get, and any increased demand on their time makes them significantly more likely to burn out of the industry early. lower pay, shorter shoots, busier schedules, these aren't just bad for individual workers but for the entire industry, and that includes the robust and well-funded advertising industry.

well, anyway, this year's coca-cola christmas ad was made with AI. they had maybe one person on quality control using an adobe aftereffects mask to add in the coke branding. this is the ultimate intended use-case for AI. it required the expertise of zero unionized labor, and worst of all the end result is largely indistinguishable from the alternative. you'll often see folks despair at this verisimilitude, particularly when a study comes out that shows (for instance) people can't tell the difference between real poetry and chat gpt generated poetry. i despair as well, but for different reasons. i despair that production of ads is a better source of income and experience for film workers than traditional movies or television. i despair that this technology is fulfilling an age-old promise about the disposability of artistic labor. poetry is not particularly valued by our society, is rarely taught to people beyond a beginner's gloss on meter and rhyme. "my name is sarah zedig and i'm here to say, i'm sick of this AI in a major way" type shit. end a post with the line "i so just wish that it would go away and never come back again!" and then the haiku bot swoops in and says, oh, 5/7/5 you say? that is technically a haiku! and then you put a haiku-making minigame in your crowd-pleasing japanese nationalist open world chanbara simulator, because making a haiku is basically a matter of selecting one from 27 possible phrase combinations. wait, what do you mean the actual rules of haiku are more elastic and subjective than that? that's not what my english teacher said in sixth grade!

AI is able to slip in and surprise us with its ability to mimic human-produced art because we already treat most human-produced art like mechanical surplus of little to no value. ours is a culture of wikipedia-level knowledge, where you have every incentive to learn a lot of facts about something so that you can sufficiently pretend to have actually experienced it. but this is not to say that humans would be better able to tell the difference between human produced and AI produced poetry if they were more educated about poetry! the primary disconnect here is economic. Poets already couldn't make a fucking living making poetry, and now any old schmuck can plug a prompt into chatgpt and say they wrote a sonnet. even though they always had the ability to sit down and write a sonnet!

boosters love to make hay about "deskilling" and "democratizing" and "making accessible" these supposedly gatekept realms of supposedly bourgeois expression, but what they're really saying (whether they know it or not) is that skill and training have no value anymore. and they have been saying this since long before AI as we know it now existed! creative labor is the backbone of so much of our world, and yet it is commonly accepted as a poverty profession. i grew up reading books and watching movies based on books and hearing endless conversation about books and yet when i told my family "i want to be a writer" they said "that's a great way to die homeless." like, this is where the conversation about AI's impact starts. we already have a culture that simultaneously NEEDS the products of artistic labor, yet vilifies and denigrates the workers who perform that labor. folks see a comic panel or a corporate logo or a modern art piece and say "my kid could do that," because they don't perceive the decades of training, practice, networking, and experimentation that resulted in the finished product. these folks do not understand that just because the labor of art is often invisible doesn't mean it isn't work.

i think this entire conversation is backwards. in an ideal world, none of this matters. human labor should not be valued over machine labor because it inherently possesses an aura of human-ness. art made by humans isn't better than AI generated art on qualitative grounds. art is subjective. you're not wrong to find beauty in an AI image if the image is beautiful. to my mind, the value of human artistic labor comes down to the simple fact that the world is better when human beings make art. the world is better when we have the time and freedom to experiment, to play, to practice, to develop and refine our skills to no particular end except whatever arbitrary goal we set for ourselves. the world is better when people collaborate on a film set to solve problems that arise organically out of the conditions of shooting on a live location. what i see AI being used for is removing as many opportunities for human creativity as possible and replacing them with statistical averages of prior human creativity. this passes muster because art is a product that exists to turn a profit. because publicly traded companies have a legal responsibility to their shareholders to take every opportunity to turn a profit regardless of how obviously bad for people those opportunities might be.

that common sense says writing poetry, writing prose, writing anything is primarily about reaching the end of the line, about having written something, IS the problem. i've been going through the many unfinished novels i wrote in high school lately, literally hundreds of thousands of words that i shared with maybe a dozen people and probably never will again. what value do those words have? was writing them a waste of time since i never posted them, never finished them, never turned a profit off them? no! what i've learned going back through those old drafts is that i'm only the writer i am today BECAUSE i put so many hours into writing generic grimdark fantasy stories and bizarrely complicated werewolf mythologies.

you know i used to do open mics? we had a poetry group that met once a month at a local cafe in college. each night we'd start by asking five words from the audience, then inviting everyone to compose a poem using those words in 10 to 15 minutes. whoever wanted to could read their poem, and whoever got the most applause won a free drink from the cafe. then we'd spend the rest of the night having folks sign up to come and read whatever. sometimes you'd get heartfelt poems about personal experiences, sometimes you'd get ambitious soundcloud rappers, sometimes you'd get a frat guy taking the piss, sometimes you'd get a mousy autist just doing their best. i don't know that any of the poetry i wrote back then has particular value today, but i don't really care. the point of it was the experience in that moment. the experience of composing something on the fly, or having something you wrote a couple days ago, then standing up and reading it. the value was in the performance itself, in the momentary synthesis between me and the audience. i found out then that i was pretty good at making people cry, and i could not have had that experience in any other venue. i could not have felt it so viscerally had i just posted it online. and i cannot wrap up that experience and give it to you, because it only existed then.

i think more people would write poetry if they had more hours in a day to spare for frivolities, if there existed more spaces where small groups could organize open mics, if transit made those spaces more widely accessible, if everyone made enough money that they weren't burned the fuck out and not in the mood to go to an open mic tonight, if we saw poetry as a mode of personal reflection which was as much about the experience of having written it as anything else. this is the case for all the arts. right now, the only people who can afford to make a living doing art are already wealthy, because art doesn't pay well. this leads to brain drain and overall lowering quality standards, because the suburban petty bouge middle class largely do not experience the world as it materially exists for the rest of us. i often feel that many tech CEOs want to be remembered the way andy warhol is remembered. they want to be loved and worshipped not just for business acumen but for aesthetic value, they want to get the kind of credit that artists get-- because despite the fact that artists don't get paid shit, they also frequently get told by people "your work changed my life." how is it that a working class person with little to no education can write a story that isn't just liked but celebrated, that hundreds or thousands of people imprint on, that leaves a mark on culture you can't quantify or predict or recreate? this is AI's primary use-case, to "democratize" art in such a way that hacks no longer have to work as hard to pretend to be good at what they do. i mean, hell, i have to imagine every rich person with an autobiography in the works is absolutely THRILLED that they no longer have to pay a ghost writer!

so, circling back around to the meat of your question. as far as telling people not to use AI because "you're just helping to train it," that ship has long since sailed. getting mad at individuals for using AI right now is about as futile as getting mad at individuals for not masking-- yes, obviously they should wear a mask and write their own essays, but to say this is simply a matter of millions of individuals making the same bad but unrelated choice over and over is neoliberal hogwash. people stopped masking because they were told to stop masking by a government in league with corporate interests which had every incentive to break every avenue of solidarity that emerged in 2020. they politicized masks, calling them "the scarlet letter of [the] pandemic". biden himself insisted this was "a pandemic of the unvaccinated", helpfully communicating to the public that if you're vaccinated, you don't need to mask. all those high case numbers and death counts? those only happen to the bad people.

now you have CEOs and politicians and credulous media outlets and droves of grift-hungry influencers hard selling the benefits of AI in everything everywhere all the time. companies have bent over backwards to incorporate AI despite ethics and security worries because they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, and everyone with money is calling this the next big thing. in short, companies are following the money, because that's what companies do. they, in turn, are telling their customers what tools to use and how. so of course lots of people are using AI for things they probably shouldn't. why wouldn't they? "the high school/college essay" as such has been quantized and stripmined by an education system dominated by test scores over comprehension. it is SUPPOSED to be an exercise in articulating ideas, to teach the student how to argue persuasively. the final work has little to no value, because the point is the process. but when you've got a system that lives and dies by its grades, within which teachers are given increasingly more work to do, less time to do it in, and a much worse paycheck for their trouble, the essay increasingly becomes a simple pass/fail gauntlet to match the expected pace set by the simple, clean, readily gradable multiple choice quiz. in an education system where the stakes for students are higher than they've ever been, within which you are increasingly expected to do more work in less time with lower-quality guidance from your overworked teachers, there is every incentive to get chatgpt to write your essay for you.

do you see what i'm saying? we can argue all day about the shoulds here. of course i think it's better when people write their own essays, do their own research, personally read the assigned readings. but cheating has always been a problem. a lot of these same fears were aired over the rising popularity of cliffs notes in the 90s and 2000s! the real problem here is systemic. it's economic. i would have very little issue with the output of AI if existing conditions were not already so precarious. but then, if the conditions were different, AI as we know it likely would not exist. it emerges today as the last gasp of a tech industry that has been floundering for a reason to exist ever since the smart phone dominated the market. they tried crypto. they tried the metaverse. now they're going all-in on AI because it's a perfect storm of shareholder-friendly buzzwords and the unscientific technomythology that's been sold to laymen by credulous press sycophants for decades. It slots right into this niche where the last of our vestigial respect for "the artist" once existed. it is the ultimate expression of capitalist realism, finally at long last doing away with the notion that the suits at disney could never in their wildest dreams come up with something half as cool as the average queer fanfic writer. now they've got a program that can plagiarize that fanfic (along with a dozen others) for them, laundering the theft through a layer of transformation which perhaps mirrors how the tech industry often exploits open source software to the detriment of the open source community. the catastrophe of AI is that it's the fulfillment of a promise that certainly predates computers at the very least.

so, i don't really know what to tell someone who uses AI for their work. if i was talking to a student, i'd say that relying chatgpt is really gonna screw you over when it comes time take the SAT or ACT, and you have to write an essay from scratch by hand in a monitored environment-- but like, i also think the ACT and SAT and probably all the other standardized tests shouldn't exist? or at the very least ought to be severely devalued, since prep for those tests often sabotages the integrity of actual classroom education. although, i guess at this point the only way forward for education (that isn't getting on both knees and deep-throating big tech) is more real-time in-class monitored essay writing, which honestly might be better for all parties anyway. of course that does nothing to address research essays you can't write in a single class session. to someone who uses AI for research, i'd probably say the same thing as i would to someone who uses wikipedia: it's a fine enough place to start, but don't cite it. click through links, find sources, make sure what you're reading is real, don't rely on someone else's generalization. know that chatgpt is likely not pulling information from a discrete database of individual files that it compartmentalizes the way you might expect, but rather is a statistical average of a broad dataset about which it cannot have an opinion or interpretation. sometimes it will link you to real information, but just as often it will invent information from whole cloth. honestly, the more i talk it out, the more i realize all this advice is basically identical to the advice adults were giving me in the early 2000s.

which really does cement for me that the crisis AI is causing in education isn't new and did not come from nowhere. before chatgpt, students were hiring freelancers on fiverr. i already mentioned cliffs notes. i never used any of these in college, but i'll also freely admit that i rarely did all my assigned reading. i was the "always raises her hand" bitch, and every once in a while i'd get other students who were always dead silent in class asking me how i found the time to get the reading done. i'd tell them, i don't. i read the beginning, i read the ending, and then i skim the middle. whenever a word or phrase jumps out at me, i make a note of it. that way, when the professor asks a question in class, i have exactly enough specific pieces of information at hand to give the impression of having done the reading. and then i told them that i learned how to do this from the very same professor that was teaching that class. the thing is, it's not like i learned nothing from this process. i retained quite a lot of information from those readings! this is, broadly, a skill that emerges from years of writing and reading essays. but then you take a step back and remember that for most college students (who are not pursuing any kind of arts degree), this skillset is relevant to an astonishingly minimal proportion of their overall course load. college as it exists right now is treated as a jobs training program, within which "the essay" is a relic of an outdated institution that highly valued a generalist liberal education where today absolute specialization seems more the norm. so AI comes in as the coup de gras to that old institution. artists like myself may not have the constitution for the kind of work that colleges now exist to funnel you into, but those folks who've never put a day's thought into the work of making art can now have a computer generate something at least as good at a glance as basically anything i could make. as far as the market is concerned, that's all that matters. the contents of an artwork, what it means to its creator, the historic currents it emerges out of, these are all technicalities that the broad public has been well trained not to give a shit about most of the time. what matters is the commodity and the economic activity it exists to generate.

but i think at the end of the day, folks largely want to pay for art made by human beings. that it's so hard for a human being to make a living creating and selling art is a question far older than AI, and whose answer hasn't changed. pay workers more. drastically lower rents. build more affordable housing. make healthcare free. make education free. massively expand public transit. it is simply impossible to overstate how much these things alone would change the conversation about AI, because it would change the conversation about everything. SO MUCH of the dominance of capital in our lives comes down to our reliance on cars for transit (time to get a loan and pay for insurance), our reliance on jobs for health insurance (can't quit for moral reasons if it's paying for your insulin), etc etc etc. many of AI's uses are borne out of economic precarity and a ruling class desperate to vacuum up every loose penny they can find. all those billionaires running around making awful choices for the rest of us? they stole those billions. that is where our security went. that is why everything is falling apart, because the only option remaining to *every* institutional element of society is to go all-in on the profit motive. tax these motherfuckers and re-institute public arts funding. hey, did you know the us government used to give out grants to artists? did you know we used to have public broadcast networks where you could make programs that were shown to your local community? why the hell aren't there public youtube clones? why aren't there public transit apps? why aren't we CONSTANTLY talking about nationalizing these abusive fucking industries that are falling over themselves to integrate AI because their entire modus operandi is increasing profits regardless of product quality?

these are the questions i ask myself when i think about solutions to the AI problem. tech needs to be regulated, the monopolies need breaking up, but that's not enough. AI is a symptom of a much deeper illness whose treatment requires systemic solutions. and while i'm frustrated when i see people rely on AI for their work, or otherwise denigrate artists who feel AI has devalued their field, on some level i can't blame them. they are only doing what they've been told to do. all of which merely strengthens my belief in the necessity of an equitable socialist future (itself barely step zero in the long path towards a communist future, and even that would only be a few steps on the even longer path to a properly anarchist future). improve the material conditions and you weaken the dominance of capitalist realism, however minutely. and while there are plenty of reasons to despair at the likelihood of such a future given a second trump presidency, i always try to remember that socialist policies are very popular and a *lot* of that popularity emerged during the first trump administration. the only wrong answer here is to assume that losing an election is the same thing as losing a war, that our inability to put the genie back in its bottle means we can't see our own wishes granted.

i dunno if i answered your question but i sure did say a lot of stuff, didn't i?

[mywitchyblog]

I just wanted to say your takes on age and shifting have been really helping me. I didn't have the opportunity to enjoy my teenage years and I feel like everything is falling apart in my adult life, so I really want to age myself down and experience life as a teen again. However, tiktok constantly made me feel like a creep and I was even starting to doubt myself and my motivations, which is crazy. So thank you for standing your ground and having our back lol and stay away from shiftok yall

AS.YOU.FUCKING.SHOULD.

Girl, keeping your distance from ShiftTok? Absolutely the right call. That place is less of a community and more of a cult with a superiority complex, stuffed with self-appointed “moral guardians” who’d rather police everyone’s shifting practices than actually understand a damn thing about shifting itself 💅. They’re too busy gatekeeping, throwing their tired opinions around, and stirring up drama to realize just how hypocritical they look. Chile, the irony is thick enough to choke on, and trust, we see it 👀.

And don’t even get me started on the anti-age-change crew. These people couldn’t argue their way out of a paper bag without leaning on the same three tired-as-hell logical fallacies, dragging them out every time to keep shifters in check without an ounce of actual understanding or empathy.

Ad Hominem – This is anti-age changers’ go-to move when they’re out of actual arguments. They skip right over any real discussion and dive into calling people “pedo” or “creep” just to shut them up. Rather than taking the time to understand why someone might genuinely want to experience being younger again, they grab for the ugliest insults they can think of and throw them like confetti 🎉… only it’s confetti made of trash 💀. Example: A shifter explains, “I age down in my Desired Reality because I had a tough youth and want to relive a better version of it. Plus, I want to experience a healthy, innocent romance from my teenage years.” But instead of even thinking about the idea that there might be something healing and meaningful in that, here comes an anti-age changer with: “If you want to age down to date, you’re a predator—plain and simple.” Here’s the kicker: these critics don’t care about the reasons. They’ll weaponize shame to make shifters look like villains, ignoring the fact that not everyone who age-shifts and dates does it for predatory reasons. Many want to experience that sweet, teenage love they didn’t get in this reality, to relive the simpler emotions of that time without adult complications. But the anti’s? They’d rather throw accusations than try to understand even a sliver of the truth. They’re using the “pedo” card because they know it’ll silence some people, and honey, it’s a sad attempt at control through fear 🙄.

Straw Man Fallacy – Here’s where things get especially messy 🥴. Instead of listening to what you’re actually saying, they twist it into something completely off-base, creating a fake argument to attack. They don’t want to engage with your actual reasons; they’d rather paint you as something you’re not so they can feel good about their so-called “moral high ground.” 🙄Example: Imagine a shifter saying, “I age down because I missed out on a carefree youth and want to date someone my age in that reality. I want to experience young love in a non-sexual, simple way.” The anti immediately twists this into, “Oh, so you’re saying you’re an adult wanting to act like a teenager to date kids? That’s sick.” See the problem? They’re creating a whole new argument based on something you never said. This shifter just wants a clean, innocent experience of being young again, complete with those little flutters and first dates that only make sense at that age. Some shifters may even explore young relationships with some intimacy, but it’s coming from a place of reliving a time they missed—not about attraction to minors or anything predatory. These critics twist the intention, making it sound like a fetish when it’s about pure curiosity, nostalgia, or healing. They’ve crafted their own horror story and are trying to pin it on you 👑, and honestly? It’s lazy, transparent, and completely off the mark.

Hasty Generalization – This is when anti-age changers pull out the big, sloppy brush and slap the same, tired accusation onto every age-changing shifter. Because they’ve heard one example of someone age-shifting for sketchy reasons, they assume everyone who does it must have some secret, shady agenda. Girl, the logic isn’t even there 🤦‍♀️.Example: Anti-age changers will say, “Oh, I heard about this one person who aged down to act out some weird fantasy, so clearly all shifters who age down to date are predators.”This is their way of weaponizing a single, extreme case to invalidate every other shifter’s unique, personal reasons. There are countless reasons people age down and engage in romance, and most have nothing to do with predatory behavior. Imagine someone who wants to experience a first crush all over again, or who never got a chance to date as a teen and just wants that innocent thrill of hand-holding and kissing at a school dance 🕺💃. Some might even explore sexual intimacy because, for them, it’s about curiosity and filling in experiences they missed—not some twisted attraction.Let’s get real: most age-changing shifters just want to feel what it’s like to be young again, to make memories that heal, to have those butterflies and firsts they missed out on. The antis are so obsessed with scandalizing that they can’t imagine a reality where someone wants to age down without any creepy motives. This broad-strokes accusation is not only unfair; it’s lazy as hell. It paints every age-changing shifter with the same brush, and it does nothing but create stigma and misinformation. Like… maybe sit down and breathe for a second instead of trying to stir up a scandal? 😒

Here’s the reality: these fallacies are tools they use to twist, shame, and silence. They’re not here to have a real conversation about why someone might age-shift or date in that reality, or to understand that those desires can come from totally normal, even therapeutic places. They’re here to make it sound twisted, full stop.

The next time they pull out these tired arguments, just remember: they’re not about facts, they’re about control. They use moral panic as a blunt weapon, hoping people won’t look closer and see right through their paper-thin accusations. Keep doing you, stay fierce 🔥, and don’t let their fallacies dull your shine.

[blackbat05]

The Gall of HeR!

Evan Buckley x Reader (Gender not Specified)

Plot: You come back home feeling blue from work. Luckily, Buck is there to lend you some support.

Genre: PG-13

A/N: New character! Only started watching 9-1-1 last year but wasn’t in the best back then. It’s been such a huge support to get where I am today so it’s only appropriate to do this! Also I can’t deny this is based on actual experience recently so this is my way of therapy😂 In all seriousness, note to self to always fight for myself because no one will do it for me.

“Hey! I’m home!”

Buck pads out of the kitchen in his “kiss the cook apron” that Eddie gave him as a Christmas Present last year as a joke.

“How’s work?”

I sigh, putting my bag to one side before unceremoniously dumping myself on the couch. “It was good, and then it was bad. Do I make sense?” My nose crinkles in confusion and I at that point I wished that my brain would stop running at a hundred miles per hour. Though, a part of me really needed to vent my feelings in a safe space. Buck was my safe space.

“They approached me for a possible promotion at the Library.” I start and Buck’s eyes lit up. “Yeah, that was my reaction. Inside. I didn’t expect this at all.”

Buck comes to sit beside me on the couch, body angled to face me fully. I take a deep breath and proceeded to explain how I had to ground myself first, to hear more details from HR before committing to that decision.

“So, I had that first meeting with Esther and obviously I needed time to process right? I didn’t understand some points that were raised and I wanted to clarify with her what some things meant to I called a second meeting the next day.” I explained. “The second meeting goes fine. It mostly involved her clarifying my doubts. Then after the meeting, she sends me an email noting all the things we discussed, and guess what?” I find the rage in the pit of my stomach bubbling.

“She adds in the extra clause that initially, they thought of reverting me back into my original position if things didn’t work out. But after considering the company’s position, if I did not perform or if I decided not to continue, I would have to leave the company!” My voice gets higher with each passing second. Buck reaches out to grab my hand, a soothing reminder that I was not in the library reading that darned email but I was here, with him.

“And then, Esther had the gall to storm into the library and yell at me what I meant when I sent that email and now she’s in trouble with the higher ups! My fault? How is expressing my opinions in a professional manner my fault?”

I finish off telling Buck that I wasn’t afraid of taking on the challenge. But my biggest issue was only being informed of this only after my second meeting and when I bought up the possibility of not taking on the role to her.

“Wow.” Buck purses his lips. I look at him reproachfully.

“You think I’m acting up too.”

“No. I think you’re standing up for yourself. No matter what others may say or think. It’s good that you question everything that’s being presented to you least you be taken advantaged.”

“Even if it means they might pass me up on this because they think I’m such a prima donna?”

Buck laughs. “In all seriousness. There are more ways to grow than besides promotions at work. You’re growing as a person and that’s more important. Do what you want to do and always do it for yourself.”

You don’t know what you did to deserve this man in this lifetime. Someone who supported you no matter what. That’s what you really needed right now.

“Thanks Buck,” you threw yourself into him for a hug. “I think I really needed to hear that. After all those times of doubting myself, I really needed to hear it.”

“Hey, you know I’m always your biggest supporter. Now let’s go and have dinner. Bobby taught me how to make this lasagna and we are not about to let it get cold.”

“Gosh, what would I do without you?”

“You’ll never have to know.”

[chjroptera]

this is going to be a long one, but i feel like you'll understand my point of view: i sent you an ask like 2 or so months ago wanting to hear your opinions about how you do/don't separate the content creators from the characters on the dsmp. at the time i held a very opposing belief to you, now not so much. your original response made me think a lot about it. it was well worded. especially that these characters had foundations set with who the content creators actually are (wilbur and tommy being brothers at the time, dream being dream. the list goes on). at the time i didn't want to think about it at all, because not doing so allowed for complete separation between the horrible people behind characters that i love/loved (still love, but in a different and sadder way now) to continue. now, with more and more information coming out, with things getting less and less obscured and content creators being more blunt about their awful time spent with the dsmp, i find it nearly impossible to enjoy these characters at all. save tommy's and tubbo's, and quackity's when i don't think about his shit ending lmao. it's sort of like a fog has lifted from me if that makes sense. and the dsmp feels like this media that can't be understood like anything else can. it's so specific to what it is and the discussion surrounding it and how lines blur between character and creator. you have people that hold this steadfast blind belief (which i understand a lot of it is so they can continue loving something that they've loved for a while in a way that's unchanged, even though it's changed so much, i've been there) and then there are people like you, who seem to still have love and appreciation for the story but understand that nuanced middle ground. idk, i was wondering if you could talk at all about how you still enjoy these characters. or if you have any further thoughts about how the lines blur and the foundation that was set by the creators that their characters were laid on top of. sorry again that this is so long. been thinking about it a lot

thanks for sending this, i know its kinda jarring to realize dsmp is more like a blurry memory than a concrete story, and i totally get why you can't find that middle ground/enjoy it anymore. i also appreciate you wanting to hear more from me, i really enjoy talking about this stuff.

at least for me, i always saw dsmp as a story first. i dont know if you followed me on twitter but dude i was making threads on threads of theories, breakdowns, character analysis, everything. i enjoyed the ccs content too but from the first lore stream i watched (the dawn of the 16th) i always saw it as a story with intentional main and side characters, foils, character arcs whatever. as it went on, it became more scripted, which worked well for me because in my eyes more development made them less connected to their actual cc. tftsmp also made the divide wider because now characters had reincarnations, soulmates, and descendants/ancestors. tftsmp added so much original shit to the dsmp that it really did feel like a concrete story.

its kinda unavoidable that the ccs would use their own personalities and traits as bases for characters, a lot of them weren't writers or had personas. like for the longest time it was assumed that c!drm and c!spnp were childhood friends solely because the two are in real life. in reality it wasn't confirmed till the prison break stream which brings me to another point: a lot of dsmps canon depends on if you were even there or not. i explain in here and my best example would be cc!spnp saying his favorite headcanon was c!skpy and c!bad being his dads, which bad had already confirmed and then had retconned because of spnp saying it was a headcanon. its really fcuking dumb man.

i still love the story. im still super passionate about it if you didnt see how pissed i was about quackitys dumb merch commercial. i love the characters and i still do write analysis for them, watch the streams, make fan art but it IS a lot harder now. posting those c!wils took a couple minutes of back and forth with myself but i know that the only people here are dsmpers aka the only ones who Get It. karlnapity is literally my favorite ship ever and i cant bring myself to draw them most of the time because its feels so weird. i don't want to make them ocs (tbh i already have and shifted shit around lol) because they're already characters with development and backstories. i love them as they are, and theyre eternally suck in stasis.

i just kinda accepted that i really love this web series and surround myself with people who are willing to talk about it critically. acknowledging that the characters are an extension of the character who played them soured my experience a lot, it took me 2 years to draw c!drm again because i just dislike the cc that much. as someone who was literally there since 2020, dsmp is ours now. the ccs dont care about the story and neither does anyone concerned with the drama right now. you look up "dsmp explained" on youtube and youre getting thousands of videos regurgitating the same timelines and news updates on the cc drama, nothing about the narrative or the complexities of the media itself.

[theonlymanny]

Paul lahote x male reader

Pt1

Summary: after Paul tried to attack your sister bella who was stupid enough to slap him. You decide to save her. With Earth bending.

Also mmm…. Reader is blind. I think you can guess who reader is based off. If you don’t it’s alright. your like 15 because I think Paul is 16

—————————————

“What did you do to him!” Bella your older sister lost it. “He didn’t want this!” “What did he tell you?” “He tells me nothing because he’s scared from you!” Bella lost it when Paul laughed. She slapped him. Oh it was about to go down… “bella get away from him!” You said while running towards her. “Why-” before Bella could finish Paul shifted. “M/n Run!”

You positioned your feet on the ground while your hands started vibrating. In 2 seconds Paul was hit with a rock bolder which send him flying towards a nearby tree. “Don’t you ever try to hurt my sister again!” Before you could do anything else, Jared got a hold on you in the air. “Ugh! Let me go you-”

After everything calmed down you, your sister and the other Dogs went to the Uley’s house.

“so how did you do that?”

“Can you not ask.” “Oh, No, no,no I get it!”

“….” “Do you move them with your mind?”

“Gosh do you ever shut up!”

“Hey umm… what your brother did was crazy how long have you known?” “ I- he never. I don’t know okay. All I know is that he moves rocks. god knows how…..Can we stop talking about this?”

“Come on bella we don’t bite!” “Don’t forget M/n he’s kind of cute.” “I’ll rip your head off Jared!” “Yeah he is so cute”

“Hey what was that?” “What was what?” “Don’t act like you don’t know!” “Okey,Okey. Listen closely…”

“Mhm…” “ I… sold my soul so now I can move rocks with my mind.” “You’re impossible…” “what!? It was good right?” “let just go”

Before you could enter the house you heard Paul behind you. “What do you want?” “I just want to say sorry okay? I crashed out. I… see you’re really strong. And well…” “is there a reason you are being so nice? Because last time we met you tried to bite my head off!”

“so… do… you… know what imprint means?

“No and I don’t want to know. Let’s just head inside.”

You met Emily, Sam’s wife. Who was really nice. You could see they were all really happy. except Paul.

“Hey Paul! What’s wrong man!” Jared asked Paul “huh- what oh um… nothing.” You could feel he was lying. Sam knew what was going on. Paul imprinted. On you.

“So Bella, M/n I guess you’ve already met Emily, Jared, Embry and… Paul.” “But M/n I guess you already now who you launched that rock to.” “Yeah, anger issues right here!” “Don’t be disrespectful!” Bella softly punched you in the arm. “What!?” “Basically what sam is going up to is that Paul imprinted on M/n” “what does that mean?” “Well…”

After Jacob explained to you and Bella what imprint meant. Paul started walking towards you. “It’s okay if you hate me I understand-” “woah buddy hate is a strong word. I don’t hate you! I actually kind of like you. You are brave, strong and kind of you know… hot.” Bella rolled her eyes while every body else started laughing.

“But I think we still got to work on those anger issues you got there.”

“I’ll try my best just for you.”

—————————————

I am so fucking bored and can’t sleep so I taught why not make a m/n that is not DC/batfamily? Also I barely can’t think of anything so here it goes. Also in my opinion this is probably the worst m/n I’ve ever done because well I barely remember any twilight and it’s badly written.

Peace and love ❤️

[dearweirdme]

Hi 👋

First, I wanna thank you for being honest with me. I'm not the best at reading social cues so unless you are direct with me I'll be thinking "I think we're getting along!" and go on completely oblivious to any implications lol So your honesty is greatly appreciated, I'll keep everything you said in mind in the future.

On a second note, I'm really sorry for how my words came off 🙏, that really wasn't my intention. But now I see exactly what you mean, it really wasn't my place to tell you how to run your blog, it came off really bad. I sincerely apologize for that.

Now, to be real with you, I don't see you as delusional or wrong, or to be more accurate, both our opinions are based on pure speculation and personal interpretation, so I don't see you as any more delusional than I see myself.

In my perspective, I don't see Jikook as a real couple because they have never confirmed themselves to be one. And as long as that question lies unanswered, I'll only truly believe what they have described their relationship as, which is close friends. There's a part of me that suspects they're a couple but I don't see it as a fact.

So, keeping that in mind, I'll only believe you are actually delusional if there's not a single fiber of your being that believes you could be wrong, you are 100% sure Taekook are a couple. But that wouldn't be because you're a Taekooker, it'll be because you, a complete outsider to their life, believe your speculations to be a fact. And that's just a dangerous mentality to have in general, and unfortunately, I see it frequently in both jikook and taekook circles.

I don't come here to try to change your mind about Taekook, I come here cause I like reading your takes. You give very grounded opinions and debunk many biased assumptions I have of jikook, showing me different perspectives I couldn't see in my little bubble.

Moving on, I wanted to ask you: what really sold you on taekook, that made you go "they're dating"?

One thing I see as suspicious is the weird tension they have with each other, I don't see any other members having that same tension.

I think it's this very tension they have that makes Taekookers believe that taekook prioritize hiding their relationship to protect themselves, and Jikookers believe that taekook really did grow distant and got closer after In the soop.

Taekookers: tension = sexual tension and hiding relationship

Jikookers: tension = distance and awkwardness

I understand both of these takes, but I have some different interpretations of it, but ain't nobody reading all that. This shits WAY too long already lol.

Borahae 💜

(the more you look at him the more beautiful he gets, we can't blame Jungkook for getting a little lost in him kkkkk)

Hi @moo-mood!

I’m glad you understand.

As for your question about Tae and Jk, I think your ask really shows how people outside of tkk fandom don’t really understand where we are coming from.

We don’t generally focus much on sexual tension I believe. I’m sure there corners in our fandom that do, but in general sexual tension between Tae and Jk is not that often a point of discussion. There are moments that I feel classify as that, or at least as strong attraction.. but we don’t really get to see much of those. We also don’t expect to, because the last thing we would be privy to see between a closeted couple is obvious sexual tension. They hide that, and I think they hide it well. We see flirting, we see tenderness, and we did get some more loaded moments.. but imo not as much to be able to say Tkkrs generally explain the tension between Tae and Jk as it being sexual.

Sexual tension is only one part that might clue us into wether two people are in a romantic relationship though. What clued me in was how Tae and Jk are just a level up in closeness when compared to the other members. Imo they are closest physically and emotionally. There’s a reason why despite efforts to show Jk and Tae as less close (and yes, imo it’s been efforts) there are still soo many who never believed that. It’s because all throughout the period that Tae and Jk were deemed to be distant, their bodies and their interactions showed us differently. We often get laughed at because of our words on stares, looks, touches.. but those things are actually the hardest for people to consistently fake and to consistently hide. No other duo is as aware of each other as Tae and Jk are. No other duo gets each other as easily as Tae and Jk do… and that is actually something I am quite sure of… regardless of wether that means they are in a romantic relationship.

So it started with me believing Tae and Jk are closest. And what made me believe they are more than friends is basically everything else around them. The way they are the biggest ship, and yet Hybe does not commercialize them. The way they get jealous and/or annoyed because of the other. The way they are at times possessive of the other. The way the other members react to them (wether in a good way or in a way that they’re afraid of discovery). It’s all supported by my belief that individually speaking I feel Tae and Jk are possibly queer.

All in all, when I think of how I feel a closeted idol couple within the same band would be dealt with in SK.. it’s just basically what I see happened with Tae and Jk.

[thesehandsfic]

Hi! You do not have to answer this question if you don't want to, but I was curious why you chose to portray Niall as an abuser in Tenebroso. There is no CSA in canon, so I wonder how you came to that? No pressure to reply :)

hi sure complicated question but definitely worth answering.

it's my opinion there is actually subtext in canon to support this (this being: ronan as a victim of csa). other people have talked about this, i know i'm not the first to think this and i won't be the last. i don't remember specifically which authors/bloggers have discussed it, but it's an interpretation of canon that i've definitely seen before.

when i first read the books as they were released, that's what i thought ronan's Deal was going to be; like i remember genuinely thinking that's where the author was going with it, and i turned out to be wrong, but the subtext is there.

this portrayal isn't based on things we know about niall (since we don't really know that much about niall tbh), but instead, it's based on things we know about ronan. some examples:

- something bad happens to ronan at night that he's not allowed to talk about

- ronan's father refuses to explain or educate him regarding what is happening to him at night

- he is isolated from the outside world by virtue of his "secret" and by nature of his upbringing

- he has fraught relationships with his siblings, particularly the older sibling, who "knew" about "the secret" and was not as understanding/helpful as ronan might have liked/needed regarding "the secret"

- he's weirdly attached to his father and holds him in strangely reverent regard

- he's an alcoholic, has a tendency to self-harm, he acts out for attention, is depressed, misanthropic, and "othered" from his peers

- nightmares/sleep related trauma/sleep paralysis/kills himself in his dreams/monsters appear to him in his dreams and hurt him

- he has a pretty notable reaction to adam's choice of material for the greenmantle plot; csa is the absolute worst thing adam could think to pin on this guy, and ronan is (in my opinion) triggered by it

- he hates himself/sees himself as "wrong" or "alien"

- he is destructive towards his personal property and is triggered when he returns to his childhood home/is reminded of specific things that took place in his house

- he has a deep seated compulsion/desire to please/conform/succeed

- unable to attach/bond in a healthy/regulated manner

- strange relationship with his brother, particularly interesting is that he often refers to them as a married set of parents; he refers to himself as "daddy" and himself and his brother as "mommy and daddy"

- he has a problem with authority, specifically with male figures of authority, especially those who try to "parent" or "teach" him

all of these things are not necessarily ironclad, but i spent a lot of time discussing this with @neurosses at the time of writing, trying to decide if this was a path i wanted to take or an interpretation of ronan & niall that i felt was correct, so possibly she will have something to add since this is a topic we discussed/hashed out/worked to ground in canon.

i have said before that it's my belief if you are taking away ronan's magic, you have to give him something else; there must be a wound of some sort. this doesn't HAVE to be child abuse, but if you remove the aspect of magic from the things i listed above, you have a pretty solid foundation for an alternative interpretation of his canonical trauma.

specifically regarding tenebroso, i chose not to give declan that shared experience, but there is some basis for it regarding declan as well:

- niall turned him into his "work wife" when his own wife left/his dream wife wasn't designed to be smart/useful/a true equal

- he is parentified, almost by force (assigned guardian in the will)

- strained relationship with his siblings, particularly the one that still genuinely loves their father/doesn't see father's faults

- bears resentment towards younger sibling that he perceives was "preferred" or the favorite based on the attention paid to him by their father

i don't expect everyone to agree with me and i don't expect this interpretation to become widely accepted, but i do believe there is basis for it in canon (the entire lynch clan has serious Gothic Family vibes but that's a whole 'nother essay), and i really am not sure i have anything else to say about it; it is easier for me to explore these things in fiction/character study than it is for me to sit and expound upon it through meta. so i hope this is a satisfactory answer for you!

[infriga]

I convinced my mom to try the live action One Piece, because she's the type to like this style of show even though she isn't into animation and would never read manga, but I didn't think I'd be able to convince my dad because he's usually a stickler for more grounded and realistic stories (his favourite genre is war movies, his favourite movie is Saving Private Ryan, for reference). But, when I brought up with him how I figured it probably wouldn't be his thing because it was fantasy, he mentioned to me that he does enjoy some fantastical stuff if it has like an internal universe logic, like Star Wars, and the more I thought about it, the more I remembered that he also enjoys campy fun action adventure stuff that doesn't take itself too seriously like Indiana Jones or Pirates of the Carribean.

And One Piece has both that internal logic for why people can perform crazy feats (even if it isn't explained right away) which I mentioned to him (just that there is a reason why people can do crazy things in this world), as well as the campy fun action adventure thing going for it, especially in the Live Action (the fight against Morgan's base even has a major Indiana Jones vibes ngl). So I explained that to him and asked if he wanted to try it, and he agreed to watching the first episode with me to decide if he'd watch it with my mom and me.

AND HE ACTUALLY SAID IT WAS INTERESTING SO FAR!! Like, he is NOT the kinda guy to enjoy anime or manga or even western cartoons, always refuses to watch anything anime and doesn't show any interest when I talk about it (I've managed to convince him to watch a few movies like Sword of the Stranger but it's obvious that even when he's not bored or doesn't hate it, it still doesn't catch or keep his interest), and he's really picky about anything fantasy or SciFi, if it like sets off his bullshit meter too much he starts nitpicking the logic behind certain abilities, or decisions, or explanations, etc. I once tried to get him to try Gravity Falls and he wanted to stop after the first episode. He's THAT picky.

So the fact that he actually laughed several times while watching the first episode of OPLA with me, commented about Luffy's character positively several times (he seems to think Luffy is really funny which surprised me cause I thought he'd be the most entertained by Zoro but I mean I can't blame him it is Luffy after all), never cringed or criticised or said anything about how ridiculous it was, means a lot coming from him cause he's always really blunt and honest about his opinion on this sort of stuff (which is fine I don't want him to pretend to enjoy stuff when he doesn't). He actually watched the whole first episode without it losing his attention, and seemed to have fun! And he agreed to watch the rest with my mom and me!

This sort of thing is one of the reasons why I dislike when people just dismiss the idea of live action adaptations entirely. I get that people are jaded with past failures, and don't like when live action is treated like a replacement for or improvement from animation when it isn't. But it is a valid medium just as much as animation or comics or writing are, and can be used to produce some amazing things. And the fact is, there are people who have a hard time connecting with other mediums who will otherwise never engage with this media in its original forms. Live Action, when done well and done right, can reach new audiences and welcome them into the fold in ways the original formats never can.

One Piece didn't need the live action to be popular, obviously, and the live action cannot and will not replace the original, nor should it. But I love that we get to have it alongside the manga and anime. It's just more of what we love, it's the cherry on top of an already stellar multi-layered cake. It complements the original rather than taking anything away from it. And for the first time in over a decade I might be able to share One Piece with my parents, who would only ever have a chance of experiencing it and enjoying it in live action. There's just something so awesome about that for me personally. I just wish more live action adaptations would understand what the One Piece live action understood about the adaptation process, and that's how to keep the heart of the story in-tact, so more people from more fandoms could have a chance to share something they love with more people who it would otherwise not reach.

Anyway, thank you Oda and the OPLA cast and crew for doing live action right for once!

[floofanflurr]

Thoughts on Asgore? Just curious since a lotta people are divided on "divorced haha man" and "mass murderer"

Ohohoho this is very much a slippery slope for me! And a topic I have many opinions on. Thanks for the ask!

Please note for anyone that does not have the energy to read something like this, that this is overall, a critical piece of Asgore. (though not shamelessly bashing him.)

I'm prefacing this to anyone reading - I am not looking to fight, and I will not engage in any arguments around this. I don't have the energy to engage like that. I will delete/block any comments looking to start an argument and move on.

So here's my character analysis of Asgore under the cut, and my personal feelings about goat dad.

Asgore and his incomplete character arc, and why he honestly kind of got shafted:

I think Asgore is an interesting character, but I just... really struggle to like him.

"But Floo!" you may say "Why do you like Undyne, and the other monsters that killed/hurt Frisk/the other kids but not Asgore? Why is he different?"

I debated on that long and hard myself for a while. Why does Asgore rub me the wrong way when Undyne doesn't? Could it be because he is the reason everyone else is doing what they are, because he ordered it? But no, that didn't feel quite right.

And then I realized that it's because Asgore never truly grew as a person. There are some fics out there that I've read where I really do like Asgore. He's a fuzzy goat dad, and I just adore him! But when I examined the differences between those fics and canon, that's when it really stood out to me about WHY I don't like him in canon.

Every other character in the game gets growth that was (while caused by your/frisk's actions) still decided on by themselves. Let's go in order of the decisions these characters made that showcased their growth (in a pacifist run)-

Toriel - She, after having been given suitable time to ruminate, realizes that what she is doing will not work and tears herself out of her isolation to go after the last child and protect them. Her passivity wasn't saving anyone, so she changes herself, grows, and goes to protect them. (it's late, but it DOES happen)

Papyrus - I think the place he really shines in a pacifist/neutral run is when he beats Frisk 3 times and lets them go, but his character arc is all the same, anyway, even if you do beat him. Namely, that he lets them go. He could keep going, he could keep fighting, but he realizes that his want for friends and fame wasn't worth hurting someone. (even if that's not directly how he phrases it.)

Even if you outlast him and beat him the traditional way, he still decides to use his last special attack instead of fighting you until you're down. It's pretty clear he could have kept going if he wanted to.

Undyne - She, like Papyrus (and almost every other monster) has the character growth of letting Frisk go. A decision she actively makes. When Frisk saves her in hotland, pouring water over her head, she could have continued on with the chase, and kept going. But she didn't - she was honorable and conceded her defeat.

Mettaton - Same song and dance as Papyrus and Undyne (I love this character growth, and that's not to diminish ANYONES. They all have different flavors and motivations for going after Frisk that need confronted, even if the action is similar.) But he lets frisk go and realizes that the people underground need him more than anyone above ground. And also learns to touch base with his family a bit more, and value his friends/family more.

Alphys - Alphys decides to confront her crimes and reveal herself! There's still a bit of external pressure here (the "I KNOW WHAT YOU DID" note from Flowey) but still, she didn't have to come clean. But despite everything, she did, and she faced her wrongdoings and also told the people she loved.

Flowey - Do I need to explain this one? There's so many character essays on him (and Alphys tbh LMAO) Long story short, he learns to move on and let go. (and also broke the barrier and released the souls)

So now we move to the crux of the issue. Asgore.

He had a HELL of a character arc building up! So many flaws and bad decisions! We know he's kind, and a pushover, but also responsible for all of this hurt and death of children. (Yes, he had reasons, but that doesn't change his actions.) To be honest, it's the kind of character arc I love. Someone who has caused harm, learning to grow and be a better person. (Cough cough, Heart on the Table, cough cough)

...But he never actually got to the "better person" part.

We know monsters in Undertale are flawed. It's why it's such a great game! So many characters have done so much bad, but! The core of the game is that anyone can be a good person if they try! Look at all these people learning and growing, and being better people than they were before!

But the true pacifist ending kinda shafted Asgore, to be honest. He's a coward, and he never really has to face what he's done. He never decides to just... stop. To face his crimes and the world he's shaped around him.

If he had, independently of others, decided to spare Frisk, that would be one thing. But he didn't - it wasn't until Toriel showed up, and then all of Frisk's friends that he stopped.

Asgore's core conflict was that he was doing something he hated and he knew was bad, but he couldn't stop because how would everyone else react? His people needed him to do this bad thing.

A completed character arc for him, from a story telling perspective, would have had him stop what he was doing, while still under the impression that this would be a hard decision, and that everyone would hate him for it.

(A bed he made for himself! Through his action and inaction, he stoked monsterkind's hatred for humanity back up. There is a much larger discussion to be had around this topic, also how Chara was treated by him and monster kind (also his hand in Chara and Asriel's death) and many more factors. I am aware this is a highly debated topic, and I don't have the energy to fight it, so I will leave it at that.)

Regardless on if you agree if that would be a good or bad decision on his part, that would have been character growth - basically, Asgore having to face all of the accumulation of his cowardice and actions.

But he didn't. He didn't back down until he was basically told "hey yeah, so we all like this kid so you don't have to kill them."

He never wanted to kill them! That was never the issue! The issue was that he was willing to kill them anyway. And if Frisk's friends and his ex wife hadn't shown up and said "hey so we actually DONT want you to kill this kid" he would have! He was willing to kill a child because other people wanted him to, and we never get to see him overcome that hurdle of not killing a child despite other people wanting him to.

We can talk about the potential ending where he offers Frisk his soul, but even then, he still never actually confronts his actions. He's still unwilling to face all of the people he's harmed. (and YES allowing and ENCOURAGING his citizens to murder children is harming them, too. Especially because monsters don't see humans as people. (another essay I don't have time to get into right now, but is based on canon fact))

So... Yeah. I think Asgore has a lot of wonderful conflict baked into him, which is something I love in a character. He's torn, and a coward, and a father, and a broken ruler and king who is doing what he thinks his people want. But it's frustrating to me because he never got the character arc he deserved, and never got the chance to grow into a better person like everyone else in Undertale gets.

I do actually enjoy writing about him... and drawing him too on occasion! (though he's hard to draw) and ASGORE and Bergentrückung are actually my favorite songs in the soundtrack since they are filled with so much emotion. He really is a delightfully conflicted character and that conflict and hurt and pain in a character is addicting to me.

If he had a resolved character arc in game... well, to be honest, he'd probably be my favorite character??? Like, maybe even more than Papyrus (before the hyperfixation took hold, of course. That's a beast you can't reason with.)

But alas, it is what it is, and Asgore never grew. He's stuck being the same monster he was from the very beginning.

Thanks again for the ask and sorry you got a whole ass essay in response lol! I have many feelings about this game and the characters in it, Asgore included.

(Also, to anyone reading, I am aware what I have stated is simply my opinion, and many people have different ones. My opinion has no more value than any other persons.)

Another disclaimer - I love Undertale, and all of it's characters and everything that went into it, and while there are things that I feel about Asgore's character arc, I love and appreciate the way the game played out in actuality, and I wouldn't change a thing about it. Toby wrote a masterpiece, and is not only allowed, but should write characters the way he wants to. Who cares if it's not textbook?

Have a cookie for making it this far:

🍪

(I was gonna drop an Asgore sketch but HOLY HECK it was not cooperating.)

[rnsk-kousatsu]

On Cherubimon's evolution

One thing that people often don’t realize about Shuuji, despite it being fairly obvious from the beginning of the game, is how easily influenced he is by those around him. Although he seems stubborn on the outside (at least initially), he’s actually quick to yield to external pressure and bend to others’ wills. You could argue that, initially, he only kept giving in because he kept getting outnumbered. However, this tendency to relent to others is still apparent even in the Truthful route, where he’s no longer pressured by numbers the way he was during the beginning. For instance, when he suggested moving in order from the shrine with the strongest barrier, Aoi objected, insisting they should start with the weakest one instead, and they ended up following Aoi’s suggestion. This shows that he hasn’t fully shaken his habit of giving in to others even when he’s outgrown his other early game traits.

Part of why I think this behavior remains in Shuuji is because of the way he was raised by his father. While it’s true that Shuuji — very much like Aoi — has a strong sense of responsibility, I believe this sense duty also comes from his need to meet the expectations others have of him. His urge to fulfill these expectations seems to be driven by a desire to be accepted, as his father has made him believe that living up to these expectations is the only way to gain approval. In short, he constantly seeks external validation by repressing how he truly feels and following through what other wants.

Cherubimon’s evolution scenario seems to address this persistent trait of his and attempts to make him grow out of it even if just a little. Due to the simplistic scenario presented in it (much like any other affinity-based evolution scene in Survive), perhaps not many notice it’s meant for that. However, ever since the first time I watched it play out, I’ve been intrigued by how this line by Cherubimon is worded:

“シュウジが責任感だけじゃなく、自分の中に見つけた『正しさ』を信じたから、ボクにも力が湧いたんだ”

This line (very literally) translates to “I was able to find strength because you (Shuuji) didn’t just rely on your sense of responsibility; you also believed in the ‘rightness’ you found within yourself.” Something to note is that I couldn’t quite come up with an appropriate word to translate “正しさ”, but we’ll get back to this later. English localization has it translated to “Believing not only in your duty, but in your own righteousness, you filled me with strength,” which isn’t wrong per se (it’s correct and it flows more naturally than the very literal translation I’ve come up with, in fact), but translating “正しさ” as “righteousness” in this context doesn’t really click in my opinion. Let me finally explain why.

While translating “正しさ” as “righteousness” isn’t necessarily wrong, “righteousness” often has a stronger moral or ethical connotation, implying a judgment of moral superiority or adherence to a strict set of principles. For me, this feels too heavy or “formal” in the context where Shuuji is simply discovering and trusting his own sense of what is right rather than claiming a broader moral high ground, which I believe is the case here. It’s probably why it’s written in quotes (『正しさ』), perhaps implying subjectivity since it comes internally from Shuuji’s own judgment.

Now, to connect my interpretation of what “正しさ” means with what I said earlier before about the line intriguing me: the line makes it seem like Shuuji’s sense of responsibility/duty (責任感) isn’t necessarily the same thing with what Shuuji believes to be right. The way Cherubimon puts it implies that duty is external, and this new thing that Shuuji discovers comes from within and it’s what has triggered the evolution. In other words, Shuuji finally finds it in himself to just follow what his heart believes without getting too concerned about what others think of it, instead of constantly focusing on fulfilling duties and obligations in response to external expectations, which is represented by his strong sense of responsibility.

The dialogue that comes after that line drives home the point even further too — Shuuji wonders if what Cherubimon calls his “rightness” is just his ego talking (the Japanese word used for this is literally also “ego”/“エゴ”). Instead of saying he’s wrong for thinking about it like that, Cherubimon reassures him that he doesn’t care whether his “rightness” is driven by his ego or his selfish desires (身勝手), because to him, it still holds value if it can be shared with and understood by others. Essentially, Cherubimon is saying that Shuuji’s own personal beliefs or actions are valid as long as they resonate with someone else, making them his form of justice or righteousness (as a note: “正義” usually translates to “justice” in English, but I think this is where the word “righteousness” would be appropriate to use). He wants Shuuji to realize that personal motivations can still lead to something meaningful and just when they connect with others. I personally find how this is incorporated in Cherubimon’s evolution beautiful — it’s in the way  Shuuji finally allows himself to embrace his personal beliefs after struggling with trusting his own heart (since it’s been long overshadowed with his need to meet the expectations imposed on him), and by doing so, he doesn’t just empower himself, but also enables Lopmon to reach his final stage of evolution.

Note: Something else I noticed just now, even if not very relevant to this writeup, is that Cherubimon uses the pronoun boku/ボク in that particular line, which is inconsistent with the pronoun he usually uses (watashi/ワタシ). I wonder why that is, but I figure it’s simply just a slip-up.

[punksocks]

Astrology Observations Pt.6

Based on my experiences, take them with a grain of salt

People rag on Leo suns but some of the sweetest people I’ve known have been Leos. The most warm in a subtle way have been Leo suns with earth placements. If you need someone to root for you no one believes in you like a Leo, it’s a feeling like a warm glow in the dark.

Aquarius suns think unconventionally in a conventional way. Like they will come up with creative ideas that still are still under a conformist umbrella. If something is trending they want to be at the head of that trend. Aquarius moons have the real out there, out of the box ideas. Sometimes they won’t be grounded enough to make them work but Aquarius moons will really make you think differently.

Sagittarius and Geminis tend to set the trends first, can’t explain why but their energy and clever ideas tend to be infectious. Pisces are also really good at this with their dreamy energy, less intentionally though. Virgos will also find very clever ways to use the tools at their disposal.

Every time a cancer has suddenly gone from distaste/indifference to being nice to me they’ve been trying to get something out of me 🤷🏾‍♀️ (Cancers that are always nice are a different story lol, very kind people)

Where a sign falls in your houses will definitely influence how you perceive them. Signs in your 8th house will come off as suspicious and secretive, 2nd house will be seen as grounded and with affection, you’ll identify closely with signs in your 1st house, etc.

Gemini placements really have their shit together when it’s together imo, they can really balance a lot of things well. This can be hard to perceive sometimes because Geminis can fake having a harmonious life better than any other sign. Libras get a lot of flack for being fake but Libras are a sign of balance. They like to have a sound image to project socially but they can be deeply off balance when anything is lacking in their life.

Trust a developed Virgo’s (sun, moon, rising) advice, even if you don’t want to hear it, they know what they’re talking about.

Heavy Capricorn or Scorpio placements? Welcome to the family karma club. Odds are you have a relationship that’s strained with at least one parent, uncle, aunt, grandparent, etc. The good news is that if you break out of cycles with your family (and don’t fall into cycles with people like them) you can have a much more rewarding life and a found family to match no other as an adult.

I’ll probably do a family post soon. I have a lot of ✨opinions ✨

Whole house astrology can teach you a lot about yourself and frankly I prefer it.

For example, my standard birth chart has Saturn/SN in Aries in my 5th and 6th house- but my whole house birth chart has Pisces in 5th and Aries and 6th and that makes more sense for me. I’m a creative and have had a sort of winding journey to make my art my full time job. I’ve also had to bring in a spiritual/healing focus to my creativity and my life in general but it’s vastly improved everything for me. Also I definitely have had very delicate physical health and a lot of sudden rivals in the workplace.

[twopoppies]

Hi! So I was actually at Morriña festival a few days ago and wanted to ask your opinion on the theory that Harry was there, then saw that you already posted a bit about it. So here’s my take. I’m actually still on the fence about it, but leaning towards “within the realm of possibility”.

My arguments in favour:

• Louis was very funny and cheeky with fans for most of the show, but for some specific lines he got significantly more serious. What stuck out to me personally was “love you cannot hide” in The Greatest, the entirety of Saturdays, the second verse of We Made It. His gaze seems to be much more focused and pointed, not moving at all, and with it being during these specific lyrics… I am ready to clown lol.

• In the beginning of We Made It (and maybe more times, this is just what I recorded) he pointed twice somewhere high - too high for fan signs, but lower than he usually points for emphatic value. And I think that he pointed in the general direction of the projector tower, which, as I’ll explain later, is the likeliest place for Harry to be if he was there.

• There was technically a place for Harry to hide at, despite the open layout of the festival. You can see the scheme at the festival’s insta page here https://www.instagram.com/p/C9zvd7ni6MF/?igsh=MWdkMWhkZDZqb2NsYQ== and the building you initially posted about was indeed just a warehouse with toilets. I was inside, although a little drunk already, but I only remember very high ceilings and windows to let in natural light, so I am 99% sure that there is no proper second floor. Other buildings on the site are too small, so instead my best bet is the projector tower in front of the stage. I saw some people say that there was someone in the side of the stage, but I couldn’t notice anything, and I had an excellent view of that side, plus Louis didn’t look that far to his left.

• After the show Louis posted a picture of himself from the back, and the tower is well within his range of aforementioned medium-high pointing.

• Harry’s most recent bike pictures - they were backdated exactly to July 26. I don’t have nearly as many experience as you, but to me such backdated pap pictures have come to mean that Harry was actually in a different place that day.

My arguments against:

• Based on what I could observe from my spot, Louis’ gaze doesn’t seem to (always) land on a plausible spot for Harry to hide in. Sometimes it goes a little too far to the left from the projector tower (even on the picture he posted he seems to be looking more to his left), and there are no other suitable buildings in that direction. Unless we consider industrial buildings beyond the festival grounds, but this seems ridiculous to me. I doubt that Harry could’ve come to a random Galician cement company and be like “Oh, my secret boyfriend is performing in front of here tonight, can I please hand around your cement mixing tower or whatnot for half the night?”

• I only notices a lot of the aforementioned things a good while after the show, when I heard that Harry was supposedly there and began rewatching my footage to prove or disprove that. So I may be cherrypicking facts to fit what I would really like to be true. Except for the Saturdays thing, though; he was genuinely so emotional during it, and his demeanour shifted so suddenly when he started it, that I noticed this even in the moment.

So here’s what I can say, what’s your opinion?

And an unrelated fact for your interest: the majority of the crowd, or at least those who camped and ended up at the barricade, were larries (I was at the barricade too btw… best night of my life). During Back To You Louis didn’t sing the “I love … “ line at all, but we all screamed “I love him” and he nodded and smiled at us.

Lots of love and best wishes :)

Hi, sweetheart. You comment about the cement mixing tower made me laugh. 🤣🤣🤣

First of all, I’m so glad you were there and got to be at the barricade, and had such a good show.

Second, I do think the photos of Harry in London were likely from any day but the day they dropped, based on his clothing (and that there was no particular reason for him to be papped in London that day)

Third, I don’t think it’s impossible that he was at the festival, and your comments about why and where, make more sense than anything I’ve seen yet. We’ll never know for sure, but I’d love to believe he was able to be there.

x

[pico-farad]

I've been watching Vrains for the first time, and I finished season 1

some thoughts below (a lot. a lot of thoughts below)

Setting & Setup

The setting is a very smart choice, and the highlight of Vrains in my opinion.

The aesthetic is relevant, it integrates well with Konami marketing its mobile games, and it neatly deals with the problem every Yugioh series has to address of how to make consequences for duels that can be safely broadcast on children's television (aka the shadow realm / sent to the stars problem)

The virtual world opens up so much possibility in how to present things. 

In the character and setting designs, obviously, but also, the duels have their own visual identity. They don't need to play cards on a duel disk or hold cards in their hand, cards will just appear and disappear in pixels (it also probably saves on their animation budget). The duel grid and other visualizations can show up as they're relevant. And seeing the character take gashes to their avatars is dramatic while still being kid-friendly.

Every Yugioh needs its peanut gallery to react to the duel and be explained to, and Vrains incorporates them the most easily of any series, since they don't need to be physically present.

Kill the frog and the pigeon though.

On the topic of duels, I like both link summoning and speed duels.

I like the spacial/positioning element of link summoning, it puts an additional layer on top of "little monsters make big monster."

And speed duels have all the advantages of turbo duels, allowing for dynamic action, visual metaphor for the tide of the duel, and the ability to change locations without sacrificing pacing, all while requiring less suspension of disbelief than card games on motorcycles. It's easy to take for granted, but the heist sequences wouldn't work at all if they had to be standing duels. 

I also liked this about season 1 of 5Ds, where there's two modes of dueling (turbo duels and ground duels). The contrast between speed duels and master duels is fun.

Skills are cool too, though I feel like they could have designed better ones. Seeing Yusaku drop below 1000 got kind of predictable.

And finally, there is rich thematic potential in this kind of virtual setting. Themes about our relationship with social media, video games, artificial intelligence, and tech corporations are very relevant and have depth. I don't have the highest of hopes for Yugioh tackling them, based on how this first season has gone, but I'll withhold judgment on this until I'm finished.

Yusaku

I like Yusaku. He's blunt, but he's not edgy like I thought he would be. He's actually kind of nice toward Naoki when they meet. The three things tic is charming. I like his hacker deck, it's probably my favorite protagonist deck theme after Elemental Heroes.

Yusaku's problem is not that he's boring per se, but he isn't really put in any interesting situations in S1. 

A lot of his duels are just him being challenged to a duel he has no interest in (Go, Blue Angel, Ghost Girl), he beats them, and they don't actually end up forming a relationship or establishing a dynamic. Because their characters don't have anything to do with each-other except mutually not wanting the bad guys to do bad things.

Yusaku gains allies, but he doesn't make friends. He starts off with his only real relationship being Kusanagi, and that doesn't really change by the end of the season (and his relationship with Kusanagi is not very developed either).

Now, there is a reason for this, which is I think the core of Yusaku's character in S1. It's that due to the traumatic event of his childhood, time has stopped for him. This is very real for victims of traumatic events, being unable to move forward in their lives, develop relationships or think about the future, because their minds are still stuck in the past. This is why Yusaku seeks his revenge. It's not revenge he's seeking, it's closure.

This is a theme that's worth exploring. The problem is that I don't really think they explore it, not sufficiently enough for me to give them credit. If they were exploring it, they could have shown Yusaku reckoning with the divide between him and others in a number of ways. 

Most chiefly, by forcing him to make friends anyway. This is Yugioh goddamnit. The opportunity was right there with Naoki, but it's just played as a joke. Instead, most of this theme is squeezed in at the end of the final duel vs. Revolver, and without the proper build-up, the moment of Yusaku renouncing his revenge and reaching out to be friends with Revolver doesn't land nearly as strong as it could have.

If there is one relationship that Yusaku maybe develops though, it's...

Ai

The relationship between Yusaku and Ai should be what the show hinges on, based on the premise, Ai's status as the "partner," and glimpses I've seen of them through fandom.

Ai is the inciting incident of the story, his existence drives the plot forward, because Hanoi wants him, but Yusaku has him, and Ai doesn't want anything to do with either of them. This premise is gold. It's rife with dramatic potential. Ai is forced to work together with his captor. Yusaku is forced to work together with this goddamn annoying AI. They are both just trying to use the other, but end up developing a bond.

Or at least... that's what I think should have happened...

Very little happens between them in season 1, and it either goes nowhere, or comes out of nowhere. Ai tries to escape, but that thread is just dropped and forgotten. Various Hanoi guys hint that the Ignis can't be trusted, but it doesn't really faze Yusaku because he already doesn't trust Ai. The same thing happens when Revolver reveals that Ai is his counterpart from the Lost Incident and has known it this whole time.

There's only one turning point in their dynamic, which is in the second to last duel vs. Revolver, where Ai uses his body as a shield so that Yusaku can use Storm Access. And even then, Ai says it's because if Yusaku loses, Revolver will kill him. But that's been their entire dynamic for the season anyway? Why is this positioned as the emotional moment where they become partners?

By the end of season 1, they're... allies. The same as the rest of the characters on Yusaku's side. But if there was one character Yusaku should have made friends with, it's Ai. Especially if they are positioning for a humans vs. AI conflict.

His design is cute though.

Go

Go's problem is that he needs to be integrated into the story and cast. Aoi at least has a relationship with her brother and Ghost Girl. Go is connected to... some nameless orphan children, a nameless manager, and a childhood orphan friend who shows up for 5 seconds, is put into a coma in order for Go to have a motivation to duel Genome, and never appears again.

Go isn't a best friend character, and he's not a rival either. He's not even a friend character, period. He really just seems there to be a third duelist.

Does he even know about the Lost Incident, or why Playmaker is even fighting Hanoi? Go has no clue what the plot even is, how can he be involved in it? My guy is living in a different story.

It's a shame, because Go does have some interesting bits to his character. Being a charisma duelist is central to his character (unlike Aoi, whose relationship to charisma dueling seems to end at being a cute idol girl), which could have been used to explore the culture of Link Vrains and the performativity of online spaces.

This is tied to some kind of theme he has going on of dueling for others vs. dueling for yourself. It's brought up in contrast to Yusaku, and why he initially dislikes Playmaker. All of that could have been interesting, but it doesn't really get a full treatment.

Revolver

Revolver is fine as a season 1 antagonist. He's not really a character yet, but I'm interested in where they take him from here. His backstory is sympathetic honestly. It's a pretty familiar and tragic situation, where a child narcs on their parent, who isn't even a good parent, but then comes to regret it.

I also think Revolver is sympathetic because I would nuke the internet in a heartbeat.

His Link Vrains design is cool. Mirror Force is funny, so are the gun dragons. The final duel vs. Yusaku was sick honestly, I loved the extra extra link.

Anyway, I still enjoyed season 1 and think there's room to take a turn for the better. In my experience, there's two kinds of yugiohs, the ones that start off strong, and the ones that end strong. My suspicion is that Vrains is the latter.

On to season 2! Time to meet everyone's favorite Salad king :^)

Hm? Was there someone I missed?

ha ha...... you get your own post, Aoi.

[thefuzzzz]

Ranking Nico Di Angelo ships as a multishipper with a crazy imagination, a Nico hyperfixation of 3 years, and the willpower of a god:

1. Solangelo - 8/10 I love them!! I adore Will in TSATS and he’s easily one of my favorite characters. I wish Rick had let us get to know Will separately before he was immediately made Nico’s boyfriend, but I love him anyway. I think they’re good for each other and very supportive. I think I spend too much time consuming media of them than their actual book interactions, because in media I hate their fanon portrayals, but I adore them in cannon. I only had the chance to read half of TSATS, but I thought it was cute!

2. Jasico - 10/10 I love them for the same reasons I love Solangelo, but Jason got character development and Will didn’t. Also, they had a cool moment with Cupid that I think about once a week at least. Jason is constantly someone Nico trusts and (I may be wrong) hugs at some point in the series. The only people Nico has shown direct physical affection to within the series (to my knowledge) are Will, Jason, Hazel, and Reyna. This proves how much Nico trusts Jason, even after Cupid. Also they’re silly and dumb and I love them so I’m right always

3. Nico x Conner - 10/10 I FUCKING LOVE THEM SO MUCH. Lemme explain. So when Nico came to camp he stayed with the Hermes cabin, but Luke was already fucked off (I think) so Conner and Travis were probably in charge of the cabin. Conner’s age changes several times, so I headcannon him to be just a tad older than Nico. I think since he knew Nico when he was a kid he can make present day Nico less doom and gloom and know when he’s truly happy. Also, Nico went to a notably strict military school before coming to camp, yk what they say, strict conditions raise sneaky kids. Thats right, these two are fucking nuts. They are little thieves. And I don’t even wanna mention the implications of Conner’s dad (Lin Manuel Miranda) being the god of travelers and Nico essentially being an eternal traveller. They make me so sick I love them

4. Nico x Clovis - 7/10 they were mentioned as friends MAYBE once and I took that shit and ran with it tbh. I don’t even remember if it’s cannon. I just love them. I THINK it was mentioned that Clovis helps Nico with his nightmares, but atp this shit might just be my imagination or a fic I read once. Anyways, Nico is noted as a very anxious person, and Clovis is very laid back. I really like that duo and the idea that Clovis can help to ground him a lot and help him relax

5. Valdengelo - 6/10 while I do adore them, they have hardly any time together or any bonding moments at all (Note: I am a hypocrite over Clovis let’s fight abt it) I do love media about them and consume it at rates not comprehendible by mankind though. Aside from no time together, I think they’re epic. Nico experiences a lot of the same things as Leo, such as losing his mother and general sadness, but they cope in wildly different ways (neither of which are healthy). Also, Nico grew up in the lotus casino. I’m sick of us all acting like he doesn’t understand technology. Let them be engineer boyfriends PLEASE

6. Pernico. - 0/10 I don’t care at all if other people ship them, since it’s fandom and you can do whatever you want. I just personally don’t enjoy their chemistry and see them more as brothers. You do you tho.

Keep in mind this is just my opinion please don’t take anything too personal!! I love all ships (almost.) equally and if you have any fic recommendations for any of these please give them to me I’m desperate

(Also, this doesn’t represent my FAVORITE Nico ship, just a ranking based on how much I giggle when I see them. It does not take many logistics into account)