#if you're horrified by what he's doing

[ajunicetryagain]

nothing worth anything is built on purity.

we will all get things wrong. we will all say the wrong thing or pick the wrong people or make the wrong choice.

all of us.

you deserve grace to come back from your fuck ups and your honest mistakes without being lectured or belittled along the way and you know what? so does everyone else.

all of us.

[the-girl-with-too-many-ideas]

Unpopular opinion, If the story was told from Shen Jiu's perspective, svsss would be a horror and Shen Yuan the villain.

I mean, you're talking about someone who had little to no automony their entire childhood. Who was a slave and suffered unspeakable horrors at the hands of his master to the point of developing a fear of men. Who knows what it is like to have no control over your body or what happens to it.

So, to be not only kicked out of his body, but forced to watch as someone else occupies and uses it (arguably doing and becoming everything he was rumored to have been and done) would be viscerally horrific.

(This is why I firmly believe that YQY would take the Shen Yuan revelation badly. He was a slave too, and without a doubt, knows how much Shen Jiu valued his freedom and autonomy above everything else. He would be so horrified and devastated to learn that his Xiao Jiu was stripped of both again while he stood by and did nothing again.)

[tropicalcontinental]

But satisfaction brought it back

[crimeronan]

I'm rereading Chapter 2 of why did love put a gun in my hand and the bit where Hunter says "It's just his temper, he doesn't mean to do it" is making me so sad. I'm used to thinking of Hunter as the character with the most accurate read on Belos in this AU but even HERE he doesn't seem to realize how calculated the abuse is. 😟😟😟

i went back to remember what the full context for that bit is and ough. god. yeah. it's a gut punch:

hunter is Certainly the character with the most accurate read on how violent and dangerous belos can be. but even so, he can't conceptualize the level to which he's been manipulated....

when belos hurts HIM, that's just fulfilling a mutual contract between them. sometimes belos needs to hurt somebody and he can't help it and he and hunter both know it's best if hunter takes that on, right?? no need for anybody else to be involved. keep it in the family

hunter saying "i know how to talk to him" because talking to belos on luz's behalf has always worked Before, because belos wants it to, because that's the best way to keep hunter loyal...

"he's still the same person he's always been, he doesn't want to hurt you at all" with the implication of "he DOES want to hurt me and always has, but that's all right." boy.......

if hunter had a truly, TRULY accurate understanding of belos, then he would have either run away with luz or smuggled her out of the castle ages ago. because he would understand that he really.... has no control. over the amount of danger that luz is in.

instead he needs the belos situation to be one that's self-contained, as long as hunter keeps playing his role. if he controls the situation then he can keep luz safe. and consequently it's also his fault if luz gets hurt. because hunter is supposed to do Anything to keep her from getting hurt.

that is his Job.

[imagionary]

Ah I really love your au and all the little details you wrote about in the tags!! Especially the little tidbit of chip painting scenery :-] I can't wait for more !

Thank you!!! 💚💚 I think Chip has a soft spot for nature, despite having worked in deforesting

[quietwingsinthesky]

if i was going to make a gravity falls oc, they would be a ghost-like thing that haunts the mystery shack and the joke is that they were haunting it also back when ford was building the portal, but they're completely faceblind and were distracted the day stanley and stanford had their fight, so they literally didn't even realize that's a totally different guy living in the shack now. they just thought he was not talking to them anymore because he was being rude. >:(

[pkmoth]

having swap au thoughts. *slaps roof of claus* there's so much mental illness in this guy. im gonna blow up everyone in the room and then myself

[tkbrokkoli]

cant believe that after driving the car, riding the train, booking a hotel room, having a nightmare, visiting the father in law, visiting a hospital, making a friend, and escaping an assassin, the incomprehensible Horrors™ are back at it again and harder to bear than ever 🐻

[sweetpea-sprite]

i love that a large part of oliver's character arc is coming to love ni no kuni over time until the journey is no longer only about saving his mother to him but about defeating shadar. and i will forever be pissed that level 5 got rid of most of it in wotww. btw.

accidentally wrote an essay about this so i'm putting it under a read more

they didn't get rid of all of it. he has his soulsnare moment. he. uh. i'll be completely honest with you i'm entirely blanking on ANY other moments. like obviously he willingly sacrifices himself to defeat shadar but that's like the culmination not the build up. um. what other. uh.

okay anyway in dotdd you can SEE him get more attached to ni no kuni. literally the first cutscene you see of him after gateway (the deleted ghibli scene. you can see it in the casino in wotww) is him staring at the world in awe. it's emphasised. there's a zoom in on his face. in wotww he has a moment like this but it's a lot less focused on oliver's reaction and more on showing You the beauty of it. (the ghibli scene is prettier anyway...)

in general dotdd does a much better job of showing oliver falling in love with the world and its inhabitants. listen i am the fairyground's #1 fan but in the arc it replaces there's a scene where swaine protects esther, and then immediately after they start fighting again, and oliver starts laughing because he's FOND OF THEM. they're FRIENDS. it does a much better job of showing the party's bonds with each other than the fairyground does. (in a perfect world we would have both the fairyground and del mokahl.)

it's even little thingsss. stuff like swaine directly saying he wants to go with oliver. the tombstone trail where oliver makes friends with a ghost and cries when she disappears. it's so much more obvious that he's getting more and more attached.

and then in xanadu when they discover that mornstar's stones are scattered and they have to find them there's a TURNING POINT. where oliver steps forward and stubbornly says well i don't care that it seems almost impossible. there's a CHANCE. we can do this. think of everyone who's out there suffering we have to TRY. otherwise what was the point of everything we've done up until now? (foreshadowing for his soulsnare moment!) and he doesn't mention alicia ONCE.

in wotww the only stone guardian where you clearly help someone in need is aapep, where you help ali and yasmina break their curse. in dotdd it's all three - oliver promises to look after grey/cerboreas for his past owner, and also, um, organises a union during crossbones. it's just a lot more obvious that oliver wants to help people. he had an ulterior motive for coming here but now he genuinely wants to help and it's OBVIOUS.

and then oliver gets really fucking angry at shadar in perdida. he gets more pissed off in general in dotdd (yet another trait i wish wotww oliver had...) but specifically at shadar he starts shouting about it to the sky. he gets PISSED. it's set off by them discovering a girl who had a piece of her heart stolen by shadar due to her grandmother, on purpose. oliver shouts to the sky that he is "going to SAVE that little girl!"

even the SOULSNARE isn't only about alicia! esther and swaine get trapped in there too and oliver tries to run directly into the poison marshes HIMSELF to get them back and is only stopped by drippy who rightfully points out that he will DIE.

when he finally frees the souls in the soulsnare he has the wotww moment of "everything we've done up until now was for nothing" and then is reminded of everything they've done, and his reason for fighting CHANGES ENTIRELY!!! and it changes in wotww as well - this is the most important part of oliver's arc, after all - but in dotdd. it's already changed. they don't even need the pea montage because you already know how much oliver loves this place.

and then he SACRIFICES HIS LIFE FOR IT!!!!!!! he came here to save his mother - remember, he SAID NO when drippy asked the first time, until he learned about alicia. but he's become so attached and in love with ni no kuni that he heads into a battle he knows he's not coming back from to keep it safe. it drives me NUTS. this world isn't his own and he's killing himself for it because he adores it so much. it's [SCREAMING]

and then in wotww they get rid of almost all of this and oliver is still a fantastic fucking character. they got rid of all of his anger and most of his tears and he's still phenomenal. isn't that crazy. like dotdd oliver is superior but wotww oliver is still really good is the thing

god. anyway. this is your sign to play dotdd. please. please. please. pl

[antsday]

honestly a lot of the most truly terrifying and manipulative horror-villain type characters come from romance authors who think they're writing a desireable male lead

[mejomonster]

There's a podcast I found on youtube called Behind the Bastards that goes into the history of awful people in history. Listened to the Thomas Jefferson episodes recently and. Wow rich people always have been shit (as a group)

Jefferson admired the roman 'farmers' who were land owners who had slaves work their land. He and his peers were virginia landowners who also had slaves farm for them. The ideal he read about and admired were "hard working self sufficient farmers" but this image is not of a man hunting and farming himself or with his family, but a man living in comfort with slaves to do the work and provide the comfort.

Now the big trend among conservatives is tradwifes and the image men are sold about it - a woman cleaning their home, farming for them, providing for them and obeying them. Which on the small scale is to like appease poor men and poor women - to give poor men this illusion that they could have a stay at home wife and afford for her to not work eventually (and also serve him), to give poor women (that they could afford to not work for money one day and serve a man who loves them for being the 'right' kind of woman). The people who are actually achieving this lifestyle are rich men (and women who end up working since... if you're an influencer that's your job, so it's all an illusion since the lifestyle could not be achieved without money coming in).

It's just a symptom of a bigger pattern. Conservative circles push this lifestyle as idealized to the masses (a man being served by someone for free, able to control them absolutely). If the masses aspire to that, hope for that, then the masses will continue to think they'll be billionaires one day who WILL have that and DESERVE to have that. And instead of fighting the billionaires, they'll think that is the goal to be admired as a sign of success.

Meanwhile our whole world, our current world, is at the mercy of some very very rich fucks. Who are attempting to sap what wealth everyone else has, and take it for themselves. These billionaires live in comfort! Far more comfort than slave owners of centuries past! These billionaires have so much money, they can buy any service they want, land, websites, politicians. And yet its never 'enough' money to these bastards. They need to buy more property to rent to the masses, and drive rent prices up by using housing as assets. They need healthcare gutted because god forbid the masses pay less for healthcare - they SHOULD pay 100,0000 to live after an accident! God forbid the masses own property, and therefore have a little wealth and security for their family - if they're less housing stable, they'll quit shitty jobs less. You can abuse them more! God forbid the majority of humans have food, water, shelter, healthcare. Got to raise the price of all groceries, because you can! Because you need to get ALL the money the masses manage to make, and funnel it to yourself. Billionaires are just like those illusions of "self sufficient farmers" who own slaves and rely on slaves to both provide necessities and luxuries.

Billionaires really spew the bullshit they're self sufficient, then don't pay their employees living wages. Billionaires have nothing to offer without the efforts of their employees, and the money those employees earned for them (or the rent they charged etc). They certainly aren't self sufficient, they're also not a single benefit to society. They dream of a world where everyone serves them, provides for them, and gives them always MORE. In many ways the world probably already is this, all of us buy something that eventually contributes to a billionaire, or work for one (or for a company that serves one), or pay taxes to a government that coddles a billionaire, buy groceries. But billionaires always want MORE. More more more. They're destructive in their existence. In what they choose to do, which is take from others to give themselves more, to give themselves SO much they can't even use it all. They'd still be rich enough to buy a politician off, to buy an island or a website, if they paid their employees a living wage and charged reasonable prices. Once you have enough money you simply cannot spend it all in your lifetime, in your grandchildrens lifetimes, even if you buy absolutely everything you ever want. They don't have to seek to take from others endlessly, to continue existing with the lifestyle they do. But they still seek to take more and more and more. In the process they hurt most people, and hurt the world we live in as a whole. And they don't care, even though it would not hurt them at all and would not take a single tangible benefit they receive, to stop being Such destructive presences in the world.

[the-girl-who-didnt-smile]

"She's the most beautiful angel in all of heaven now."

[otogariado]

i get why people would opt to say walter was a terrible person since the beginning, but i think that's like, the most boring takeaway you can get about his character. he was already insecure and prideful from the start, and it's what would hurt him and keep hurting him. but like, being insecure and prideful are regular traits any regular person can have. the actions that he makes because of these traits, which in turn keep fueling his ego more and more, are what makes him an interesting character. and he was already pretty capable of hurting other people, but he wasn't doing it out of malice, but more because of careless selfishness at first. what makes walter terrifying is that the more he does it, the more he becomes aware of what he's doing, and the more he keeps going and keeps being more and more meticulous and deliberate about what he does that hurts people and even to the point when it was specifically to hurt people.

i think the traits were there in walter from the beginning—the pilot did a pretty good job of establishing how powerless he's felt all his life and just how susceptible he is to letting this newfound perceived power get to his head so easily. he even says this explicitly in 5x06 "Buyout" when he tells jesse "i'm not in the money business, i'm in the empire business". but saying he was this monster from the start kind of implies he didn't undergo through a character arc throughout the show when it's quite literally what he did. he got worse. so much worse. through mostly the fault of his own fragility.

[mechahero]

//Still floating that little dream world idea around. And then started brainstorming what Lambda's might be like. So far, toying around with landscape ideas such as there being a sky with building bits smushed together, floating a nice blue sky with all the other items that can be seen floating in there. Lambda's hanging outside this big green building in the center. You can travel through it!

You are not supposed to go past Floor 1.

[seraphim-soulmate]

me to myself, (about me), "oh man this is all gonna fuck him up so bad when he finally wakes up from the post-op fog and realizes the amount of suffering he's endured is gut-wrenching and will make him puke from crying. anyways time to go do some other random thing to distract myself bcs I obviously am not yet cognitively capable of confronting the carnage that my life became"

*sits down with popcorn to watch the shitshow "me" will have to endure once I come back to myself*

OH FUCK ITS ME IM ME I LIVED THIS AND IM GONNA HAVE TO DEAL WITH IT ALL FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

[arolesbianism]

I <3 transmasc Wendy because it adds another thing to the kid who does not know how to handle anything being thrown into everything pile but instead of a thing like dead sister it's the prospect that he kind of likes having short hair and the idea of being a guy and it still makes him feel like the world is ending until suddenly the ppl around him are just like fine with it and everything is like cool actually and he melts over that too until finally he's just a normal baby trans person and can get back to being bad at coping with his other hashtag issues again