#is this the longest post on this blog

[incorrectmahabharatquotes]

Recently I saw this post by @god-has-adhd (I'm not reblogging it because I saw the people they tagged and realised very quickly that it's quite likely that us reblogging the post will be unwelcome, to put it mildly. I'm tagging the OP here anyway since it's a direct response to the post and it seemed only fair to engage in the conversation. I hope they don't mind.) OP urged everyone to watch the video regardless of the political leaning so in the spirit of giving everything a fair shot, we watched it. 'We' here refers to both me and Mod G. There are things we agree on with the guy speaking in the video and there are things we disagree with/think he didn't properly research. However, there is one thing that's most relevant to this blog and to me, personally so I'll be talking primarily about it. This is your long post warning, I'm afraid.

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"The Real Story of Eklavya"

The context for people who haven't watched the video is that the guy brings up two stories, one of Satyakama Jabali from the Upanishads and that of Eklavya from the Mahabharata. He brings up both these stories in the context of caste, he helpfully titles it and everything.

What I found interesting is that he frames himself talking about the story with the words "The real story of Eklavya". If you know even the basics of storytelling or filmmaking, you know that this is quite important. This implies that you, the viewer, do not know the real story and the one you know is either incomplete or false.

He begins, in a memorable instance, by asking ChatGPT for a summary to grasp the popular interpretation of the story of Eklavya and Drona. I have THOUGHTS about using a machine learning tool that is trained on data that is infamously biased and lacking when it comes to anything that isn't American, but that would be digressing from the point. ChatGPT provides him a summary that mentions that Eklavya was denied Drona's tutelage because he was of a lower caste. After this, the guy proceeds to recite the lines where Eklavya is mentioned in the Adi parva of the Sanskrit Mahabharat that we refer to as Vyasa's Mahabharat. He expresses surprise at how Eklavya is introduced as being the son of the "king" of the nishads (I think leader is a better word that should've been used but the Sanskrit text has a notorious habit of having just really questionable ways of referring to people, if you've read it you know.) Which is found HILARIOUS. Bro, what do you mean you're surprised? This is COMMON knowledge, I fear.

He mentions how being the son of the nishaad's leader/king effectively puts him on the same level as Arjun and that they're both princes. He says that this means Eklavya isn't shudra or dalit (there is a word that's curiously absent here that I'll mention in a bit.) Now, this one of those parts where the choice information he presents the viewer with is bizarre. Since I promised I'll give it a fair shot, I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and assume this is a fault of him not researching enough and not willful omission. Maybe he just doesn't know. The information he's given here is correct, mostly. What he DOESN'T explain is who the nishads, as a group are. I'll fill in the blanks for him.

The nishad are said to be a group of tribal people who reside in the hills. The text he reads out even has the word "tribal" in it but the guy sort of glosses over it? The nishads are sort of like an aggregate grouping of different tribal populations and not the name of a specific tribe. Kind of. But the mention is still significant. See, the Mahabharata, especially the Sanskrit text, has this Thing™ that it does where it's incredibly rare to find a mention of tribal populations who are said to be human, many of the other mentioned tribal groups are demi-humans or non-humans or just straight up rakshahsas.

Eklavya is said to be the adopted son of Hiranyadhanus, the aforementioned king/leader of the nishads. The Harivamsa Purana part of the Sanskrit text (which is a giant-ass genealogy section where it traces the family line from the start of existence to the birth of Krishna) mentions that biologically he's the son of Devashrava, Vasudev's brother, which makes him Krishna's cousin by blood. Eklavya was abandoned by Devashrava in the forest and Hiranyadhanus found him and raised him as his own.

This makes Eklavya a tribal boy, I would use the word adivasi but people might disagree so I'll just say he has a tribal heritage, not by blood but by his upbringing. The man in the video says that Eklavya isn't a shudra, or dalit or untouchable, which is technically true. There's a missing word here that's doing a lot of heavy lifting for him, though. He says that Eklavya is a Kshatriya, which is DEBATEABLE because in the epic we've seen time and time again that blood doesn't matter and it's the society that does. With this, hopefully not to y'all, new information we might understand how the guy's assertion that Arjuna and Eklavya are on equal footing is shaky at best.

He continues to explain that in the text the reasoning why Drona refuses Eklavya is because he'd already promised he'd make Arjun The Best Archer. Since, he's bound by obligation to the Kurus, he can't afford to let Eklavya outshine his kuru students. The man proceeds to assert that in the text there is no caste-based discrimination happening here. Ergo, he concludes, the story of Eklavya doesn't have a caste aspect to it. If you believe otherwise, you're uneducated and need to learn the Truth and not fall into Propoganda. (I'm trying to be charitable to the guy but his tone when he says the word "propoganda" is dripping with disdain and it's making it very hard for me to remain charitable.) He ends this section this way.

This guy says he's given you all the facts. He's cited his source and he's said the complete truth. He hasn't. In this man's viewpoint, the complete and true Mahabharat is the Sanskrit text. Which, as you know, ISN'T what the entirety of the Mahabharat is and claiming that it is is a narrow perspective to see it. (Which is FUNNY considering this guy has a whole section towards the end of the video about Nuance and it's ironic that he's unwilling to provide the same nuance about the epic to his trusting audience.) Maybe he just isn't insane enough like me to know that it isn't the entire Mahabharat. It's possible.

There is a viewpoint that declares that the Sanskrit Text is the primary source and everything else isn't "canon". There's a SPECIFIC word for it but I will not say it because it's like a boogeyman word on hindublr, at least, so I'll omit the word in this post. This man, from what I've seen, shares this viewpoint.

I disagree.

The Mahabharat, is first and foremost a collection of oral traditions of storytelling that were written down much later. This means that the entire corpus of work that is this mammoth of an epic consists of the thousands of written texts, poetry, plays, songs, folk tales, recently it also includes cinematic adaptations, bedtime stories that your elders might have told you, and lastly, popular culture for better or for worse. This is my viewpoint and I feel it provides for a much better lens to engage with the story. Otherwise, you're denying the story of the rich tradition and heritage it was forged in.

The guy in the video wonders why the story of Eklavya is more popular than Satyakama Jabali and there are a lot of reasons for it. First is that the epic is simply more popular and, in many ways, more fun than the upanishad stories. Second is that the story of Eklavya captured people's minds because it's a story that has strife and the ending is unsatisfactory. Tragedies inspire emotions and connection in a way that comedies do not. There are many more reasons but I'll stop listing them.

It's not a coincidence or happenstance that there are caste dynamics added in the popular interpretation of the story. There are even seeds of this in the Sanskrit text, if this guy is truly only looking at that alone, Eklavya being a tribal kid, the way his physical appearance is described in the text, the way he's stopped from sharing a space with the kuru princes etc. If a variety of people who have historically faced similar things especially when it comes to education and find themselves mirrored in Eklavya? That's not Propaganda, as the guy puts it. It's just how stories naturally evolve and grow. It's people reading between the lines. There's no conspiracy at play. Just people finding something to relate to when they cannot relate to any other character.

I can write essays on how caste and varna show up in the Mahabharat (and I might, if even ONE person asks me for it) but to sum it down, it's a task of examining exactly who and what KIND of people are absent from the story. The Invisible People, if you will. You can count on your fingers how many shudra, dalit and adivasi figures are in the Mahabharat.

Drona is a teacher who fails at being a teacher in this instance. (The Mahabharat in many ways is a story of people failing to do their Duty. There's a certain peacock feather wearing guy who does a whole song and dance about it. It can cover a whole book. It's quite popular. Maybe you've heard of it?) Even if you ignore the caste dynamics reading of it, you cannot deny that the man just sucked at being a teacher in that moment when he denied education to a student, whatever his reasoning may be. He brutally asks for the kid to maim himself and again, even the Sanskrit text describes this action of Drona as cruel. He creates a barrier for Eklavya to stop him from continuing to practice his archery.

It's not surprising that Drona is read as a stand in for an education system that sucks at being an education system that does its job. Again, it's not a conspiracy or propaganda. It's people trying to connect to a story through the prism of their life experiences.

It is not my place to tell people what to believe and what not to believe. It's not the guy in the video's either, despite what he says. People's interpretations are personal to them. What is my place is to remind people that it's wrong to deny people their interpretations. There are versions and interpretations of the story that I hate or dislike but I'm not standing here and telling you they're not the Truth. This is the nuance that Mahabharat requires that the guy lacks. This is also why I believe his sources and research is lacking in this department.

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Beyond Eklavya

There's a lot of other thoughts and things I want to share about the rest of the video. I'll try to summarise the highlights.

There's a part where he doesn't understand what systemic patriarchy means, exactly, even though he himself gave an EXCELLENT example of it towards the start of the video with Satyakama Jabali's mother's heritage not being considered when it comes to his gotra. It was frustrating because he SAID it. He said the perfect example himself. I almost thought he set it up as a complete circle moment but he hadn't.

I appreciate him bringing a Shaivite perspective because I'm honestly tired of so much Vaishnavism at all times. I love to see different schools of Hinduism actually being practiced and not just one dominating and subsuming the others.

Towards the start of the video, Mod G predicted that the man would go on a "Periyar sucks" rant and I was so delighted that G was so right.

The guy in the video neglects to look at any contemporary research and scholarship about the linguistics and the Aryan migration theory(which he calls the invasion theory, obviously) including the genetic studies.

There's a funny bit where whenever the guy mentions Ambedkar he has to assert that he thinks Ambedkar is anti-hindu. Even when he's praising him. It happened multiple times.

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TL;DR The man in the video fails to provide his viewers with the full picture about the story of Eklavya even when he claims he is.

- Mod S

ALSO

The structure of his arguments are poor especially in the section where he talks about why the North-South divide came about. Does he not know about the field of linguistics and how root languages are established? Telugu as a language has a 'Dravidian' (he seems to hate that word, even though Dravida is not just the anglo word for the southern parts of India) root because of certain features it has. Notice how North Indian languages use Gender. And then, notice how Southern/central or even Adivasi languages use gender. One main reason why Dravidian languages have been speculated to have another root language different to Sankskrit is the counting systems. Its not wrong to say Telugu has sanskrit INFLUENCE, but again, look at WHICH people within the language group use that type of Telugu (spoiler alert, its the 'proper' upper castes). He dismisses that entirely and makes it a whole issue about how the North South divide happened.

Its very clear to me that he has no intention of representing any of the counter arguments to his premise in an honest manner and is instead single mindedly trying to create more propaganda.

-Mod G

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Thank you all for an incredible 500 days of love and support. I offer you: answers to questions that no one has asked.

(As always, more can be found in the tags <3)

[lotuspeacock]

what the fuck even happened episode 8????

like, plotwise i know what happened but like there’s so much new info i’m processing.

rei dresses like that not for the professionalism of the job, but because his father expects him to look high-class even when he’s murdering people

anna’s musical talents literally traumatize children.

rei’s father has a god complex about his bloodline

the “organization” is more or less run by rei’s father. this is why kyutaro said that rei should know best what happens when you betray the organization, because every childish rebellion was treason on the organization.

rei doesn’t get too close to kazuki because the consequence if he does are dire.

side note: when rei says he has something to protect, he’s not just talking about miri. there is no mistaking that kazuki is precious to rei.

when rei is asked “did you find true belonging on the outside” he denies it. this is probably because he wants to protect kazuki and miri but it could also be because rei genuinely believes that he doesn’t truly belong in their little family. i believe this changes by the end when rei sees that kazuki and miri were waiting for him just to see him smile.

this is from a few other posts i saw, but rei’s mission was a warning. a peek into the consequences of forming attachments.

a continuation of point six, we see rei standing in his family home, feeling completely estranged while he’s on the phone with kazuki and miri being told to be back by dinner.

rei never seemed to be affected by his job before. but in the car with ogino he expresses shock at the picture of his mentors murdered wife. and the picture seems to be taken in the goriest way. rei is opening his heart to his family and as a consequence, he has to face the reality that he is not just killing, but taking lives.

“for the concept” WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN???? this man makes me so uncomfortable he is so goddamn psychotic. he definitely kills for fun even though he pretends its some big philosophical thing. essentially he was saying people exist to die. also his fucking blue eyed stare 🧿👄🧿

WAIT WAIT WAIT THEYRE TOTAL FOILS OF EACH OTHER. rei and his mentor that is. they both have that single slut strand.

miri is extremely insightful. she notices when someone close to her is hiding their dissatisfaction with life - what she calls “sadness”. her mom was dissatisfied with her life as a single mother and rei is dissatisfied with living under his father’s boot.

rei didn’t tell ogino his mentor’s last words because they weren’t meant for him (but probably also cuz ogino is a creep sob). rei “didn’t hear” anything because the words were directed to someone already gone.

this is less a plot point but more a personal analysis - i was sorta hoping that kazuki would show up during the fight and save rei, and he does! he saves rei, but not during the fight because that’s not really where rei was struggling. rei needed to be saved from his own belief that he was irredeemable, and kazuki did that perfectly bu showing rei that no matter what, he’ll be there. unconditionally. i mean, the man didn’t even ask about all the blood on his suit. (another i won’t ask i wouldn’t tell moment)

kazuki cut rei’s hair and decorated the apartment. when rei said “but then you suddenly started cleaning”, he’s saying that he didn’t care about kazuki until kazuki taught him how to care. when kazuki barged into rei’s apartment and cleaned the blood stained hands of a child assassin, he also cleared a space for himself in rei’s life. (side note: of course the undercut was kazuki’s idea)

“you think we can change?” god this was such a good quote. and the way kazuki doesn’t put up a front and say “of course” because he’s trying to figure out if he can change too, so he just says “dunno” but its so sincere and hopeful. i love the dichotomy of kazuki not knowing if he can change because he’s spent the past 4 years trying not to and rei not knowing if he can change because he doesn’t know how to. at the root, it’s because they both see themselves as unforgivable.

continuation of points six and eight, rei smiles when he’s home with his family.

oh my god the angst just doesn’t stop.

[taiistired]

If Martyn meant nothing to him, he couldn’t see it in the golden glow of Scott’s joy. “I love you,” Scott said.  Martyn squeezed his hand. “Love you too.”  He resisted the urge to say, my liege, and instead, bit his tongue hard enough that he tasted blood. 

— the final lines of @apollothetransboy's it’s better to leave than to be replaced may or may not have changed my brain chemistry irrevocably

[whimsyprinx]

I feel like now is a good time to announce that I’m in the process of moving blogs! Im doing so for a few reasons, the main one being paranoia, so for that reason I won’t be saying my new urls publicly so like please dm me if you’d like my new url so you can follow me there! I’ll be reblogging this post a lot so ppl can see it (so sorry if you get annoyed by that)!

I’m also remaking my discord account as well so if we’re friends on there then feel free to message me for my new username!

friends and mutuals please do reblog so shared friends/mutuals have a higher chance seeing it!

[cloudabserk]

i’ve had this blog for a decade now, since i was 11 years old! and i’ve been posting my original drawings for 4.5 years, since i was 16. when i started posting my own work i had <100 followers, and yesterday i hit 5000!

i’m so grateful i get to share my drawings with this many people and i get to add happiness to the world in that way. thank you guys for being so kind and supportive of my dumb cartoons :)))

also for fun here’s the ten blogs i’ve been following the longest (who are still active):

@mimiadraws @thexfiles @marisatomay @pentheos @darkseldarine @8pxl @adrianicsea @hyrude @skeilig @walterwhte

[violinist-rachel]

Rachel, did you love karl again

"H-huh?... Carl who...? Sagan...?" "I -hic -enjoyed watching his show growing up, but I haven't -hic- met him in person before..."

[venusmage]

Venus. You're giving me a crisis rn. Why does the tiger person in your last post have bedroom eyes and why is it working on me?

SEE THIS IS SO FUNNY TO ME. Most of my (active) follower base has been from the past two years so a lot of you guys aren't aware that I've been drawing sexy animal-people before I was drawing sexy people-people. I'm like a furry sleeper agent.

edit: Drac is my most well known OC so I should even add that, originally, he was my guild wars 2 commander and he was a rat back then. so,

[theunconcernedembalmer]

[coming back for 5 secs just to haunt annoy your boi]

[moonlightdancer26]

do you think Snape’s bedroom is clean or messy? How organized is it, do you think? 🤔

I think Severus was a freakily clean person by nature lol, but I think he sometimes let himself “rot” in the mess and refused to indulge in self-care in order to punish himself. [I think that’s also why Severus didn’t seem to put in much effort into his appearance, I believe it was a mix of genuinely not caring and not bothering to fix it because “it’s what he’s used to.”] Also I think Severus’s bedroom in his chambers at Hogwarts (when he was a professor, not a student) and Severus’s bedroom in his childhood home were very different. I believe in his childhood room he never bothered to clean it because it would always end up messed up bc of his father anyway. And I believe when he became a professor and moved to Hogwarts for most of the year, he saw it as a “fresh start” and an opportunity to freakishly clean and organise everything.

[askadelcatty]

(@ask-the-shiny-pokemons) Rimi @ Umbra: "Hi, how are you?" she smiles at Delcatty/Luxray. "Anyways, do ya remember your childhood?"

UMBRA: "I'm doing just fine, thank you! Its nice that we've had so many visitors outside of our usual groups today..."

UMBRA: "To answer your question..."

UMBRA: "Both Spirit and I can be pretty stubborn when we put our minds to it. She always used to tell me that it ran in the family..." UMBRA: "We fought almost daily at one point over the same thing, over and over again, and that continued until..." Umbra trails off, his mind somewhere else....

A gentle nudge of his mother's paw against his shoulder snaps him out of the memory of the past. He hadn't even heard her walk up.

SPIRIT: "Ah... I apologize for interrupting you two talking, but it's getting late, and Eclipse should really be getting to bed soon."

The delcatty pauses, before murmuring towards her son, a concerned expression on her face.

SPIRIT: "Umbra.... can we talk in private...?" [ The askbox is now closed. ]

[nohoperadio]

There's a fun Wikipedia page about "fictitious entries" which is mostly about copyright traps in reference works, i.e. deliberately false obscure information slipped into encyclopedias, maps, dictionaries etc to catch out plagiarists, and hoaxes along similar lines. But I'm fascinated by the existence of this section towards the end:

First of all just the fact that someone thought the article needed a whole titled section just for explaining the concept that sometimes mistakes are made by accident and not on purpose is so intriguing to me, and secondly they thought this concept was best conveyed using a wordy quote from the Victorian linguistics journal The Transactions of the Philological Society (1885-7)?? Did they just enjoy this quote so much they wanted to get it in somewhere? This has got to be in contention for the greatest amount of effort put into imparting the smallest amount of information I've ever seen on Wikipedia.

[popponn]

i don't think it's obvious enough that i like isagi so i will say this: i like isagi. a lot. so here we go a self indulgent rambling

i genuinely wonder if he falls under secure attachment style or actually an avoidant. also he likes totoro and a rather childish cm song—is it because he enjoys his childhood a lot, despite all the crybaby and scaredy cat parts? his family is loving so it won't be surprising. and he still has attention on mangas and games it seems (that ps4 wish for santa) even if his focus is definitely on soccer, so saying he only likes them because he only pays attention during childhiod feels wrong. and of course, the third cutest possibility is that he has a surprisingly cutesy taste for someone who seems really stereotypically "normal" for boys his age. third possibility is my favorite honestly. also also, bllk end is still faraway but i wonder if he will get a hairstyle change. he is fond of his hair (his sprouts especially if according to trivias. he puts wayy too much care into them sksksk) but he will definitely look good with an undercut. i love forehead isagi but i wonder what other hairstyle will suit him. also isagi will looks good in casual comfy style. i do think isagi will kind of sucks at driving though. however, he will definitely be a good house/roommate who you can trust when you got sick. will definitely be appreciative to gifts like cups and mugs, knitted scarfs, etc. his reaction at funny gifts will be cute though. he will probably suit a totoro phone case. sigh. i love him. probably will also suck ass when it comes to "approaching first" when it comes to romance but it's him and it's cute so it's okay. probably needs a lot of "new things and new feelings" in a relationship though, but i probably need to mull over this thought a little bit more. he is not exactly people oriented and more goal focused, though people do seems to play a lot of factor in his thinking. still love him tho.

[jay-brooks-hugger]

My Favorite Jeffrey Combs characters

Ok ya'll, I had to give in and share my favorite Jeffrey Combs characters and why I love them. I decided not to add Herbert West since he's an easy pick, plus my love for Re animator died like back in 2019 ); . Anyways, here are my favorite Jeffrey Combs characters!

Character Description: So we're starting off with Crawford. Crawford is one of the main protagonists in the 1986 adaptation of HP Lovecrafts From Beyond, " From Beyond". He is the assistant of Dr Edward Pretorius. He starts off as an ambitious assistant to Pretorius but after witnessing the power of the Resonator he slowly starts to lose himself throughout the movie.

Why I love him: It's pretty simple, he's so silly. For real though, it's cool to see how he and the others slowly start to lose themselves. I really like his style, it really reflects the fashion of the late 80's. Not only that but he seems like a really cool person to hang around, I would 100% be friends with him.

Character Description: Next we have John. John is the main protagonist in the 1995 horror movie Castle Freak. He and his family inherits an old italian Castle. Throughout the story we figure out that this Castle holds a dark secret, not only that but we learn more about the Reilly family's tragic past.

Why I love him: He's such a complex character. I love that we get to see why him and Katherine's relationship is so strained. Even though he is the cause of his sons death and his daughter being blind, you can't help but feel bad for him. He might be very flawed but the man still loves and cares for his family. It does suck he cheats on Katherine though. What's even sadder is that he dies before he can ever redeem himself. Really his story is tragic all around. He's one of those characters I wanna give a deep hug too.

Character Descrption: Next up we have Lt. Dan Margolies in the 2000 adaptation of the comic series Faust, "Faust". He is a minor character in the story. We see him figure out the truth behind the occult organization ' The Hand ' and eventually turns around and joins the main villain M into capturing Jade and John Jaspers.

Why I love him: While this movie is heavily flawed, Jeffrey Combs and Andrew Divoff definitely made the movie 10x better for me. *side note: I should 100% make a favorite Andrew Divoff characters next, since he's up there with one of my favorite character actors* Anyways, Dan is a really cool character. While he may be your typical hard boiled cop, he has his own little Combs twist to him. I like the scene in the beginning where we see him tryna rizz up Jade, that part was so funny to me. I really wished we got more scenes with him. If I'd ever became a cop, I would love to have him as my Lt.

Character Description: For my next entry, I decided to pick H.P. Lovecraft from the 1993 adaptation of Necronomicon, " Necronomicon: Book of the Dead ". He is the character that guides us/ introduces us to the stories featured into the movie.

Why I love him: While the real H.P. Lovecraft wasn't really a good person himself, Jeffrey Combs portrayal of him in this movie is awesome. It's so cool seeing him in this role. I will say though, Jeffrey Combs looks really uncanny with the nose makeup to me for some reason. Other then that I enjoyed his portrayal of H.P. Lovecraft.

Character Description: For my next contestant, I picked Jay Brooks from the 1998 horror movie I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Jay is the hotel manager the main 4 meets when they first make it to the Bahamas. He is very incompetent to the 4 and dismissive.

Why I love him: While Jay is a very small character in the story ( He only has 2 scenes in total ) he was such an interesting character to me. I don't know why I like him when he isn't really that important to the story. I guess it's because it's cool to see Jeffrey Combs in that haircut ( someone said he looks like Joe Pantoliano ( another one of my favorite actors ) and I can see the resemblance ). Plus his night fit was so cool and weirdly attractive to me. Anyways I would 100% try to have small talk with him and try to make him open up more to me.

Character Description: Next up we got Shepard Lambrick from the 2013 horror movie Would You Rather. He is our main antagonist in the story. He is a very wealthy man, and we see him use this wealth by hosting a deadly twist on the game ' Would You Rather '.

Why I love him: Shepard is such a interesting villain to me. While he's your typical evil rich man, he's still enjoyable to watch. I really wanna steal a suit out of his closet, his suit looks really cool to me. It does suck that we don't see him get his comeuppance, the man is pure evil and it sucks to think he's still hosting that same game of ' Would You Rather '.

Character Description: Ok for my 2nd favorite Jeffrey Combs character, we have Dinosaur Bob from the 1994 crime and romance movie Love and a .45. Bob is one of the minor characters in the movie. He is part of a local mob and throughout the movie we see him try to pursue our 2 leads.

Why I love him: 3 reasons, the man is flamboyant, he has a really cool mustache and the mans can dress. I swear Bob is one of those characters I'm real down bad for. He is so fun to watch. The scene where him and Creepy Cody bust through the tattoo parlor and starts to mess around with one dude is so iconic. That chair sit and dance lives rent free in my head. I would 100% be the Bonnie to his Clyde.

Character Description: Now for my Number 1 pick I of course chose Milton Dammers from the 1996 horror comedy Frighteners. He is a minor villain in the movie. He is an FBI agent that specializes in cases that have something to do with the occult. Throughout the film we see him try to pursue and capture our lead Frank Bannister.

Why I love him: YOUR VIOLATING MY TERRITORIAL BUBBLE!! Anyways, this mans is the definition of goofy, silly, crazy, and weirdo. Every scene he's in is so captivating. I swear I can never get enough of Milton. Jeffrey for real went all out in this role, and I love that. While bro is insane, I can't help but to feel bad for him. You can tell all those cases he took in the past really did do damage to his head. And the fact bro has many damaging scars on his body, the mans for sure went through so much trauma.

There ya'll go! Those are my favorite Jeffrey Combs characters of all time. I do plan on seeing more of his work, as there is some I haven't touched yet. I've been a fan of his for awhile, he's definitely one of my favorite character actors of all time. He's one of those actors you can never get enough of. It's so easy to fall in love with his work since the man is so talented. While I don't expect this post to get any attention, I wanted to post this anyways for the Jeffrey Combs fans. Anyways, ya'll have a good day!

[venusiancarbondioxide]

some notes on fun

this is perhaps one of the more stupid things i've ever written in my life, but i feel like it might be important to make some notes on having fun because god forbid, another human being may run into these issues, and i'd like to give them a hand. in fact, i suspect most of them have, but i'm running into them later than most. i'm 25 years old and trying to figure out the concept of having fun in a way that i'm sure most people have figured out by age 10. but hey, better late than never, right?

some background: for most of my life, i've been an achievement-focused planner, all the way back to elementary school. i was the type of kid who would get a 93% on a test and then get mad at myself because i could've gotten a 100%. i really cared about doing well on standardized testing as a third grader. it was essential to me that i do well in those early school years so that i would get into the right classes in high school, and thus get into the right college and complete the right program to have a Good Career That Makes Me Happy, the kind of career where it's more of a thing that you are versus a job that you have. i was convinced that having the right career as a grown-up made you a happy person, and nobody in my life took any efforts to dissuade me of this notion. 

there were stumbles (thinking i wanted to be a professional novelist, that flopping because of the prospects of writers in the modern day, wanting be a lawyer, that flopping bc of my waning faith in the justice system, my brief forays into considering grad school, etc.), but even when i didn't have a plan, i was always Making A Plan. and having fun was allowed. i did things that were fun along the way! i was in girl scouts and irish tap and marching band and had a small group of friends and all of that. but the most important thing was always sticking to the plan. in my defense, there is a lot of societal messaging that says that this kind of career-and-education-focused life is the path to happiness and i was only a kid, so i don't blame myself for getting stuck in that trap. if you believe in astrology, blame it on the fact that my sun's in virgo, i guess. however, i owe it to myself to try and get out of it, especially now that i'm at a point in my life where all plans are gone.

like, really. i have no long-term plan for what the hell i’m doing. my last two "this is where i'm going with my life from now on" plans went up in smoke, most recently another attempt to go back to school. and i was in the process of trying to make another plan, my third "this is where my life is going for sure" plan in two years, when i realized i straight up don’t know what i want to do. i don’t know of anything that sounds enjoyable to me, honest-to-god. and i finally thought to myself, “what if i just have fun? what if my plan is to just have fun?” 

within reason, of course: i’m not going to quit my job with no backup plan just because my job isn’t fun. going to work is a bummer, but you know what’s worse? being evicted. i pick the least-evil of the two unfun evils. but really, what if my only plan was just to have fun? 

i threw that thought at my therapist thinking that she would say something like "having fun is important but it shouldn't be the main thing you focus on in your life" but she was like "yeah no, i think you should just try to have fun for a bit. i think you've been so focused on plans that you're not even sure what you think is fun anymore."

which, ouch, but she's not wrong. ii would not use the word "fun" to describe my current life, nor would i have used "fun" at any point in my life. fun was a thing you had on occasion when you had behaved well and earned it, not a thing your life could be.

but i want my life to be fun! so far, it hasn't, and i think that sucks. what’s the point of being alive if i’m not having fun? and the reasons i’m banned from trying to kill myself are too long to list, so i might as well try to enjoy my life. i am actively attempting fun and imparting the first lesson of fun i learned onto the uhhhhhh three people that have read all of this so far. 

if you have too much fun, it circles back around to not being fun anymore.

as a person who's had alcohol before in their life, you think i might have already known that one. to some extent, i did. too much drinking results in a hangover, too much fun running around the city makes your feet hurt, etc. a physical body has its limits. i have more than one chronic illness—i know that! but it also emotionally makes you feel like shit, which i didn't know. i was familiar with post-fun fatigue, but it was either a) physical exhaustion but mental satisfaction or b) a situation where something had gone wrong in the fun-having process. but now i have Learned. 

the way i learned this was exceedingly simple: i played stardew valley for 11 hours out of a 24-hour period. 

at the beginning of active fun-seeking (literally like, last week), i rediscovered the joy of stardew valley. i’ve always had fun playing stardew valley! so i played some after work when i would normally doomscroll and hey, much better. much more enjoyable. Having Fun, having a more fun day because i am actively taking time to do a thing i think is fun. but then i had a bad day at work on friday, came home, and played stardew valley for about five hours straight. i only realized how much time had passed once my ass physically started to hurt from sitting in the same spot for so long. and it was already close to midnight, so i had a late dinner and went to bed. 

the next day, i woke up at 7:30am and was annoyed that i had woken up so early, so i decided to play some more stardew valley about it. i stopped six hours later. i skipped breakfast and lunch in this process. my eyes were burning like a motherfucker. my ass hurt again, not to mention my wrist. i had a headache so bad that i had to take a four-hour nap (this was also partially due to the weather—my head always hurts when it rains). and emotionally? i felt somewhere between entirely empty and vaguely ashamed. nothing at all like my little post-work stardew sessions. i was so focused on the fun of the game that i had neglected food, consistent water intake, and basic cleanliness (i forwent a shower), and surprise, surprise, it turns out that makes you feel emotionally kind of shitty. getting that wrapped up in the fun circles back around to not being fun anymore. 

i assume all activities have a similar wall. the fun has to stop for basic things like food, water, showering, that pile of laundry i have to do, the dishes, all of that. doing a fun activity when you’re parched from not drinking any water for six hours and you have the dry mouth disease actually isn’t that fun. the same goes for if your hair feels slimy and your wrist kind of hurts and really any of that kind of discomfort. stop what you’re doing, do the minimum self-care stuff, and then you can go back to having fun if you want. 

so now i have a stardew valley limit: no more than three in-game days in a row, and i’m experimenting with no more than five in-game days per regular day total. that would be a little over an hour of stardew valley per day, which is around what my post-work stardew sessions were anyways. it turns out that a small part of me had it right from the start; good for her! hopefully i’ll get lucky and her accidental wisdom will strike again. 

[neversetyoufree]

in the last ep of the anime, i noticed that it cut out to the ending directly before vanitas could actually take noes hand, and i wondered if that was referencing what noe said about vanitas at the beginning.

Oh that's such a good catch! You're absolutely right anon, and I think we can take your idea even further than that.

I've talked about this in a previous post, but VnC's running refrain of Noé reaching for Vanitas's hand is really symbolic. Noé has saved Vanitas from literally falling multiple times, but their entire relationship is also one big metaphorical outstretched hand. Vanitas is "falling" down toward his inevitable doom as he self destructs via his revenge, and Noé is grasping out desperately as he tries to catch him and save him from that fate.

"That day when I didn't grab your hand" (which I assume, along with killing him, is what you mean by "what Noé said about Vanitas") might refer to a future event in which Noé will literally fail to catch Vanitas. But more importantly, it's a reference to the larger truth. By Noé's definition of salvation—in terms of preventing his death, Noé is going to fail to save Vanitas. No amount of reaching out can prevent his ultimate fall.

Within this metaphor, then, the scene on the rooftop after the amusement park can be summed up simply. It's the scene where Vanitas finally lets himself reach for Noé's offered hand.

I mean this in three ways.

The first way is the literal way. The scene ends with Vanitas reaching up to take Noé's hand and be helped to his feet. And despite the sheer frequency of Noé reaching out for or trying to catch Vanitas, this is only the second time we see Vanitas actually reach up and take Noé's hand to be helped of his own accord. The only other time is in the catacombs, right before he decides to tell Noé about Doctor Moreau for the first time.

In the catacombs, Vanitas taking Noé's hand works as a symbolic gesture of trust and an acceptance of Noé's help with the Moreau case. Noé has been forcing his help on Vanitas up until this point, staying up late by the door just to follow him out, but taking his hand is the moment that Vani starts to willingly bring him into the fold. The literal is never just literal with these guys.

The second way comes when Vanitas tells Noé that he's "given up on making him do what he wants." As I said, Noé has spent the entire manga reaching out and trying to save Vanitas from his "fall." One major facet of that is his recurring refusal to let Vanitas isolate himself. He makes a willful declaration of staying by his side when Vanitas tries to dismiss him in the bell tower, and when Vanitas tries to cut Noé out of his life by the blade of a knife, Noé comes back with "I will never set you free." Vanitas wants, or at least claims he wants, Noé to leave him the hell alone, but Noé says no every time.

"Giving up on making Noé do what he wants," then, means that Vanitas has finally let himself accept that he wants Noé by his side. There's no more pretending he doesn't want his help or his presence. No more trying to shove Noé away every time he's upset. At least in this moment (though we'll have to see if he holds himself to it), Vanitas has admitted that he wants Noé and Noé's supportiveness in his life.

Mochijun even uses a flashback panel to be sure we know exactly what Vanitas means here. It's that important.

Giving up on trying to push Noé away is one very significant way in which Vanitas has accepted the metaphorical outstretched hand. He's admitting he wants Noé, and Noé's presence means the presence of love and help. It means the end of self-isolation as a maladaptive coping technique. Of course he's going to reach up and accept Noé's literal offer to help him to his feet in the same scene that he finally tells Noé he'll stop trying to get rid of him.

The third way is, of course, when Vanitas says that he wants Noé to be the one to kill him.

Now, this is not how Noé wanted Vanitas to interpret his outstretched hand. Unlike his loved ones, Noé does not see killing and being killed as a way to show love or to save someone. His offer of salvation is meant to be an offer to save Vanitas from his self-destruction. But Vanitas does not want to be saved that way. And given that the manga begins with the statement that Noé will kill him someday, we know that Vanitas cannot be saved by Noé's definition.

However, Vanitas does not share Noé's definition of salvation. I don't know if Vanitas himself could even put words to his personal idea of salvation. But we know from multiple examples that it can sometimes include the gift of a kind death to prevent a worse life. That's the kind of salvation he offers when he returns a curse bearer's True Name despite knowing that it will kill them.

I have a lot of thoughts about the kind of salvation Vanitas could find in Noé, but for the purposes of this scene, this idea of a preferable death is a big one. Vanitas would rather die than lose his humanity, and this is an extremely vulnerable thing for him. Saying that he wants Noé to kill him is, in his own way, accepting Noé's unspoken offer of salvation. He's saying "I want you to be the one to save me in the one way that I can accept."

Vanitas cannot envision a life for himself, and thanks to the way Luna's Mark is rewriting him, it's likely that a long life as his human self would be impossible even if he weren't suicidal. But though it's still not healthy behavior, his request for death is, in his own terms, taking up the hand that Noé has extended. It's a grasp for salvation by a man that cannot admit that he wants to be saved.

And that brings me back to your original point, anon. Because Vanitas reaches up for Noé's hand, and that is incredibly important, but in both the anime and the manga, we do not get to see him take it. The meaning of this depends on what definition of salvation you analyze the scene through.

By Noé's definition, we know that Vanitas cannot and will not be saved. As he says in the beginning, Noé is going to kill him someday. There will be a day when he will fail to grab his hand, and Vanitas will finally fall to the gravity of his doom. So in that way, it makes sense that even in the most optimistic of scenes, we have to cut away before Vanitas can actually take Noé's hand. He might be letting himself reach for it now, and that's a good thing, but Noé is never actually going to be able to pull him up. To show us otherwise in a scene so full of symbolism and foreshadowing would be a lie.

However, as I keep saying, Noé's definition of salvation isn't the only one at play. As much as Vanitas's death will not be prevented, the fact remains that he is still finally letting himself reach for salvation in some form. So perhaps we can cut away as soon as he starts to reach not because he'll never be saved, but because the thing that matters in this scene is the reaching itself. Noé has become a supportive constant in Vanitas's life. He's just reaffirmed that he won't change, that he'll continue to support Vanitas from beside him.

We don't need to see Noé take Vanitas's hand once he starts reaching because that is a foregone conclusion. It's Vanitas's decision to reach that needs the emphasis of being the final shot, because that's the heart of the moment.

In the manga, Vanitas reaches up, and we cut to the sunlit sky. This whole scene, in addition to the running thread of reaching hands and salvation, has an overarching symbol in the end of the rain. Vanitas and Noé's horrible fight was in the storm, the rain patters to its end as they make up, and the sun breaks through the clouds as they reaffirm their pledges to one another and Noé re-offers Vanitas his hand. It's simple but effective pathetic fallacy.

So to that end, Vanitas reaches up to take Noé's offer to help him stand (reaches up to take some version of his promise of salvation), and we cut to the sunlit sky. Noé has brought the sunlight back as he offers his hand to Vanitas. Joy and light and hope return as Noé's love for and desire to save Vanitas are reestablished. Then Vanitas reaches toward that light, and we cut to the sunbeams to make sure you know just what he's reaching toward.

This works well for the end of a story arc! The weather symbol has been a constant throughout the whole amusement park arc, so of course the chapter that marks its end has to be capped off with an image of the clouds breaking. It's a closing note that pulls together Vanitas's reaching for salvation, the weather symbolism, and 55.5's general tone of relief.

Meanwhile, the anime switches things so that we see the sunbeams first, and then Vanitas reaching for Noé's hand is the final shot of the whole entire show. And for once, I actually really like this little change! The manga's order of images works well as a resolution for its chapter and its story arc, but the anime's version works really well as a possible end for the story overall.

The VnC anime may or may not ever get another season, so for the foreseeable future, Vanitas reaching for Noé's hand is the end of the show. This gives that shot a lot of emphasis. In fact, it kind of makes it the meaning of the whole thing.

Noé spends the whole anime reaching out and trying to offer a hand of salvation to Vanitas, and the final shot of the whole thing is Vanitas letting himself reach up to take it. We don't end on the shot of their clasping hands, but the shot of the reaching, because Vanitas's decision to accept some form of salvation is the thing the whole show has been building towards. It's the decision to reach up that makes the whole story.

So though they go about it in very slightly different ways, the manga and the anime are still both making meaning out of the simple act of Vanitas reaching. That's the core of the whole thing.

And overall, though I've framed "we cut away because Noé won't actually be able to stop his fall/grab his hand" and "we cut away because the decision to reach is the important part" as two opposing interpretations, I actually think their co-existence is key. Vnc's whole story is a conflict between Noé and Vanitas's definitions of salvation. The tension of their relationship isn't "will Noé find a way to save Vanitas from death?" (He won't). The tension is "will Noé find some other way to save Vanitas before his death?" and "will he be able to recognize that alternate salvation as salvation if/once Vanitas claims it?"

VnC is a story about a doomed man who might in some way be saved. Chapter 55.5 cuts away before we see Vanitas actually take Noé's hand because he is doomed to fall someday and not reach that hand when it matters most, but also because the thing that matters in this scene is that he decides to reach up at all. Vanitas is going to die, so any hope and optimism in his story must make peace with the doom of him. His healing from his trauma and accepting love and help happens while he is hurtling rapidly toward his ending. That's the beauty and the tension of Vanoé's relationship (and the beauty and tension of VnC as a whole).

So to answer your question anon, yes. We cut away before Vanitas reaches Noé's hand because, as we're told in the beginning, he will not ultimately reach Noé's salvation. But at the same time, the whole point of the rooftop scene is that Vanitas does want to accept some kind of salvation, and he just might manage do it. It all depends on how he can be saved.