#its also all very famous

[nickbutnodick]

for my followers who have never been to nyc: it is smelly. and has lots of people.

[fauvester]

something something seeing things through different eyes

[08-47]

mirage chilling wit the kagome veggie juice pack

[neon--nightmare]

forest fire by ajj is SUCH a loveball fresh song to me bro

[no-light-left-on]

thinking still about how the Heart calls the Whalers 'puppets' and the amount of mystery there is around them, when playing as Corvo and perceiving them through the Heart, in comparison to how they are in reality.

we see them talk to each other in a manner any people would. they consider insubordination, they talk badly of Daud behind his back, we have Billie betray him. there are some that are loyal, yes, be it because they believe in Daud or because they see gain in this path, but by no means are they a monolyth.

however, we do hear from the Heart about a 'fog that surrounds them and hides their secrets' and it is even confirmed, by Billie (and also Galia in the books) that leaving Daud made them 'think clearly for the first time in years'

I've seen a couple theories and I do want to dive into each, to an extent.

there's the suggestion of the Heart talking badly of them, calling them mindless drones that only kill out of hatred and hurt. which, valid. the Heart also says certain things about Daud, 'why did you bring me here? do you expect me to forgive him?', so it's not unlikely that their attitude towards human lives and their willingness to kill for Daud is repulsive enough that the Heart does not see past it

another option is that the mindless puppets is more of a metaphor and is meant to talk about how the Whalers are, in a sense, a cult. which would be incredibly interesting to explore if we had more information on how the Whalers function. now I do want to point out that by cult I do not mean it in a Secluded Religious Organization but as a sociological thing. a literal cult if you will, with a leader that charms their followers, the seclusion and all the unhealthy attitudes of losing oneself to the group. and, that does check out - the loss of individuality, they are as one, following someone's orders without hesitation, someone they would die for. there are a lot of unsavory implications here (if you know how cults work, you probably had some cross your mind already), but arguably Daud is not charming enough to be a proper cult leader. the appeal is the magic, and his excellent skills as an assassin and a leader. maybe it's because of the time we see the Whalers at, right before a collapse, but Daud is regularly doubted and we see a lot of insubordination. the Whalers are not necessarily loyal to him because of who he is as a person. they want the power, they want the influence, maybe the protection, and the things keeping them from disobeying are fear, rather than loyalty.

the third thought or theory is, then, that many of these symptoms can be explained by the influence of the Void. we know the Void affects people, both physically as we see with Delilah's Witches or the Eyeless, as it influences them mentally, if the high numbers of people going mad because of their worship are something to go by. if, then, the Whalers are bound to the Void through Daud, it only makes sense that they would be influenced by this link to something that messes with people's brains. Galia saying she feels better after her Arcane Bond faded could easily mean that the influence the Void had on her has faded, and the creeping madness of it has subsided significantly.

all of these most likely come into play. one of the Heart's lines in dh2, if we point at a Witch, is reciting some of the recipes the Witches chant before quickly apologising. we do learn significantly more about them than we do about the Whalers, of course, possibly because Jessamine has more ill will towards the Whalers than to the Witches. still we see the Void affect the Heart. there is also a notion that the Witches are 'not quite human' due to their Arcane bond.

there's no real conclusion. it's just interesting

[thatonefreemanversefic]

Bad news gang :( This Freeman Friday is turning into a Cicero Saturday, and not in the fun double update way, but in the slow update way. I wanted to wrap up things tonight but the vibes are really bad for me rn (my therapy has been reschedule for the 4TH time in a row chat I am NOT doing all that great tbh) and tomorrow I will quite literally be busy all day. 6am to 10pm there is not a speck of time I will be able to slip away to write or anything, so uhh jumpscare I actually have things I do outside of fanfiction, crazy right?

TLDR; Update will be a day late for the sake of my mental health and busy schedule.

[mariatesstruther]

everyone look at this very important picture of gabriel and smaranda luna

[wiretism]

We need to start treating bad writing like bad art and im not kidding

[frobby]

reol is doing the opening for blue exorcist season 4 instead of uverworld and i know yall are broken up about it but does it make you feel better if you know reol did the song where kagamine len sings about how big his dick is and nothing else?

[quatregats]

What is a scholastic magazine? When I saw the goncharov post to me it looked like the english textbooks we had in high school (in a non-english country, so english were taught as a foreign language). It's not the case, then?

Scholastic is a publishing company which publishes a lot of children's books in the US, and they have a magazine which is designed to be used in primary school classrooms so that young students can practice reading comprehension and media literacy, it has lots of little articles that teachers in my school would sometimes assign us to read when we were like 9 or 10 years old. It makes sense that it looks like English textbooks, though, because it's basically the same thing but for native English speakers who are just learning to read.

Edit/addition: Looking through the notes, it seems like a lot of people thought it was Scholastic Magazine, but it might actually be a magazine for English learners, so honestly who knows what it was. It totally might be your textbooks, ignore everyone else :')

[volfoss]

actually yeah im making a quick poll on this. for anyone who has been around long enough to remember when i made my massive clamp readathon situation (in which i read every single one of the works they put out) be everyones problem. hi. im doing it again but much worse now. reading about 400 volumes (and more if i can find more) of tezuka osamu's work. i am just curious on the general consensus of if i should upload thoughts as i read each one (ie: one post being like i finished kimba/jungle kingdom, heres my thoughts) or just have a MASSIVE post of hey. read them all heres my thoughts (as i did with clamp. which is when i found out tumblr had a max text limit)

[sideblogdotjpeg]

sol is so endearing to me because he loves doing things for and making stuff for his friends. but also hes not very good at it. my failking

[altruistic-meme]

there is this tiktok that i have saved from last week when there were only like 4 gas stations open here and every time i remember it i just. the video was filmed literally right behind my apartment. i drive that road almost DAILY. i can literally see those signs FROM MY BED. that's MY HOME.

[toestalucia]

the dude on the gbf team who loves writing men falling in love with cheerful, older women and then having said wife DIE in front of her husband has been working very hard this year

[agonizedembrace]

Question to you Evelynn what was the reason for you to make the Villain's song. I heard a rumor that you made it because you were a fan of Karthus, from Pentakill. To be fair to the rumors. It's potentially true.

And there were rumors that people, mostly men. you were in a relationship with before. Were unheard or unseen afterwards. The speculation of their disappearance is because said such relationships. How would you refute and debunk that.

[daily-linkclick]

Regarding your tags about the overseas trip... Maybe Qiao Ling's father has landlord money and offered to pay for Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi's trip abroad... but it got added onto the debt they needed to pay later?? Just throwing out theories at this point

yeah most likely! the thing that bothers me most is how lu guang got that same good grace when he never grew up alongside qiao ling - which makes me believe he had his own money until after college. unless qiao ling's father was insanely kind, i just find it hard to believe that he'd pay for more than one kid when he's already paying for two