#just have a terrible personality

[piastrination]

I KNOW WHAT U TELL UR FRIENDS!!

[bigfatbreak]

Birds of a Feather previous / next

[angry-kid-with-no-money]

"Nora doesn't know anything about the things she writes about" "aftg is terrible queer rep" "the queer characters in aftg are so problematic"

Idk guys maybe the book series abt problematic ppl set in 2006 and written in the mid 2010s shouldn't be expected to hold up against scrutiny of what we consider to be moral and correct now, in 2024

Idk tho, idk

[corpsentry]

pick your battles

[infernal-lamb]

some rushed doodles of our new goat darling........I have so many plans for them

[ollierachnid]

Coloured renditions of my initial swapped-ghostbusters au, now featuring the rest of them!

(I will explain roles/dynamics at some point soon, I swear, but my main note is that the key aspects of the characters' personalities remain consistent with canon and so changes have been made to the narrative to fit better)

[fury161]

portraits for a de au i think about a little bit

[fisherrprince]

some of what’s up with this guy

edit: can you pretend I wrote “after” instead of “before” THANX

[crabsnpersimmons]

have been feeling under the weather lately, so i daydreamed a silly nurse moon to take care of me

also couldn't decide which i liked better so i leave the choice to you, brave patient. which nurse will you choose?

[littlebigmouse]

"Reigen was extorting free labor from Mob", "Mob working at spirits and such is child labor"

I mean yes kinda but also that is so not the point.

Reigen and Mob first met when Mob was ten. Mob asked if he could come back. Mob needed companionship and life advice and a safe space to hang out, all of which Reigen provided. Mob gets paid in pocket change and food and snacks at the office. In return, Reigen gets to not die a horrible and gruesome death once a week.

It's a mentoring relationship. They're friends.

Mob doesn't need money. Mob isn't at the office to get money. If Mob genuinely needed and wanted a part time job, then yeah, 300 yen an hour is bullshit and he should book it out of there. But the two just needed an excuse for Mob to hang out and Mob meeting spirits and going to excorcisms was probably helping a lot with feeling in control of his powers in the first place.

Is it always the healthiest friendship? Absolutely not. It's explicitly adressed that Reigen has come to rely on Mob a little too much sometimes and increasingly doesn't respect his boundaries. That's also what made Mob bail in five seconds flat and he only came back when Reigen apologized. Not because Mob wanted the 300 yen give or take a bowl of ramen and some plant seeds back. But because these were friends having a conflict and they talked it out and wanted to hang out again.

Do you think Mob has a work contract? Set work hours? Do you think either of them care?

They are friends, your honour, who cares about the pocket change.

[prismatiger]

Tell me your opinions on the stuff. Any stuff.

Grins. Smiles, even

I'm using you as an excuse to infodump my theory about the Island because I've had no in to do that, and my theory is pure opinion. Anyways:

THE ISLAND IS STUCK IN THE FUCKING FUTURE

(SCARE CHORD)

Hi so you might ask me. What the fuck do you mean by that. Well. Let's start with what we know about the Island, the King, and Wish Craft. (long ass post under cut. sorry)

The Island was redacted from the perception of outside world, via Wish Craft.

Wish Craft has the power to enable Time Craft. We see this primarily through Siffrin's timeloops, but also through the King's powers.

One of the King's powers is to show the saviors a "vision of the future."

...And this same attack is deflected back at the King by Mirabelle in ACT 5, in which the King is able to see the Island before being frozen in time.

...So. The King's "vision of the future." We're never told explicitly what this vision is. All we know is that it's apparently powerful enough to wipe the party in one hit, hearing it from a distance hurts your head, and that whatever Siffrin (and Loop) saw, they don't seem to actually be able to describe it. Even the King himself doesn't know what his vision entails.

We don't know whether the party all sees the same thing when struck by the vision, and Adrienne's answer to the question about it in the Reddit AMA is. vague? It's not a "no," and the specific wording makes me think the answer might be yes. But that's me reading into it.

Now. What do we know about the Island's redaction? The Island was affected by the wish recently, as in "like a decade ago" recently. We know that nobody in Vaugarde or the rest of the world is capable of thinking about the Island, anything closely tied to the Island's culture, or people on the Island for very long. When they do recall these things, they slip right out of reach. Particularly, the consequence for trying to think about the Island (or, more specifically, break the wish that forces the Island out of perception) is significant pain, localized in the head.

And that said pain is enough to become lethal, if pressed hard enough.

From here forward I'm running with the assumption that the King's "vision of the future" is not personalized to any individual, and is unchanging throughout the course of the whole story. Now. Remember the end of ACT 5, where the King gets hit with the deflected "vision of the future", and instead of dying, he recalls the Island and gets frozen in time? Very odd, yeah? Why wouldn't the King just die like everyone else does? He even does take 9999 damage when trying to say its name, like Siffrin does, and like the party does when they're hit by the attack.

Well. We know that he has a "true wish" that the ability to freeze Vaugarde in time grants. I don't think it's at all a stretch to guess that the King's "true wish" is to be able to remember the Island. My personal guess is that the King (and Siffrin) brought this "true wish" into effect via the "SAY ITS NAME" sequence- he even tries three times, a significant number in wishing.

The King (and Siffrin's) wish breaks, because it can't be fulfilled in this moment without breaking the wish to prevent the Island from being thought about. However. Consider the conditions at the end of ACT 5- the King sees the vision of the future reflected back to him, and what he sees is the Island. He remembers the Island, fulfilling his own wish, and is frozen in time. I consider this a compromise between his wish and the one binding the Island- the King gets to remember the Island, but nobody alive is able to think about it, because he's frozen in time; it's like the Universe is correcting itself (I WILL GET BACK TO THIS). The wish of all of Vaugarde to defeat the King is fulfilled, since he is no longer a threat, and Siffrin's wish wraps itself up soon after.

MY POINT BEING. The King's attack is a vision of the future. This "future" is of the Island, in some uncorrupted state. The saviors see it when he attacks them, and he sees it when it is deflected back to him.

The logical next question is "okay, so the Island exists in the future, but how do you know time shenanigans are even related to the Island?"

Recall a very odd series of interactions throughout the game, in which you try to interact with a piece of equipment that you already own.

The game rewinds slightly, before the item disappears, as the Universe corrects itself.

This is awfully similar to two particular events: looping back without seeing the death screen, and talking to the Daydreaming One about her sister. The latter is more interesting to me for the purposes of this theory.

In both instances, something is misaligned within the Universe (an item existing in two places, someone remembering something they're not supposed to) and it is corrected through some sort of rewind. Also compare the dialogue above to when you try to give Mirabelle the Stylish Bow when you already own it.

The world glitches, but Siffrin defuses the situation before the Universe has to intervene. Omitted from the screenshot is the fact that Mirabelle's portraits switch to happy from "catastrophically anxious" with no transition after Siffrin shows her where the bow is. Important to note is that when Mirabelle tries to recall receiving the bow, her head hurts, much like how trying to break the Island wish causes a headache.

The Universe leads you away from perception, and you can only follow.

My theory that I keep circling around is that through Wish Craft, the Island has been displaced temporally. The denizens of the Island, as well as the Island itself, still exist, but they are in the future. The Island is still loaded into the world, like how equipment is before you try to interact with it, and the Island cannot leave this quantum state, because it never actually went anywhere. The magnitude of the redaction event is so severe with the Island, because it is so much larger as an entity than a sword or a bow. There are of course things I don't really have pieced together, like why somebody would wish the Island into the future, how far into the future it is, or why equipment behaves this way. But it's the only Island theory I've seen that I have some level of confidence in, so I might as well lay out my cards for it.

[serpentface]

Wardin provincial tax magistrate on the annual Apomalo Tlinya (phrase close in meaning to 'journey of the late (autumn) sun'), which is a tax collection tour.

His station is marked by his white cloak, royal blue belt, gullfeather khattanocuy, the ability to bear a sword, and a scroll containing documents stamped with the Usoma's seal confirming his identity and authority. He does not travel alone, but is accompanied by a large retinue of scribes, soldiers, advisors, and servants.

All citizens have tax obligations regardless of class, and these are owed primarily in grain and livestock. This is based in this internal economy being predominantly a barter system (with its coin currency having direct value as precious metals and serving as a means of establishing fixed values for various trade goods) and heavily reliant on agricultural goods. It is significantly more difficult to evade or cheat on taxes when what you owe can be established by sight, measured in hard to miss livestock and fields of crops.

As such, taxes are collected via annual tours in which these magistrates (personally appointed by the Usoma and collecting in his name) tour their lands in person. The Apomalo Tlinya serves multiple purposes. It is primarily a method of collecting tax, but also doubles as a way to assess a province's agricultural wealth and well-being as a whole and to take an official census of the population.

This routine act of taxation has been integrated into official religious practice, being looped in with the bounty of the harvest season and thanksgiving to the face Inyamache for having provided the necessary long summer sunlight as the days grow shorter. The actual Apomalo Tlinya begins upon the official celebrations of the New Maize day in each capital city (usually observed on a separate day at the actual end of the harvest for each village), where the festival ends with the tax party leaving the city in procession. The magistrate always ceremonially rides a red bull khait, bearing a solar disk framed by royal dual-viper insignia on its horns. The bull's journey is compared to the ideal seasonal behavior of the sun, generating new life out of rain-fertile earth and then 'dying' after the harvest to allow for the rains to come. Villages who host the Apomalo Tlinya entourage each night experience a fringe benefit via permission to introduce any receptive mares to the bull and possibly get some (very valuable) calves out of it. The bull will be sacrificed at the end of the journey in a final act of thanksgiving, in hopes this offering will help ensure the next year is bountiful.

The attempted veneer of solar thanksgiving and harvest cheer aside, the Apomalo Tlinya visit is enjoyed by just about no one (except for perhaps the people lucky enough to get a pretty khait calf out of it), as it entails the personal loss of some of this aforementioned harvest. Nobility owe SUBSTANTIALLY higher taxes than commoners (given that they are considered to Own the majority of the crops/livestock, which is only Tended by their land's peasants), though the actual tax burden is proportionately steeper on the peasantry (whose tax obligations will come primarily out of their allotted share of the harvest, and/or any livestock they raise on the side). Taxes don't tend to be outright devastating in years with average crop yields, but an already bad year can be made ruinous by this visit. The timing also coincides with seasonal harvest festivities. A few unlucky villages every year may have their New Maize feast day interrupted by the sound of horns and a small legion of white-clad taxmen bearing down to collect.

Each province has only one tax magistrate, making this a lengthy and logistically complicated undertaking. It begins at the end of the harvest season (late summer), and the rounds may not finish until early winter. While it might be easier to divide these duties among a greater number of less-powerful officials, this allows taxation to remain Relatively centralized and performed by trusted appointees (often friends or relatives of the Usoma himself). This has had side effects of these officials becoming especially powerful individuals within each province, with very little checks in place to prevent corruption (beyond hope for sustained loyalty, often reinforced with special privileges and favors). Flagrant abuse of this system is rare, but more unpopular magistrates are commonly suspected to leverage additional off-the-books taxes for their own personal gain.

[angelofthe2000s]

Blah blah blah Buffy’s so mean to Spike blah blah. Have you considered that he deserves it? That he likes it, even?

[alienfailboy]

please remember that luke skywalker adopted rey and fin a few years after marrying din djarin and and opening his jedi school on mandalor with their green rat son.

[gingermintpepper]

In my Zeus bag today so I'm just gonna put it out there that exactly none of the great Ancient Greek warrior-heroes stayed loyal and faithful and completely monogamous and yet none of them have their greatness questioned nor do we question why they had the cultural prominence that they did and still do.

Jason, the brilliant leader of the Argo, got cold feet when it came to Medea - already put off by some of her magic and then exiled from his birthland because of her political ploys, he took Creusa to bed and fully intended on marrying her despite not properly dissolving things with Medea.

Theseus was a fierce warrior and an incredibly talented king but he had a horrible temper and was almost fatally weak to women. This is the man who got imprisoned in the Underworld for trying to get a friend laid, the man who started the whole Attic War because he couldn't keep his legs closed.

And we cannot at all forget Heracles for whom a not inconsiderable amount of his joy in life was loving people then losing the people around him that he loved. Wives, children, serving boys, mentors, Heracles had a list of lovers - male and female - long enough to rival some gods and even after completing his labours and coming down to the end of his life, he did not have one wife but three.

And y'know what, just because he's a cultural darling, I'll put Achilles up here too because that man was a Theseus type where he was fantastic at the thing he was born to do (that is, fight whereas Theseus' was to rule) but that was not enough to eclipse his horrid temper and his weakness to young pretty things. This is the man that killed two of Apollo's sons because they wouldn't let him hit - Tenes because he refused to let Achilles have his sister and Troilus who refused Achilles so vehemently that he ran into Apollo's temple to avoid him and still couldn't escape.

All four of these men are still celebrated as great heroes and men. All four of these men are given the dignity of nuance, of having their flaws treated as just that, flaws which enrich their character and can be used to discuss the wider cultural point of what truly makes a hero heroic. All four of these men still have their legacies respected.

Why can that same mindset not be applied to Zeus? Zeus, who was a warrior-king raised in seclusion apart from his family. Zeus who must have learned to embrace the violence of thunder for every time he cried as a babe, the Corybantes would bang their shields to hide the sound. Zeus learned to be great because being good would not see the universe's affairs in its order.

The wonderful thing about sympathy is that we never run out of it. There's no rule stopping us from being sympathetic to multiple plights at once, there's no law that necessitate things always exist on the good-evil binary. Yes, Zeus sentenced Prometheus to sufferation in Tartarus for what (to us) seems like a cruel reason. Prometheus only wanted to help humans! But when you think about Prometheus' actions from a king's perspective, the narrative is completely different: Prometheus stole divine knowledge and gifted it to humans after Zeus explicitly told him not to. And this was after Prometheus cheated all the gods out of a huge portion of wealth by having humans keep the best part of a sacrifice's meat while the gods must delight themselves with bones, fat and skin. Yes, Zeus gave Persephone away to Hades without consulting Demeter but what king consults a woman who is not his wife about the arrangement of his daughter's marriage to another king? Yes, Zeus breaks the marriage vows he set with Hera despite his love of her but what is the Master of Fate if not its staunchest slave?

The nuance is there. Even in his most bizarre actions, the nuance and logic and reason is there. The Ancient Greeks weren't a daft people, they worshipped Zeus as their primary god for a reason and they did not associate him with half the vices modern audiences take issue with. Zeus was a father, a visitor, a protector, a fair judge of character, a guide for the lost, the arbiter of revenge for those that had been wronged, a pillar of strength for those who needed it and a shield to protect those who made their home among the biting snakes. His children were reflections of him, extensions of his will who acted both as his mercy and as his retribution, his brothers and sisters deferred to him because he was wise as well as powerful. Zeus didn't become king by accident and it is a damn shame he does not get more respect.

[canisalbus]

Alright.

.