#no plot makes sense anymore

[buscandoelparaiso]

how many helicopter incidents will happen in grey's anatomy every season before the show ends

[ladykyriaa]

I think one thing I'm gonna say to the people who are, in a way conflicted and/or waiting to watch the series is that you're honestly gonna have to be okay with grey areas. That's literally it.

KnH isn't going to explicitly show nor tell you how good/bad things are. it's an incredibly realistic story set in ancient China tackling its many issues; starting from societal problems, political, norms, gender roles, and so on. What might be problematic now isn't necessarily something the characters are going to think about more than twice.

I think a slightly controversial example would have to be abt the pedo emperor. YES, an incredibly horrible person and deserves to die in the most painful way possible. But KnH also tackled the issue that he had been human, all too pathetic and pitiful to rightfully rule the empire-never had the spine to talk to proper women thus resulting in him only talking and being attracted to (gag) little girls. You're not gonna see the characters talk ill of him more than necessary, they know its fucked up and frankly weird, but there's nothing to be done but to live with the consequences of his actions.

(Why I set this as a grey example is because I've seen people expecting the pedo to be this horrid-abusive person-and he is of course- but they certainly weren't expecting him to be depicted so pitifully and hurt, like he himself was a literal child still in need of protecting.)

don't also expect the characters to do one good thing after another just because you expect them to. Under different situations, different feelings, different place, their choices vary from one another depending on what's necessary. Don't even expect their relationship to be one linear from start to finish, thinking you can guess which way its gonna go.

in fact this is what maomao says when Jinshi questions her explicitly about their relationship

and i just think this genuinely applies to the series as a whole. Natsu Hyuuga isn't going to outrightly spell it out for y'all what Maomao nor Jinshi feels for each other, what the empress dowager feels for the pedo, what Ah-duo feels for the emperor and vice versa. She expects people to understand and come to their own conclusion.

She pieces together puzzles and expects you to fit them together, if you somehow got a different result from the way she intended then, well, that's on you I guess.

don't expect a "yes" or "no" answer to whatever questions you're about to ask. There's always gonna be a "but" and "however" to it, I think. At least from my experience of reading the novel and questioning the choices they've made.

People in this fandom throw away the word SA so easily, TOO easily I'd say. from here on out you're gonna read a lot more "problematic" things that other characters have done that they think are more or less for the good-whether that be their own good or other characters' sake.

The anime honestly does paint the series in a lighthearted way, and compared to other series it's certainly not as "dark". However I do think the strength of this series lay in its realistic choices and stories, how the characters feel so utterly human, not just driven by plot.

[ineed-to-sleep]

I forgot about how killing eve's writing just starts getting progressively worse the more season 3 goes on. Like girl what happened to my show.......... my characters......... what did they DO to villanelle...................... and where is EVE

[amber-angel]

What's the POINT?????

I half expected Misty's fucking chocolate martini to be poisoned, that's how out of left field these stupid plotlines are getting

[squidling2005]

last night i had a dream about mouthwashing and it started out with the scene where swansea has the axe raised above daisukes head, and swansea says "close your eyes, daisuke." and so he closes his eyes and the axe comes down, and then he opens his eyes and shoots up into a sitting position and finds himself alone in the room, and he's like "...was that a dream...?" and anya appears out of nowhere and sits next to him and is like "you're ok now, daisuke." and daisuke is all freaked out and crying "i was so scared"

and anya hugs him and says "i know, daisuke." and they hold each other for a while, and then daisuke is like "where is everyone else..?" and anya smiles sadly and stands up, holding her hand out, and daisuke takes her hand and follows her out of the room and into the med-bay and he finds swansea crouched in front of something leaning against the wall, and curly is in the bed and jimmy is there too ig.

daisuke looks relieved and says "swansea! you're ok!!" and swansea turns and looks at daisuke and he has this heartbroken look on his face and daisuke is like "..whats.. going on..?" and jimmy isn't reacting to anything they're doing, but when daisuke looks over swanseas shoulder he sees himself, leaned up against the wall with his head caved in from the axe. next to him is anya, her face bloody, and swansea, with bullet holes in his head. and daisuke stares, not quite grasping what he's looking at, and the anya that walked in with him puts her hand on daisukes shoulder comfortingly, and swansea looks away, looking guilty, and daisuke is on the verge of a panic, not understanding, and he's like "n-no, i. i woke up, right? it was just a dream, right??"

and then i woke up. and it was just a dream.

[tavina-writes]

I'm not exactly sure how I want to phrase this yet, but I think a lot of the utterly weird takes I see sometimes float by me on our cursed blue hellsite (esp when it comes to mdzscql fandom) is coming from a refusal to meet the genre where it's at.

Like, why are we trying to interrogate classism in MDZS society, MDZS is a romance, the societal worldbuilding is just enough to support some general big ideas and the provide context for the romance. We can't get ANY kind of read on general classim/sexism/anything else from. this source material. if you think you can get granular when your sample size of characters from various social and gender strata are so small and we don't know how the vast majority of people in here live you are making stuff up.

Like, meet the story where it's at: it's a romance novel.

[wackywatchdotcom]

before i go do smth else like smth i think abt often but was thinking abt a few hrs ago in particular is how the circus easily tricks the audience into thinking the circus would be Better Than Real Life. when i think from literally almost any angle you examine it its just as bad (if not worse, depending on your own problems)

i think theres like so many problems its hard to even list them all. some of it is personal taste things. cus i think a lot of people think itd be fun because they enjoy specific aesthetic choices in the circus, or bc of other interest related things. but like. what about people who HATE bright colors. what about people who dont like the idea of not being human. what about people who dont enjoy things like roleplaying. some aspects of the circus are only even appealing to specific tastes in things, making one of the few 'draws' of it not really even being a universal thing

and thats the superficial stuff. because more importantly, if you dont like the real world (for whatever reason), the circus may provide a temporary solution to that, because its so far removed from reality. but i think the circus is way smaller than people realize. theres definitely always going to be things to see since caine can always make things, but its just as limited if not more than the real world, because while the world grows and changes, genuinely new things are created and discovered and stuff. caine will never really get to see that, let alone recreate it for the players- and even then, it still isnt actually that thing. that doesnt even factor in that caine is already operating on limited knowledge of the real world. its not clear how detailed he can get on things, since the accuracy can vary (spudsys being so accurate to the real world, vs the dinner in ep 1 being so flat and lacking almost any detail), but theres a good chance that anything he makes is going to be limited to, at the most, a CONCEPT from the real world, if theres nothing in the real world you like, thats still all youll get, just in a different way.and if you DO like things from the real world, youll never get to truly reexperience it (even if caine remakes it, youll know its not the real thing, and it wont be 100% how you remember it, either)

then theres the safety/pain/horror aspect to what caine makes. i think because there hasnt been gore or anything its easy to assume the circus is still tame, and that anything bad that happens cant be TOO bad. but this is NOT true at all. the teaser of the show establishes that even when caine is not going for horror, he still hurts the players. theres things thatd be physically horrifying to a person like getting possessed, theres physical pain (i see it debated but i think its clear that even if they were to experience less pain, they still DO experience pain, but thats a different topic) or extreme discomfort, theres psychological torment (the exit doors are genuinely very cruel even if that wasnt caines goal, what ep 4 did to jax and gangle. kinger getting taunted in ep 3, etc). its all survivable but even if you like them caine isnt trustworthy enough in this way to never do smth horrific to a person, or cause it through his actions

then theres the complete lack of autonomy, which imo is one of the most frightening things about the circus. bc unless your tastes are always aligning with the exciting, completely family friendly existence of the circus, and you never deviate even a little, you are going to be barred from any semblance of it. its best illustrated in how pomni HATES being touched but caines always prodding her and moving her places and stuff, and in how zooble is denied the option to opt out of adventures even when they state they want to directly by episode 4 implying the choice to even have time to yourself is deeply conditional (plus, the whole lack of an exit entirely meaning that even if you liked the circus, the lack of option to leave would still affect a person. youre getting locked in a big room for the rest of time and youll never get to leave). and also this post

and THEN you factor in the social aspect. because regardless of how you prefer socializing if at all, the circus is a nightmare. if you dont like people, thats great! you dont NEED to be anyones friend! except that you are going to be forced to interact with them eventually, and when you do its going to be repeated. its not gonna be once. and once caine notices hes going to bother you about it. forever

alternatively, if you DO like social interactions in any way, no matter what, if its not you, youre going to see others abstract. you are going to inevitably watch those you care abt struggle and eventually get stuck in a state that Seems Extremely Horrifying To Experience forever. its long and drawn out and itd suck and it wouldnt happen once

then is the easy to forget fact that if you have psychological problems they can and WILL follow you to the circus. gangle and zooble are the biggest examples of this. the circus didnt get rid of their problems, they just gave it a new, horrifying inevitable consequence. i sometimes fall victim to looking at the circus and assuming that ohhh i wouldnt have this problem! because i wont have to deal w it getting set off! but like... yeah i would. i wouldnt stop having this or that in the circus id just have to deal w it while ALSO going on adventures

theres many things. you cant truly eat you cant die you dont get to decide anything when you do die it seems terrifying to experience and youll be stuck in some level of that forever and anything you enjoy is not with you and anything you dont enjoy will follow you too to some degree and the list goes on and on

all this said i dont think any of this is an indicator that the characters lives are meaningless or smth just because it sucks. theres a reason gooseworx has said that the takeaway from the show should be that theres meaning to be found in a stagnant life. theres still meaning in their existence and i dont think its as hopeless as it may seem- but i think its still BAD. and tbh the idea that its worse only HELPS that theme of the show!!! i dont think itd hit as hard as a theme if the circus DIDNT suck

[cent-scratchnsniff]

something bad did indeed happen to that man. spent abt 25 minutes trying to find a better picture of that one (1) offical piece with his eyes open that wasnt compressed or tiny

[watery-melon-baller]

theres people who only have one ship and people who don't have any ships and multishippers well im inventing a new kind of shipper and it's "all of these people are gay and a little in love with each other but the romance is up to interpretation"

[gxlden-angels]

I've had this account now for 5ish years now. I've been in therapy for years, not exclusively for religious trauma but it's a major part. I've gotten better. I have a lot of content here I could reflect on, but I don't think I want to. I like knowing I progressed. I don't like looking at what from. Usually religious trauma comes up in therapy as an "oh yea...." instead of by name now. It's indirect. Enmeshment. Parentification. Vaginismus. Scrupulous and Harm OCD. Alexithymia. Derealization and Depersonalization. Paranoia.

I'm like, a real adult now I guess. I have a bachelor's degree now. I walk this upcoming weekend. I live in a house and I'm renting out a room with my own money. It has a backyard my cat likes to run around in. I had a job interview in my chosen field today. It went well

Then I'll go back to my family for the weekend and I find out they're spiraling into AI generated christian conspiracy theory videos. Their pastor is preaching about Trump being the anti-christ, and any non-Trump or Conspiracy message is the same thing he's said for the past decade, sometimes word for word. My uncle is convinced he's a prophet. He tells a story about a girl that was paralyzed after not listening to his message. My grandfather is convinced us black people are the true Israelites and chosen people. I thought I was the only one medically neglected by my aunt who's a doctor. I was not. I show her my emotions chart app. She tells me it's good so I can recognize when I feel bad and remember Jesus's love until I'm happy again. It's not normal for your joints to pop out of place apparently. We all learned this at the same time. It's Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. That explains a lot. My grandfather fell asleep to a video about the Ethiopian bible and how other bibles were made to take out miracles by Jesus and angels again. The remote is lodged in his hand so we can't change it

Then I talk about plants and food with my dad and my grandmother. My dad jokingly complains about his mom making him garden with her all day half a century ago. I give her a little kiss on her forehead before I go. My dad sends me home with leftover peach cobbler he made. I eat it with my lunch at my job. I answer phone calls at a front desk. I paid real taxes for the first time this year. I go to therapy and I talk about everything from my sex life to my graduate school plans to my opinions about generative AI (I hate it). I'm like, a real, breathing adult that has autonomy I guess. I'm not even claimed as a dependent anymore. I built my own desk that I bought from Big Lots.

You get where I'm going with this right? I'm not cured or healed by any means. Far from it in fact. I still get a pang of anxiety using the lord's name in vain and a chill down my spine when manifesting feels too close to confessing. It's harder making a personal post about religious trauma now though. It's not necessarily that I'm cured, it's just so engrained that I've created atheistic excuses to stay stuck in my religious trauma. I can pinpoint the source of it if I think about it long enough, so I don't think about it long enough

I'm not afraid to think lustful thoughts because holding lust in your heart is a sin, it's because I feel like a creep. I'm not worried I'll be sent to hell if I make mistakes that take me further from Jesus, I just think making mistakes would make me a bad person and an asshole. These beliefs popped out of nowhere, of course. They aren't influenced by the religious trauma so deeply buried in my head that taking it out would feel like taking out the gray matter of my brain itself. I'm schrodingers's man where I'm only a human when I'm observed. It used to be a deity but then it was you. I'm observed by you and that proved I'm human just long enough to get by when I most needed it. I still have that problem, but I'm seen outside of here. I see myself more often too

I don't want this post to seem like a good-bye, because it's not. I'm just currently in a period of limbo and I feel like the next generation of religious trauma bloggers are rising. I'm too busy arguing with my therapist about why I'm a bad person in a way that doesn't just boil down to "I'm a sinner in need of redemption" in a desperately-secular way. I'm self-aware enough to know that's what I'm doing, but not progressing enough to stop yet. I think what will happen is I'll eventually get frustrated enough to give up on the secular origins of my mental distress. I think a lot of you are in a similar place. You're out long enough that it feels like it should be over. You don't live in the bible-thumping, belt-wielding, gay-bashing, hellscape you once did. You might even be no-contact. You pay taxes now in your apartment. But it's not over. It's still there. It's just harder to say it's Jesus's fault I'm like this. It feels like it's been too long to still blame the bible.

It's not. It's buried in your synapses and neurons and muscles and bones and skin and hair and teeth and it's hard to remember that after 5 years. It's not oozing out into your bloodstream and filling you with enough cortisol and adrenaline to fuel an elephant anymore. It trickles though like a leaky faucet. I think I've lost the plot at this point, but you get it

Like I said, not a goodbye despite what it seems like. I just have to remember that a leaky faucet is still a concern

[criminalmaya]

Can't believe i had to bear the sight of fucking 🗿 and no eddie diaz tonight. The fuck is wrong with you tim? You mean to tell me an ex amy medic who has seen it all in combat wasn't supposed to be with his team in the biggest disaster the 118 has had to face, the one where his medic knowledge could have help a lot? the one where their captain, bobby nash, who is his family too, dies???? Does that sound right for anyone? Cause it doesn't for me.

[nishitanis-left-nut]

infinite wealths got 14 chapters, im not gonna pretend like i didn't start the game foaming at the mouth wanting to see kiryu again but I didn't think he'd show up as early as chapter 3? i dont want to complain about More Kiryu but bringing him back at the very beginning of the game feels wrong, like theyre admitting that they couldn't make ichiban work on his own so they had to bring in John Yakuza himself to keep the fans happy or something. i had to stop playing after they get out of the car so idk if Kiryu leaves the party again soon after, but even then it feels weird to have him there at all so early on

and... the info dumps and verbal recaps of what happened on other games were never this bad were they? i get how they wanted to vaguely treat infinite wealth as its own thing and how, it being the 8th or so game in the franchise and all, a lot of people would not have played most or even any of the previous games (why you would bother with infinite wealth if thats the case is a mystery to me but eh) so they wanted to make sure everyone playing was vaguely caught up with ichiban and kiryus story but like... I was there. yes i do remember kiryus pretending to be dead to protect his family, yes i do remember how ichiban has two dads. why would they make him say that around six times in just the first three chapters?

and i get how they felt like they HAD to introduce kiryu properly since, again, a lot of people playing infinite wealth probably just played LaD and nothing else, but even in LaD they didn't just dump kiryus backstory on you. did i miss something why does ichiban just know everything about kiryu when they made it pretty clear in LaD that he never found out anything about him? when they parted ways in yakuza 7 he was still referring to him as "that guy" or "the dragon" because of the dream he had and seonhee didn't tell him anything, even after kiryu left, so how does he just know his name and his backstory now and why does KIRYU act as if he gave him that information himself. i was there, you have no reason to find it normal that he even knows your name????? i am losing my fuking mind over this actually

the info dumping is so weird, if you dont know who this mysterious man that seems to have a troubled past and Feels Important to the narrative is... too bad? skill issue even?? (its kind of on you if youre confused about things after jumping into the 8th instalment in a franchise) if y7 made you curious about him, the game being vague about who he is and what hes doing here did its job well since now youll most likely play the previous games to find out what his deal is, and if you dont, thats okay too since Ichiban was supposed to be the New Protagonist. but since they didnt keep kiryu as an "easter egg" (how could they even do that. its Kiryu.) now it feels like him and ichiban arent even fighting for relevancy, it feels like theyre actively pushing ichi farther back into kiryus shadow

and it feels like the more the games go on the more they dont seem to take the world building seriously (like how the florist just doesn't exist in yakuza 6 because the game would've been over the moment kiryu got to kamurocho, and him not existing anymore carried over to the games after it) maybe i should replay the games now without rose colored glasses but i dont remember ever feeling like i was watching the writers talk to me directly this aggressively in a scene before? this is just the third chapter i get theyre still just setting things up but... i think its just ichiban

the man who erased his name didnt feel like how infinite wealth is feeling and it came out before it, but after yakuza 7. idk what it is about having ichiban as the protagonist that seems to make the writers just... idk. ichiban had a lot of potential at the beginning of y7 but then by the end of the game it felt like that was it, his story got wrapped up. and i know we could say the same thing about kiryu but at least with him the writers made it make sense and work according to his characterization (eh...)

but ichiban is just A Nice Guy which couldve worked really well but hes such a simple character that they just dont know what to do with him? like oh yea his mom is alive actually so lets send him to hawaii to find her. uh a big tiddie vtuber canceled him online. i guess. (im also realizing now that i actually kinda hate how the games take place in the modern day. i know there was never a way to work around that since the games have always worked like this and you being as frustrated and annoyed as ichiban and kiryu are is kinda the point but. eh.)

i know im biased as all hell since i love kiryu, but what made kiryu falling back into the yakuza world over and over again believable and compelling was the fact that yea, the world "outside of him" still exists, politicians and police officers are still corrupt, old friends still need him, and his reputation still makes waves through the underworld and them crashing in on him over and over and over again until he just lets the tide take him made sense- i know im oversimplifying his story and yea they made a lot of weird and inconsistent writing decisions through the games (again, i dont think the florist even gets mentioned in y6 and the time line in general has a bunch of plot holes, majimas story too) but it. idk. the direction theye taking things in is weird and i hope Pirates doesnt feel like this

hes wholesome and prettty and nice and i like h im

[kibibarel]

hi i'm watching a good response to a bad YouTube video but the guy doing it isn't defending my blorbo valiantly enough. saying that Lusamine's motivation is "just vanity" is kind of like saying Moby Dick is about a whale. it's like......you're not wrong. but also i'm pretty sure there's other stuff in there also

[amtrak12]

When you know the fic will turn out so good, the writing, the characters, the humor, all of it -- but then you remember the effort that goes into writing epic-length 50k word fics

[angelpuns]

sir????? Wdym me aren't even at the climax of Kid Leo yet???? How far ahead did you plan???? Hats off to you man, I could not.

Oh I've planned it to the end, plus a bit more, and then I ended up rewriting the ending just recently :D

I don't like fully committing to an au or a fic or anything without a full plot/idea cause then I won't finish it :3 I actually did go into Kid Leo without that originally but then it got big enough I wanted to be able to finish it one day! So an actual plot happened!

Also yeah we're still about halfway through, even with all the cuts I've made, but not quite to the climax yet!

[bpdpenguin]

I had to go back to this scene in case I was remembering wrong and he actually said "I love you"—he doesn't! what he says is much more interesting.

ed is still convinced at this point that oswald is fully selfish. he figures that if he's going to be used anyway, there's comfort in knowing with certainty HOW and WHY. he's operating from "love is weakness": his love for penguin makes him weak. it's clear what lee is using him for and he can work from that. he can actually become stronger, he's repeating his past mistakes from season 3 and betraying penguin made him stronger. there's the potential here—maybe even inevitability—that if he does the same thing, get someone he looks up to to approve of him and then flip that on its head, he can prove himself again.

it's interesting that he's "the riddler" here, especially with the broader context of penguin giving up his revenge for ed and giving his trust to him. riddler is thinking logically: penguin is a master manipulator. giving up his revenge MUST be a tactic, but how? what does he want from him? what will he take? therefor riddler MUST betray before he's betrayed. he's blind to emotional truths and so can't wrap his head around the real reason, that's why what eventually gets oswald's devotion through to him is something physical, something tangible. REAL PROOF. something much more like ed's own willingness to be tortured without giving him up, even to die for that. it's why he questions oswald whenever he spares his life or does something out of character for the sake of ed: ed's trying to figure him out from a logical point of view—like a puzzle—there must be something he's missing, it must be a trap. the love he's offering can't possibly be real.

that was PENGUIN'S revenge, that was the clear-cut motivation he had before he gave it all up for ed!

another thing about ed's repression is that he over complicates and over compensates! he is always compelled to leave hidden messages that implicate himself, like when he left kristen the "nygma" clue. a lot of it is his ego: who but him could ever figure it out? who could match his intellect? but he's also LOOKING for that someone! but it's more than that, it's PARANOIA. when jim knew nothing of his crimes, nygma overthought everything and that's what led to his downfall.

i think the clue here is that he's focusing on penguin's initial revenge. and the overthinking is leading him into a self-destructive relationship with lee.

he loves "it": the change in her that resembles penguin.

from what we've seen before with how oswald dodges ed's leading questions of why he keeps ed safe—and with how he brings up "friends" and "brothers"—he's def not comfortable enough to say "i love you" first anymore. ed would have to be the vulnerable one, and at the end of the series he's faced all truths about himself: he's the riddler, he's a villain, he loves oswald. he's moved past the traumatizing night where he said "i love you" to someone for the first time, when he was actively killing her. he understands now that killing her was JUST AS MUCH HIM as mourning her, and it's the same as what he experienced with oswald. the two personalities—if they were not one and the same the whole time as ed manifesting his own battle between repression and truth—are at least fully integrated with each other at the end of the series.