#not knowing if it would be a self fulfilling prophecy or not

[postsforposting]

hmmm so many thoughts.

This is a livestock guardian dog. It looks like a pyraneese mountain dog, one of the most well known and best guardians.

It's giving very Star Trek Quark:

Is the dog "one of the good ones" or merely one of the lucky ones? What's the line between the two? If lack of luck and hardship are what make you deserving of callousness and disregard, do we not then create the monsters we claim are inherently despicable? Using luck of birth and how others treat you to decide who YOU are?

Bit of a self fulfilling prophecy, innit? We slap the label on and act like it was meant to be there. Deny help until you prove you're worthy of it, as that choice isn't the root cause.

Can you be happy that you personally are safe? Sure. Should you use your happiness and your safety to justify the suffering of those around you? To be the cause of it?

The wolf died of the cold and never approached. As if it sat there, denying itself life, because of people who hated it, who would NEVER consider helping it. The sheep don't acknowledge its existence except when it attacks, except to wish it the same harm they believe it intends them.

The dog is a carnivore too. It still eats meat, probably eats sheep. The difference between the dog and the wolf is that the dog doesn't hunt for itself; the end result is still the same. Does someone else killing for you instead of you doing it yourself put enough distance between you and the act to matter, to determine who you are and how you deserve to be treated?

The sheep are herbivores, incapable of protecting themselves--that's the whole reason for the existence of the dog. The sheep need the dog, but despise what it is, think themselves above it. It exists to serve them. It literally stands between the sheep and the wild.

The sheep don't see the dog eat, and that's all the difference to them. The sheep don't know they probably ARE food for the dog, via Master.

Both the dog and the wolf are obscured by snow, blending into the environment. Only one's far more deep than the other, more sunken. The dog knows that could easily be him, but for the grace of luck. He's grouped with the sheep but he's not one of them, never was, and never will be.

© pet_foolery

[toodrunktofindaurl]

"Death's child"

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[beargregor]

wait i'm curious, what makes you say that gregor doesn't like everyone else (if i read that post right)? just curious since i've never seen anyone else say that

i don't necessarily think gregor dislikes everyone else at lcb but i do think that gregor is an incredibly petty person that isn't nearly as close to the rest of the sinners and even outright dislikes some of them cough cough rodya cough cough which a lot of people just Refuse to see because he's as much of a doormat as he is. there's several examples i could get into to try and prove my point however i'll just focus on what i personally think to be the biggest ones.

additionally, this is going to be kind of long, so i'm adding a read more. read more! read it. sorry for being so wordy. i have several diseases.

Pt1. gregor is the type to try and get along at least decently with everyone, especially if he gets a good first impression from them.

this is less a point in favor of gregor's distance w/ the rest of the sinners and more just a contributing factor to it. once again there's several examples i could point to here but i think the most in your face one happened in canto I with yuri, as several people have pointed out. even before gregor comes clean about growing attached to her as quickly as he did because she reminds him of his sister, we get this interaction.

i'll go ahead and make the disclaimer now that i don't necessarily think gregor is the most reliable of narrators, especially when it comes to his feelings and interactions with most people, but from the way he acts when the topic of yuri comes up (and the way we still see him act even all the way up to c7, nearly a whole year after yuri's death) i don't see reason to question his sentiment here. gregor immediately got that aya and yuri were close, potentially even taking note of their traded belts, and went out of his way to get something nice for yuri despite hardly knowing her.

i feel like a lot of people have forgotten as much, especially since it's been so long since c1, but gregor actually spent a good bit of season 1 doing the exact same thing with the other sinners! gregor reads a connection between him and ishmael pretty quickly despite getting off to a rocky start

mostly because gregor can tell that ishmael is pretty sardonic in a very similar way to him. there's been multiple instances where ishmael and gregor have essentially expressed the same sentiment at different moments, most notably gregor's little argument after ishmael got shot with a decay ampule in c4

and ishmael's response to pilot talking about self-sacrifice in c5

i could go ahead and pull up more examples, but in general pm has gone out of their way to show us that gregor and ishmael are pretty similar, so it makes sense for gregor to assume that they're friends, right?

this will be pushpin 1. keep note of this for Later.

ishmael's only the first sinner we see gregor trying to do this with in s1, we also see him try it out with heathcliff, sinclair, and ryoushuu

he's tried to get along with charon, being one of very few sinners that we've seen actually try to establish a connection with her at all

even rodya, despite my insistence that gregor doesn't like her nearly as much as the fandom thinks he does

all of these seem pretty fine and dandy, right? sure it frequently leans towards self-degradation, micromanaging, and commiseration, but gregor can at least be pretty chummy with most of the sinners, can't he?

Pt2. hell's chicken was more than just comic relief guys please

i'm fully aware that this is quite the hot take, but i think hell's chicken deserves a lot more credit for character writing than the fandom gives it. hell's chicken gave us foreshadowing for several events, such as the donqui bloodfiend reveal

heathcliff's distortion in c6 (as well as hong lu's highly speculated distortion at some point in the future)

and ryoushuu and sinclair's continued connection by making him the odd one out on her team

which, hey! that implies something about gregor's odd one out, don quixote, too, doesn't it? yes. yes it does. that's pushpin 2. keep note of that for later.

speaking of pushpins, hey! that's pushpin 1!

splitting into teams is one of the major events in hell's chicken, and most of the sinner's choices are either motivated by very little, backhanded, or motivated primarily by not wanting to be on the opposite leader's side. i didn't include all of the picks, just because i feel like including most of them already gets this across, but i think gregor took one major thing from this: most of the sinners, when push comes to shove, will only side with gregor when they refuse to or can't take his opponent's side.

now, don't get me wrong, i'm fully aware that this is primarily intended to be comedic relief, but when gregor is being described as having his trust broken by ishmael or nearly crying because no one on his team properly sided with him for him, i feel like it's pretty fair to read into this.

something that i think is pretty important to remember in conjunction with this is that we know that gregor is the type to hold a grudge, both from his general attitude towards the G corp soldiers in c1 as well as his continued distaste for vergilius

even beyond the splitting into teams of hell's chicken, the sinners have given gregor plenty of reasons to feel bitter. i feel like this is something people have noticed but haven't really put a finger on, but it's kind of wild just how often the rest of the sinners make gregor the butt of the joke

and sure, we could argue that a fair few of these aren't really made with any ill intent. quite a bit of it could have been meant as harmless teasing, but with gregor being more sensitive than most, it coming from nearly all sides, and as often as it does? yeah, i think he's prone to taking it a bit personally.

Pt3. yes i do still think gregor was the third most important character in canto VII you guys gotta hear me out okay

of course, all of this leads up to the bit of the story i highlighted, doesn't it? c7? i totally get why people haven't really picked up on all the gregor things i did in it, seeing as they were mostly not *directly* said about him or by him.

personally, i think that gregor's distaste for talking about himself on any serious level and thus leading to him getting sort of "sidelined" narratively (which i take issue with that claim, but still. it's effective for getting what i mean across atm) is supposed to lead players to take a deeper look at the times gregor gets held up to other characters and compare and contrast what's being said about them by the matchup. as i showed earlier with his immediate latching onto ishmael, i think this is something gregor himself is at least partially aware of too.

so, that begs the question, who was gregor compared to in canto VII that makes me think it's one of the most critical pieces in understanding his character?

really, i'd like to avoid getting too lost in the analysis of this canto specifically, since i'd like to do a proper post about this later, but i figure i can bury the lede a little before doing it properly.

c7 features several characters being made to perform in sansón's play, acting out the relevant backstory for this segment of the plot. a lot of these characters have rather direct, degrading reasons for playing the roles they do.

outis, a character with an inflated ego who wants her journey to have a purpose, is made to play an aimlessly wandering villager with a single line.

hong lu and ryoushuu, two characters for whom families and the expectations placed upon them are likely going to play a major role, are made to play bloodfiends.

rodya, a character who resents her lot in life and is constantly shown to be eager to leave her destitution behind her and become someone special, is made to play a helpless villager that's too poor to even offer any money to the hero that saves her.

heathcliff, a character that has spent most of his life getting dehumanized by comparing him to beastly animals, is made to play a literal bear whose sole purpose in the plot is to get beat up and then quickly left by the wayside.

sinclair, a character that has two opposed parties essentially treating him as a macguffin to procure for their side, is made to play the character who was arguably the catalyst for this entire canto, not to mention playing a decently major role in ruina.

our star don quixote is made to play her father, the first kindred, but there's someone by their side the entire time, isn't there? don quixote's dear, steadfastly loyal companion. a character which don quixote has tasked themself with getting to come out of their shell?

hello again, pushpin 2.

gregor has been made to play our unreachable star, sancho. someone had to, of course. you can't really tell a story without it's main character, now can you?

now, i should once again give a disclaimer. i am not trying to say that i think adapting what happens to donqui/sancho in c7 to gregor is the road pm is going to take here, not only would that toe a bit past the line of foreshadowing, but it'd also just amount to rehashing that plotline again, which i don't think would make for a particularly exciting story.

what i DO think is that we can take a lot of the things that are said to either directly be the case for sancho and use them to inform how we see gregor.

and god, does playing sancho have some fucking implications for our favorite ossan archetype.

starting off, the earliest moment we get to see of sancho is quite literally her just waiting for death to take her in a pile of ashes.

which, i should remind everyone, is actually pretty damn close to what happens to gregor's literary counterpart at the end of the metamorphosis. gregor samsa experiences one final breaking point that pushes him over the edge and makes him decide to just wait for starvation to take him.

gregor and sancho both consider themselves to no longer be human, something which sancho goes out of her way to highlight repeatedly throughout the canto and gregor is quick to get defensive on her behalf for when outis starts really tearing into her

sancho spends quite a lot of this story denying herself the joys of community and friendship, despite knowing that, even with the rest of the sinners frequently making jokes at her expense and outright insulting her, they were things that she desperately craved.

and, while this is getting into my "outis is a red herring meant to distract us from gregor's eventual betrayal" theorizing, i also think it's worth noting for this discussion that sancho's fellow kindreds, her family, all seem to be under the impression that she dislikes them and ultimately her departure was an act of betrayal

and that, despite gregor being one of LCB's resident mood makers and attempted conflict de-escalators, one of the sinners that's most prone to making appeals to the bonds they've all forged together, only him and faust remained silent during everyone's speech

so yeah, i think there's quite a lot of little details and hints building up to the reveal that gregor's not quite as fond of everyone as he presents himself to be. i do think a lot of this ultimately comes down to gregor getting in the way of his own happiness, similarly to donqui, particularly because he's been frequently portrayed as something of a self fulfilling prophecy, especially by giving him as many christ allegories as they have by way of priest and garden of thorns. gregor is convinced that the rest of the sinners don't like him because he's not convinced anyone could like him, so he convinces himself that he hates them because why should he care if someone that he hates hates him too?

a lot of this ultimately ties back to my personal interpretation of what happens in the metamorphosis as well as my own theories regarding all the times gregor has made weird callbacks and references to lobcorp and ruina, but yeah. i think about this guy and his deeper characterization a fairly normal amount, i think.

to end this off i'll highlight one of my favorite little "gregor is fucking seething and trying so hard to keep it cool" moments, in the credits CG for c7 we see rodya teasing him by drawing a little horse on his window and actively pointing and laughing at it, which gregor really doesn't seem all too pleased about.

i personally think this ties into the other cruel part of sansón forcing gregor to play rocinante, which is the more literal "he's actually just straight up playing rocinante" side of things. gregor was quite literally made to play something less than human, less than even animal really, as he was reduced to nothing more than the shoes don quixote wore as she got to play the leading role. sansón directly makes jokes about gregor being nothing more than shoes in the play twice, which adds to this reading, i think.

this, imo, really plays into the adaptation of the metamorphosis! i've seen a lot of readings for the book that posit that, despite being the protagonist, gregor samsa can't really be considered the main character due to nearly everything he experiences in it being used to further his family's character development at his expense, which i think fits nicely with limbus gregor seemingly having the most said about him through indirect means by holding him up to other characters. also it's rodya carelessly making fun of His Big Major Insecurities™ again like she did in c1 which i always find fun. rodya i love you but god you're the worst.

[leashybebes]

tommy who absolutely jumps at the opportunity to do nice things for people (maybe one day he'll stop feeling like he has things - start with his existence and work down - to make up for). tommy who is so delighted to have the opportunity to be A Good Boyfriend because when has he had the chance to do that before? tommy taking every chance that he gets to look after evan and spoil him and treat him gently.

tommy, who cannot for a second fathom that he needs to let evan do the same - that evan would do it, and would relish in it just as much as tommy does. tommy who doesn't realise he's depriving evan of that, of chances to know him better, see him better.

tommy who never sees the traps he sets for himself until after they spring. tommy realising after he's blown up the best thing that ever happened to him because of a sudden, overwhelming fear that evan didn't know him that, oh. there's another one. that's on him.

[frankiebirds]

[rollforjackass]

i could KILL him for this. motherfucker's every interaction with children has him being, if not nice, then at minimum kind and forgiving and genuinely invested in their wellbeing.

he asks crying kids what's the matter, he's afraid to hold a baby because he's worried he'll drop it, he goes after people who are mean to kids without a second thought. his whole mentorship with timothy hunter is him trying to do right by that kid no matter how he feels about it at the time. man would be the most loving dad in the world but because of his own awful goddamn father and the ways he thinks he takes after thomas, he doesn't think that's true. i hate.

[minty-bunni]

The craziest thing about PTSD is thinking you're free from it and then getting triggered like 5 mins later by the most random thing.

[lordkingsmith]

wip wednesday (I promise, promise, promise I am limiting my wants to 3): 6) Cursed; a power rangers fic, about the psycho rangers and the what if scenario of Daniel O’Halloran going from Trek’s enemy and murder victim to personal grid ghost of character development to psycho silver and ally to Trek’s lover. I’m currently animating the kid I came up with writing chapter two. Third and final chapter will be fun to do. Won’t introduce Dusk but it will set up how they get to being his parents

lol you can ask about all of them says the man planning to do several of yours I don’t mind. If you’d like a bonus, I’ll do saltwater spoons for this one too 💖💖

One of the songs on Trek and Daniel’s YouTube playlist. Given how in the fic I accidentally made strawberries and summer the most important things Daniel let’s himself miss when he’s dead, strawberry sugar high feels like a fitting song for the two. Especially with Trek trying to describe what he wants with Daniel. Trek never went to earth. He was never meant to be on earth, just the moon, and that’s fine. Daniel got him curious, and Trek knows Daniel’s memories are biased. But he wants to fall in love with everything Daniel loves. It’s easier to couch that in “I want to taste strawberries, I want to experience summer, I want to see if they suck” instead of “show me everything you’re in love with so I can love it too”

Due to family dynamic schtick Daniel is sometimes referred to as “brother in law” by the other psychos, even before he and Trek got together. Yellow and Axe had a running bet who he’d get with, Virgil or Trek. Trek felt obvious but Axe figured the psycho gimmick of mimicking teams and team dynamics might cause Daniel and Virgil to mimic Andros and Zhane. It didn’t happen.

Bonus:

Saltwater Spoons was inspired by a very late night, too many cups of coffee and the song salt skin by Zellie Goulding. Mental image was a prince coercing a pirate to help him kill his sister and frame her bodyguard so prince could take the throne with the pirate at his side.

Turned out the story wasn’t about the prince it was about the bodyguard going to find the only person who could end the prince’s reign of terror; a person who can change fresh water to salt and salt water to fresh water. Fact it kind of clicked eight years after the initial idea with writing Hollyhock of all things is more than a little funny to me. Poor Brill was thought up for a chosen one fic and he’s pretty much chosen one by trauma and kidnapping by love interest. No worries, they work it out lol.

[sistersorrow]

Every time somone tries to make eme more hopeful by saying "you never know what the future holds," it really just comes off as an admission that they lack basic pattern recognition

Except for some small things here and there, the broad pattern of my life has gone the exact way I expected to with no signs of that ever changing or improving

[mutalune]

I think one of the objectively funniest (in a tragedy-irony-way) things about Crowley is that to us the audience we are so very aware that he is so in love it makes him the stupidest idiot on the planet but like if you see his behavior from Aziraphale’s perspective????

Crowley, doing his damnedest to protect Aziraphale without letting Aziraphale know + following behind him all the time (looking at you, Prepping for The Bookshop Ball arc!!!!) literally just means that Aziraphale is off in his own little world doing his own little tasks like playing matchmaker and detective and newspaperman, with literally 0 idea that Crowley is gagging for it every day of the week

(hence: “you’re being silly!” Instead of him being like “oh dang crowley’s actually bothered” like when Crowley “plays it cool” and us as the audience is like “oh he’s faking!” Aziraphale is not the audience and it kinda works on him!!! He‘s busy with his detective work he doesn’t have time to notice that Crowley is being weird when Crowley’s always vague and kinda weird by default to him!!!)

like that’s comedy babes I’m sorry it’s so funny to me

RIP Crowley unfortunately you must learn to tolerate the mortifying ordeal of being known even if that means aziraphale stops thinking you’re cool and mysterious

[red-dyed-sarumane]

a lot of times i think my art styles kind of stagnated but im looking at old sketches and like. okay maybe not.

or like looking at the first doodle of the girlies which was supposed to be a joke vs the girlies i draw in 15 minutes when im bored this year

[kuromi-hoemie]

last rb stressed me out lowkey akakska i had an ex like that and it became a self fulfilling prophecy kinda thing..

[dbphantom]

you know if you guys voted for stretch armstrong i probably would have shut up a lot sooner tonight

[andromeda3116]

me to myself, currently: other people aren't obsessing over your social mistakes like you are other people aren't obsessing over your social mistakes like you are other people aren't obsessing over your social mistakes like you are other people aren't obsessing over your social mistakes like you are

also me: obviously they have all begun to hate me

[ipatrichor]

having thoughts.

[locke-esque-monster]

Soulmarks that show the last words you ever say to your soulmate.

REVERSE TROPE WRITING PROMPTS

Too many beds

Accidentally kidnapping a mafia boss

Really nice guy who hates only you

Academic rivals except it’s two teachers who compete to have the best class

Divorce of convenience

Too much communication

True hate’s kiss (only kissing your enemy can break a curse)

Dating your enemy’s sibling

Lovers to enemies

Hate at first sight

Love triangle where the two love interests get together instead

Fake amnesia

Soulmates who are fated to kill each other

Strangers to enemies

Instead of fake dating, everyone is convinced that you aren’t actually dating

Too hot to cuddle

Love interest CEO is a himbo/bimbo who runs their company into the ground

Nursing home au