#okay! so now for my fucking thesis statement

[mispronouncing-michaelangelo]

day7: free day!!!! okay so this ones kind of personal to me because i have those tattoo placements along my shoulders/neck and have been healing that while working on this piece! its kind of a yakuza au but not strictly

[gnc-tits]

i have to write an essay today and like. i overall have enjoyed the professors classes but mostly just bcoz theyve been asynch. the professor…..idk maybe itd be different if it were taught in person or multi modal with a set class Time but overall she is just not tht great at teaching 😭which is FINE like im fine with teaching myself especially for a lit class but also??? this essay is a “literary analysis” and not only is the rubric ultra fuckin specific with what we have to write about but its also broken down by paragraph structure like in the rubric she Tells you what to write about paragraph by paragraph. like what are we even doing here

[vampiefemme]

so, your best friend accidentally sent you a video of her masturbating. what now?

18+ below! smut smut smut!

ellie’s bedroom is heavy with the scent of sex, her fingers still pruned from her own wetness. she’s spent the last few minutes tense and panicked, too paralyzed with anxiety to get up and put some clothes on, and she’s considering what she’ll change her name to and where she’ll move to start a new life when you finally, finally text her back.

it’s okay. give me a second to reply, alright?

the weight on her chest eases a bit at your reassurance, but a new spark of uncertainty flares up at the second part of the message: give me a second to reply. jaw tight, she sends you a question mark, then follows up with you don’t have to respond. it’s probably better if you don’t?? again i’m so fucking sorry.

but as the minutes tick by, slow and lazed, she starts to panic again. her mind conjures every possible response you could send her next: an angry thesis statement on why ellie’s a disgusting pervert, a seething comment about how stupid she must be for sending a video like that so carelessly. would you ever look at her the same way? would things ever be the same?

all it takes is another notification from you to make every imagined worst-case scenario evaporate. ellie clicks the notification as soon as it pops up, chewing on the soft flesh of her inner lip.

it’s a video.

you sent her a video.

she hits the play button without a second thought, heartbeat thudding in her ears.

“i know you’re probably embarrassed,” you say, head tilting as you frown with sympathy. a blush paints ellie’s cheeks bright red. “but i need you to know how wet that made me.”

holding the camera up, you extend your arm outwards to reveal the rest of your body - your naked body, ellie realizes with a shock. she sits up in bed, back ramrod straight, her phone shaking as a nervous tremor strikes through her. but she can’t look away - not when you’re tracing a hand down the soft curves of your body, fingertips grazing over one peaked nipple, then moving lower, lower. ellie swears she’s forgotten how to breathe.

you release a pleased hum. “i liked watching you touch yourself,” you say, so matter-of-fact. “i hope you like watching me.”

and she does, god she does. she settles back down onto the mattress, eyes never leaving the screen as you work two fingers through your soaked folds. you moan and sigh and keen, rolling your hips down against your own hand, the wet sounds of your pussy so intoxicating, ellie can’t believe she’s gone her whole life without seeing you like this.

and it might be wrong, the way her own hand drifts between her legs to find herself still hot and wet, but she doesn’t have it in herself to care. she dips a finger inside of herself as she watches you ride your own hand, grinding down on your palm as your fingers work in and out of your cunt. she finds a rhythm that matches your own; soon enough, you’re both gasping at the pleasure building beneath your waistline. with every roll of your hips, ellie’s cunt tightens, flooding with slickness - as if she could get any wetter.

as you get closer to the edge, your grip on your phone falters and the camera starts to shake. ellie hisses and curses under her breath when your phone captures the blissed-out look on your face: eyes rolled back, brows pulled together, teeth sinking into your lower lip.

“oh - oh my god,” you stutter, panting, “i’m gonna come, ellie.”

ellie. ellie ellie ellie.

“holy fuck.” ellie’s pussy clamps down around her fingers at the sound of her name on your lips; her thumb glides over her clit just right, and she didn’t think she’d come this fast but she does, her vision exploding into blinding white as her orgasm crashes into her. it’s the only time she looks away from the video on her screen - but she certainly hears your orgasm, all high-pitched moans and ragged breaths, your cunt gushing onto your fingers.

when ellie finds the strength to open her eyes again, the video is still playing. you’re catching your breath, chest shimmering with a thin layer of sweat. you look at the camera and smile. ellie thinks she might pass out.

“thanks for the video,” you say, lifting your free hand up to wave.

when you bring your fingers to your mouth and purse your lips around them, sucking them clean of your own come, ellie’s sure she’s going to pass out.

and then, she decides, she’s going to fuck you stupid.

[gullamor]

Nothing Good Happens In The Deep Roads

Hi, I'm new here to Dragon Age Tumblr. Publicly, anyway. I lurk. Anyway, I've been playing Veilguard like many of us I imagine. For show and tell I have brought you the most paranoia-inducing segment of one of the companion quests and I like... haven't seen anyone mention it or talk about it so I would like to add it to the collective borg of screams. So, like, spoilers. Duh. You've been warned.

Still here? No turning back. Okay good. Welcome.

SO ANWAY. I'm on a second playthrough now, trying out new options and classes and things. I get around to that point where you start to get companion quests fired up and Lace's kicks in earlier than a lot of them to me at least. Ya go down to the Deep Roads where nothing good ever happens. And my first time through, visiting Kal-Sharok I distinctly remember it being... fine. Like there were darkspawn and stuff but that's just the deep roads and they cranked the gross factor on the darkspawn anyway, so... what gives? Where are my bad vibes and sad times now of going down in the deep roads where nothing good ever happens? Enter playthrough numero dos. I'm picking through Kal-Sharok, really getting up in there. Trying to find all the things I missed. I was standing at the precipice before delving down into the Deep Roads. And my eye snags on this fucking thing:

Now, y'all with color coordination skills may note that all the bad guys and evil shit down here is red-coded. In my brain, I was just thinking to myself. Huh... that looks like a Venatori crystal. ... I don't remember there being Venatori on Lace's quest. So naturally, I'm curious. I continue on, and try to get up closer to get a better angle.

Huh.. that doesn't look like a venatori smashy smashy crystal... that looks like a person... And then ALL AT ONCE I recall where her questline continues and how there's angry Red Lyrium Titan Lace by the end of her questline AND that Valta mentions 'something has found Lace' when we're talking to them and then we get jumped. There's no shot that's angry lyrium Lace... right..? So now like any sane person, I'm on my guard the entire rest of that quest. And I was fucking right to be BECAUSE SHE STALKS YOU THE ENTIRE TIME. I eventually remembered as I was playing you can zoom in with the photo mode they blessed us with and could see Lace. But they stalk you through the entire area until you get to the chamber where Valta is. I don't know if I caught them all, and I am too frightened to go back and find it so I dump all my findings here for the community to scream with me about.

tl;dr, and my thesis statement in all things with these games Nothing. Good. Happens. In the Deep Roads.

[charcubed]

"GAY WEEK" ON DOCTOR ODYSSEY REVIEW: not the episode I expected, but the episode I fucking deserved

A lesser show would use Gay Week to introduce queer content and possibly have it for only one episode as a special. But on this show? It’s always queer and the function of Gay Week is showing and explicitly talking about polyamory the entire time, setting up a polyamory slow burn.

WHO is doing it like them, I ask of you?

I am locked the fuck in for the long haul, baby!!!!! (as if that's news)

YIPPPEEEE

----

okay here I'm (mostly) copying and pasting some of my live tweets to share my immediate thoughts on the ep

-TRISTAN ENJOYING ALL THE ATTENTION FROM GAY MEN…. 👁👁 I love this bisexual

-“Polyamory” / “Throuple” / “That deep human condition question… Can all of my needs be met by one person?” We are literally watching a show on network television that’s explicitly about slow burn polyamory and I am in complete and utter disbelief. This is the thesis statement. They just went out and said that shit

-No but seriously they managed to have the throuple do an explicit threeway and NOW they're turning it into a slow burn?? WONDERFUL FOR ME PERSONALLY. LET'S GET THIS ANGST

-Max: “I’m a one woman” kind of man Tristan: “Aves… I can’t share you" Avery, lowkey: why are you both so fucking stupid and making this only about me when we have potential here because ALL of us want each other equally, including you two????

-No but this is so realistic I'm foaming at the mouth. OF COURSE they're getting caught up in the M/M part of it!! Of course they are!!! Of course that potentiality has to be drawn out!!! DELIGHTFUL

-TRISTAN’S FINGER KISS OVER THE SHOT OF MAX. IF ANYONE NEEDS ME I’LL BE PASSING AWAY.

-Anyway. “I’m a one woman” type of man Max said...... well guess what Max, that’s still true because you’ll have one woman and one boyfriend. Problem solved, king <3

-Also, if I think about how Max "I need to chase more joy" Bankman and Tristan "I have too much affection in me" Silva both reacted to having SO much happiness in one evening that they got scared by it and felt it was too good to be true I will start screaming.

-Hey so we all agree that the function of the single “heterosexual” couple on the ship is so we could get the visuals of 2 queer men standing in the background watching while the woman gave birth right. Like as thematically connected to Max’s excuses. We collectively saw that, right? Just checking

-Regarding the preview for next week: LOL. NO WAY IS AVERY ACTUALLY PREGNANT. I don’t know how or why but I’m calling bullshit, respectfully…. there’s gonna be some niche medical explanation for this tomfoolery and it’s going to force emotional angst

I FEEL LIKE I HALLUCINATED THIS EPISODE

THIS IS THE SHOW AND TRIO I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO HAVE AND CAN'T BELIEVE EXISTS

Captain Massey you sweet, kind, and accepting old man I love yoouuuu... John Stamos in a throuple I love yooouuu.... writers and directors and creative team behind this queer polyamory show making very deliberate phrasing and framing choices I love yooouuu... <3333

[farenmaddox]

SPN wild theory time

I will just go ahead and start with my thesis statement: I don't think that Jack killed Mary.

With that out of the way, let's get into my warnings for this post: 1. There will be spoilers for Seasons 11-15 of Supernatural 2. I wasn't in this fandom 5-6 years ago when these episodes were coming out; maybe you guys already talked this all out and your entire response is going to be "we already went through this, dude." 3. This post is actually like 3-4 posts in a trenchcoat. I may have gone slightly overboard.

All that said, buckle up, here we go.

Chuck's "omniscience" is questionable. He has been surprised by Dean's decision-making and been upset about it, and has admitted that Castiel is someone whose actions often contradict Chuck's narrative. So, by his own admission, he doesn't/can't know everything.

However, he always thinks ahead and always has multiple ideas on how to solve a situation, and he always has a contingency plan.

First, let's look at how he handled the Amara situation. I would characterize Chuck's behavior in Season 11 as writing a self-insert fic. Chuck is a writer, after all. He knew that Dean taking the Mark of Cain would either lead to Dean's destruction or to Amara being released, so he would have been ready for Amara to appear well before she actually did. But it's only in episode 11x20 that he chooses to do anything about it, ostensibly because Metatron talks him into it. We already see signs that he's kind of "done" with the prime world and the Winchesters here, but then Metratron convinces him to give it another go, and that's when it becomes self-insert fic.

He displays the ability to absorb Amara into himself in episode 15x17, so I think this was always the contingency plan if all else failed. But he wanted to be in the story. He wanted to be on the team and be a hero, so he joins up to do the big assault on Amara plan that is carried out in 11x22. I truly do not think he foresaw that Amara would win that fight. And with how badly wounded he is, the contingency plan is no longer viable. So he has to go with the Dean-as-a-bomb plan. He was already thinking about letting it all go to shit, so this is fine. But then Dean wants to save the day with his faith in familial love, which Chuck definitely didn't see coming. I think Chuck lets it happen despite the fact that he doesn't actually give two shits about Amara just because Dean is his favorite and has managed to surprise him so maybe the world should go on a little longer.

All of this is just establishing a baseline of Chuck-ness. Now we're going to talk about Jack.

See, I don't think Chuck ever planned on Jack actually being carried to term and surviving. The wild card, as always, is Cas. Who, when he had a chance to kill a nephilim (a thing he has done before! a thing he has assisted in doing in the past! it's a sure bet for Chuck!)...doesn't do that. But that's okay (Chuck thinks)! The Winchesters will probably kill the kid! And if they don't, and Lucifer wins, then Chuck can swoop in and be like "my beautiful son and my beautiful grandson, oh my me, this is delightful, we should be a family" and then kill them both.

Dean hating Jack was absolutely Chuck's first choice of potential plots for how to take care of the Jack problem when it turns out that there is going to be a Jack. He likes that story. It surely fills him with glee that Sam doesn't hate Jack and Dean does. But then... fuck, it's Castiel, again! Chuck had no involvement in Cas being resurrected, for once. No way to predict that one. And Cas being back means that Dean doesn't hate Jack and isn't going to kill him, especially since Jack helps them get Mary back, which sucks for Chuck, who is now very committed to this storyline of Dean killing Jack. Don't forget, Chuck can kill Jack whenever he wants. But he wants Dean to do it. He's bored and done with Dean and is ready for Dean to be dead.

So, how do we get Dean to kill Jack? Well, obviously Cas's death doesn't goad him to do it because the fucker just can't stay dead, so it has to be Sam or Mary. And it can't be Sam, because Sam has to watch Dean kill Jack and himself. That's the story. So it has to be Mary, right?

Chuck just has to wait for the right moment.

Jack has a strong sense of fear about hurting people by the time of Mary's death. 13x06 and 14x16 are some critical episodes where we see how he feels and reacts to hurting innocent people. And he seems to have pretty good control over his powers as well. He had just recently had a conversation with Donatello (in 14x15) about how easy it is to continue doing the right thing without a soul. His decision to kill Felix the snake was very much on purpose and very controlled, and honestly can everyone shut up about the snake. Jack fucking loved that snake. It was sick and nobody else knew how to help Felix either. He euthanized a sick pet.

So it is hard to believe that Jack just randomly lost control of his powers and killed someone whom he had no reason to kill. That's not really consistent with Jack's behavior. Even when he's in a complete rage in 14x20 after what Sam and Dean did to him, he doesn't kill them. At his most angry and while experiencing a huge surge in power, he somehow doesn't kill Sam and Dean. But we're expected to believe that in 14x17, he just "accidentally" flies off the handle and kills Mary.

The thing that is genuinely so crucial is that we do not see Mary's death in 14x17. It does not happen on screen. Deaths in this show always happen on screen, and it's not on screen. All we see is her face near Jack's, and the next episode all we see is the blast site. I think that the reason we don't get to see it is because it didn't actually happen the way we're told it did.

The fact that Mary can't be resurrected? That's weird, and new. That literally never happens. Everyone can be resurrected. People who were turned into paste by archangels can be resurrected. People who have been cremated can be resurrected. But Mary can't be? That's got Chuck's smell all over it.

Jack thinks he killed Mary, but he fucking didn't. Chuck did it. Chuck smote the shit out of that woman and Jack doesn't have any other explanation for what happened. I don't even think he is actually hallucinating Lucifer. Soulless guy who "doesn't feel guilt" and doesn't want Lucifer in his subconscious but somehow can't get rid of him? It's Chuck. It's Chuck dressed up as Lucifer to keep Jack on the edge and convince him it was his fault so he can lead everybody to the grand finale.

And then stupid Dean ruins the story and doesn't kill Jack. Which Chuck should have seen coming, because this is what happened with Amara! But he didn't, because sometimes Chuck actually doesn't know things! It's okay though (Chuck thinks), because Chuck always has a contingency plan. He has always been able to kill Jack whenever he wanted, and if Dean's not going to do it, Chuck might as well. So he does.

I'm telling you. Chuck killed Mary. Jack didn't do it.

[ravenkinnie]

so uhhhh watched act iii yet. what do you think.

I was keeping track of which leaks turned out to be true because I saw people say these CANNOT be real because it's so ass and well i think that person was for the people like they are a whistle-blower. this was a warning

*there's something hysterical in the thesis that if hextech wasn't invented eventually we would all be rich. there's something so liberal about it idk. like a statement on assimilation or whatever

*heimerdinger saying he waited for ekko all that fuck ass time and then sacrificjgg himself for him...... I'm sorry who the fuck said christian linke projects on ekko and ships himself with heimer

*not vi being dead in the good reality. she was born to suffer ig

*not jinx living in some fuckass dwelling even in her good reality, she's just meant to live in someone's basement

*first of all the way when jayce had hextech he invented capitalism and when ekko and jinx had it they went back in time???? that's a statement somehow

*jinx has such ariana grande proportions like she needs a volume of hair to cover the fact that her head is so huge and she's so tiny

*the way time travel to these two is like an invention you show off at a party like they invented facebook. this world building is crazy

*I shockingly didn't even mind timebomb I can't lie, I'm not even mad. I'll find something to complain about later like idk the way they git torn apart by the invention of capitalism (by jayce) makes me giggle

*mel is like the most beautiful animated character ever I'm sorry and now she has magic??? this storyline kind of feels so detached at times but also it was so perfectly to my taste that I enjoyed it regardless. I'm fuckung OBSESSED with the dynamics between mel and her mother and I would watch this slowly unfold in a 20 episode season instead of being introduced through exposition

*viktor is so hot this season, they really ate that twink

*unfortunately the way jinxs storyline makes no sense bleeds into caitvi and caitlyns storyline so it's not really well done yk. but it feel like fanservice for a very specific type of a lesbian and I'm that lesbian. caitlyn is so beautiful and drama is so high like I kind of ate it up like I'm sorry I am watching with my pussy rn

*everyone was so hot acc. caitlyn had me mewling like cats in spring, jayce did get hot, jinx was so pretty this act

*the way jinx was like I didn't know your mom was there and that's it, okay bitch you still killed people. like the way she really perceives only emotional conflict and not moral or anything I fuck with that

*I have to just once again reiterate. caitlyns storyline and caitvi, and vis storyline too acc, were not well written and they need more seasons. however the bare bones were so hot

*this act made me realise that silco loves to say a bunch of nothing

*I mean this plot is just nonsensical the way we just held hands and sang kumbaya to solve poverty. everything solved by a speech cause we got limited as hell screen time. it's giving kendall pepsi commercial

*also they started a whole war in the time it took for vi to get out of that fucking cell

*caitvi sex scene was fucking fantastic. in a prison cell, I'm cackling. the world might be a cruel place but I just watched lesbian pussy eating in a league of legends show so sometimes good things do happen

*it really is like the best female characters come from the most misogynistic places. when ambessa slapped mel I screamedddd

*I mean they desperately needed more time and seasons there's no hiding this fact but I think ideologically this would always be like this

*like they couldn't make it good but they did make it wild instead so I appreciate this

*I am kind of sad about caitvi not getting more time because there's so much bullshit in how the character choices had to align to get them to necessary plot points and they had to speed through a lot of development but man. at least caitlyn got her pussy ate

*I acc don't hate jinxs hair. I do hate her storyline but burning down the last drop was beautifully dramatic I deserved a whole season like this

*caitlyns gotten the most pussy across this show I need everyone to remember this

*caitlyn assassinating ambessa and when that bitch went "bold little one" I'm sorry they should have been scissoring too, we didn't need maddie. it would be funnier when caitlyn has to tell vi she was with someone else too like no you do care acc!! tho caitlyn getting betrayed by a fling and almost executed is hot girl activities. like shes just my little female fantasy character

*jinx didn't get shit in writing but at least she got some cunt back. but oh my god the way her arc did nothing like both her and vi, for main characters esoecially, really adjust to the most nonsensical plot

*ambessa just got a mess of a season to be evil in like she couldn't live up to silco in s1 as a villain. I will be thinking about her and caitlyn touching each other tho. and then mel killing her??? incredible work ill cry over what could have been if it was good

*caitlyn losing an eye and getting an eyepatch girl you know this one is made for me

*mels mage lil look being just quite literally just lingerie and like one of those cheap sets you get from sex shops that come in a bag, just to remind you what game this show was born of. not that I'll hold it against her as a kai'sa main

*hollered when jayce told viktor there's beauty in imperfection mf he was dying

*I bet jinxs death scene could eat 8

in a show that isn't this. but this was so ass like the whole storyline was just ass so this doesn't feel like silos death where it's like obviously you don't want a bitch to die but it makes absolute sense for the character. this is just dumb

*I KNOW I SAID IT BUT AGAIN this show will try to fix anything through a speech I swear to fucking god. arcane believes these two cities just needed to go to couples therapy

*caitlyns so sexy with an eyepatch. like she just is. this was the highlight of the season, that caitlyn needed this fuck ass arc to get super hot

[juniperhillpatient]

okay so the unfortunate thing is that there could be a thesis statement style huge ass essay on every single fucking line of dialogue & moment of cinematography on Yellowjackets because it’s all That genius & my mind doesn’t shut off well. like. it’s SO hard for me to just casually watch anything but especially something so fucking genius so yj is a bad choice for bed time but fuuuck man

Natalie’s “you won’t have the gun” statement to Travis after he defends Lottie’s spiritualism & says “we’ll need more than just food to survive the winter” & INSISTS on going a direction Nat knows there won’t be game / meat because in his words - “we haven’t been this way before” (because Javi might be that way, something they both refuse to say out loud & that Natalie refuses to believe) - I’m just. going insane over the double meanings behind their every interaction & line. Neither of them even mentions Javi. They aren’t having a deep philosophical conversation about hope vs survival but also….. beneath the layers of discussion over hunting grounds - that’s ALL they’re talking about - is the things they aren’t saying. is how this isn’t a hunting mission for Travis, but a search party Nat considers hopeless. sorry. this show is just really fucking good. I’ll try to calm down now

[rindomness]

hello hi tell us about mementos and the security level

OH HELLO. Welcome to my personal hill to die on. This post is long. It's one of my out-loud rants in text form. Sorry in advance. There's a cut down there somewhere.

Thesis statement of whatever's about to come next is that Mementos fucks actually as a concept its execution was just horrible and also Yaldabaoth is a terrible final boss. OKAY LET'S GET INTO IT

First things first I really do think Mementos should have gotten a security level. The game plays "Mementos is the public's Palace" very straight, all the way to the end, insisting that Yaldabaoth is created by the public's desire for a status quo yadda yadda yadda. So like. Here's the screenshots actually

I didn't get the whole conversation mostly because I think I was streaming at the time and complaining out loud but like. He just straight-up says this? And then they do nothing with it???

Imagine this with me. Enter the imagisphere or whatever.

It's October. You've just defeated Okumura, and you just watched the mysterious black-masked figure you've been told cryptically about for a while now kill his Shadow. You watch Okumura have a mental shutdown live. It's horrific! It's worrying! What happened? What's going to happen to you? The Phan-Site meter starts dropping rapidly. You go to Mementos to prepare for the next Palace.

There's a security level.

NOT ONLY did this act make the public lose faith in you, but now you're enemy #1, and it's reflected in the collective unconscious. This Chekov's gun that they set up back in May goes off. You have to be much more careful in Mementos because if you aren't, you could get kicked out. The stakes are higher. Mementos, the public view of you, has changed. It's not just doors opening for you anymore.

THAT WOULD BE SO COOL. RIGHT? RIGHT??? BUT NO! No we don't get a security level until the depths, which contradicts itself, actually, because once you get to the depths, the whole POINT is that the public ISN'T reacting to you or your actions! Why the hell would they care that you're In There!

The obvious answer is that it's because the security level belongs to the Holy Grail/Yaldabaoth/the fuckass cup/whatever you personally call him. And okay, whatever, but the game goes out of its way to establish that the Grail isn't really a separate entity from "public desire," he IS "public desire," the status quo incarnate, so once again, I ask, why is this the only time you have a security level! (I know it's because this is the home-stretch to the final boss and mechanically it has to act like a proper Palace. I still think it's stupid.)

And now that I'm talking about the Grail. Hi. Hello. If you've talked to me on Discord you already know this but I fucking hate the Grail. I think it's stupid. I think it's thematically inconsistent. I think its only purpose is to be the "Let's fight God!" final boss. I truly believe that if I hadn't gotten into Persona 5 through Royal, I would not still be into Persona 5, because I would have gotten so frustrated with Yaldabaoth that I would have dropped the game. I regularly complain for half an hour straight about this thing in voice calls. One person once told me the only thing they knew about Persona 5 was that this cup sucked because I wouldn't shut up about it.

I've somehow managed to not do this on Tumblr but I can't really talk about Mementos without talking about it so I guess we're talking about the cup

Narratively: Yaldabaoth just sort of comes out of nowhere??? The whole game is building up to Shido. The whole game. And you do it! You defeat him! And then... there's this other thing??? Apparently??? I was genuinely really confused when I got to this part of the game the first time because I was going ok we beat the final boss complete with eight hundred phases! Hooray! And now there's this other fucker. Going back through the game there's some foreshadowing for him? But it's kind of all concentrated in the start of the game, around Madarame's Palace, when you're just getting used to Mementos, and then it all sorta just disappears.

YOU KNOW WHAT IS FORESHADOWED, THOUGH? MORGANA.

Imagine with me x2 because this is where I thought the game was taking us when it went "btw we need to tackle the depths now"

Morgana has no memories. Morgana knows there's something in the depths that explains who he is. Morgana assumes it's because he's human, and will become human again if he finds out what it is. The WHOLE POINT of exploring Mementos was for Morgana's memories! And then he starts getting these really unsettling dreams, right, where he's a Shadow, or has a Shadow, or whatever. And then you get to the depths.

What I thought was about to happen was that we were going to find out that Morgana was more or less what the Grail claims to be(a being created by the wishes of the masses) and that Mementos was going to be Morgana's Palace. "Oh but Morgana has a Persona-" Morgana's already a weird case I could easily see him having a Shadow or being a Shadow himself while also having a Persona. I'm ignoring Maruki because we're talking about vanilla and Maruki didn't exist yet.

I thought our final boss was going to be Mona's Shadow and that by defeating him(the part of Morgana(as a Shadow/Metaverse being/etc) representative of what they were trying to make Yaldabaoth: wanting to let the status quo handle everything, more or less, the desire to let the system do what it's designed to even if that thing is "crush everything in its path") we would reaffirm that change is possible as long as we all work together. Morgana getting to be this very physical symbol of rebellion and force of will and getting to go NO I want to try even if it hurts me.

What actually happened was... a lot more underwhelming.

What we got was, in a game where one of the primary themes is "rebellion against systemic injustice, you can't just get rid of the One Guy and fix Everything," a final boss who was... one guy who if you got rid of him you'd fix everything?

And I get it Atlus doesn't want to actually shake the boat that much but at the same time Yaldabaoth comes out of nowhere and says absolutely nothing of substance in a game that, over and over again, gets SO CLOSE to saying something really powerful and then sinking back into what's comfortable. It's the aesthetic of rebellion without the teeth of it.

Anyway now that I've complained for an essay's worth here's some positive stuff

I really do like Mementos. It gets a lot of shit for being repetitive and boring and like I sort of get that but on the other hand it is a JRPG. I'm not sure what you expected from the area that is, mechanically, "Here's where you go to grind." I don't see a problem with having this area. I think the special floor events manage to spice it up enough that it's not all that boring. I like Jose being there in Royal, I think he adds a lot, actually. The implications of everything Jose says are fascinating to me. The fact it's impacted by the weather! Like, as a world component, Mementos is so so cool actually guys. I know it's a Persona game so "world impacted by cognition" is sort of the bare minimum but it's really cool!!! The aesthetics fuck! The only layer I really don't like is.. fuck, I think it's Kaitul? Whichever one gets unlocked after Kaneshiro's Palace, I haven't gotten there in my current playthrough yet. It's just... too dark to see, all the time, imo. Mementos feels(except for... 90% sure it's Chemdah) very oppressive and spooky and I honestly think that's great. It's a depressing place to be! For a game about how corruption and systemic violence hurts everybody, it's really good!

In conclusion... don't ask me about Mementos unless you want an essay LMAO in seriousness I understand why Mementos gets shit but I think it should get less of it. And also that I could have fixed it(the cup. The cup is the big bad part of Mementos. Not the grinding you're going to get that with a JRPG no matter what you do you signed up for it when you launched the game.)

[intertexts]

since I can't talk about my favorite bits that made me go AUGH bc of things you dont know about yet. give me ur favorite bit. what was ur favorite bit in that fic. gimme the authors notes behind the scenes ramble

AUAUAUAUA.... u r so nice 2 meee godddd what the hell. exploding u💥💥💥!!!!!!!!!!! ANYWAY. OK. OK. AUTHORS NOTES.

things i included that i am VERY IFFY ON but nevertheless went for:

>i think there's like 70/30 odds that they (dakota) try to do the putting ashe's headphones with thank you scientist or smth blaring on him to try & bring him back thing. can't tell you if it'll work or not but it has to come up. nevertheless i think if u were stuck in yr head for a year with the fucking trickster u would appreciate some quiet!!!!!! & its just. idk man. that's what i'd spiral over. what if one day u wake up n u don't even like all the stuff u love anymore. etc.

>I'M ALSO TAKING. A REALLY FUCKING LONG SHOT by explicitly referring to wiwi as alive? honestly? like it's a 50/50, i think that all the stuff w/ the heart etc should continue to have thematic resonance, but also i don't know how that will work with the wisps when they..... return? (<- using this word in the loosest possible way i just don't know how else to say it. when theyre onscreen again??) i'm sure the wisp thing gets some resolution i have no doubt. and i don't know if "whisperer william" and "alive body traits" are mutually exclusive. idk. idk. we'll see!!

>i'm assuming tide will make another appearance b4 the season ends. idgaf if he shows in deadwood or not i fucking HOPE NOT but i just thought man. he Would come to bring them all back n take care of them. i think he and mark should get to have a really long slightly more. real? conversation on how much parenting fucking sucks and is stressful and terrifying and they feel bad at it.

MY FAVORITE BIT. goddd. iiii. ok. i have a lot of Thoughts on wingfics & idk. i guess i always think they're a bit too easy. u have wings that u Never Ever Let Anyone Touch Except Family And Lovers and u Let Someone Preen Them and what-- there isn't even any terrifying indecipherable swirl of emotions about it?? it isn't even scary?? (& also the whole Why Is It Good When People Touch Ur Wings. "because it is" okay??? and why then?? i also am guilty of this but at least theres like. two sentences about it.) & when there's hybrid shit & its like ok suddenly u woke up with Searing Pain in ur back and things writhing around in there breaking through yr skin and bone to get out and-- thats IT??? there isn't even gonna be any lasting trauma about it? you're not even gonna feel weird about being permanently Different now? it isn't even inconvenient and painful?? so ig that's like-- the core of this one, lmao. obviously i have. Thoughts and Feelings on the whole prime nonconsensually and irrevocably changing ur body defenders thing. like. of course. thesis statement of my blog. & i have thoughts about. being a vessel & not getting any say in it, ig. idk. i hate when people take my stuff without asking!! the idea of someone taking my ME without asking is like, viscerally terrifying 2 me. not unpacking that moving on etc.... my favorite bit is ig ashe having conflicting and messy emotions on liking the way it feels. freaking out and trying 2 stonewall it out & eventually just. letting himself have the good thing. oversharing 9pm time but idk... ashe is a little Like Me in that he was a fucking shut in & never had friends until he was a teenager and doesn't really. know much about it? didn't have much experience in it? so he's really satisfying to write not in a projection-y way but an ah! i KNOW what this is like i can write this correctly!! very scary!!!! very 24/7 butterflies in ur stomach!! OH. I LIED. ACTUALLY. my favorite bit is ashe unconsciously using words & such abt capacitors and voltage and electricity etc. bc of growing up with an electrician dad :] very very small and minor but i have a lot of fucking emotions abt it actually!!! anyway. yeag <333

other behind the scenes thing: in my head wiwi is freaking the FUCK out the entire time he is going shit SHIT SHIT i'm so fucking bad at this shittttttttttttt is this what it's like for dakota to deal with me. is this what i'm like. shit. what do vynce and dakota do. hes like. cartoon running putting down the tracks just in front of the train this entire time <33 this is important to me.

[asthedeathoflight]

Home For Christmas

Hi guys. This morning I sat down and was like hey I've had some Christmas Remjax thoughts, I should write a fun little one shot while I wait for everyone else to wake up. 4.5k words later it's no longer Christmas in my timezone and its less of a cute oneshot and more "how many remjax thesis statements can i fit into one fic. and also its christmas flavored." Merry christmas? merry christmas.

- - -

“Come on. Please?”

And here was the problem. Rembrandt has very round eyes, and very long eyelashes, and she had trained for years in the sacred art of using them to get what she wanted from Ajax. The puppy dog look she had on at the moment was not even a little bit genuine. It was a party trick. Ajax had caught her practicing it in her reflection in a subway window several times. 

None of this helped Ajax even in the slightest. Rembrandt made The Face, and she crumbled every single time, and just had to pray Rembrandt would use her powers for good and not evil. 

Her faith was waning by the day. Case in point:

“It’s not that I don’t want to go,” Ajax lied, “It’s that I don’t think you should go.” (Conveniently, the last part was seeming more and more true the longer this argument went on.)

“It’s just dinner!” Rembrandt insisted, and okay, who was lying now?

“It’s Christmas,” Ajax hissed. 

“It’s Christmas Eve,” Rembrandt shot back. 

A clever ruse. But Ajax wasn’t stupid. “That’s even worse.”

“Come ooooonn, it’s just for like an hour!” A bald-faced lie. Ajax couldn’t believe her ears. A Christmas Eve dinner that was only an hour long was more insulting than no dinner at all. “It’s not like I’m going to Mass with them or anything.”

“Did they invite you to Mass?”

“Well- um,” Rembrandt had the decency to look kind of sheepish. “Well a little bit?”

“Rembrandt!”

“I said no! I said just dinner! And they said that was fine!”

Well. That was progress. Kind of. And she was making The Face again. 

“Even if you did go,” Ajax said, which Rembrandt immediately (correctly) interpreted as an admission that she would be going, “I don’t see what the fuck I’d be doing going with you.”

“Going to a party,” Rembrandt said, like she didn’t see the problem. “That you were invited to.”

“I don’t-”

“Do you want me to get out the card again?” Rembrandt waved an arm at the cabinet where she’d tacked up the handful of Christmas cards they’d gotten, including the one from her aunt that did, admittedly, explicitly name Ajax in its invitation to Christmas Eve dinner. 

“No.” 

“What am I supposed to say if you don’t come, huh?” Rembrandt said, “She’ll be all sad. I’m sure she’s told everyone already that you’re coming.”

What had Dora told them? Who did they think was coming? Valerie’s roommate, yes, darling Valerie, who was supposed to be a ballet dancer and now lived in a shitty one-bedroom apartment down by the docks after a falling out with her parents that Ajax was sure they all suspected about. 

Ajax could barely even make it through small talk with the bodega guy. What the fuck was she supposed to say? 

“Just tell them I’m busy. I’ll go bother Cleon like always.” She would not. She had already told Cleon she was going with Rembrandt. Cleon’s eyes had gone all soft and happy. She’d rather stay home alone than tell her she wasn’t going after all. 

“No!” Rembrandt insisted, “I want you to come with me.”

The other Warriors wondered sometimes how Rembrandt got Ajax to go along with her, since Ajax was so stubborn. They had no fucking idea. 

“Why?” The question came out a little more raw than Ajax had been intending. 

Rembrandt stopped to look confused, and then a little bit sad. “I want them to meet you. I love you. I want the people who know me to know you.”

And that wasn’t The Face, not really. It could have used some workshopping. It was just a wrinkle between her eyebrows and the slightly bewildered, slightly defensive look Rembrandt always got when she was being honest, like she couldn’t believe she had to say what she was saying. Ajax didn’t have a very good track record resisting The Face, but she really didn’t stand a chance against whatever the fuck that look was. She caved. 

- - - 

“This is dumb,” Ajax said for about the millionth time since they’d left their apartment. It was the only way to preserve her dignity at having been defeated by Rembrandt making slightly-less-effective puppy dog eyes at her. 

“Your input has been noted,” Rembrandt deadpanned. She was a little nervous, Ajax thought. She was hiding it well, but Ajax knew the difference between normal Rembrandt fidgeting and nervous Rembrandt fidgeting. She gave Rembrandt a reassuring little nudge with her shoulder. Rembrandt shoved her back, which meant she wasn’t spiraling too bad. 

Dora’s house had been decorated with what Ajax found a frankly unnecessary number of Christmas lights, all along the eaves and wrapped around the bushes in the front yard. The soft amber glow from them did, admittedly, kind of make Rembrandt look like one of those hand-painted Christmas angel figurines, a fact Ajax was only noticing the normal amount. 

The steadying breath Rembrandt exhaled made a little swirl of steam in the cold air. Ajax wished, suddenly, that they didn’t have to go inside. That she could stay suspended in this moment, in the soft light, and not have to worry about anyone inside or what they thought of her. 

But the moment faded, as all moments do, into the next, and Rembrandt knocked on the door. It opened almost immediately, a woman Ajax didn’t recognize but who had something of Rembrandt in the corners of her eyes and set of her shoulders still looking over her shoulder to insist that she's got it, Jesus. The woman looked back towards them and Ajax braced herself for judgment or confusion or reproof, but she didn't even seem to see Ajax. The moment she saw Rembrandt, her eyes started to well with tears. 

Wordlessly, she reached out and drew Rembrandt into a tight hug. They were silent for a moment, before she said, quietly but fiercely into Rembrandt's hair, “It's good that you're here.”

She drew back and smiled, seemingly recovered, and waved them effusively into the house. As they crossed the threshold they were transported from a grim December evening into a Christmas-themed alternate reality. The whole living room had been hung with fragrant garlands of pine boughs, and the walls were papered with construction paper cutouts of stockings and candy canes and ornaments. 

The room, which was already lively, became a flurry of activity. Ajax was largely forgotten in the jostle, as everyone in the room suddenly wanted to hug Rembrandt and ask how she’d been. As Rembrandt disappeared towards the center of the room, it occurred to Ajax what it had meant, for her, not to go home for Christmas for so many years. Ajax hadn’t thought it strange when Rembrandt followed her to Cleon’s that first Christmas, and every Christmas after that, had just been selfishly glad to drag her into playing board games with them. 

But Rembrandt had been missed. In a way that, perhaps, the rest of them weren’t. There wasn’t anybody on Earth who was wondering where Ajax was tonight. But here was proof that, every year Rembrandt had been with them, there was a home missing her. Silently, Ajax toed off her boots and slipped past the crowd into the kitchen. 

It was quiet in there, with a few festive-scented candles burning and a couple pots simmering on the stove for dinner. Ajax was poking at the rice a few minutes later when Dora bustled in. 

“Oh, Ajax!” she said, with evident relief, “I didn’t know if you’d made it.”

Ajax considered pretending like she hadn’t been messing with the woman’s cooking, but she’d found that Dora appreciated honesty. “Needs salt,” she said. 

“Give me that.” Dora grabbed the spoon from her and tasted it. “Hm. Yes. Can you do it? I’ve got to go find another Santa hat.”

Without waiting for an answer from Ajax, she bustled right back out of the kitchen. Ajax stared after her, and then down at the rice. Sure. Shit. Cooking in someone else’s kitchen. Ajax squinted down at the little Christmas-themed shakers on the counter next to the stove. Was a kitten in a scarf more or less salty than a penguin with reindeer antlers? There was a trick to knowing which one was pepper, but Ajax couldn’t remember it. 

Admitting defeat was not one of Ajax’s strengths, but she backed off the shakers. There had to be a thing of salt somewhere else in the kitchen. After opening several cabinets and finding: cups, plates, more cups, a box wrapped in green paper and shoved in between some bowls, and a truly astonishing number of novelty cake tins, Ajax found the salt in the back of a skinny cabinet over the sink, behind little jars of  spices and packets of Sazon. The rice only needed a little bit, and then it was almost done cooking so she took the lid off and turned down the heat. 

Ajax stood there in the kitchen for about as long as she could bear (about five minutes) poked her head out to the living room again, decided that was way too many people to reasonably ask her to talk to - related to Rembrandt or no - and went back to poking her nose where it didn’t belong. There was pork roasting in the oven, flan chilling in the fridge, and a box full of delicately iced gingerbread on the far side of the kitchen, shoved all the way to the back beneath the cabinets. The shelf above the fridge had a murky jar of what Ajax’s investigation revealed to be tamarind rum. She put it back (respectfully) and then (disrespectfully) immediately regretted it. 

Just as boredom got the better of Ajax and she’d started eating one of the gingerbread cookies (good. chewy.) Dora came back into the kitchen, at a more normal pace and wearing a tinsel-adorned headband she hadn’t been wearing last time. When she saw Ajax, caught, still holding the box of cookies, she laughed. 

“Oh, by all means,” she said. “They’re just in here hiding from the little ones.”

She pulled Ajax into a brief but warm embrace. “Here! Here,” she said, “I’m being a bad host. Let’s get you a drink and then you can tell me everything you’ve been up to. That girl of yours always leaves stuff out when I ask.”

Dora poured them both glasses of coquito from a pitcher in the fridge and settled against the counter. Ajax didn’t really mean to tell her everything. Just a few things, so she’d be satisfied. But Dora had eyes that crinkled up like she was smiling even when she wasn’t and she just sat and listened and nodded and never acted like she wished Ajax would stop talking. So Ajax told her that Cleon was making Swan get her GED, and that Cochise was using her GI bill money to take night classes at the community college with her so she wouldn’t be alone. Rembrandt was growing an apple tree in their bedroom window from a seed she’d found already sprouting in an apple one day, and it had five happy little green leaves, but Ajax was worried the cold wasn’t good for it. Ajax had left Cleon’s present at her apartment with Swan a few days ago and the suspense of not knowing how she’d react was killing her. Cowgirl had been planning a New Year’s party with the other girls from the bar for weeks now and Ajax was already dreading the hangover. She’d told the fish guy at the grocery store that Dora said hi and thanks for the shrimp he’d saved for them last month. There was a new girl hanging around their corner, and Cleon and Cochise were already having tense conversations in the corner about what to do if she wanted into the crew. And when Ajax ran out of life to recount, Dora told her about the kids in her class, and the latest gossip from the staff room, and how Rembrandt had loved Christmas when she was young. 

- - - 

Eventually, Dora was called away, and Ajax was alone again in the kitchen to give an occasional stir to the food on the stove and stare down the pork to keep it from burning. She was so enmeshed in her staring contest with the oven she didn’t notice the patter of little feet on linoleum until they were right next to her. 

She startled as a very tiny hand reached out to pat her on the thigh. “Bwah,” said a small voice confidently.

Ajax blinked down at the small child, who was looking back up at her with apparently Rembrandt-family-trademark owlish brown eyes. Jesus, but she was tiny. Ajax had forgotten kids could be that small. She put down her glass of coquito and crouch down to be nearer to the kid’s eyeline. 

“Hey, what’re you up to?” she said, softly.

“Bah!” The kid said proudly, and then giggled like this was a favorite joke of hers. “Hiiiiii. Merry- Merry Christmas!”

Only, the kid couldn’t have been more than two, so it was more like “Mewwy Kimmus.”

“Merry Christmas yourself,” Ajax replied. The kid giggled at her again. God, even her smile looked like Rembrandt’s, on the rare occasions that Rembrandt forgot herself enough to really smile. “I’m Ajax. I like your shoes.”

The kid positively beamed at that, stamping her feet in her silly little decorative kid shoes. “I’m Isa. I like your jacket. It’s shiny.”

“Hi, Isa. I think you probably got someone out there you gotta go back to,” Ajax said, standing up and leaning over to look out the door the kid had come through for any following adults. 

Isa shook her head so hard it looked like she might tumble over. “No, no, no,” she insisted, “staying!” 

She made the universal gesture at Ajax that she wanted to be picked up. Ajax looked down at her, bemused. There were only a few social rules that weren’t lost on Ajax, but one of them was “don’t go around picking up strange children.” 

Seeing that her grabby hands weren’t having the desired result, Isa arranged her face into a forlorn pout of absolute bereftness. Fuck. Ran in the fucking family. Ajax should never have agreed to this. She was fucking outnumbered. 

“Motherfucker,” Ajax swore, bending down to pick her up. She held her out at arm’s length for a moment. “Don’t tell anyone I said that.”

Isa shook her head, eyes wide, and then nodded, like she couldn’t figure out which one meant she agreed. Ajax glared at her for another second before deciding “motherfucker” was probably too many syllables for her to pronounce. She settled Isa comfortably onto her hip , where she immediately began pointing around the room at where she wanted Ajax to take her. 

“Hey, slow down,” Ajax complained, “If you wanna walk around so much you can do it yourself.”

She did, however, acquiesce to Isa’s frantic gesturing at the pot of rice, and gave her a spoonful once she’d blown on it enough that she was reasonably sure Isa wouldn’t burn herself. The kid wriggled happily in her arms. Ajax, who had been five percent responsible for said rice, allowed herself a little glow of pride. 

Suddenly, it all felt very familiar. Ajax was gripped by the sense-memory of another her in another time, another kitchen, another baby in her arms. Her chest ached with it, all of a sudden, like an old bruise. She always thought she’d grown around it, until a new shift brought it back to the surface. A new wave of grief for a thing that had never really been hers to lose. 

Isa patted her on the neck, little-kid clumsiness making it more of a smack than a gentle nudge. “You look sad,” she observed. Ajax laughed. 

“Have a cookie?” she was pointing to the box of gingerbread, where Ajax had failed to re-hide it. “And then I have a cookie also.”

“Very slick, kid,” Ajax said. She looked back at the door. Coast still clear. There didn’t seem to be any tak of having dinner soon.  “Sure, we can have cookies.” 

- - - 

Isa was still gnawing on her cookie when someone came looking for her. He was a bookish-looking man, with his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows and a kind of restless nervousness to him that Ajax recognized. 

“Oh, there you are Isa,” he said with no small amount of relief. “I hope she hasn’t been bothering you. She’s not really afraid of strangers.”

“I noticed,” Ajax said, amused. “Sorry, I don’t know if she was supposed to have cookies.”

He sighed the heavy sigh of a young parent during the holiday season. “One more won’t kill her,” he admitted. “Come on, Isa, you’ve gotta go back with Mom.”

Isa squawked and clung to Ajax, shaking her head. “No!” she protested, “We were havin’ fun.”

“Were we? And here I thought I might be boring you.”

Isa giggled. “Nooo, you’re not boring.” Now that someone knew where she was, however, she seemed less interested in the kitchen. She patted Ajax on the arm and started wriggling to be put down. Ajax lowered her to the floor and she tottered off into the living room, where her arrival was greeted by a chorus of “Hello, Isa!”s. 

Had that ever been Ajax? Had a roomful of people ever been happy to see her? Ajax didn’t know. She couldn’t remember ever being that small. 

The man extended his hand to shake. “I’m David,” he said, “I really am sorry about her. She just loves meeting people.”

“No problem, man.” David. Ajax had heard about David. He was Rembrandt’s boy cousin, the one whose clothes she had been wearing when they met. 

David smiled, looking like his mom. “You must be Ajax. Mami said you were in here helping with the food. I can’t totally blame you.”

Ajax was instinctively wary of people who knew who she was when she hadn’t met them, even though she also already knew about David. But she felt the weight of his knowing much more heavily. There was more for him to know. But Dora knew, and Dora had still invited her. She couldn’t quite hide her apprehension from him, apparently, because he laughed. 

“No, God, it’s fine, we haven’t been gossiping about you. Well, maybe a little. It’s just exciting, you know, to have someone new around.” He rolled his eyes. “Everything’s a holiday. We get sick of each other.”

Ajax remembered getting sick of her family. She had come up with a different solution. She tried to smile like she understood. 

“Listen, while I’ve got you.” David reached out and grabbed her by the wrist. Ajax, as a Christmas present to Rembrandt, did not flip him around and pin him up against the cabinets, even though it would have been very easy. He had a look in his eyes like he was just trying to be sincere, so Ajax just held her breath. 

“I just wanted to say thank you,” he said, and God, he was sincere, wasn’t he? Even the other Warriors never thanked Ajax like that. “That summer with Vallie… It was bad. We were all- I was really worried about her. It means a lot, to know she wasn’t alone. That someone was looking out for her.”

He squeezed her arm briefly, and then released her to grab a gingerbread and follow his daughter back into the living room. He was wrong. Ajax wanted to yell after him, or scream into a pillow. If he was worried about Rembrandt he should’ve been there for her, everyone in this house should’ve. The fuck was he doing thanking Ajax? That Ajax was the person who had stepped in was the problem. Rembrandt never should have needed her in the first place. But he was gone already, so Ajax couldn’t say any of that. She just poured herself another drink. 

- - - 

Dora came in a while later to find Ajax silently staring out the window. It had started to snow, in tiny little clumps that would soak through her boots on the way home but glowed under the streetlights. 

“Dinnertime,” she announced, sounding a little worn out but still cheery. “Come, help me set the table.” 

There was a pretty young blonde woman helping with the table, too. She introduced herself as Sarah. Ajax remembered from the Christmas card that this made her Isa’s mom. When Dora left to herd the others into the dining room, Sarah smiled at her in a way that Ajax was beginning to recognize as the harbinger of small talk that she was wholly unprepared for. At the very least, Sarah had a perfectly normal smile and perfectly unremarkable blue eyes. Her smile was tired, but it had an air of camaraderie to it. 

“First time, huh?” she joked. 

Ajax shrugged. 

“I remember the first year I came to Christmas here,” Sarah said wistfully. “David always offers to have Christmas with my family, but Easter with them is more than enough, trust me.”

She chuckled to herself. “It’s good you’re here,” she said more seriously. “Last year the kids’ table was just me and David and Isa. Can you imagine?”

Ajax did laugh at that, relaxing a fraction. The others were starting to trickle in. Ajax kept looking at the door for Rembrandt, even as Sarah pointed out to her which one her place was (true to form, at what Dora exasperatedly insisted wasn’t, and yet clearly was, the kids’ table). Rembrandt came in a little late from the door that led to the kitchen, wiping her eyes on the backs of her hands. Ajax looked at her in concern but Rembrandt shook her head before she could say anything. 

“It’s fine,” she murmured under her breath. Ajax frowned at her, but Rembrandt just smiled and, well, she actually did look alright. She didn’t look the way she did when she was shoving everything down. She looked more relaxed than she had in weeks. 

The food was very good. Ajax had spoiled that particular surprise, and also her appetite, by hiding in the kitchen and snacking for the whole party, but it was nice to watch everyone else coo in excitement. 

Rembrandt joked comfortably with David, giving Ajax a glimpse into a past life they’d shared as the babies of the family. Sarah seemed to like Rembrandt immediately, and they continued a conversation they’d apparently gotten distracted from, in which they were discussing with utmost seriousness the virtues of various colors of bedroom paint. Ajax looked up from this conversation in helpless confusion only to find that David was already looking at her with a similar expression. This solidarity warmed and reassured her enough to continue to listen to Sarah’s monologue on periwinkle vs. lavender vs lilac and how people all over the world were doing themselves a disservice by mixing them up. 

- - -

By the time they were leaving Ajax had mostly forgotten to be excited. They lingered by the door a while, as had every guest to leave before them. David and Sarah, who were spending the night, came to the door to see them off. Dora waved to them from the sofa, where Isa was sleeping half-sprawled over her thigh. 

“Oh!” Sarah said in a stage whisper. “I almost forgot!”

She went over to the tree and picked up a plain brown paper bag and brought it to Ajax. “Here, this one’s for you guys. I was going to say to open it tomorrow, but it’s so cold out there you’d better open it now.”

“You really didn’t have to-” Rembrandt started.

“No, no!” Sarah insisted. “It’s my hobby, it’s no trouble at all!”

Inside the bag was a long, simple knitted scarf and a pair of wrist warmers knit in the same rich, deep blue yarn. 

“Oh,” Rembrandt said softly, “It’s like the sky.”

“Yes!” Sarah whisper-cheered. “See, David, I told you. He thinks they’re black.”

David sighed the sigh of a man who had lost this argument several times already.

Sarah drew Rembrandt into a quick hug. David, to Ajax’s immense relief, just clapped her on the shoulder. 

“Stay safe out there,” he said. 

Rembrandt was careful to close the door quietly behind them. She reached up to wrap the scarf around Ajax’s neck, adjusting it until it was even. “Okay,” she said, mostly to herself, “Okay, let’s go home.”

They were quiet on the walk back to the bus stop. Rembrandt let her stay quiet until they were on the bus. 

“Hey,” she said, nudging Ajax with her elbow. “You’re thinking about something.”

And Ajax really didn’t mean to tell her everything. She meant to open her mouth and say that she was fine, just tired. But there was Rembrandt, a little bit sad and a little bit confused, and so what Ajax really said was, “You know I don’t have a family, right?”

Rembrandt blinked, frown deepening. But, Ajax discovered, she wasn’t done.

“It’s just you. You’ve got all these people who care about you. And I’ve just got you.”

Rembrandt considered this for a while. “You’ve got Cleon and Swan,” she said finally. 

“No, don’t give me that ‘we’re not a crew, we’re family’ bullshit-”

“Did I say that?” Rembrandt glared at her, “I said Cleon and Swan. They care. They miss you. I told Cleon I was taking you before I told you.”

“That’s- oh. Hm.” Ajax had to sit on that one for a bit. “It’s not the same.”

“No,” Rembrandt agreed, “It’s not. But for what it’s worth, I’m really fucking grateful I have you guys.”

“I don’t see why,” Ajax muttered, “We’re together because we have to be. Nobody else wants us. People want you.”

Rembrandt sighed. As the air left her, she seemed to shrink a little bit. “My parents are getting divorced,” she said conversationally. 

“Oh.”

“Mhmm,” Rembrandt agreed. 

“Did you… know?”

Rembrandt made a non-committal sound. “Dora called me, after she sent the card. She said I should come, because my mom wouldn’t be there. So. You know. I suspected. But my dad wanted to tell me himself.”

Ajax sat back in her seat. “I’m… sorry?”

Rembrandt shrugged. “I… don’t think I am. I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.”

Ajax nodded. She didn’t really know what to say to that. They sat in silence for a few minutes. 

“Ajax?” Rembrandt said suddenly.

“Mmyeah?”

“What would you do if my mom showed up at our apartment?”

“Um,” Ajax said. This felt like a trap. Rembrandt was looking at her with complete earnestness. Ajax was shit at lying. “...probably get the cops called on me.”

Rembrandt closed her eyes, nodding to herself. She exhaled. “Every single person in that house,” she said, “Any one of them would have taken me in. And when my mom knocked on their door, they would have let her in. They would have let her drag me home.”

She breathed out again, shakier this time. “They love me, sure. But they wouldn’t have protected me. Not like you did. Not like you do.”

When she spoke next her voice was much quieter. “I know you think I don’t need you,” she said, “But I do. I really, really do.”

“Okay,” Ajax said. She put her arm out so Rembrandt could tuck up under it and nestle into her side. Rembrandt put her head on Ajax’s shoulder.

“Okay.”

[noodyl-blasstal]

Blupjeans Week Day 1

It's @blupjeansweek! Blupjeans week last year was the thing that encouraged me to start writing fics, so it's been fun to play with it again! Like last year, it's loosely connected (so far anyway!). So, now I'll stop blethering and here's some words. Day 1 - refuge

16 hours to go.

16 hours until he tanked his viva, fucked up everything he’d been working for, and his supervisor says he hadn’t ever believed Barry was capable, he just wanted his fees... Well, John would definitely say that if Barry could get hold of him but it had become abundently clear over the course of his postgrad research that John wasn’t the easiest guy to reach. Which might not be a problem if it wasn't his literal job to support Barry through his PhD.

At this point Barry hadn’t heard from him in two weeks despite a variety of progressively more panicked emails. The last conversation they had was John's particularly un-comforting statement that Barry should “...expect majors" because "it’s not the worst thesis I’ve ever read, but it certainly isn’t the best.” Barry's secondary supervisor hadn’t even bothered to show up for that meeting, so it was anyone’s guess what his take was. Barry assumed it wasn’t great.

He grabbed the pot from the coffee machine he’d abducted from the kitchen a few days ago and perched on his desk instead. He debated swigging straight from it, that seemed more efficient than using a mug, plus, his hand seemed to be shaking a bit and he didn't want to risk trying to pour it into a mug then into himself - he needed every drop to keep him awake long enough to work out how to fix this disaster.

“Knock knock! This is your 16 hour anxiety check in.” Barry’s door creaked open, but Lup didn’t appear. “Barrrrooollllld?” She sing songed, then added hopefully “...have you finally decided to sleep?” 

“Come in Lup.”

“Damn, you’re still up.” Oh, of course she was disappointed. She was probably sick of having to baby him through his anxiety. “...Not that I don’t want to see you, I was just hoping you were getting some rest.”

Barry held up the coffee pot in a cheers motion then took a swig from it. He was fine, this was fine, but if Lup left in disgust he could get back to scribbling increasingly unhinged and hard to read annotations on his sticky notes and trying to work out how to pull this disaster over the finish line. 

"Doing totally fine, huh?” Lup eyed him disapprovingly. “Barry, you have to take a break. You're going to crash in the middle of it if you keep this up. You've got what, like 15 and a bit hours?" She waited for him to nod in affirmation. "Cool, then you've got time to sleep."

He didn't have time to sleep, he had to try and plug the holes in the sinking ship that represented four years of his life. Suddenly Lup was in front of him, he hadn't noticed her moving, but she had appeared and was gently prying the sticky note monstrosity he hadn’t realised he’d picked up out of his hand. "No, I need to…"

"Sleep." Lup said. "You need to rest. There isn't a single thing in here you don't know. It's fucking brilliant, no, don't argue with me, I've read it." Barry snapped his mouth closed, he wanted to protest, but he wasn't entirely sure he could remember what he was arguing with, there was no fight left in him. "Now give me the coffee pot, Barold." He gripped it more firmly. No, not even for Lup. He couldn't relinquish this, it was the only thing keeping him awake. Lup raised and eyebrow. “Barold, don’t make me full name you. I'll do it! Hand over the pot.” Lup held her hand out expectantly.

"I'll fall asleep."

"That's the idea my guy. C'mon, gimme the sweet sweet bean juice. You don't need that where you're going."

"Where I'm…? Where am I? I'm here." Barry looked down to check.

Lup used his moment of confusion to swipe the coffee pot. Usually it wouldn’t have worked… probably, okay, it would have, but slower and he would have protested more. Right now his hands felt too heavy to even think about taking evasive action. "Yoink!" Lup said triumphantly, holding it aloft. Then he blinked and she didn't have the coffee pot any more. Maybe she magicked it somewhere? Barry turned his head to try and find it, and then she was tugging at his hand. "Not here, Bear, somewhere comfy."

"The chair's comfy, it's ergonomic." He paid a lot of money because the guy in the shop was really confident about that.

Lup snorted and tugged harder. "Barold Jorts Bluejeans, you're coming with me." 

"My name isn't…"

"...Ssssh." Lup might have been laughing. Barry wasn’t entirely sure, maybe it was him actually? Should stand? Oh, actually, he was up and moving and Lup still had hold of his hand and maybe she didn't have to let it go and she could just keep holding his hand and he could hold hers and maybe she’d have a nap with him. They stopped.

"This is your room." Barry wasn't entirely sure how they'd got there, time was doing strange things. 

"Yup, cha'girl decided you couldn't be left unattended in yours, it's too full of anxiety, even if I get you to sleep you'll marinade in it. So, we're here." Lup pushed the door wide.

Her bed had developed some kind of blanket canopy, there were string lights strewn around, and he could hear the soft patter of rain even though there wasn't a cloud in the sky. "It's… this is… magic. You made it all magic."

"Uh huh, now get in." Lup lifted a corner of blanket, it revealed a whole mess of pillows and blankets waiting inside. The bed looked so cosy, so inviting, so much better than his boring bed. He shouldn't, he really shouldn’t, he should study more, he couldn't afford to get off track. "That’s it, Bear." Oh. He was in the process of crawling in, and he was comfy. He flopped bodily into the bed and everything smelled of Lup’s orange body wash. Maybe he could just live here.

"I should do more prep." He mumbled, and sank into the pillow nest, rubbing his face on a soft fleece blanket. 

"Uh huh." Said Lup. 

"There's… I need to… you see, I have..."

"I'll wake you up in a few hours, sleep tight, Bear."

“Sleep tight Lup.” Barry mumbled from the depths of his blanket cocoon.

Part 2 here.

[littledoggy-girlcollar]

a counterargument: colin bullied nate pretty relentlessly, including physically. nate was openly scared of colin in the for the children ep. not that that makes what said okay, but he also apologized to colin afterwards.

you know i did think about this when writing the post so here's my thoughts on that:

you're right, colin did bully nate in season one, but unless i totally misread shit (which, possible, i did watch a lot of it fairly late at night and watched the other part of it while writing an essay), the bullying was explicitly ring-led by jamie, and was stopped pretty much entirely by roy yelling at them in the club. as far as i remember, there was nothing specific that colin did that jamie and isaac didn't, and while i also don't remember a full apology to nate, it also seemed like they all got along fairly well afterward, especially after nate's promotion to assistant coach.

and then the Headspace episode happened. i had thoughts abt what i was going to say and then i went "hey lemme pull up the episode to make sure i have that right" and i forgot those thoughts and now i have new ones and they're way more thesis-y than i thought they'd be so here we go!

nate is a bit of a dick to colin during practice, following some ribbing of nate's new nickname of the "wonder kid," coming from him mispronouncing "wunderkind/wonderkind" (as far as i can tell these are the same word? just different spelling?). dani, jamie, and colin all make essentially the same joke, but colin is the only one that nate gets mad at. could this possibly just be because of the lingering resentment from the bullying last season? sure. but colin actually goes to nate's office to figure out what he did wrong and if there's something else he should be doing, and nate literally tells him he did it because dani and jamie have more talent and recognition than he does (incredibly paraphrased). my rant about how colin could end up being THE most inspiring member of the team if the show/the character decides to go that way will be saved for another post, but in essence, nate explicitly tells both colin and us as the viewer that he picked on colin because he doesn't think he has that much power to retaliate, and nate's position as assistant coach gives him a level of authority over colin as well.

crazy. almost like a role reversal over here or something.

anyways, beard calls nate on his shit, nate apologizes to colin in front of the team, the apology is accepted. in all, it was kind of a one-off thing that was resolved fairly easily, and i am realizing that my view of that specific instance may have been clouded by the rest of the episode, but there is one more point i want to hit on before we get to that part, which is that: colin is a gay man in a sport with (from what i've heard) no visibly out queer men, and nate had no way of knowing this, but that probably made his comment cut deeper than he even intended. i know in season three colin says he doesn't want to be some big statement or representation or whatever, and i think that's totally fair and if the show wants to stick with that i think that's chill, but i do still think telling a closeted gay man that "you aren't special, you don't inspire anyone, shut up and do the work" would have a biiiiit of a mental impact beyond just the visible hurt we see from colin as he leaves. again, this bit isn't necessarily on nate since he didn't know and may not have factored it in even if he did, but to me it's just kind of another drop in the bucket of "wow this man is just saying anything now cause he's got an outsourced sense of superiority."

and that's actually where my main problem comes from. because after the apology the team gifts nate a jersey with "wonder kid" on it. and they are happy about it, and they think it's cool, and they give the credit to will (the kitman, you know, nate's old job) for coming up with it, and will says "it's a pretty awesome nickname." and then nate sees one fucking negative meme on twitter, in a flood of literally hundreds of positive ones, plus headlines and fucking podcasts praising him to high heaven, and nate goes "clearly will was trying to embarrass me, guess i better go physically threaten him so he never does that again."

because he's an insecure prick that doesn't actually believe in himself or have self-confidence. he's done a bit of growing, sure, and he can stand up for himself and voice his opinions a bit better now, but despite his stupid fucking posturing and spitting in the mirror (cause its tough? a metaphor for him hating himself? whatever it's fucking stupid) he gets all of his confidence from other people. he hasn't internalized it yet. he feels good when ted praises his ideas, he gets overly insecure when roy does literally anything, including give the proper credit to nate, feels lighter than air and higher than heaven (i don't usually invoke holy shit this much the show must be rubbing off on me in terms of metaphors) when everyone is praising his name, and it can all be ruined by one comment from his father and the same picture of his face on the internet only this time it's saying shit instead of giving him glory. so he's hearing all of this praise from pretty much all corners, and he feels good about it, but he can't hold onto it. he can't internalize it. so when he sees a sliver of criticism, it all goes out the window, and he doesn't want that! that makes him feel bad! so he has to get rid of that, too, and the easiest way to get rid of it is to turn it around on someone else. someone with less power who won't fuck you up and who doesn't visibly have enough support to come back at you (because while i love colin, we really don't see him shine on his own that much. and neither does nate). and sure whatever nate's dad is a jerk to him and childhood issues shut the fuck up that's a grown man with an actively growing support system. which he throws under the bus like five seconds later by the way.

anyways. my point here is really that the episode is kind of a perfect summary of nate's character at this point in the narrative. he's abusing his power out of some weird sense of superiority one good win got him, he's got enough humanity to realize (re: be forced to realize by a large man with a beard and ability to disappear from offices) when he's fucked up no actually hold on. he literally only apologizes cause coach beard confronts him on it and is expecting it. he wouldn't have done this otherwise and we know it because look at how he's treated will literally since he got there. ok sorry for the detour that hit me literally as i was writing and i don't have the energy to go back up and revise to fit that in. so: abusing power, will apologize when made to by those he still views as having more power than him, externalizes all of his self-concept, positive and negative, and continues to take out all negativity on anyone he views as having less power. WHICH AGAIN FUCKING SUCKS SINCE THAT LITERALLY USED TO BE HIM IT'S LITERALLY "WELL I WENT THROUGH X SO YOU SHOULDN'T GET Y" BEHAVIOR FUCK OFF. GOD. okay i need to end this before i get real fucked up about it ok closing statement.

yes, colin bullied nate in season one. yes, nate ostensibly apologized to colin and colin accepted. no, the reason this grinds my gears isn't necessarily the colin thing specifically, but the situation is kind of a microcosm of everything that's going on in the world of nate, and is therefore condensed, and therefore saturated, so it sucks more ass. yes, i understand that pretty much everything i've laid out is why nate is such a well written character, but that doesn't make him a less shitty person. i'm sure i had more things to say and forgot them so if you wanna ask questions shoot.

[eclipsecrowned]

🔥 // @decreedfate

I think... There comes a point where attempts to diversify or identify with a text via headcanon bypasses actual intent and instead travels backwards into stereotypes, erasure, or forms of -phobia. Like, I understand what a member of the comm is doing when they pull an 'I think Emily Dickinson was a lesbian!'

But I think certain reps need to be thought through. For a personal example, an ex friend would routinely throw me scraps. Oh, I want to ship my OC with Blorbimir, so I think we should ship his canon love interest Blorbej with the other female lead Blorbina, I know you like that ship a lot. Oh, you like Blorbelgard? That's so funny, because I hc her as a lesbian. But then if I sat down and looked at her actual storytelling, Blorbej and Blorbina are nowhere in the text except a disclaimer that 'oh Blorbimir/Blorbej didn't endgame he's always loved my OC and also 'Bej's a lesbian <3 They ran off to R*vka Blorbiverse Russia together far from the action <3' or 'I hate this fucking character so much what a bitch I hope my fave Blorbitri excruciatingly kills and maims her.' If you're going to write rep to cater me I want it in the text and not presented as villainous or unworthy of the author's time. Likewise, the new hot shit is 'oh this woman character is too girlboss and lesbian to actually ship with stinky men protags <3' when it's like. You only did this to have misogyny and erasure covered up under a thin veneer of rep and empowerment.

I have also seen some people take the point of characters or arcs and basically gone 'The fact I am unsettled or not represented in this overt villainy is a flaw of the narrative,' instead of a point. Sometimes, I think it's okay to not see yourself represented in certain narratives. Like, when a villain is clearly an embodiment of historical patriarchy bearing down on a female lead, someone crashes in saying 'What if a transmasc lesbian?' Which... So now we have a predatory lesbian who transgresses against assigned sex to obsessively ruin the life of a protagonist. You understand how having that as a villain is arguably far worse rep than Sir Blorbert Blorbington IV who is haranguing Blorsette because pat of the thesis statement of the work is 'Patriarchy Bad, Respect Women.' Again, I understand the intent, but the execution just gets worse and worse the more you actually think about it beyond the naive scope of 'all representation is created equal and enhances the narrative.'

Another one that gets on the nerves of me as a lesbian when fandom pulls it, the character Blorbella routinely abuses character Blorbennifer in canon, to an upsetting degree, including serious emotional or physical harm. Aren't the lesbians cute, says fandom, ignoring that Blorbella is clearly a representation of how privilege and bias breeds cruelty against people like the ND/POC/Queer/take your pick Blorbennifer. I get you all have kinks for a rich dommy mommy but maybe romanticizing actual internalized misogyny and racism/homophobia/ableism as some sapphic win isn't the serve you think it is --

'Blorbin is ace/gay, that's why he hates women, we stan an ace/gay king.' Think that comment through maybe.

'I think Blorbiam is autistic he's just a widdle baby.' They're always either infantilizing people with autism or assigning it like a 'Get Out of Hell' free card for grown villains.

'I think Blorbarian was an abusive husband, a deadbeat father, a violent alcoholic, and I as a white person hope he dies.' You are talking about a POC character why do you think it's ok to pin that sort of stereotyping on him just because you don't like him as a character?

'Blorbeisha is so big and strong and not feminine, I as a cis person think she's trans.' / 'Blorby is so small and soft and not like other men, I as a cis person think he's trans.' Transphobia. Transphobia. Go pick your switch and get back here I'm not having it --

And honestly, I think it has a lot to do with the moralizing of fandom, which has been a net loss all the way around. You can't just like or dislike something. If you like it, it's the ideal rep, enhanced by your touch, all that matters is how you can paint yourself and your ideals onto the canvas. If you don't like it, it's degenerate, awful, hateful, only the uneducated masses and actual monsters disagree. So who cares what those on the other side of your funhouse mirror see reflected back at them?

The characters themselves don't have feelings to hurt, but look at it this way: a transmasc lesbian sees Lady Bloberta IV and internalizes it as 'This person sees and represents my community as violent and predatory.' I've had friends in fandoms who identify with Blorbarians as rep for their own culture/race in fiction and had to navigate the entire fandom re-inventing generations of stereotypes instead of being able to act like an adult and say 'Eh, I just didn't like the character.' My identity is the latest way that fandom can express their disregard for the stories of women and in turn I disproportionately see representation of my sexuality as a side plot to elevate cis men in fiction. The intent is usually innocent, to expand rep in fandom. But I'd advise if you aren't a part of the community you are seeking to represent, maybe look into the history of its representation a little.

[atinylittlepain]

You have convinced me, please let me know which albums of the great Bruce should I listen to first??

If it helps for suggestions:

- I am very much a listen to the whole album person

- I am very much NOT from america

- I regularly cry listening to music because it’s just, so good? 💙

Thank you!

Okay, non, it is time. I've thought very carefully about it, and I think I have a quintessential roadmap to guide you through my beautiful wife bruce's oeuvre. Before I get into that though, I have a few things to say about his music.

To put it plainly, think of each of Bruce's songs as a story - if you ever listen to him talk about his songs, he'll talk about personas and characters populating his albums, he'll talk about trying to capture certain American characters, archetypes and images that are now of the past. He means that, and it is what he does. Maybe this is a reach, or just me being pretentious (hello, let's put that english double major to work) but his songs really remind me of Flannery O'Connor's short stories - and she would often talk about being interested in grace, and capturing it in her writing. And it's not grace in the religious sense - it's a hard-earned, or sometimes hardly-earned grace, found in those that are failing, those that are longing, those that are young and uncertain and at the same time very old, and very tired. I've seen jokes circulating about how Bruce's music makes you realize that you too have a sixty-year-old beat-down midwestern dad somewhere inside of you - and I think those jokes are pointing to that grace, to something that inherently aches inside of us, something very old, and very human. That is my thesis statement about Mr. Springsteen - it's why I love him and why I listen to him and why I'll be sorely sad when he is no longer here with us.

AND with that, here is my bona fide roadmap to your first trip with Bruce:

NUMBER ONE

Alright, starter album right here, and maybe considered a bold choice by some - BUT, this is an album you can listen to start to finish and feel like you just watched a movie, and I feel that this album captures something essential about Bruce's work, both lyrically and sonically.

my favorite songs from this album

The Promised Land

Something in the Night

Darkness on the Edge of Town

NUMBER TWO

Mannnnnnn this album - I'll be honest with you, it's just fucking fun - some of Clarence's best work (sax man, beautiful man) some of the best imagery, and I believe after Darkness on the Edge of Town warming you up, it's a perfect second listen - it's short, and pretty punchy, but goddamn, it hits.

favorite songs

JUNGLELAND (one of my all time favorite Bruce songs, truly, tears in my eyes when I listen to it, it's that good)

Backstreets

She's the One

NUMBER THREE

So this album is my favorite Springsteen album, hands down, no holds barred. And yes, it is pretty different from any of his other stuff. Bruce recorded these songs on a four-track recorder in his home in New Jersey, with little else - he was in his early thirties, The River had been a smashing hit, and he was depressed. The original intent for these songs was to rerecord them with the E Street Band - however, that did not happen. The songs that did get rerecorded would end up becoming Born in the USA (arguably his most popular album), and the songs that didn't would get salvaged off a cassette he had been carrying around in his jacket pocket, and they would become this album. It's sparse, it's insular, it's unprecedented, and it is, indubitably, my favorite album. (I could make a whole fucking other post about just this album, but I will restrain myself... for now)

favorite songs

My Father's House

Reason to Believe

Atlantic City

And after you've gotten through these three, I would say be free and explore - The River and Born in the USA are pretty infamous - I would say you might like The River more just given the "NOT from america" status, as you said.

favorites off The River

The River (I mean, cmon now)

Drive All Night (makes me cry like a baby)

Crush on You

However, Born in the USA is inarguably brilliant, she's popular for a reason - I'm from fucking Ohio though, so that whole album really gets my gears turning regardless.

favorites off Born in the USA that are, um, less american-y

Downbound Train (all time fave)

My Hometown

Bobby Jean

And, of course, I highly recommend listening to his live albums, there's just something about them - here's two songs to get you started there:

Happy listening, dear anon, I'd love to hear what you think when you start digging in :)

[zeep-xanflorp]

making sense of that's amorte bc i'm silly

ok so the spaghetti like represents a lot of things. it brings the family together despite bad things happening. it brings them joy. but then they find out that this product that is bringing them so much happiness actually comes from a direct result of unhappiness, depression, and ultimately a person's suicide. they're eating the body of a person who killed themselves. i suppose the question then is: is it worth it to continue enjoying something that makes you happy even if it's something you consider wrong? rick considers the spaghetti guilt free, so his answer is yes, prioritising his own pleasure. but morty's answer is no, and he seeks to solve it.

he wants to learn the names of the ppl he's been eating in an attempt to humanise them and get closure, but isn't satisfied even then. he goes to the funeral of their most recent victim and tells the people there about what they were doing, to get it off his chest.

interestingly, the family are more upset over not having their spaghetti night anymore than the fact they've been eating people and are angrier at morty than rick.

the government then invites morty back to the planet to get his full statement on everything he's doing. they serve him a plate of human spaghetti and tell him it's okay bc the person who it came from consented to being eaten. morty says this makes it go down easier and they realise they have a product bc of how delicious it is. they start selling it on a large scale under the brand name "morty-o's suicide spaghetti."

then this episode turns into a critique on capitalism and consumerism and potentially cannibalism? in the way it kinda explores the argument that cannibalism is the only ethical way to consume meat. the government of the world rick was stealing bodies from is now using morty to indirectly act like the frontman to advertising spaghetti as a product. this makes the planet start to commodify their ppl's pain. literally. they make ppl more miserable to cause more suicides so they can make more product to sell more money.

morty decides this is unacceptable and seeks a solution. he tells rick that if he gets help, he won't look for the moral flaws in rick's deeds ever again. rick agrees and manufactures a creature that is almost a person but is basically created just to kill themselves and become spaghetti. they seem to be okay with this option, until it's ruined by protestors and they're back to square one.

then my leadt favourite part of the episode. morty remembers rick can synthesise anything he gets a sample of which HE OR RICK SHOULDVE REMEMBERED SOONER BEFORE SO MANY PPL DIED. IDC HOW NAIVE YOURE TRYING TO MAKE MORTY OUT TO BE HERE HES FUCKING NOT ANYMORE SO ALL OF THE PPL WHO HAVE DIED IN THIS FUCKING EPISODE AFTER THE MORTY-'O'S DISCOVERY IS FUCKING ON FHEM.

but there's only one person left who would probably kill themselves and the only way they're able to convince him to follow through is to present him an opportunity to end the spaghetti trade forever. and so he agrees. he goes into a euthanasia chamber and presses a button, rick grabs everyone's attention and broadcasts this guys entire life history to everyone so they can see the intrinsic value of life, the beauty of individuality and lived experiences. then everyone's finally grossed out by the spaghetti and put off it forever. no more spaghetti.

rick points out that it's not these ppl's deaths that made the spaghetti distasteful but the complexity of life, and i think that's basically the thesis statement of this episode. that and the fact that not everything is black and white, even if morty desperately wants them to be. he learns grey areas are sometimes acceptable.

favourite scene is the ending when rick is teasing them.

idk not the biggest fan of this episode. i think it had smth to say but missed the mark. this is just me reading into everything and trying to make sense of this. fucking dark even for this show, even for my tastes.