#or hes just switching back to manipulation tactics idk

[shebeafancyflapjack]

I've never heard this conversation in full as I usually reach Lagras before it's done, so I'm fascinated by Dutch's apology, it sounds like he's waking up from some delusion once Arthur reminds him how long they've been together. Almost like it foreshadows his response to "I gave you all I had" at the end.

[mxtxfanatic]

Thank you for the recommendations!

As your tags mention skipping to the first time skip in 2ha then going back, I might give it a second chance and try that out. What chapter should I jump to?

For TGCF, did end up reading half of book 4, skipping to 5, and then going back to 4, so it’s not a bad strategy for when things are getting a bit too heavy.

MXTX really is good at mixing dark plotlines with humor! When I think about it, MDZS did get pretty horrifying and dark, but the combination of mental breaks offered by swapping between timelines, and the inclusion of humor, worked really well to offset things.

I also adore the way she plays with different dynamics too, especially in SVSSS!

There is a teacher/student thing, but then again the student is also a nigh unkillable demon lord who gave his teacher a blood mite kill switch… except he’d really rather be a house-husband then a demon lord, and his best manipulation tactic is to sajiao, not use the blood mites. It’s all absolutely hysterical!

Anyway, I’m all for trying some other lighthearted fare, even if they aren’t necessarily ‘like’ SVSSS, so thanks for including some of them too!

Depends on where you stopped. When I first read 2ha, I got fed up around the lake arc where they were tryna get spiritual weapons, and I skipped to right at the end of the second Butterfly Town arc (idk chapters, I’ll respond with that later if you can tell me where you left off). But had I known that the Xia Sini era was coming next, I actually just would’ve read it through. Near the end of the Mo Ran 1.0 era, I started to become less frustrated with Mo Ran being a dick because he was already slowing down with that and more frustrated with his inability to see how shady Shi Mei was.

Funny though, cause my first time reading tgcf, I also skipped book 4 and went straight to book 5, but that’s because I couldn’t handle the suspense of the book 3 cliffhanger to be waylaid by a whole flashback arc lol

[fountainpenguin]

So about the recent Origin chapter, are Anti-Bryndin and H.P. on good friend terms again? (Or more Flour King patented manipulation?)

High Count Anti-Bryndin has never manipulated anyone in his life!!

They're definitely working on it. The Origin chapters leading up to infamous Chapter 37 were intentionally written to paint Anti-Bryndin as a guy who seemed to be pulling a lot of strings. Everyone talks him up as being the guy who's buddy-buddy with the nature spirit of communication. They talk about his silver tongue... Talk about the rumors that no one is immune to Anti-Bryndin's charm and that he can seduce absolutely anyone.

Then H.P. meets him and considers him a goofball, a pen pal, and friend. He falls head over heels for the guy, but insists he's not being manipulated because his QPR with Anti-Bryndin "isn't romantic, so it doesn't count as being seduced." Love that for him.

As time passes, there are signs that Anti-Bryndin might be hiding things, and that splinters the relationship between them for a while... supposedly.

Personally I think their friendship splintering was on the Head Pixie being possessive, not on Anti-Bryndin. When you start looking into it, Anti-Bryndin was super upfront with H.P. about how he's, like. poly. Like, he literally cannot get any more obvious about how many people he is married to and/or dating and/or in a QPR with and/or seeing on the side. His relationships are extremely public knowledge.

Yet H.P. went into this thinking he could dominate all of A.B.'s time. That didn't work out for him... and then things kept snowballing, getting increasingly worse as he shifted towards a more desperate attempt to impress and/or flirt with A.B., to the point that he started disrespecting Anti-Fairy cultural beliefs in the zodiac and genuinely making Anti-Bryndin really upset with him. H.P. has such an immense fear of being forgotten that he sabotaged a QPR he was really happy in because he couldn't handle the stress of knowing A.B. snuggled with other people.

This isn't to say A.B. is completely innocent, because he was definitely setting up some manipulative tactics (like making a point to scry H.P.'s crystal ball / scry bowl when he knew H.P. was busy just to force H.P. to pay attention to him, dubious boundary crossing, playing with trading cards, slathering him with attention when he was around, nudging him to vote on certain political topics, etc.)

Like, yeah, Anti-Bryndin was absolutely manipulating him... I just also find it hilarious that H.P. panicked and backpedaled before A.B. really got to play that card. Everything that went downhill was definitely "H.P. in panic mode" and not "A.B. screwed things up and was revealed to be blatantly toxic" and that's funny to me. I mean, it's terrible because H.P. was definitely blind to that toxicity (which is why he's falling back into the friendship all over again), but the fact that there was an entire plan being laid that got wrecked because H.P. switched gears is great.

I talked more about "How much of their friendship was a lie on Anti-Bryndin's side?" in a previous Ask HERE if you're interested in reading more about what Anti-Bryndin was going for.

Anyway tl;dr - I like to think of "On the Notion of Cutting Ties" as Anti-Bryndin and H.P. coming together after the timeskip, looking back on who they used to be, and saying "Weren't we jerks?" They're both trying to come clean about their faults and start over.

idk, I had to split this chapter in half because the first draft focused only on the machine H.P. and A.B. are collaborating on and not on their relationship, so all the wordcount that came from that conversation was brand new to me. I really like how it came out. The genuine "I'm sorry I offended you with how I treated your culture, I want to try again" is nice and soft and I love that for them. The QPR may be over but we can still enjoy... they.

Let's not deny that A.B. forced H.P. past his comfort level with Fairy culture things (preening), but H.P. definitely came back and forced A.B. beyond his comfort level with Anti-Fairy cultural elements. It was good of them to talk about these things and I'm glad they did. They do consider each other friends, or at least they're trying to. H.P. will never fully repair his trust in Anti-Bryndin, but he's trying. He regrets how forceful he was and this is one of the things that will make him hover around the neutral middle zone instead of fully committing to being an ally of the Anti-Fairies.

Whether it looks manipulative or not is up to you... The war from "Balance of Flour" is on the horizon, tho, and Flour King will be doing his Flour King thing. Should be interesting.

[smileyside-up]

Last dday of classes before Christmas break but I got obsessed with a book too early and now I can't focus so here are my thoughts

UUFHFBFBHDHD I LOVE ROTSGE SO MUCH THIS IS MAKING ME FEEL LIKE A CHILD AGAIN BUT GODDAMN INSTEAD OF BEING HAPPY BECAUSE I'M READING SOMETHING PRECIOUS TO MY CHILDHOOD I'M SO STRESSED BECAUSE IT CHANGES EVERYTHING WE KNOW ABOUT THE BROTHERS AND I DONT HAVE ANY FRIENDS THAT HAVE READ THIS BOOK SERIES SO HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO COPE

Okay drank some water to calm down going lowercase now

(Bullet points cuase idk how to string these in a coherent paragraph)

ji0PARALLELS. I though the parallel between Soph + Aggie and Raf + Rhi was that there's like one evil, one good, and that they're siblings and they're like leaders of their schools kinda? (Agatha being Camelots queen and Sophie being evil's dean) BUT NOO THE FACT THAT THEY WERE SWITCHED?? I MEAN NOW THAT I THINK ABOUT IT IT WAS A VERY GOOD POSSIBILITY BUT IDK MAN I NEED TO REREAD THE MAIN SERIES

RHIAN NEED S TO BE PUT IN THE DOOM ROOM FOR BEING A GULLIBLE GAY WHORE LIKE BRO EVERYTIME HE MEETS A REMOTELY PIRATE-LOOKING PERSON AND SWOONS I JUST WANT OT SERIOUSLY SHOVE THE STORIAN UP HIS ASS BUT I WOULDN'T BE SUPRISED IF HIS HOE ASS WOULD LIKE THAT

I dont actually think hook was that bad tbh, I feel like he was JUST about to find that he was evil and when he had a piece of Rafal's sorcerer soul he developed a taste for it and realized he was evil early etc etc and he thought to use that power to defeat pan but the magic fades over time because it's just a piece so he went for his gullible ass brother(btw that was the shittiest and most obvious manipulation tactic I have ever seen but it worked on rhian somehow)

ALSO I almost said "wait if Rafal was the good one why was his soul frosty and cold and... evil??" it wasn't. he was just salty and determined to the mission at hand and Raf feels like the type to internally shut down emotionally when he's upset so yeah that explains the coldness

Vulcan is THE walking "ick" like this mf really thought calling Rhian "duckling" was seductive enough to get him to betray his brother(it worked for a split second though)

THE POSEUR THEORY (it isn't officially called the poseur theory but it's my name for it). the theory that main series Rafal is actually Rhian is absolutely. just holy shit. THERE IS SO MUCH EVIDENCE TO BACK IT UP. My personal addition is when Vulcan was first introduced I was like "OHHH lolz the brothers have a type for stylish villains" BUT NOW, I THINK ONLY ONE HAS A TYPE. Also I don't know what would be worse, if the theory is true, or Rafal went through some shit and went mad over the hundred years after he's killed his brother and in some sick twisted coping mechanism he becomes him/unwillingly became like him personality wise.

THE FACT THAT THERE ARE 2 FICS ON THIS BOOK ON AO3(NOT COUNTING THE ONE INCEST FIC) LIKE COME ONNNN GUYS PLEAAE GIVE ME CHARACTER STUDIES!! POST-BOOK THEORY FICS!! FUCK I'LL EVEN TAKE OMEGAVERSE SMUT IF IT MEANS CONTENT

WE NEVER GOT TO SEE ALADDIN MAKE A TRUE FRIEND AND IM MAD

I should have made a "gay" counter while reading

MAIN SERIES RAFAL(?) DEFINITELY SAW HIMSELF AND HIS BROTHER IN AGATHA AND SOPHIE AND THAT'S WHY HE MEDDLED IN THEIR TALE SO MUCH EVEN THOUGH YOU WOULD THINK THAT HE'D HAVE LEANRED HIS LESSON NOT TO MEDDLE IN THE FAIRYTALES

Justice for Rafal if the Poseur theory is true his name has been dragged through the mud so much because of his stupid ass brother and justice even if it isn't STILL because of his stupid ass brother

Thats it for now but I'll be back

[analoghorrorexplained]

Theory: Mandela Catalogue is about religious hypocrisy

Warning, this post may contain spoilers. This post is also purely speculative. Please do not take this post as canon. Along with that this post may contain disturbing material. Reader digression is advised.

_____________________________________________________________

I have noticed very few people have talked about what Mandela Catalogue actually means, so ill take a stab at it. 

Mandela Catalogue is about religious hypocrisy and how self proclaimed ‘Christians’ actually worship the devil due to their actions not aligning with actual Christian beliefs.

Lemme explain:

In the canon of the Mandela Catalogue universe it is all but outright screamed at you that at some point in the timeline, god was replaced by Satan and the alternates that came out of that are essentially demons. And Biblically, Satan and his hoards operate via fear, anger, frustration, and chaos compared to God who operates out of love. 

Switching to real life: many modern day religious extremists and televangelists often operate the same way Alternate Gabriel does in the series. In the segments we do see of Alternate Gabriel he often manipulates those based on what they fear most. For Joseph it can be implied that its the fact his wife, Mary, is having a child out of wedlock. For Noah, its the impending flood (and he used this opportunity to manipulate Noah into taking possible alternates onto the ark). And from other instances we see in the series of this happening: its the mother and her child being taken away. Its people’s fears of home invaders. Its the very presence of something ‘not quite human’ walking among us. And going back to real life, religious extremists often employ the same tactics to further their own agendas. They play off of the fears of their listener base to get them to do whatever they want via manipulating them through fear. “Us Vs Them” mentality. This then drives people to do horrible things, often out of desperation and fear, in order to try to keep away whatever they are afraid of. The alternates and SUS Gabriel are just a personification of that. 

So all the people using God and Christianity as a platform of hate are actually just worshiping satan, because in this world (and maybe irl idk) Satan has ultimately replaced god and is using his new platform to do what he does best: fuck shit up. 

They use fear to manipulate people into killing themselves, killing their family members, and to just overall destabilize their society. And nobody knows what to do about it since you are not fighting a literal thing, you are fighting an idea. This is why the alternates cant die (other than the fact they are literally incorporeal beings) you cannot kill fear. And when that fear is exploited you are able to make a LOT of people do practically anything (regardless of how fucked up and terrible it is). And the ringleaders of that are the people who spread fear (in this case the alternates who take the form of friendly figures, in a more real life perspective those who use religion as an excuse for hate and act as preachers of the gospel).

Please keep in mind a lot of what I said above relies on allegory, and I know in Mandela Catalogue things are more literal. But it still kinda works.  

[messymessyml]

This fic idea haunts me:

So Damian canonically dies and is brought back to life with a chaos shard, and this process grants him some powerful abilities before he uses them up in a fight orchestrated by Bruce/the JL (from what I understood, Bruce was concerned Damian wasn't able to control them and his ego combined with the new powers was concerning, so he staged a mecha fight to have Damian save the JL and the mech was just powerful enough to require everything Damian had to give). This was a very entertaining plot as a reader, but a pretty horrifying and manipulative way of dealing with Damian.

This got me thinking; if I was Damian and had just been revived and developed powers and my father had manipulated me into losing them, I'd be angry but more than that I don't know if I'd trust any of the adults in my life if they were willing to completely lie their way through a plot to take away a new advantage (one that allowed me to literally fly and be on par strengthwise with my best bro Superboy) that I'd gained after having died because I was too slow. A death that happened as a result of being betrayed by my own mother and my aged-up clone. I decided to give my all to save the adults in my life at the cost of my powers (powers that might protect me the next time my mother decided I was less than useful to her schemes yet again) only to realize the entire fight was staged. I was lied to. The gratitude I received from the big three, two of which are father figures and one of the most powerful women in the world, a family friend, all decided to lie to my face and manipulate me.

This, on the tail end of my very traumatic revival where my father and a lot my my family almost died trying to bring me back. Everyone was so relieved I'd survived that they forgot to help me cope with the fact that I still died. In my teens. After a year in the ground, most people had processed my death but i felt like i had just died and seemingly woken up with my father stabbing me in the same place my clone brother had impaled me mere moments ago.

I could definitely see the trauma and betrayal and non-existent coping skills driving a wedge even further between my family and I and dissolving any bonds of trust I had with the outside adults in my life. Driven mad with nightmares and the uncanny feeling that you're behind the times and life is moving too fast to heal from, I'd definitely decide to do something rash.

Maybe even move to Tibet rash.

What's interesting is that in one of the storylines, Damian goes and learns from a Buddhist monastery at one point. What if, Damian does this after losing all trust in his support network and decides the best way to protect himself is by leaving.

Here's where The crossover happens. I'm getting tired so I'm switching to bullet points:

Damian moves to Tibet

He finds his way into the mountains on a soul searching journey and stumbles upon the Temple of the Miraculous

The kwami here have free reign and more direct action abilities, which, in this case, means they can turn into animals and act as independent guardians when their miraculous are not in use

Marinette had had longer to train with the kwami and is not the direct grand guardian, she's just a guardian in training with a true Ladybug soul

Marinette portals back and forth from Paris to Tibet with Kaalki and on one of her visits meets Damian

Hawkmoth is still at large but Marinette had more backup this time around

Dami and Mari kick it off

Damian wants to help Marinette and ends up joining in guardian training

Idk if he's a true cat soul or not, but they aren't soulmates in that sense of the word, he just matches Marinette and can tell he could grow to love her

Again growing tired, but eventually, through meeting and helping each other (Mari with tactics, Dami with healing) they fall for each other

Damian starts a new life with Mari and ends up being a full guardian

Unclear if Damian would forgive his family in this one

Damian may or may not have been involved in Hawkmoth's defeat but he definitely keeps Mari stable and Plagg in a good mood

Idk this idea refuses to write itself even though it's already written in my head. Good luck me. I have some written out but I've been hesitant to post about it as transitions have been very hard for this one.

[normal-thoughts-official]

When/how do you think Ragnor and Catrina realized camille was being abusive towards Magnus?

Btw, I love u❤

fantastic question anon, i love YOU! i think that depends on a couple of factors. i think people who have already been or know people who have been in an abusive relationship are more likely to notice the warning signs, and/or to interpret stuff like the person pulling away as a sign of abuse. whereas people who haven't lived through it and aren't informed on it might not even realize what's going on until before it's over, and even be angry

so because we live in a hell world and catarina is a black woman, i think she is more likely to notice the warning signs than ragnor is, because black women are more likely to be in abusive relationships than white men. i'm not saying catarina herself has been in an abusive relationship necessarily but presumably her family has plenty of black women and she's also more likely to also be friends with other woc and marginalized ppl than ragnor is because again, hell world. so she has a higher chance of having been in a similar position before, although of course that's no set in stone rule and ragnor's circle of friends does seem to have a lot of marginalized ppl (and i hc him as aroace which makes him queer which puts him in an entirely different position than a straight white man and probably means something about the relationships he builds, but anyway) BUT my point is, i think catarina is more likely to notice earlier

i think ragnor is pretty perceptive tho, and also that they are pretty close and talk a lot, so i think once catarina noticed she would have talked to ragnor, and it wouldn't take ragnor long to realize that she was right

so okay when would they notice? i think that's always a slow process but i'm pretty sure their suspicions would first arise when magnus started to ditch them and stuff like parties and outings because of camille. first of all, i don't think that's like magnus at all, and second of all, there is an obvious difference between "i'm in the honeymoon phase" and "sorry, i don't think it's a good idea, my partner might not like it" or even "yeah! that sounds great!... just let me ask my partner about it". big difference

so that already has catarina in particular very wary of her because magnus is not the kind to ditch his friends because of a partner and the way he's acting about this is weird. so, she decides to keep an eye and maybe even put this to the test by making a surprise visit and invite him to a party like, right then doijadiosaj and she takes him out and she notices that magnus is Out Of It and he seems even a little... tense and scared and almost paranoid. and like, this is relatively at the beginning of their relationship so she wouldn't have been Horrible about it yet but at the beginning the person expresses enough control and discomfort with these things for you to be kind of uncomfortable even if you don't really realize that it's because you're Scared Of Hurting Your Parner

so THAT gets catarina really worried, because if magnus can't relax because he's afraid of camille's reaction, and worse, if he doesn't REALIZE that's why, that's the reddest a flag can get in such an early stage of their relationship. she tries to talk to magnus about it but magnus is the king of deflecting and basically waves her worries off. which just makes her more worried, but what is she supposed to do? she knows that pushing will only makes things worse and make it easier for camille to turn magnus against her and cut their ties. so, she lets it go and pretends that she buys his excuses. that's probably when she also talks to ragnor. ragnor probably had noticed that something was off but he hadn't really thought that it would be something super bad, and i think he'd still have his doubts about it, but well, he has that on the back of his mind now. and besides, he trusts catarina's judgement and he can admit when she is more qualified than him to assess something. it's why their relationship works

the first time they say anything is probably when magnus tells him about some fight they've had. probably because magnus told camille that he was upset about something she did - like idk, making fun of him in public about a topic that's sensitive to him. and like magnus wasn't even mad at her, he had never mentioned that whatever joke she made was off limits or related to a sensitive topic, he just wanted to communicate and let her know that it had hurt him, and she pretty much Exploded at him. and somehow turned it all around so it was magnus' fault for accusing her of trying to hurt him on purpose when that's not what magnus did, and now magnus pretty much wanted advice on how to apologize and let her know that he loves her

so catarina and ragnor try to subtly poke holes in her logic and show him that he has nothing to apologize for, without straight up being like "she's manipulating you" because Kids, That Does Not Go Well. and it makes magnus... heartbreakingly confused in that way abused people get when the logic they have been being shoved under shows cracks that would mean something too awful to even imagine

and catarina is a fucking wreck because at this point, she is sure of it and it makes her relive... so much trauma of other people she's seen go through that and lost and/or her own relationships if you want to go with that. and she doesn't want to lose magnus or have magnus go through that but she doesn't know what to do and she KNOWS that next step is magnus pulling away from her and ragnor no matter how careful she is

she probably gets the rare Comforting Hug from ragnor once magnus leaves and she also talks to dot and maybe elias? you know, their other friends. and they have a Catarina Comforting Day and hear her stories and cuddle and you know, try to make her feel better. and eventually they try to devise some kind of game plan so they can try to help magnus get out of this

it all goes to shit of course when they have the rare outing with camille, and camille is Obviously Refusing To Interact With Them If She Can Avoid It which is classic abuse thing - sure, i'll go see your friends, but you have to choose between interacting with them and me, so really you don't actually get to see with your friends because you'll feel bad that i'm isolated and eventually seeing your friends will feel either pointless or nervewracking cuz it feels like juggling your relationships. and if you want to see them without me i am going to act like you have something to hide and i'm a victim

anyway! so they notice that and they try to undermine that tactic by, you know, interacting with her a lot. so camille switches it up and tries to pick up a fight, and lo and behold, she succeeds - i know ragnor doesn't look like the kind of guy who loses his temper easily but i think when you push his buttons he is VERY bad at hiding it and half a snappy comment is all camille needs to lash out at him and play the victim. she's good

so that's when their plan gets fucked and everything goes to hell because then it's just too easy for camille to isolate magnus from his friends with really just a few tweaks to the previous tactic i mentioned - "are you really picking them over me, magnus? you're gonna keep hanging out with them when they are so rude to me, probably tell you all sorts of things about me, try to get you to break up with me? can't you see how manipulative they are? how they're trying to turn you against me? why do you insist so much on seeing them when you know how much that hurts me?"

and done

catarina and ragnor probably fight after that because god DAMN it, she fucking tOLD him that they had to be careful! and she's been swallowing all kinds of shitty comments from her but ragnor just had to fucking lose it at the first provocation, didn't he? and god knows how long it'd take for them to reach him after that, because camille is already preemptively making him think that they are trying to manipulate him to break up with her out of jealousy so he won't listen to anything they say directly. and she's right, of course, and ragnor is out of his depth and doesn't UNDERSTAND how these things go and how much this slip up will affect them in the future

i like to think that ragnor apologizes to her and catarina probably... has a breakdown because fuck she is worried and she is reliving way too many nightmares here. and ragnor is actually very tender and hugs her and apologizes and kisses her forehead and tells her that he's going to fix it. and he actually swallows his pride and apologizes to camille just to try and turn this thing around, but, well. the damage is done. and really, there is only so much friends can do when dealing with something like this. at the end of the day, they did all they could

and from then on they try their best to be there for him and pull magnus out of the camille-created isolation, but there's only so much they can do, and it's up to magnus to notice and get help to get rid with her. they'll always try to be his support system, but well. it's hard

and of course eventually magnus does get rid of her claws and catarina, ragnor, dot, elias etc., are all there for him when he does. and he probably feels guilty because he pushed them away but really they are just so RELIEVED that he's finally free of her. and him and catarina probably get a teary hug full of apologies for things that aren't their fault, and they try to make up for lost time by spending as much time as possible together now. especially because i think that it also hurts catarina to have her friends pull away - she obviously yearns for family, for closeness, i don't think she does well with people pulling away from her, she wants the kind of closeness that comes from routine and she used to have that with magnus and the rest of the immortal squad, you know? and magnus knows that, so, he tries to compensate

and eventually they start to heal their relationships, but magnus still has a long way to heal himself, but well. he'll get there. they are together and all

[mugi-chan]

❞Dorms playing Among Us❝

ლ  Tea Order: All the boys: The Dorms Playing Among Us! 

ლ  Warnings: None! 

ლ Shop owner notes: I’m honestly not having a good week, everything is just seeming to go wrong so to cheer myself up I watched one of my favorite twitch streamer playing among us and thought what would the dorms be like playing among us. I know there is like fanart out there of dorm heads as among us characters and that also inspired me to write this! 

Sorry for not severing up any orders yesterday, like I said things just been going downhill for me right now! 

After playing a few rounds this dorm would develop trust issues with each other 

Out of everyone Trey is best at being imposter

Everyone trusts the Vice dorm head right? 

And Trey would take that to full advantage 

Deuce is possibly the worst when it comes to being an imposter 

He would try to lie but everyone would see right through his lies 

Ace would totally point blame at a crewmate and get them voted off 

Riddle is just confused, he never played video games before and Among us is a nice simple game to play with the Dorm

At least that’s what riddle thought 

Riddle is sus of everyone

He's that guy that goes “idk man he’s kind of sus” 

Cater is someone who takes a little to long to do task but great at doing vent murders 

Almost everyone round they are yelling over each other and not a single coherent sentence 

“IT’S DIAMOND-SENPAI, IT’S DIAMOND SENPAI”

“I WAS IN REACTOR, TREY WAS BEING CAMERAMAN ANDY AND SAW ME GO TO REACTOR” 

“I got off camera’s around that time” 

“THEN WHO WAS ON CAMERAS?!” 

They are a chaotic group

after an intense game they would all laugh about it over tea.

They are mostly a very tame group when playing Among us 

Savanaclaw would be all chill but very smarty about there plays

“Hey are you the imposter?” 

“Nah” 

“Eh idk man he’s kinda sus right now” 

Leona may seem lazy but he’s really good at switching the blame to another person

Jack is probably the best at being detective 

Sometimes Jack would stalk people to make sure their doing their task and not faking it 

He can deduce who is clear and who may the be imposter

Ruggie is best in Savanaclaw at being imposter 

He’s really sneaky and really good at vent kills

It’s crazy how good Ruggie is, every time he’s imposter he wins the game 

After some rounds of Among Us there is probably a fist fight going on in Savanaclaw over the game 

“I think leona is the imposter”

“Eh? Why do you think it's me?”

“I mean you were the last one out of spawn, and the body was found in spawn”

“You do know there is a task right outside spawn right?”

There really isn’t any yelling involve unless there are some hard accusations 

Then it’s whoever is that loudest 

When they start to yell over each other most people would have to turn down their volume or take their headphones off since their ears would hurt over how loud it was. 

Most of the time if the next room is playing Among us you can definiatly hear it 

So much threatening to hurt people just so much

This dorm is crazy good at getting imposters out 

Imposters can not win a single game in this dorm

Azul just knows who it is just from the first kill 

He would talk so much that it would eventually convince everyone to vote out the imposter

Azul is also the best at being imposter, he would do the same strat he does to get out the imposter

Everyone would believe him because he’s just that good at talking his way out of sticky situations

Jade is normally on the cameras seeing if anyone would commit a murder

When someone those kill in front of cams, he would pressure the imposter to come out 

And they always confess, Jade has a threatening voice that would even make Azul confess to being an imposter

Floyd is probably the worst at playing Among Us 

He probably gets vented out first because he couldn’t defend himself 

After some rounds he may be annoyed but when he gets imposter

Oh boy it’s genocide 

If Floyd and Jade are imposter they would win 

The only duo that can make the imposter wins

Mass genocide, they would double kill everyone 

And their master plan is to kill Azul first since he’s most likely the only one who can get both of them out 

If Floyd and Azul are imposters they would be arguing and throwing each other under the bus over everything 

If Jade and Azul are imposters they would be so manipulative and change the narrative so they would be clear

This dorm would definitely learn how to be manipulative after playing Among Us

Kalim is the worst at playing Imposter, he would lie right out of his teeth and everyone can see right through it 

Kalim may be bad at being imposter but he’s really good at being crewmate 

Jamil is really good at being imposter

I mean he manipulated his whole dorm into believing that he would save his dorm 

Jamil is super good at vent kills 

He would kill and slip in right before someone walks in

Trust issues was already there at first but now trust issues are high 

Jamil wants to do genocide but Kalim and the rest are like 

“Oh yeah we’re just doing tasks that’s all” 

“So Jamils the imposter?” 

They may be bad at being imposter but their super lucky on voting out the imposters 

“Hey so Jamil is acting kind of sus right now”

“Why am I being sus?” 

“Idk man you looked like you faked a task”

Jamil was An Imposter (1 imposter remaining) 

“Nooo Jamil why would you betray me like this (´；ω；`)” -Kalim

If Jamil and Kalim are imposters, Kalim would be the nice imposters who would barely kill anyone, while Jamil is out on a killing spree

If there’s one thing Kalim is good at it’s convincing people that Jamil is good person 

And people would believe Kalim 

Because our dorm leader is so sweet and kind that he wouldn’t defend a killer right?

Well Kalim also got that little dark side in him (that one sprite if ya know what I mean)

Why would Pomefiore play such a weird game? 

Uhh apparently Epel and Rook 

Epel heard Ace and Deuce talking about it once and wanted to try it out 

He knew Vil wouldn’t allow him to play it so he asked Rook if he wanted to play with some other pomefiore students

Rook thought this would be a perfect opportunity for Epel to open up to Pomefiore

When playing the game Rook found it really interesting 

He may have slipped it up to Vil about the game 

Vil would roll his eyes because he has heard about it from the other dorm heads

Rook would invite Vil to play a round with them if he feels like it

Vil would at first say no but after watching Rook play a round of Imposter, Vil was intrigued 

This imposter role is very interesting to Vil

Once Vil does come to try out the game he is very hooked on the idea of all of this 

A chance for him to shine above everyone

If Rook and Vil area duo it’s over

Their going to win no matter what

Rook is always backing up Vil and everyone just believes him

If Epel and Rook are Duo it’s just Chaotic, Rook would just kill everyone and epel would just not know what to do

Out of the three Vil is probably the best at being imposter

Rook would never vote for Vil so everyone would pretty much just lose 

If the imposter was not Vil or Epel they would kill Rook first just so they can even the votes

As soon as the game is release, Idia was already playing it with some of his online friends 

When it started to get popular at NRC he started to get a little shy on playing the game since that means there’s a chance that he has to play a round with someone from another dorm 

Unless it’s with Octavinelle trio 

Then he’s fine with them 

When he plays a round where he is really confident he feels really bold and starts arguing with people 

Out of everyone Ortho is the best at being imposter

I mean he’s super cute

Why would he ever kill someone?

Well clearly that was a lie, he acts super innocent that in fact Idia wouldn’t even believe that Ortho was the imposter

Idia and Ortho is deadly duo 

Idia would go on a killing spree while Ortho would be distracting the rest of the crew 

If people are accusing Idia for being imposter Ortho would go full cute little brother 

That would make everyone feel guilty for ever thinking that Idia was an imposter

If people were accusing Ortho for being imposter, Idia would hard defend Ortho over everything 

Ortho really loves playing this game because that means he gets to spend time with his friend and his brother at the same time! 

Ignihyde probably has like 3 Among Us servers going on that is always so full

Ohhh boy this dorm is old but they really enjoy this game

But it is always split

Sebek being Sebek would defend Malleus up and down 

Not even Lilia can convince him that Malleus might be the imposter

“NO NO MALLEUS-SAMA WOULD NEVER”

Everyone has their volume really low because Sebek’s voice is so loud that at low volume it sounds like Sebek is arguing at a normal voice level 

Silver is probably AFK most of the round 

Lilia would always be taking his sweet time doing task

Sebek ABSOLUTELY hates the admin task (the card swiping one) he wants to get his task done so he could be by Mallues 

Malleus is just wandering around wondering how to do all the task, especially simon says 

If Sebek and Silver are a duo, they are really good imposter duo

They would vote Sebek out first since he has a loud mouth 

But since Silver is almost always AFK he can kill people that check if he’s still afk

Silver is best at playing imposter 

His afk tactic is always so smart 

Sebek is the worst at playing imposter 

All it takes is Malleus asking him if Sebek is the imposter and he would confess

Lilia and Malleus is probably the worst at playing imposter 

Since they are who knows how old, technology is really hard to control 

Especially trying to control the  WDSA keys 

Lilia would always love playing this game with everyone since he wants to know what the kids are up to these days 

Would you like to order something? Look at our Tea shop rules first!

[gone-series-orchid]

I know you've said before that you think Caine and Drake are pretty one-dimensional (and I agree completely). I was wondering if there were any other villains that you wish had been explored more instead of giving those two more page time in later books. Or if there were any characters that you thought could have had villainous potential that were unexplored??

wow, interesting question! i think my main problem with caine and drake is that they’re just kind of blandly evil, one-dimensional like you said. i think, ideally, villains should feel like real people.

funnily enough, i think zil probably comes closest to embodying that in this series. he’s mean-spirited from the beginning, but it’s only under lance’s influence (from what i remember) that he becomes a real threat due to his gaining confidence. i think it would have been nice to see more of him in the series—he’s insecure in his role as leader of the human crew, which makes him fallible. he’s also kind of unnerved by lance’s neo-nazism. he’s arguably the most intelligent out of the crew aside from lance. he’s not sympathetic, per se, but he is compelling.

i would’ve liked to see him interact more directly with the protagonists—especially astrid, because i think she should get a chance to one-up him in some way after he was thinking creepy thoughts about her in hunger. also, i think astrid, being the smartie she is, would probably be most likely to try to persuade him to turn over a new leaf—she’s a normal, and a white, aryan-looking (gag) normal at that, which would probably satisfy lance, and she still has distinct power in the fayz. though zil could probably poke a hole in her argument by pointing out that she only really has that power because she’s sam’s girlfriend, which is true. anyway, they could have words about it.

i think zil is compelling because he has the potential to be redeemed. it’s a slight potential, because he’s already done some pretty evil things, but he’s not totally evil—he has to justify the violence he commits in order to accept it, which is more than caine or drake does. we never forget that, at the end of the day, he’s still an insecure, blustering twelve-year-old. he’s an anti-moof bigot, but he could change. i think lance, more than zil, represents total irredeemable evil. he represents what zil could descend into being. he’s the devil on his shoulder (astrid could potentially be the angel if she maybe switched tactics from lawful punishment to direct emotional manipulation).

i’m a sucker for human villains and natural disasters being the principal antagonists, which i think is why the first four books work so well? i think fear and light suffer from the gaiaphage taking control of the narrative, villain-wise, when i think it worked best when used sparingly. gaia is pure evil, nothing more. she’s fun to read about in her own way because she’s so villainously campy, but that’s kind of it. she’s not really interesting, imo.

i think the reason why i harp so much on the insufficient “humanity” of antagonists like caine and drake is because that’s the principal strength of books (lord of the flies, battle royale) in the “kids trapped in place and forced to survive” genre: what do the actions of the characters say about human nature? about society? about morality? in lord of the flies, the message conveyed is ultimately a bleak one: the kids all descend into savagery in one way or another, with the purest one of them all, simon (the jesus figure) being driven insane, and the intellectual (piggy) being murdered. the story is all about “the darkness in the human heart,” to paraphrase the last line of the book.

in battle royale, on the contrary, the message is ultimately one of hope. despite the characters living in a dystopian fascist society that sacrifices one class of students to a killing game, the main character shuya clings to the idea that he and his classmates can figure out an alternate way to survive the titular battle royale aside from murdering each other. his compassionate view of humanity is validated by the pov vignettes given to all his classmates. all of them are given distinct personalities; some are kind, like shuya and his allies noriko and shogo, and some are drake-esque sadists, while the majority fall somewhere in between (my personal favorite characters are the girls that team up with one another in order to protect themselves from possible sexual violence from the boys. they hole up in a lighthouse!). but all are tragic in the sense that they’re children thrust into an unfair and cruel situation. even then, though, the nobility of certain characters shines through.

for instance, there are two girls at the beginning of the game who are best friends and don’t want to kill anyone. they (foolishly or bravely) use a megaphone to call out to the other kids in hiding, asking if they can all band together. shuya and several other characters are tempted, but sadly the girls are both fatally shot soon after their announcement. they die in each other’s arms after affirming their friendship, tears in their eyes. shuya and several other kids are devastated by the girls’ deaths. while some more callous characters deride them as being stupid and naïve, the reader is ultimately meant to mourn their deaths and the lost potential of a class-wide alliance. they know that their enemy isn’t their classmates, but rather the fascist government that makes them kill each other in the first place.

anyway—tangent aside—i think those two aforementioned novels are really solid examples of the genre gone is in. gone has more of superhero vibe to it, given the focus on powers and mutations and paper-thin evil villains, but i almost think the way that’s executed almost detracts against the aforementioned “kids surviving, etc.” genre? like, that’s all about the messiness of morality and human nature and whatnot, and while superhero comics can weave that into their narratives (watchmen, the brat pack) those are usually deconstructions of the genre than straightforward examples of it. the superhero genre is usually morally black-and-white and really action-focused. this is why i think we get the strange tonal mixture of kids reacting realistically to the trauma of starving versus reacting fairly unrealistically when faced with brutal superpowered violence, such as when brianna decapitates drake like it’s nbd. or anything brianna does, really.

there’s a shift from the realistic to the unrealistic that’s fun, but tonally dissonant from each other. so there’s this sort of disconnect, at least for me. i sympathize greatly for astrid when she’s slapped by drake and forced to call little pete a slur, for instance, but how many times does drake or caine murder a kid in cold blood? at some point it gets...idk, old? as the violence gets more cartoony the less it interests me aside from morbid fascination, and there’s just so much of it. it gets desensitizing after a while. i think that’s why, even though i think it’s handled fairly believably in gone, i had a lot more trouble with the monster trilogy’s blend of absurdism (the animorphs-style mutations like dekka turning into a cat woman with medusa hair and another character turning into a praying mantis with super speed, etc.) vs. grimdark realism (ICE forcibly deports a character’s father, terrorist violence is a common theme, the san francisco bridge is destroyed, a baby boy is mutated into a giant fuzzy caterpillar and then gets blown up by the military—like this is budding dystopia-level dark and the narrative doesn’t seem to realize it). it just feels too heavy and too light at the same time. the contrast of tones does a disservice to both of them. idk what i’m saying let’s get back to your actual question lol

as for characters with villainous potential...hmmm. tbh i think astrid has villainous potential? i mean, i like the idea of her moral righteousness escalating in a way that makes her more morally gray. she’d have to probably latch onto more powerful kids in order to have any leverage over sam and the gang, given her powerlessness. maybe she could manipulate orc into being her bodyguard while she plots to usurp sam or something asgjsjk. i think she could be a powerful threat if she wanted to be! it’s fun to ponder. i heard of an au where she joins the human crew that i thought was sort of interesting!

what do you think, @goneseriesanalysis? any villains you wish had been dived into more, and/or characters with villainous potential you think would have been cool to explore?

[whetstonefires]

mcu ethics bad

The thing is that, while I was angry at Tony during Age of Ultron, particularly when he rode over Bruce’s compunctions about building a giant combat super-robot and pressured him into the project like a very very bad friend who happened to also be wrong...

...and when he equipped Hulkbuster armor and fought the Hulk in the middle of a city rather than attempting de-escalation or attempting to haul the Hulk out into the giant adjacent desert....

(And my suspension of disbelief snapped like a frayed cable when he brought down a skyscraper that had had no time to be evacuated on a street full of fleeing people and the only reason we were given to believe he hadn’t just cold-bloodedly created massive civilian casualties was that he told his AI to find the impossible magic angle where doing this wouldn’t kill anyone...)

While I was angry with him then, and unspeakably relieved that he recognized his own damage and retired at the end, haha psych, I was revolted by him during Civil War.

It’s supposed to make us sympathize with a character more, spending so much time with them, getting into their heads, being shown their emotional drives and reactions to things, and we spent so much time with Tony during that film, understanding his point of view. And...I did understand him. He’s not complicated. I even sympathized with his emotional state.

But in the context of his actions, throughout the film, I gazed into that understanding the way I did into Kylo Ren’s face in the seconds after he first unmasked. I see you, I know you, everything you are is written here, and the lines of your shame and self-revulsion are so thick upon you, and you should be ashamed but your self-destruction does not expiate or justify one jot of the harm you do.

Because everything Tony did in Civil War came from a place of selfishness. He was selfish all throughout that movie down to his very spine.

And selfishness isn’t itself necessarily bad--you need a little, to get through life, you have the right to your own portion of it. Your boundaries and your needs. But the type of selfishness that is forcing other people pay dearly for your emotional comfort and sense of control: no.

That is tyranny. That is not acceptable.

And you know how I know he was being selfish? Because his motive for pushing the Sokovia Accords was his personal guilt for the destruction of Sokovia.

But the Accords didn’t address that at all! They were tangential to the issue! None of the terms of the Accords would have saved Sokovia--in fact, the existence of them could easily have prevented the evacuation and harm-reduction the Avengers managed there, without saving a single soul.

The Ultron crisis was something Tony did, not as Iron Man but as Tony Stark, with Bruce Banner’s help, and which Wanda as criminal fugitive later helped exacerbate, and which all the other Avengers were involved in only to mitigate harm.

Legislation, or...treaties, idk, the UN isn’t actually empowered to pass laws so who knows what this thing was...aimed at preventing another Sokovia would mandate constant ethical oversight of billionaire science man’s mad science. At the very least! He never has to run things by ethics boards because he’s self-funded, at the very least let’s invent a mechanism to make up for that.

That would address the actual Sokovia issue, both in terms of risks and in terms of Tony’s personal guilt feelings.

But no one suggests that! It’s not even on the table! Because no one, certainly not any government, can tell Tony Stark what to do unless he lets them, that’s been a clear matter of record since Iron Man 2.

And because no one writing this legal instrument of whatever description was actually motivated by wanting to avoid another Sokovia, or even another ‘Wanda tries to neutralize a suicide bomber but merely gives him a different, smaller victim pool’ incident.

They didn’t care! They blatantly didn’t care! The entire thing was a ghoulish use of the dead to gain enough political leverage over the Avengers to put a leash on them!

(Which might not be a bad thing in principle, everything needs its checks, but when the last quasi-governmental organization you worked for turned out to be Nazis who were only prevented from staging a mass slaughter of undesireables by the skin of your teeth, I think you’re well within your rights to be very choosy about who you agree to obey, and to be firmly against pledging your honor to follow people whose first move was dishonest coercive tactics.

Actually you’re well within your rights to demand to negotiate the terms of even a much less sweeping contract, even without the Nazis. The whole approach to this thing stank to high heaven.

The fact that it was written by the UN like a treaty, expected to be signed by private individuals like a contract, and then enforced like a law except not because 1) laws are for everyone 2) if you break a law you get a trial not extrajudicial incarceration and 3) being pressured to consent to a restriction and then punished for refusing consent is hypocritical circular logic and in fact police corruption at its finest, all continues to show it was a bullshit nonsense franken-document.)

The whole movie is people ghoulishly using the dead to manipulate Tony into making bad decisions in response to his emotional pain. That’s. The plot of the film.

Then Zemo staged T’Chaka’s assassination and framed Bucky for it to raise the tension, ramp up the pressure, and prevent any sitting-down and talking reasonably through this, which might have allowed for the recognition of how extremely bullshit the entire concept was.

Tony was being used. Tony was a tool of bad people for most of that movie, and while Zemo banked on using his wrath for it, the politicos were leaning on his guilt.

And there’s honestly little I hold in deeper scorn than going out and hurting other people to assuage your own guilt and treating this as having the moral high ground. No. You don’t have the moral high ground on account of your guilt motivation. You have it if the actions you took were just, or at least could reasonably be assumed to have been so at the time.

And Tony fucking knew they weren’t. He didn’t even last to the end of the movie before recognizing that he’d been manipulated and fucked up, and doubling back.

That he then walked into a different manipulation, turned on a dime, and had to be stopped from doing a murder doesn’t unwrite that.

And it drives me nuts that people will say Tony was acting out of principle while Steve was acting out of personal attachment. Because sure, the Bucky thing was important, was the reason he was walking forward against all opposition instead of standing still to argue, but it wasn’t the reason Steve said no, while...

Tony wasn’t acting out of principle. Tony isn’t...very good at having principles. That’s not even a criticism or condemnation, it’s just how he functions. Since Iron Man he’s been substituting good intentions and emotional investment, which has worked out to varying degrees. It works best for huge, difficult, very straightforward decisions like ‘ride the nuke through the portal and save my hometown.’ It works less well for nuanced situations.

Tony was, as usual, acting out of emotion. And some awful shitheads who’d figured out where his levers were had calculated how to jiggle his emotion switches in the right places to make him do exactly what they wanted.

And you can tell he wasn’t acting out of principle because, for example, someone who was trying to get the superhero community under outside control for the sake of harm mitigation...

...well, firstly wouldn’t have chosen to stage a massive battle? But it’s possible someone in the UN specifically told him to do that, and in theory they at the very least signed off on it, presumably for its PR value of making Captain America look deranged and violent since it’s a deranged decision from every other angle, so yay, he can pass that responsibility up the chain and not have to angst about it, as promised.

But I was going to say would not have approached a minor who (this timeline takes pains to show us) had no prior experience of battle or even, somehow, serious violent crime, to recruit him to go be a government child soldier on another continent, without his guardian’s knowledge or consent. There were overtones of blackmail in Tony’s approach, before it turned out Peter was such a big fan he didn’t need that. What the fuck frankly.

That is not the action of someone who wants to start doing things by the letter, scaling the violence down, keeping within the law and putting the power of decisionmaking in other people’s hands because he’s realized he can’t trust his own.

And frankly even if he did act like that I wouldn’t necessarily support his choices, in particular his snap decision to behave coercively toward other Avengers with vastly less social power and security than he has.

And that’s the other thing! Everything about ‘Tony + Accords BFFs’ rings so hollow because he has never thought rules applied to him, and he knows perfectly well the entire time he’s fighting to force this surrender of agency down other people’s throats that he is going to be practically immune.

This man was technically a terrorist, proabably the most prolific single terrorist in world history until his rogue android exceeded his body count, but he was immune to prosecution because he was in tight with the United States military-industrial complex and basically untouchable due to his status within capitalism, and pursuing their international goals anyway. In the time between Iron Man and Iron Man II he was basically a one-man upgrade of the US drone program, and so good at it that the crest of blood he carved through the Middle East allowed him to announce he had ‘privatized world peace.’

(You are never going to get a world peace worth anything on the basis of a giant flying gun, okay.)

He went to war as a private individual, against non-state actors who were not directly threatening him, which is very much defined as ‘mass murder’ in all domestic and international law, and the US army in response sued him for control of his weapon. And lost! Lost.

No one attempted to press charges. No one. Because Tony Stark is above all that. And he knows it.

And like. I’m willing to accept the mass murder under the heading of ‘superheroing’ within the terms of this setting! Even if, after his vengeance rampage on his specific kidnappers, this violence was kept strictly off-screen for a reason. I did that! I bent that far! Genre convention!

But this history is kind of vitally important to any analysis of what he thought he was doing, and what he actually was doing, when he decided to become the iron gauntlet of the Sokovia Accords.

The currently active member of the Avengers who needed muzzling most was very manifestly Iron Man, and he knew even as he jammed the muzzle on all his comrades to make himself feel better that it would affect him the least, even if he didn’t finally retire for real this time. You don’t force Tony Stark. Not if you want anything out of it but blown up. You persuade him.

And once you have...oh, look at what he can do.

[redxblueihateloveyou]

Hi, it' me again (coming back and forth just to talk about AkaKuro lol). Tumblr hides your response again, and I dunno what to say at this point X.X Anyway, I dunno what it is like in Russia, but in my country, the AkaKuro fandom is still alive. People still write fanfic and translate stories and doujinshi so it is quite nice XD Your AkaKuro video is very popular among us btw. Thank you for making such wonderful edit XD

Hey, my sweet akakuro anon;) hehe I’m gonna answer in parts:) in Russia I know couple of Akakuro people who are still alive haha but mostly it’s just me haha I’m so happy you liked the video and OMFG I still can’t believe it hot over 600K FUCKING VIEWS and 34K likes! asdfhgfdsasdnfd I haven’t gotten such amazing feddback in a while. I’m also really happy that bc of the vid I’ve hooked up many new people on them hehe yes

Someone thinks that Kuroko doesn’t notice Momoi’s crush????!!!! LMAO you kidding me! Of course he knows, that’s just what you do, when you don’t want to encourage this, plus they showed his real feelings through the Nigou lmao More than that, he definitely knows about the fact that Momoi is oblivious to her real feelings for Aomine and vice versa.

Haha Kuroko and Kise are so much alike tbh, they’re both sneaky AF, but the difference is that one pretends to be stupid/easy going and another one pretends to be innocent. Both hiding behind the masks, but both know that the other one is dangerous haha they’re probably my 2nd fav dynamic in KNB, it’s just hilarious to watch them pretending to be clueless lmao

I’m 100% sure that Akashi is well aware of all Kuroko’s manipulations, he just likes to watch him play. I mean, I think that’s exactly the reason why he’s so infatuated with his since the beginning. Bc he’s basically the only one, who can “mess up his shogi board” haha *wink wink*

To me Bokushi is actually the least scary part of Akashi, since he’s the most vulnerable one. And he’s like always offended lmao He’s basically just a book with a super scary cover, but inside there’s a romance novel xD I mean, in all seriousness, as soon as they switched and Oreshi came in play, have you seen what he did??! 

Kuroko is also scarier, because Akashi’s “manipulations” are coming from his super intellect as he searches for the right tactics to win, cause you can’t do it without outsmarting your opponent, Kuroko on the other hand reminds me of a kitsune, bc he likes to trick people into doing what he needs, but he’s also making them think that it’s what they want. And he takes different forms for each one of them. I mean, depending on his needs, he can act like a complete gentleman or be a complete asshole or pretend to be sorry and make puppy eyes, and hell, and I’m pretty sure he pretends being physically weak at times too.

But I find all of this hilarious, too, especially when he loves to see ppl suffer cause it’s funny lol Like do you think that was an accident when he put himself his own curry, while everyone else were eating the ones that Riko served them? HA HA NO

And the one who can fully read him is the mister emperor and the funniest of all this is that he actually encourages such behavior lmao he’s always like “yes, kuroko is allowed to do anything he wants”, “kuroko? Idk what you’re talking about, he’s an angel!” lol

Like remember when they were “looking at pictures” and said that they can’t wait to play with each other again and Kuroko smiles and squints at Akashi. It’s like he knows, that he knows what he knows xD And they do it all the time. About Akashi’s personalities,considering the fact that Kuroko immediately noticed “whole” Akashi during the fucking game, I’m honestly scared lol 

Yeah, also GOM listens to Akashi bc they respect him and intimidated by him. But Kuroko has the whole GOM o the palm of his hand for a entirely different reason.

Yup, same, I dont think anyone else could’ve handled them honestly, that’s why I think they’re so perfect for one another, besides the fact that they’re both each other’s weaknesses and strengths. I mean not only they see each other for who they are, they openly admitted that they like each other the way they are. So I hope, they keep doing what they’re doing and be happy, since they make each other so happy haha 

And I still think it’s the sweetest how Akashi can make Kuroko so jealous, because it’s so unlike Tetsuya to lose his face like that. Not to mention Kuroko’s speech. Like FUCK “I've wanted to say this to you for a while now, but I never had a chance. This goes beyond happiness and the person who’s the cause of all this is before me, it’s all thanks to you, Akashi-kun.” Not only this sounds like a wedding vow (lmao), but just in all seriousness coming from a person like Kuroko it’s worth a lot. He’s so prideful. 

Akashi santa? It was a comic in a Jump! magazine:)

P.S. that’s so nice to talk to someone, who sees characters for who they are, not like “kuroko is so cute and seirin is the most imporant to him and just friendship and unicorns” lmao 

[the-lightning-strikes-again]

I was curious if I was the only one who kinda enjoyed the battle between the paladins and Lotor in s6? Well at least at first I did until it was never further explored in later seasons. I honestly thought for sure Lotor would come back after s6 and there'd be more to the colony. But it's all kind of just forgotten about so they can move on to the next thing. Anyway hope I'm not bothering you. Sorry for my rambling. haha

Hi, anon! Thanks for the note! And no, you’re not bothering me at all; I appreciate the chance to chat! For the record, I know you’re not the only one who genuinely enjoyed s6. I even know people who enjoyed s1-s8 entirely, lol. As for myself, the animation and acting involved in the s6 battle was really great, and I loved the Sincline mecha. It is honestly one of my favorite designed mechas out of all the mecha shows I’ve seen. So s6 wasn’t a total loss for me. And I actually would not at all have minded a genuine villain!Lotor if they’d properly set up for that. As it is, though, the reason for the battle in s6 is what bothers me and sours my enjoyment. Ultimately, I think the show had to compromise very important story components to result in this battle, and that kills my enjoyment.

I can try to explain what story components I felt got compromised in s6, if you’re interested. But this could get a lil salty, haha. I’ll put it under a Keep Reading line:

The show had a subtle through-line of showing a duplicitous, distrustful Lotor go from hunting down the paladins and throwing several people under the bus for a personal gain (s3-s4), to being actually scared in s5 when he thought Zarkon was going to kill the paladins, to being willing to share his entire intelligence network and information of unfathomable power with his new allies (s5), to allowing the paladins to actually order him around and actively change his moral priorities (s6, ep1)—which is very, very different than the relationship he had with his own generals. So the show had Lotor on a development arc regarding his distrust—and even a redemption arc regarding a fault in his morals, even though the show very plainly stated (multiple times throughout s3-s5) that he longed to get to the quintessence field to stop the Galran empire’s feasting on planets.

That’s part of what bothers me with s6—it reverses this subtle through-line of development and then punishes Lotor for an understandably disturbing de-valuing of life that…1) likely wasn’t even his worst or most extensive crime, 2) was something he was actively learning to overcome and get away from in the present time, and 3) was based on a moral problem paladins had seen within him and previously still accepted their alliance.

Lotor wasn’t a saint to start in this show, and he had a perspective where it didn’t bother him for some people to die if it meant his larger goal of peace was obtained. The weird thing about s6 is we saw the paladins experience that with him already, well before the s6 colony twist. In S6, Lotor places the value of obtaining unlimited quintessence over the safety of an entire Galran planet, and Allura admonishes him and reminds him of his innocent subjects. In s6 ep1, Lotor is very directly challenged by the morality of Allura, who despite being a victim of Galrans, desires that no one should die. That these innocent subjects and Galran soldiers are still just as valuable as everyone else.

So by this moment in s6, Lotor has identified the paladins as valuable enough to risk his life for them…but he hasn’t assigned that same value to the average Galran soldier or citizen he’s still deemed expendable/not worthy of saving compared to his grand agenda of peace. If he had assigned them such value, he would not have initially tried to argue with Allura on going to save them. It’s the one time that Allura gets huffy with him post-alliance and directly contradicts him. And Lotor looks…almost mournful or ashamed? He submits to her, regardless, allowing for his personal missions to go on hold for the first time in interest of other people.

His submission here shows another switch had been flipped in his character, for the better. Prior to Allura and the paladins, he had no difficulty assassinating Narti or leaving his generals for dead after they realized they were in fact expendable. S6 ep1 shows Lotor submitting to save even Galran soldiers that he likely knew were not Emperor Lotor fans.

So going back to the big colony twist, the paladins actively should have known that Lotor had a slightly bent perspective about the expendability of people, because they’d seen it before in season 6 episode 1 and even back in season 3. Clearly, he’s done not good things in the past at the expense of others “for a greater good,” so I don’t know why it’s such a shocker that he would apply the same perspective to Alteans. They literally saw him de-value his own people before, in real-time.

It gets weird too because we see that Lotor had very quickly changed his tactics for obtaining pure quintessence after he realizes Allura and team Voltron are the path of least resistance and least collateral damage. We see him relenting to protect all of his innocent subjects. So ultimately, he ends up being punished for having a problematic perspective that he was slowly beginning to decouple from at the time of his accusation, which the paladins were also witnessing. As it is, the show punishes Lotor for his past crimes precisely after the paladins had already seen this behavior in him, and also after his perspective had started to change for the better. The narrative then pushes him back down into a behavior where he instead expands the list of people and things he accepts as expendable.

I feel that the subliminal messaging behind this particular construction is a little screwy and disheartening. The colony twist would have been better if the show had presented Lotor in s5 and s6 episode 1 as not being ashamed—not submitting—and even getting irritated that Voltron cared about one labor planet in the face of what Lotor felt was a higher calling for peace. It would have been interesting to show Lotor as inherently unconcerned or even approving that the paladins almost died while he and Allura were out in Oriande. There needed to be a more solid through-line of a very troubling, uncontrollable fault that would undermine the alliance and peace itself.

Next, to even get Lotor to go insane or to have him reliant on harvesting Altean quintessence, the show had to contradict its own worldbuilding in early seasons. Lotor was fully infused with massive amounts of quintessence prior to birth that EPs once stated put him on pretty much the same level as Allura, and that he was immune to quintessence. So…s6 heavily contradicts Lotor’s incredibly dynamic behavior and even his moral interest in not killing planets by making him go insane to nearly kill the entire universe. And canon accomplishes this in a way that canonically shouldn’t have been possible, per his in-utero quintessence exposure.

And then I’m bothered that if all he wanted was pure quintessence, there were canonically several other ways to obtain it, including for example that Balmera planets were known for harboring pure quintessence, even pure quintessence offered by living beings like Alteans, and that Balmeras were capable of offering up such power willingly in exchange for a slight token from the asker—or that Weblums happened to be concentrated quintessence manufacturers just floating around…

And I’m bothered that in various places, the show uplifts Alteans as inherently different in their life force/quintessence from all other living things. It contradicts the basic worldbuilding around what quintessence even is according to earlier seasons and creates some…idk, really squicky master race vibes, in ways that other fantasy space shows like Star Wars desperately have tried to avoid by showing diversity among the Jedi and Sith ranks. In VLD, it’s as if to say that Lotor couldn’t have possibly accomplished his goal without specifically sacrificing the life force of one particular race.  

And while what Lotor did doesn’t by definition count as genocide (he still preserved the race and its culture), this messaging in later seasons about inherent racial reasons to sacrifice people is the same problematic thinking people use to perpetuate genocides in real life. And I just…I have a real problem with that. According to the later seasons, the colony Alteans are victims of Lotor’s experiments for specifically being born Altean. It’s even more squicky that the show could have rejected the bad message of “we must sacrifice a race because of their inherent properties” and fleshed out the minimal cues that other races could be just as powerful and helpful—but didn’t.

(For example, the show presents Keith with Princess Leia-like quintessence sensitivity, Coran and Balmera people with the ability to interface with and accept quintessence storages, the Balmera people themselves infusing the Balmera with their quintessence, the Weblums harboring mass stores of concentrated quintessence in their bellies, the very non-Altean Druids like Macidus manipulating mass quintessence into magic, and even a sea serpent/The Baku in season 2 using quintessence to mind-control an entire species. This show could have very easily pulled a Star Wars and at least fleshed out that hey, Midi-chlorians don’t discriminate and that any species can harbor a great Jedi…or Sith.)

But no—instead of presenting a diverse front of magical capabilities coming together to save the universe, the show champions in s8 its own horrific implications in s6, by having two Alteans sacrifice their lives in the end…because of course no other race could learn or manipulate the deep secrets of the universe? No one else could help share the load so that no one would have to actually die? I get that war means sacrifice, but like...why are we always sacrificing specifically along racial lines? So actually, after that s6 morality tantrum, the show approves of Lotor’s tactics by sacrificing the few Alteans to save the many because those few are somehow inherently different? And isn’t it wild that ultimately the federal figurehead of Alteans, Princess Allura, exonerates Lotor for sacrificing Alteans for their power in the name of larger peace…shortly before pulling a Lotor and sacrificing herself in the name of peace? So even in the final moments, the show is trying to argue with me that sometimes it’s necessary to sacrifice a specific race by virtue of their inherent nature.

So…I guess I’ve rambled. I really wouldn’t have minded a villainous Lotor or a big Voltron vs. Sincline battle. There were things I genuinely did like about s6, and I applaud the animators and VAs for their performance in that season. But I think there were a million and one ways to produce that plot, and the way s6 gets to these points makes me feel disquieted. It feels contradictory to previous worldbuilding and to character arcs, it undermines the morality being argued throughout the show, and it just feels like a cheap bait-and-switch if I think about it too long. Instead of relying on an old crime and a known character fault as a justification for battle, it would have been far better if Lotor had done something to specifically betray Voltron and the newly minted alliance or proved himself incapable of submitting to moral choices. And that’s only if they wanted a truly villainous Lotor. There were ways he could betray Voltron without actually turning into a comic book villain...even ways that he could outwardly play a betrayal while still functioning as an agent for Voltron’s aims to stop a loose Haggar/Honerva...

I guess, in retrospect, s6 is a really good example of a plot-driven season. It presented some really fantastic animation and battles and angst…but what did it cost the show to get there?

I think VLD itself should have taken its own advice—that one cannot place a lesser value on one component in the name of achieving a desired end goal. The season ultimately sacrificed world building and character development to achieve a stunning, angsty, heart-stopping robot fight. And that sacrifice undermined so many other things about the show and tainted my enjoyment. Sort of like mixing poop into a cake, I guess, lol.

[luvreyn]

My Manhwa List (2019) pt. 6

Most of the story here offers more than romance and has politics. Carry on ~

Joseon's Ban on Marriage

Summary:

For 7 years, marriage was banned in the Kingdom of Great Joseon because the King lost his precious wife. Enter a marriage fraud specialist to save the day (while she sends the King and his trusted General into emotional chaos).

WHY YOU SHOULD READ:

- plot = 4/5 few chaps but very promising

- art style = 4/5

- the mc is very funny

- idk who the ml is tbh but this looks like it’s more than that bcuz p a l a c e

- the tactics of the people in the palace into tricking their emperor into lifting the no marriage ban is funny lmao

- mc is meme-able and is not a coward

- to conclude: despite the few chaps, this story has a lot of potential, it’s very promising. the art style is okay too and the characters are easy to like

Lady to Queen

Summary:

"I will never love the Emperor."

My sister Nilla, who became the Emperor's Queen after having dreamt of fairy tales and true loves, came back divorced and accused of high treason. Our family, the Rochesters, were mercilessly executed. But by some miracle, I came back in time to before she was selected as the Emperor's Queen candidate.

If I become queen in your stead, you and our family need not suffer. This life of yours can have a happy ending, sister. I promise.

---

An empress fell into a trap, divorced and was cut off by her family. In the last minute of her life, her sister Tricia regretted the way things ended. "If only I were the empress" then she would make sure not to love the emperor. Everyone will be happy without dying.

When she opened her eyes, she returned back time before she became the Empress. In order to prevent a recurrence of the tragedies of her past life, Tricia makes a final decision: "I will become the queen instead of you." Can Tricia, who became an empress, live a happy life?

WHY YOU SHOULD READ:

- rewind type of story

- plot = 4/5

- art = 3/5

- the mc is very loving towards her loved one especially her sister but she also knows how to be bad

- more than a romance

- no ml but i think the emperor is the ml basing on the story BUT he’s trash so not considered

- strong independent women? check

- p o l i t i c s 

- cunning and smart mc? check

- ngl but i’m only reading this because i want vengenace against the emperor for what he did to the mc’s sister/family

- villain is effective you’d want to kill her yourself

- to conclude: one of the stories that will make you care less for romance or ml because the progress/plot will make you just want the mc to be the ruler of all. the mc is strong independent and the villains are great

Your Throne

Summary:

Tensions are brewing under the seemingly calm surface of the Vasilios Empire, a kingdom ruled by the Imperial Family and the Temple. Lady Medea Solon has lost her place next to Crown Prince Eros, but resolves to do whatever it will take to win back what's rightfully hers. Will she reclaim her throne?

WHY YOU SHOULD READ:

- PLOT = 10/5

- art style = 4.5/5

- p o l i t i c s

- this is an anti-heroine type of story so to speak

- few chaps so i cant be sure but centers around two women 

- mc is very smart, cunning, manipulative and wicked that even the crown prince considers her as a threat

- mc is strong independent woman

- no clear mls but rest assured that this is more than that

- you’re gonna love how cunning they all are 

- m y s t e r y 

- concept is good too since soul/body switching is one of the theme (body switching between medea and psyche)

- helio is a cinnamon roll but can kill you

- to conclude: read bcuz this story is awesome and will make you want the women to stand up together!! you might even hate if they have endgame bcuz this is more than romance and it’s so interesting. more than the art style, the plot and characters themselves are all so freaking cunning that it’s hard not to love ((p.s: pls hate the crown prince like i do lmao))

19th Century Memoir

Summary:

Two siblings who were separated at a young age due to the death of their parents reunite again with many mysteries muddling their past.

WHY YOU SHOULD READ:

- plot is okay so 3/5

- art style = 2.5/5 i think the art style is okay but it’s not really my cup of tea hence the low score but if you like a unique and painting-ish (museum style) type of style then this is for you

- m y s t e r y 

- mc is pretty

- few chaps but promising

- to conclude: low on my list but the mystery will keep you going, the plot and art style are decent. 

Leaf Moon

Summary:

There were rumours going around about the mysterious encounters of two men.

WHY YOU SHOULD READ:

- the story is promising

- plot = 3/5 (to be fair, it has like few chaps only hence the low rate)

- art style = 3/5

- this story is brought back to life or to be more accurate time rewind type mc was killed but her husband and sacrifice?? sorry for the spoiler) :--( 

- one of the stories that will make you want to read even if there’s no romance involve

- more than a romance

- m y s t e r y

- to conclude: it has only a few chaps so i can’t say for sure but the start and the chapters are very promising. also, very mysterious bcuz no one knows what her then husband killed her and sacrifice her and also who saved her b

[tottymatsuno]

Ahh thank you!!! I love the post you linked bc I have those same thoughts on Osomatsu as well? Like literally Osomatsu was elected prophet for a children's crusade, he's the blind leading the lame! Osomatsu is the exact same age as the other brothers and judging by the way his organs are (could be a joke could be a reference to their genetic mutation due to being sextuplets) Osomatsu isn't even the original cell! He's actually one of the later split offs. It's 100% arbitrary.

So for Todomatsu who's role is less important and intergral than being first is simply last. He is the baby which is just as arbitrary as being the eldest Todomatsu is at the most born within the same 24 hour cycle as Osomatsu. He didn't stay in the womb longer than some multiples do, he wasn't born weeks or months later. The same exact day. What's a few hours amongst friends?

Todomatsu has the exact same problem which is lack of definition. Osomatsu can be summed up as the piece of shit eldest brother and Todomatsu can be summed up as the manipulative youngest brother. They're actually very similar though? I think a big issue is Osomatsu has nothing to hide because he's terrified of real rejection so it's easier to get it out of the way rather than getting his hopes up. Osomatsu would rather someone put him in his place immediately so he doesn't have to get hurt along the lines

Todomatsu is the opposite. Todomatsu has a healthier mindset of "I'll present myself slightly better to impress you and then be myself when I trust you." this is what like 90% of people do in relationships and the getting to know you phase Todomatsu just went a bit too far the first time he did it.

Both of their driving forces that causes their pretty fucked up behavior is the need to be loved in their entirety. Both of them have DPD but Osomatsu has the immature subtype while Todomatsu has the accomodating subtype.

In fact the brothers all have textbook DPD. All of them are desperate for someone to latch onto and who will love them because they can't love themselves. Osomatsu is too afraid of rejection to foster that relationship onto anyone because he knows he won't be able to cope if he has to be alone so he places that consuming need onto his brothers.

Choromatsu and Karamatsu would accept anyone who made themselves available without real discernment, Ichimatsu and Jyushimatsu would attach to the first person who fought against their small pushback but Todomatsu would take both his own desires and the feelings of the other person into account before he makes a decision good or bad. Todomatsu is very judgmental and picky but as long as he's attracted or feels cherished hes just as easy as his brothers.

All of their have their own built in safety features in terms of who they want to leech off of and they're all so terrible but idk tottys is so appealing to me??? Like his negative traits work well with mine and ik I wouldn't eventually seriously hate him because he's thoughtful and introspective in his own way. He def doesn't manipulate people jus to be mean but he does it often in order to scratch his back and someone else's.

I was watching s3 today and Totty suggested they do chores after making Matsuyo angry and to me the scene read as Todomatsu was switching tactics after all of his brothers said they wouldn't clean. And as awful as it is that he wanted to manipulate their mother I'm pretty sure throughout the season the brothers did more chores and it made them all appreciate Matsuyo better.

i used to like totty then i spent several years hating him but now i think i finally understand. he simultaneously pretends his brothers don't exist and also loves them so much. he's evil but also the littlest baby brother. he's trying very hard to separate himself from his brothers because he was so dependent on them when he was younger, but he loves them too much and still depends on them too much to fully separate himself. he too is stuck in the "i am them and they are me" cycle of the matsuno sibling crab in bucket effect. also he really is cute but only when hes being himself. like karamatsu only being actually cool by accident

[lysical]

red robin issue 5 part 2

...Tim, you’re actually just being a dick. 

This is a civilian girl who I’m assuming is around Tim’s age (the interning throws me off a little but DC is full of wunderkinds at this point so who knows), who has reason to fear for her life, who walked into a room that should have been safe for her (because it was the Wayne Suite and she was supposed to be the only one using it) and found you passed out and dying and got abducted because of it. Throw her a damn bone. 

He still comes across condescending but I’ll take it at this point. 

Tim compares the League to a business meeting and honestly, from what I’ve read so far in the book the League is not impressing me at all. Yost is trying to idk make them sympathetic or something, I don’t quite know, but he’s handed the entire organization an idiot ball and removed basically all of the danger and mystique from them. 

I care not for a war between assassin guilds, tbh. Not the way it’s presented here. 

Also Tam is the most endearing character that appears in this book and deserves better. 

This rival gang is being Sue’d up to be honest. And I think Yost is trying to make Tim look clever, but it’s literally just repeating something only he heard so I’m not sure what he’s trying to do tbh. Making the connection from ‘playing’ to ‘sport’ isn’t really a leap.

This makes zero sense on any level and is Sue level bullshit. Ra’s has been handed an idiot ball, and I’m saying that taking into account any ‘manipulations’ that might supposedly be going on because frankly Yost has not impressed me with his plot at all up to this point. He’s made up an all new and super edgy group of rival assassins that make the longstanding League look like dumb school children, just to prop Tim up. 

i’m screaming they have cheap plastic foldout chairs wtf kind of organization is this. Please someone tell me this is a surreal hallucination of Tim’s. 

aNYWAY omg. Uh, Yost isn’t selling me on anything. Too much of Tim telling me he’s compromising, talking about seduction and corruption when Ra’s is just like ‘here we’re going to hold a seminar on why drugs are bad and you shouldn’t do them in the workplace’ or something idk. 

This would feel less weird if Yost had carried on with Tim’s distress and obvious mental issues from earlier issues but he switched to ‘stoic, vaguely witty loner’ and didn’t look back. Tim’s also kind of obsessed with his own importance in this issue, it does kind of read like a corruption but I don’t think it’s honestly meant to. I think we’re supposed to get that Tim is sucking it up for the greater good in a ‘paved with good intentions’ way, but it reads more like all Ra’s had to do was be like ‘Only YOU can save the League’ and Tim was like ‘yes I will sTEP UP’. Which isn’t right, considering what’s coming. 

Also the fact that Tim’s so sympathetic to Pru is a bit bewildering. First of all, Tim what are you thinking? Revenge? Why is that a motivator that’s convincing you to help out. Her type of revenge isn’t your type of revenge? This is going to become clear in a second as Yost trying to be clever but it doesn’t work. 

The problem with Yost’s little spin and shock tactic here is that he has so much of Tim’s internal thoughts on display that you shouldn’t be going ??? Tim’s own internal monologue is not a place to trick the reader and lie about motivations so that you get a GASP ending. 

Unless Tim in half a second dismissed all that and went 180 onto I WILL NOT COMPROMISE, the last thought he had before accepting was the bizarre thing about revenge. It’s OOC and done purely to add shock value, and it doesn’t work for me. 

[lestifuckingforget]

Why I Moved Out Last Time

Unfortunately, I wasn’t smart enough to stay out. More on that in a later post. This archive is from an old chat with a very close online friend. TRIGGER WARNING: Just look at the tags, my dude. Abuse, violence, assault, etc. ---- LestIForget03/13/2019 So my brother just knocked me onto the floor and tried to strangle me... that was nice. I'm leaving on the 26th. [Fiance at the time] made the decision.

Best Friend03/13/2019 Give me perspective on that first part please.  Normal brotherly assholery, or assault?

LestIForget03/13/2019 Assault

Best Friend03/13/2019 what the fuck

LestIForget03/13/2019 That what I kept thinking. Well, after he finally let go of me.Hard to think when your airways are getting squeezed. And Mom knows, she just flat out denied it even happened to my face.

Best Friend03/13/2019 age? motivation? police?

LestIForget03/13/2019 Joel is 20. Motivation is a bit complicated. I'll get to that in a sec. I didn't call the police because the cops know him better than they do me, and Mom made it clear she was going to deny it if I did call them. So I didn't want to waste the officers' time. Anyway, motivation. Bit of a complex story, but I want to be fair and give you the full picture. Lemme save what I'm working on first.

Best Friend03/13/2019 okay. do you need my help?

LestIForget03/13/2019 I'm alright. Okay, so. Basically, I had trouble sleeping last night, so I woke up late. Samara wanted me to get up and get dressed, and told me I had to do it in ten minutes. She wanted Joel and I to go with her and mom to sign her will before she left for Japan. Mom couldn't sign because she was the notary or something, IDK what it's called, so [Family Friend] was going to meet us to be Witness Three. I thought he would be meeting us at wherever we were going. Now remember, I have pollen issues. So I got dressed and got out there, couldn't wear my mask because we were going out in public, and I was having trouble breathing. I hoped if I could dash to the car and get inside, I would at least have the sanctuary of the car and then, once we got to the wherever, I could be inside an air conditioned building. But no -- Mom hadn't even started the car, she was sitting in the driver's seat with the windows open, and when I opened the back door to get in, there was a folding chair in the way. Joel and Samara were chatting outside the car. I was confused by the chair and, in my panic, I muttered, "Are you fucking kidding me?" Mom took offense and told me I was "unwelcome" if I was going to curse. I apologized and switched to "heck". I got inside. Then I asked why we were waiting, and Mom said we were waiting for [Family Friend] to meet us here. So I said, "Let me know when number three gets here then," and went back inside.  [TBCd, not done typing.]

Best Friend03/13/2019 (k)

LestIForget03/13/2019 So a few minutes after that, I hear Joel and Mom come storming in. From what I can hear from my room, Joel dropped a bunch of f-bombs and Mom got triggered again, telling him he wasn't allowed in the car with that sort of language. So he called her bluff, got out of the car, and went inside. Samara of course started panicking, because she needed her will signed. Joel was shouting and Mom was shouting, and eventually Joel went off somewhere. I came out, hoping to reassure Samara and Mom that I was, in fact, still interested, I just needed shelter, and I wanted to ask if they needed a new third witness now. I walk out and Mom immediately turns on me. I say, "I just wanted to know..." and explain my mission, and Mom says something about how dare I pretend I care when I cursed up a storm. I'm confused and try to remind her that I only said the word once and immediately switched to "heck" when she called me on it. Mom won't listen and keeps interrupting me, dragging up any excuse to call me a bad person (even things that happened weeks or years ago completely out of context), telling me I'm not allowed to drink her coffee (translation: any coffee under her roof) because of my behavior. Then Joel comes back in -- perfect fucking timing -- and starts apologizing to Mom. IDK if he meant it. TBH I doubt he did, considering what happened next. He immediately starts yelling at me because Mom is yelling at me. He starts saying shit like -- IDK if you know anything about Stephen Crowder, but basically, the insipid shit that guy says to get a rise out of people he disagrees with. The "I'm sorry your mother didn't love you enough" type of shit. Really stupid, and honestly, it irked me. So I told Joel to calm down and chill. [TBCd]

Best Friend03/13/2019 ...k

LestIForget03/13/2019 So Joel instead starts getting right up in my face, intimidation-tactic style, and yells something like, "Go back to your pit -- okay, your pit -- and leave us normal people alone." I'm still confused, but I'm starting to leave the kitchen. Joel continues to follow after me. Mom's yelling. Joel's yelling -- and cursing. And Mom's letting him. So I'm further upset. He won't back off, and I'm trying to end the conversation. He won't leave me alone. So once we get to the kitchen doorway, I give him one final, "Joe, I don't care what you're on about, you need to back the fuck off and get out of this." He yells at me again, something to the effect of "No, if you want to be a man, act like a real one," etc. So I lift my foot to push him away. He then shoves me into the hall. I'm like, "Okay, this is escalating, I'm walking away. That was stupid of me." Joel starts yelling at me like, "You want to fight? You want to kick me? You're gonna kick me?" and swatting at me, so I just keep moving. Finally, I get in front of my bedroom door, and I try to push him away, I tell him to stop and back the fuck off. He then goes right for my throat. I can't defend myself in time because 1] I'm not a violent person and 2] I have a splattermask on, so my FOV is shit. I go down on the ground, and Joel is still yelling, "You want to kick me? You want to kick me?" Then Mom comes in from the kitchen. Joel eventually lets go. I ask, "Did you not just see that? He tried to actually strangle me!" and my mom says, "Oh, please. He didn't try to strangle you." Joel says, "Oh no, I was trying to do that." and Mom just brushes it off. I finally just go to my room and stay there. So my oldest sister Jean ended up being the third witness. Finis.

Best Friend03/13/2019 remind me why you're not on a bus to Kansas right now

LestIForget03/13/2019 Oh, and he called me a motherfucker right before I pushed him with my foot. Hence why I doubt he was actually sorry for cursing. Because I want to be able to pay rent first.

LestIForget03/13/2019 However, it's out of my hands now. I told [Fiance at the time] what happened, and she bought me a ticket for 2AM on the 26th. And she wouldn't let me argue her down. So that's that. Joel is still welcome and loved in the house, I heard him joking around and making Samara laugh when they got back from the notary, and nobody's even knocked on my door to see if I'm okay.

Best Friend03/13/2019 I have a lot of sour and jaded opinions about family. your family does not change my opinions.

LestIForget03/13/2019 I'm just shocked and disgusted that my brother would actually go that fucking far with violence. I'm not even exaggerating, it was not a pet strangle or a play strangle.

Best Friend03/13/2019 I wish there was something I could do, or I hope that I've already done enough to help your escape I believe you. it's horrid.

LestIForget03/13/2019 It's fucking disgusting.

Best Friend03/13/2019 I don't know how you will readily forgive this. or why you would, other than principle okay.  less than 2 weeks.  this gives me relief.

LestIForget03/13/2019 And the fact that they still are okay with him but call me an abuser, accuse me of threatening them and being violent, etc. when I didn't even try to physically fight back while he had me on the goddamn ground, is just fucking putrid. I have never, ever wanted to cause harm to a family member. Not even when Dad or Mom would actually physically attack me. I was always defend-or-run-or-ride-it-out. But no, I'm the one who makes people feel threatened somehow.

Best Friend03/13/2019 you should not change that doctrine.  Violence is violence, and this is assault and abuse.

LestIForget03/13/2019 Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Joel is fucking incompetent.

Best Friend03/13/2019 get out of there. and never look back.

LestIForget03/13/2019 Believe me, now that I've seen that the violence isn't over, that it's not just emotional manipulation? I'm getting the fuck out.

Best Friend03/13/2019 yup.  it is abuse on all fronts.

LestIForget03/13/2019 I was only willing to withstand the emotional shit. That stuff I can scrub off. I can't scrub off the physical shit.

Best Friend03/13/2019 you've been physically assaulted, emotionally abused, stolen from, lied to, and invalidated. they are losing you.  I hope they learn to regret it.

LestIForget03/13/2019 TBH They'll probably just circle jerk and agree it's all my fault and that I'm just the crazy one in the family. But so fucking be it. John and Dad are the only ones I'll ever give the time of day. Dad because he has become a better person and realized the importance of love and support, even if he doesn't accept something; and John because he's the youngest and high-functioning, and he more than anyone else needs someone to be there who can understand him.

Best Friend03/13/2019 I'll believe he loves you correctly if he supports your flying out of the nest and into your actual real life

LestIForget03/13/2019 I haven't told him. He won't argue with me, though. And he's one of the few people who might give me a ride to the bus station when he finds out I'm leaving. Dad, I mean.

Best Friend03/13/2019 right for the record, I'm fucking done with your family. nothing i've ever heard endears them to me

LestIForget03/13/2019 -hugs-

Best Friend03/13/2019 I already have a dim view of families -squish- you have always deserved better than this

LestIForget03/13/2019 I hope you're right. That I deserve better, anyway. I'm going to try to make something of myself in Wichita so that I don't have to go back.

Best Friend03/13/2019 if I'm wrong, then I'm happy to have whatever learning disability that prevents me from knowing the more correct answer

LestIForget03/13/2019 I'll sleep on a park bench or behind a Denny's before I come back here. Lol

Best Friend03/13/2019 heck fren I've seen people sleep inside the Denny's

LestIForget03/13/2019 LOL That's how determined I am. I'll even sleep outside the damn Denny's.

Best Friend03/13/2019 at this point I think you'd be welcome in a domestic shelter. this wasn't just violence.  this was a death threat. there's ways to be violent that do not directly attack life support systems.

LestIForget03/13/2019 Fair. Although I think he would have let go once I passed out.

Best Friend03/13/2019 the message sent by "throat" is something much darker than --

LestIForget03/13/2019 .... if he could tell actually.

Best Friend03/13/2019 jesus christ [LestIForget]

LestIForget03/13/2019 Because I was wearing my mask So he couldn't have seen my eyes close. But heyyyyyyyyy he just got his EMT certificate so

Best Friend03/13/2019 choking can cause brain damage

LestIForget03/13/2019 Maybe he could have resuscitated me LMFAO

Best Friend03/13/2019 I know you're being facetious to cope and shit maybe I'm just not ready to laugh about this

LestIForget03/13/2019 Fair I'm sorry. I'm still pretty shook about it myself, I'm just kinda past the "wtf" stage and more into the "lol this world is shit isn't it" stage.

Best Friend03/13/2019 I recognize that.  Please don't feel like you owe me an apology.

LestIForget03/13/2019 -hugs- I should make coffee tbh Or tea, maybe Something to help calm me down

Best Friend03/13/2019 if you're allowed to have coffee

LestIForget03/13/2019 Thing is, I don't even want to like burn the house down when I leave or anything. They can crash and burn in their own time. I just want out. And the more time I have to sort of breathe and recenter and get over the shock, I'm just like, "The more things change, the more they stay the same," and I figure they're just as right for this world as I am. Oh, I'll find a way.

Best Friend03/13/2019 *shakes head*

LestIForget03/13/2019 Addicts always find a way lol

Best Friend03/13/2019 I agree.  you just want dignity. and leaving in an undignified way betrays a core principle.

LestIForget03/13/2019 Yeah. Would be nice if I could get all my things and just poof. As it is, I'll have to leave a lot of my possessions here in boxes. Might see if my oath-brother is willing to keep them. I don't trust my family to actually leave them alone.

Best Friend03/13/2019 your distrust is well-founded

LestIForget03/13/2019 And tbh, in this area, shelters are already crowded. And wifi isn't guaranteed. I need to be able to work on my art so I don't vanish from DA and FA.

Best Friend03/13/2019 that's fair.  please convince me you're safe for the night, though else I will pay for a hotel/motel room for you.

LestIForget03/13/2019 I'm fairly safe in my room, and I can get food or drinks at night once everyone else is asleep. During the day, a lot of people are either at work or school, so I have a decent space of morning to sneak about. Joel frequents the kitchen, but he does have to sleep at night, and I can hear where everyone is while I'm in my room, because it's smack-dab in the middle of the house. So I'll know when he leaves the kitchen, and I've been sneaking around the house since I was about seven.

Best Friend03/13/2019 this is very faint convincing.

LestIForget03/13/2019 So don't worry. I know how to avoid everyone and still live semi-comfortably.

Best Friend03/13/2019 And I choose to worry, and will remain worried for 13 days.

LestIForget03/13/2019 And if all else fails, I can call up somebody on the phone or on Discord and have somebody witnessing. I put them on speaker, and nobody moves a fucking muscle unless they're very, very stupid.