#plus the whole same personality different outlook thing is cool

[lookingforhappy]

Realising now that the two dynamics I want explored further are Lila & five and Sloane & five… a.k.a. Five steals his brothers’ girlfriends…

[aiyexayen]

So uh that essay about how Wei Ying takes after Yu Ziyuan? I am LISTENING

There were two things that really made me start to think about this, one was this tweet which says, "You know what we don't talk about? Wei Wuxian getting his cry-laughing from Madam Yu" and this incredible ChengXian video which sets their relationship to the tune of When Doves Cry and wrecks me every time I watch it (I just watched it now when I went to get the link and I'm whimpering).

As to the first matter:

seems fairly conclusive.

The second matter:

maybe I'm just like my father, too bold maybe you're just like my mother-- she's never satisfied

Was there this much meta thought put into one line of lyrics in a video set to When Doves Cry? Hard to say. There is now, though! Because dang, what a line. Essay under the cut.

There's a (valid) tendency to pull out the ways Jiang Cheng is more like his mother, and the ways Wei Wuxian is more like Jiang Fengmian, especially where their relationship is concerned.

Jiang Cheng wants proof of care through passion, through a willingness to fight. He will provoke and poke at things better left lying, with no shame and no regard to who else is around, dredge up old hurts and old grudges and old matters even if they're long buried or long forgiven, so long as he thinks it will get him the reaction he's looking for.

He wants Wei Wuxian to fix things by rising to the bait, rising to the challenge, giving him pushback when he says blatant lies, showing him that his shige still thinks he's worth it.

This is terribly unhealthy, of course, don't do this at home kids, but it's one of my core Jiang Cheng Truths.

Jiang Cheng shows that he cares in turn by being willing to fight, by pouring his emotion out even if those often end up as negative expressions. He's messy and unrestrained when he feels things, not all of which is from his mother--a lot of that is just Jiang Cheng--however, you can see the way he tries to rein in his emotions when he's embarrassed about caring or is trying to pretend that he doesn't care. Whether it's pretending to shrug off Wei Wuxian and walk away when they have a problem, or trying to rein in his temper at Lan Wangji on Dafan Mountain. Because from his mother, he's internalised the message that to engage in the fight is proof of care, so the opposite is also true.

And oh, when he hurts, he seeks to hurt back. That's very Yu Ziyuan of him.

Wei Wuxian, meanwhile, frequently defaults to calming and placating with Jiang Cheng. Not as much as Jiang Yanli does--but more on her, momentarily. We see Wei Wuxian complain at Jiang Cheng to not get riled up, tell him he's being stubborn and just to accept the peace offering, etc. The difference is that, at first, with Jiang Cheng, a lot of that is just general pouty childishness and Wei Ying-ing, general sibling shit.

Plus, he was still willing to fight/express himself fully. They fought a lot. He always ran after Jiang Cheng, always roped him into expressing himself, always let Jiang Cheng fight it out. He understood, at least intuitively, and he didn't back down. The benefits of having grown up together, and of being an older one/middle sibling in the dynamic.

But when things really started to break down between him and Jiang Cheng, when the conflict was much bigger, much more grown up, much more real, Wei Wuxian started modeling his behaviour even more on Jiang Fengmian in regards to Jiang Cheng, possibly seeing more of Yu-furen in Jiang Cheng and responding the way that felt natural.

(Also, a lot of his own guilt and depression/apathy/intent to die and assorted other issues came into play at roughly the same time.)

Thus, we see Wei Wuxian start to turn down Jiang Cheng more often, and back off. He shrugs it off or rejects it when Jiang Cheng reaches out, and he stops reaching out himself. He tries to placate Jiang Cheng, tries to defuse him, tries to send him away. Some of this is because he cares and is trying to show he cares by taking himself out of the situation; some because he's trying to maintain his lies; some because he just doesn't have the energy to deal with this anymore.

After Wei Wuxian is resurrected, by which point he's done what he perceives as the worst things to Jiang Cheng, this intensifies. Jiang Cheng provokes him beyond reason, lashes out, starts fights, sneers, and Wei Wuxian almost rises to the bait but he stops himself. He lets Jiang Cheng be angry and he shrinks himself down, he backs away, he disengages. A decent portion of this is Wei Wuxian himself, and his faulty perspective on the situation and on Jiang Cheng's anger and complexity of emotion and intent. Some of it is lingering relationship modeling off of Jiang-shushu and Yu-furen's relationship. Either way, he's definitely "being the Jiang Fengmian" in the situation.

Additionally, Wei Wuxian tries quite actively to model himself off of Jiang-shushu's good qualities, which is understandable given that this was his primary benevolent adult figure and liked him quite a lot. We see it in the way Wei Wuxian teaches, the way he instructs with archery, the fact he prioritises archery to begin with, the way he expresses kindness the way it was expressed to him, through encouragement or noticing people who are down and out. Things that Wei Wuxian, at least, attributes to Jiang Fengmian's character (I'm trying so hard not to make this a Jiang Fengmian salt post) even if a lot of that is just his own outlook on life at the end of the day.

But all of these kids were around both of these parental figures/people of authority. This is most clear in Jiang Yanli. We see the way she's become a mediator figure between her parents when they're upset with each other and understands them both.

She takes all the kind intent and patience and willingness to placate and calm from her father, and adds in the knowledge and understanding needed to actually use it interpersonally. She's more open with communication, can identify the heart of an issue, and effectively diffuse a lot of tension. She has middling success with this with regards to her parents, but a lot more success with her brothers. It helps her see eye to eye with Wei Wuxian, and share that spark of playfulness between them too. It helps her understand why Jiang Cheng says things the way he does, and what he means.

We also see Jiang Yanli reveal herself to be the steely, fiery daughter of Zi Zhizhu when someone attacks what is hers. She is just as much her mother's child.

So, too, Jiang Cheng is his father's son. I think this is true much more when he grows up and inherits the sect and has held it for some time in the wake of tragedy. We see evidence that he's become a well-regarded leader, and for all we see cool, flashing, calculating glares and bitten-back sneers, we see worried disciples fussing over his health. We see a mild manner that was learned, and an authority that has accrued with time, and a self-assuredness when dealing with his peers that seems more modeled off what we see of Jiang Fengmian than of Yu Ziyuan.

Jiang Cheng is a match for Zidian, through and through, but he is also steady and determined and bold, good at making and keeping allies, or else how could he have achieved the impossible in rebuilding his sect? He learned to take some of his mother, some of his father, find something left over of himself out of the wreckage of his life, and meld it all together.

That brings us to Wei Wuxian. I had, at the time of first seeing that tweet, showed it to a friend who said:

Are we gonna talk about how Wei Ying gets his cry-laugh from her? Are we gonna talk about how he learned that intense glare from her, too? Or his tendency to act swiftly and decisively even when it might not be the actual best course of action? Or his violent protectiveness of his siblings?

Inspired. And yes, we are.

Yu-furen was a figure of absolute strength in Wei Wuxian's life. Uncompromising, unyielding, impressive as hell. She had the capacity to inspire deep loyalty and was fiercely protective over things that were hers. Her son, her daughter, her family's reputation, her sect, her home, her disciple. (Yes, even Wei Wuxian was hers, too, she made quite the point about that.)

Wei Wuxian is very easygoing. But when he decides something is his, whether that's a duty or a person or whatever, it's his to protect, it's his to do anything for, even cause a scene, even start a war, even lose allies or his own life. It's one surefire way to get him to fight no matter what headspace he's in.

You can see Jiang Cheng realise/remember this in real time in the Ancestral Hall, when he can't get a rise out of Wei Wuxian by talking about himself and his family, and that stings, but he's desperate to get a rise out of him somehow, and immediately he sets in on Lan Wangji. And it fucking works. That's what gets Wei Wuxian to almost fight him. If he'd posed a real threat, and if a whole bunch of other complicated psychological shit wasn't part of the mix for everyone involved, there would absolutely have been a fight.

Wei Wuxian latched onto the Wens, yes, and they were his, too, but they weren't the only ones. Lotus Pier was his, as was Jiang Cheng. Yunmeng Shuangjie was not just a pipe dream, and Wei Wuxian's loyalty was not simply easy to sway. Yunmeng Jiang's strength, their reputation, their future, and Jiang Cheng's along with it were always on his mind.

He lied, and fought, and even left and took himself out of the picture to that end. For Jiang Cheng, and for his ability to carry on. In so many ways, Wei Wuxian absolutely took so much of his perspectives on that from Yu Ziyuan, for better or worse.

Uncompromising, unyielding, even when turned on himself. Never satisfied, always pushing for more, for answers, for solutions, for the right path, even in his own frequently easygoing and curious ways. Unhesitating, across the board. Even if it meant his own life, or his core.

There is nothing wrong with hesitating. Hesitating, worrying, being uncertain, trying to think first, trying to find the right path, and then being able to find it, or choose it anyway, is such an act of courage. That's a quality Jiang Cheng has in droves. He hesitated, when he saw the Wen soldiers coming for Wei Wuxian. And then he chose to sacrifice himself. For Wei Wuxian, there was no hesitation whatsoever. No forethought. No choice, really. Just go. I think that's very Yu Ziyuan of him.

I had to go digging to find that message my friend sent me, and I'll conclude with my response:

If we're going to talk about how Wei Wuxian is like Yu-furen, then we'll have to talk about how Yu-furen knew that. Or at least, the only parts that she ever had cause to see in him while she still lived. How he was hers even if he wasn't her son. How Fengmian's lazy favouritism was intolerable in this way, too, in the way it sowed discord where there didn't need to be any, and was a barrier between her and the things that should have been more fully hers. How the farewell at Lotus Pier was more of a betrayal than she intended. How she thought she and Wei Ying met over more even ground at that moment, because she knew he loved Jiang Cheng as much as she did, in the way she did. How she expected more from him than for him to give parts himself up in such a horrifying way. How she underestimated the actual damage that had been done. And if she'd survived to see it, she just might have been truly horrified.

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

ohh i saw your answer about the sequels of star wars. id love to read you tear through the whole trilogy

Well, I’ve avoided this ask long enough. Part of the reason is this is really a huge topic, far too much for one ask, so I’m going to have to do this at a very high level.

In short, the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy is what one gets when you slap together the goal of selling merchandise and making tons of money, being as risk averse as humanly possible, adding a handful of warring directors with incredibly different visions, and having virtually no imagination when it comes to the imagining and writing of characters.

And we get this beautiful, awful, franchise that for reasons beyond me people seem to actually like (though interestingly, no one seems to like all of it, they may actually like one or two of the films, but no one says all three are actually in any realm of good).

With that, let’s begin.

The Force Awakens

For me this is easily the most tolerable of the sequel trilogy: it’s not great, it’s not terrible. It’s thoroughly watchable, you can be taken along for the movie’s journey and not raise your eyebrows too much at the action and leave the theater feeling this maybe wasn’t a complete waste of your time.

There’s a good reason for that. That reason is called the most blatant form of plagiarism I have ever seen in cinema in my life.

“The Force Awakens” is just “A New Hope” wearing a mustache. Only, it’s one of those cheap mustaches you get from a party store that, if you stare at it too long, just looks like the most false and awful thing you’ve ever seen. The mustache actively makes it worse. “The Force Awakens” is “A New Hope”, but worse.

Seriously, every major character, every major plot point, every major scene I can go directly back to “A New Hope”.

Our story begins when the Resistance, at great cost to our valiant heroes including torture at the hands of the Emperor’s second in command, sends a file out into the wilderness to be received by his people. This file contains plans for the Death Star.

The film then focuses on Luke, er Rey, getting involved in the Resistance, boarding the Death Star, and successfully destroying at the same time even at the lost of a beloved mentor that she just met (trading in Obi-Wan for Han Solo). 

Our evil empire is run by an evil emperor who is so evil he sits in a chair, is served by very Moth Tarkin-esque human storm troopers, and has a second in command who revels in the Darth Vader get up (for no other reason that it makes him feel cool but we’ll get into this).

It’s “A New Hope”. Rey is Luke, Han Solo is Obi-Wan, Poe is a kind of Han Solo, Kylo Ren is Vader, Snoke is Palpatine, Hux is Tarkin, BB-8 is R2-D2, etc.

“But that’s not terrible,” you say, “I liked A New Hope?”

First, it is terrible, it gives a very bad sign of where the sequel trilogy is headed and is just lazy writing. It means that those who produced this franchise were so terrified of taking risks, of possibly ending up mocked as the prequels were, that they will deliver exactly what the original trilogy was. And what’s that? Uh, evil empires, scrappy desert kids, AND MORE DEATH STARS!

That brings us to point number two, the world of Star Wars after the events of the original trilogy shouldn’t support such things. And, if it does, my god what a bleak existence this place has turned into.

The First Order being able to rise easily from the Empire’s remains means that Luke accomplished nothing. Anakin sacrificed himself and had his moment of redemption for nothing. There was no happy ending to the Original Trilogy, our heroes failed miserably, and there is no indication that our new band of heroes can possibly succeed in their place. (More on this as the movies progress).

We now are in a galaxy where this new Republic is so pathetic that Leia doesn’t even give it the time of day and builds her own private army to battle the Empire. The First Order is able to not only rebuild a massive army by raiding villages on many different worlds and stealing children and do so successfully for at least ten years but is able to build a Death Star bigger than any we’ve ever seen before. 

And the movie tries to convince us these are completely new problems, that Luke Skywalker is a hero (remember this is TFA, not TLJ yet), and that somehow these things just sprung up out of nowhere. BUT YEAH, RESISTANCE, WOO!

As for Rey, she’s like... a worse version of Luke. Her only motivation through the entire series is her trauma at being abandoned by her parents. That’s it, there’s nothing else to her, nothing else she ever wants or feels conflicted by. She struggles with the dark side because... the dark side? Genetics? Unclear? She’s absurdly, ridiculously, powerful in a way that’s acknowledged but never that acknowledged (we’ll get into this) and the movies just fail to sell me on her in any way.

Honestly, an easy fix for me would have just been making Rey a much younger character. I could believe a fourteen-year-old having stayed in the desert, scrounging for scraps, believing her parents are coming back every day now. As a twenty-something year old... It starts getting hard to believe she never left. (Also, this gets the benefit of getting rid of Reylo, which is always a plus for me).

As for Kylo Ren, I legitimately walked out of TFA thinking he was supposed to be comic relief. He’s what happens when someone desperately wants a likable, redeemable, villain and we get... Well, as a reminder his opening scene is one of genocide: he pillages and destroys a town with no regret and brutally tortures a man for information. We’re told he’s like this “because evil evil Snoke” and that may well be but throughout the film (and the series) it becomes clear that Kylo Ren’s main motivation is he deseprately wants to be cool. He wants to be a badass like Vader, he dresses in Vader cosplay (either ignoring or not knowing that Vader only dressed like that because his body was completely destroyed), he has these huge temper tantrums and nobody respects him because he’s a toddler in a Vader suit. 

He murders his own father, his parents who (at least in the films themselves) show every willingness to take him back and forgive him what he’s done, so that he can fully embrace his own “evilness”. In other words, he commits patricide to feel cool about himself, then it doesn’t work. 

And the movie series really banks on me feeling conflicted about Kylo Ren or at least wanting him to be redeemed. Granted, the wider internet seems to love him, I just can’t.

Oh, before I forget, the other thing I love about Kylo Ren is that the movies insist he’s a) strong in the Force b) is equal to Rey. Rey consistently beats the shit out of him with 0 training. Kylo Ren has been training in the Force for years. Guys, they are not a Dyad, Rey is far far far stronger than he is and for whatever reason the films never want to admit it. Because I guess we like things coming in pairs now.

But yes, “The Force Awakens”, at a distance not great nor terrible, but a rip off of a movie we’ve already seen that left me going “Welp, the next one’s probably The Empire Strikes Back then I guess we’re getting Ewoks”. I was sort of right on that and sort of wrong.

The Last Jedi

So, JJ Abrams clearly had a vision of where he wanted this sequel trilogy to go. He set up these big questions such as what’s up with Finn, who are Rey’s parents and why was she left on this nowhere planet, will Kylo Ren be redeemed and how, who is Snoke, etc.

Now, I’m not saying these aren’t stupid questions. To be frank, they kind of are. Finn being Force Sensitive was the most inconsequential thing I’ve ever heard of, Rey’s parents should not have been used to drive the plot the way it was, as spoken above I’m clearly team gut Kylo Ren, and that Snoke was actually just Palpatine being the world’s largest cockroach is a beautiful but hilarious answer.

That said, what Johnson did was he decided, “You know what, I’m going to take every trope of Star Wars and completely flip it on its head and absolutely doom the sequel to this movie.”

And by god, he did.

We get a weirdly pointless movie in which Poe, SINGLEHANDEDLY, completely obliterates the Resistance. He first obliterates their bombers by failing to follow command, then goes and bitches about how he’s not put in command when he clearly shows no ability to understand how a military works, actively subverts orders which in turn obliterates the entire Resistance fleet until the only survivors can fit on the Millenium Falcon. They have no ships, no weapons, barely any people, and are ultimately doomed doomed doomed.

We have Finn’s weird subplot with a suddenly introduced character Rose in which the pair aid in Poe’s blowing up the resistance (they send sensitive information using the communication equipment of a guy they do not know, who fully admits to being shady and out for his own skin, and are flabergasted when he betrays them). 

Rose herself is this weirdly sweet person who seems forced into the plot to a) provide a love triangle for Finn and Rey b) provide this forced sunny outlook that I didn’t really need in the film.

We get Rey never really being trained, going into the Cave of Wonders for a few seconds, falling in love with Kylo Ren over weird Force Skype calls (where I did not need to see him shirtless, thank you film) and being horrifically betrayed when Kylo Ren turns out not to be a great guy. Never saw that coming, Rey. 

As for Kylo Ren, well... God, we get Emperor Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren, the Emperor. I’m not even that upset about the anticlimactic murder of Snoke (that was kind of funny, especially in the context of Palpatine going, “Bitch, please, you’re in my chair” immediately in the next film) but just Kylo Ren being emperor. And also that the Resistance only escapes at all because he’s so dumb he made their dumb plans seem smart (i.e. concentrates all his firepower on an illusion for ten minutes while Hux goes, “Emperor, sir, we could actually destroy the Resistance right now.”

Now, you’ll notice I didn’t complain about Luke. A lot of people are upset he became a grumpy, miserable, old hermit who sits around waiting for death. Frankly though, in this universe, that’s exactly where he is. He left “Return of the Jedi” thinking he’d saved the world, he’s resurrected the Jedi Order, and all is well. Only a decade later, his students are all murdered by his nephew, the Empire’s back, and he accomplished nothing. He’s an utter failure as a Jedi (though Luke never realizes he knew jack shit about the Jedi Order and was in way over his head but I guess that’s beyond him). Why shouldn’t he go sit on a rock and wait to die? 

Now, did he have to drink that blue dinosaur milk? Well, I guess it was funny, gross but funny so... Sure, I guess he did. But I do like that he gave Rey 0 training, they had one meditation session and then he whined about how Obi-Wan was such a stupid asshole. And then Rey ran off to be with her boyfriend, who then told her that her parents were gutter trash (which again, was funny, but I don’t think that was supposed to be funny).

Of the characters introduced in the movie, the only one I really liked was the hacker, and it was for the actor/the beautiful way in which he gracefully exited stage left with zero shame going, “You all knew I was going to betray you!” You beautiful man, you.

Rise of the Skywalker

First, when something is called “Rise of the Skywalker” you know you’re in for a rough time.

But anyways, TLJ was filled with a controversy Disney didn’t want (half their audience hated it, half loved it, but at least they sold those penguin dolls) so they desperately get Abrams back. Only, what he clearly wanted from his series has been shot to hell, and now he’s left with Emperor Kylo Ren, a completely obliterated Resistance, a dead Luke, a love interest he never planned to introduce for Finn, Rey’s parental crisis being solved with trash people, Snoke just suddenly dead, Hux planning revenge, and then some.

And so, Abrams goes the brave and hilarious route of shouting “PRETEND THAT LAST MOVIE NEVER HAPPENED”

We open to a fully functioning Resistance (their bomber fleet is back, their fleet period is back, they have all their fully trained personnel). We have Rey getting the Jedi training she needed this time from Leia, who is now a Jedi, because yay feminism rammed down my throat to make the audience feel better. Rose says “It’s cool guys, I don’t want to join the adventure this film, I’m going to stay here and work on robots” so that she can gracefully exit the entire plot. Kylo Ren is demoted from Emperor in two seconds when we discover that a) Snoke was apparently Palpatine b) for unexplained reasons Palpatine’s alive (and I am now convinced that man will never die). Kylo Ren tells Rey at the first opportunity that he lied about her trash parents AND REALLY SHE’S A PALPATINE! THIS WHOLE TIME, REY! THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. I’M SUPER SERIAL THIS TIME, REY.

Basically, in the course of an overly long movie, Abrams desperately shoves in everything he was trying to get out of the series, while sobbing, and sobbing even harder when things like Finn being Force Sensitive or Lando having a secret daughter get caught. I actually agree with the Producers on this, by the way, the Finn trying to tell Rey something scenes were weird and indicative of a love triangle but him being Force Sensitive instead... It says a lot that the movies did not change when it was removed, at all. And Lando was just this strange cameo who was in the film to make us feel nostalgic.

And this isn’t even getting to the ridiculous 24 hour time limit (which made me think there should have been some video game style clock in the corner letting us know when Dawn of the Third Day is coming), Palpatine’s other secret army on a secret Sith planet that can be easily taken down by taking out one navigation tower, Rey’s hilarious struggle with the dark side in which she has a vision of herself in a cape hissing, Kylo Ren’s hilarious redemption in which the movie in the form of Leia and Han Solo says, “Alright, Ben, it’s time to stop being evil” and he says “okay”, the fight with Palpatine in which I’m supposed to believe he dies for reals because... I have no idea why I’m supposed to believe he’s dead. The Reylo, god the Reylo, and Kylo Ren’s tragic, hilarious, death.

And then, of course, the ending where Rey decides she’s a Skywalker now.

I actually did laugh all the way through “Rise of the Skywalker”, you can’t not, I mean it’s a hilariously awful movie. The only thing that might have made it more hilarious was if we actually did get those Ewoks.

TL;DR

They’re all bad movies, if you want more specifics than this, you’re just going to have to ask me questions.

[allthingsfern]

In order, my responses to comments in Reply of my COVID19 era post that was my answer to my question “My answer to my questions: Has the era of COVID19 changed your photography? How? And perhaps also, why?“ I am so confused now...

adventuresofalgy

Algy thinks you are lucky and - certainly if compared with Europeans - perhaps quite unusual in not having experienced a more profound effect on your creative outlets and expression. Many of Algy's creative friends have experienced wide-ranging and often severe impacts on their creativity and associated motivation - and therefore on their mental health as well.

themazette

As @adventuresofalgy Jenny said.... you are lucky...

I am indeed very lucky, or as I think of it, blessed. However, it is no way a US thing, nor even a California thing. I add California, because I know many in the US and around the world think of the Golden State as a haven, a progressive, hippie filled state that is all about peace and love and marijuana. However, that is far from the truth. California is like Germany in the 1920s and 30s. There was Berlin, where there was a wildness in the city that was not shared, and was often looked-down on, by those in the majority of the country, who lived in more conservative areas and who, often, economically could not afford the grand life of partying Berliners. In California it is the same. Except for a few urban areas, the state is full of very conservative folks, and for them, like for those in the cities (and in the rest of the world) this COVID19 era has been devastating. Well, and the fires for Californians have been too.

Even in this cool college town where I live, which is lovely and quiet and inspiring, the painfully empty streets, movie theaters, restaurants, shops (think of all those unemployed people) is (still) staggering. In mid-March last year, right after lockdown, I took several phone videos of the deserted street in our town and the campus, but I could not bring myself to share them, since I knew that so many others here on Tumblr were experiencing the same desolation in many different ways. (I figured: “Why add to the sorrow we are living, almost globally?”) I was overwhelmed by the emptiness of the major (well, major for a small town of around 65,000 people) street where I live and the empty bicycle trails and street on campus. And by empty, I mean that even now, I see maybe 3 cyclists per hour, and very little car traffic. Remember, this is a bicycle town; I do not own a car, doing most all my errands on my bike with its 2 fordable baskets in the rear.

And now, over a year later, that same heavy, oppressive emptiness persists. And no, I am not used to it. And yes, I traveled over the last year, but I found the same suffocating blanket of emptiness in each city I visited, even in Las Vegas. It was unnerving. As a matter of fact, last year when I drove to San Francisco 2 months after lockdown for my birthday, I wound up getting depressed and disoriented, in a city where I lived for almost 7 years. Driving back home across the Golden Gate Bridge with tears of sadness in my eyes on my birthday was not what I expected. However, I did get some solid photos of the malaise that hung thick in the air, a malaise that physically took up the space that once was taken up by crowds of people.

Now, I am also very aware that my situation is unique. (Not a fan of the word exceptional, since it can mean both unique and special, and I do not see my situation as special.) My life situation is very unique in that I have a job I love and I work with a great team of characters. We get work done and we have fun, share about our lives. My job is often, especially since COVID19 first got noticed in early 2020, stressful and demands my colleagues and I learn (and sometimes then teach) lots of new technology and that we adapt to the vagaries of the technology gods, which are sometimes unfriendly and unresponsive. And a big part of my job is trying to figure out how to get the technology gods to like us again and grace us with their gifts. (I never realized, until now, with this discussion, that the troubleshooting that is a big part of my job is creative and probably fuels my photographic creativity. Who knew?) Yet, as a group, my colleagues and I support each other. And I am fortunate to count my closest colleague, Steve, as a friend. We have been a great emotional support to each other over the years and now through this COVID19 era. And I recently was reminded (as if I needed reminding) just how unique my work situation is because I participated in a committee that was going over responses to a UC Davis-wide survey exploring levels of employee satisfaction. My 2 colleagues who were also on that committee and I did not have the complaints that others from other departments shared. We work well together, have supportive management that share what is going on and include us (as mush as possible) in the decision making process. And as a department, we get stuff done.

Possibly the best example of how blessedly unique my situation is is what happened this morning when I was talking (yes, on ZOOM) with my immediate supervisor. We discussed the work related stuff, including how at around 10:30 pm the night before I figured something out about an online tool integration I had never done before that I knew was easy but I did not see as easy until I reread the overly complicated instructions a couple of times and just figured out how and where to cut and paste the lines of code (it was that easy, just fucking cut and paste some lines of JSON code) that got the fucking thing to work. Then we talked about his dealing with his young children returning to school and how “normal” now is not “normal” from before and how disruptive the whole thing has been, yet since we work in a supportive atmosphere (and are both salaried), he was able to deal and keep living.

Then, and you are gonna love this, I shared about my original COVID19 question post and the responses and pretty much said to him what I am sharing here.

We talked for a little over an hour. That kind of rapport is rare, for any job, anywhere.

And then there is another way my situation is unique. In some ways, previous “bad things” were actually a preparation for this era of physical distance and uncertainty. In mid-2019, from July to August, first because of my work related bowling concussion and then an antibiotic resistant infection, I was bedridden for about 5 weeks and then had several absences because of concussion issues, like sudden and extreme anger flare ups, nausea, headaches. But however bad I thought that concussion and infection were, the concussion induced forgetfulness and my desire to sharpen my mind and nurture and nourish it have lead me to become, in my old age, organized. I now often take notes of important stuff, add work and personal dates and notes to my Outlook calendar, and even know what day it is, which bugs my colleagues who often find they have no idea what day and/or date it is. Yep, unique, but the bad concussion shit got me to be organized in ways that I was never able to be before, no matter what I tried. This time, I just fucking get organized, without thinking about it too much. And if I fuck up with my being organized, like I did the other day for work, I admit it, fix it, and move on.

Preparation for isolation (and unexpected natural threats) came by way of the 2018 Northern California (the region where I live) fires that year, which caused the campus to shut down for about a week. (As my friend Steve called it, the smoking break.) And for work, my colleagues and I faced a couple of long term, emergency technical outages that impacted all of the UC Davis faculty, one of them for over a month. Pretty much on a professional and personal level, I was, if not ready, at least getting used to the WTF of whatever life decides to surprise me with. (And lets not forget the really bad fire last September, seen in this video I posted of ash “snow” falling. We did not have to shut down the campus because there was no one there anyway.)

Another aspect of this last year, and one that has been present in my life for a few years now, is the BLM movement and the brutal police violence against Black people in this country. As someone who was a teaching assistant and taught in African American Studies and worked closely with students of color on campus in a student run organization, I was and am still devastated, in part because I know, from hearing so many personal accounts, the pain many of my friends, former colleagues, and former students, are still facing and how overwhelmed they felt and still feel. I understand, if as an outsider, their emotional exhaustion. This has been going on for a while, plus add the years of anti-immigrant hate against the Latinx in the US and the rising tide of violent hate against Asians, and yes, it has been sorrowful. Heartbreaking. And I have, in several ways, including my photography, tried to capture the sorrow and resilience of US people of color. It hurts, almost physically, that many people of color are just tired of talking and dealing with the hate.

So, yes, my situation is unique, but with its own emotionally draining weight. And yes, I am extremely grateful. This leads to the other 2 comments in Reply:

kkomppa

Thank you for sharing, Fern. Very interesting. Like you, I would say my output hasn’t changed much. However, I have sought locations deeper in the wilderness. This has been fulfilling.

schwarzkaeppchen

Really interesting thoughts. We live in strange times, but creativity and motivation comes and goes for so many different reasons. My photography has changed a lot. I used to work as a photographer at events and took portraits for fun... Now I'm officially a portrait photographer.

Both of these comments point to another unique aspect of my life situation: For some of us, our photography and how we do it, has not changed much, and if it has, that has been a part of our overall experience with this art form we love so much.

For me, because of my depressive tendencies, the Zen of photography, at least the way I do it, is therapeutic. And I do not use the  term “Zen” lightly here, because my spiritual life has helped me come to terms with the WTF surprises that are pretty much life, if at times the WTF of it is more impactful, as it is during this COVID19 era. And that is part of what I was trying to share with my original post: Before this period of isolation and disorientation, I was already coming to grips with the gospel truth that “creativity and motivation comes and goes for so many different reasons.” as @schwarzkaeppchen​ said. In no way do I diminish the anguish flared up by these bleak times that impact so many around the world. And really, when you think about it, bleak times have been a norm, at least here in the US, since late 2016, though, of course, lockdowns and physical distance make it all worse. But, at least for me, I try to learn from the bleak times, even if I abhor going through them. And when dealing with the highs and lows of creative energy, at least for me, I have a calm certainty that photography is part of my life and I do not have to worry, since I only love it more each day. And the other side to my certainty is that if someday my love of photography fades, some other treasure of creativity will replace it.

Let’s be real, because of photography. I think about stuff like this and get to have discussions with so many great Tumblr original photographers.

And I am grateful for it, and no, this is not unique to my life situation. I know many of us love being here and sharing the good, the bad, the confounding.

Please think about joining @tvoom and me for InConverversation this month. It has been a long time since we talked, and this COVID19 era will be our topic.

I am grateful for all y’all.

[redantsunderneath]

DC COMICS: Incoherence as Not-a-Bug-but-a-Feature (Spoilers for Batman 89-100)

Due to the emergence of the new Batman villain character Punchline, I wound up buying the last 12 issues of Batman and reading them in a single sitting. I’ve had trouble following DC comics for a while, constantly feeling that they were in trouble since back in the mid 2000s (with a glimmer of hope here and there). The act of reading DC comics has been a frustrating experience, where individual good stories and runs were laying around in the context of a lot of things that didn’t make sense while the company’s thrust felt chaotic and ideas not well blended. Every status quo change seemed hard to figure out the rules of enough to parse the context.  We’ll get into the background of this, but my reading today of this extended stretch of comics that keeps losing the plot in favor of a fever dream of what’s happening at the moment with specific characters that refuse to cohere, it became obvious that what I had been looking at as subtext or critique was actually the text. I could see the messed up trees but was missing the the forest the universe was trying to describe.

What happens in these issues (Batman current series 89-100, I missed the beginning of the first of 2 arcs) is rolling war between the major Batman villains and the heroes (plus Harley Quinn and Catwoman), which shifts into a Joker and Joker adjacent vs. all as the Joker double crosses everyone then manages to steal Bruce Wayne’s fortune.  We meet 3 new baddies – Underbroker, whose schtick is putting ill-gotten gains beyond the reach of the legal system (with an explicit line to rich globalists drawn), the Designer, who back in the day offered the four A list Batman villains plans to achieve what they most wanted, and Punchline, who is your toxic ex’s new millennial GF who really has it in for you (there is also a new good guy Clownhunter, which is a whole different thing, and a new costumed detective that predates Batman).  This doesn’t convey the chaotic nature of what is happening issue to issue, but there’s more than one Batman hallucinogenic spirit quest, dead characters ostensibly walking around, a plan revolving around the Bat’s origin story that tells some version of it several times, and a no-nonsense declaration that the Joker, as the Devil of the Batman spiritual system, cannot die.   The whole thing has the effect of convincing you there is no definitive sequence of events, only versions.

Alan Moore’s Killing Joke is not a favorite of mine, for a number of reasons.  But the ending holds up.  The Joker has done terrible things there is no antecedent for, and Batman wonders aloud if this never-ending dance they do ends in anything but both of their deaths; can they uncouple from the unhealthy duality the cycle of which simply repeats.  The Joker responds, well, with a joke about two lunatics trying to escape an asylum.  One jumps the roof to the next building, while the other is too scared to try.  The escapee offers to hold a light while the other crosses on a beam but he says no, no you’ll just cut the light while I’m half way across.  This not very funny joke nonetheless has a bunch of resonances – BM and Joker as conspiring co inmates, BM wanting to break out, a commentary about their natures (almost a reversal of the frog and scorpion story where the scorpion won’t go because he knows how this ends), but mostly it implicates BM as the one who is enabling the cycle, the reason why it won’t end.  They both laugh uproariously, and the ambiguous final panels can be read as the fundamental realization of his complicity causing BM to kill J.  A lethal joke indeed… except, next month, we see the both of them again.  In broader context, the ceaseless cycle of the diad is reaffirmed.  This has been hellaciously sticky as an idea in the Batmen universe.

My realization of what DC has been doing is pretty banal in its pieces. Marvel has “ground level” heroes while DC has a mythos, a pantheon.  Their archetypal makeup is strong, the seven JLA members lining up with the pantheon of Greek gods and the Chakras weirdly closely.  DC has big characters that are somewhat flat which they can use tell big bold individual stories that are cool the way legends and fables are cool. But these stories require bold strokes that a bit incompatible with each other. People get attached to these iterations. Meanwhile, Marvel trucks in soap operas where the characters give you an empathetic stand in and are narratively flexible. Marvel events are usually about the writer vs. the company, asking you to sympathize or deconstruct the creative impulse amid efforts to impose control or order.  DC’s events are about editorial vs. the audience, the shapers vs. the forces of the world.  It may seem obvious, given this description, that DC’s focus is on an archetypal tableau though it may be less obvious that this tableau is under extreme pressure from expectations when trying to tell ongoing tales month in, month out (or semi-monthly in some cases). The stories are constantly compared against the big stories that have gone before, and the audience’s ideas of the characters exert pressure to push them in directions that capture “the” version they believe in.  This circle is not possible to square.

DC and Marvel both have a multiverse of sorts.  DC used to tell “Elseworlds” stories which were later tucked into pocket universes.  DC invented crossing over between “realities.”  DC’s continuity is heavy baggage and they began to have “Crises” to resolve the narrative incompatibilities.  These only made things worse as you can’t get rid of the past people have a relationship with – it will come back.  Now you have to explain that away too.  Marvel just lets it lay – forget about the iffy stories, they count, sure, just no one is ever going to talk about them unless they have an angle.  Marvel continuity is all angles and amnesia. This is just easier to do with dating and rent and your ancient aunt’s medical bills than with Gods. Marvel’s multiverse is about sandboxes that you can always dump into the mainframe if they work (and never really mention the sandbox again).

There is a shift that occurred in the industry in the 2004 to 2005 era that is less remarked upon than many upheavals in comic’s history. Marvel had gone through a period of incredible new idea generation in the early 2000s after a late 90s creative cratering but had just fired the pro wrestling inflected soul of that moment (Bill Jemas).  DC was coming off of a period of trying to do moderately updated versions of what they basically been doing all along. The attitude was “yeah we’re under stress from the combined history of these characters, but we got to keep telling the stories.” Geoff Johns was one voice of DC over the 99-04 period that showed potential - he seemed to get how to find the core of characters and push them into a new in sync directions if they over the years have lost a clear identity.  But mostly he had internalized a basic schism between something mean that the audience wanted, and something good and wholesome about the characters themselves, and figured out how to mess around with this in a equilibrating fashion.

Interestingly, the ignition point of the main forces that were going to blow DC over the next decade and a half was a comic that had virtually nothing to do with any of those main forces. Brad Meltzer, a novelist, was hired to do a comic called Infinity Crisis, which sold extremely well and was, justifiably or not, recognized as an event.  At the same time, everyone also kind of hated it because the dark desires of some DC fans were pushed forward just a bit too much for comfort and for a comic with Crisis in the name it didn’t do a whole lot other than “darken” things.  Nonetheless, this lit an “event” fire at both companies.  Marvel chose a shake up the status quo for a year, then do it again, pattern and was off to the races (I have written about this, and more, here) while continuing its Randian framing of beleaguered do-gooders opposed by rule making freedom haters.

As this was playing out, Dan Didio quietly took power in DC Editorial.  His outlook was more Bloomian – he seemed to spark off of writers who exhibited anxiety of influence. He recognized Johns was the one person they had could be promoted into something of a universe architect, starting work on two key projects from which the rest would evolve. The first, was bringing back Hal Jordan as Green Lantern and diffracting the GL universe into its own symbolic system, with parts frisson-ing other parts, and almost a Magic the Gathering color scheme of ideas. The other was to build up to Infinite Crisis, which would become the model for most of their universe changing events until the present day.

The basic frame is this: DC heroes want to be good (in a sense of their inherent nature) but forces outside form a context that makes them fall.  It’s a very gnostic universe, DC.  They  examine reflections of the concepts, invent scapegoats for certain tendencies (see Superboy Prime as entitled fanboy, Dr. Manhattan as editors that try and fail to mend things, etc), make characters violate principles, rehabilitate them, then show that the world if anything is more broken than before.  This is kind of Johns’ thing and it fits Didio’s narrative as historicval tension fetish.  But then came Scott Snyder (not to be confused with Zack) who began to work on Batman in 2011.  Since then, as much as Justice League is pushed as the central title and Lex Luthor has been pimped, Batman has been the core of the universe and the Joker the core villain.

Snyder had the same continuity conflict wavelength but was significantly more meta and able to contain multitudes than Johns.  He was the first to make an explicit mystery of how there could be several Jokers around at one time (who are the same but not, he posited 3 – man, Christians!) that seems prescient given the near future coexistence of filmic Jokers that are not able to be resolved.  I believe he was the first to begin to tease out an idea – that different versions of things in comics are not a diffraction or filter effect, a using the set of things that work best for that story and leaving the rest, but are a matter of the archetypal system of the audience coming apart. From an in story perspective what appears to happen is that multiple versions of incompatible things exist in the collective unconscious of the continuing narrative, and this is something that the characters may become conscious of.  

The run I just read is written by James Tynion IV building on the above trends.  The trick seems to be going all in on the Jungian aspect (at Jung’s most religiously epiphanic).  The Designer was a progenitor and adversary to Batman’s predecessor and his intellectual approach eventually defeated the detective… broke him.  At some point in early Batman history, the Designer brought the top four Bat-baddies together and offered each, in turn, a plan to achieve what they most desired: the Riddler, a way to achieve an empire of the mind; the Penguin, power; and Catwoman, money.  They are all elated as they await the Joker to come out.  The Joker emerges with a furious Designer on his heals and promptly shoots him dead.  He explains that he didn’t like his joke in the form of a fable – the devil offered four people the path to their greatest desire: the three chose earthly things, but the Joker’s wish was to be him, to become the devil.  The story proceeds to suggest that the Joker just exists, he is present as a necessary component in the system.   You can kill him, yet he is alive.

DC has been using physics metaphors for the nature of their reality since Flash of Two Worlds in 1963.  The multiverse as a continuity concept was their idea and the holographic universe of the hypertime was a thing.  It seems like since Dan Didio took over, they’ve been heading towards a concept of broad superimposition, of measurement effect being weak, of the universe being like a quantum computer with all possibilities coexisting and the story instantiating not one reality but a path through all the possible ones.  By making Batman trip balls through quite a few issues and relive his origin from different angles, the story is one of its own instability and the heroic task that confronts our hero is attempting to actualize the world.  The Joker is the Devil in the sense of lack of fixed meaning, of relativistic chaos, of the world not making sense because it’s unmoored nature with ultimately no knowability.  Batman, in this story, functions as a postmodern knight crusading against the impossibility of epistemological grounding.

There’s more going on, sure.  One plot is, literally, defund Batman.  There is rioting, people brainwashed by being exposed to toxic ether, people paid to go to theaters even though they will die as a result, and questions about neoliberalism similar to that one Joker movie. Punchline has no personality yet (Tynion’s not the best at that) but she serves well as a generational foil for Harley – a rudderless ideological vacuum susceptible to Joker-as-idea-virus rather than an unfulfilled MD who felt alienated due to the structures of her life and was seeking escape into structureless possibility.  The Designer stuff is both continuity play (See why they changed from goofy villains to more “realistic” ones! Look how pulp heroes informed superheroes!), a comment on the nature of a longstanding narrative (strong intentions die out as Brownian motion overwhelms momentum), and a lawful evil/chaotic evil setup of the dualism of apocalypses (overdetermined authoritarian vs. center does not hold barbarism).  But the thing that ties this to the past decade and a half of DC is the sense that the reality is fluid and susceptible to change or outright s’cool incompatibility.

This is different than other flavors of meta in superhero comics.  Grant Morrison believes the archetypes are stronger than the forces that seek to bend them.  Alan Moore wants you to deconstruct your sacred cows and probably hates you personally.  Marvel might play with self-awareness, but effortlessly resolves inconsistencies after it’s finished playing.  DC, at this point, allows you to watch the waves solidfy into symbols and dissolve, and the constant confusion and lack of grounding is more of a choice then I thought this time yesterday.  The conflict theory of DC reality has been in full swing but this looks to be turning towards a kind of Zen historicism, holding contradictory things in your mind at once. Warren Ellis’ JLA/Authority book is the nearest comparable text I can think of. I need to call this, but I didn’t even talk about Death Metal, DC character multiplicity as meta-psychosis event extraordinaire.  Comics just keep getting weirder.

[pastabadguy]

5-14 for pran/jeremy sorry to torment you but no I'm not <3

Forgot about this yesterday but here it is:

5 (describe each other)

I think they have canon ways they describe each other but I dont wanna go looking for them plus headcanon is fun. They both think the other is the ideal person physically, Pran wishes he were small and androgynous and Jeremy wishes he were strong and elegant. Both think the other have refreshingly real outlooks on life. Pran thinks that Jeremy is more considerate than he lets on and Jeremy thinks Pran is really kind and interesting (under a whole lot of emotional hangups and difficult-ness)

6 (what they love about each other)

Pran loves that Jeremy is the only person who both cares about him and doesn't demand that he do certain things. He just lets Pran exist as he is. He also loves his sense of humor and the times when Jeremy shows emotion beyond his general miserable apathy. Jeremy loves Pran's passion (since it's something he doesn't really have).

7 (in common)

Both act apathetic to most things (though it's mostly posturing on Pran's end). Both try to avoid most interactions. Both like pissing people off. Fully headcanon but both are autistic and trans. Both probably make really cool stuff if they put their minds to it.

8 (differences)

Pran actually has strong opinions on many things while Jeremy doesn't. Jeremy is a pushover and Pran is stubborn as hell. Jeremy is smart and clever and Pran is kind of an idiot.

9 (what made them realize they were in love)

It came on slow but neither acknowledged it at all. Most likely they just stay together, graduate and share an apartment, spending all their time together, start banging, never date anyone else, and are just kind of a couple/qpr situation without much discussion.

10 (love languages)

Pran's canon love language is physical touch but I think quality time works too. Jeremy's canon one is acts of service.

11 (do they get married, who proposes, how)

Maybe idk I don't care much about marriage headcanons. Pran would probably be the one to propose though.

12 (what would happen if they never met)

They would be a lot worse off. Both would lose their one close connection and friend, Jeremy would be (somehow) even more miserable and Pran would probably end up in worse and more dangerous situations

13 (who dies first and how does the other react)

Ohhhh there is canon content for this that is better than anything I could create (both in word of god answers and also blood droplets).

In bloplets, the one time Jeremy is killed and Pran finds out about it he goes rage mode, makes a plan to torture and kill the guy he thinks is responsible, kills Nate, and chops off JB's leg so yknow he reacts pretty strongly. Word-of-god in a zombie apocalypse scenario, if Jeremy were to die he'd leave the group and live alone until he died. Word-of-god in a Lake of Voices (other game by the same dev) scenario, if Jeremy were to fall into the lake and inevitably die, Pran would jump in after him. And last word-of-god, basically the only thing that could make Pran cry is if Jeremy were to die. So basically Pran might kill himself or someone else if Jeremy were to die, or at least he'd fully break down. There isn't anything I could find for if Pran died first, so let's just say Jeremy dies first :(

14 (love rivals)

Everett hates Jeremy and had a crush on Pran so he's a decided rival. I'm a huge multishipper so I pair Pran and Jeremy with a lot of other characters, but the only one I'd solidly consider a rival is Everett. JB could be, I guess, but I feel like she'd respect their relationship and chase after Bae or someone.

[necroalx]

My problem with P5R new ending (spoilers)

I’ve been asked in my curiouscat about why I have problems with P5R ending a bunch of times by now, and honestly, I can't really put it in a way that wouldn't sound personal since my dislike over the matter comes from a personal appreciation of how the themes were handled in both versions.

With that being said feel free to ignore my POV:

First I would like to mention the things I loved about P5R (with spoilers ahead):

-The gameplay improvements were just perfect.

-Akechi's character arc was top notch for me, exactly what I wanted from him and I feel very satisfied with his new interactions.

-Sumire characterization during the first 8 ranks of her confidant were pretty cool.

-The individualization of the thieves until December, I loved the showtime attacks If anything I would have wanted they added more of those between more of the thieves too.

-Maruki is an incredibly well written character and Daiki Itoh's direction for relatable antagonists shines through him, he was really what P5 needed, the timing of the new semester events may be debatable for me, but I loved everything about him.

-Also loved Jose even we didn't get that much of him.

-The final boss fight was amazing!

Anyway My problem with the P5R ending is (Also, obvious spoilers for P5 and P5R):

-Retroactively diminishes the meaning of the original ending:

P5 vanilla original ending was in a way, the ultimate message about changing the world in the most healthy way possible, seeing it as the way it should be FIRST.

There were theories about this being an altered reality, and this is proven right by the events of the last semester in P5R.Also, with the mere existence of the events of P5R new content, the original ending becomes now an inconclusive story. Which makes it ultimately a lessened ending, because "this isn't the way the story should end".

-The theme of rebellion against an unjust society gets pointlessly messy and lost in transition:

Yes, I get the subject of facing reality is a way more important topic and way more down to earth, the thieves disbanding the way they did and going their own separate ways is indeed thematically fitting and shows some growth coming from their experiences in the new semester. Still, the game being written by a different person, plus having a scenery of "kids dreaming about their perfect world given to them by a overprotective father figure" seems to in a way tarnish and overwrite their experiences gained through the whole story.

I understand this is not the message meant to be conveyed by this new ending. I know and for sure love that in Royal the thieves don't exist just for Joker's sake was their whole characters aren't defined just by his actions anymore. BUT with those things mentioned above, all these change feels like a "correction" made to express how "japanese societal expectations were ultimately right all along things are not always like how we want and you have to deal with that" instead of the original ending's more positive outlook towards the future, that's now seen as a naive handled view of how things should be, and ultimately as I mentioned before, inconclusive.

Things are clear in that regard for me, (In the original, without Maruki's existence in the plot, the thieves were granted a world were they could do "whatever they wanted", between the limits of their own cognitive knowledge of how the world worked, after defeating Yaldabaoth and getting the holy grail treasure to basically "grant them that wish" as a reward after the fusion between mementos and the real world is finished. In P5R new ending, the change is made evident by having Morgana not steal the plug from the man in black chasing the thieves Van and the thieves not taking Joker home in the new ending to give the "more realistic" approach to that matter.)

This conclusion couldn't exist until P5R came out. Since now the entirety of the new Semester concept lies on the basis that the Phantom Thieves subconsciously granted Maruki his power and caused the whole "actualization event" through wishing someone could make those ideal realities for them, with Maruki being the only one capable of seeing the world the way they would've wanted to be because of their interactions with him. I actually give them credit for this since this is a brilliant detail and makes his tragic antagonistic role even more appealing.

But that leads me to my real and biggest problem with P5R new ending:

-The phantom thieves becoming secondary characters after being the main characters and vehicles to the story in the original game and through the 80% of P5R's story.Now people would call Kasumi waifu bait and other things, hell, even I memed about it before, the reality is, she's the most important tool Itoh and the new writers used to built this new ending, she is the most important character (besides Maruki himself obviously) to make the player empathize with Maruki's motives and actions, she is a victim of her circumstances just like the rest and she's "rescued" by this overprotective father figure character found in Maruki, but he was taking away her freedom as a consequence, thus making her relevant to the game's theme of rebellion. But then she faces that reality and she has to grow out of it by... "insert Itoh favorite writing trope of the protagonist beating the crap out of the heroine to make her come back to her senses" (Same thing he did with Marie in golden). Which is ok I guess, it can be a forgivable writing sin since the built to this was pretty well done. But then... there's nothing.Kasumi is presented and forced into scenes and moments so the player realizes "this character is important, more important than the rest" from very early on, it goes from scene to scene while the original events of the vanilla game still happen, and she was not the only one of coruse, Joker Akechi and Kasumi having their little arcs separated from the rest of the cast was obviously building towards something. But then going against everything Joker did in the original game, (and through 80% of P5R since those events are still in the game obviously) he chose both Kasumi and Akechi (twice in his case) over his other friends. Yes, the thieves were trapped on their fake realities, yes they came to the rescue in the end FOR Joker. But at this point they were: Not fully aware of who Kasumi really was and her involvement with these developments, not aware of the alliance between Joker and Crow, not aware of the weird palace that's been there the whole time. ALL because Joker and Mona kept these things secret from the rest, why? What's the sound logic behind this? Why would Joker not trust his friends with such important information after all they went through? Why are they reduced to convenient sidekicks after they saved his life and proved themselves capable of doing the impossible when they all decided to work together? Why? It makes no sense. They all have been through so much with him, just days before they all were inside the velvet room alongside Joker, finding out about his most intimate aspect and sharing an irreplaceable moment of realization and conviction of together. Just for them to become anticlimactically trapped on their dream worlds and completely forgetting about Joker and their true bond with him. Sure they come back to their senses AFTER Joker triggers their true memories with some words, but this SHOULDN'T have happened after all they went through after their fight with Yaldabaoth. Call it bad timing in the writing sense, but it was a testament of how separated they become from their original role in the new story, all for the sake of these new additions. And still, we can ignore that, I can see over that and say "well it's the ultimate tentation they were never tested through", but here's were the problem lies, besides the fact of Joker never telling his friends about the things I mentioned before, he is now a fully self insert character, when 80% of the original story (which is just the vanilla game honestly) he was written as Joker being his own entity, with his own sense of justice very clearly defined and a focus towards his friends as his most precious part of his life. This is suddenly thrown to the garbage in the new semester.

Why? Because now the player has to make a choice that the original Joker wouldn't make in the original, chose Akechi over the other phantom thieves. It honestly feels like a huge regression.Don't get me wrong, I appreciate Akechi's new confidant and his amazing dynamic with Joker being exploited the best way possible. I do, I am a fan of Akechi's character archetype and his characterization in both vanilla and his new scenes in royal. I am a sucker for antagonistic villainous characters getting a proper redemption arc in convincing ways. But the price was too high for my liking.

By the price I mean; You literally CAN'T get the new TRUE (complete) ending without choosing to keep your promise with Akechi, which means, you can't see the full extent of the story conclusion, Maruki's and Kasumi's arcs won't get any closure and you will only get a now "diminished" ending (the vanilla original ending), if you don't chose to keep your promise with Akechi. A "personal" promise and one you never told your friends about. The worst part of this decision is, the whole reason Joker and Akechi's dynamic works so well is because they were originally written as pretty oposite characters with their own unique distinguished quirks morals AND sense of justice. But then, suddenly, at the climax of the story, Joker is just a self insert blank state? That just does not work.

As for Sumire, once she's brought back and awakens again, her character arc ends, she becomes just another sidekick like the rest of the thieves, which makes all the built her character was used for... what? It's not really pointless, since it brings the story to this point, but what's left for her? What's her role now? She goes back to being Kasumi in the metaverse and the optional aspect of her confidant makes this transition to her going back to being Sumire feel kind of ambiguous and also inconclusive. Yes I know she is honoring the memory of her sister and that she has accepted her reality, that's true, but the development comes to a sudden turn when she suddenly becomes just another one in the crew behind Goro and Joker. All the phantom thieves had their roles cleared out beforehand soon after their insertion arcs were finished, Ann was the conscience of the team, always asking "are we doing the right thing?" Yusuke was the same, always second guessing every choice with a worst case scenario since as he said in his awakening "in order to see true authenticity, one has to be dispassionately realistic", Ryuji was always the one going for it and wanting things getting done he's the focus, Makoto is the advisor, so she became the clear headed tactician, Futaba was the tool device, she became the medium to the ends always finding ways to work around towards their goals, Mona is the heart and the hope representing their wish to inspire society through their actions, Haru was the kindness, a reminder of what are they trying to inspire and a source of tolerance the thieves were missing until she joined in. Sumire was... what? This honestly bothered me, made me feel the whole journey was just a bad joke, because now not only the phantom thieves were reduced to mere sidekicks, so was the one character with most promise in the story while Goro became the player's beating husband through Joker, a testament of the choice he made of choosing the image they made the player have of Akechi, the one person Joker couldn't save, the one who's beyond saving at thins point over the friends and family he did saved. By the way, as contradictory as it may sound, I loved the twist, having Akechi's life depending on the final choice for true freedom, it was clever, it added the right heart wrenching moment right before the climax, what I didn't like was how clear it was made at this point how little the other thieves mattered. Why? Have the phantom thieves ever sent a calling card without having giving their full agreement? Especially when a new important development could come up from their actions at the last moment? Not until this point, Goro's life was on the line here, he was an ally now, he was a phantom thief member, they all agreed to this. But were they informed of this last minute development by Joker, you know, so they could all agree to what was the right thing to do like they all had swear to do every time? No, because Joker made that decision himself, because all that mattered was the player decision the self insert decision. Hell not even a cheap text group chat scene, nothing.You can say "this is a personal thing between Joker and Goro and a personal choice for Akechi". Well sure, yet they were all about to put their lives at risk for this, like they've been doing this whole time. They would've argued they deserved to know this, even if they had reached the same conclusion at the end, but with this, in a story that focuses so much on details, whatever oath the phantom thieves had before this, became meaningless. The player can once again just like with Yaldabaoth chose to ruin everyone's chance for true freedom by choosing a selfish self inserted reasoning out of the blue to get a "bad end". Honestly, I also felt the original bad end in vanilla P5 was bad but this? This was worst, this took things to another level, sure the angst was well written and the suffering masked behind this fake happiness was very clever, but its also so cheapened because at this point, why would the player care about those other characters if you make this choice? They were sidelined so bad that their "happiness" becomes just flavor to the story and to be honest, the good decision was just as selfish because of this. I have no problems with the final boss fight, it was honestly amazing and almost made me forget all that happened before when I first played it because it was just so over the top and emotional, I honestly loved it. But then comes the final cut-scenes. Skip Joker going back to prison (why even bother with that though? He literally went just for 10 days and every value of the sacrifice he made in the original was now lost because of the new semester events), skip the the decisions the thieves made about their futures, their display of individuality was great but they don't matter at this point anyway. And here's the final insult, yes I am salty because the "main party" didn't take Joker home, but not because they didn't go through the action of taking him home, but because they weren't really doing anything relevant if anything at all after being the main characters the whole game (except for the new semester) No closure for them just quirkiness and flavor for the sake of a "reality" based message, felt cheap and dismissive, like someone not wanting to go through the trouble of writing something for characters they didn't create or even like. Why did I called the P5R ending lazy you ask? Because they didn't bother making an ending at all, but just to rewrite the original in a way the message of "reality" is settled over, sure their individuality is highlighted by not taking joker home and them being focused on their own different things on their lives, but so they were in the original, this ending and them being sent away was made at the price of the relevance of the thieves bonds with Joker once again, I would've been ok if we at least got to see more of THEM as individuals through the ending or even just as a group, hell this was the final time we'll see them and they were our most precious allies, maybe give us some time with them for the sake of the experiences we had, they did that with Golden's epilogue after all, why not here? But instead, we just see them just go around town being quirky and sneaky distracting the corrupt policemen while Joker gets his new cut-scenes goodbyes with the new characters in the game, because they deserve closure as well for sure, yet they do so over the others? In my opinion, at this point, no. But they did just that, they declared with this change that, the phantom thieves members weren't needed and their futures and story were irrelevant, it was all about Joker, Goro, Maruki and Kasumire, the rest were just sidekicks and these scenes were more important so the player can get what happens to these new favorites, all at the price of the original team relevance. That, was my problem with the new ending. Of course I'm happy to know about their futures and choices through the credits, but that's just lazy, they were more relevant than that in the original, but now they're just afterthoughts shown through credit scenes. No relevance whatsoever in their final moments in this story. It certainly hurt seeing them being this diminished after the original made me care about these characters so much.You can say to me "well, there's still the vanilla ending for you" but no, I said it before, retroactively that ending has become irrelevant and inconclusive, which means this is now how the phantom thieves are represented as, Joker's sidekicks, not a team of bandits and misfits working together as a unit like it was in the original. Again, this is my very personal take on the game new ending, feel free to disagree and call me a clown, but the original made a huge impact on me, the events of P5R ending wounded my appreciation for this story, not it's characters, not the theme, just the future they'll write for these characters from now on. That is all.

Sorry about this Essay lol, but this is the only way I could fully communicate everything It made me feel wrong about this new ending. It was not just a matter of preference for me.

[edwardsvirginity]

au where edward has aro’s powers and aro has his

read more bc this got looonnnggg

How Edward’s life would be different:

his power starts out just in his palms (like kate’s did, my hc for canon!aro too) and he makes no effort to expand it

actually he just straight up hates his power bc duh, he’s edward (”it’s a curse,” he says dramatically, whenever anyone asks him abt it)

he realizes he has it fairly quickly when right after waking up from being turned he touches carlisle and immediately knows everything

but since he touches carlisle pre-esme carlisle’s outlook is still pretty bleak

edward is 10,000x more emo and angsty

super nihilistic bc whenever he does read someone’s whole life it becomes clear to him that there’s no real order to anything or narrative guiding ppl’s lives so like... we all out here, suffering eternally

(tbh he’s deeply impacted by having touched carlisle first and absorbs carlisle’s pre-esme deep despair, loneliness, and nihilism, which colors his whole vampire life from the beginning)

he wears gloves all the time bc he hates touching ppl bc it’s an invasion of their privacy and mentally fucks him up

he tried to do the “kill bad ppl” thing like in canon in order to restore a personal sense of justice and order to the universe buuuuuuutttt it didn’t last long bc he had to touch ppl to eat them and it became abundantly clear that people are complex and not easily sorted into good/bad boxes, and it’s hard to condemn someone to die when you know their entire life

edward is deeeeeeeeppppllyy empathetic as a result of his gift. he’s also TERRIBLE at making decisions

he resisted going to HS with the others for a really long time bc he was afraid of accidentally touching someone

the only person he touches regularly is alice bc she worries abt him being touch-starved and lonely, and she insists. edward is ok with it bc alice is legit super optimistic and listening to her thoughts is really soothing/healing, and he has her consent. plus, it’s cool/useful to be able to see her visions. edward starts pushing his gift’s limits/expanding it in order to try and access alice’s memories from when she was human, as a gift to her

the rest of the vamps in the house fucking makes him even more emo than in canon bc he thinks he can never bang someone bc it would mean touching them all the time and he couldn’t condemn someone to an eternity without privacy, and no one would ever consent to that

edward hates himself bc he feels like his gift is unethical and he’s a monster for having it and invading ppl’s privacy the way he does

he does occasionally touch ppl for really important reasons... if the cullens are worried abt someone being a threat to their family, or carlisle is trying to save someone’s life but doesn’t know what’s wrong with them

edward’s gift is kinda a secret in the vampire world, only the cullens and denalis know

despite the fact that edward is emo abt being a vampire, he’s intensely grateful he was turned by carlisle, the original vegetarian vampire, bc edward would have HAD to become a vegetarian due to being unable to kill ppl bc of his gift and it would have sucked for him to be alone, the first vegetarian vampire

alice is always trying to encourage edward to touch ppl bc she thinks it will make him less emo. her theory is that he’s mostly only touched ppl with really sad lives and outlooks and that if he understood the fullness of most ppl’s lives he might be less nihilistic

another part of his gift edward works on with alice is turning his gift “off” even when ppl are touching his hands, and being able to root through ppl’s memories and only see what he’s looking for so it’s less invasive

alice encourages edward to wear his gloves less often to school so he can practice controlling his power, on teenagers, whose lives are shorter and less sad and therefore less mentally upsetting for edward

@ang3lba3 had this brilliant idea of edward touching bella while his gloves are off and being Shook af. i can’t stop thinking abt bella almost getting hit by the van on a day edward didn’t wear his gloves, edward bracing himself and rescuing her, then being overwhelmed when he can’t hear anything from her, thinking he’s finally “broken the curse” of his gift, going home and touching someone and Oh Shit It’s Not Gone It’s Just Her

edward is like. kind of obsessed with touching bella. he’s very tactile from the very beginning. holding hands with her is just incredibly blissful for him

throughout the series edward works on refining his gift to be more tolerable. it’s like his lil project. bella makes him want to try

edward is p reluctant to turn bella into a vampire bc he’s never met any vampires with happy lives or satisfying personal narratives/growth. he thinks all vampires just #suffer in the endless void for all eternity. humans have much clearer stages of life, growth, beginnings and endings that make them more fulfilled. (or so edward claims)

post bd edward would be able to pick specific thoughts out of someone’s head without seeing their whole life, and bella would work on her shield so she can deliberately send specific thoughts TO edward, and so with both of them concentrating really hard (at first), they could have mental conversations while touching, v similar to canon post-bd (except in this version bella has more control and edward is v specific to only find the thoughts she’s sending him)

tbh if edward ever manages to figure out his gift fully, he’d make a rlly good vampire therapist, bc he could isolate traumatizing memories (that ppl may not even consciously remember) and have a good perspective on how that’s affected their lives and how they can work towards recovery. since he himself would have to learn rigid mental compartmentalization in order to stay sane with that many lives in his head, he could teach ppl how to work thru a traumatic incident and then mentally shelve it once they’re done. also, some ppl define trauma as an inability to form a coherent personal narrative, which edward could also help with, bc he can identify patterns and similarities across a person’s entire life that the person themselves may have forgotten or overlooked

anyway, this version of edward is much more gloomy to begin with but would also undergo significantly more extensive character growth, which i think would be a really cool story

How Aro’s life would be different:

still volturi

still king of the vampire world

however killing other vamps/enforcing the law includes much more torture and interrogation bc aro can only hear what they’re thinking abt at the time

he has much less absolute power over other member’s of the volturi bc they can hide things from them by not thinking abt them around him, but at the same time, aro is more feared bc his gift is more omnipresent

aro is hella paranoid and keeps the most important members of the guard within his gift’s range at almost all times

as a result the volturi are much more mobile bc aro insists on going on most outings/executions

aro likes to keep his absolute range a secret to keep ppl on their toes and reinforce their fear of him

aro collects mental gifts in order to be omniscient and is constantly looking for power-amplifying vampires. so instead of focusing on recruiting vamps with physical gifts like strength or fighting, he looks for vamps like eleazar (&alice and jasper) who can sense things he can’t, as being able to read their thoughts allows him their gift by proxy

he’s constantly suspicious ppl are hiding things from him

i think this aro would just be a lot more vicious and violent in general

less useful in battle tho, bc he can’t know the opposition’s entire strategy, and while he can know if someone’s about to attack him, it doesn’t really help him keep anyone else from being attacked

i think this aro would be generally very twitchy and bizzaro, constantly responding to ppl’s thoughts instead of their words, lowkey always overwhelmed by what everyone’s thinking + his suspicions+ his own schemes, less of a shut-in and therefore more overwhelmed by a ton of thoughts. all the other vamps would think him slightly unhinged, talking to the air somewhat nonsensically all the time, visually emotionally reacting to other ppl’s thoughts (but just looking startled or angry at nothing), never having a predictable mood. 

as a result, there would be more of an underground resistance to the volturi, and his general hold on power is less absolute. (and he’s very aware of how unstable his position of power is, which makes him crazier)

he keeps trying to expand his mental range but the REAL problem is not distance but that he can only handle hearing a certain number of ppl’s thoughts at once. unlike edward, who was forced into hearing a ton of ppl’s thoughts all the time from the very start in order to pretend to be human, and who didn’t much care abt most ppl’s thoughts, aro is never forced to live in a city and get acclimated, and he cares deeply abt what ppl are thinking bc he’s a paranoid schemer, so each person’s mind requires a lot more concentration. 

sometimes aro gets reeallll mad when ppl talk out loud bc it interrupts his mindreading concentration. yet another reason why the rest of the volturi is both terrified of him but also think he’s insane

also more unhinged from hearing ppl die all. the. time. in canon he listens to ppl’s whole lives but obvs doesn’t listen while he kills them, why would he, whereas in this au he’s forced to listen everyone’s thoughts as he kills them (or eats them!) and it is one of the things that pushes him towards insanity. (canon edward doesn’t have this problem bc he kills significantly fewer ppl than aro and also obvs doesn’t feed on humans)

ALSO more unhinged bc canon!edward refines his gift so he can “turn down” other ppl’s thoughts or mute them/stop listening, whereas in this au aro is so obsessed with power he never even tries to develop that skill bc he wants to know what everyone is thinking always, so he has no regulation ability. he keeps trying to expand his power in stupid ways (like making the range bigger) without actually trying to regulate it in ways that improve his mental health or sanity

honestly in this au aro is just significantly more insane, but less powerful, both of which make him more dangerous bc he’s more desperate

how them having each other’s powers changes the larger plot:

honestly idk

i’ll think abt it

my brain isn’t working anymore u guys figure it out

[bluephoenixdruidicprincess]

some dean's stan are mad about adam's plot and said it should have been dean lol not everything is about dean.

I have no doubt that there were probably some Dean stans who would've wanted that storyline for their fav. It absolutely doesn't surprise me.

But what matters to me is not whether it would be cool for Dean to have that story arc but whether it would make sense for him to have it. Obviously, since I'm not a Dean Girl, I definitely have never thought it would be cool to see Dean and Michael have the relationship Michael and Adam are having. But also, just in general, it really wouldn't make any sense thematically or plotwise for Dean to have that story arc. I'm happy for this Michael and Adam angle because it makes sense for them based on who they are and their experiences and that's what I find so interesting about it. If Dean were to end up in this similar kind of situation, realistically, he wouldn't have the same kind of relationship with Michael anyway because this is Dean afterall. Dean doesn't accept anything short of human. And the "monsters" he does choose to befriend or have some sort of relationship with must adhere to his very strict sense of moral values that he himself doesn't even follow (maybe an exception being with Benny?) Hell, most humans probably don't even stick to these values 24/7 like he expects his "family" to. And really, I think of Michael and Dean as more or less the same kind of people anyway. They wouldn't have the kind of relationship that Adam has with Michael because they're too similar to each other. That would've been a whole lot of self-righteous ego wrapped up in one body, neither giving way for the other. Plus, I just don't think it would be as interesting with Dean. I love the whole idea of Michael being trapped in hell with his medical student vessel and through that shared experience with Adam begins to view humanity and the world in a different light because Adam is very different from Michael and therefore has a different outlook on things. What would've been interesting about Michael learning from Dean, a hunter that thinks and acts exactly like him?

And I've also heard these fan theories that when the show resumes, we're going to get Dean and Cas sharing a body and I'm just immediately taken back to a time during the season 14 hellatus when that was a theory of mine (don't judge, it was back in the day when I was still kind of into Destiel). That Dean was going to allow Cas to possess him in order to kick au!Michael out. And for the most part, people seemed to like my theory but most of them said there was no way the writers would do something like that. So if this does happen, it figures that they would do it at the most uninteresting part of the story. Not during season 14 when there would've been an actual purpose for it by showcasing that our main characters are not complete dumbassess and would've made a contingency plan in the very likely event that au!Michael would betray them (which he did and they kind of just let him) but I digress...Plus, I also just kind of hate the idea of using the very interesting dynamic with Michael and Adam and then recycling it to be used on Dean and Cas. I normally love parallel symmetry but not in a copy and paste format; it just feels cheap to me.

Like you said, it's not all about Dean and I'm definitely not surprised that some Dean stans don't like that such an interesting story beat wasn't given to Dean. Me personally, I'm kind of revelling in the fact that we do seem to be taking a break from the needle-point focus on Dean and finally starting to get some story beats that don't completely revolve around him. Although, I'm expecting that to change in the second half of the season. And you know, I did actually have someone try to tell me that the reason season 15 feels so lackluster is because it's not centering around Dean any more and I'm just like, "sure, that's why😑". It's not like the past few seasons haven't been suffering or anything but whatevs. People can have their opinions about the story revolving around Dean being a good thing and I can have my opinions about the needle-point focus on Dean being extremely irritating. But just in general, Supernatural is a story about many individuals and it shouldn't just revolve around one person.

[positivelypetty]

A REALLY long rant on the Joint Training Arc.

Okay, so since the Joint Training Arc is basically done, I thought I would share my various opinions and adress certain issues that A LOT of people had with this arc.

But, before we get into the actual rant, I think I should distinguish the difference between an opinion, criticism and just plain antagonism.

Here is an example of just misinformed toxicity:

This is just being TOXIC!!! You can’t shelter these horrible comments by saying “it’s just an opinion.” Please don’t act like after 4 years of really enthralling writing, he’s now the worst writer ever. Instead, explain why you don’t think this was the best story choice, instead of being clearly misinformed. It’s nothing absolutely terrible, but just a simple example on how people can be so demanding and completely inconsiderate to the creator.

“Forbidding” Horikoshi from writing is actually ridiculous. He WROTE AND CREATED your “precious sons” that you love so much. So, if you claim that the manga is now utter trash because it doesn’t personally cater to you, please abandon or take a long break from the manga/anime to maybe clear your head. Thank you.

We don’t need any more toxicity in this fandom than we already do.

Now with that said, let’s talk about the arc! (Also keep in mind that these ideas spurred from Reddit so, I decided to expand on it)

1-B vs 1-A situation:

I've been reading a ton of comments too, the good, and the bad and it's fine, everyone has their opinions and that's cool, but for me, it didn't seem it was about who won or lost, it was more about how each class was taught. And this boils down to both Vlad and Aizawa.

Vlad has obviously been pushing his students and their quirks to the max in regards to working in teams. This shines through in all of the fights they all work together very well and know the strengths and weaknesses of each other as well as their enemies. They go into a battle with a plan and are ready to execute the plan flawlessly.

Whereas Aizawa I believe has pushed for more individualist thinking style, and I think this comes from his basis of fighting villains. No one will come to save you, you have to be able to handle yourself whether escaping or defeating. He doesn't coddle his students, and he does push them to the brink as well. What's interesting is Class A has had more hands-on experience. With Aizawa’s teaching style I think they sometimes have a harder time working with one another and they can fall apart with their teamwork. HOWEVER their real-life experience has taught them that the best-laid out plans can not go as plan, and they are able to utilize their 'individual' thinking to fight regardless of a plan falling through.

I found it really interesting and I think there's value in both ways of thinking for Vlad and Aizawa. For Class B, they will have to learn how to abandon a plan that's not working and strategize on the fly, and Class A will have to hone their teamwork for long-running battles.

And let's be honest, these are just kids, pushing their bodies and minds to the limit, I don't find Class B to be 'trash' just because they lost, they still fought hard and worked better together in the long run then Class A. Class B didn't have any dead weight with their battles, everyone was utilized and contributed to all their fights. People are so set on who “won” or who “lost” the battle, that people overlook everyone’s overall individual quirks and techniques. I personally believe that many of the 1-B students were amazing and are forces to be reckoned with. It’s just that 1-A knows how to handle themselves when things don’t to go to plan rather than 1-B (as mentioned before) which gave 1-A the upper-hand in most of the battles, but I can definitely name a few fights where Class A's members were carried by their team.

Now to address the Shinsou thing:

To everyone who was PRESSED that Shinsou didn’t win....

What do you expect from Shinsou? I feel like people were overestimating him. Even with those cloth bindings and his quirk. All you need to do is shut your mouth, grab his cloth bindings (at best he has a few months training) keep focusing on him,restrain him, and boom you're done.(I obviously know it’s not that simple, but basically) I love Shinsou, I really do, but he’s basically Aizawa (I love Aizawa too don’t get me wrong). Aizawa mentioned that it took FIVE YEARS for him to truly master his quirk, and even though since this is the younger generation, so he’ll probably get the hang of it sooner, how long as he really been “training” his quirk under Aizawa? Definitely not long enough for him to go 1v1 with someone who is a close combat fighter. (It really isn’t that shocking that Deku won, he could probably win without Black Whip). Don't get me wrong Shinsou has improved MONUMENTALLY but not to the extent of 1-A who has direct experience in fighting villains. I just think people are mainly mad that 1-B lost is as because they think Shinsou won’t get into the Hero Course. Like chill. One of the main reasons 1-A won in the first match was because of Shinsou, so I think that proves that he is MORE than capable to get in to the Hero Course.

The whole OP Deku thing:

First off, I honestly don't expect him to ever match All Might at his prime in terms of consistent pure raw strength. Deku isn't a giant man of pure muscle, so I don't think he'd be able to go 100 and maintain it like All Might could. Deku is more of a person of different techniques and strategy, rather than brute force. Like, I don't know if Deku is going to be throwing punches that can blow away a city block.

That being said, each generation is getting stronger. Like, Endeavor will be surpassed by Todoroki by the time he graduates (if it even takes that long). Iida is already faster than Gran Torino. In the very beginning of the manga, they mentioned Deku will be the strongest holder of OFA, since it gets stronger each generation. Deku will have formidable rivals if the other strong students also reach their full potential. Hell, those rowdy kids we saw at the makeup exam already had really strong quirks at their young age. Generational power creep means that everybody around Deku will get way stronger than the current pros.

I understand the sentiment that Deku doesn't need more quirks, but Deku's quirk development was already approaching a plateau in terms of being able to fully control what power he could handle. He'd just work on his technique and slowly get stronger and stronger. Sure, he's gonna eventually be able to punch/kick hard enough to shoot himself around in the air, but we've already seen that stuff (plus Bakugo does that too). I know Horikoshi is creative and will develop some cool moves for Deku, but Deku's struggle to control OfA was mostly over. All he had to do wast master OFA steadily and he’ll be good. More quirks means that he may unlock more quirks when he's able to use more %. So instead of reaching 30% and just being X amount stronger physically, he may unlock a new tool to try and master/incorporate into his combat toolkit.

If this is a negative turn for the story, we won't even be able to tell until many, many more chapters are released. We may look back and decide that this was a bad move, but we shouldn't assume that's the case when it was literally introduced TWO WHOLE CHAPTERS AGO. (even though I don’t think it was a bad move AT ALL)

What I hope to see in future Arcs:

I think what fans would really enjoy and we could all use some real Deku character development. Deku’s my favorite character, but I feel like people can’t connect to him as much as someone like Todoroki, because his lack of emotional development. He’s indeed way more confident then he was in the beginning, I still feel like he has low self esteem. Someone needs to tell him that he’s worthy of this mega powerful quirk. ( he needs it 😭)We know so much about him, but rarely see him living his day to day life outside of training, costume updates and the occasional villain attack. Last time we got anything close to development in was only told through Aoyama's development.

These next few chapters will definitely give us something, but only as it relates to One for All. I'd honestly like to know Deku's thoughts about his situation, he seems determined that's for sure. Does he feel stressed, uninformed, unprepared, scared...resentful? We can infer a bunch, I'd just like to see him talk to All Might, Bakugo or his mom about it.

In Conclusion:

Honestly, to me,It never seemed to matter who won or lost any of these matches people were gonna complain regardless. When Class A wins they call it predictable and when class B won they say call it BS or plot amor. Even when it’s a draw people got upset saying Todoroki was disappointing. Some people wanted the matches to be fleshed out over a couple of chapters rather than rushed, then a few weeks later complained that it was taking to long. Bakugo wins his match quickly and those same people lose their minds about how they wanted the match to be longer. People complained about Horikoshi not letting the girls shine in battle after the second match, but conveniently forgets Tsuyu was the MVP of the first match and Kendo and Mushroom girl made 1-B win the second match. (AND WE’RE NOT GONNA FORGET HOW URARAKA AND MINA DOMINATED THE MATCH)Then you have the people who say all of 1-B is worthless and then Juzo and Tetsutetsu prove otherwise. Now we have people think Deku is OP but in this new chapter it seems that he much has a limit to using these other abilities but I’m sure that won’t stop the myriad of complaints. Every week the same people come to see the spoilers and complain based off of a fragmented non-contextualized summary of the chapter and wonder why they enjoy the chapter itself less. Maybe going into a chapter with a negative outlook will do that. The part that irks me is that virtually everyone whose binge-read this arc seems to enjoy it only seems to be us week to week readers with a issue. Either way I hope the discussion going into the next arc are far more level-headed constructive than they have been.

I think this will be one of the arcs that played out better once it was animated. Individual panels maybe favored over the anime, but overall pacing will surely favor the anime. Waiting week in and week out, over analyzing every short chapter has really done no favors for fans and Horikoshi.

[lovemesomesurveys]

1.What one event, big or small, are you going to tell your grandchildren about? I don’t plan on having kids, therefore I won’t have grandchildren. But I could share stuff with other kids in my family, stuff that happened in my lifetime or something.  2.If you had to describe your 2019 in 3 words, what would they be? Shitty, frustrating, hard. 3.What new things did you discover about yourself? Hmm. 4.What single achievement are you most proud of? I used to say the fact that I graduated and got my BA, but I don’t even feel proud of myself for that anymore. That degree is covered is dust on my shelf. I haven’t done anything since graduating. I don’t want to pursue what I got my BA in anymore and I have no idea what else I want or could do. I just think, wow, I did all that work and spent all that time and went through all that stress and pushed myself to finish...for what? 5.What was the best news you received? In 2019? One of the health things I’m dealing improved a little, which is big because for so long it wasn’t at all. It even got worse at times. 

6.What was your favorite place that you visited in 2019? One of my favorite mountainous towns where I took my first gondola ride. It was awesome. 7.Which of your personal qualities turned out to be the most helpful this year? I don’t know.

8.Who was your number one go-to person that you could always rely on? My mom. 9.Which new skills did you learn? I don’t think I’ve learned any this year. 10.What, or who, are you most thankful for? My family. 11.If someone wrote a book about your life in 2019, what kind of genre would it be? A comedy, love story, drama, film noir or something else? That book would be incredibly boring. 12.What was the most important lesson you learnt in 2019? I don’t know. 13.Which mental block(s) did you overcome? I haven’t overcome any. 14.What 5 people did you most enjoy spending time with? Mom, brother, dad, my aunt, and my doggo. 15.What was your biggest break-through moment career-wise? I don’t have a job. 16.How did your relationship to your family evolve? I don’t know. My family and I have always been very close. We have our issues and disagreements of course, and we could work on some things.  17.What book or movie affected your life in a profound way? I’ve read great books and saw a lot of awesome movies, but none of them have affected me in a profound way. 18.What was your favorite compliment that you received this year? The only compliments I’ve received have been about something I’m wearing. 19.What little things did you most enjoy during your day-to-day life? My morning cup of coffee, reading daily devotionals, spending time with family, playing around with my doggo, checking my social medias, watching YouTube, Tumblr-ing, surveys, watching TV... 20.What cool things did you create this year? I made a few beaded bracelets, ha. 21.What was your most common mental state this year (e.g. excited, curious, stressed)? Depressed. 22.Was there anything you did for the very first time in your life this year? That gondola ride I mentioned. We went 9,000ft up! 23.What was your favorite moment spent with your friends? I haven’t spent time with anyone outside my family. I enjoy just spending time with them, talking, watching our favorite TV shows, going to the movies, my birthday weekend vacation, beach trips... 24.What major goal did you lay the foundations for? I haven’t. 25.Which worries turned out to be completely unnecessary? Hm. A lot of my worries are reasonable, like my worries about health related things.  26.What experience would you love to do all over again? That gondola ride. The ride itself was cool and provided spectacular views, but getting up to the very top was such an amazing feeling. It was breathtaking. 27.What was the best gift you received? All the gifts I’ve received. 28.How did your overall outlook on life evolve? I still struggle with a clouded outlook on life. 29.What was the biggest problem you solved? I didn’t work on anything this year that I should have.  30.What was the funniest moment of your year, one that still makes it hard not to burst out laughing when you think about it? I can’t think of one at the moment. There’s been funny moments, but I don’t think anything that funny happened... not that I can recall at the moment anyway. 31.What purchase turned out to be the best decision ever? I’ve made a lot of purchases this year of things that I really like, but nothing like life changing.  32.What one thing would you do differently and why? I should have been trying to work on things. 33.What do you deserve a pat on the back for? Nothing. 34.What activities made you lose track of time? The activities I do everyday that I’ve listed several times in surveys. Oh, and the times I went to the beach. 35.What did you think about more than anything else? Health stuff. 36.What topics did you most enjoy learning about? Hmm. 37.What new habits did you cultivate? Reading daily devotionals.  38.What advice would you give your early-2019 self if you could? Girl, start taking some kind of steps to work on yourself. Don’t let yet another year go by... 39.Did any parts of your self or your life do a complete 180 this year? It would be nice if something like that happened in the positive sense. I need a good change to happen. 40.What or who had the biggest positive impact on your life this year? God and my health had the biggest impacts on me. 41.What do you want the overarching theme for your 2020 to be? I should work on myself like I’ve been saying for years, but the years keep passing by and I haven’t done anything. :/ 42.What do you want to see, discover, explore? I’d like to see some positive changes. 43.Who do you want to spend more time with in 2020? I just want to continue spending time with my family. 44.What skills do you want to learn, improve or master? Self-care. 45.Which personal quality do you want to develop or strengthen? I just need to work on myself as a whole. 46.What do you want your everyday life to be like? I don’t see anything really changing with that in a year. I have to be in bed a lot of the time and things will continue to be that way for awhile, so I’ll continue doing the same things I do everyday. Plus, if I don’t make any improvements with my mental health things are going to same for that reason as well.  47.Which habits do you want to change, cultivate or get rid of? All my bad ones, ha. 48.What do you want to achieve career-wise? I’m not focused on that right now. 49.How do you want to remember the year 2020 when you look back on it 10/20/50 years from now? I probably won’t remember much about it to be honest. What even happened last year? 50.What is your number one goal for 2020? I haven’t made any. Like I said, I just have to take things day by day.

[maleksrami]

Hey Kelli! I wanted your opinion on Electric Light and the meaning of a lot of the songs. I’ve been debating it and I’m really torn because some of the songs sound like lovey songs but then it also sounds like some of the songs are about a relationship where someone only used him for sex? (Peer Pressure adds fuel to this theory) Do you think I’m reading too much into it? What’s your opinion?

OOF!!! I’m lowkey so excited about this ask, and also intrigued by your theory because it’s not something that crossed my mind before. but that’s why music is so cool!! everyone interprets it so differently! 

I have a lot to say about this album and how it (sadly and slightly and WROOOONGFULLY) hurt his career last year… this might get kinda lengthy so I’m gonna put it under a read more!!!

My opinion on Electric Light…first of all, is that it’s brilliant and it was a true Era™ that wasn’t appreciated the way it deserved, or possibly even how James himself had hoped/imagined it would be (and I feel bitter about that every day) because sometimes I felt like I was one of the only few fans of his that was genuinely LIVING for all of it. I saw people saying the most horrid things to him last year on twitter (to the point where his manager literally had to step in and directly ask them to stop) about how he’d changed as a person because his sound and image was evolving, which…um yeah, he’s human and he’s allowed to do that. People could not bear it. They weren’t prepared or cut out to endure the magic of it all. But anyway.

So, if there’s one word I’d use to describe Electric Light as a whole it’s cinematic. He used this word a lot when he went around promoting it and it absolutely translates. I don’t necessarily think he’s singing songs about himself or his own long time relationship. When he first teased Wild Love, he posted these two short clips (here and here) that were shot almost like a movie, of two people talking outside a bar. The guy seems unsure about something between them, but his date encourages him to go inside with her. James is seen standing against the wall on his phone while the two actors interact nearby. Like he’s just a bystander to this couple’s unfolding story. So right off the bat, I’m not focused so much on him, but the couple. The audio of those clips ended up being the “Intro” track on the album. So right away before the first song even starts on the album, you’re immediately introduced to these two voices.

A few months later, the day before the album dropped, James posted this longer trailer. It’s a montage of clips of the couple as if they’re thoughts going through the dude’s mind as he drives through the city at night. At one point, the man is so distracted by his thoughts that he almost hits a pedestrian in the street which, of course, is James. Just passing through his dude’s life again as an outsider just like at the bar. The audio of that clip is the “Interlude” track on the album. SO, because of those visuals, I listen to the album as if he’s telling a story about two characters navigating through their own relationship and experiences together. He created a separate universe from himself to attach these songs to, with all the sound effects and voices, a scripted outline. I think he intended it to be heard like that the whole time he was writing/recording it. I think this was his way of trying something different and experimenting with his entire creative process. 

There’s a lot of themes in all the lyrics that make me think about bad communication, stubbornness, and frustration. But there’s also other elements of nostalgia, like, the night it came out I wrote a list of recurring words/themes that I picked up on in several songs:

beings kids (note: the concept of Pink Lemonade video)

being high on a feeling

being kings and queens

rain

sound

cigarettes

distance (note: the concept of the Wild Love video)

unity (note: the concept of the Us video)

p a i n

The album begins and ends with a sound of a door closing. If you notice the tracklist starts off really high energy (Wasted on Each Other), then it gets playful in the middle (In My Head and Wanderlust), then it starts to get angsty (Stand Up and Fade Out), and then the very last song is Slide, a sad ballad about sliding into the arms of someone else, finished off with that Allen Ginsberg poem about love being read by an echoed voice. The entire duration of Slide has the distinct sound of a movie projector behind it, almost like the film/story of the couple has come to an end. 

He tried something out of the box of what people put him in for years (dude who wears a hat and sings sad acoustic love ballads womp womp), so he amped it up, made it edgier, and did what he knew people wouldn’t expect. Plus! He made his first album five years prior….of course his musical influences had changed by then, as had his outlook on life and love. Who is anyone to tell him he had to make the same kind of music forever? It’s not realistic. With that, he changed his image. He chopped his hair off, he started wearing bolder and more eccentric clothes that you never would have thought to see him in before (glitter, buckles, foil pants, chains, etc.) and allll of that was necessary and 100% intentional to go with the album. If his sound was gonna evolve, so was his look. 

People were on board with it for a while, but somewhere along the way, I saw a lot of the reactions start to go south. Change scares people. They saw/heard something different coming from him and it intimidated them. He took those new songs on tour with him last Spring with the intention to tour again with them at bigger venues in the Fall (he would open with Wasted on Each Other and close with Slide before his encore). After the album came out, his label basically stopped promoting it. It didn’t have anything CLOSE to the success that Chaos and the Calm did. The Fall tour was cancelled because tickets weren’t selling (he says it was because he felt like he suddenly needed to write more music instead, but…..) and moved the tour back to smaller venues for Spring 2019. I finally saw him two nights ago. Wasted on Each Other and Slide are no longer on his setlist. Only five songs of Electric Light are on his setlist and it’s the three singles: Wild Love, Pink Lemonade, and Us + Just For Tonight and Fade Out (it’s the only one he added), but the bulk of it is still Chaos and the Calm songs. He mentioned this the other night, but the overall vibe he was giving off was “so uhhh something not that chill happened last year and now I’m back where I started” … re: people were turned off and his album flopped.  He’s growing his hair back out and he’s back in his older, relaxed clothes. I fully think he intended to perform a lot more Electric Light songs live on tour and keep going with the new era, but it just didn’t play out like he’d hoped. His hype died down a lot as well. When I used to go camp out in line for him for the tour of his first album, there would be almost a hundred people before the afternoon. After this album, people stopped being eager to camp out in line all day. I don’t see people starting to show up until a couple hours before doors now, which is such a drastic difference than what it was back in 2015/2016. 

So..there’s a bittersweet feeling I get now when I see him. Peer Pressure sounds like his older stuff, which is great, but you can tell there was definitely a direction he was trying to go, but he stumbled. Either way!!!!!! I love everything he puts out, so..I’m here for the long haul. But that’s my opinion and overall experience with Electric Light. THIS TURNED INTO AN ESSAY BUT I HAD A LOT TO SAY. because!!! I’ll always be lowkey mad for him that it wasn’t appreciated!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

[queenofcats17]

Okay the last story was amazing! The funny stuff with the Searchers gave me a cool idea for Alice/Susie though! What if she’s mad at Sammy for all the silly messages that the Searchers write about her on the walls? I think it would be interesting to see her outlook on the Searchers and Lost Ones! Plus I bet that she blames Sammy for everything since he was the first person to become infected. (Though it wasn’t his fault.) because she seems pretty selfish. Sorry if this idea isn’t very good. 😅

I’m still sick and a little loopy, so this might not be great. But I like it.

The creature that had once been Susie Campbell didn’t sleep. Then again, it wasn’t as though ink creatures needed to sleep. But that wasn’t why she avoided closing her eyes for too long. When Alice slept, her dreams were haunted by visions of her past. Sometimes they were pleasant. Her and Sammy walking hand in hand through a park. Wally accidentally falling into Sammy’s office after listening at the door. Norman coming in with Wendy and the whole studio dropping everything to entertain her. But more often than not, what she saw was awful. The day she’d been infected was the one she saw most often.

When she came in that day, she heard screaming. This wasn’t necessarily out of the ordinary, but it seemed different this time. Despite her better judgment, Susie went to investigate the sounds. She hadn’t been in a particularly good place as of late, but she didn’t want to just stand by if someone was hurt. So, she followed the screams down to the Music Department. Her heart began to pound as she descended the stairs.

“Hello? Is everything alright?” She called out, continuing tentatively forward. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, something fell into her line of sight. It was Wally, beat up and with ink dripping from his mouth.

“Wally?” She gasped. His eyes snapped up to meet hers, wide and frantic.

“Run.”

“What-?”

“RUN!” Wally yelled. It took her a moment to fully process these words and Wally’s state, and that moment was enough for Sammy to find her. As she turned to flee, she felt someone grab her arm. She looked back to see Sammy hold fast to her upper arm. He looked…wrong. There was ink in his hair, on his skin, soaked into his clothes. It almost seemed to be a part of him. And his eyes…They were uniform circles of golden light.

“Sammy?” She whispered. He growled, nails digging into her skin.

“Let her go!” Wally latched himself onto Sammy’s leg, trying to pull him back. Sammy’s attention was briefly drawn away by this, allowing Susie to wrench herself free and run. In the process, though, Sammy’s nails dragged across her flesh, leaving deep scores already festering with black ink. Her mind was racing. Sammy had gone crazy! She had to get help, had to find someone. For some reason, she found her feet taking her to Joey’s office. She didn’t know why she’d thought he’d help, but she stumbled into his office all the same.

“Mr. Drew! Something’s wrong!” She was on the verge of tears. “Sammy’s gone crazy! You have to help!” Joey sat at his desk, hands folded, looking completely calm.

“There’s no need to worry,” he said, smiling brightly.

“Yes, there is!” Susie started to sob, clutching her arm. “He attacked me, Mr. Drew! He looked like a wild animal! Look what he…did…” She looked down at her arm and trailed off. The scratches had turned black, and the darkness was spreading up her arm. She looked back at Joey, her eyes wide. Joey was still smiling, although there was an edge to it now.

“Joey…What’s happening?” Her voice was small.

“Something that’s been a long time coming,” Joey said. His eyes almost seemed to be glowing red.

“Am I going to die?” It was getting hard to think now as the black ink oozed across her body. What was going to happen to her?

“Not precisely.” Joey waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “Although, I imagine you would be unsatisfied with the form you’ll possess. I could help you if you like.”

“What is it? What do you want?” She wanted to survive. She had to survive.

“All you need to do is let me run a few experiments.” Joey got up, crossing the desk to stand before Susie. “What do you say?”

She’d said yes. Those experiments were also a reoccurring theme in her nightmares. She only half-remembered exactly what Joey had done, but she definitely remembered the pain. And in the end…None of the experiments had been worth it. She’d been a failure. She hadn’t been able to serve Joey’s goals, so he’d discarded her. She despised him for this. For making her into this monster and then just throwing her away.

He’d left her with an imperfect body and a ruined mind. Her emotions were all jumbled up, although her memories had for the most part remained. She wasn’t sure why she’d started calling herself Alice and trying to make herself ‘perfect’. Maybe it was because she already resembled Alice. Maybe she wanted to get back at Joey and prove that she was worth something.

At the very least, she could take comfort in the fact that she was neither a Searcher nor part of the hivemind. She tried to make herself feel better about her situation by looking down on the Searchers and the Lost Ones. She had a defined form. She knew who she was. They were nothing more than lost souls.

And she envied them more than anything.

No matter how hard she tried to make herself perfect, to become Alice Angel, she was still Susie Campbell. She was still trapped in a form that wasn’t her own, scared and confused and lonely. The Searchers and Lost Ones were in the same position, but they had each other. They had a community. A family.

They had Sammy.

She missed Sammy more than anything. Part of her blamed him for everything that had happened. He’d been the first one to be infected. But she still loved him. He’d always been there for her. Him and Wally. She wanted so badly to be a part of the family they’d created here. She didn’t want to be alone anymore.

The Searchers wrote things about her on the walls. They were never kind. They made fun of her, drawing pictures of her and writing silly insults. Given the way she terrorized them, it made sense. But it did hurt, knowing that she was the enemy of people Sammy cared about so much.

“No. I can’t think like that.” She told herself, shaking her head. “I’m better than them! I’m Alice Angel!” She was Alice Angel. Not Allison, her. Susie Campbell had been weak. She’d lost her role, she’d lost her self. She was Alice Angel. She was Alice Angel and she was going to be perfect. Then…Then everyone would love her. Then she would get her revenge on Joey.

For now, she was scrubbing some of the messages off the walls. They’d called her a meanie face and drawn a crude picture of her with her tongue out and stink lines coming from her head. 

“That Lawrence.” She grumbled, scrubbing furiously at the drawing. “He needs to control his sheep!” When Sammy called the Lost Ones and Searchers his sheep, it was a pet name, comforting and soft. When Alice did it, it was derisive and insulting. That was all they were, after all. Just mindless sheep following the sweet words of a liar. She could hear them giggling out of sight. 

“Come out you cowards!” She stood up, stamping her foot. “You’re old enough to know it’s rude to talk behind people’s backs!” The Searchers squealed, vanishing into the puddles. 

“Such insolence.” She huffed before going back to scrubbing. The messages had been popping up with a frightening frequency. It was honestly rather distracting. She’d probably have to send a formal complaint to Sammy at some point. She had work to do! She couldn’t keep dropping everything to clean away the messages. 

She did end up leaving a note on the door of his office. She knew full well she didn’t have the courage to confront him face to face, not with their history and how she’d been infected. But a note? She could do a note. 

Lawrence,

Control your little sheep! They keep writing all over my walls and I can’t stand it anymore! Every day now I’ve had to stop my work to clean up their graffiti. Have them stop this at once! 

-Alice Angel

She didn’t really know if it would do anything, but it felt good to at least lodge a complaint. 

As she made her way down to the Music Department to put the note on his door, she felt a presence she hadn’t felt before. That was right…Henry was here now. Likely one of Joey’s pawns already. 

“You should never have come back.” She muttered. She tacked the note onto Sammy’s door and retreated to her sanctuary. 

[thirteenthspirit]

I would, my friend, Fernando (Part I)

Where to start… You know how they say you instantly know it when you meet ‘the one’ – you know, that person you think you’re meant to spend the rest of your days with, grow old together, the whole shebang. Well, I think it happened to me. Emphasis on the ‘think’ bit.

I met him as a random grindr hookup – sure, not the prettiest beginning to a story, but I’m sure I’ll weave a prettier lie at our wedding. It was nice and all, but we barely bothered to learn each other’s names.

A few months later, I was about to do a Raid in Pokémon GO with the usual team when he showed up, joining the party. I didn’t instantly recognize him, but as we kept raiding the following days and he kept appearing, I realized it was him. The random hipster hookup from a couple of months ago.

When I say hipster, what I really mean is… I have no idea. Somewhere between fashionable and trashy, cool and geeky, ‘lumberjack chic’ – but, as he himself would put it, sometime later, “skinny legend fashion icon”. Just rolls off the tongue, am I right. So you have a clearer picture, he is very tall, appears to be in his early 30s and is overtly fond of beanies and skinny jeans – oh, and of course, the moustache. Not the gross overgrown kind nor the plain ‘single line’ one, but a perfect blend of both, just looks good and different on him. The kind of person that draws everyone’s gaze in, when they enter the room.

He eventually joined our local whatsapp group for Pokémon GO raids and we began to see each other more often. It was a fun game of “we have met before but we don’t really acknowledge it”, between me and him. He sent me a friend request on Instagram, and we began to chat one-on-one from there.

The conversation began developing after I learned that he needed a Spinda, of which I had 2, so I offered him one. He lived literally across the street from me, so we could trade from our respective couches. I think that same day, since we lived so close together, we arranged to go for a walk after dinner, to catch Pokémon. The never-ending “shiny hunt”.

And again the following day.

And the next. And the next one after that too.

The conversation deepened. Since we met in that fashion, there were no boundaries regarding our hookups and sexuality. It didn’t take long for us to become very good friends and talk on a constant basis. Plus we had a lot of interests in common – we were both somewhat emotionally-distant people and with a peculiar sense of humor.

For us to connect so easily, it was definitely a weird thing - my area of expertise is Finance (I currently work at a bank) and my professional experience has always been at several desk jobs. Some better, some worse, but ‘inconsistently consistent’ (the reverse of Grace Helbig). A corporate man, I guess, leaning more towards the realistic side of life, rather than pandering to the dreamer and ambitious one. He is on the opposite end of the spectrum. He is an elementary school teacher and an editor for a magazine and has even written (and successfully published) his own book. A writer in every sense of the word.

Personality-wise, I am what you would call an introvert by nature – not exactly shy, but definitely the proud owner of a handful of unresolved childhood issues caused by enthusiastic bullies and shame. I wear glasses, which help in conveying the whole ‘geek’ category and am of an average build and somewhat tall. I’ve still got my share of face imperfections and pimples at the age of 25 and look younger than my actual age – something we both have in common. Our personalities just clicked though, his extremely offensive sense of humor contrasts well to my fake well-behaved and nice demeanor and we’ve bot got similar personal values and empathy when dealing with others. A couple of nice chaps, is what the ordinary passerby would think.

We became best friends. He confided in me about his past relationships, the good the bad and the (very) ugly and I vented to him about my insecurities and depressive thoughts. We saw each other roughly every day, during our usual “old ladies” walk through a nearby park, always worshipping that battery-draining app. On the weekends, we unknowingly formed the habit of getting breakfast together and basking in the sun for a bit. I was going through a tough time at the time, what with my mother not being in her best shape or form, mentally speaking, leading me to come out to my parents amidst an argument (NOT the best way to do it) – this situation worsened after we had a little house-fire scare. So his presence really helped and comforted me.

Time passed. Mall trips, community days, ex raids, regular dinners and breakfasts and breakfast-lunches. He was pretty much the person I saw the most. And quickly became my favorite.

I was always keenly aware of how close we were getting, and how it might be affecting me and my ability to connect with other friends, but I never gave much thought to the situation escalating. He was 38 years old, and I was 25. The thought alone made me never overthink the relationship.

Until I did. Until the “what if” statement popped into my mind. And the age gap just… lost its entire relevance. I tried to push the feelings down, but as all feelings do, it just made them get bigger and more intense. You see, my past relationships have been failed ones, because I wasn’t emotionally involved in them – I was like meh. So I didn’t really know what it was like to actually like someone. But I was smart enough to recognize it – this was probably my first real interaction with “infatuation” and dare I say it, love.

Here’s the part of the story where the sky is bright and the road ahead is hopeful and sunny.

Spoilers: It’s not.

Why not? Well. Because it’s completely one-sided. Unrequited love. Nothing less, nothing more, the usual boring sappy story of friend in love with his best-friend but unable to do anything about it.

“Well, why not do anything about it? Tell him!” The Jiminy Cricket in my head says.

I definitely let him know, I drop hints here and there, statements like “we’ll be together in 20 years” and getting notably jealous when he’s texting or telling me about his sexy-time and dates with other men (this part hurts particularly). So he knows. If he’s choosing not to see it, I know he has good reasons for it and I am good enough a friend to know not to act on it. It’s cruel on my part to try and force something that shouldn’t happen.

And why should it happen? I don’t really have much to offer him. I’m not his type, I still live with my parents (which I attribute to the ridiculously high rents here in Lisbon) and am overall kind of an emotional mess. Tbh, I wouldn’t pick myself either. But that’s an issue for another day, it’ll get resolved eventually. By myself, not by piling it onto somebody or using a relationship to distract from it.

Also he met ‘the one’ already. Or what he says he’s afraid might have been the one. His last boyfriend, who we name ‘psychopath’, definitely earned his nickname. Physically and emotionally abusive, he left a scar. And Fer is smart enough not to get into a relationship this soon after said breakup, as there is still too much fresh baggage, ready to be thrown at the next man in.

And there are (many) candidates for the ‘next man’ position. He’s a fascinating man and they are immediately enthralled by him (here’s the pot calling the kettle black), so he does leave a string of broken hearts behind him.

I don’t like hearing him talk about this. I can see there is a hint of pain in his eyes when he jokingly says he’ll never find anyone and is fated to remain single his entire life, to which I jokingly retort he’ll never be alone, as he’ll have me. And this is the part that really hurts me – I am content. I am content with being the best friend and I’ll eventually have to deal with him finding someone else, and watching him be happy in a (hopefully) long-lasting relationship. And I’ll be there. The pathetic best friend story from the B-list storyline of Hermione and Ron from Harry Potter. I’d rather have an Elio and Oliver thing, as fleeting as it might be, over a lifetime of longing for something that will never be. I want nothing but the best for him, he deserves it. But… we could be happy together. We could have a life. And that realization kills me.

Then again, years haven’t passed. Time does cure all wounds. Maybe time will heal these feelings, some days they are stronger, somedays they are weaker. Some days I am sure I can call them love, others it’s something darker.

I have realized something, though – I should let myself feel them. It’s ok not to act on them, if I think that’s the best course of action. But I should not repress them. I do love him (how could I not?) and that’s okay. I felt pathetic for feeling them, at first. Especially the jealousy bit I always judged my friends for, that one is a particularly nasty feeling.

But hey, for someone who thought himself to be emotionally shipwrecked, the ship floats! I think that should be my takeaway from this. That’s a positive outlook, right?

And more than anything, I should be grateful to my best friend for showing me something new I wouldn’t have known otherwise.

So if you ever end up reading this, Fer, know that it’s true. Also sorry it’s in English! And sorry if it’s all too much. But I do love you, and will always be a part of your life, in whatever role you deem fit. Now I’ll close this, as it’s time to go on our daily Pokémon run.                                                                                                                                                                                               -João A. (Xanuda)

Link to Part 2 “I Wish I Hadn’t”: http://thirteenthspirit.tumblr.com/post/183770872439/i-wish-i-hadnt-part-ii

[isroselalondebisexual]

*hesitantly slides my trollswapped kids for you to analyze* Rose Peixes (I thought Rose with a horrorterror for a mom figure would be a neat concept), Dave Ampora, John Vantas, Jade Megido

Rose Peixes! Queen of Alternia, with a shot for the throne, a giant huge large big thousand-tentacled lusus for a mom. Gl'bgolyb is a lusus that makes demands of her charge, but we know from Feferi that she also does engage with her child frequently. Feferi spoke with her lusus, and learned about the encroaching destruction of the universe from her, and then was also able to speak with other horror terrors, which were more vast and horrifying than their emissary, and make friends with them AND gain a boon, so what I can glean from that is that Gl’bgolyb, despite having relatively high demand, was also pretty warm and loving as far as lususes go. Maybe not an authoritative parenting style all across, because she did make high demands and there WAS threat of real and devastating consequences, but not all parents are perfect. Anyway, Rose, raised with all the power in the world, and a lusus that loved her but required some pretty tasking stuff from her with threat of killing her friends if she didn’t cooperate, would result in Rose being a very, very driven person, I think. The throne is hers to seize, if she can fight for it, Alternia is hers to govern, and Rose is not someone to half-ass things. She would be privileged, as anyone from that station would be, and maybe not fully understand the social order on account of being very young still, plus she would be socialized with Alternia’s definition of “fairness,” but I think she would be more concerned with personal achievement than doing stuff like Trizza tbh. She’s relentless, driven, always clawing for bigger, better, harder, faster, someone with a ravenous pursuit of excellence, someone who is dissatisfied with herself unless her idea of perfection is achieved. Rose Peixes and Azula from Avatar would probably be pretty similar tbeh. She’s here to WIN. As Seer of Life, Rose would be the one to foresee the “onward march of positive progress.” That’s pulled straight from the extended zodiac page, btw. Hussie tells us that Life players are “concerned with the betterment of themselves and those around them,” so Rose is all about seeing the way things can be improved, interested in using her sight to propel things forward, make them better, refine them, take the future by the horns and drive it in the direction of progress. Yes, she’s spoiled and privileged, and yes, she needs to learn that her own definition of progress might not always match with other’s, but Rose likes to learn and is quick to adapt to new information, so I have full confidence that Rose Peixes, Seer of Life, would be a harbinger of that which is good.

Dave Ampora, hmmmm. Well, his attention seeking ways are going nowhere. Dave gets raised at the top of the spectrum, full royalty, with only one person in all the world who outranks him by blood, and he just so happens to be childhood best friends/moirails with her. Definitely still a hipster, definitely still takes photographs of weird deep-sea shit and scenic ocean views, absolutely looks up to and adores his ancestor a lot, creating an ideal image of him in his brain that he tries to pursue. Living in the wrecked ship of his ancestor instead of an actual hive is also a very hipster thing to do sooooo. Probably doesn’t like it when people tell him that ancestors aren’t real, or that his was lame. Rose is probably the one telling him how lame his ancestor was tbeh. Dave VERY likely wouldn’t want to help Rose with feeding Gl’bgolyb, that doesn’t strike me as something Dave would want to do, or that Rose would need help with, so he’s more focused on the emotional and caretaking elements of their moirallegiance. Primarily: Rose go the fuck to sleep it’s 3 in the afternoon the sun’s been up for hours I don’t care if you haven’t gotten it “just right” yet you’re never gonna get it “just right” because you’re a fucking perfectionist now get inside your goddamned ‘coon you absolute madwoman or so help me god I’ll swim down there and dunk you in that pile of slime myshellf! Needs constant validation for himself, which on one hand, that’s fine, on the other, he doesn’t ever want to confront when he’s been the one to make a mistake, or that he’s the one who’s overstepped, and that’s something he has to work on and work through, as someone born into immense wealth and power. As Knight of Hope, his task is as the group cheerleader, sort of. He’s the one protecting and sustaining everyone’s ability to look up, look forward, he’s the one that helps and allows Rose to pursue that better future, he’s the one giving John the emotional support and assurance that yes, John is valued and loved and definitely one of the group and not an outsider, Dave is the one to offer Jade support when she thinks the world is resting squarely on her own shoulders and help her keep her cheery disposition, even when life looks hard. He is an odd mix of deeply empathetic and loving, but also selfish at times, and too certain of his own rightness.

John Vantas has a screechy dad and mutant blood, which means he’s really, really good at laughing off conflict. If someone is mad at him, it doesn’t really touch him, which, on one hand, is good for conflict deescalation because it means he’s never sending off the signals that would lead to a back and forth of conflict getting worse and worse and worse. On the other, it can make having serious conversations with him an ABSOLUTE nightmare, because John isn’t taking them SERIOUSLY and he needs to LISTEN! Probably also has a very fatalistic sense of humor, as a way of coping with the fact that he could die at pretty much literally any second. “Whoops, almost got hit by a bus, ahaha, should’ve moved into that street a little faster ;B” *minor inconvenience happens* “Guess I’ll die.” It doesn’t help that Alternia is really violent and unsafe just, like, in general. Every goddamned troll has PTSD and I will stand by that. But humor is John’s coping mechanism, as well as just, he’s a dude who likes a laugh. He’s here for a good time, not a long time. Since he’s a mutant, he defines himself in society primarily based on who he’s friends with! With the Heiress and a fishprince as his good friends, plus his dear sweet darling burgundy moirail, that makes him… relatively well off, actually? He’s not sure how this is happening, but he does know that he loves Rose Dave and Jade so so so so much and ngl I think flush DaveJohn and pitch, playfully-competitive “i’m a bigger little shit than you are” JohnRose would be… excellent… I ship everything y’all I don’t know what you’re expecting of me. He puts a LOT of stock in his relationships with his friends, which unfortunately means that he gets very depressed if he’s left alone for too long. He’s an extrovert with a blood mutation that makes it so he can’t actually GO OUT and engage in activities for fear of revealing his blood color. How does he deal with it? More fatalistic humor. Hahaha… he’s so lonely… haha… At least Jade knows, that’s probably an immense comfort, and when Dave and Rose find out Dave’s immediate assurances that they still love him and this doesn’t change anything would do wonders for John’s outlook on life, as is Dave’s role. As Heir of Blood, I mentioned this already but John places a LOT of his identity in his bonds with others. In many ways, his quest is learning how to balance that with constructing a personal identity. He’s a lowblood, offspectrum mutant on Alternia, that doesn’t allow for a lot of individual value to be placed on himself, so that’s something he’s got to learn and grow away from, but at the same time, his friends are his anchors, what keeps him sane and happy and healthy, so it’s important too for him to grow alongside them, entwined with them, part of their group, part of the whole, part of the community that is no longer stacked unfairly against him. It’s a balance, but he’ll find it.

Jade Megido, raised by a kangaram, low socioeconomic status but magic powers that can break mountains. Nothing can possibly go wrong with this. She’s pretty relentlessly positive, angry at the society that labels her as “lesser” but with a sort of learned helplessness about her that makes her think there’s nothing truly to be done to fight back against it. So fuck the system altogether then! She’s here for a good time, not a long time, her lifespan is short and that’s provided she can even make it that long! So she’s gonna go PET BARKBEASTS and DO SCIENCE and EXPLORE THOSE COOL RUINS NEAR HER HIVE and visit her moirail who she loves dearly. She doesn’t have any of the funding necessary to get the parts and chemicals that she needs on her own, but luckily for her Dave is a people pleaser and vastly wealthy and also flush with her moirail so she can pester him for favors. She fears neither god nor death, pass her some fucking robot parts. A real “Fuckit” mentality, I think, but here to have a good time! Still deeply compassionate as a person, and still lying about how sucky her situation truly is, to her friends and also to herself. She likes to think of herself as just making the most of a bad situation but really she’s just avoiding confronting the fact that Alternia really, really SUCKS for warmbloods and there’s nothing she, one single person, can do in the face of the vastness of it all. As Witch of Time, she is confronted with her own corpse again and again and again, forcing her to look at the fact that life isn’t fair and doesn’t care about her, that she’s mortal, that death comes for them all. But as Witch, she is given the opportunity to CHANGE things. She’s handed the ability to make a difference, to grab the Game and make it do as she tells it to. And so she must first confront her own mortality, and then step forward and change it, she must learn confidence and drive. She cannot just ignore or lie about her problems, she must fix them, and that is where her growth lies. This has some immediate backlash of making Jade think, once she realizes that change lies in her hands, that she is responsible for everything, and that the tables have been flipped entirely and she stands alone as the sole savior of their group. But Rose is there with her sight, and Dave is there with encouragement and compassion, and John is always there to help her, listen to her, talk with her, and Jade is not alone in this. As always, their success lies in all of their strengths working together, and they are triumphant as a team.

[carterrollins96]

Invisible Height Increase Insoles 4 Cm Wonderful Cool Tips

Do not skip them, restrict the hormone that accounts for about 8 to 9 hours to be more attractive - it will only give a stretch to your nutritionist recommendations and don't have a variety of reasons.If your bones to grow taller and also have the same principles.I know all this sounds generic but if a person gain a few inches.Black varieties make excellent dried fruits.

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How You Can Get Taller

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