#so COMPLEX and so much to ANALYZE

[drieddpetals]

(i feel like analyzing stuff again so here we go) kaz is smart because he knows people. he loves puzzles, loves locks, loves taking things apart to figure out how they work. he says in soc that you figure people out like you figure anything else out, by taking it apart. kaz is smart because he finds enough out about people to make assumptions.

he knows what people will do, and often times it leaves the ones being duped going "how did he do that? how did he know?" kaz never truely knows something will 100% happen, he's just assuming it will and is almost always right.

in the begining of soc, when the crows are breaking matthias out of hellgate, kaz assumes wrong, though. he knows that jesper has a reputation for being late, so he assumes that jesper will take to the task of releasing the animals like he will anything else he does, and be late doing it. he has, in some sense, taken jesper apart. he knows what jesper does, and he plans around this assumption, however ends up being wrong. nothing extremely consequential happens because of his assumption, but it proves that kaz will assume things with confidence.

a huge aspect to why kaz is so successful in his planning and overall schemes is because he knows how to make a good assumption. he has inej gathering him intel, which enables him to make such confident and correct guesses about how people will act.

one instance of kaz's assumptions being correct is the whole geels and 19 burstraat situation in the beginning of soc. when kaz threatens to burn down geels' lover's home, geels could have not cared, could have shot kaz right there, but he didn't. geels doesn't, and kaz continues very boldly facing him. why? because kaz knows how geels will act.

another instance is in ck when kaz kidnaps alys and uses her to get inej back. at this point, kaz knows how van eck will act. van eck has already duped kaz once, and i imagine after this one of the things kaz does to insure it never happens again is over analyzing and taking him apart. it works in this instance, because kaz has already seen how much van eck cares about a "worthy heir," and alys is literally holding that. kaz has taken van eck apart, and had figured him out enough to make a bold and correct act based on assumption.

all this to say, kaz thinks and thinks and thinks and is always thinking and picking everything apart, and that is the key to why he can get away with everything he does. and maybe one day his assumptions that make him so smart will fail him, and maybe one day they'll be fatally wrong.

[art-from-within]

It just struck me that narrative wise, Morgott having a heavy tail and Mohg having large wings may not have been a completely random choice on the part of fromsoft....the omen twins were both shackled to the ground in the sewers, one of the two still heavily worships the guilty system none the less. Morgott clearly toiled to keep the crumbling status quo a float, draining him. The tail could represent that he is still shackled in spirit.(Look at his tail 😭)

But the other, Mohg, possesses so rebellious a spirit, his wings symbolizes a strong sense of independence and freedom. Man got out, and unlike his brother said fuck yall and flew away.

[dumbfucksystem]

i keep thinking about the fact that unlike sy (who never even thought about how his family might feel about him dying), airplane actually had the option to go back to his family and ultimately decided not to.

like imagine being a parent and finding out that your child chose a life that didn’t have you in it.

just think about the guilt that his parents must have felt when they heard the news. each of them are enjoying time with their new families, but they haven’t spoken to their son in a while. he’s in college though so he’s probably fine. he’s not reaching out saying that he needs help or money or anything though he never asked for much when he was home either.

then they get the call. and they find out that he died alone in his apartment. he was electrocuted while trying to salvage his laptop. and they think he didn’t have to die this way. he never asked them for anything, and now they know that he desperately needed them. he never mentioned how much he struggled, and maybe he would have if they had been in contact more often. but they were too caught up in their own lives to pay attention to him.

no parent should have to out-live their child, but they distanced themselves so much from him that they couldn’t even be there for him when he died.

cough your child could have lived a long, happy, & healthy life and eventually die of old age surrounded by people they love. but instead he died when he was young and alone because he didn’t feel comfortable sharing his problems with you cough cough

[fandomunsexyman]

SVSSS is a novel with a fandom.

[ID: A Scum Villain edit of the "missing the point" meme. A bullet arcs from velinxi art of child Shen Jiu kneeling while furiously glaring. The bullet says, "People are not entirely one thing or the other and holding them to these extremes ignores the complexities that come with their humanity." It arcs over the head of a person across from it, who ignores the bullet and exclaims: "Wow!! Shen Jiu's only crime was being mean and was wrongly hated!" End ID]

[wickmitz]

I decided to start talking about Wick and Rocky's relationship because I like their dynamics too, I like seeing Wick scared of Rocky and Rocky being aggressive with him, which is unusual because Rocky is rarely aggressive with anyone, but of course Wick is an exception to rule

Also my mini opinion about their possible relationship, I think that if Rocky didn't have to fight for his place, then he and Wick could become friends, or at least tolerate each other a little, I also see some superficial similarities, their gentlemanly and romantic natures, and their common love for explosions (remembering the quarrymen chapter), but this is my assumption, I think that I don't understand the characters' personalities well, so I can be wrong in this assumption, something like that. So, what do you think about their relationship?

for starters, i cannot thank you enough for this ask! as i’ve said previously, i have many thoughts on these two, so it’s nice to finally be able to share some of them. although given the extent to which i think about them, i apologize in advance if this is sloppy and sort of everywhere … while i’ll try to structure things the best i can, i cannot promise i’ll succeed! but hopefully this is an enjoyable reply nonetheless.

one of my favorite things about rocky and wick’s relationship is absolutely how aggressive rocky is towards the aristocrat ; he is prone to glares and cruel jokes and borderline hissing whenever the man is within his line of sight, or can be brought to a wailing-fit over the mere mention of his name from miss m’s mouth. there is a childishness to it, but a very prominent threat as well in spite of rocky’s usual incompetence. so he goes out of his way to posture around wick, readily lying and adorning himself with the gangster drapes he so badly wants to wear, in the hopes that it intimidates … will even badmouth wick’s family and make fun of his name and rock related obsession to mitzi, and so on so forth! yet all of this is very reminiscent of schoolyard bullying rather than anything too severe, though we as the audience understand rather quickly that rocky would bash wick’s head in with a tire iron if he could. ( translation : if it wouldn’t earn the tears or hate of a certain beloved mitzi may ) and it’s all very intense despite the absence of actual violence! and i understand why many fans see this as unusual for rocky and believe that it’s only wick who makes him act so aggressively, but i’d argue it isn’t really wick at all that prompts such scary reactions from him … and that rocky is a deeply angry character who’s a.) been boiling quietly for a long, long time and b.) has turned wick into a punching bag of sorts for this inner world of resentment and hurt. basically, when he’s judging the well-to-do or poking fun, his eyes don’t look at wick and actually acknowledge him as sedgewick sable ; instead this is a being, something vague and metaphorical, who threatens to upseat rocky’s permanence in the lackadaisy and steal away his savior, and he’s had a hand in the violinist’s misfortune for a long time.

obviously, rocky doesn’t think wick robbed him of his family twice over and made him homeless, but he is channeling the fear and anguish of those events into his loathing for wick, if that makes sense? it’s easier that way -- to finally have an outlet for everything bleeding inside of you, to be able to bite and claw at something without feeling conflicted or having to take personal accountability for your own mistakes … which is something that i think rocky does struggle with to a degree. he is sort of a finger pointer! his pain has to be worth something, it has to be for someone else ; spending years homeless and losing his last bit of family was for freckle, and the scrambling of his literal brain was for mitzi, and that means he can’t ever be angry with them! well, except that he is, somewhat, but he buries it deep down instead of feeling it. with freckle there is a sense of strain between them -- an air of ‘you owe me’ from rocky to freckle as he uses freckle to appease miss m, and he constantly pokes fun at his cousin too. it’s lighter than his jabs at wick, but there’s a constant pestering, a reminder of how good freckle has it : how he’s got the mom and the house and the job and the girl most notably. i don’t think rocky is intending to come across as mean, and to his credit he hardly does! but it’s rather clear to me that some part of him, some hidden and deeply hurt part, is rather indignant about taking the fall for freckle all those years ago. which he can’t understand, because how could he? he made that choice, he decided to take accountability for something he didn’t do because he loves freckle and knows it’d be so easy to believe this family tragedy was roark’s fault ; the devilish child he was, all troublesome and too broken to properly fit anywhere. so there is a disconnect born here, where rocky can’t comprehend that he’d be angry at freckle, so instead these not so great feelings are placed elsewhere and silently boil over time. and with mitzi … i don’t think he’s angry at her per se, but there is a frustrated and desperate chorus of : why him and why not me, when i’m the one out here dying for you? which is certainly unpleasant. of course, rather than allowing those feelings to be more aimed at miss m, whom he feels unloved by, he ( again! ) represses these emotions and allows them to fester into his greatest fears and fantastical complexes. i think there is a lot of other miscellaneous anger he could have towards others too … perhaps some part of him is sore upon seeing ivy’s normal lifestyle, watching her go to university and knowing that’s been taken from him. or an ache felt when hearing stories from zib and the band and how they used to travel successfully, living as nomads, and rocky is all too reminded of his similar lifestyle and how he couldn’t make it work as effortlessly. people with immense trauma are more prone to irrational anger and jealousy, to viewing everything around them as unfair and believing it’s even more unjust that so many people get to live comfortably while they’ve suffered. a situation that gets more messy when you’re someone like rocky, a man who’s willingly made choices that have harmed himself and wants to continue on with his smiling, bumbling fool of an act. he does not want to be angry, does not want to see it within himself, i think, which leads to an accidental increase of it.

all of this is to reiterate that wick is a scapegoat for rocky and nothing more. it’s why he’s rather hypocritical whenever it concerns the man. for example, it was stated by tracy that he looks down upon wick for his excessive presence at the bar, yet he appears to enjoy hanging out with zib -- who drinks just as often! he makes fun of how all wick ever talks about is rocks, when he himself is prone to poetry rambles that people find irritating or boring, and etc etc. this is also just a human nature thing, to critique someone you heavily dislike and even going as far as to belittle things you love or do in your own day to day because you just hate them that bad! but given rocky’s willingness to befriend anyone, it more so reeks of a dehumanization element. wick is every obstacle in his way, every divine force that threatens to send him packing again, so he is equal parts unnerved by wick’s presence and angry about it. it is mostly a fear response we are seeing, an emotion that’s morphed into long held resentment and anger. so his actions are extremely defensive, with him trying to push wick far away and keep him and mitzi separate, like some sort of animal attempting to ward off a threat that’s come too close to their home. despite the loaded animosity there, this hate has hardly reached its peak … but it shall only grow more intense as things continue onward i’m afraid, since as it stands ( in the comic at least ) rocky is at an all time low … and is ten times more desperate. i’d honestly say wick has become so warped in his mind’s eye that he can only strive towards ‘winning’ over the other man, because that’s all he can see anymore. i think mitzi implying that wick willingly helped her out, the intense head injury, and rocky’s fragile emotional state is exactly what pushes him towards premeditated murder in look-see. i don’t know how people perceive that arc, but to me it’s very clear that rocky actively sought to see the deaths of wes and fish that night. going as far as to lament that he’d be, “very disappointed if ( he ) dreamed them,” and purposefully luring the marigold duo away to have freckle pick them off. while you could argue that this was a smart move, in a gangster sort of sense, there’s still no denying that rocky is oddly chipper about the whole thing and is now seeking death out ; whereas before his methods of vengeance were just, well, ruining people’s livelihood but ultimately leaving them alive. this isn’t to discredit the fact that rocky is going through something! he is in a very muddled and dark place, mentally and physically, but even tracy has said that the head injury hasn’t changed rocky’s personality -- it’s only brought things to the surface.

source : q&a with tracy .

which, yeah! makes sense! head trauma can cause a person to become a wreck emotionally ( think mood swings, irritability, etc ) but it doesn’t completely morph someone either. personality changes may occur, but it’s not like you’re being rewritten entirely, you know? and given tracy’s old statement, it’s clear that ‘personality changes’ aren’t a side effect he’s suffering from. something that adds to my beginning statement, which is that rocky is a deeply angry and troubled person, more so than fans give him any credit for.

however, to touch upon your mini opinion about these two, i actually wholeheartedly agree that rocky and wick could become friends if circumstances were different. they do in fact have many superficial similarities, but one of the more prominent things they deeply share is never really belonging in the groups they frequent. this is more overt with rocky’s character, yet wick faces it too in subtle ways. the well-to-do crowd, seen through the investors, find the gentleman to be lacking in about every place imaginable ; to them he is an obsessive freak who cares too deeply for meager rocks, something they constantly mock him for, while he’s also being noticeably set apart from the rest of them … he seems younger than the investors, more excitable, passionate, and a little less experienced, and doesn’t seem to care for money or reputation as much as them either. there is a constant rubbing between him and them, where what he enjoys is seen as wrong, such as his love for the lackadaisy and his choice in paramor, a grieving widow with extremely dangerous ties. we also know that wick doesn’t have many friends at all, with the only two he has being lacy and church ( church is listed as such on his character profile, in a sort of tongue-in-cheek way ), both of whom work for or with him. they are obliged to hang around, and while they care in varying ways, they are prone to judging him just as much. honestly, it’s not shocking that wick seeks refuge at his chosen speakeasy! but even there he is rather distant from everyone else. he doesn’t speak to zib ever in the comics, nor seems all too close with viktor, ivy, or horatio … it is merely mitzi he is close to, even if he knows of the other people who work there. and, once again, wick very obviously doesn’t fit in. he is not gangster material, could never be an atlas may replacement, much less someone who could get his paws dirty in such an active way. so he has his feet in two different worlds and doesn’t know how to fit into either of them, or which one he actually wants to fit into more. i think in many ways rocky could relate -- these are two very lonely people who wish to belong somewhere and be accepted by some group or another but go about it in all the wrong ways. wick, who is too hesitant to fully commit to what he wants and is worse off for it, and then rocky, who obsessively throws himself against what he wants until he breaks every bone in his body. they also have explosives to bond over, lol, and other miscellaneous things like their taste in women i suppose … but this potential bond adds to the tragedy of lackadaisy, where we see two people who on every level should get along but we’re burdened with the knowledge that it’s an impossibility anyway, because there’s no removing the circumstance of which they’re in.

though i like to believe that despite wick’s fear of rocky, he maintains a kindness towards him regardless. i think his worries about rocky are rather surface level … he doesn’t know the boy at all, really, and thus can’t make heads or tails of him, hence him believing the lie in balderdash. so when i’m feeling particularly self indulgent, i like imagining a world where they’re forced together and sort of ‘stuck’ together ; to which rocky finally breaks and exposes his wounds to wick, in every sense of the word, and wick finally gets him. the aggression, the possessiveness of mitzi … it is all fear and desperation and a profound sadness, things he’d sympathize with. if rocky was able to explain that he loathes wick because if he saves the lackadaisy then mitzi won’t need him anymore and that it’s not fair that wick gets to so easily fix things when rocky would give his soul for his home, for her, and how wick could render every sacrifice he’s already made for naught by smoothing things over with some greenbacks and he can’t lose this, he just can’t --! … which, well, wick is too kind of a man to be able to do anything except feel awful, even though it’s not his fault at all. here we have two people who could coexist! and they should, since rocky logically can’t do every speakeasy job ( band member, rumrunner, mitzi’s shadow, also the guy who gets the money for the hooch ) by himself, just like how wick can’t save the lackadaisy with only his cash and limited booze stash. it’d be a joint cooperation, a collaboration between them, both equally important in the grand scheme of crime’s every turning wheel … but rocky’s rage and fear won’t let him see that, and likely never will. still, in scenarios where everything ends up alright for the lackadaisy and the people involved in it ( which is not how canon will go, by the way ), i fancy wick and rocky getting better within their relationship. rocky will always be prickly and quick to upset around the other man sadly, but perhaps he could see wick in a softer kind of light. or at least understand vaguely enough that he isn’t out to get rocky, so to speak. and then maybe wick learns that pancakes soothe rocky’s ire and poorly makes them anytime he wishes to talk to the man, and other fun things like that! but you should have more confidence in your character analysis skills, because you were spot on ( at least in my eyes ) about them potentially getting along if things were different. it’s certainly a fun aspect to play around with, and is important to note when discussing their relationship so you can fully understand just how warped rocky’s perspective on things are. and how unstable and traumatized he is too, of course </3 sidenote, but i also hope that throughout everything i’ve said here, or anything i’ve said before on my blog, that my love for rocky and my own sympathy for him comes across well enough. while he’s deeply flawed and i have no qualms discussing said flaws in depth, i also don’t think of him as some insane freak who’s evil at his core or anything like that. honestly, i adore analyzing him so much as a character because of how far down his issues go! he’s very well written, i’ll say, as is wick and many of the other characters, but i digress.

once more, thank you for the ask! i’ll end this here because i fear if i don’t i’ll start going in circles, since their relationship is so vast and very important for rocky in a character sense. hopefully i shed some more light on it though! i love these two to bits and pieces and i wouldn’t be half as invested in lackadaisy if their dynamic wasn’t so monumental -- at least to me.

[c1trvswurld]

Finally glad the mouthwashing fandom-at least on here- is finally coming around to see the idea that neither curly or jimmy are completely innocent nor should be babied or completely villainized because to do that you'd need to *checks notes*

Completely ignore how mouthwashing is a story of how systems of abuse are kept in power. Particularly rape culture and the patriarchy that encourages these actions while also encouraging bystander effect from other men close to predators...which is all encouraged under a system like capitalism.

Idk read more of tha rant in tags I got carried away I fear.

[foolssoup]

germs i wanna know if im amongst my peers cuz i feel like im the only gay man watching this show

[rhaenyrathecruell]

Alicent now knows she was wrong and she refuses to accept it. She cannot change crowning aegon as king and it would be hard to stop the war in its tracks with aegon being king and cole being hand but, I think rhaenyra wanted accountability. Alicent has attacked rhaenyra and her sons over not taking accountability and yet when faced with her own she runs.

[transmascutena]

thinking about how akio sees his younger self in utena and wondering if there's any fondness there. doesn't change the horror of what he does to her obviously but i do wonder

[namisweatheria]

I wish so badly that skypeia wasn't a nauseatingly racist narrative that purports the colonizer's fantasy whitewashed narrative of how they saved "savages" (THEY ACTUALLY USE THAT WORD!!!!!!!!) from themselves. The part where they bring CURES to disease instead of, you know, the intentional spread of it as biological warfare that actually happened, gets me so fucking mad every time. Or when the poor poor guilty old colonizer president feels so bad and tries to give some land back and they refuse because they're too mad. Something that has never ever happened anywhere ever. ITS UNBELIEVABLY CARTOONISHLY RACIST THE WHOLE THING.

Just like the million other offensive caricatures in one piece, they do not end up being as two dimensional as they originally appear, and they and their feelings are taken seriously by the narrative. An effective story that tugs on your heartstrings in it's culmination is eventually crafted, BUT HE HAS TO MAKE YOU SO SO MAD AND UNCOMFORTABLE FIRST. EVERY TIME. WHY.

[solradguy]

I'm so grateful that the only GG fans that care about the light novels are the ones that can be normal about things because Lightning the Argent goes from the rawest scenes of carnage imaginable to Ky Kiske doing something mildly religious like offering a short, silent, prayer for someone that got mangled to death by WMD dragons, and I just know that, in the wrong hands, those brief religious moments would generate the most annoying goddamn memes you could ever imagine

[wonder-worker]

"The division between the two families [the Woodvilles and the Nevilles] and their allies can be seen in the royal charters that they witnessed. Warwick, Rivers and Archbishop Neville of York, while serving as chancellor and afterwards, were fairly constant witnesses to royal charters and consequently often appeared together. This was not, however, the case for other family members and friends. From 1466 to 1469, if Scales or Woodville associates like Sir John Fogge, John Lord Audley or Humphrey Lord Stafford of Southwick witnessed royal charters, then members of the Neville group, such as John Neville, earl of Northumberland, or John Lord Wenlock would not, and vice versa. Discounting the ubiquitous Warwick, Rivers and Archbishop Neville, of the twenty-four charters issued between February 1466 and June 1469, twelve were witnessed by men associated with the Woodvilles, eight by men associated with the Nevilles and two were witnessed by no member of either group beyond the two earls at their heads and the archbishop; only two charters, both from 1466, featured associates of both families.

Such striking segregation of witnesses suggests that something more than simple convenience or availability was at play. [...] The evidence of these witness lists does show the extent of the split between the two groups from early in Edward's [first] reign and of the need for political society to work with that cleavage in the heart of the Yorkist regime."

— Theron Westervelt, "Royal charter witness lists and the politics of the reign of Edward IV"

*This is specifically applicable for Edward IV's first reign; in contrast, the charters in his second reign displayed a great deal of aristocratic and domestic unity and cohesion.

[nostalgicfortomorrow]

mako and bolin parallel each other because:

mako kept everything soft and sweet inside of him, curled into a tight little ball while he trapped himself in a hard casing in order to protect his brother.

bolin kept everything hard and angry and destructive into a pit of lava in his soul, hoping it would never come out. he encased it in layers of softness and naivety because someone has to make sure that people doesn't consume themselves with their own anger but bolin being able to bend lava when there were no other "softer" options, while the fire burned in his eyes and you could see the stone and flames consume him and he knew that theres no other way to do this except embrace this side of you BECAUSE HOW ELSE ARE YOU GOING TO SAVE YOUR BROTHER WHO DID EVERYTHING TO PROTECT YOU AND YOU DID EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER TO MAKE HIM HAPPY.

[morallygay]

Apparently there’s a poll trend of putting 10 of your fav female characters and ppl vote for their fav.

I’m kinda reluctant to the idea bc ppl will just vote for those they know and I’ll be sad to see beloved characters of mine have no/few votes just bc they’re less known. BUT! The main point is just to share some female characters you like bc #feminism so. I would gladly. And I tried putting relatively well-known media and characters.

[a-star-that-burns-brightly]

I'm so glad to see more people talking about just how disturbing Yuno's situation actually is and how maybe it did fuck up her 18 year old psyche to have middle aged men sleep with her

[seethesunny]

Y'all can't handle Apple. You aren't ready for a real fucked up mess (Duchess).