#so yes you're probably right

[reachexceedinggrasp]

No sorry, I mean the show is making 'the' humanlike Ghoul significant when it is slightly less so in the later games. In the very first game it is significant, the surviving ghouls in particular have become somewhat removed from human culture (like Set) - this is an issue with the later games where things which are very significant end up being downplayed (super mutants, ghouls, Deathclaws) - but I was trying to say that the show gives it more metaphorical Beastlike meaning than just video game monsterliness.

You're right, there are still plenty of bad endings possible, but I'm surprised at how much positive foreshadowing there is for his character. But there was a lot of that for Kylo Ren in TFA.

I'm also a bit baffled with the Fallout show (and Hot D), both recent major productions, because some of the editing and the pacing is just baffling. There are some real plot contrivances that just feel ultimately verryyyyy silly, and I'm not somebody who ever complains about that!!! So my concern now is less whether they stick the landing and more worrying about the current state of editing and whether anybody's getting paid enough

Anyway, sorry to bother you with this topic again, but thank you for entertaining my nonsense

Could you tell me why you think so? I don't know if I'm getting that vibe. They do definitely suggest he's rare in being in nearly perfect shape when he's so old, but it's focussed on his ability to survive such a dangerous and miserable life rather than just the fact of persisting as a ghoul. Older smoothskins aren't in great shape, either. It seems more about his skill and tenacity than an innate quality he has. Characters seem to be mostly questioning his will to go on rather than the how. I don't know that I think he's more human than other ghouls we see. The pale guy Lucy rescued seems very normal and his look is pretty similar.

Totally. Honestly, my only real concern is that he'll die. Either tragically or 'bittersweetly'. I don't think there's a chance worth worrying about of his character arc going in a negative direction in any other way than death being the ending. Either bc they think of him as 'already dead' or bc peaceful death is the happiest they'll allow him to be. I fear both those possibilities. I don't fear for his soul, if you will. He's not going to become a villain.

The pacing did strike me as very strange. I didn't know if I was just grumpy because I've not been feeling well or if it's because it often dips into a horror movie style that maybe I just don't like? but yeah. Because there's the opening prologue scene, which is an absolute fucking 10/10 cinematic masterclass, note perfect in every way, and then the rest of the episode after that felt weird/incredibly slow. I think the structural edit is fine, but something about the shot to shot editing is off. The timing is awkward, particularly when there isn't dialogue. I've felt that way about pretty much all the streaming original movies I've seen to varying degrees, so it's definitely a production process problem.

[wren-kitchens]

im annoyed and a little pedantic so can i just say as a blanket statement

queerbaiting is when the promotion for a FICTIONAL STORY intentionally hints towards two characters having a romantic relationship, without any intention to follow through in the show, in order to get queer people watching without discouraging the homophobic enjoyers of the show

queerbaiting is NOT:

a celebrity who you think is queer because theyre gnc or they have a 'vibe'. that is a real person and they cannot queerbait

two friends of the same gender pretending to flirt with each other for fun. those are real people and they cannot queerbait

a show with two characters of the same gender who are canonically friends that YOU PERSONALLY think would be better in a relationship. that's not bating, that's shipping, and subject to opinion

there are more but those are the main examples of people misunderstanding what queerbaiting is and being mad at something that isn't actually a problem

[alatariel-gildaen]

I'm currently rewatching ST, and a friend of mine said that if I rewatched it, I'd definitely reconsider my stance on Jancy/St*ncy.

And....

No.

Jonathan was thinking of breaking up with Nancy (and breaking his own heart) so that she could follow her dreams without feeling guilty about leaving him behind.

Steve's dream involves Nancy giving up her dreams in order to follow his.

My stance is firmer than ever. I love Steve, but he's not a great boyfriend. Not for her at least. Jancy to the end!

[clover-mouse]

when you stumble into being a furry they do not tell you how seriously you might end up taking your animal choice for your fursona. i am definitely definitely taking it too seriously but the facets of my identity i want to explore and acknowledge add up to too many different animals to choose just one. the other day i made a chart about it. the chart .. was not enlightening

[brainrotcharacters]

Have a romp in a Honda Odyssey now and fix your marital disagreements today!

[winepresswrath]

Armand's simpering little "and I never have" has taken on new dimensions for me. Technicality king and also I think very in keeping with his whole malign fairy creature deal. You can tell him not to hurt the bae, but you should really specify what "hurt" entails. Is chopping someone's hands off really hurting them? If they have annoyed you very much I mean.

-questions Armand might pose to Lestat that inspire him to leave the country

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

i need to share the absolute fucking Experience i had playing minecraft tonight. i'm gonna be emotional about it for days

so me and my friends like to play on this server that's pretty much just a bunch of minigames. one of them is Murder Mystery - of a group of - i think its 13/14 people - one person is randomly selected as the murderer (spawns with a sword), the other as the sheriff (spawns with a bow). the rest are innocent. the innocents can gain a bow by collecting coins. no one knows anyone's status unless the player shows their sword/bow. i'm doing a quest where, in order to get points, i need to kill the murderer.

so as the game start countdown begins, me and my pal are checking out this Red Link skin. it's pretty neat! we're all crouching and punching at each other, as one does. i feel a connection form with Red Link. we're buddies now. we're in this together.

so we're all running around the map. every time i see Red Link, we crouch and punch at each other. the game is going fine, we're having fun. i'm delighted that i've made a one-game friend.

then my friend says that Red Link is the murderer, and i literally have a hard time believing it. Red Link? my Red Link? no, they must be mistaken. we were together at the start. they had ample opportunities to kill me. it can't be Red Link. but whoever the murderer killed was the sheriff, and i needed to complete the quest - picking up the sheriff tombstone grants me the bow.

so i run, trying to find it, and i turn the corner.

there Red Link was, standing at the end of the hall, by the tombstone, with a sword in hand. i froze. i was so upset - not Red Link! not my dear companion! i was so sure that was it.

but i walked forward anyway, thinking that maybe if i dodged around them, grabbed the bow, and turned and shot fast enough, i could get them. the thought was actually distressing! Red Link didn't put the sword away. they watched me slowly approach. we stood on either side of the tombstone, and i expected Red Link to cut me down. i was well within reach of their sword.

Red Link calmly, still looking at me, moved to the side and past me. i panicked and grabbed the bow, ran to the corner, turned and drew - Red Link was already at the other end of the hall, running away. i didn't want to shoot, but i needed the kill - who knows when i'd get an opportunity to complete the quest again. it's a tough one.

i missed, thank fuck, but man. i was in shock. i thought i was a goner.

then, after the game where awards are given - the murderer, who killed them, who collected the most coins - i went up to Red Link and crouched. they crouched back.

then they left the game.

[yeliuxi]

I enjoy a good Priest trope subversion, but I don't think predestined love is a trope that was subverted in Qi Ye. Or, at least, not in such a clear-cut way.

It's true that Jing Qi falls out of love with Helian Yi by the seventh lifetime, and does not pursue the predestined love that Bai Wuchang allegedly gave him a chance to reclaim. It's also true that Jing Qi eventually chooses to pursue Wuxi instead, and goes with him back to Nanjiang. And it's also true that Priest used a lot of Buddhist themes in her work, and was stressing that nothing is permanent, not even an alleged soulmate and fated bond.

But I think we can also assume that the first three lifetimes at the very beginning of the novel are talking about Jing Qi and Wuxi. And I think it's these lifetimes that suggest a real, fulfilled, unsubverted predestined love.

The first three lifetimes (as translated by Chichi, because their translation is 200 times better than mine would have been):

The first lifetime, a stone appeared, turning into the burial mound of a hero, feelings unable to be broken. The second lifetime, a boulder split, ferrying a predestined love across the Bridge, a pair of mandarin ducks flying off together. The third lifetime, a jadeite burned, vowing to abide by an invaluable oath, eternally following each other in life and death.

The first life, a hero dies, but his love persists through death. The second life, someone (the lover of the hero, presumably) does something to follow someone else (the hero, presumably) in death. Their predestined love is unfulfilled, so they reunite in the Netherworld at the Naihe Bridge. They reincarnate, and find each other again in another life, where their predestined love is fulfilled.

It's never actually stated how this lover follows the hero in death, but I assume it was not entirely mundane, as where before a stone is a memorial, becomes a standing reminder of death, this boulder is broken, and that is what ferries their love across the Bridge. Actually, this might just represent taking a different path of reincarnation (reincarnating in a higher realm, and becoming a being of the Netherworld).

When the Netherjudge shows up in the first chapter, he comments that Bai Wuchang was not originally a person of the Netherworld. Bai Wuchang was inhabiting a "temporary" form, waiting for someone, but he forgot who. A hero died, and a lover died, but one continued reincarnation in the mortal realm, while the other is stuck in the Netherworld, becoming Bai Wuchang. Assuming Jing Qi is the hero and Bai Wuchang is the lover, Bai Wuchang followed Jing Qi to the Netherworld, but is unable to fulfill his predestiny while reincarnated in a higher realm, and this is why his form in the Netherworld is temporary and "stifled."

The Netherjudge states that Bai Wuchang has been waiting around for a a predestiend person for a while, and that he should go now. From Chichi's translation:

“This cycle’s Bai Wuchang was not originally a person of the underworld, and had been doing nothing more than borrowing a temporary frame in wait for his destined person,” he explained upon noticing Hu Jia standing there dumbly. “Now, he ought to go.”

It's likely that whatever means Bai Wuchang used to reunite with his loved one in the Netherworld cost him his memories, or was just a consequence of reincarnation in a higher realm (like how people will not remember most of their previous lives when reincarnating as living beings). But Hu Jia keeps all of his memories (remembers learning about Helian Yi in lessons, and tales of dotting the dragon's eyes), and he is a ghost messenger also of the Netherworld. So, I don't really have any good explanation other than a reach. Regardless, Jing Qi reincarnates, but Wuxi is unable to reincarnate with him, despite originally being a mortal.

Hu Jia comments that Jing Qi has suffered such ill fates, despite not doing many wicked things in his lives with Helian Yi. Bai Wuchang gives the excuse that it's difficult to calculate karma, but this might actually be because Jing Qi was not able to fulfill his destiny with Bai Wuchang, because he was the only one who reincarnated. Instead, he became destined with Helian Yi due to a karmic misallocation. His hair even turns white before the age of 33 in his first life, which also could also be a sign of imbalance or misallocation.

After Bai Wuchang sacrifices his cultivation, he reincarnates as Wuxi. And who is Wuxi infatuated with (who was Bai Wuchang waiting for, who does Bai Wuchang grow increasingly obsessed with, who was his predestined one)? Jing Qi.

But Jing Qi doesn't have memories of lives prior to Helian Yi. This could just be explained by Jing Qi drinking Meng Po's soup like a normal person, but it's been stated before that the soup doesn't work very well on him (because he's special). Bai Wuchang notes that Jing Qi's hun souls are still in the mortal realm, and not in the Netherworld with him. The hun souls are responsible for higher functions, like consciousness/awareness/intelligence. If Jing Qi is missing his hun souls, then this can explain his confused state at the beginning of the novel, and his lack of memory.

But, well, even if I'm grasping at sraws, I will also just present to you this passage (also from Chichi's translation):

Therefore, at first light, Jing Qi was wrapped in a pocket-sized version of Court dress, which had three layers inside and three layers out, then floated into the palace with his eyes half-open, about to meet the one predestined to be tangled up with him for his entire lifetime.

Wuxi and Jing Qi are a predestined love, though they were not the predestined love that Jing Qi was led to believe he was meant to fulfill

[evilkitten3]

au where there's like a paperwork error and sasuke ends up on team eight. but no one else's placement changes. so kakashi has to deal with just naruto and sakura, who isn't filtering herself at all. or better yet, sasuke gets swapped with kiba, so kakashi has to deal with three loudmouth hotheads, one of whom can just track him down whenever he's late.

meanwhile kurenai's first lesson is homicide 101 and sasuke thinks he just hit the team jackpot

[masterfuldoodler]

girlbossed too hard.... unless...

[undergoing-mitosis]

i am keeping both freminet and chongyun on my team and using them both as dps i do not care that they are both cryo claymore characters (so less capability for elemental reactions) cause they are my silly little autism children and i love them and i will protect them with my life and nothing that anyone says can stop me

oh yeah also i pulled the bell for the first time today and yes apparently it is by far not the best weapon for chongyun but it FITS HIM SO WELL so i simply do not care

like look at my boy 🥹 it matches his belt 🥹

[skrunksthatwunk]

you go to a lesbian blog and find it says women only!! no men allowed!!! and go oh! excuse me, um, what about other lesbians? plenty of lesbians are genderqueer... and they go well, okay, go fuck yourself tim chop off your sweaty dick and stop calling yourself a lesbian. you do not have a dick, actually. you think about that fact often, even though it does you no good. you do not tell this person that.

you go to another lesbian blog and it says women only and you try again, and this time they change it to wlw + nblw only (non-men who love non-men :D). and you'll say hey i appreciate that but gender's not really that cut and dry for a lot of people. someone could be both a man and nonbinary, for instance. i just worry that you're looking at nonbinary as a generic third gender, or an extension of womanhood. i mean yeah you include nblw in your tags but all your posts are about pussy-havers exclusively. what's with that? and they say go fuck yourself you pervy man pretending to be a lesbian. you tried to sneak in but i won't let you.

so you go to a lesbian blog with a dozen or so posts about queer people needing to be more weird about it and you sigh in relief. but you still see the men dni. that's odd. hoping for the best, you say hey! i know you mean well but please maybe don't put men dni at the end of the lovely posts on your lesbian blog bc some lesbians are men. and they'll be like ok!! well you're allowed ;) and you say no that's not. no. some men are lesbians not just me. you think about your own dicklessness and wonder if that's why you were given entry. and you add that even if male lesbians are allowed, there's no indication of that. how would anyone know without asking? and they're like ohh gotcha gotcha well men dni + this is for sapphics only!! and you'll be like ok well that treats the concepts of men and sapphics as mutually exclusive identities and i just told you that's not true and you agreed with me so.. i don't think that solves our problem. and they're like. ok. fine. men dni but genderfluid and multigender people are allowed! and you're like no see that's. that's still the same thing.. you're saying the same thing just with different words. if you don't want men to interact but you're fine with multigender/genderfluid/etc ppl interacting then you either don't see them as Real Men (because they don't reach a standard of Full Manhood) or Complete Men (because they're only Part-Time Men), both of which suggest that they are, in some way, not men or less-than men, which is invalidating and defeats the point of the exception in the first place (accommodation) OR that you don't really mean the dni which is confusing and inconsistent and makes guydykes feel weird and uncomfortable and excluded from the lesbian space you're trying to cultivate. and they're like um. ok. so. cishet men dni? and you're like well i think that makes more sense, but what if someone identifies as both a cishet man and a sapphic? again, if we're trying to accommodate the genderfucky populace then that has to be a possibility that is considered. and they say god you people are never happy. what do you want me to do? what am i supposed to say to keep the right men out? and you pause. you empathize with the need for a space free from dudes trying to fuck you straight and feminine. dudes who watch lesbian porn and joke about what they'd do if they were allowed into girls locker rooms. who look at you like a piece of meat, and like someone who looks at women like pieces of meat in the same way he does. you get it. you know. you want a space where you can be sapphic, too. that's why you came to these blogs in the first place. you brace yourself and you say well i don't know that there are "right men" to keep out. i don't know that there's any single label that would accomplish whatever it is you're trying to accomplish. you could go for "sapphics only" or "queers only" and i think that might be the closest thing to what you want, but it's never going to be perfect. creating any exclusive space is going to shut out people you didn't account for, and the broader the label, the more people will be shut out that you didn't want to shut out. and what about people who don't know if they're allowed? what of questioning transbians, where are they supposed to go? and, frankly, i think i might rather my dykey posts get read and appreciated by a gay guy who sees me as a man than a woman who only sees me as a sacred womb, pure from male perversions or violence or whatever. i think community might just be more complex than a dni can handle. and they look at you and say i don't want to not have a dni. i think you're too permissive. you can't just "what about" or microlabel your way into everything. go fuck yourself, i bet you're not even a lesbian anyway. go find a real problem to get mad about.

you go to a lesbian blog. you ignore the men dni because you know you probably don't even count to them. or maybe you do count and, out of respect for your manhood, they'd shun you accordingly. you try to feel okay about that. you scroll past dozens of posts about mediocre men and gagging at straight friends' boyfriends and how gross and undeserving men are of the beautiful women they couple up with and how all women should be gay so they can get treated right and and and and and. you finally find a post about curling into someone you love and feeling at peace and try to lose yourself in it. you know that feeling is what unites you, what makes you belong. you try to focus on it. you think about carding your hands through a butch's hair or lacing fingers with a femme and feeling warm and loved and more yourself than you ever have before. like this is who you're meant to be. you read about lesboys and butch boytoys and genderfucky dykes and big hairy deep-voiced wonderful women (like you want to be someday, like you wish you could make yourself) and you try to ignore the men dni underneath each and every post. and you daydream about meeting someone kind and earnest at a lesbian bar even though you don't think any such bars exist within three states of you and you can't drink and don't want to drink because you need to be in control of yourself at all times so you don't fuck up like you're always about to and here in the nonexistent lesbian bar you feel wanted and safe and in good company. you picture your ideal, happiest self. it is a mistake. ideal-you has a goatee. not the mascara one you smear on and call drag even though you know it's not drag, not really, the beard you call drag because you think everyone would look at you sadly if you told them it was just to pretend you had something out of your reach. a beard that's soft and that you grew and that cannot be smudged away if you get too comfortable with it. the dream shatters. your people pull away from you, their scoffs mixing with the mind-numbing gay girl bedroom pop you learned to settle for just to have something that almost resembled you, they all pull away and turn their backs and do not look at you. you're too close to being a man now, even though you're the same amount of man as before. and they know you're not supposed to interact with men, not as you would with dykes, at least. and it sours. it's all your imagination, all in your head, but it sours.

you sigh. you think about how small you are. how short, how narrow, how feeble. how your voice pitches up when you talk to strangers because it's easier to speak quietly when it carries more, and because you're nervous. because it's a chore to talk, like everything is. you think about testosterone. you think about how your family would look at you, the questions they would ask, your answers they would only pretend to accept. the uncomfortable glances and whispered questions they'd try to hide from you. you think about how small you are, and how small you will always be. how you don't know of a way to fix it, but even if there was one, no one would want you anymore. you'd be the only one thinking it made you a cooler dyke. you think about how you don't even want a T-voice all the time, how you'll never be able to switch it at will, because you don't know how and can't bring yourself to figure it out. you think about how your throat closes around every hint of your own attraction. how wanting is perverse, how wanting is invasive, how wanting is embarrassing and too vulnerable so it must stay anonymous, as an online witness, and how you can barely manage to form or maintain friendships because your brain makes you pull away, always spinning out and struggling to recover from the simplest of interactions. how they'll all leave you and you won't chase after them at all and how that will hurt them. how stuck you get. how it looks like nothing's holding you back, how that frustrates everyone who thought you were going to be more than you were. the people you love who understand except when it comes to being ghosted, being shut out. how you don't want to hurt them. how you can't tell them that because you're stuck. how you turn to stone when touched, how you never reach out, how you lose your speech and can't look at people, how your autism is fun and sexy until it becomes real and you never see them anymore, how much you longed for someone who knew everything without you having to explain, and who loved you anyway. how unreasonable you know that is to expect of anyone. you think about that not-even-real lesbian bar. you think about how you still can't drive. how you can't leave your home on your own, without dragging somebody into helping you. how you can't leave your body. how you can't leave your manhood behind.

you think about finding another lesbian blog and ignoring everything. about skimming it for the parts you can juice some meaning from. the parts men ignore and don't understand, and how typical of you it is to do so. or the parts where you're not welcome and you should accept that, because it's for lesbians only. how you are a lesbian anyway. how you're meant to choose lesbian or man, how each is a betrayal of some kind to yourself or your people, your family, your lovely strangers, your rare friendly acquaintances. about the parts that tell you you're not wanted, that you're ugly and lazy and gross and insert yourself everywhere without even asking. about the parts that tell you you are hated, and how lesbians are above it all by rejecting men. how lesbians are each blessed miracles. about the parts that say you should be ashamed of being whatever twisted confused freak you are, of everything, of looking and wanting or not looking or not wanting, of picking and choosing instead of taking it all in with a smile. after all, shouldn't you take it? or is your ego too fragile, as men's so often are? aren't you tired? good. we're not here for your consumption. and we sure as hell don't want your company or "community" or whatever. didn't you read the sign? no boys allowed. and if you want to come in you have to make up your mind. as if you haven't told them the only answer you have. you're both. you're both.

you know you broke the rule by interacting.

but it gets lonely sometimes. you wonder if they know.

[brittlebutch]

a lot of people seem to use Entry #61 as 'proof' for the crux of the "Brian didn't care about Tim, he was Taking Advantage of Tim's conditions and Forcing him to work as part of totheark" thing, but honestly when you think about it there's no possible way Brian could have possibly orchestrated that series of events, like you almost have to interpret that as a baffling group of coincidences

[loverboybrightsideghost]

i'm gonna be honest, seeing gifs and stuff and the so far positive reaction to the wicked movie is sort of tempting me to want to watch it, but at the end of the day, for me it just feels like i won't be able to see the actors (any of them) as the characters. not because i think they'll do a bad job, but fiyero might be the only one i will be able to really believe bc i don't really know jonathan bailey and never heard of him before this. cynthia erivo tampoco pero the marketing of the movie and general Hype has felt a little much about the actors themselves for me rather than about wicked. it's like it's about There's A Wicked Movie rather than Wicked, if that makes sense? it's too aware of itself somehow, at least to me. and i don't really like ariana grande and i already know (and maybe that's a self-fulfilling prophecy, but oh well) i won't be able to see her as anything but ariana grande, no matter how convincing she might end up being. i could make the effort w her, but i feel like even making the effort would just make me aware that im making the effort and make me Know its ariana grande even more. idk it just seems too "wicked-on-purpose-look-at-us-Big-Good-Actors-axting-in-Incredible-Iconic-Wicked-Movie" and not "this is wicked"

[ficoandleo]

[Please convince your violent husband to use the sensory deprivation tanks at Darkwick General instead of committing crimes against his own body. I've already wrangled permissions for him to use them freely, he just needs to show up.]

@ask-doctor-isami

He starts to type 'He's not my husband' but concludes that it's besides the point and a waste of time to say. He knows who he means.

He hasn't done anything abnormally dangerous since then, but if I think he's acting strange again I'll see what I can do

Not that that BTH listens to me. But he might consider it more if I suggest it

On the other hand the more I think about it the more I don't know if leaving him alone with nothing but his thoughts is a good idea

He flies off the handle at random. He might just feel worse in there

Maybe he'll tell me why he doesn't like the idea at least

[sysig]

But would you tho (Patreon)