#something about double stars

[ald3r-wolfcak3]

You have no idea how much I love this two-headed pumpkin horse

[licorishh]

double ?? upload ???? yeaaaahh i've gotten FASTERRrr for whatever that's worth so complementary blyla because guess what i miss them too (nobody was surprised by that)

[starcurtain]

I think it's really funny that everyone seems to be misinterpreting the recent Ratiorine crumbs we got, running with the idea that Aventurine thinks Ratio is actually a gentle scholar.

In the original video, Tingyun starts listing off people working with her group as models, but she only describes rather than names them: she has a lazy general (Jing Yuan), a gentle scholar (Ruan Mei), and a cool/laconic swordsman (Blade--how she got him, lord only knows).

Aventurine then gets visibly confused (that's what his "?" is all about), because the people that come to his mind for "general," "scholar," and "swordsman" don't remotely fit the adjectives Tingyun used. He thinks of Feixiao (the opposite of lazy), Sushang (the opposite of edgy), and, of course Ratio--the opposite of gentle. (As @hundredsspoons pointed out too, the Ratio emoji used is even the angry one where Ratio is throwing his e-chalk; this doctor is at his least gentle, lol.)

It's still definitely a Ratiorine crumb; Aventurine's first thought for "scholar who is hot enough to be a model" is Ratio, rather than any woman, but this is actually Aventurine thinking of Ratio as the dead opposite of Tingyun's description; he is not affirming Ratio is deep down secretly a marshmallow here.

Aventurine knows his man is a bit of an ass and accepts it as-is. 😂

[buqbite]

Halo

[m-says-hi]

Hello!

I have more sampo thoughts! Surprisingly, not about the recent event but an old event. Or not even the event itself, but something from after it

The memory bubble you get after Aetherium Wars.

Couple of things about memory bubbles before I bring up Sampo or this particular bubble’s contents. After some (admittedly brief) research on bubbles, I’ve learned they’re created by Memokeepers to preserve memories and are usually stolen from the original memory holder. In the game there are 21 memory bubbles. 20 of them belong to Herta and can be found around the Space Station. The last one is the one from after Aetherium Wars and is found on Jarilo VI.

I haven’t interacted with any of the memory bubbles myself, but I have read through all the dialogue and descriptions on the wiki. The 20 belonging to Herta all seem to put you in the pov of the memory holder. It tells it more like a story, kinda similar to Simulated Universe?

But the Aetherium Wars Bubbles only gives dialogue (very similar to Sampo’s character stories) making us more like an observer and not part of the memory. Unless we’re watching the memory of someone who was watching the conversation, but I feel like there’d be more description of the setting if that were the case.

I could go on about the content of the conversation, but I think we’ve all read through it multiple times. What really caught my attention was the beginning and end dialogue of the bubble.

(taken from the wiki. I haven’t done aetherium wars yet ;-;)

Four things stick out to me right away:

The game/The trailblazer’s thoughts notes this feels different

As I mentioned before, there is no description of the scenery showing up before you, but just two figures. My guess as to why is that this bubble wasn’t created by a stolen memory, but was made by the memory holder (or at least the memory holder was involved in the process). The memory holder being Sampo

2. There’s an implication that this bubble was left on purpose

This only adds to the point above. There’s a strong implication that Sampo left this for the Trailblazer to find. You also get an achievement for finding this bubble called Confessions of the Mask which. That kinda says it all.

But now I have two questions, the first being how? It's not said explicitly, but in a conversation with Herta it's implied that Memory Bubbles are only made by Memokeepers. So, if this was left by Sampo, either he got a memokeeper to help him (extremely possible) or he has the power to do it himself (extremely interesting)

My second question is why? 

Why would he tell us? Why is he telling us in this indirect way? My guess is it has something to do with his mask. The conversation in the bubble mentions Penacony and Sparkle. So,this was probably around the time Sampo started planning to go to Penacony to get his mask. I discussed this with a friend, and she suggested it might even be some sort of warning, which is why it’s done with a memory bubble. 

That sort of reminds me of the recent event, where Sampo spills a lot about the Fools and the Tavern, information that you would only really know as a Fool, but said it in a way that implied he wasn’t a fool. That he heard it from somewhere else, someone else, not that he knew it first hand. I wonder if his mask is sort of.. Making him unstable? (He grew increasingly dark every day) And the 7 day event was another warning. Warning of who he might become when the mask fully takes hold and a warning to not become like him

3. The game/the Trailblazer’s thought recognizes that there are multiple mysterious things about Sampo

Maybe this isn’t as important as I’m making it out to be. After all, we all know something is very Off about Sampo. But the Trailblazer recognizing it feels significant to me. It feels like further confirmation that eventually we will unravel these mysteries. Eventually.

4. “When talking to one who wears a mask, always keep your wits about you.”

This. THIS. This statement has been driving me mad since I first saw it. When I read those words I immediately thought of the translated statement from Topaz’s trailer:

“One who is unaccountably solicitous is hiding evil intentions”

(if you have no idea what I’m talking about, it’s one of my first posts)

The statements are not the same. But they feel so strongly similar, like they go hand in hand. Both are warnings. Both tell you to be careful about people who are not how they appear, people with masks and people who are falsely sincere. Both are talking about Sampo. Looking into this made me realize just how many times we've been warned about Sampo. Half of those times being Sampo himself

Something about it just makes my brain light up with possibilities and I feel like I keep pushing the statements together waiting for something to make sense and explain everything else, but I’ve yet to figure it out. So I’m left here just kind of going insane

But that’s all I have for now! Maybe someone else will have something

[madbard]

I’ve been thinking about having a double.

Maybe they’re better than you, and you resent them for that. Maybe they’re better than you, and you are in some way grateful that you don’t need to be perfect anymore, because they will be perfect for you. Maybe they’re better than you, and everyone else agrees, and you are left alone, and you hate them because of it.

Maybe they’re worse than you, and you feel such a deep empathy for them because that could have been you. Maybe they’re worse than you, and you hate them because they represent everything you hate about yourself. Maybe they’re worse than you, and everybody else agrees, and when they abandon this lesser version of yourself you must wonder how easily you could be discarded as well.

Maybe one of you is more real than the other, and you both know who it is. Maybe one is more real than the other, and you don’t know who it is. Maybe both of you are equally real, which means you are equally unreal, and as halves of what should have been a united whole you become something either so much greater than yourself, or so much less.

Maybe you were torn in half, and you will always feel the phantom pain where another consciousness was ripped from your very being, where you were born from an act of unfathomable violence.

Maybe you discovered them, as you were just living your life, and it shook you to your very core, because if nothing else was certain, you at least had a sense of yourself as a singular entity, and that sense of self can never fully be regained.

If your double experiences something, are they stealing that experience from you, or are they expanding the definition of you so that you may experience twice as much? If someone loves your double because they think it is you, is that love stolen? What if your double loves them back?

If you love your double, is it because you love yourself, or because you love the person you were, or the person you could be? Is it because they know you like no one else can? Is it because they are inescapable, as the self is inescapable, no matter how far you run? If you hate your double, does it mean the same thing?

Is your double your reflection? Are they your shadow? Are they a carbon copy or the imprint you have left, the inversion of your impression on the world?

If you kill your double, have you killed yourself? Or have you become, for the first time since they existed, an individual?

Does killing your double make you a monster, or does it finally make you human?

[emeraldspiral]

Girls don’t want to see another attempt at rebuilding the Jedi Order. Girls want Ben Solo back.

[dizzybevvie]

its so sad to me when I (blue eyes haver) say i love brown eyes and people are like, "yeah but i dont have PRETTY brown eyes, i have really dark brown eyes." and its like yeah fella, theyre brown, I meant you too.

[grasstimes]

[bacchuschucklefuck]

What about sorcerer Adaine? It'd keep the way her parents treated her consistent because of in that case they'd see her having the easy way of casting instead of studying to be a "proper" caster

this is a great idea!! the only reason why I'm not gonna pick it up is bc I've already locked down sorcerer for kristen haha

[nenoname]

it's a bit sad to me when folks cram relativity falls!dipper into an exact ford role of being a genius scientist who becomes a sci fi hero character

[constantvariations]

I remember someone saying "there's no such thing as a good racism allegory" and it's been bouncing around in my head for a while. I'm someone who typically thinks anything can work if given the right circumstances, but then I really started thinking about it and I believe they're right

Because if you want to talk about racism, you should just talk about racism

(This is unpolished and ramble-y, so strap yourselves in)

Racism is deeply ingrained into our society, no matter where you live. Imperialism and colonialism has ensured that no corner of Earth has been left untouched. Choices from hundreds of years ago are still being felt today. There's practically no end to the discussion of its effects on the world and its people

So, why should anyone feel the need to dress it up in cat ears?

I've consumed a lot of media where writers have consciously echoed in part some aspect of racism in their fantasy story: Bright 2017, Dragon Age, RWBY, the MCU, Harry Potter, Detroit: Become Human, etc. The biggest thing they have in common is that the narrative is told to side with the victims, but it somehow always ends up against them

It always sides with the status quo

It's confusing, maddening even, because the narrative oft goes out of its way to show how horrible the system is and how these folk don't deserve their treatment, so why are we going back to normal as if it's a good thing? Why are the people actively working to improve the system decried as annoying at best and monstrous at worst?

Then you look at the people who write these storylines. The beliefs they hold, the people they vote for, which charities and organizations they give to, and it all makes sense. Centrists (at best) trying to look progressive are the ones who need to dress racism up in cat ears and rainbow freckles. They set aside the long, brutal histories and crushing systemic realities to play pretend that racism is Not That Bad and is only done by Those Bad Individuals

That's why Velvet's ears are tugged instead of culled. That's why the Mantle drunkards say mean things to Blake instead of attempting to assault her. That's why everything surrounding the SDC's labor practices is so vague as to be useless while the biggest evidence of their malice is hand-waved away by a writer who says the victim "had it coming" as if someone can deserve being branded by being too much of a brat

These stories aren't meant to make the audience question why our society works off the bloodied backs of the exploited or demands we take good, hard looks at ourselves and how we've been duped into believing so much garbage about entire swathes of people. They're meant to satisfy the people who only feel bad that these things are happening because they (white folk) look like the bad guys. It's a self-congratulatory wank about how "I'm not like THOSE guys, therefore I'm a good person!"

And then there's the characters meant to convey this story in the first place: always inoffensive, mostly aimless, "not like the other girl" types that pander to that delicate palate. Blake - a conventionally attractive, pale skinned girl in fashionable clothes - used to be passionate about equality but only in the right way, and demonizes anyone who does not conform to this mindset despite having no reasoning to back it up while never once demanding better of the privileged people around her even when they do racially insensitive things

The biggest downfall of these racial allegories, be they about cat girls or orcs or elves or robots, is that they do something that marginalized folk have been forced to endure since the dawn of time: literal dehumanization. There are tangible differences between humans and whatever the allegory is, which undermines the very fundamental fact that black/asian/queer/neurodivergent/disabled/whatever folk are unapologetically, undeniably, exceedingly human. By dressing up their plights in cat ears or spottled blue skin, you're creating theater not for the people who actually live through these struggles as a means of connecting with them and providing them a safe outlet for their feelings, but giving the people who benefit from passively allowing the system to enforce said struggles a pat on the head for not being the grand wizard

I don't really know where I'm going or how to end this, so I'll just sign off with if you're going to talk about racism, just talk about racism

[fucktheroyals]

everyone watching ahsoka: Anakin!

me seeing anakin, knowing ahsoka is probably gonna tear him a new one and we are probably about to find out things we don’t wanna know:

[braceletofteeth]

Just Joong's characters saying คิดถึง-คิดถึง (I missed you so much)

[saturdays--sun]

FIANCÉ MENTION !?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

[onigiram]

TAGS. i didn't like the other ones asjbfjbsdjgb