#sorry this is such a tangent. i need to read up more theory on this after all

[dayurno]

i just saw a post about andrew and his meds and how he was probably misdiagnosed for depression but he’s actually bipolar which made him manic all the time bc of his meds and!!!! yes to me andrew has always been bipolar. anyways i just had to share this with someone what are you thoughts on bipolar andrew? i know this isn’t kevin related and for that i’m sorry

"i know this isn’t kevin related and for that i’m sorry" HRGJLDHFGDFJG KDFJG FUNNY....!!!! i do answer non-kevin related asks sometimes but the flesh and the spirit must be willing... i'd say it's occasional like an expert briefly commenting on another expert's field

i thought bipolar andrew was canon? isn't it? i've never really had any extensive thoughts about it; to me it was just a fact of the world like the foxes are orange and kevin is beautiful..... well. regardless. i think it's a good hc if that's what it is :) i'm not all that interested in diagnosing aftg characters with personality disorders and i think a diagnosis of something is not always a concrete reality of life and more so a guideline to follow to deal with a specific cluster of symptoms, but as far as they go, andrew being bipolar makes a lot of sense!

i have a friend who went through the foster system when they were younger and a few years ago i do remember we were talking about andrew and they said a lot of how he was written was taken textbook from a 'how to foster troubled children' manual, which i think is most of what i think about re: andrew's mental health. to me it is more interesting (fiction wise!) to think about the material conditions that caused him to develop the symptoms he did, and less so about the ultimate conclusion of them. does this make sense?

tl;dr: i thought andrew being bipolar was already canon, if it's a hc then it's cool :=)

[sunshades]

hello bell, I hope you're having a wonderful day. I'm very bad at articulating my thoughts but I 100% agree with you that the end scene with cathy and heathcliff standing next to the graves are indeed cathy and heathcliff, not their children! but this theory is very prevalent in the fandom and it doesn't make sense to me, which I brought up to my friends but I can't explain myself further than 'why would it be their graves considering the message of the canto and development of their relationship' and then elaborating on both to the best of my ability.... I think I chose the wrong line of thinking and now I'm stuck and it's driving me insane! how would you explain the scene being cathycliff? thank you in advance!

hi anon!! i'm really sorry this ended up super offtopic and more character analysis beam but. I LIKE TO BE THOROUGH

SO long story short i mean Yeah you're right it just doesn't make sense for these to be Other Guys after the whole thing about how they can in fact reach to each other and even if it's "too late" the love was there and it always remains.

i'll put a tldr at the end to mention some other smaller things that make the child reading incorrect, but to get way too detailed with it, the canto removes the narrative need for a second generation, because heathcliff and catherine are already taking on those roles as far as the ending goes. so let's talk about a glimpse of tranquility!

small tangent re: general reception cuz i just think it's always relevant. it's not that prevalent here, but correcting common misconceptions is kind of impossible over on twitter, and there are a lot of people who read the books years ago and don't remember some details. i still see people wondering stuff like "why did they call him linton when that's his last name?" while someone familiar with the story will pick up on how that's because he's based on linton heathcliff even more than edgar. a lot of limbus source books discussion goes by word of mouth rather than solid sources (ohh the divine comedy misinfo that goes around...) so i mean. just because more people say it it doesn't mean they're understanding it better than you. always double check 🔥

OKAY with that out of the way: much like linton is linton h. and edgar, the same goes for heathcliff and catherine, including personality (heathcliff's passion but hareton's loyalty and kindness, and on the other hand cathy e.'s impulsivity but also cathy l.'s crafty side and more reserved personality) and most importantly narrative role.

the thing with the second volume of the story is heathcliff isn't "redeemed", but the tale itself is, through hareton and cathy l. in some essays i've seen this described as a kind of fairy tale situation, with hareton being almost this "lost prince" trope, but even that "good" ending to the book is terribly bitter with the context that it was only an option for him, as a white man who could reclaim his family's wealth, while heathcliff is never able to be peaceful and free in a world that upholds the racism that victimized him to that point- this is stressed by the fact that even in death, he and catherine reunite outside of heaven, outside the bounds of society.

when it comes to limbus: i wanna link to this v good post by @/melonisopod about how heathcliff is hareton, and i have mentioned before how hindley is also heathcliff, but yeah to restate it: heathcliff eventually breaks the cycle, in the face of hindley who first subjects him to the abuse, spurring his desire to take revenge and enact that same violence on others, and in the face of the erlking who represents everything horrible people think of him and he worries he might turn into. this reflects the way hareton is framed narratively, with book!heathcliff explicitly seeing himself in him, the love and the shame and the inadequacy...

catherine is handled differently, because she does give in to the despair and follows the path laid for her by the narrative (that the only ending for their story involves her death), but the canto still hints at the dual roles through the line about the ghost of her mother, or the whole situation of the spring equinox.

so heathcliff and catherine both suffer through the events of the first generation, and obtain the narrative role of the second generation, but then the thing is: while heathcliff is obviously connected to hareton (to you, the reader), the erlking is also just. literally what would've been him. he's looking at the reflection of his future and nelly tells him: that is you, you are the devil. of course it's important that the symbol of the resolution of the story is also him, not a third hypothetical (white) child. he's the one who decides to change things:

and he's the first to acknowledge that they lost that chance of speaking and working things out together, and that now they did uh kill a bunch of people and drove their mother figure insane (nell im sorry nell may you have a lovely retirement), so THAT'S when the graveyard scene shows up-

this is meaningful enough for both him and the erlking to realize the strength of his and catherine's love- and unlike the book where we're looking at an entire saga featuring two generations of characters, and the resolution and narrative satisfation can come from either of them, here it can't be about anyone else but heathcliff. it's not a generic "oh i guess love will keep happening in the city", this is about the possibilities of their lives. it is about knowing that even if she won't wake up, it's worth moving forward and living and remembering her, and that eventually they'll meet again in some form, and that their love was not wasted, or outmatched by the hatred they had for each other and themselves.

not to go on another tangent, but a sentiment i see at times in fandom is that multiple universes/mirror selves/clones plots tend to get a reaction where people assume that the story being told is always "you're shaped by your experiences = none of those people are like you" which! absolutely makes for a great narrative like hell yes everybody let's go rewatch infinity train together! BUT it's not the only story you can tell with it! because at times instead it can be used to give you a different perspective on a character, or to give it to the characters themselves! something like umineko hinges on this line of thought, that those alternate truths are still part of you.

canto vi touches on both of these points, on one hand by having catherine (who was so caught up in her mind that she overlooked the people around her) understand that the person she loves and must protect is the one she spent her life with, but on the other hand they have heathcliff (who was so blinded by his self-hatred that he couldn't conceptualize anything beside that) see the truth of a world where they can be together, and know what even if things were to turn out badly, they will meet again.

FINAL NOTES to support all this: the river of consciousness is ofc a plot element to the city in general, but it also references the underworld rivers of greek myth- this was the haunted house canto, where the main npc turned into the house and had her body puppetted by a ghost characterized as a banshee, while the main character met his own self who was characterized as a dullahan and lead an army of the dead... we're also in a larger story based on the divine comedy- wuthering and canto vi share a lot of imagery with canto 5 of dante's inferno, and while i can't be sure of the former, the latter was definitely intentional.

with all of these together, the implication of the scene is that at the end, we're finally getting to see the shadows of the underworld at peace, emerging from the current together. and heathcliff himself clearly sees that image as the two of them!

NOW other assorted stuff:

i keep mentioning it but yeah like just to clarify in the novel heathcliff and catherine do reunite as ghosts, walking the moors together, same as the certain world cg,

dante sees "two youths who each resemble Heathcliff and Catherine"-- hareton does not look like heathcliff, he looks like catherine (first book screenshot, i didn't crop it so i wouldn't have to add another picture and have tumblr be mad at me) in that scene heathcliff goes on to talk about how actually Everything reminds him of her, but that's irrelevant in this context. first of all hareton is white, but he's also described very similarly to her, he has her same eyes and hair, and has a completely different bearing from heathcliff. (on the other hand, since we're here, game catherine being blonde makes her visually closer to catherine l.)

kind of? sidenote maybe but the canto not only describes catherine and linton as not loving each other, but it's also pretty much said that they didn't even sleep in the same bed. nelly's whole arc implies to me that only she is the costant that's always dragged in between their drama, while marrying linton isn't necessarily like... recurring? the world where cathy works at k corp and the one where she's a sailor confirm this further. so there's that

best for last: the canto's profile banners! to start with, this is the same image that was used pre-release in the roadmap to promote the heartbreaking. baseline, why even promote heathcliff's canto by using a picture that isn't supposed to be him or even a character that physically shows up in the story. but more importantly, only one grave, only one person, the golden bough in the distance. of course it's him! even more specifically, this one isn't "heathcliff from the wuthering heights of a certain world", but it's our own: left alone, but looking for the hope in the distance.

SO this got super long. but to sum it up, the child reading goes into a lot of hypotheticals that kind of ignore the narrative roles of heathcliff and catherine in the canto. it kind of just boils down to a "what if (thing that didn't happen) happened just like the book though" feeling which like, nobody really expects or even wants for other cantos? well sinclair is going off to war next

on the other hand, additional material points to the tranquility cg being heathcliff and catherine, heathcliff speaks of it by recognizing himself in it, the erlking is so personally moved by it in a way that doesn't make sense for someone seeing the daughter of the woman he loved and the son of his abuser, and just in general the ghost reading of it is a reference to the final chapter of the book in a way that acknowledges the events of the game and heathcliff's characterization.

as more of an opinion, i would say the scene even places dante's narration as a parallel to lockwood's and the story's closing lines "(i) wondered how any one could imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth", which i find really cute, especially when thinking about inferno 5 🙏

again!! sorry this got so long, but i hope it helped! every now and then i realize there's bits of the story i wanted to write on properly but then ended up only discussing with friends, so i'm always happy to share... have a lovely week anon thank u for stopping by to talk!! very flattered you though of me 😊💖!!!

[elowhinn]

OOO!!

Just read your Anti-Magic Reader and I wonder how Malleus's magic would react to the anti magic. Like he's the 5th? strongest mage. Could Reader cancel his magic immediately or would reader need to work their way up to cancelling out Malleus's magic or would reader only be able to partially cancel out such strong magic?

Would there be any backlash from the Anti-Magic to Reader and over-blotted students ? 👀

Can Reader cancel out potions if they end up consuming them? or would that be some sort of loop whole? (I'm just laughing at the imagery of an ever growing frustrated Vil if reader ends up immune to every potion he brews lol)

The Anti magic may be helpful for avoiding some opportunistic Yans but there is also a big negative, if reader gets hurt, magic might not be able to heal any grievous injuries... 👀

I have many questions and theories building up lol

hehehehehhhhe i love this ask ( im also so sorry for the late reply ive been putting off logging into tumblr for awhile because, laziness. )

If i may go on a scientific(?) tangent- considering in the ol' ancient days of human history when people from other continents go to another continent there's a tendency for them to either bring disease, or get disease

AND that got me thinking, considering yuu/mc isn't from the Twisted wonderland world itself, I'd imagine magic to be some sort of disease to yuu/mc and her body would create anti-bodies to not be infected by the magic/disease that or some weird magic doo-hickey gives em' the plot armor

scientifical tangent over: time to answer the ask itself

If it were from the start yuu/mc wouldn't have that much of a resistance to magic... yet, so in terms of cancelling out Malleus's magic- it'd be a small build up :D, as you said the dude is one of the fifth most powerful mages in the world in yuu/mc being that op in such a foreign world at the start? (Probably but huhu.. feels a bit unrealistic... I mean this is a fantasy setting already... ) but I'd imagine as the more overblots mc faces the anti-magic barrier around her and in her would strengthen and increase in size ( a walking Riddle's UM )

I'm still working on the idea of what exactly would happen with anti-magic yuu/mc during the overblots tho so :,)

Drinking any sort of potion would basically be a flavored drink, carbonated water typa feel, but basically no effect, and considering Vil is very adept in potion making... while not conventional, real poisons without magic infused would also do the same effect, no? :)

And you're right on that part huhu, let's say mc gets a rather nasty wound- or gets into an actual deadly accident- magic spells, potions, elixirs, all of the sorts wouldn't work; but this is also a chance for yans to get an opportunity to swoop in and take care of mc physically, nursing her back to health ( with a price of course, ) totally not looking at a few characters rn ( guess who /j )

[lyngracetalksnwritesnstuff]

Jiang Yanli Time Travel AU

So this has been a plot bunny of mine for a while, since I've gone down the rabbit hole of time travel and fix-it fics recently and noticed that not many (at least of the ones I've read so far, I'm sure there's plenty, this seems like too much of an obvious idea not to be ignored) of them seem to focus on Jiang Yanli, which kinda seems like an oversight to me, as she would be THE PERFECT PERSON for a time travel fix-it au.

First of all, she's seen all the sides of the story. She's seen firsthand how Wei Wuxian was pushed to do the things he did, and how some of his actions may not have been as well thought out, and how Jiang Cheng tried so hard to help him in his own way and ended up giving up on him.

I also think she saw exactly what was going on in the Jiang household and tried to help in the best way she could, because she grew up in an environment and society that told her, as a woman with limited cultivation potential, she could only be mild and gentle.

So I think, given a second chance, she has the potential to realize how her passiveness and inactivity against how their parents drove Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng apart didn't help very much, and take a much more active role in the story.

This was honestly born from my need for more Jiang Yanli in general. I love mdzs, don't get me wrong, but it could've been so much more interesting had it just given us insight into the side characters more, especially the women, instead of killing them off.

Wen Qing, I kinda understand; she was leading what they thought to be an army of Wen culivators, and they couldn't kill Wen Ning for nefarious reasons.

Then again, it also could've been interesting to see her escape and go into hididng for the thirteen years while WWX was dead, maybe running into Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan under an alias or something and getting tagled up in that whole mess.

With Yanli, I also understand her death as an important part of the story, as it's kinda the thing that drives WWX over the edge, but I also would've enjoyed it if she was still alive—just barely—and ended up getting saved and getting to raise Jin Ling and making changes in the cultivation world—She could've easily been named acting Sect Leader after JGS died (Meng Yao would've absolutely still killed him) until Jin Ling was of age, as Jin Zixuan would've still been first in line if he was in line, so that (in theory??) would give his wife presecende over Jin Guangyao.

Wow, that kinda got out of hand lol. Sorry for the side tangent.

My point: Jiang Yanli should star in more time travel aus, and I'm probably going to write it at some point. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[pianistbynight]

What are your top study strategies with piano? I'm a self-taught pianist that most started because of my love for your lie in April and how music moved people so I am always trying to improve!!!

hi! first of all, i'm sorry this took a while, i wanted to make sure i had as complete a list as possible without being too overwhelming! also not sure what level you're at, so i'm going to assume you're just starting out and you're looking to play classical music. 🙂 also this is more of a "do as i say, not as i do" bc i really struggle to do some of these consistently 🙈

try to learn some basic music theory as soon as you can. just enough to be able to read sheet music (how to read treble and bass clefs, accidentals, time signatures, basic rhythm, and key signatures) if you haven't already. that's something i regret not doing at the beginning bc the vast majority of music and all of classical music are written in sheet music and you get so much more info from it than you can from the best of synthesia videos. beyond that, knowing music theory -> pattern recognition, so it can help with sight reading and memorization. this is the youtube series i learned the basics from. it's pretty comprehensive although i find he's sometimes hard to hear and goes off on a tangent. at the very least, you can use it as a guide for what to type into the search box to get a more concise explanation as there are lots online!

familiarize yourself with the basic technical exercises (scales, arpeggios, triads, etc.) in every key bc those patterns and fingerings appear all the time in classical music.

practice sight reading. (yes, i know it hurts the brain, it hurts mine too, but it will really really speed up the learning process when learning new repertoire so we can focus on the more fun aspects of music! 😆😅)

practice every day! and not just moving your fingers, your mind needs to be present and your ears need to be listening (e.g. are you playing with the right dynamics? are you moving in a way that will get the right tone? how is your posture?). sometimes it's a lot to be thinking about as you're playing, so it helps to record yourself and listen back. once you feel yourself losing focus or making the same mistakes over and over again, maybe it's time to take a little break bc practice makes permanent and you don't wanna injure yourself 🙂

on that note, playing an instrument is kind of like playing a sport in that you need to make sure you use proper form so you don't injure yourself (using bigger muscle groups like your arm and gravity rather than forcing the sound through blocky fingers)! if you play on a digital, the keys will generally be lighter than on an acoustic (highly recommend trying to play on both to compare!), so making a conscious effort to play the way you would be forced to on an acoustic is all the more important.

i hope this helps! my ask box is always open if you have any more questions or just wanna talk music 🎶💗 i'm really excited for you! expressing yourself through music and sharing it with others is so fulfilling 😊

[sunstream7]

Phone Charms

OC x Canon -1429 words JB, the world's worst person to ask for a good plan or for reasons not to go for the guy

“JB, I know you say you support my decisions wholeheartedly and by that you mean you think I should do whatever I want because it entertains you, but you have GOT to talk me out of sending this text.”

“Do it, what's the worst that could happen?”

Chiara could barely hear her own disappointment over JB’s snickering, rubbing her temples as if trying to soothe an idiot induced migraine. She was, of course, except this time she was the idiot inducing her own mental anguish.

“Walk me through why you like him again? Well- aside from the obvious.”

“I don't KNOW why I like him! That's the problem!”

“Its because he’s hot, isn't it?”

Chia could hear the smugness dripping off of each of JB’s words, and that same ‘gotcha’ smirk that she’s almost permanently had since day one.

“I guess? I mean it helps, but like- thats a subjective thing”

“Nuh uh, he is OBJECTIVELY hot”

“What if I was a lesbian?” “Are you?” “If I was, I wouldn't be daydreaming about kissing that AWFUL man during math class-”

“-and during every other class, and group meetings, and afterschool, and during lunch, and-”

JB was cut off with a firm smack to the back of the head, which, unfortunately, did little to dissuade her, just sending the girl into a fit of laughter, which much to Chiara's dismay, didn't stop her tangent.

“Hells- why do we like ANY of them? They're all terrible!”

“You’re terrible too, that's why I have to deal with dumb and dumber every day.”

“Okay glass house, you’re in the ‘we all suck but it's okay because we’re attractive’ group too! And don't give me any of that ‘It’s different’ bullshit, we all know you've got some DeEp AnD eDgY bAcKsToRy- WAIT”

Lord help everyone involved every time JB had an idea. Chiara loved the girl, but her ideas would give Jackass a run for their money. Her last three ‘theories’, read as ‘godawful plots, plans, and schemes’ were:

1- Pavlov Pran into liking her (Ayla beat her to the psychological tricks, she wears vanilla perfume for a reason)

2- Get Lynn to organize a group meeting and bank on Pran being late, leaving Chiara as the only person to fill him in on what happened (Chiara made a mental note to bring a non-romance novel to book club, since JB clearly doesn't need any more fuel to her little meet cute scenarios) (Lynn also didn't agree, citing the fact that it would be ‘too mean spirited’ to play a trick on someone who already struggled to come to meetings. Chiara later learned that this was not only directed at Pran, and was a vague comment on her own habitual tardiness. Jerk)

3- bribe Jeremy into getting Pran to go somewhere, only to bait-and-switch him into a date. (He would just leave. Chiara would also probably leave. And that was if they could get the world's most apathetic man to do something in his life. JB and Ayla were good at strong-arming people into things, but anything JB asked would get back to Pran, and anything Ayla did would result in unknowable amounts of psychological damage.)

“CHIARA I KNOW WHY YOU LIKE HIM, HE’S FUCKED UP LIKE YOU-”

Maybe the psychological warfare was actually the better plan. Did health insurance cover ‘damage inflicted by two brutal high school girls?’

“Wow. thanks for the character analysis”

Not a single part of her dry tone put JB off, simply encouraging her.

“I KNOW! I’m so good at this! But seriously! Can’t you guys bond over deeply rooted childhood traumas or something?!-”

The law would understand underage drinking at times like these

“-Jeremy already talked major shit about Pran’s parents during that one meeting, and you've said some nasty shit about your dad-”

“-Del’s dad-”

“-Right, sorry, Del’s dad, but STILL! He’s so hateful, there’s got to be some room in that cold dead heart for someone who can be as bitter as he is!”

Lynn recommended deep breaths to collect herself, it was some bullshit advice, but it had trained Chiara in the art of ‘worlds most disappointed sigh and glare.’ This wasn't enough to stop JB. Nothing ever was. As much as Chiara admired her determination, it was a lot more fun when she wasn't on the receiving end of it.

“Hear me out-”

“-How about i dont-”

“-Shut up, you dont have a choice, now im actually onto something.”

Wow. A cold day in Hell. No sense fighting, it would only make JB dig her heels in deeper at this point.

“Everyone knows that man has not felt an emotion since the eighteen hundreds that isn't spite, loathing, or irritation, and are you any different?” “HEY!- I have emotions-”

“That aren't anger, bitterness, or hypertension?”

“Hypertension isn't an emotion-”

“-Shut up, im not done. There's CLEARLY some overlap there. Now I'm not saying you have to armchair psychologist him, and if you say the word ‘fix’ I will throw something at you, because we don't need you looking like Bob the builder, but you can relate.”

“And why does that matter?”

“Arent you the one that always says you should have a good foundation before adding romance?”

“JB, hatred towards the world doesn't classify as a ‘good foundation-”

“Besides the point-”

“Then WHAT is the point?!”

Most days Chiara could sit through rants of all kinds. It was good background noise, her own personal podcast about drama and relationships and people she really wont admit to caring for, but this was her own love life- or lack thereof- and so being read to filth in some roundabout way of understanding her own romantic longing.

“I think you two have more fundamental similarities than you’d like to admit.”

She wasn't getting out of this for the next three to five business days, was she?”

“Do I even want to ask you to elaborate?”

“Nope! Because I’m going to anyways!”

That self-approving grin was back in full force as JB launched into another borderline incoherent ramble.

“You’re like- the same person! Sure he is literally the polar opposite when it comes to behavior, you reactive dog of a woman, but still! Something or other about core values, you get it?”

Chiara just let her shoulders slump, shrugging as she finally met JB’s excited gaze.

“Honestly? I don't. At least there's something redeemable about him somewhere, even if its buried in that-”

“-Cold dead heart?”

“I was going to be nicer, but yeah.”

JB was quiet for a long while, and Chiara wasn't going to spoil that silence earlier than necessary, but when JB spoke up again, her voice was softer than normal, almost sympathetic.

“You said there was something redeemable about him.”

“Of course there is. Theres.. Something at least alright in almost everyone, even if they are absolutely awful”

“So what’s his?”

She could use a cop-out answer. Something easy. A “He’s hot” or “It’s impossible to rile him up so I can talk about whatever I want”JB would probably take that.

“He’s… really good to the people he cares about. They are few and far between, but it's.. Almost loyal to a fault.”

Ah. The dreaded ‘Ah-Ha!’ moment. A ‘Eureka!” if you will. You could practically hear the gears turning as Chiara tried to rationalize her own damning evidence, which, clearly, wasn't happening fast enough by JB’s standards, as any thought that had been loading was quickly dispelled by her words.

“And YOU, my friend, are the exact same way! You're just more… vulnerable with who you actually like! Same bitch, same problems! See? I am SO smart!”

Any other words she said quickly blended into the usual background sound, was she? Was she really the same way? It was rare to have real thought provoking discussions when it came to the art of wooing, but maybe JB had been onto something. The world was unkind and unfeeling- explained as ‘life just kinda sucks sometimes’ or ‘everything in this world is awful.” and yknow, the world is really awful sometimes- she could reconcile with that viewpoint. It was far from the most awful thing about the world. 

She scooped up her little brick of a phone, a Nokia, still with the antenna, and stared at the typed out message for a few more moments before sending it, tossing the phone in her bag without waiting for a response, and beep of possible rejection drowned out by the jangle of copious amounts of phone charms.

| can we go to the botanical gardens this sunday?

[thebunniesgrim]

I'm getting way too much enjoyment watching how some of Helluva Boss fandom is raving over the popular current theory that stolas is going to die in the series.  

Because of the Oops episode and how the skull and cross bones in the smoke clock landed on Stolas and other stuff  

I.e.  

Having imp assasins in LooLoo Land 

Stella  

Striker  

His lullaby saying that when he’s gone Octavia will be ok and that today could be his last (I could go on a whole tangent about that lullaby it's so good)  

Western Energy  (that's it)

I'm not saying I want stolas to die but am I also saying it would be funny to watch the fandom go up in flames about it?  

Well call me Phineas and Ferb because

Yes  

yes I am 

You can stop reading here if you want. Under the cut I'm just rambling justifying why I think what I think. there are some jokes and lighthearted critiques, but you know... you have the option to look and give your own opinions  :)

I mean I have my grievances with him like I've said in my other post (shameless plug Warning I'm very illiterate in case you haven't noticed) but like I don’t wish death upon him I still like Stolas believe it or not   

lol.

In fact I hope stolas doesn’t die and mostly I don’t think stolas is going to die at all frankly. I highly dout the writers/viv/whoever is going to actually kill off stolas mostly because like any time stolas is in danger its so underminded like- ok LooLoo land is mostly a joke (good joke too I like the end where Stolas turns the imp guy into stone good pay off), Stella played for laughs beacues shes making the hit right in front stolas and it doesn’t get paid off till the next season which is fine the seasons are short, Western Energy he was fine like an episode later.  

If home boy cant be hospitalized for more than one episode he isn't dying  

Granted I will allow some leeway as we don’t know how much time has passed since Western Energy to Oops but it- I don’t think stab wounds and broken arms heal that fast regardless of that :/ if I'm being honest especially if it was a holy weapon just saying.  

Even if he did die that brings up a lot of questions like what happens to demons when they die? Are all demons immortal and can only die due to physical damage? are Asmodeus and Beelzebub going to outlive Fizz and Vortex if imps and hellhounds/other demons aren't immortal. Were the 7 deathly sins ever babies like everyone else? If demons are immortal and can live forever and the Ars Goitias can only be killed by angelic weapons that are hard to get, I'm assuming, why do, they need to have children or heirs? Why even have children at all? If angelic weapons can kill demons do demonic weapons exist and can they kill angels or other holy beings?   

All this and more on You Can't Answer These Questions at 8 

Lol  

anyways

but in all seriousness 

Here’s the real question  

If they did actually kill Stolas, will they bring him back?  

Riddle me this batman  

there's a very the very real outcome of them bringing stolas back through some magical demonic bs anyway so like it really won't matter. They're not going to have Stolas bite the dust permanently and if they are... respect honestly (the balls frankly).  

People will cry, I'll laugh because I'm heartless, he’ll be like resurrected or something, and everyone will be happy or mad idk.    

Like it's one thing for Millie to get hurt in the other episodes because there wasn’t a major plot point you know? (and she’s not important) There was no lingering scene on it with sad music. In when stolas got hurt it was this big thing and for him to just be like fine an episode later is like what? How are you going to have this big emotional climax with no emotional orgasm (sorry) afterwards. And like no I'm not letting this go what the heck? You had the whole fandom screeching about Blizto going to sloth just to do nothing with it and put a twist about Barbie and then also have stolas be perfectly fine and dandy the next episode afterwards. Are there no stakes in this show? Like I get that Helluva Boss wasn’t planned in the beginning but like come on... When Viv approves of the episodes does she look back at the other episodes? Is she even there? Is she ok? Is she and everyone else seeing a bigger picture that I'm not? Has she sat down and watched Helluva Boss from the very beginning and watched them from episode one to now? I mean really not just a once over to send it off to youtube I mean really took a good and hard look at the episodes? The way they mix episodic, and story is really messing with me I'm going to go back and watch all the episodes from the beginning just to make sure it’s not me.

I like how I said in my tangent about Hell fire (shameless plug part 2) I said I liked the new episode over all give or take some extremally small nitpicks yet here I am complaining :) guess I'm a liar   

soo yeah, I really don’t think they're going kill off their golden child, their best boy, their little botanist boo, their dopamine deficient dandy, their booboo bear, their uwu baby boi, their uke wukey cinnamon roll, their twinky little baby owl, their Boo thang, their stary eyed savant, their sad beige gay, their smoopy woopy do, their snoogum-boogums, their skidamarink a dink a dink skidamarink a doo, their-  

ok 

I'm done  

I'm so sorry   

[gotta-pet-em-all]

Okay nerds. This is… going to be loose as all hell. So. Sorry. I also don’t have sources for most of this stuff. Or the proper format. The wifi here is bad at academic journals and I don’t feel like squinting at a bunch of crusty pdf documents. This is generally going to be about broad cultural trends and disability theory. 

So history is big and weird and cultural. And what I’m going to be talking about actually goes back to the great Kalosian war. We don’t even have records of who they were fighting, not to mention borders have changed a lot and their enemies may no longer exist. There are theories, sure, but frankly I don’t care and this ain’t about them anyways. 

No one agrees when it was, but at some point in history, there was a shift away from battling with weapons like swords and knives, and towards Pokémon battling. And that particular shift is so so important for disabled history, because it’s something that allowed disabled people more social mobility. 

I’ll back up a bit. So, in what I will be referring to as the Sword Era, monarchies were the default form of government because they’re stable and decisive. People often needed swift governments because they were often under attack from their neighbors. 

Alola was. Frankly pretty damn isolationist due to their geographic location, but I’ll get to that in a second. 

So. Sword Era meant that warriors would have the most upward social mobility. You could gain power and glory by honing your body and proving yourself in battle! Scholars had this to a lesser extent, being good choices for advisors and members of the court, but they were typically too eccentric (read: likely autistic) to participate in the highly neurotypical social structures of the upper court, and it was more common to simply have one at your manor. 

This is the part where I cut in and go on a tangent about how there’s this pervasive idea that all physically disabled people are gloriously intelligent prodigies, trapped in a body unsuited for athletics but with a brilliant intellect and a quick wit. That’s straight up not true and it’s confirmation bias. Sure, you had a decent number of physically disabled scholars. But you also had disabled people who were more like me. Who had brain fog or other cognitive impairments, who had undiagnosed or unmedicated tismHD, who were in so much pain that they couldn’t think properly.

Those people? They stayed at home, with their family as caretakers. And… hm. This wasn’t great. I’m skimming over this one because it hits a little close to home lol.

Alolan royalty was largely about distribution of resources and conflict resolution. And as technology progressed, they were able to delegate more of their work to specialize committees that could make better decisions about things like urban planning, and this lifted a lot of the responsibility from them. Alolan royals were scholars first and foremost, who trained in geography and politics and alchemy and ecology, and there are records of a good deal of them being…frankly unhappy and overwhelmed by their lot in life. 

That said, Alolans were largely community oriented, which caused some large cultural clashes when the Kalosian war arrived. So disabled people in Alola were seen as people for their entire community to take care of, rather than for their family alone to help. And this means that disabled Alolans, historically, have some advantages! If you’re disabled in Alola, there are fewer elevators and wheelchair accessible doors, but people are a lot more likely to open doors for you or offer a ride pokemon to assist you up the stairs.

That said. Because Alolans are also very traditional, they’re actually behind in accessibility compared to other regions. They’re just very good at compensating. There’s a project in the works that aims to find a way to preserve some of the linguistic quirks of alolan in braille forme, so that people have better ways to connect to their dual cultural identity as both blind/visually impaired AND alolan. I’m part of the kickstarter for that one, so I can get a textured “Welcome to alola” sticker when they move into the next phase.

So, when and how did the sword era end? For this, we actually have a myth in the Veilstone museum. It’s muddied somewhat by being oral history, but it goes like this:

A young man, callow and foolish in innocence, came to own a sword.

With it, he smote Pokémon, which gave sustenance, with carefree abandon.

Those not taken as food, he discarded, with no afterthought.

The following year, no Pokémon appeared. Larders grew bare.

The young man, seeking the missing Pokémon, journeyed afar.

Long did he search. And far and wide, too, until one he did find.

Asked he, "Why do you hide?" To which the Pokémon replied...

"If you bear your sword to bring harm upon us, with claws and fangs, we will exact a toll."

"From your kind we will take our toll, for it must be done."

"Done it must be to guard ourselves and for it, I apologize."

To the skies, the young man shouted his dismay.

"In having found the sword, I have lost so much."

"Gorged with power, I grew blind to Pokémon being alive."

"I will never fall savage again. This sword I denounce and forsake."

"I plead for forgiveness, for I was but a fool."

So saying, the young man hurled the sword to the ground, snapping it.

Seeing this, the Pokémon disappeared to a place beyond seeing...

So! Some people think it may be a literal interpretation of the hero of Galar, or the mad creator of the Ultimate Weapon in Kalos. Other people think it’s a more fictional way of processing what happened. I don’t care enough to get into the discourse, but the point is, we can clearly point to the end of the Sword Era.

And It’s The Pokeball Revolution.

If we take the interpretation of the myth to be figurative, it’s about not only overhunting and violence for the sake of violence, but shame. People were ashamed, the land was ravaged, and they were starting to pay the price. We don’t know what triggered it, and we suspect that it was very deliberately forgotten about. This is when you see the Evocation Movement in art, which frequently depicted moments in everyday life, or sleeping pokemon, as if trying to preserve and appreciate this joy after taking it for granted.

Shortly following this was the Alchemic Renaissance, during which people started really trying to study and categorize pokemon. No one had taken on anything as ambitious as the compiled regional pokedex yet, but there were scholars who studied one pokemon or one type and did so intensely.

And alongside this, you started seeing people get portraits done with their pokemon. Not just official ones with big strong pokemon, but things like the Old Man’s Treasure1, in which the treasure is a sprigatito that he is eagerly showing off to those around him. 

And these are things that have survived! These tell us that people were learning to live alongside and love their pokemon! We also see the precursors to the modern pokeball, which were carved from marble or wood.

Later, we get the apricorn, which makes pokeballs much more accessible. And this is where disabled history really kicks up a notch, and we get the Crip Revolution, a social movement dedicated to disabled people and their support pokemon finally gaining independence. They got together and shared their experiences, and a couple alchemists of the time started listening and finding a niche.

But it wasn’t always good. Some of them shared experiences with abusive caretakers, or realized that they were being abused because they’d gained context for what happened. And we started getting this massive social question of whether the family caretaking model was really the best. The medical community was surging in knowledge of how to treat people, and the disabled community started offering their services as lab rattata. Some of them helped with advancements that are used even today, such as the prototypes for a shirt buttoner for those with low coordination. But there was a rather high profile case, the Fever Night2, where this didn’t happen, and it prompted the medical community to seriously re-examine their ethics considerations and how they conducted experiments. They did manage to save most of the victims in time, but the project was shut down and its assets sold off.

Another thing that comes into play here is accessibility. Because if a rapidash hates those stairs, and you build a ramp, a disabled person may also benefit from the ramp. Incorporating pokemon into society actually expanded the public’s view of what body types need to be accommodated for, even if those are relatively uncommon, like dwarfism. Travel became easier, and cultures mixed more even in the same region.

This is getting long, oops. Anyways, disabled people used their newfound freedom to start participating in pokemon battles, and this was generally a lot better! Blind/deaf trainers struggled a lot with this format, and made their own organizations, but social mobility was becoming less of an issue. Now, it was about traveling and independence and showing off their skills.

Another thing with travel is the use of Hidden Machines. These are gradually being phased out as many regions begin adopting the Ride Pager system, but a Hidden Machine is a way of standardizing the safest way possible to make a route accessible. Many pokemon are able to cut down a tree, but those with HM training are shown to be less likely to injure themselves or their trainer doing so.

One last thing before I go. About the future.

People have been leaking documents online after the Flare bullshit. And, uh. There was a set of “Ugly Laws”3 that said the quiet part aloud. That in the new world they wanted to make, disabled people would be committing a legal offense just by existing in public. The idea was that being disabled was inherently begging for pity and making people uncomfortable. And I guess it just goes to show that even an organization that claimed to want a better future didn’t understand how to make it, and just wanted to get rid of inconvenient discomfort. 

We don’t have a lot of answers for the disabled future. Is it ethical to cure Deafness, to give a baby a colchear implant? What about the currently unavailable possibility of getting something similar when you’re older? Will certain disabilities be cured out of existence, out of community? What happens if someone doesn’t want the cure they are offered? Can we really find an accessibility solution for ancient ruins? Should we?

Whatever happens. You just have to keep fighting, one day at a time.

//ooc stuff under cut

1.https://useum.org/artwork/Old-Man-s-Treasure-Das-Katzchen-Karl-Gussow-1876 

2. Fever Night is fictional, and not elaborated on much. It referred to a series of experiments on curing “the malaise,” which is generally thought to be clinical depression. Due to a misunderstanding in dosages, the patients all developed Serotonin Syndrome and wandered the streets in a daze. Worth noting that this was done out of genuine desire to help these people. In the wake of Fever Night, it was decided that more thorough testing was required before administering medicines.

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_law Ugly laws are very real, and very much happened more recently than anyone would like to admit. The last one was repealed in Chicago, in 1974.

[asherlockstudy]

One of the loudest episodes to me is the chilli bowl jordan more, and I don't even read either of their responses to the culture comment as having taken it to mean straight culture as opposed to evangelical, but who knows.

When Link mentions Christy turning the lights off to shut him up, and jordan wants to ask, he says "i don- rhett doesn't have to answer it :)" which is either masterful ship bait or whatever you would call what he does in your theory of making comments that are a bit too real to poke at rhett. ("the other person who knows first hand doesn't have to answer :)")

rhett only seems to notice and fake laugh when jordan points out the question about link's intercourse habits would not be for rhett.

he of course still is happy to express his opinions and knowledge (not for the first time either lol) on link's talkativity in the bedroom (poor by just wants to connect smh stop shaming him) which of course could be just that they are open and have talked/argued a lot about their habits, or equally work with other theories that they always drop hints about like poly stuff etc. he also feels the need to clarify "the first time he had sex *with her*" you know, so no one will assume that he knows this from first hand experience, despite being something they have talked and joked about for years.

but after a long while of talking about sex and using cheese as a euphamism for orgasm, and link's preference for looong sex and his struggles to cheese more than once and getting engrossed in the subtextual convo and jokes to the point of mostly forgetting to care about the game and the non-subtextual meaning of what they were saying, rhett, looking pleased with himself and desk patting, says "so I double cheese myself and I double cream link :)"

and link responds with seemingly too much sincerity: "I'm alright with that!"

rhett, as typical, gets spooked and brings it straight back to purely game talk lol

it's a great watch tbh, like if this is all bait, it would be very impressive and also very manipulative.

but it seems like sometimes you put that wonderful lesbian between them and they lose a little control on their perfectly straight besties personas. who knows what the real them is like though, i think they cultivate what they put out based on the audience, maybe even census data, because sometimes the bro culture vibe shows up on EB and can be a bit jarring (i remember seeing comments about rhett saying "when i was f*cking my wife's brains out" which did feel uncharacteristically crude and exaggerated)

meanwhile to my understanding the gmm audience has a heavily female demographic. but they have successfully driven a huge chunk of the community which would be interested in their baiting away, so why would they insist on getting gayer and maintaining or trying to build on such a tiny audience demographic (shippers and such)

sorry ! major tangent lmao I'm just rambling

Yeah that was one WILD episode.

[scoops404]

6. For Deep in the Dream of the Game (I hope I remembered that title correctly 🫡) and 17. if you didn't answer those yet :D

Hi honelle!! <3 For this ask game

6. What’s one fact about the universe of Deep in the Dream of a Game that you didn’t get a chance to mention in the fic itself?

You nailed the title, hell yeah!

Punz and Sam ended up making a huge castle/village in the Nether and like farmed everything they possibly could in their time there. There was also something going on with the villagers in that they could speak and were more intelligent than they seem to be in the game itself, but I realized that tangent wasn't really serving the heart of the story, so I just hinted at it. There's also color theory around the color blue -> once they accept they're stuck and need to come together to live anyway, everything is blue (the bed and the soulsand campfire), which is also George's color and the one he sees the best. it's George being the true heart of the story, even though he'd argue that's Dream. Additionally, there's a line, either directly or bastardized, from the End Poem in every chapter after chapter 1. The gods of the poem can kind of speak through George. If he were a better listener, he would have heard them more than just in Finnster's funeral scene. (sorry, that's like 4 facts, my bad. I have longwindedness disease, if you hadn't heard)

17. What highly specific AU do you want to read or write even though you might be the only person to appreciate it?

The beauty of a highly specific AU is that I have to stumble upon it. I can't want it too badly or ask for it or it won't happen. I can't even know i want it until i'm reading it. Examples: the baseball AU in Teen wolf that made me understand the game. The WWII fic for Supernatural that did more to teach me about the mechanics of war than any class i had in school. So I feel like I have no idea and even if I thought I had an inkling of an idea, it could just as easily fall flat for me if someone wrote a fic to my specifications lol

Thanks for asking!

[jjk-confessions]

To my sibling in christ anon

Sorry fam but I cant still cant get behind that theory you do you but i do acknowledge that MAPPA milks tf outta of HI arc and i’ve already explained my side of the story

“I think Akutami failed to show how much Gojo misses his past and how this “outweights” his dream to justify why Gojo doesn’t mention it at the airport.”

Gojo has ALWAYS been the one who longs for his past like it show through his whole schtick of “no one can take away the kids youth” ever since his first introduction and just in case yalls stopped reading the manga after gojo’s death, there’s flashback scenes of gojo thinking about geto LOTS (which is a big symbolism of gojo’s past). Gojo was all like “i need to catch up I was left behind” (pertaining to geto) right before he killed all the elders. It’s never about “outweighing” gojo’s dream. It’s about being absolutely traumatized by his upbringing/past, not being able fully and properly process it that it holds him back and self destructs him. Also again, just in case yall stopped reading the manga after gojo’s death, his dream was actually fullfiled although yes gojo isnt there, his kids are now the new ppl in charge and they gave us hope that they will do better than gojo in more significant ways not just from how powerful they are(which i can go tangent but whatever not now).

“His dream was born from his past, but Gojo is more than a man that peaked in High School and never moved on from that.”

Yes, I agree with that but I also think he’s a guy who peaked in high school and never moved on. He can be two sides at the same time cuz it makes him such a real and complex character. I think this is the part where I say that the fandom hold such an “idealized” version of Gojo in their head that strips him out of his nuances. Yes, he is a teacher who looks forward to molding his students and bettering the future BUT he is ALSO emotionally stunted mofo who is stuck in the past like i explained earlier which (like you said and i can agree anon) makes him “believe that people cannot understand him because of his power” cuz this is reinforced by his past experience with Geto and being a weapon throughout his life. This makes him hard to fully connect with ppl around him and effectively isolating himself when he actually got ppl who care for him. It’s ok to say that Gojo is flawed. It doesnt make his character any less but very interesting and multifaceted

I feel like it is Akutami who stripped Gojo of his nuances when he let Nanami say how he’s just a Jujutsu pervert that never cared for anyone and not even Geto disagrees

BFFR. This is like saying that gege strips out yuuji of his nuances when sukuna constantly insults him that he’s just some weak cockroach and nothing else 💀💀 (which yuuji may have his weak moments but he constantly gets up and kicks fucking ass, proving sukuna wrong).

as for what nanami said to gojo, lets try to put that dialogue in full sentence. Im well aware that there’s shit ton of translated versions of dialogue but lets stick to what we are talking about

“You live for jujutsu. You don’t weld it to protect something. You use it solely for the sake of satisfying yourself. You’re a weirdo.”

(If we talking about raw scans/translation, Replace that weirdo into pervert whatever)

Lowk nanami is kinda right actually about “you live for jujutsu..you use it for solely for the sake of satisfying yourself” like if we look back to the fights we see Gojo genuinely having SO MUCH FUN with sukuna fight. AGAIN, it is spoon fed to us in gojo’s after life with gojo’s “I had fun” dialogue about the sukuna fight. Also, according to interviews, Gojo chooses student with a powerful potential like if we say he takes over half of the kyoto kids i gurantee you he WILL ABSOLUTELY FOLD and prolly wont give two fucks when recruiting some kyoto kids (who despite being the same oppressive system of jjk like tokyo tech). Lets be real he chooses kids who have impressive abilities already becuase he delights in power! While yes, the way that nanami said is HARSH AF, there hold some truth to it but also since gojo is a nuance and complex character, there were times he showed us that’s wrong, that he genuinely cared for ppl aka his students.

-from yall-need-better-reading-comprehension anon

.

[jasontoddiefor]

I absolutely adore your Jiang Fengmian and Cangse Sanren just being friends posts so much because my personal theory is that they were great friends and people were weird about platonic-male female relationships and shitty about how a beautiful, renowned women married someone insignificant in their eyes. It’s so nice and refreshing and I’m tired of the whole he’s creepy and obsessed with a dead woman instead of his two best friend died and he’s trying to give their son a good life. Let the man be complex! Is he is a great parent? No, but he was arguably a better dad than attic wifer and lecher, a C level parent and someone who was kind to common folk and let their kids play with his disciples, that making him into this villain character that’s either super creepy and gross or apathetic and completely neglectful and letting Madam Yu do inhumane abuses in front of him without retort is so weird.

Sorry for the tangent, I just love you having a platonic friendship of two souls both a little bit in awe of each other’s worlds. Let him be a lowkey depressed man with his two best friends gone and dead and is now just trying his best to be a good Sect Leader and still failing at times. Let him have some complexity.

Anon you made my day with this ask.

Like, I think the "grieves the idealized version of someone he loved (romantically)" is fine, like, whatever, but it's also kinda basic?

And if they were genuine platonic friends only, it would also add to the narrative IMO? MDZS very much works on a "things left unsaid and left unacknowledged" kind of theme, and a friendship that isn't allowed to be seen as such would fit just right in. From what we see, JFM is a very mild man as well, so of course there'd be questions, misunderstandings and such messy ugly rumors.

And I think the fandom also just generally exaggerates JFM? Like while reading and watching either adaption, I mostly got a sense that this is a man who has resigned himself to living alongside his wife and mostly doesn't know how to parent any of his kids in a way that doesn't infuriate YZY so he decided that being more hands off in general is better. But not this mess of obsessive to neglectful?

Like, thos interpretations can be fun, love me a good dark fic, but that's just not what canon gives me?

But yeah!!! you're right!!! Let him be a lowkey depressed man with his two best friends gone and dead and is now just trying his best to be a good Sect Leader and still failing at times.

Also here take a snippet of friendship bc I couldn't find much on AO§:

Cangse Sanren knocks on his door until Jiang Fengmian drags himself out of bed. He doesn’t know it is her or he wouldn’t have answered the door in his sleeping robes. She doesn’t notice, of course she doesn’t, and Jiang Fengmian is relieved that nobody else is up this early.

If he didn’t know any better, he’d claim Cangse Sanren only got up early to spite Lan Qiren and his expectations of her, but she came with the habit.

“Fengmian, I need you to go shopping with me,” she declares boldly. He knows that her expectation is now, although most shops won’t open for another two hours most likely. She probably wants to go exploring the area early – and ditch the disciples accompanying him, except maybe Wei Changze. She behaves even stranger around him and Jiang Fengmian is glad to have finally found something to tease Wei Changze about.

“And why do I need to go with you?”

“I need someone to tell me when the sellers are ripping me off!”

He knows that she has gotten a much better understanding of average prices now, and doesn’t have the heart to tell her that he knows as little about the prices of average street food stalls as her. Sect heirs, generally speaking, do not go shopping in the places Cangse Sanren finds her most favorite trinkets.

Still, she grins at him and Jiang Fengmian finds himself smiling back. He kicks her out of his room to get dressed, for his sense of propriety more than hers. Cangse Sanren has a rather tolerant view on partial nudity, even to a Yunmeng native. He considers waking another disciple to tell them that it is not last night’s curse that made him disappear, but settles on writing a quick note instead.

“Where are we going?” he asks Cangse Sanren the moment they’re out of the door.

She grins again, tellingly, and takes him by the hand to drag him into a street of craftsmen he’d have never seen without her. She hardly shuts up, praising every piece of art, the food, and Jiang Fengmian whenever he points out a piece of jewelry that would be particularly unpractical for nighthunting. Most of them look like gifts one of Jin Guangshan’s terrible cousins had tried to give her.

He thinks it’s the closest he’ll get to having a sister, but he’ll keep that thought quiet, least of all it betrays something else.

[0809sysblings]

I was listening to Double's instrumental and there's like, the sound of a baby or small child?? What is going on??

very good question, i would also like to know the answer!

yeah tbh i don't have a very confident idea on what it means... i guess i've got a few possible ideas as to what it could signify but... again, i'm not confident in them so do with these what you will 👍!

also this is kinda long and rambly lol oopsie daisy...

it could represent John having been just born (as he directly refers to himself in the song as "a newborn" and also talks about how he was "born" only very recently in Neoplasm). now if this was meant to mean this, I would think they would have used the crying of a newborn baby to represent it since they cry when they're born, not laugh. which the audio seems to contain laughing, not crying. and newborns cannot laugh yet, only cry. so maybe instead of having just been born it's meant to allude to the fact that he's very very young.

TANGENT INCOMING...

--skip if you want it's not super relevant. maybe interesting to think about, but not completely relevant to this.--

cause i'm not really sure when exactly John split! was it before the murder(s)? during? after? idk lol.

i REALLY need to actually sit my ass down and read those long ass tarot card analysis posts for MeMe because i haven't really read any yet because i suffer from Cannot Fucking Sit Down And Focus To Read Giant Paragraphs Of Words disorder... which is ironic because i love rambling and making long posts. as you can see.

but anyway. maybe he split to deal with the stress leading up to it. or maybe he split to deal with the stress of the murder(s) having already happened and to take the responsibility even if he didn't actually kill anyone. it's not uncommon at all for an alter to split afterwards to take on the aspects of a trauma that can't be accepted.

for example- if Mikoto is the murderer, maybe John split to be someone who did want to murder the victim(s) and to be someone who doesn't feel any guilt over having done it. and then the other characteristics to his personality are to support this: unapologetic, doesn't take any shit, fine with being violent to protect himself and others, doesn't feel bad about rebelling, etc. hell, he could even legit believe he was the murderer depending on how far his role to take responsibility for it goes.

if John is the one shown mostly in Double (because there's certain imagery to suggest that maybe he isn't there for a lot of it. but also imagery to suggest he is. i hate it here my brain is too small for this), he may have not actually done the murder(s). if the inside of the train represents the subjective reality (not the objective reality) of what happened, so how John sees it, then that could be why he's doing the "killing" on the train even though we know the confirmed murder happened outside the train station. he's there to be the murderer, even if he may have not actually done it. and why we see mannequin pieces flying outside the train, where the murder occurred, as he swings from inside the train.

TANGENT END... yippee

ok i had another explanation but i cant seem to figure out how to word it... and also it's more to me like a "oh, an interesting nod to this thing maybe..." and less an actual theory.

if someone wants to add onto this with their own takes, please feel free <3. because i haven't thought too long or hard about this yet or any legit theories for the MV. despite being mikoto-pilled, i am more the type of person who likes to pick apart the psychology and subjective aspects of characters and behavior. not really... actual narrative theories.

thank you for the ask!! sorry i couldn't really answer anything for you though, hah...

[04dissection]

hi, for ask game~ 1, 3, 4, 11, 16 for Muu and 2, 5, 7, 8 for Fuuta, please 💖

HI ANON!!!!! Thank you so much for the question! This gets hilariously long so under the read more it goes.

Content Warnings: Discussions of suicide

Muu Kusunoki

1. favorite song lyrics?

I think it'd probably be these lines from After Pain.

"If you're going to make me the villain / It's okay to ignore me / If it's endurance, I'm used to it / It's just having another taste of it."

With the added context of It's Not My Fault, and with After Pain being very solidly about events after It's Not My Fault, I suppose you can say this is a part of Muu's difficulties with ascribing fault to herself- actually, since you asked me about both of them, I find it so intriguing T2 seems to exemplify a sort of contrast of fault and guilt that 0304 as a duo has. Muu doesn't feel guilty nor at fault, Rei deserved it because of what she did to her, while Futa does feel guilty and admits fault(or at least seems to), and, in a way, you can make their motives similar: they did what they believed was right. Sorry, tangent over, continuing on.

I just personally love this line because of how it's sung and how it somewhat subverts us expecting to her to hit a higher note(it's been forever since I've actually done any music theory, so I don't know the terms).

To include a line from It's Not My Fault, I really like this one! (Using the translation from Fandom as much as I... dislike using it since I couldn't find who made the translation originally and as we know It's Not My Fault's official translation is... rough).

"Don’t ever hate me, and don’t look for what lies “after and from” the pain. / Wait, wait, it’s not my fault! / You get it, right? It’s you, after all. / What a relief. Can’t be helped. Since I’m always meant to be pitied-"

I adored her referencing After Pain here, and telling us not to look into it- literally telling the audience 'don't look into me <3 you said you don't hate me! so you don't have to look into me!' I specifically always like 'I'm always meant to be pitied.' This line really says a lot about Muu, and especially of how she acted in T1- though that was also partially and probably mostly from fear.

I need to mention, though, Muu's not a manipulator. Even if she tries to, her personality will get in the way of it. The thing with her is that she sees relationships as purely transactional and that the right thing to do is just to let people get their way. It's not that she doesn't care about Haruka, it's that to her, his threat was what he wanted to do, so why should she get in the way?

She wants us to pity her because we, the audience, made pity mean forgiveness- so if we fit that into her framework of relationships, wouldn't that mean that the transaction is her making us feel bad for her in exchange for being voten forgiven? I hope that's something that will come up in T3.

3. favorite non-mv official illustration?

I can just say the cake art, but I actually really like the third anniversary art- which is my profile picture.

But I adore it. It's a very unsettling piece, what this the spotlight lighting and all, and her expression is so wonderfully creepy. I love this art set a lot, it's great.

4. favorite minigram episode/moment?

Episode 22! Specifically the third panel on this page: (x)

It's such a funny little minigram and I adore this single frame of Muu holding Jackalope so much. I like to imagine that she had wanted to hold him since he popped up in the interrogation room during her first voice drama. And I can agree, rabbits are really nice to hold on your lap as long as you aren't stressing them out too much.

Fun fact, actually- the minigrams associating Muu with plaid(31 and 38) is actually the reason why I have the my blog background as the squares. They made me associate her with those square patterns.

11. what are your favorite points about their story and the narrative surrounding them?

Definitely how both her and Rei caused the downfall of the other, in a way. Both repaid aggression with aggression, with one case leading to months of intense bullying and the other leading to a murder. I'm not saying that these are equal, but that doesn't make either good things to do. Muu and Rei both turned that hourglass on the other.

I don't know, it gets to me how much they seem to have torn into each other and the length of time they did. Rei wasn't some completely innocent girl, and neither was Muu- They're both messy with ugly emotions and ugly truths and ugly actions. In the end, both were hurt and more than likely both dead because of the abuse they suffered at the hands of both each other and their peers.

16. how do you think they actually sing in regular life?

I haven't seen what she says on the karaoke cards so if I'm wrong I'm wrong- but I think Muu is an alright singer at best. Her range is.... abysmal to put it nicely and her voice can be rather squeaky at times. If she is able to stay in her range though, she has a rather pleasant singing voice. I imagine she used to sing more and used to have a better voice, but once she began to get bullied she slowly just stopped.

Fuuta Kajiyama

2. favorite mv moment/frame?

Something really gets me about this moment in Backdraft. Something about watching yourself repeat your mistakes, and remembering how gleeful you were doing it- you really just become sick from the joy you derived from awful things. At least that's my interpretation of it.

...As a weird aside, I ended up spending like, half an hour trying to see if there was a word in psychology for what I meant. I'm still figuring out a new search engine over google(playing with a bunch of different ones) so my results are definitely different feeling. But it did remind me of flashbulb memories, so I guess it wasn't for nothing.

I also should mention I love the fact that Bring It On is 4:04 minutes long. As you probably know, that's an error code!

"The server cannot find the requested resource. In the browser, this means the URL is not recognized. In an API, this can also mean that the endpoint is valid but the resource itself does not exist." (x)

5. favorite voice drama line/moment?

Braze You! at the start is just 4 minutes of Es tearing into Fuuta and it's beautiful. I think it's just nice to see Es having a good time, even if that's from harassing Fuuta.

But that's not my favorite moment- Braze You! is definitely very fun to watch, but Baptism of Fire is absolutely one of the best VDs we've gotten so far- with Fuuta calling Es out on the hypocrisy of our previous votes- why WAS Kotoko innocent and him not? While personally, I'd argue that it was dependent on how both were framed in their videos, Fuuta doesn't know about those. And anyways, he's right. We ARE doing this all for fun. Even if he got entertainment out of cancelling people, we're still not that much better than him- in his perspective at least. At the end of this day, Milgram is a work of fiction. There's a degree of separation from the events we can give ourselves, even if the characters attack the fourth wall with all their might.

7. favorite relationships with another character if they weren't in milgram, the way you'd imagine or would like them to be?

Oh this is a difficult one for me... I'll go with Fuuta and and Yuno. She likes messing with people a lot and I think it'd be funny. I adore when characters mess with other characters in a playful way. Yeah this is short, but Fuuta doesn't exactly give me a lot of lee-way with how he talks about everyone.

8. what is your theory for their crime? if there is general consensus on it in the fandom, do you have any other, not-so-widely-accepted thoughts on it?

I generally do believe in the consensus that Fuuta was part of some sort of online 'purist' group- named 'the dark triad,' very ironic name you guys- and seemed to start a campaign on Killcheroy that led to her death- with him doxxing her at some point due to how close she lived to him. I'm not entirely sure on the importance of Rumerie as of now, but I can say for certain that he is important- I mean, the graffiti in Backdraft is literally both Fuuta and Rumerie's online names intertwined- but he's important in some aspect that I just haven't figured out yet.

...While I don't have much evidence for it, I think my major divergence from common consensus is that Killcheroy did not commit suicide. If there's anything that's been obvious symbolism in this series, it's that it uses the practice of taking off your shoes before committing suicide to convey the action- please note that with Mahiru's boyfriend, Hinako, and Muu(Haruka does not participate in this, but he does have his atrocities against shoes). But notably, in Undercover:

Killcheroy Es has both their shoes on.

Undercover is a music video that definitely needs more examination(There originally was a Mikoto derailment here, but that's a different post), and this is one of those things- because Undercover doesn't lie- it might dramatize, such as showing Mahiru strangling Es while they stand in for her boyfriend, but that's in a way, right- Mahiru is here for the fact she directly led to her boyfriend's suicide. While you could argue and say that Fuuta has no idea what happened- and as such doesn't know if she committed suicide or not, as he says in Baptism of Fire:

I believe this is jumping to conclusions. We have to remember: Undercover is not Fuuta's song. It isn't even Es' song, they're just the conduit. This is the song of Milgram itself, I believe. And Milgram definitely is not restrained by real world law and theory. So far, all the bodies of Es as the victims roughly match to what happened- even Mikoto's, who is just plain unable to access the memory. So why would Fuuta's be different?

That argument aside, while I currently don't have a lot of basis for it as I'm still figuring out a lot of the details in Fuuta's case, I believe Killcheroy died from health complications exacerbated from stress- presumably a heart condition, as a lot of the blood in the Undercover art looks like it came from approximately the chest area. My evidence right now is that I made it the fuck up, sorry, but it's the main one I can think of since I really don't think she committed suicide.

[kryoxsdrawingcorner]

What favorite headcanons do you have of the four knights of Gwyn?

Thank you so much for the question!!! And I'm very sorry for the late reply, this last semester really kicked my ass X_X I've taken some time to gather some of my ideas, but a disclaimer fist: I have only played the first game (and managed to get the last missing achievement a few weeks ago, very proud of that UwU) All my understanding of the Lore and Story comes from the first game story, ingame item descriptions (which I dedicated an unhealthy amount of time to reading through), so my headcanons might sound a bit outta pocket? idk :) I'm going on a tangent here, please bear with me:

- To start with Ciaran, god i love her so much. I believe she was the first of the four to reach that high a rank and had years of experience in the subterfuge/assassin branch of the military. Though she was not the one to found the knights, that honor fell onto Ornstein, she was the first candidate chosen. - I don't think she really wanted to leave her post with the other assassins and believed that fame/glory as one of the Knights of Gwyn, would be rather counterproductive for someone who works mainly in shadows. - Assassin life is lonely, constant undercover work and month long missions away from home, I don't think she had many friends, if any at all. Working together with strangers from very different military backgrounds was not new, but to form a group? It felt like a show. A nice performance to show off how far you can come when joining the army. - It was an honor to meet Ornstein, and they first never considered being more than simple colleagues. It shocked them both how well they got along. Their humor is dry and often mean at first glance, I think that was the first thing that truly bonded them. - I think it felt easy for them to form a friendship, and that scared Ciaran a bit. Friendships in their profession don't last long. -When you fight her she will say something along the lines of: "Hmph, you humans...", suggesting that she is not also human? Maybe she is of a different race? (I've been waiting for some free time to finally make a design of her, maybe the next few days...) - Ornstein! Ornstein's first thought was to reject the offer of becoming a Knight of Gwyn, not to mention the Captain of the party. Training a special battalion of Dragonslayers was enough, he didn't have time to parent another- granted, more "elite"- group of Knights. But he wouldn't be Ornstein if an order wasn't fulfilled with flying colors. - Ornstein has always been a loner. His pedantic, cynical and all around stuck-up-ness repels people in social settings, but make him reliable as a captain. - This attitude might not be for everyone but Ciaran and him understood each other almost instantly. - I really enjoy the theory of Ornstein being an illusion conjured by Gwyndolin in DS1. While I don't know much of the later games, I have seen theories of him going after the Nameless King. I love that for him, adds drama - He and Smough definitely had something going on; but I can't imagine it ended well. Smough, though a cruel executioner, doesn't deserve to be left in a forgotten city in perpetual twilight. - Poor Artorias: He was an incredibly kind soul, who put others before himself. His undying optimism was one of his greatest strengths, even though his peers (mostly Ornstein) often found it naive. - Artorias dedicated his life to defeating the Abyss and Darkness, so much that it makes me wonder, if he had personal reasons? Was his home destroyed by the corruption? Had he lost loved ones to it? - Personally, I think Artorias was honored to have been chosen as a knight of Gwyn, but was unsure. Would this interfere with his mission? - He was an open, cheerful person and brought a careful balance to the little group. A much needed optimism radiated from him, that made people flock to him. Though I don't think he would make light of the duty they carry. He is always full of hope and believes that every life is worth saving; even if its to his detriment sometimes. - Ornstein couldn't stand that cheerfulness in the beginning. He thought it was childish and naive, that Artorias takes defeat too lightly, that he doesn't linger on loss. It took him quite some time to understand Artorias' hope is the thing that drives him, it's what inspires the soldiers around him to live another day, fight another battle.

-Ciaran had no such judgement for Artorias. She understood quickly that this is just how he is. She is an expert at adapting to peoples moods and personalities, but it felt so easy with Artorias. Joking around, training, important gatherings in Anor Londo, or even meeting off duty, she felt no need to pretend with him. Even if she decided to not say a word, she could rely on Artorias to fill the silence with comfortable chatter.

-Gough was the last that rose to the rank of Gwyn's Knight. It was a shocking turn of events, not just for Gough himself. Giants were considered lesser beings, and one of them being granted the honor? It was a scandal. - It was Artorias that "found" him. Maybe during training, his eyes followed the sound of a loud twang of a greatbow. This giant, in standard archer uniform shot arrows the size of halberds at targets that were mere pinpricks in the distance. He squinted at the straw mannequins to see if the giant hit. Every single one was pierced through head and heart. - Giving praise was easy for Artorias, but Gough shuffled his feet and kept his eyes to the ground when receiving the kind words. - Once acquainted, Artorias seemed to notice him every battle, not once did the great spear-arrows that rushed past him miss a target. - Even in a fight against dragons, one would merely look to the skies to watch the beasts fall to the ground with ripped wings. - Gough was a lonely soldier in an army of many. His skill with a bow granted him a position above "live shield" or fodder for the front lines. For a long time he was unsure if that is a blessing or not. But when he met the Wolf Knight, he could hardly believe him talking to him, let alone complimenting his skill. - Gough scolded himself; he should fear this man, he who could ruin his life with a single critique. But Artorias makes it hard to fear him when he smiles at you like he wouldn't be happier anywhere else. - They kept stumbling into each other- or, more likely, Artorias knows almost always where to find him. Sometimes he has his great Wolf with him. The beast instantly takes a liking to Gough and always leans into his hands when he pets her. - When one day, Artorias comes with a proposal, Gough is terrified. He would not admit this though, and while acknowledging the honor of a position among Gwyn's Knights, he declines politely. He hopes Artorias can understand his reasoning, even without him voicing them. - But even though Gough is sure that Artorias knows his fears, the judgement and resentment towards him and his fellow giants that will surely follow, he looks at him with resolution set in his eyes. "Thou art worthy, Gough. No other compares to thee." - Gough has not often felt hope, but in that moment, he felt alive.

I may have let thing run outta control X) I know its not really a list of headcanons but I like going with the flow

I would love to know your thoughts and headcanons as well!!!!! <3

[fanficapologist]

Hey! Just read chapter 64 and I can’t help but think this and some of the next few chapters will be the calm before the storm 🫣 either from the war or with Alys.

I’ve also read some asks regarding Alys and it’s making me even more antsy to read about her and Maera finally meeting. I think it’s because canonically, Aemond’s said to be besotted with Alys and even then their relationship isn’t as heavily portrayed, more like alluded to, at least for me because we don’t see their dynamics “onscreen”, (I hope this makes sense 😭 but to compare the description; in the HOTD tv show, they made Aegon a r*pist, though it is only mentioned and the act was committed offscreen, so book-wise, we don’t really “see” them)

So, i think it’s interesting to see how Alys is portrayed in fanfiction because it makes one wonder what sort of qualities could this person possess for him to begin some sort of relationship with her, physical or otherwise (some fics depict them having an affair or an actual relationship). I think this limited portrayal of Alys makes her more mysterious, makes me want to know more about her and it’s interesting to see how she compares with other OFCs like Maera because despite Aemond loving OFCs, he still comes back to Alys or at least has feelings for her too or has something in common that OFC’s never experienced or he sought love that OFC did not provide when they were separated, that sort of thing.

It also makes it easy I think to portray her as a femme fatale, or a cunning witch, etc because she is essentially a blank canvas. And I’m not going to lie, I do love a good drama (only in fiction!) and to step out of the characters for a bit, I think Ewan Mitchell also did a fantastic job of bringing Aemond to life.

But yeah, I hope my ramblings made sense, I’m so sorry if I went on a tangent but this writing really does make one come up with lots of theories and realizations hehe. ☺️

Hello my love! You are definitely right about this being the calm before the storm! 😏

I completely agree with you about the blank canvas, which is what makes it so interesting to write. Obviously I don’t want to say too much about the dynamic between Alys and Maera but I will provide my 2 pence worth ☕️

Women in the ASOIAF universe have lot to cope with and it’s definitely a mans world. Peasant, nobleborn, whore, wife, mother, royal, regardless these women get very little choice in their futures. You see a lot of female characters making the most of their situations and this is what Alys will definitely be doing in ODAM.

The fact Maera married Aemond at all was due to pure luck, because she had come into possession of advantageous land needed for the war effort AND Aemond is a prince and had some power in that decision.

Love is also a rare thing to be found in a world like this. Parental, romantic or in platonic alliances. But I guess that’s why we’re all suckers for OFC X Aemond fics, because that love has thrived in a difficult environment 🖤