#that’s not true now either

[deepspaceboytoy]

Empires don’t really last much longer once they hit the “stripping the copper wire” phase of institutional decline so these next few years are gonna be interesting

[falafels]

pt.61!! <pt.60 pt.62>

aaron is “little rat ❤️” in nicky’s phone. so is andrew. it is so unbelievably confusing but nicky says it has to be identical because they’re identical. ends with andrew’s first piercing because then he’s changed to “little rat 💘”

tags for the homies ❤️ @andrewsleftarmband @blurryhour @you-know-i-get-itt @notexactlythatgirl @longspacerat @tessasilverswan @minyard-05 @carbon-dated-gal @bisexualchaosdemon @stormiiflies @watercoloureyes01 @vampire-overlord @iron-sides @azure-wing @buffalo-fox @ohgodnotagainplease @pink-hydrangea @jaywalkerss @ohmynoggin-blog @cosmic-marauder @min-getoutofmy-yard @plazybones @disastersappho @leestars13 @the-witch-forever-lives @minyardsss @post-historical-posts @andabuttonnose @hidinginmyhands @aftg4l @allfor-thegames @yaoishida @inafieldofstarflowers @snowcoming @mooniism @jeanmoreausautismstickers @prometheusthedragon @graveyardviolence @bustedleftshoe @beatrix33 @aftg-bs @yes-i-exist-shutup @milktemproom @all-for-exy @moon-over-ruined-castle @meta-breakers @oneandonlystarshine @dragonslayer26806 @malepresentingleg @lesbiansforkevinday

[dollopole]

I was just thinking about the fact that in so many Merlin fics, Merlin keeps being an healer/doctor/medic, which makes sense, since that’s how he started his life, by helping people however he could, but now consider this:

Merlin, who has lived so long and more than probably witnessed the deaths of thousands, even of those he loved, cherished and respected. So what if a millennia of life completely flipped his view on what it means to heal and study medicine. What if after all Merlin saw, everything that happened had the opposite effect on him, which means that he stopped trying and left the job to someone else.

Merlin still helps, surely, in the end, it’s in his nature as human, but we can already see how he changed, even only after ten years of being in Camelot and witnessing death after death.

What if he despaired because disease spread and not even his magic could help it, what if his magic decided that humans had to live with their own course of actions and so his magic simply refused to help them, which got Merlin just angry at the prospect of doing this for so many years.

But now take into consideration when Arthur returns:

I believe Arthur would be the healer/doctor/medic this time around.

He would be eager to help everyone he can, because that’s also in his nature, but since he can’t do it anymore in the way he once did, he has to find another path for him, a path that would make him heal too, heal from all the times he killed, instead of helping someone in danger.

Arthur lived a life of death even before Merlin could start to think about killing someone.

Arthur had his hands smeared with blood since he was a child. Being Uther’s son was automatically, in both magical people and peasants’ perspective, who lived under Uther’s tyranny, a sin and a guilt, even before Arthur could pick up a sword.

He did not just kill sorcerers, but he was raised with a mind of a killer of justice. To defend his kingdom, his father, his counsellors, his court and his people no matter what he felt regarding it, was and had always been his main duty.

He was trapped in a murderous cycle, literally, where he couldn’t do anything but raise himself to believe that the only way to help people was to kill them.

On one side, we have a man who spent his life helping people and who got tired of death, and on the other side, we got another man who spent it killing people and still got tired of death.

But to Arthur and Merlin it happened in different ways.

Where Merlin left the responsibility to someone else, Arthur decided to take that responsibility himself, in the hope that maybe, one day, he could bring back to life all those he had condemned for the simple act of living as themselves.

[yearninflowers]

Imagine...

Anaxa, someone you've gotten to know after one fateful meeting, has begun to grow on you little by little. Although those accidental meetups seem to happen quite frequently nowadays, you enjoy them all the same. He is quite the entertainer, after all. Equipped with various knowledge over life and his rather spicy attitude, he captured your eyes in the heat of prohibition and curiosity. He seemed to shine, somehow, in his own way. How could one be so confident with their belief and never falter? Whatever is fuelling his own devoutness—you wanted to ask—what does it take to be utterly devoted (to all his research) yet empty of faith like him?

The contradiction that lies beneath his impassive face could make anyone who notices laugh amusingly. Anaxa has always been a person who based his judgement on facts, and more often than not, ones he experienced himself. He does not believe, nor does he trust, an existence he could not grasp. It lacks a reason, he would say. Perhaps linking feelings with mindful comprehension has always been a stupid decision, yet he, a person who has never known of such intensity, does it all continuously. Such complexity is gathered to be one thing: devotion. And Anaxa, no matter how long he tried to search, could never have its truest form, faith.

A scholar's mind is to enquire about every little thing the world has to offer and speak of the truth that prevailed. Being one himself, Anaxa tries to do so as well. Questioning, denying, defending—he does it all easily. It comes like second nature to him. However, proving something that cannot be seen by the eyes is harder to do, even for someone as capable as Anaxa. He won't lie, though; the effect of believing said unseen thing is as real as it can be, yet proving its existence has always remained impossible to do. After all, what can you unveil to the world when the object itself is unknown?

So, he deems whatever faith lies upon someone; it is not equivalent to being real and only an effect of illusory belief. But that is what feelings are too, isn't it? An intense effect which stemmed from within the heart yet hidden deep inside the flesh of a soul. It cannot be proven, nor it can be seen, but it would always be there, haunting the bodies that bear the weight.

And for once in his life, something stirred itself inside Anaxa. Something ugly, he feared. The way his hands would tremble, fearing the ugliness of what he could do, made him disgusted with himself. How could someone as him be affected with something he could not foresee? Or an easier way to say, you. How could you, a stranger with no strings attached to any of the Chrysos Heirs, make his mind go numb? You, an ordinary citizen living in Amphoreus, had successfully done something many others had failed to do. You made him feel this absurdly warm feeling, and he could, for once, never figure out why something had happened.

Anaxa pondered for days upon days to search for the reason. He studied your movement almost daily, arranging coincidental meetings with a bump on the shoulder or even a short visit to a place you frequented. He thinks you must've noticed, but no words have been spoken over the increased bonding time. Perhaps you had never known that Anaxa has been watching you, studying you to the point of dissecting you apart inside his mind every time your eyes met. Perhaps you never noticed him just as he noticed you, deeply and obsessively.

Sometimes, it frustrates him. It feels as if all the observation he did had amounted to nothing. What else—just how—no, what will—argh, Anaxa feels the need to rip you apart, taking out everything to search for his selfish need. Will after opening the mystery box make him understand his concerning devotion? Has he finally succeeded in attaining what people often called faith? But has faith always felt so covetous? Is it not filled with belief that stemmed from one's pure love? This does not feel like its description to Anaxa. Whatever it is, it feels disgusting.

Yet it feels so amazing too. For once in all his time in the world, he feels whole—too full, even. However, the question still remains. For something as unreal as faith to fill Anaxa, The Heretic, just who are you to attain such a feat?

He now often wonders, is it you or him that made him feel the impossible? If it is him, then what is the fuel to his interest? Is it the curiosity of a human? Or could it be something entirely different? As a person, he'll gladly let it all flow. After all, feelings are as normal as they can be for people. But as a scholar, he is bound to question it nonetheless. As he said, a scholar's mind is to question everything, even if the subject is an obsession.

However, if it is you. Anaxa will still try to find the reason that makes you twinkle in his eyes. He'll do whatever it takes—even if it means scrapping you until the very last end of your being—to find out why. As someone who sees the world as an abundance of knowledge to be discovered, Anaxa will stop at nothing to find and prove it. Frankly, even if he thinks he's at fault for the sudden change in him, it will still lead to the same conclusion: examining you.

So, to make everything easier, as his new subject of interest, won't you let him search every inch of yourself and help unveil the truth? He can't ever help it anymore—the disgust and the curiosity keep on killing him from the inside, yet it makes him so full and so happy.

At least, for his sake, do it, yeah? Aren't you a very curious person as well? To mingle with such a person, amazed by his antics and abilities, and even seeking him out yourself—he knows you 'love' him too.

[swordscleric]

I'm only halfway through the second phase of Predathos (which, to be clear is an incredible vibe for a bossfight, love a good head & hands/multitarget-same-entity boss) but I cannot shake the feeling of disappointment and just dissatisfaction I have had with this campaign that definitely started with Dusk/Yu, got followed up handily with the first Delilah/Sun Tree fight and then has been unfortunately reinforced with every discussion surrounding the Prime Deities since Hearthdell. This campaign is fascinating to pick apart, I have been really enjoying pulling apart why it isn't working compared to C1 or C2. But as much as I'm having fun dissecting where the worldbuilding has led to the current weaknesses in the gods' argument or reading other people's incisive commentary on the lack of personalities on the Ruby Vanguard's end, the "girlfailure" nonsense, etc etc, man do I wish this campaign was better than it is.

There are so many avenues of improvement -

Matt telling everyone to prep and write characters for this campaign instead of a C2-esque character-focused campaign.

Matt working religious organisations into the world properly.

The cast engaging with Marquet as a genuine location rather than set-dressing.

Otohan, Ozo and the rest of the Vanguard having more than "*insert snappy line here*" for their personalities.

No Delilah.

Bell's Hells having an iota of curiosity for anything outside of their own selves, including but not limited to: the gods, religious worship, the Elemental Titans and why they were sundered, how the people of Exandria feel about the gods, Vasselheim and its role in suppressing information about Predathos, Ludinus Da'Leth's plan and how it would still break the world if they did it in his place

I don't know why all of this fell into place in the way that it did, but it did. We can endlessly speculate why - the cast resting on their laurels after C2, not having enough time between the animated shows and Daggerheart and Candela Obscura and, and, and - but at the end of the day I really do hope that whatever form the final campaign wrap-up takes, they burn the damn questions asking the cast "what if the world was made of pudding and this character and this character kissed?" and instead pick questions that get them to introspect for a potential Campaign 4. Otherwise I don't know what will happen, but it sure as hell won't be Mighty Nein part 2: Issylra Boogaloo.

[i-might-be-a-simp]

Whenever I think about all the fucked up things in the world I can't help but say shit like "Cale would never" "Cale would have hated this" "Cale would have blown up an island after hearing that"🙏😞 our glorious king cale pls end corruption and bring world peace and once you do that i promise you can own 70% of the worlds riches i beg you just make the earth squeaky clean by killing every scumbag- WHY ARE YOU TURNING AWAY NO COME BACK DONT IGNORE ME YOU CANT WALK AWAY NOOOO I PROMISE YOU'LL GET YOUR SLACKER LIFE AFTER THIS ...REAL AND TRUE 100% NO SCAM

[sergle]

yall are about to piss me off by not having any PASSING basic knowledge of the way the u.s. military manipulates its recruits into joining by typing up one of your uninformed, unresearched, unempathetic, individualistic, unbelievably annoying posts about how 100% of the people in the military ended up there because they just Love America So Damn Much! they're extremely mature and informed at time of recruitment, they can totally leave anytime they want, they totally had tons of other avenues in life they could've taken, there was no rush at all to get income as fast as possible, and everyone in the military also totally is part of the combat divisions and personally enjoys being IN the military very much, big believers of violence. everyone in the military is shooting guns all day, that's how that works. they LOVE BLOODSHED. also I love the "amewicans haha" twang to this type of shit because you're actually TOTALLY stealing our Thing, which is turning systemic issues into Individual Issues. Instead of talking about the powers that be, it's so Personal Choice up in here. It's, "well you shouldn't have done it then. I totally wouldn't because I know better." you don't wanna talk about the military industrial complex as a whole, and you don't want to talk about recruiters, you just want to pin the blame on Specific Individual People one-by-one, as if they're responsible for the system that they're being ground up in. someone was in the military? bad person, no matter what. it's easier to believe that, I guess, than to acknowledge that Normal People (with high school educations) are manipulated and incentivized into joining a system that is Bad. at like age 18. but yeah no that 18 year old should have just been smarter lol haha anyway here are some screenshots for no particular reason

side note this reply of someone going "umm just get loans and go into a high paying field it's easy XD" as a direct response to someone trying to explain how most americans joining the military are being funneled in that direction out of a need for money.

and another person who Decided that americans join the military just CLENCHING their teeth thinking of other people, and not thinking completely selfishly about their own selves and their own income/housing/healthcare.

[cicicolorao]

fingers crossed that season 2 reveals more about Dimension X and what the hell happened

also I think Ramon still has his own skills, but he needs to get back into the habit of using them, and get his strength back

[demon-of-the-ancient-world]

So so insane about just how well the Dune movies walk the line between making Paul sympathetic and making him...uhh.....everything else.

Because it would be easy to tip it too far in either direction and make him out to be either cartoonishly evil or (excuse the term) woobified -- but I think the key to it is that it's never depicted as being a "but" situation and rather always a "yes, and" situation. Yes, Paul is a very young, very deeply alone person who has lost everything and is under the pressure of thousands of years of genetic engineering and religious propaganda and really never stood a chance against all that, and it's a tragic and heartbreaking thing to witness. That is all true. Also, he's using an oppressed group of people for his own political gain and is about to cause both a horrible environmental disaster and a war that will leave countless people dead, among other very very bad things that you are absolutely not supposed to agree with and root for. This is also true. All those things are equally true, and it WILL make you uncomfortable. And you as the viewer are not supposed to choose a side to fall on, you're fully intended to see all of that at once and walk that fine line with the character, and the chaotic and messy experience of having all those things packed together as truth without it being an either/or situation is absolutely the most accurate way of perceiving him.

[camellcat]

I love how selfish spike is. his love isn't "unselfish" it's SO selfish

when he tries to be good it is always for an ulterior purpose. even if that purpose may not be evil, it's certainly not unselfish. you think he'd give a shit about dawn if she wasn't buffy's entire world? do you lot remember how quickly he dropped her when buffy started fucking him? even if we want to talk about the beginning of s6 that was out of guilt and obligation. and I'm not saying he didn't care about anyone else there because he definitely did, but he wouldn't have been there if not FOR buffy

he enjoys buffy happy because he does love her, yes, and her joy is a beautiful to him. but he likes her upset just as well too. he revels in buffy's suffering. he likes her hurt and he likes that she hurts him and he likes to hurt her. it's a language he understands, that he enjoys. he just likes her in whatever way will make her pay attention to him longer

I'll freely admit that he's emotionally supportive for her, which is something she needs desperately. but a lot of the times that's just when he himself isn't being someone who's actively deciding to tear her down. either way, as long as he's affecting her on some tangible level that makes him feel like he matters to her, he doesn't particularly care if it's for the better or the worse

I've just seen a lot of people call him unselfish and I don't agree. at all. probably ever. I don't know if this is a common fandom idea or if I've done that thing again where I've stumbled across a minority that I can't escape, but. just putting my opinion on it out there I suppose

[userautumn]

I feel like, at this point, either BuckTommy has to be endgame OR Tommy has to be allowed as a recurring character regardless of the status of their relationship because if they just erase him from the narrative altogether in, like, three episodes / when we return for Season 9, especially after his appearance in Bobby's final episode, that's going to be really, like... like what was the point? What was the point of even having him there?

[francesderwent]

“decrying the manipulative cowardice of cohabitation” I would love to hear more of this take on TTPD if you’re willing

boy am I willing!

I am going to start with You’re Losing Me, because I think it’s a crucial prologue to the album. You’re Losing Me is about a relationship that’s dying, because the partner she’s singing to is stuck in inactivity. she begs, “do something, babe, say something. lose something, babe, risk something. choose something, babe, I’ve got nothing to believe unless you’re choosing me.” we’re in new territory, for Taylor. she sings, “now I just sit in the dark, and wonder if it’s time.” he isn’t leaving (Forever & Always), and he’s not doing something so awful that she has to leave (The Moment I Knew). he is staying—which for so long has been the hallmark of a happy ending in her music (Stay Stay Stay, All You Had To Do Was Stay, New Year’s Day, The Archer)! but he won’t make some decisive move, won’t risk something, won’t choose her. but he is with her, so what is that choice?

and the thing about TTPD is, when she’s speaking directly about that relationship, she doesn’t exactly just tell us. So Long London is more about what the collapse of the relationship felt like for her than a story of how it collapsed—she felt like he wasn’t giving himself to the relationship, she felt like she was putting in all the work, she felt like her sadness wasn’t taken seriously, she felt unsure of whether he even wanted to be with her. and she throws in there amidst all of this: “I’m pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free” and “you swore that you loved me but where were the clues, I died on the altar waiting for the proof.” they were together for a long time, but still she’s waiting for something—still she felt like she was taken advantage of when that something didn’t come. the altar line is the clearest hint—along with “my beloved ghost and me sitting in a tree D-Y-I-N-G” in How Did It End—what was missing was marriage. she felt left at the altar. the relationship that should have followed the traditional trajectory of “first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage” stalled out after love.

don’t get me wrong, I think she totally captures the feeling of slow despair when your partner won’t commit—but she doesn’t come out and say “you liar, when I fell in love with you, you told me we would get married and have a family, but you never followed through”. on the face of it, she barely focuses on this relationship at all—at first glance only the track 5s are obviously about the long-term live-in partner. instead, she presents us with a twist: not an album about the six year relationship which ended out of nowhere, but an album seemingly mostly about a rebound that only lasted a few weeks.

but the rebound doesn’t leave the theme of marriage behind! no! in fact, marriage comes to the forefront right away in the title track: “at dinner you take my ring off my middle finger and put it on the one people put wedding rings on, and that’s the closest I’ve come to my heart exploding.” and again in Fresh Out the Slammer: “ain’t no way I’m gonna screw up now that I know what’s at stake here at the park where we used to sit on children’s swings, wearing imaginary rings.” so despite everything that she knows from the get-go is wrong with this guy (“you’re in self-sabotage mode, throwing spikes down on the road”, “all your indecent exposures”, “I know he’s crazy”, “the jokes that he told across the bar were revolting and far too loud”) it’s evident to me why this is the one she wants—because this guy says, clearly, that he is willing to give her what her last partner would not. marriage isn’t the unspoken wound that’s made the relationship bleed out—it’s out in the open! this guy is making moves! and so the story of how the live-in partnership fell apart starts to come together: she was lured away by the rebound guy, someone she had a former acquaintance with but who’s appeared again in her life at a decisive moment (see: Fortnight & Guilty as Sin) precisely because here was a way to actually have the happy ending that she thought she was promised in her old relationship. “it’s gonna be alright, I did my time”!

but of course, that’s not what happens. just as quickly as the rebound guy swept into her life and promised to fix everything, he disappears without a word. Down Bad paints the picture starkly: their love affair was so quick and so dramatic that she feels like she was abducted by aliens and then dropped back at home with a story no one seems to believe—but it was real, he did say all those things, she was in love. until finally, in The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, she has to admit: whatever he was after, whatever his motivations were, it wasn’t love. he used her.

why is this important, when we’re talking about cohabitation and not rebounds or hookups? let’s turn to loml. loml tells the story of a relationship which from the beginning seemed like it was heading straight from the first kiss to marriage, but which turns out to be not what she thought it was—“a con-man sells a fool a get-love-quick scheme”. perhaps the most telling line on the whole album, “you shit-talked me under the table, talking rings and talking cradles”, tells us: in private where no one could see, he made her all these promises. but she can see now that he didn’t mean them, that although she’s mourning the loss of their love, what she’s mourning wasn’t even real: “something counterfeit is dead”. who is this song about? lines like “in your suit and tie” “you low-down boy” “you holy ghost” “told me I reformed you” and “Mr. Steal Your Girl and make her cry” seem to point to the rebound—but lines like “you stand-up guy” “you cinephile in black and white” and “all those plot twists” seem to be references to the partner. and the closer you look, the blurrier it gets. “you holy ghost” applies to both of them—one ghosted her by disappearing, but the other became a ghost in their home. “told me I reformed you” sounds like I Can Fix Him—but her relationship with the partner started in an album that opened with “knew he was a killer first time that I saw him”. the rebound stole her from her partner, making him Mr Steal Your Girl, but the partner did the same thing back in the day. “something counterfeit” could be pointing to “was any of it true” in Smallest Man—or it could be pointing to “your faithless love’s the only hoax I believe in”. the more you know the lore, the more you have all her old lyrics memorized, the more references you see.  Taylor has always been famous for calling her boyfriends out publicly, but this time, she didn’t hide any identifying clues for us to unearth. she blurred the details, she painted everybody with the same brush. loml is about both of them. they both told her they were heading towards marriage and kids—and they both disappeared on her.

and once you start to see the parallels, they start popping up all over the album. the title track is about the rebound—but it says “I’ve seen this episode and still loved the show”, hinting that everything with him feels familiar for some reason, and her plea “who's gonna hold you like me? who’s gonna know you like me?” echoes her triumphant statement to her partner in ME!: “I promise that nobody’s gonna love you like me”. My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys tells the same story as loml of the man who gave you all kinds of attention at the beginning and then when he saw forever coming, smashed it up—“I’m queen of sandcastles he destroys” parallels both “once your queen had come you’d treat her like an also-ran” in Smallest Man and “salute to me, I’m your American queen” in King of My Heart. “but you should have seen him when he first got me” is the thesis of practically every song she wrote about her partner from evermore to Midnights, when she had to go back to the beginning of the relationship to find something romantic to sing about. Down Bad is the same story again, of singling her out and making her feel special, and then abandoning her. Fresh Out the Slammer parallels High Infidelity, which had her current partner cast in the part of the one she was running home to, the one who brought her back to life. “we’ve already done it in my head” in Guilty as Sin is the sinister reprise of “in the middle of the night in my dreams, you should see the things we do, baby” in Ready For It. is The Albatross about the public outcry in But Daddy I Love Him, or is it about “here’s to my baby, he ain’t reading what they call me lately” in This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things? in Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus, who is she talking about when she says it would haunt her to know their love was real? Peter weaves the two stories into each other: both men met her when they were twenty-five—one said he wasn’t ready for a relationship but maybe they’d connect again later, the other said he was ready for a relationship but he wasn’t ready to get married. “we said it was just goodbye for now, you said you were gonna grow up then you were gonna come find me”. but all those promises, from both of them, from every guy she’s ever dated, were never ever kept.

in the album liner notes, she sums it all up: “and so I was out of the oven and into the microwave”. both men did exactly the same thing—the only difference is one did it slow, over six years, and one did it fast.

that’s a really powerful, and a really unexpected statement. think about it. most people in our society don’t really believe that marriage is until death do us part; they believe in the possibility of divorce, they believe that marriage is until one or both parties call it quits. therefore, marriage is essentially no different from living together: both are committed, but not unbreakably vowed. so the death of Taylor’s six-year cohabiting relationship is, for many people, the death of the most serious kind of relationship there is. and instead of delivering the “mature adult breakup” party line of “sometimes things are good and right for a season of life, but they just don’t work out”, what the album says is “what you did is exactly the same as if you’d fed me a few pretty lines to get me into bed then stopped answering my texts”. living with someone without proposing marriage to them EQUALS love-bombing them then ghosting. one lasts a lot longer, but it’s still just manipulation and use. she has to ask herself about both of them what it was they really wanted—“were you writing a book, were you a sleeper-cell spy?” about the rebound, and “was it hazing for a cruel fraternity I pledged and I still mean it? were you making fun of me with some esoteric joke?” about the partner—because they clearly did not want her.

I think in the end what she saw was that it’s not about timing, it’s not about fate, it’s not about anything other than whether the man has the courage to make a commitment. she says in loml “the coward claimed he was a lion”, and in The Black Dog “you said I needed a brave man, then proceeded to play him until I believed it too”—these men pretended like they were brave enough to get married, but then “there was danger in the heat of my touch, he saw forever so he smashed it up”. he gets scared and gives up; he’s “lost to the lost boys’ chapter of life”. all that courage was false bravado. “tail between your legs, you’re leaving”. by the end of the album, she has lost all patience and respect for these blokes who warm the benches on the fields of love.

I really do believe that the album she gave us is more sophisticated than if she had simply written a callout of her partner in the style of Smallest Man or Should’ve Said No. she can give detailed accounts of individual sins all day long, but by looking at the big picture and drawing equivalencies, what we get isn’t an accusation so much as it is the development of an ethics.

I mean, come on. that’s cool.

[sysig]

You’re looking a bit different than usual! (Patreon)

[coolnonsenseworld]

A little promo with my little obsession on the side...........

Reminder all items are shipped from Poland - for details on shipping times check out FAQ or send me a private message!

 mmezzy.bigcartel.com

[dykedvonte]

RE: Your post on the AU of Jimmy being in the cockpit rather than Curly.

I think that Curly would think that Jimmy was reaping what he had sown, but in a way would feel a twisted sense of relief that Jimmy was brought down by his own actions rather than Curly himself having to be the "executioner" in the situation, so to speak.

With "taking responsibility" and the fix-it mentality that he and Jimmy share being the overarching theme, compounded with Jimmy flat out insinuating that all of his crimes on the Tulpar will be "Curly's tragedy" in that one scene, I think Curly would almost find comfort in the irony that the choice was forcibly taken away from him. Which in itself is messed up, but it might be a bit cathartic. There's an interesting polarizing dynamic within Curly's relationship to his own responsibility in that it's his greatest burden and the thing he, too, avoids the most.

I don't think Curly would find any relief in this actually. While Curly didn't/doesn't like the responsibility he had, he defiantly doesn't avoid it, he just goes about it in a weird way.

A thing I noticed is that its less about taking responsibility with Curly and really what that responsibility meant objectively and then subjectively to Curly. The leniency that he applies to Jimmy also applies a bit to the others as well. He thinks his responsibility is more towards keeping the peace and things in order more than dolling out punishment. He has even more choices to make and responsibilities as he literally has to make sure they survive/ration long enough to be saved. Or figure out how to save them himself. The correct issue with Curly and responsibility is the prioritization in his head. He sees the big picture and prioritizes that. He doesn't notice the little things that he should but it's not a active dismissal, perhaps not even conscious despite how dismissive he seemed. He takes too much responsibility, espcially in regards to Jimmy, and I think this situation is when he realizes that is also a bad thing as he can't "fix" all of his wrongs.

I think he'd regret not making a choice, because in the end this happened because he wouldn't directly choose who to comfort and help. He tried to help both and ended up doing nothing for either and letting Jimmy fuck them all over. In this scenario/au he's thinking about all the times he let Jimmy inadvertently make his choice, and how he chose to let it happen. He regrets all of it and would be so bitter that he was giving his choice up for so long. He chose wrong and it affected everyone. The only thing he'd find cathartic is the fucked up truth it will never happen again, not with Jimmy at least.

But he's not happy he's getting joy from that. I think it's a point not a single character other than Jimmy is depicted at deriving joy from another's pain. Even Swansea is being more sarcastic when he cheers on Curly about crashing the ship and ending his sobriety. He's happy Jimmy was forced to take responsibility, but this? He wanted him to learn a lesson and do something with himself, this is hollow in a way it's just embittering. Jimmy didn't get what he wanted, he can be happy about that but no one else did. This isn't justice or closure for Anya, he's stuck in a place he was so desperate to leave with even more pressure on his shoulders. Daisuke is just a kid and Swansea doesn't deserve this after all his year making himself a better man.

Like in his sections, Curly is preoccupied thinking about all the responsibilities he has, taking on things he shouldn't have to and trying to keep the peace when he doesn't have peace in his own mind.

[wonder-worker]

Wild how we know that Elizabeth Woodville was officially appointed to royal councils in her own right during her husband’s reign and fortified the Tower of London in preparation of a siege while 8-months pregnant and had forces gathering at Westminster “in the queen’s name” in 1483 – only for NONE of these things to be even included, let alone explored, in the vast majority of scholarship and historical novels involving her.