#the worst person you know made a great point

[dykedvonte]

I find the line "I have to believe our worst moments don't make us monsters." Fascinating because it comes from Anya, and I feel she really proves it the best.

For obvious reasons most people are in the "Anya did nothing wrong" camp and for good reason but there is a single action that I don't think she did well and it was her suicide. Specifically her method.

Realizing that Anya took Curly's painkillers was horrifying to me. As a Nurse I have no doubt that she'd know how terrible dying from overdose is. She had access to a gun which is well known for having a far more instant and far less painful death. And despite everything falling apart around her, knowing how bad Jimmy was, she still left Curly alive.

I don't think I thought about it much like that at first but the longer this game has sat with me the more horrified I am by the action. Curly is man who has been horribly disabled and is completely unable to help himself and he is very much a human being who does not deserve to be anywhere close to that amount of pain. Those painkillers were one that the few things that could give him any amount of relief and Anya took them.

She could have shot herself and left the painkillers for whoever was left to help Curly. She could've shot Curly and then taken the painkillers. She could've shot them both and quickly put an end to their misery, yet she didn't. Anya had a great amount of her agency stripped away from her, to the point that she didn't deem life to be worth it anymore and ended it, right next to a man who couldn't make that choice for himself even if he wanted to.

It is easily her most horrific choice and yet, she's still an angel.

(Please don't take this as Anya slander, I genuinely love her so much. I just find this to be an incredibly interesting thing)

I do subscribe to the idea that Anya realized that Jimmy was hitting Curly when giving him his medicine but didn’t intervene. I also don’t think her taking the pills from Curly as monstrous mainly because (while she knew he suffered worse with out them) she likely also knew they were basically bandaids on a bullet wound.

I have this sort of belief that that statement can only really apply to Jimmy in the inverse. Like some statements in the games aren’t meant to apply to all characters and not in every context of every action they do. It’s the idea that no one should be responsible for Jimmy’s actions but himself but they are forced to by him or the environment. Everyone is experiencing their worst moments but no one is a monster outside of Jimmy due to his inability to take responsibility and how he escalates the severity of the situation through his bad choices. Even then it’s not one moment that makes Jimmy a monster it’s the culmination of every moment that prove his inability to be anything but in this scenario.

With Anya you must remember she did have the code to the gun. Yeah, she could’ve broken it open but who’s to say how easy or how long it would’ve taken. Not to mention, there’s this misconception that she wanted the gun to kill Jimmy which isn’t true. She wanted the gun to defend herself in the case he got aggressive which is an important note of Anya being the only proactive person on the ship vs reactive. Locking the door, knowing there was no way in was likely a duel mercy for them both. A person in his state would die relatively soon without constant care and she has ample time to pass. It’s a hard decision to make for herself and someone else but it was the easiest even if it caused more damage than it was ever meant to cause.

It’s a sort of parallel to how Curly made choices he thought would help Anya and everyone but ultimately doomed them all further. Jimmy got what he wanted in both scenarios of crashing the ship and wanting Anya gone. What happened on the Tulpar will go down as a tragedy if they are ever found, a mystery if not but certainly not in a way that Jimmy wanted. Anya and the pregnancy are effectively gone but he’s still facing the repercussions for it.

There’s this idea that it’s controversial to say that Anya was anything but perfect and while I don’t think she did anything wrong, she certainly didn’t make the best choice in telling Jimmy but that again was because of the situation and environment she was in. We don’t know why she didn’t wait on Curly after their conversation in the cockpit, we know that was the plan and we know Jimmy finding out through her alone was the catalyst to the crash within like the next hour, yet you can’t really blame her. We don’t know why Jimmy came to medical nor what anyone else was doing. It can be considered her one mistake but then again we can’t blame a reasonable action on someone’s unreasonable response.

I think that’s a big aspect a lot of people look over in the characters actions. Most of them are normal, reasonable, human. But the systematic responses to them and Jimmy’s are unreasonably harsh and punishing.

This has gone off in a tangent from what you originally posed but I genuinely think of what might do happened if that confrontation happened with Curly there and away from the cock pit. I assume it’d happen in medical or even utility, hell, an area away from anything sensitive but what if? If the ability to do something awful wasn’t at Jimmy’s finger tips, if there was more than one voice in Curly’s head during that moment, what would’ve changed?

When I look at Anya I see her as having the best responses to anything happening during the events of the game but the environment, systems against her and even the other crew mates to an extent made it so it would inevitably backfire on them and mostly her hard.

[dadrielle]

I am going to treat this as being in good faith even though I know you have copy pasted this same response on multiple posts.

It's fair enough to see this post and roll your eyes about it. I am being a sarcastic lil bitch about implications that really aren't meant to be there! Liam absolutely didn't mean to do this as an "Orym doesn't trust them" or "Orym doesn't respect their boundaries" thing, and I know that. And I know no one in game is gonna read it that way, either. I didn't tag this Orym specifically because I was picking at a small thing irritably and I fully acknowledge that.

But! There are 3 things I want to say to this on a more serious note.

First, I think we must acknowledge that the implications of listening in on one's friends over listening in on one's enemies are quite different. People have different reactions to different applications of Observant because the social stakes and boundaries are situational. It means something much different to punch an enemy combatant in the face than it does to do the same to your best friend, you know? And Orym is not omnipotent; he does not just automatically know everything that happens, despite how we all joke that he can see god with his high perception. When he chooses to listen in should matter, as should the implications. That's actually my main issue with this whole thing, but I'll get to that in a moment.

Second, I would just like to say while I'm sure you believe it's true I and others critical of Orym don't talk about any of Orym's actual flaws, the fact of the matter is there are many fans who do most of our character discussion privately with our friends instead of tumblr or god, even worse, twitter. And my Orym feelings aren't identical to every other person who is critical of him. As I said in the initial tags for this, I don't think this was the worst thing in the world, it just bugged me! That was just an emotional response, and those often pass. There are lots of moments in stories where my initial reaction is a strong negative emotion, because I am feeling the feelings of the moment, but then I love the full picture it creates. Imogen and Laudna's "did we break up" phase is a great example of that, especially Laudna's ongoing insistence that she was a dead end. It hurt to watch! It made me sad! But it really enriched the narrative! My actual, continuing issues with this Orym moment have nothing to do with Imodna, or the meanings of this moment in particular. It's just another expression of something I've been grousing about among friends for ages. I actually WISH it was Orym being fucked up, that it was something that would come up again later, something he might get push back on. I wish the implication that he feels the need to monitor Imogen and Laudna, that he isn't thinking about how they might feel about it, was a flaw that would be explored with the other characters. Instead it was just kinda there and I imagine no one else will ever have a reaction to it one way or another.

And that leads to the final thing: my biggest issue with Orym listening in is that it DOESN'T matter. It feels like at some point, Liam stopped having Orym engage with other characters and the narrative as actively. It's started to feel very repetitive, and I am deeply frustrated with it. I know he is a reserved, PTSD-laden soldier who uses his hard line morality and sense of duty to hold himself together, who refuses to tell his friends how he feels because he doesn't want to be a burden. I know this! And I think it makes for an interesting character and I want to love Orym as much as I used to. But this is an interactive game, an ongoing narrative, and after a certain point, choosing to have your scenes be solo and keeping your character from changing any of their stances starts to feel like refusing to give other people room to react and challenge your character, and refusing to engage with how others' narratives have changed. What Imogen expressed about not running in this episode isn't a revelation. She has, at this point, been saying some variation of it for about half the campaign. And he has told her he is proud, before. It was nice, then! But listening in to their conversation here and feeling proud in isolation didn't add anything new to the narrative. It could have, if it was a conversation, if he had talked to Imogen directly. But instead it feels so empty to me. Disconnected. It even sort of re-framed the moment as if it was about Imogen Finally Choosing To Not Run, instead of being about Laudna trying to reaffirm a future that keeps slipping from their grasp, one she only just started to believe in again on the precipice of Imogen possibly sacrificing herself for the world. It makes it seem like Orym has barely moved on from the solstice, like he hasn't registered how Imogen's narrative has developed since then.

There are so many things I would love to see from Orym that require acknowledging that things have changed. I wanted him to talk to Dorian instead of chasing after Dorian's dad to say he should be proud of Dorian, especially since Dorian had already had his big cathartic conversation. I wanted him to ask why Dorian has come to hate the gods so much, to ask him why it wasn't just the Spider Queen he was mad at. I wanted him to talk to Fearne about the fact that people outside the party have treated her with the same anti-Ruidusborn suspicion as Imogen, particularly in light of their conversation about taking Imogen out pre-solstice. I wanted him to actually internalize that he was wrong about there being nothing beautiful in Exandria before the gods, and to talk to Ashton about it in a way that starts with him actively listening to Ashton instead of just repeating the same arguments, even if he came out the other side still disagreeing. I wanted him to realize that there hasn't been any danger of Imogen running and that the core of her struggle now is with the fact that she's being asked to sacrifice herself. I wanted him to talk to someone about his guilt over killing Zathuda. I wanted him to acknowledge the hardness he put on when he tossed the locket on Bor'dor's corpse and declared this was war and what that hardness did to him. I wanted him to work on his flaws and talk to people! But instead, he listened and reacted in isolation. The fact that his reaction to Fearne asking him if he was ok as late as episode 95 was just "then why ask? You know the answer" instead of opening up is narratively a problem for me. The few times he has opened up a little have been wonderful but he's still holding most of it to the chest. So many emotional Orym scenes are people talking to him about his emotions and him not responding. We're in too deep, man! "If not now, when?" doesn't just apply to kissing Dorian, you know? He is running out of time to open up.

So. Do I still think listening in on that moment was sucky of him, even beyond the hyperbole? Sure. I think generally purposefully eavesdropping on something like that is sucky. It's a small kind of sucky, though. A blip. Because this is a story, the big sucky thing is that it didn't mean anything for any other character and felt just narratively disconnected. And I find that so frustrating because there are so many potentially meaty, interesting things possible in Orym's story, and I desperately want that richer narrative for him and for Dorian and for all of them.

You might not agree and that's fine. To paraphrase Orym's own words, every one of us forms our own interpretations with the lenses or prisms we see life through. Of course I'm gonna get more het up when this ongoing, general Orym frustration touches on something Imogen or Laudna related - they're my favorites! Of course that influences how I see things. I know they aren't everyone's favorites, so something like this moment won't be a domino-kick on tangentially related, piling frustrations for everyone. But it is for me. I'm not really trying to convince anyone I'm right, here, just to explain why I feel this way about it.

Sure would be fucked up if Imogen and Laudna, until only recently, had every single one of their private moments observed against their will, and then their friend decided to observe possibly their last private moment against their will, huh? :)

[spot-the-antisemitism]

https://www.tumblr.com/pocketsizedquasar-3/767892590782775296

"Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point" (NOI Hamasniks recognize that most popular Tumblr Tankies are white racist soviet larpers who jumped in the #FreePalestine bandwagon but then deffend atrocities like the war and invasion on Ukraine because they have a reductive black and white view of the world)

They're so close yet so far...

Love when the leopards eat your face and decide it's only snow leopards are the problem and proceed to stick your head with your remaining face down the gullet of a panther

OP has me blocked but let me guess the USUAL NOI TALKING POINTS the "Ukraine hates blacks unlike russia" (false btw) and the "white on white genocide means less opressors to go around"?

hey at least African Americans see the way a lot of Arab hamasniks look down on all people of African Descent and decide "that's not my activism is non-transactional means"

[odinsblog]

I want to preface this post with the following disclaimer: This is not an endorsement of John McCain, who was thee most capitalistic, voter suppressing, anti-abortion, warmongering Republican who never met an American war he didn’t agree with. McCain callously joked about America bombing Iran by singing, “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran,” and much like Liz Cheney, his simply having hated Donald Trump does NOT magically erase or wash away all of the harm done to Black and Brown people that he and the Republican Party are directly responsible for.

Not to mention, John McCain was willing to put Sarah Palin! within a heartbeat of the presidency. That alone should tell you everything you need to know about him.

(source) (source) (source)

To be clear - McCain was a Republican, and not even a “moderate” one at that. As such we should always be wary of praising or elevating them. I despised him as a person and especially as politician with the power to legislate, and I beg you to remember the adage about a broken clock being right twice a day.

The rare occurrence when a conservative accidentally happens to make one or two good points that we might agree with, should never be mistaken for actual progress. Republicans are not our allies, and they are not good people—if they were, they wouldn’t be Republicans.

THAT ALL SAID, I cannot help but acknowledge that McCain’s assessment on Vladimir Putin was spot on and especially prescient:

[incorrectbatfam]

I made another Uquiz lmao

[nottodayjustin]

April 1st 2024 best hockey tweet(s) of the day

[ennawrite]

genuinely how it felt when Rhysand told Az to back off of Elain in that ACOSF bonus chapter

[willbyersabyss]

When Mike called El a superhero at the end of their argument, El felt discouraged. So why would Mike's monologue include the same statement when no work was done to change El's feelings towards that title? In fact, the opposite conclusion was reached. El learned that putting herself into boxes was reductive. She shouldn't just be a superhero, she needs to be a "monster" too to truly understand herself. If Mike's monologue gave El strength, it means that he's leading her in the wrong direction. Her self-image takes multiple steps back when she's with him.

El looked angry when Mike called her a superhero. That isn't what she wanted to hear and she knows she shouldn't lean back into that mindset. Anger fuels her powers. So yes, it did give her strength, but not positive strength. El looks over to Max dying, something that makes her angry, listens to Mike, and screams out in anger as she rips away from the vines.

El knows that Brenner was right. Mike disagrees. Mike doesn't see how reducing her down to a superhero is harmful. But El does. She gave Mike the cold shoulder just before this statement. She believes Brenner was right about her being neither a superhero nor a monster.

[angell-castiglione]

Alright, imma be a lot more blunt than I normally am because I’m tired of this shit.

There’s no law that says you hafta listen to the extremely flawed podcast that outlines the allegations against Neil Gaiman, but pretending it’s a conspiracy based on 0% evidence doesn’t make him not a predator, it makes you ignorant of the case against him at best, and an enabler or conspiracy theorist at worst.

And for the love of Christ, keep trans people out your fuckin mouth while you’re defending that piece of shit. He’s not one of us, we don’t claim him, and using us as an excuse for why the very credible allegations aren’t valid puts us in line of fire of those TERFs. Using us to protect your fav doesn’t make you an ally, it makes you an active threat. Do better.

[nicolefirekitty]

he's a dick but he's right

[kittykatinabag]

This debate makes me hate Biden the more I watch it. I'll still be gritting my teeth and voting for him because Trump is so much worse, but fuck the Democrats.

When we're not voting between unabashed fascism and a series of trade-offs that really don't need to be traded off, I'm anti-ing the fuck out of the Democrats.

[lellalombardiapologist]

Nelson Piquet, who was very mischievous, used to tease him unmercifully. Once Piquet said he’d found Balestre’s hotel key in the pitlane, and gave it to him. It had a metal tag attached which said, ‘Admit one prostitute to the room of the president.’ Another time Balestre was making an endless pompous speech at one of the drivers’ briefings, and Piquet was standing beside him with a litre bottle of mineral water, pouring it into the pocket of Balestre’s blazer. Everybody could see what he was doing, but it was a while before Balestre became aware of the wetness seeping through his trousers.

hey nelson quick question what the fuck

(source)

[heather-m-quigley]

[monstermoviedean]

neighborhood associations are evil and should be abolished but also everyone in my neighborhood just got an email reminding us we aren't allowed to have any flags except the us flag...right after someone put up a maga flag. tempted to walk over to that house with a bucket of popcorn so i can sit out front and watch the tantrum in real time.

[saaraofthesand]

I was so caught up in bungo stray dogs that I forgot to talk about world trigger’s new chapter. I’ve been waiting for those flashbacks for ages 👌🏻

[siryyeet]

"This post is so real hm bit funny worded tho" *looks at username* username: Naziradfem42088