#there are a lot of factors at play

[itcouldbeyourlastmistake]

I’m actually contemplating taking a gap year after high school. It might actually be a good idea idk

[vaggieslefteye]

ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ᴍᴇ ᴄʜᴏᴏꜱᴇ ↳ anonymous asked: HUSK and ALASTOR or angel and valentino?

[beneathsilverstars]

anyway related to my "gullible" post i do think bonnie didn't really have a lot of friends / any good friends. i'm taking a watsonian approach to "some of the things bonnie does seem more like age 5-8 than 10-12", and a doylist approach to "everyone in this party grew up kinda lonely and feels disconnected from their peer group"

[celestefox13]

It will forever stand out to me that, of the 3 original top 1st Class SOLDIERS, rich kid Genesis is the one that snapped first.

Not biological experiment child soldier never really had a dad Sephiroth,

Not poor kid joins the army and tries to maintain a code of morals and honor in the middle of a war spawned from politics Angeal,

But the hero complex rich boy with the apple trees in his yard and an obsession with an unfinished opera Genesis.

[thewhizzyhead]

once again this is more of a brainfart but a certain aspect of orphan town has come to mind recently - so obviously the first sets of verses feature the orphans getting ticked off that the reveal that the warriors, the so-called "late night cosmetology class" goers, were present at a gang summit they weren't invited to. the ensuing chorus then features the dudes boosting their rep up, saying that their rumbles are due to be famous and all that - and seeing as the orphans clearly take the lack of invitation as an attack to their ego, fox and swan resort to a well-known tactic used to bring insecure ego-obsessed men to heel: batting their eyelids and making the girls seem small and sweet by saying they were simply just "lost and lonely" while also making the boys feel respected as proper men through compliments ("heavy, heavy") and through asking them for help ("what do you suggest we do") - and this works!!! of course it all goes to shit when mercy challenges their masculinity and dominance by questioning how easily they fall for the warriors' damsel in distress act, but in any case, I find this treatment of the orphans to be another layer of cool and care in recontextualizing the warriors as women - as clearly this is an instance of not only misogyny in action, but in how women have to deal with insecure-ass men through stroking their egos just to get by peacefully, which is obviously not a take one can do if the warriors remained men. also its cool how swan stops the peace act when a.) the orphans seemingly act threatening to mercy ("mercy i'm losing my cool"), so swan, who doesn't know her, immediately jumps to her defense, and b.) when the orphans threaten harm to the warriors ("or we gotta rain down from you, from the rooftops"), causing swan the well-established pacifist to directly insult and attack them. i dunno i just think that's a cool take too that kinda foreshadows how the women are willing to take matters to their own hands once threatened rather than safely play to the tastes of men. anyways woo

[aplpaca]

i think the popularity of anime means that books could get so much weirder and do fine if publishers werent fucking cowards like. one of the most popular recent animes has a main character who fused with his demon dog and now his head and arms turn into fucking chainsaws. soul eater was fucking huge and just look it it. the grim reapers son has 2 guns that are a pair of shapeshifting sisters and thats only a tiny fraction of whats going on in that series. we need more of this energy in english-language sff books. im begging major publishing to Get Weirder

[moeblob]

Look, I just think it's VERY funny and on brand that I thought of an entire premise of colorful characters for half the cast and immediately drew the only one void of color.

[langernameohnebedeutung]

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[shitpostingkats]

Wow, I knew Dual Destinies was a devisive entry, but I think I failed to comprehend exactly how devisive

[bitsbug]

Getting myself weirdly worked up about the common misconception that 'purpose' is a thing that exists with regards to evolution.

Like, I get it, niches can very well seem like some designed role, crafted to further along the Divine Machine of Nature. When confronted with an organism you don't like, the first question is "What purpose does it serve? Is it insignificant enough to be eradicated?"

But this very much isn't how the natural world works; evolution isn't a planned process. It's a bit more like.. y'know those videos of an algorithm being trained how to walk through trial and error? It's like that, but with a million more variables. And much like the algorithm, there is no forethought involved in evolution - it's only the immediate ''reaction'' to (aka whatever works to survive against) environment circumstances. There's not even the "goal" of survival, it's just that things which don't survive are unable to pass on whatever made them not survive, while things that did survive do.

Now imagine this process happening billions of times in parallel, all interacting with eachother, and all changing themselves in response.

The conditions a population experiences most, and the other populations it interacts with most, will inevitably affect its 'algorithm' for continuing to exist. This friction will pressure it to become more specific in how it functions, and it will come to rely upon how the things around it function. In turn, its environment starts to rely upon how it functions, however indirect that may be. It's all separate systems pressed against eachother, morphing so they align in a way that fits.

So, you can see how this can be so easily mistaken for a purpose. But the distinction is very important, because a species' entire *being* is the thing its ecosystem has molded to, not just one aspect of its lifestyle. Fleas and mosquitoes both take blood from larger animals, but they absolutely aren't interchangeable - their method of feeding, prey choices, life stages, and even movement are completely different, and something else in their respective ecosystems WILL rely on these traits for its own survival. Removing even that one thing will daisy-chain across the system, hindering the survival of everything involved.

That's why vying for killing entire species willy nilly is a bad thing, even if evolution is a morally neutral process with no true meaning behind it! And also why 'purpose' is a bogus concept to apply to this extremely complex system!

[silviakundera]

more Li Rong/Pei Wenxuan/Su Ronqing dynamic thoughts...

Ep 18, Su Rongqing: "Don't forget that if it wasn't for His Majesty's fear of the imperial relatives, you wouldn't have even been able to get close to Her Highness in your life. Not to mention to be with Her Highness."

imo it's key that SRQ is from a super prestigious land-holding family, whose wealth and power are old & deeply entrenched. He's your modern day chaebol nepo baby, smart & educated & ready to inherit his family's slice of the empire.

Because he's every insecurity PWX has, tied up in a bow and sneering dismissively at him lol. PWX whose family worked hard to get out of the countryside and entered officialdom just in his dad's generation, and who doesn't even have the backing of that family. He has had to work 40x as hard and without being the princess consort he would never in his lifetime have achieved the stuff that's just handed to SRQ.

Part of PWX being determined to fight for Li Rong and not letting SRQ get in his head is that he needs to internalize that she sincerely thinks PWX is valueable and has never thought he was inferior to SRQ. None of their problems were ever about that. She saved SRQ for her moral conscience. Then she settled for him because her husband couldn't let go of his childhood engagement crush (plus his own acknowledged pride issues about a marriage arranged by the throne). He never actively tried to repair the marriage - his insecurities overtook him and he gave up. SRQ didn't "win". There was never any contest.

But though Pei Wenxuan tells himself this and tells Su Rongqing that she'll never say yes to him.... we gotta know that it's not that easy to defeat all your inner demons. That's why I think he gets a bit erratic and overblown in his romantic moves in the succeeding episodes - subconsciously anxious to tie Li Rong further to him.

[introspectivememories]

i miss when the main personality trait for dabi was "even tho we have differing goals and wildly different ways of achieving it, know that you're my little sibling and i will always love you" and then the reveal came and hori was like "you stupid fucking idiot, you really thought you could have big bro!dabi?? he fucking hates them you idiot"

[mashbrainrot]

i wish people made comments about any other member of the mash cast's appearance with the frequency that they do about Mike

[iggydancebreak]

im so conflicted

spoiler

i don't forgive alvar at all but he's a funny character and I kind of love keefe and hims dynamic

he should be punished but I also agree that he can change and grow. keefe gave him too much wiggle room and also he didn't I don't know how to feel

he probably should have brought him to the lost cities to have a tribunal

does he not deserve a normal life after punishment though? idk maybe it could have been handled differently but I don't 100% agree or disagree with how keefe handled it idk I read his perspective and I understand how he felt so idk

overall I like alvar as a character and he deserves to live a normal life but he did a lot of horrifying things that he needs to resolve and/or work for

but istg what is the reason keefe why can't you tell you're BEST FRIEND WHO IS HIS BROTHER AND GIRLFRIEND WHO WAS LITERALLY TORTURED ABOUT THIS???

i understand why he hasn't though, I just hope it happens soon I guess. he's been through a lot and I can understand how he's feeling right now. i just hope he does what's best and everyone does as well haha

i understand how he feels though this should be brought up jn book 10 and resolved idk

theyre both going through so much and are struggling.

[gyrovagi]

dai has a fascinating quality to it where it like objectively is not good to play and is a lot of boring busywork but thats exactly the right quality for my brain to latch onto for hours. i love just doing tasks.

[ladyalicentshightower]

I think people overestimate how feminist team black is. If someone brings up how Baela should be the heir to Driftmark, it's always "she would've been Queen if not for the Greens!", ignoring that 1, she would be Queen consort, not a Queen in her own right, and 2 she has a legitimate claim in her own right to Driftmark. Team Black's goal is to crown Rhaenyra, but Rhaenyra becoming Queen isn't a win for feminism because it does nothing to dismantle the rest of the patriarchal system that exists in Westeros. From what we've gotten so far, it reads that Rhaenyra wants to be the exception and not the rule. Rhaenyra has made a lot of bad political decisions, which means she can't acknowledge Baela's claim because it would weaken her own claim (blatantly admitting her eldest sons are illegitimate would not end well for her to say the least). So she betrothes Jace and Luke to Baela and Rhaena to kind of atone for that, like as a consolation prize Baela will be Queen and Rhaena will be lady of Driftmark, neither of them would hold either title in their own right. It's good matches because the kids like each other and will treat each other well, but it's not a feminist win or a feministic liberation. It's usurpation, usurpation that takes place because Rhaenyra has to do damage control after having illegitimate children and after a serious of bad political decisions (both hers and her fathers, Viserys is the arbiter of this entire mess). To me, Rhaenyra is very reminiscent of Mary Queen of Scots, I can see a lot of elements drawn from Mary's history in Rhaenyra's story and character, down to their sons eventually taking the crown they failed to claim/keep.