#thesis is chaotic evil

[mytortoisegotstuckinatupperware]

[lesbianphan]

speaking of allignment charts: I truly think the phandom is chaotic good as a whole. Cause we can do amazing things like that bday livestream, we can get together and do things that are so kind like every year there's the phandom gives stuff and it's so awesome?? but at the same time we are chaotic little freaks, we will meme stuff to death, we will be SO ANNOYING and 'lol random xD' to this day. I think this is essence of being a Dan and Phil audience member that is impossible to replicate. It's us <3

[i-gwarth]

Did anyone notice that, in the exchange between Viktor and Reveck/Singed, it was Reveck who had the factually correct description of evolution? A permanent force of nature, adaptation fueled by violence and death.

Did you notice how Viktor was *wrong* in his description of evolution? How he said it has a destination, to supplant nature? Did you notice he is not describing Evolution, but Progress? Did you notice that he is talking like Jayce? And that the only thing that stopped him from following Reveck and giving him Vander was his own personal decency, his moral compass. Because in principle he agreed with what Reveck was selling, a rejection of nature, of death and of suffering?

Viktor exists in tension with himself. He is committed to progress, to helping people, but in the right way. Without leaving others behind, without collateral victims and force.

The same tension is reflected at the heart of Arcane, in the duality of order vs chaos. Neat and orderly, straight lines deco Piltover vs chaotic, chthonic, curvilinear nouveau Zaun. The cold control of Hextech vs the uncontrolled fury of Shimmer.

The thesis of Arcane is the (rather simple, basic) idea that one side of human nature cannot exist without the other, and attempts to escape this duality are tragically doomed to failure. There will be a Zaun to every Piltover. A victim left behind by every leap of progress. And if we forget this, the world will waste no time to reminding us. Tension against duality is always resolved, reinforcing duality.

Viktor fell into this trap. Confusing the two, trying to separate the duality. In his final moments he realized that his attempt to escape it was always going to fail. This slots neatly into his LoL-self's agenda of mechanizing humanity: if humanity's nature is inescapably bound to chaos, the solution is to leave humanity behind. Escaping the tension. Smashing the coin.

I almost hope they don't go that route. I hope he is dead, a tragic figure who attempted a gentle uplift of the poor and destitute but failed to account for the human factors leading to them. He doesn't need to become a fanatical robot man on a crusade against flesh.

But more importantly we do not need a stereotypical Bad Guy embodying axiomatically evil conformity and forcefulness. We don't need a simplistic, childish narrative about overcoming a demon. It is good that the show so far has stained every villain with empathy, every monster with love. It is good that each character embodies the inescapable duality, so that we can never have absolute good without absolute evil.

Arcane should not aim to provide villains or solutions. It is at its best when painting a beautiful picture of our malformed humanity. Anything more would lessen the impact. We need the coin landing on its side.

[lunarflux]

aemond being a chaotic neutral

I looked this up recently, and if anyone is super into alignments, Aegon and Aemond's alignments are fascinating. They're both Chaotic Neutrals, but their motivation is different. (this is my opinion please do not come for me) Because Aemond is a Chaotic Neutral, I genuinely do not believe he hates Aegon. There might be a fine line between resenting him and hating him, but I think Aemond is more on the lines of correcting a game that he always felt was played incorrectly. He's fixing the board for entirely selfish purposes, and if he was acting with hatred, it would look so much different.

I couldn't give a full thesis on why I think Aemond doesn't actually hate his brother, but it all stems from how Ewan Mitchell portrays the character. Now, just because I don't think Aemond hates Aegon doesn't mean I think he likes him either. Truthfully, I think Aemond thinks himself to be so above Aegon in worth that hating him or liking him would be wasted energy and effort.

At this point, he's starting to lean on Chaotic Evil (as someone pointed out on Reddit), but I don't think he's entirely there yet.

[charmwasjess]

25 for Sifo, please 😁

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

Oh Ingata, you've unknowingly asked me to present my thesis on my favorite topic and I love you for it. (Okay, this could have been a two sentence answer, but it's me.) So I wrote you an essay on Sifo-Dyas, but I'm putting it below a cut to save everyone from my rambles on Sifo in the old EU and the greater meaning of his doom-ass storyline.

Apparently, I once casually mused to readalong back in the day (exactly how long ago? No need to worry about that!) that Sifo-Dyas must have been a pretty nice guy, what with him putting up with Dooku all those years. Oh sweet summer child. If only I knew then how long I would spend thinking about this idiot and their dynamic.

Back then, he was on my mind simply because of Dooku. In Luceno’s Labyrinth of Evil, Yoda takes some time to describe in length Dooku and Sifo-Dyas’s close friendship, “bound by the unifying Force,” and speculates what Sifo-Dyas knew about the lead-up to Dooku’s fall. That he was desperately worried about Dooku, that he thought Qui-Gon’s death was a breaking point for him, that Dooku might have been actively hunting down his killer's Master to fuck shit up, and this was about to be A Big Problem for Everyone. 

All of this was very interesting, especially back then, when Dooku was not a popular character and depictions of him having meaningful, positive connections in the Jedi Order were few and far between. I want to be careful here, because I’m not calling the EU/Legends bad - Dark Rendezvous has some of the most beautiful Dooku character work I’ve ever read. But compare, say, Jude Watson’s Qui-Gon in Legends Legacy of the Jedi outright calling Dooku “too cold to love,” as a Master, versus examples from new canon, where Dooku repeatedly and effusively praises his Padawans, casts their relationship as mutually loving, and even offers to get drunk and cry it out over Rael’s dead Padawan. Those present really different pictures. So Sifo-Dyas stood out to me right off the bat as unusual for being close with Dooku: a meaningful connection for a character who, at that point, didn't have meaningful connections. 

As for my impressions now, I think I have a soft spot in general for characters who seem to exist simply to die in a tragic, unescapable way, sacrificed to the narrative or for other character’s growth. In a way, Sifo-Dyas’s story is still certainly both of those.

But he’s so much more. He walks into Dooku: Jedi Lost as this vivid, funny, weird, fearless, chaotic good goofball of a character. Sith Dooku is breathlessly, affectionately describing him to Asajj Ventress (of all people) within the first few seconds of his own life story. That's crazy?! "I was born, I went to the Temple, oh, I MET THIS INCREDIBLE PERSON." Sifo-Dyas's first scene in the damn book is to make a silly little song about Dooku’s name and then telling him to "tell it to your face"?! And we’re not supposed to love him?!

I could go on. But here’s the heart of it for me with the character. The penultimate scene in Dooku: Jedi Lost, comes when he and Dooku are estranged, having been for years over what seems implied as a breakdown over an escalating series of visions that cast Dooku at the center of a world-shattering conflict. Yet, when Dooku comes to Sifo-Dyas for help, one last desperate get-the-gang-back-together, he won’t deny him. When Dooku suggests what Sifo-Dyas literally describes as “insane, the worst plan I’ve ever heard” (I’m quoting directly here), his answer is, again, directly quoting: “I’m in.” He never stopped saying that to Dooku. For all their ultimate ruin, it's sort of beautiful.

That’s the impression that stands out the most strongly - not tragic doom or narrative foil - but the aspects of bravery and loyalty to the character. Someone who would have spent his whole life having visions about someone ending the world, and still show up for that person, and later, still come to them with their own problems. It seems very, very likely - he outright says it during a vision in the cursed book – that he knows Dooku is the person who will make all the futures converge into the one terrible timeline. But EVEN THEN, Sifo-Dyas would rather bring hundreds of thousands of lives into existence than take out Dooku. And whether you read that as friendship or something more, at the end of the day, it’s love.

[jarognieva]

45, 41, 35, 28 and 23 for Micolash :>

23. Has this character permanently altered or impacted your psyche in a way you won’t forget?

I don't know if this counts as "psyche". But. I think I was inspired by his confidence. It's not that I'm not afraid of doing inhuman experiments now XD But you know. He's crazy and he doesn't hide it. He just do what he wants!

Also his character and his actions once again made me think almost philosophically about good and evil, the value of human life and whether "the end justifies the means". I am very curious how his sect functioned. Did a common goal drive them to do cruel things or is it just human nature?

28. Do you get defensive about this character? If yes, then why?

I don't think so... I'm too shy to engage in discussions with complete strangers. Sometimes I would really like to do it, but my nature usually tells me to avoid it ;_;

35. Has this character ever prevented you from sleeping because you can’t stop thinking about them?

Oh I can't count how many times! Unfortunately I don't write my thoughts anywhere and I forget them :c My thoughts are so quick and chaotic that I don't know how to put them into words...

41. Do you prefer to interact with this character directly via self-insert/reader type content? Or do you enjoy seeing them mostly with other characters in the story and/or your OCs?

The second option! I really enjoy seeing him with Edgar or Damian (but not only them of course!). I'm not even thinking about self-insert; I feel like I'm too cringe and not worthy - you know, low self-esteem etc, heh. Only one exception - when you draw me on your drawing for my birthday ♥️ It was so adorable! ♥️

45. Do you feel as if you are intimately familiar with this character?

I'm not sure if I properly understood the question but I try to answer lol. So. I have my own interpretation of this character but I'm very careful with making one clear thesis in the case of media such as Bloodborne. So I prefer to make questions without one "proper" answer.

I often wonder what prompted his fixation on Kos and ascension. Did he want to surpass others? Because he DEFINITELY didn't care about the evolution of all humanity. Simple curiosity? Or maybe he wanted to abandon a completely rotten humanity for which there is no future. I like to think it's mostly (but not only) the latter option. Yharnam didn't rot overnight. The entire society was corrupt, from those in power to the poorest. He figured he had nothing to lose.

As for my interpretation of this character - I still understand his curiosity, his desire to achieve his goal no matter what. it's really tempting to find out how it is to exist as higher being! Oh and by the way, I love the fact that he's probably the only character who actually has a good time xD (I had lucid dreams and I know it would be awesome to have own wonderful nightmare with your magic tricks and own skeletons!)

(Link for ask game here)

[ugh-yoongi]

favorite kpop group(s): tag game edition

tysm for tagging me @highvern, @cordiallyfuturedwight, & @hvseoks!

who is your favorite k-pop group?

bts, ateez, seventeen, the boyz

which member sparked your interest first?

bts: i'm pretty sure it was taegi? my best friend texted me this thesis-length primer and all i could remember later on were the ones named suga and v, lol.

ateez: mingi

seventeen: jeonghan

the boyz: kevin

who was your first bias?

bts: seokjin

ateez: mingi

seventeen: jeonghan

the boyz: kevin

who is your current bias?

bts: seokjin

ateez: seonghwa

seventeen: jeonghan

the boyz: younghoon

what makes them your current bias?

seokjin: just my number one boy. my comfort human. someone who is kind and takes care of others, who always tries his best and perseveres, who will be the first one to make a fool of himself to lighten the mood and make others more comfortable.

seonghwa: a lot??? like seokjin??? just a sweetheart. makes his little animal crossing sounds. isn't afraid to be himself. takes care of his members. insane duality.

jeonghan: chaotic. a schemer. makes his own rules and follows those instead. but also very sweet and subdued. takes care of his members.

younghoon: i honestly do not know how this happened. i went into watching content a staunch kevin bias and now i'm not. idk. maybe when i re-watched kingdom and he got in the water tank with sunwoo because he was scared. bee will say it's bc he's a leo.

who is your bias wrecker?

bts: yoongi; namjoon & hobi

ateez: hongjoong & mingi

seventeen: seungcheol, jun, & seungkwan

the boyz: kevin, chanhee, changmin, juhak

which members are you currently obsessing over that aren't your bias/bias wrecker?

bts: jungkook

ateez: yeosang

seventeen: mingyu

the boyz: sangyeon

when did you first discover this group?

bts: 2017. my best friend was into them first and sent me the mic drop mv. texted me the aforementioned primer. i kept up with them since then but didn't know kpop was... like this? like, the entire culture. was very unaware and thought it was just kinda like western groups.

ateez: 2019

seventeen: 2021

the boyz: 2021. it was either getting into them or seventeen and i went down the seventeen route first.

have you ever been to one of their concerts?

bts: twice as a group and d-day tour twice

ateez: three times

seventeen: twice

the boyz: no

what are some of your favorite songs by the group?

bts: best of me, blood sweat & tears, save me, ugh!, heartbeat, spine breaker, intro: never mind, intro: what am i to you, all of the cyphers, all of jin's solos, mikrokosmos, black swan, 2nd grade, the stars, spring day, autumn leaves, love maze, louder than bombs, 21st century girl, war of hormone. idk they have a massive discography how do you choose????

ateez: still here, twilight, say my name, hala hala, utopia, wave, wonderland, mist, answer, thanxx, fever, the leaders, take me home, dreamers, deja vu, turbulence, the real, don't stop, the king, cyberpunk, guerrilla, halazia, duna, matz, django

seventeen: fear, lie again, light a flame, super, i don't understand but i luv u, monster, lilili yabbay, trauma, highlight, march, ash, cheers, fallin' flower, don't wanna cry, my i, our dawn is hotter than day, good to me, getting closer, anyone, gam3 bo1, to you, run to you, 24h, a-teen

the boyz: ego, crying&laughter, no air, whiplash, b.o.y, bump & love, roar, breaking dawn, lip sync, eyes on me, d.d.d, drink it, echo, scar, 4ever, russian roulette, shine shine, tattoo, c.o.d.e, kiss me if you can, closer, levitating

no pressure tags: @the-boy-meets-evil @hot-soop @effortandmore @moni-logues @tbzhub & anyone else who wants to! do it and say i tagged ya :)

[dothwrites]

funeralia remains one of my favorite episodes for several reasons. one of which is that rowena flirts with cas who has a polite gay panic at the thought of being flirted with by an attractive woman. (but you can tell that he's definitely pleased by the attention) cas' "you NEVER go to parties" to sam is funny because it either implies that he definitely DOES go to parties and is shaming sam for not doing the same. or cas just DOESN'T go to parties and is STILL shaming sam for not going to parties. either way, it's cas being a bitch to sam, which is my favorite thing in the world

and then rowena's dance scene! ruth is KILLING IT and i love the idea that rowena just has her muscle boy to travel everywhere with her

"i'm gonna get a beer. you want a beer" "no" "i'll get beer" and then he gets cas a beer. and cas DRINKS the beer. peak husband behavior. i will never cease loving them. dean's "just don't get dead again" sounds (and comes off) like a very brusque dismissal but it reveals his VERY REAL fear that cas is going to die. the widower arc lives on because cas has never been that very obviously dead before. dean's still a little traumatized from it and he continuously implores cas not to do anything stupid etc. and to cas it sounds like dean just doesn't trust him or thinks less of him, but it's dean's way of pleading with him: don't die. i can't do that again

i love jessica the reaper. she's so perky!

dean is so proud of his shelf in death's library. and he should be! he's the specialest boy!

I love this conversation between naomi and cas. they're SO passive aggressive. well. cas is aggressive. naomi is just that horrible mother who is NEVER going to give you the validation that you want. naomi calmly nodding while cas lists out her crimes is PEAK BITCH behavior and i love her for it. "i'm sorry goes a long way" and then naomi just nods. UNREPENTANT QUEEN i love you for your many war crimes. they really did drop the "heaven is powering down" storyline didn't they? i think they mention it a handful of times in s14, but then... nothing! they sent dean winchester to a heaven that's powering down!

rowena's redemption arc was handled pretty well. she goes from completely chaotic evil to chaotic good and it's believable every step of the way. this scene, where rowena acknowledges that she was never going to kill sam and that she's changed... I JUST REALLY LOVE ROWENA OKAY

i'm fairly ambivalent on billie as a character (though i do LOVE her as death) but lisa absolutely KILLS this scene. she somehow manages to perfectly combine compassion with brutality and the end result is GORGEOUS. "sometimes life is unfair" and everything that follows is a masterful treatise on the nature of grief and how to deal with it and it came from thee supernatural. supernatural is a SHOW! "everything ends" otherwise known as the thesis for this show

THIS EPISODE! THIS EPISODE!

[obscureaestheticist]

Dark Con & Succession War Characters as Players & GMs

Ging: Derailing god. Knows a pirating / rom site for everything. Adores Pathfinder and 3.5e but runs games as if Tomb of Horrors was just easy mode. Pariston: "It's what my character would do :)" Lamentations enthusiast. Leorio [current arc]: Channels the power of thesis block to destroy hordes of bandits. Cheadle: Strategic player who looks on in despair at their chaotic and extremely violent comrades. T-T Mizaistom: T-posing human fighter that somehow keeps pulling off the most significant moments in the campaign. Beyond: That one tiktok friend who cosplays as their character for each session and runs campaigns like theatrical wrestling performances. That vocal training has gotta be used for something! Muherr: Army vet, seen a lotta stuff, but runs the most heartfelt and hopeful campaigns you'll ever play. 7th Sea Gm. Steiner: Sweetest guy you know, writes the most terrifying mysteries ever. Pure unfiltered neurosis expressed through Call of Cthulhu and World of Darkness. Kurapika [current arc]: 3rd life-changing trauma this week "Sure! I can make it for Friday!" Melody: In it for the deep pan crispy lore. Makes the maps out of love. Can't play an evil character the save their life. Has mountains of Solo-RPG journals of wonderous adventures. Hanzo: Falls into the habit of down-to-Earth friendly characters that sling death threats and "comedic violence" at everyone to the point of awkwardness. Shall avenge every minor NPC the gm forgot to name. Basho: Doesn't own a single rpg book that doesn't also double as an art book. Bill: "That game from Stranger Things?" Theta: Evokes awe from fellow players for her RP skills. Greater knowledge of in-game politics than the actual DM. One Ring and Game of Thrones RPG enjoyer. Tserriednich: Tonight's Session - The GMs Barely-Disguised Fetish ... Kult & Drakar och Demoner for life. Benjamin: WILL apply real military strategies to your game regardless of setting and character. YES! He will bring diagrams! YES! You should be concerned! Twilight: 2000 nut. Zhang Lei: Chill. Enjoying the vibes. Simply awaiting the fruition of his diabolical schemes to spring into action... Once every other player is done with their wacky flumph hijinks. Camilla: Dungeon Bitches & Mork Borg. Throwing hands. Fuck everything else. Fireball isn't enough. Stay away from the loot. Halkenburg: Heart of gold, but tries waaaaay too hard to help the fantasy world he's meant to just be smacking trolls around in. Kacho & Fugetsu: Supports queer indie ttrpgs and are currently trying to figure out where to store all the gigabytes of pdfs. Hinrigh: "Yes, this is a rip off of all my favorite anime characters and I love them :D" Zakuro: Too shy to speak up, didn't realize they missed 5 turns. Lynch: Screw politeness, fists are all you need to ask questions. Morena: The "Nice Girl" Oito: "I just hope the game contains no foul language. Do we need a console?" Woble: The group mascot

[emberkeelty]

Continued from this.

The Earthshakers call the Fatebinder a follower of the Scarlet Chorus. At this point, she can't even argue.

Instead, she just keeps spiraling!

Hey, remember how she went through all that trouble to spare your worthless life? Yeah, she really doesn't know why she bothered! You know what will definitely make her feel better? Killing things!

How much time did any of this even buy her?

Really? You're surprised she needs a drink?

Lantry was two-timing his guild on orders from Nerat for decades. No wonder he's always on so many drugs now, after that all blew up in his face.

This isn't fun anymore.

TGEK's LP describes the Chorus route as being a story about the folly of thinking evil means can be used to achieve anything but evil ends. That's accurate enough for a one-liner summary, I think, but what I'm getting out of this is something a lot less... dualistic. After all, the rebel path still sees you using some evil means, albeit less than usual, and if you play your cards right there you can achieve ends that are, if not unambiguously good, at least pretty clearly better than the alternatives. For a time, anyway. But that's another point where I differ from TGEK, and that's a whole separate thesis.

More to the point... what exactly does it mean when I say that the Scarlet Chorus is evil? That sounds like a stupid question, I know. Their atrocities aren't hard to list, since they keep them on full display. Just on the face of it, they are obvious, almost generic Chaotic Evil. But that's exactly the trap! Compared to the Disfavored, they seem honest about what they are, and in a way, that can be freeing. "This is war. Try to enjoy it," as Verse says. Besides, many of their more obvious transgressive tendencies are things that a certain kind of person might find outright appealing.

But there's a deeper darkness that, as usual, traces all the way up to Kyros. There's a reason Nerat is a many-faced monster of flames and voices, and as with all Archons, the reason for his existence impacts everything he touches. When he says that he's loyal, not only does he mean it, but he means something very specific by it. Like Bleden Mark and unlike Tunon or Graven Ashe, he knows exactly what Kyros really is. Unlike Mark, he's fully committed anyway. Kyros doesn't stand for anything at all beyond her own power, so true loyalty doesn't mean following her laws or fighting for her glory, but rather being subsumed by her every whim. As below, so above. Nerat's own soul got eaten a long time ago.

Most everyone has something they hold sacred, something that it would shatter them to violate. Sure, the specific thing that broke Nerat was a violent betrayal of his blood family, but that's just flavor. Verse loved her Fury sisters and is a wreck about what she did to them. Fireweed was fiercely proud of her connection to the Beast tribes, and now she's gone and used it as a profane bargaining chip. The Chorus will get you where you live. Like Kyros herself--the truth of her that Nerat sees--it demands nothing less than complete self-annihilation.

In the end, Fireweed does more or less get what she wanted.

And yet, it kind of feels like a farce. A bad parody.

Really? That's the word you're going with?

It... could be worse. Quite a lot worse. She did what she could, right? And who's to say there was ever a chance it could have been any better?

(There was. She missed it two years ago, back during the conquest, when she was pettily abusing her power as a Fatebinder to work out her grudge against the Disfavored. She murdered the Queen of Apex because the Chorus thought it would be funny and the Disfavored were against it. The transgressions that don't matter to you can still alienate you enough to bind you into committing the ones that do.)

[grayintogreen]

For the OC ask game: Ashley!

✏️ PENCIL

❇️ SPARKLE

✏️ PENCIL - is there a particular quote / lyric that you associate with them?

Ashley in true pretentious bastard fashion was very much created from me being exposed to a lethal amount of Brennan and having recently remembered the Harry Lime Monologue, which is the thesis statement of his character.

For those who haven’t watched The Third Man, I’m referring to what’s basically a third of Orson Welles’ screentime but this quote in particular:

“Don't be so gloomy. After all, it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly.”

This is how I justify a lawful evil paladin following a chaotic evil god- Ashley believes that chaos breeds beauty while also believing that when the world becomes too corrupt it has to be wiped clean.

❇️ SPARKLE - what is their most prized possession? what do they value?

As a nepo baby pretending at being poor on purpose, Ashley doesn’t have a lot of material possessions he values, but he does prize the Blade of Broken Mirrors. He killed a lot of family to get that.

OC ASK GAME.

[madamhatter]

having to handle unruly child servants or chaotic evil servants

send  me  this  or  that  questions  for  my  muse  / accepting. make  them  funny,  make  them  personal,  make  them  embarrassing.  anything  that  you  want,  just  make  them  choose!

With great hesitance, Sophie stares down at the folded piece of paper. She presses it between her thumb and index finger, careful not to crimp it. Lighter than a feather was that paper in her hands, but her body stiffened, locked to place like Atlas bearing the heavens on his shoulders.

A simple game is near-lethal to Sophie; disclosing personal opinion, no less partaking in vulnerability stretches thin her defenses. Brave is the face she places on, trying her most damn not to squirm at the thought.

Whoever convinced her to be in this position must have some unnaturally powerful gift.

Taking one deep breath, Sophie unfolds the paper. Her eyes narrow, scanning over the scrawled writing. The very question that will unhinge or hinge her composure is….!

Her brows crease. 'This question makes it sound like one is less hassle than the other.' 

"Well, this is certainly a way to start this," sighs Sophie.

"One may see that the child servants option is better than the chaotic evil servants," expresses Sophie with her hands flat and pulled away, adding visuals. "However," her hand close in distance," the reality is that these options aren't exclusive," she emphasizes as her palms then touch and clasp together.

"If I decide to spend even more time with the children, something I have already done outside of Chaldea, that doesn't exclude the avatars of destruction, madness enablers, and mass-murderers in the lot like Jack the Ripper and Van Gogh, to provide some examples."

"Despite mentioning my experience and the alignment's reputation, the Servants that are Chaotic Evil are much more manageable," she nods. 

"I apologize if that is any offense to them and the madness-inducing ways. They are much more forward in their intentions and personalities, leaving little room for any miscommunication and lack of clarity."

"In the work environment, they are wonderful. It is when personal space is involved that may bring some conflict. But, we are all working here as terminal coworkers until," she waves her wrist, "we resolve all of this."

"Meanwhile, while the child servants are the most eager to help, I admit that same curiosity that wants them to come to understand things can be quite distracting." She sighs. "Voyager and Taisui decided to spend a scouting trip mission exploring the 'fun sand' that ended up being a pond of quicksand that almost swallowed us whole after I had to jump in to save them-" 

Sophie stops speaking in a moment, glancing to the side. Despite the near-death memory, she isn't that distraught by the image. Instead, her mind seems to overwork in thinking about the topic.

'The child servants already have an advantage over me. Even I get distracted from my work and contribute to the trouble if they know how to twist my arm. Do they even need to twist it to get my help? I practically keel over like a weak-willed person with a brain of pudding if their happiness is on the line.' 

The seamstress shakes her head.

"To conclude, I would rather handle the Chaotic Evil servants because of our circumstances."

Sophie Hatter manages to grasp the game, but it seems that she feels it appropriate to provide thesis's length of a defense for her option.

[babylonianx]

"In the beginning is a thesis statement, which can be paraphrased, here's is the story of God's creation of the Heavens & The Earth. The focus is on the creation of the material world -- The Heavens & The Earth. God: This standard Hebrew term of diety, Elohim, is in the form called the plural of majesty or the plural of intensity. In the contrast to the ordinary plural (gods) the plural means "the fully of diety" or God - Very God" Even though the word for God is plural, the verb was created is singular. It means "to fashion anew". This oft-used word in the Bible always had God as its subject. Here it means that God renewed what was in a chaotic state. God changed choas into cosmos, disorder into order, emptiness into fullness. The Heavens & The Earth mean, all the creation or the cosmos. The two words without form.... void express on concept - choas. The Earth had been reduced to this state it was not the way God had created it darkness is the pontent biblical symbol of evil & wrong. The deep is a term for the secret places of the waters, this term sounds enough like the name of the Babylonianxo goddess tiamat To remind the ancient of the babylonianxo story of creation to which the story stands in dramatic contrast. All these images together potray choas, disaster & devastation. Form the portrait of utter ruin, God brought an orderly creation. The Spirit hovering like a mother stork might hover her nest - a portent of life to come from the dark. Murky depths of the choas below (the spirit is described as a dove in Matt) 3:16

[whoknowsyourfuture]

So, Just Saw the new Indiana Jones Movie

For spoiler free-

It was a fun movie, had some good callbacks. Much more action than I remembered the other movies having, but I haven't watched them in a while, so grain of salt with that. There wasn't a lot of character building or b-plots, but again I haven't watched the previous ones in a while, so. Spoilers and discussion under the readmore!

Ok, so immediately, I'm not super psyched with the intro. As the movie is written, it's somewhat necessary to get a background, but I think there were ways to get around having to introduce entirely new friends and enemies. Literally just make Indy have had an oops baby with one of his previous love interests, or, in the case of Elsa from the Last Crusade, a kid with his dad. Does that make sense with the timeline? Who knows. Or, because I love Ke Huy Quan, bring him/his kid into it for the inciting incident. There are tons of ways to have used extant characters and avoid the uncanny valley Young!Indy. As it is, the plot we got is Fine, I Guess. Very much 'bad guys have this so we got to get to the next place before them' but surprise! They managed to catch up without knowing where Indy and Co. are going in an unlikely quick fashion. Like yeah, they're going west instead of east in the Mediterranean, but there's a whole lot of west that they might have gone to and the bad guys were in a little boat🙃.

Also, this movie felt a lot more brutal. Pretty much all of Indy's friends who helped in this movie ended up shot, and a lot of innocent bystanders, even when the Nazis are still pretending to go along with the CIA, which. Given this movie takes place in 1969...😬 Yeah, I'm not considering them the good guys either. Which brings me in to how they did Mason dirty, y'know, the only WOC in the cast. Obviously the main thing is they just offed her, which, Nazis. So, technically makes sense, but given the turmoil of the time in the setting there could have been so much more done with the character. Because as it is, she's kind of ineffective. She doesn't tip the rest of the bad guys off to where Helena went, but she's still going along with everything even after they've killed innocent bystanders! I don't expect CIA to care, but if you're going to go that route, either make her properly evil, given she would have been recruited to infiltrate black rights organizations (which her actor even brought up according to Wikipedia), or make her have a crisis of faith in the CIA and give her something to do except die! She's one of like 5 POC with substantial lines in the movie, if we exclude Helena's mob BF, and the only woman! There was so much potential! And that's not the way I would even fix her character. I'd have her be Indy's TA, be sus of Helena and her whole thing bc she's heard Indy's stories and go 'someome you have history with shows up trying to find a mystical artifact with ties to the Nazis!?!?! You're getting in trouble and I'm not grading your finals alone!' Literally nothing else in the movie really has to change, although I would just to make a proper b plot. And so she doesn't die, bc this is the happy version. Since it seems like they're trying to set Helena up as the next Indy, it would have been cool if there was a duo with the two of them, his goddaughter and his student, or, given that Helena is kind of chaotic neutral to evil, they could have played off against each other and had a cat and mouse thing. And kiss

So, yeah, mostly just griping about how the characters could be more interesting - wait I forgot, when Indy wanted to stay in Greece it would have been way more impactful to have someone he properly knew going why the fuck do you want to stay? Mason the TA going 'you're coming back for your students mfer, that's who! I still need you to sign off on my thesis!'

Anyways, it was a fun movie, just go in with lower expectations than the first three. Hope Mads is having fun with his villain era, it was cool to see some of the previous cast come back even if they murdered them 😒 I do have to admit I like the horse scene even though it's less than believable. There's some cool Easter eggs with history and the earlier movies, and I fully expect them to make the next one about the lance of Longinus.

[fluffy-papaya]

legit tho, i think scar's fatal flaw is that he. okay stay with me here i will explain this in a sec but i think scar's fatal flaw is that he trusts too easily

because scar is. okay claps hands. scar is a lawful neutral. this is so much more interesting than so many people think because okay. 

 essentially — lawful, in dnd terms, has never meant ‘follows the law.’ it can certainly mean that for some characters, if that’s their personal law, but lawful just means a set of rules that the character has decided to follow. laws of society, laws of personal nature, all lawful means is a set of rules that is followed. this is very commonly misconstrued in the case of lawful good and lawful neutral. lawful means 'follows a set of rules,' not 'follows THE set of rules.'

 let’s say a character leaves a bag of gold on the shelf everytime they go to the market. a lawful good character would leave that bag of gold because they believe it is the right thing to do, even if it goes against greater societal rules. a chaotic good character would leave that bag of gold because it goes against the greater set of societal rules. they’re both doing this for a good reason, it is just how they feel personally connected that defines their alignment. morality determined the good to evil scale, and connection determined the lawful to chaotic scale.

scar’s connection to his alignment is his connection (or lack thereof) to people.

scar. scar right. he's a heart on his sleeve, trusts too easily guy, because he genuinely believes people will always want to help him, or that he's in the right. flowers, friendship passes, the fact that he thought his creeper explosion was an accident. but, because he's following this own set of rules he made up for himself, no one can trust him in return. no one gets the rules when they play scar's game, so no one wants to trust what he's selling, and its so interesting, because scar is a guy with genuinely good intentions, but no one believes him. he's kinda like impulses* anti-thesis or something.

*(impulse's anti-thesis in the fact in that they share the same character (good intentions, no one trusts them) but get played entirely differently)

[unoisveimved-un-proffesional]

!Warning!: Long post. Very unimportant stuff, you don’t need to waste your time reading this like I did, and I apologize if you choose to. I have a tendency to write english papers when I should just be writing a social media posts. On to the Brain Dump:

Maybe the flicky heart thing is like what was going on with Gamma in Sonic Adventure, in Gamma’s story ending. Maybe using creatures to power robots has unseen side effects that The Big Egg never decided to follow up on in research. Maybe Rusty is exceptionally different, as not only a partly roboticized being, but also one that had organic origins and has a living power source.

I personally think it’s a scientific failure on the doctors part in the main universe for never exploring the full possibilities and mixtures of organic and robotic beings. He’s very obviously inspired by nature, designing a lot of his most iconic bots and badniks on living creature, from Crabmeat to Metal Sonic, obviously believing he can improve nature, which is as mad science as gets but wouldn’t be entirely evil if he also wasn’t so obsessed with his self image and indulged so much in technocracy and a dictatorship built around him and his accomplishments, as well as his disrespect towards nature, no matter how inspired by it he is. Maybe his atonement and way of expanding on previously dark scientific matter is Rust Rose with the help of the Council, pushing the boundaries into even more inhumane and terrible but far more effective and enlightening results, like most things the good doctor has done but taken to an extreme.

Nature is also a chaotic force, it spirals and blossoms and blooms, and any sense of true orderly-ness is simple logistics as a result of chaos and disorder refining itself with itself as iron sharpens iron. Nature is chaos energy in its natural habitat in a way, and so it’s reasonable that the creatures of nature also embody the spirit of chaos and disorder, but also harmony and balance as a natural result of chaos equalizing itself until it’s sustainable, like how ecosystems are naturally formed. Eggman’s ultimate goal may be world domination as a military leader, but as a scientist his ultimate goal seems to be the harnessing of this chaos energy and bringing order and refinement to its raw untamed natural power. This gives him a scientific and ideological incentive on top of a personal and practical one for pursuing Sonic and the people who naturally form around him, as well as the chaos emeralds, and his desire of merging and synthesizing nature with machines that persists across all iterations of the story.

What I’m getting at is, I think Rusty may be a crude semi-punishment of a resistor, but also an alpha-testing of a more chaotic and unrefined ultimate mixture of machinery and organisms, using both a flicky as a power source and an already existing organic creature as a baseline to build off of, less metaphorical as it was for designing like the Buzz Bombers, and more literal as the council has literally attached and replaced an organic creatures body parts with machines, literally building off of her, to create not only a powerful and loyal underling to oversee the Egg Council’s empire, but also a thesis statement to their ultimate idea of synthesizing, corrupting, and building on top of predefined nature and harnessing it to their own ends, to boost their own ego’s and justify their incredible narcissism with even more incredible accomplishments in science.

Back to Gamma, who I briefly mentioned in the beginning; Gamma had a unique relationship to nature and the self, especially with that end scene with the flicky, which is what ultimately brought me to making the connection and thinking maybe there’s something deeper going on with the flicky’s, and maybe they’re more than just a battery. It reminds me a lot also of Android 16 from Dragon Ball Z , who also so happens to be associated with birds. This is more of a narrative parallel instead of a superficial one like I often see between DBZ and STH, but parallels are there, for better and for worse, but I think this one in specific is very interesting.

Anyway sorry for going off, it’s mostly meta-analysis and fluff and isn’t directly plot or lore related so I don’t see it becoming very important in the future, but I think it’s all very interesting and am incredibly invested to see where Nine and Rusty are in the future, no doubt being my two favorite characters with plot relevance, as well as narrative weight. Sonic as a franchise is very surprisingly good at this distinction and messaging of chaos, nature, harmony, and technology that, while surface level it seems to be in some media, is ever present and delivers great food for thought, and while definitely leaning more towards the good nature vs evil machines kinda theme, again does better than you’d expect to put these two forces on more equal footing without ever being too blunt. Again, it’s not top tier fiction with incredible delivery of its message and themes across the franchise, but it does better than I’d initially think. Well that, or I’m highly susceptible to even the most insignificant inklings of themes and messaging, spiraling into intense speculation and analysis. Incredibly sorry for the waste of time, but my mind had built up brain juice and needed to excrete it somewhere.

(This ask has spoilers for the first episode of Sonic Prime)

What do you think about Nine? Also Rusty Rose

I talked about my thoughts about Nine here before I watched the episode, and after seeing it I still stand by them!! I do have more to add though!! ESPECIALLY about his name. I want to write an actual cohesive post on it at some point but for now here's some screenshots from when I was ranting about it in the server sbdjsn

I have. So many thoughts on him. I'm gonna wait until I've seen the rest before typing up the entire essay though sbdndn

As for Rusty Rose. I haven't thought about her a lot just because I've been soooo occupied with Nine 😭 But!!! I'm sooo intrigued!! Like how she became roboticised??? Why is SHE powered by a flicky (I'm not sure if her one has a name)?? Why did she refer to it as her HEART, and not just a battery? Is that significant or was it just a play on words??

I think. If I had to guess. Hmm. I haven't given this much thought and once again I'm so sleepy but I think her story won't be a simple "she was captured and robotised", especially since we haven't seen anyone else robotised iirc. It's going to be something like a punishment, being made an example of, or something like she sacrificed herself. Her having a flicky seems very intentional. I don't see Amy NOT joining the rebellion before all this, she is so passionate and stubborn and cares so much about the things she loves, there isn't any chance she WOULDNT step to the eggmen. Especially if Knuckles "get off my island and leave me in peace" Echidna and Rouge "Chaotic Neutral, just wants to steal some shit" Bat have joined.

There's like half an hour before it releases I'm shaking sbdjjd