#they literally do nothing other than just exist

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Bloomp

Debut: Super Mario Bros. Wonder

Bloomp should be proud. It's part of a very special club: the club of Mario enemies whose English names are goofy onomatopoeia relating to their behavior! It is not a very exclusive club, but its members take themselves very seriously. I'm just kidding! They're a bunch of goofballs! Sorry, Bloomp, but I could not take you seriously if I tried. Good thing you exist only in the context of a whimsical scrimblo platformer!

Bloomp is, conceptually, very straightforward. A literal balloonfish. It's nothing new. But must it be something new? Must it be groundbreaking? It mustn't. All it needs to do is be Funny. and Boy Howdy, It's Funny! I look at the expression it's always making, and I think, yeah. It WOULD make that face.

But do not let their soft, harmless bodies and silly demeanors fool you! Bloomps are Enemies. Bonafide Bad Guys. You can tell by looking at the air pumps that inflate and launch them. They have skulls on them, just like Bill Blasters! Bowser did this on purpose. He made the express decision to deploy balloon fish here when he had no reason not to use straight-up bullets. It's about the pizzazz!

Of course, anything inflatable must start out tiny, and tiny Bloomps are the very definition of "piddling". This animal does not know how to do anything besides piddle. If it tries to dispute that, don't believe it. It's full of hot air!

It is obvious that the Balloon transformation would appear in a stage centered around these balloon animals, but to me, it's a bit more interesting than that. Other Wonder Effects transform the player into an enemy, or grant them properties of the stage's main enemy. This is basically doing the same for Bloomps, but the Balloon form has existed since Super Mario World. It's like this is retroactively framing Balloon Mario as a Bloomp ability!

Anyway, the Wonder Effect also has these gray Bloomps, who are... my word! They're tied in place! Is this good for them? It does mean they won't run out of air. Maybe this is how they rest? It's not too far-fetched, considering real hagfish can tie their bodies in knots. And they're full of confetti and goodies! The Bloomps, not the hagfish. Hagfish are full of slime, and no confetti. That's a good thing! I don't want any animals to contain confetti.

[ckret2]

As someone who knows nothing about those 2 states, why does Wyoming work better than Minnesota

in general:

Wyoming has 1/10th the population of Minnesota, meaning if someone goes "think about it, have you ever met anyone from [state]?" you're much more likely to go "oh man... I don't" to Wyoming

there's already an IRL joke conspiracy claiming Wyoming Isn't Real (google it)

Minnesota has stuff in it people know about. The Twin Cities. The Mall of America. 10,000 lakes. An accent people make fun of. A hockey team. Paul Bunyan. This is deliberately underselling the cultural contributions of Minnesota, this is just a list of things that people who don't know shit about Minnesota have still probably heard about. Wyoming... doesn't have much. Harder to prove it's real.

For my personal fic writing reasons, because I'm gonna have to rewrite these jokes and I don't wanna:

Stan can say "Wyoming does too exist, I'm banned from Wyoming" and Bill can say "you were banned from Wyoming without ever setting foot in the state. Isn't that suspicious? What are they hiding from you?" This IS true based on the map of Stan's travels and banned states; it's not true of Minnesota.

Ford can say "Wyoming does too exist, I drove through Wyoming when I moved to Gravity Falls" and Bill can say "no, you drove through a stretch of Utah and Colorado your roadmap labeled as Wyoming. Did you stop and do anything in the state??" Ford probably wouldn't have passed through Minnesota on his way to Oregon.

Wyoming's biggest airport is in a state park, is literally named Jackson Hole, and carries less than half a million people a year. (In contrast, La Guardia Airport in NYC carries more people in under 2 weeks.) They can try to say "look Wyoming has an airport, you can buy tickets, Wyoming's real" and Bill can say "no one ACTUALLY wants to go to Wyoming, the airport's actually in South Dakota and no one notices because they only stop there for connecting flights to other places." Can't say that about Minnesota, it's got an international airport in an actual city.

one thing Wyoming IS known for is cowboys. Bill can be forced to watch Grandpa The Kid as proof that Wyoming exists and then he can retort "Hollywood made up Wyoming."

[kandadze]

Ep 27 loose thoughts

Well, that's one way of snapping someone shell-shocked out of making a drastic decision. I feel like PSJ snapped something in herself at this moment, too. Anyone else found the ancestor's commentary going on in the background while the girls are bawling their eyes out hilarious? Just me? Okay.

While I was waiting for the ever burning wood to activate or something, the moment WX opened the box to reveal dried flowers I choked. ZYC!!!

Baby!Yichen breaks my heart, so impressionable, so open to learn. It's interesting to see that the phrases about suffering we've seen him use as an adult might have come from WX... Not a fan of telling people in mourning to stop dwelling in misery and sadness like it's as simple as flipping a switch (not to mention, she apparently *just* met him for the first time? The heck?), but at least the rest of her words seem to have helped him... so much that he kept the flowers 😭 The irony of her snow metaphor contrasted with their current predicament is indeed exquisite, A+ for that.

Are they going to be saved by the power of lurrrrve??? (At least this time. Still holding out for how that's gonna play out in the finale.) I mean, what other way to sway an ancient creature who's seen pretty much everything there is to see, than to show them something new? What's that? A test for a future event? (I'm getting really paranoid about nothing we've seen so far being real. It's like Alice in Wonderland on a bigger scale. Or Finnegans Wake on a smaller scale. I don't know.)

Oooh Bingyi and Ying Long, our original doomed couple (of self-sacrificial idiots)! I would watch a whole drama just about them. And damn, I can definitely see where Zhao Yuanzhou got his masochism from. Stoppppp not "Just let me be the first star"! (Especially since I just remembered ZYZ's "I'll be the rain...") It's not supposed to be literal! 😭😭😭 Ahhhh this scene just broke me, also because it seems to reinforce the idea that ZYZ *has* to be killed for the greater good. The visualssss in the execution- sacrifice? What the heck do I even call it?- scene though, soooo good!

"Let me do it myself." LET ME DO IT MYSELF??? FUCKKKKKKK DAMNIT HE JUST- ::head in hands, crying forever::

"Remember. This is my choice, not yours. You don't have to bear any blame or guilt." That's not how that works. That's not how any of that works!

Again, we're dealing with choices. But the fact that ZYZ choice was the same as Ying Long's... the fact that YL says that neither he nor Bingyi had any regrets... oh this is going to hurt.

Oh? ZYZ's future is not what he wants? (And wouldn't that be funny, considering ZYZ's own words while schooling ZYC in the very first ep... 9 times out of 10, things don't go our way?)

"You two are really like us." 😭😭😭

I was wondering if they were going to show us what ZYC saw, and not only does the image of ZYZ's body on that dark floor mirror Ying Long's body floating in the water, both ZYZ and ZYC wear the same clothes as in the very few scenes from the trailer that didn't happen yet... These poor sods, they've been Going Through It for almost a decade now with the only end in sight being yet another tragedy (even if the drama seems to suggest that they don't see it that way at this point.) ::head in hands, crying continues::

"My friend is here. We'll go together." The *sound* I made. Everything else this drama has given me aside, the growth of these characters and their bonds is so well done, and absolutely precious to me.

I want Ying Long's hopes and wishes for them to become true. Seeing how there's hints everywhere in this drama, I hope the words of one of the most powerful beings in existence will count for *something* in the end! (Am I grasping at straws? Maybe. Let me be delusional for a bit longer.)

What do you mean, five, ZYC? What's Ying Lei, chopped liver?

Oof this *almost* hug before WX starts feebly hitting ZYZ. It's relief, it's anger, it's fear for the next time, it's all the feelings that became too big to contain. I feel her so much. (I would've started whacking both him and ZYC way earlier tbh 😅) And ZYZ allowing her that release before pulling her in for reassurance, patting her as if she was a scared child. 😭 Cut to PSJ, looking as if she wanted nothing more but to be the one offering the reassurance to WX. Cut to ZYC, remembering that willingly or not, he's going to hurt WX beyond reassurance. Once again, the bonds in this drama!

Wait hold up hold on what? You just removed Bingyi's blood from him, that should mean that ZYC will not have to become a demon, right? So what's that about developing the inner core? (Also, I just realized that so far all they got from this trip was "go east and ask for a dragon scale" lol) Thankfully him and ZYZ had their conversation(s) about titles and identities so being asked to make that particular choice was not completely out of left field at this point. And all he cares about is whether that means that the last trace of Ying Long will disappear! 😭 (I'm so with Bingyi on this one... I would hold onto that last shred of my friend's existence, too, *especially* if they offed themself via my goddamn sword.)

What's with that look after he says that he thinks he has it - the inner core - is there a joke here somewhere? (I *gotta* go back to learning the language, the things I'm undoubtedly missing on!) The only thing I can think of is - did they think he said he's pregnant??? ::dies:: "So what's your true form?" "Must be dragon." "I say you're a mule." "Better than being a monkey." "I'm a white ape!" ::dies again:: Nice to see we still get a friendly ribbing between all of them, and I can breathe after all the angst. Fingers crossed? There's still 5 minutes left...

Oh good, let's talk about getting Bai Jiu back! (I knew there was one more character from the opening credits that didn't show up yet... guess it's the rebel princess.) While Ao Yin is eavesdropping! Talk about good hearing. Sigh, here it comes, another goal they have that will conflict with Li Lun's; they want the scale to restore the sword, and LL not only doesn't want that to happen, the scale could potentially help him get rid of the poison.

Oh for fuck's sake, I think I was subconsciously waiting for Chongwu Camp to show up, knowing that they've eavesdropped on the gang earlier, and here they are. ZYZ should really think of putting up some sound barrier when they discuss important plans, everyone seems to know exactly what they'll be doing at any given moment!

Ahhhh we're getting a nod to that little cough and stumble WX had shortly before this trip. Something's wrong with Baize token? Or with her connection to it? We only have 7 episodes left, drama!

(ZYC is such a good little brother.) Oh great, it was the rebel princess who killed WX's dad? I repeat, we only have 7 episodes left!

Sigh... with only 7 episodes left, we *also* find out that the goddamn 3-face-mask has history with the princess? And has everyone and their mother sat on that little bridge???

This feels like the endless final scenes in Peter Jackson's "Return of the King," my head is spinning.

Note to self, *stop* looking at previews. Ying Lei, what the absolute fuck?

[imjustaf444keriguess]

okay, you can't just google the basic definition of a word that's used in several contexts. that'd be like me googling system, screenshotting the term used in computing systems, and saying that DID systems aren't real because it has to be made of electronics or whatever.

going to the tulpa.info website, one of the many internet pages created by psychological tulpamancers, we can see a vastly different (although technically related) definition on their main page

by this definition (an entity 'created in the mind, acting independently of, and parallel to your own consciousness [with the ability] to think, and have their own free will, emotions, and memories.'), are tulpa systems endogenic?

we know that endogenic means formed not from trauma, and i think creating an entity in your mind that's sentient of your own volition would count as willogenic/parogenic, which is a genic label that falls under endogenic plurality.

also, some of the sources are very general, and are mentioning systems that are "not DID", and many of the sources talk about non-tulpa plurality (even if some mentioned are similarly willingly made, maybe called sentient imaginary friends instead of tulpas directly)

plurality/systemhood is the state of being more than one "self" in the brain, and endogenic plurality is plurality that's not formed by trauma. if tulpas are separate "selves" in the mind, why do you not count them as endogenic plural beings?

literally, the sources that mention tulpas are talking about bodies with more than one "self" in them, that seem to be sentient and are being studied right now. to ignore them because the oxford dictionary says they're made "in the imagination" is silly.

maybe stop acting like an expert on tulpas being separate if you can't go to one of the most fucking popular tulpa websites. or better yet, he tulpa reddit!

"but it says they're imagined into existence so that means they're fake" if a mental "self" can think and act separately than the other "self" that made it, that's a separate fucking guy. unless you have evidence to show that it's solely imaginary and the studies on tulpas show that they're closer to roleplaying singlets than actual plural systems, then show me the study

because otherwise you're getting mad that people say imagined when clearly, we're referring to sentient "selves" in the brain! you know, plural experiences??

there's also this bit in the FAQ that ogoes into a bit more detail!

and actually i was gonna say this in the tags, but it's a bit silly you used the collins dictionary to search up the definition of tulpa, since i don't think a generic dictionary would focus on anything related to plurality specifically. of course it's gonna talk about the buddhist idea, and not the psychological internet-based-mostly belief and identity that also uses the same name

(i dont think tulpas as an experience is internet-based but the term tulpamancy was popularized on the internet and in practice is nothing like the tulpamancy in buddhism as far as i am aware. it's creating a thoughtform, a headmate, another "self", a sentient imaginary friend, a mental companion, there's many alternative words that people have come up with, on-and-offline.)

i was wondering if their definition of system would include the one used for DID/OSDD systems for years now, even if it didn't include non-traumagenic systems, and... none of the results even allow for the inclusion of that idea.

like of course i'm not a dumbass, i know the definition of what a system is in a plural and disordered sense, but none of those mention sentient parts of the self, none of them mention alters or headmates or switching or dissociation. if that was my only form of research into what systemhood was, i'd be very confused.

this dictionary website doesn't have plurality in the sense that i'm describing it either, referring to politics and the general sense of an amount

maybe trying to use definitions actual systems and tulpas and plurals use might help in the future! and take a single look at the tulpa research at least, coward.

(starting off, we are a traumagenic did system. we have did.)

endogenic systems are absolutely punk and they belong in punk spaces (pluralpunk, systempunk, whatever) and here’s why:

- punk is about embracing who you are and living your life authentically and unapologetically

- punk is about not letting other people dictate how you live your life and who you can be

- punk is about radical acceptance, equality, and solidarity

- punk is about rejecting authority and the establishment (and yes, this includes the medical establishment which is often ableist and causes disabled people real, long lasting harm)

there is no room for anti endos in punk. being anti endo literally is being anti punk. learn more about what punk means, and do better.

[creature-wizard]

What the Project Monarch alter programming conspiracy theory is (and what it's not)

When I talk about alter programming conspiracy theories, people often get confused as to what I mean, so I figured I'd write a post to clear things up.

First of all, I am not saying that DID systems can't be indoctrinated or conditioned the same way literally any other human being can be, or that abusive people would never try and manipulate or exploit specific alters. That's not what I'm saying at all.

What I am talking about is a set of alleged practices first described by a number of far right conspiracy theorists, who claimed that the CIA was operating a program called Project Monarch, which was allegedly part of Project MK-Ultra.

Now, the existence of Project MK-Ultra is very well-known. The CIA did in fact conduct unethical human experiments in an effort to actually practice mind control. However, it didn't work out because drugs and the human brain don't actually work the way they thought they did. It's worth noting that these experiments were in part fueled by a fear that Russians were already masters of mind control, because as far as they were concerned, communism had to be more than just a political ideology that was at odds with America's own capitalist system; it had to be something so evil that it could only be forced on people using the most diabolical of methods. They were terrified that American POWs were being turned into Manchurian agents, and they figured that if this a thing the Russians were doing, then they should try and take advantage of this, too. Again, Project MK-Ultra was horrible, but it didn't produce the results they wanted, because Manchurian agents are nothing more than the fever dream of a terrified western capitalist.

Meanwhile, there is no evidence that Project Monarch ever existed. None. Nada. Not a shred. Despite allegedly being practiced by thousands of people in all levels of society since at least the mid-20th century, not a single piece of primary literature or documentation has ever turned up. Keep this in mind going forward.

If you've never heard of Project Monarch before, here's the gist of this conspiracy theory: Supposedly, Nazi scientist Dr. Josef Mengele wasn't actually performing eugenics experiments, and the Holocaust wasn't actually about genocide at all. It was actually a cover for mind control experiments. After the war, Dr. Joseph Mengele was brought over to the US in Operation Paperclip, where he taught the CIA everything he knew. Project Monarch was established by the CIA in order to plant programmers and programmed slaves everywhere in society for the purpose of establishing the rule of the New World Order, which had supposedly controlled Nazi Germany and had now infiltrated the US government. Supposedly, one of the New World Order's big goals was to destroy American conservative Christianity, especially Protestantism. Literally anything that a white American Protestant hyperconservative would find objectionable was supposedly the work of the NWO.

The alleged practices conducted under Project Monarch were broadly labeled "trauma-based mind control," or TBMC. While some people today use this term to refer to any form of punitive conditioning, the term originally had a very specific meaning. Let's talk about how TBMC in its original context allegedly worked. The basic concept goes like this: a very young child (sometimes even a baby) will be put under brutal torture in order to force them into dissociation. If the procedure is successful, the victim's mind will split and form a number of completely blank alters. Somehow, the programmers know which blank alters are potentially useful for programming, and which aren't. Each usable alter will be programmed with a code or trigger that will allow programmers to access the alter (force it to front) later. Supposedly, the host alter will have no memory of any of this.

During each programming session, the victim will be tortured into a dissociative trance, and the desired alter will be accessed. At this point the alter will be taught (typically as traumatically as possible) whatever they're supposed to learn, like how to assassinate someone, how to do complex mathematics at superhuman levels, or how to pose as the perfect Christian housewife.

So theoretically, someone who's basically your regular churchgoing mom could be sent a greeting card with a picture of something like a cute little Scottish terrier, have her assassin alter triggered, and go kill some local politician with some futuristic piece of technology that makes it look like he just died of natural heart attack.

Allegedly, millions of people have been programmed like this, and the average Monarch slave has an average of 1000 alters. Meanwhile, the supposed symptoms of alter programming are so broad that just about anyone with any kind of trauma or mental health issue could be diagnosed with it, and there is nothing they could do to falsify it.

Again, there is literally no evidence that Monarch programming is real. Josef Mengele was not brought to the US in Operation Paperclip; he fled to South America and died in Brazil. The Nazis (including Mengele) were very much all about those eugenics, and claiming otherwise is laughable. Not a single group, institution, or individual has ever been found in possession of programmers' manuals, nor in possession of the codebooks and books of programming records that supposedly (and would have to, if this was really happening) exist out there. Not a single person claiming to be a deprogrammed slave has ever demonstrated any of the numerous skills they were supposedly trained to be hypercompentent in.

Additionally, once you start digging into the actual sources of this conspiracy theory, you start seeing the exact same tropes that feature in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and early modern witch hunt manuals. They've been given some updates to resonate with the fears of post-WWII American WASPs, but it's ultimately the same scapegoating and fearmongering that sent millions of people to their deaths.

It's obvious that most of the people who believe that Monarch programming exists haven't actually read works like Trance-Formation of America by Mark Philips and Cathy O'Brien, and They Know Not What They Do: Illustrated Guide To Monarch Mind Control, The Illuminati Formula Used To Create A Total Undetectable Mind-Controlled Slave, and Deeper Insights Into The Illuminati Formula by Fritz Springmeier and Cisco Wheeler. If they did, they'd be pretty hard-pressed to deny that these books are some of the most hateful garbage ever written. These books are chock full of xenophobia, racism, and a general hatred of anyone who isn't a hyperconservative Protestant. Pseudoscience and pseudohistory are rampant throughout, as are now-failed predictions about the alleged future plans of the New World Order.

Some people out there have asked me, "well, what about this other person talking about it?" I promise you, the stuff they are talking about ultimately comes from these books, which were published throughout the 1990's. This includes Unwelcome Ozian, whose books Chainless Slaves and Rules of Programming contain text that's straight-up copied from some of these books. People like Dr. Alison Miller and Dr. Ellen Lacter cite Svali, and Svali's own work describes the exact same NWO conspiracy theory as the works of Springmeier and Wheeler.

I encourage anyone who isn't likely to get triggered by talk of extreme violence (including sexual) to actually read these books so you can see for yourself just how bad they are. A huge part of the reason this conspiracy theory has so much traction is because few people actually know where it comes from, and just how completely ridiculous the whole damn thing is. Just about everything QAnon was on about is packed into these books.

And finally, while dissociative amnesia does indeed exist, we also have evidence that people can confabulate memories of events that never actually happened. Rock-solid evidence, in fact. This is literally what happens every time someone goes under hypnosis to try and remember a past life, and "remembers" a past life in the medieval period filled with anachronisms and historical misconceptions. If you'd like to see some extremely obvious examples of memory confabulation for yourself (some of which don't even involve hypnosis), you can click here and here.

(By the way, the terms "RAMCOA" and "OEA" were created by the ISSTD, for the purpose of making these types of conspiracy theories sound respectable within legitimate psychiatry.)

[arosebyan0thername]

If there are a million Reeve Carney as Orpheus fans in the world, I am one of them. If there are only two Reeve Carney as Orpheus fans in the world, I am one of them (Eva Noblezada is the other). If there are no Reeve Carney as Orpheus fans in the world, Eva Noblezada and I are dead 😔

[toddtakefive]

thinking about todd and his resolve toward… not quite isolation, but being alone in a room full of people again. he goes along to the study room to sit on his own and do his homework, he sits at the poets table and follows along with what’s being said while keeping quiet, he goes to the meetings at all but doesn’t necessarily contribute (in fact, if you watch him when cameron is telling the story ‘from camp in sixth grade’, you can see that he recognizes it before any of the other poets but doesn’t voice it until they all have). he’s not alone, necessarily, if you want to get technical about it, he’s just lonely, and he’s generally okay with that. he doesn’t have friends and that’s fine, he doesn’t participate in class and that’s fine, he doesn’t have a relationship with his family and that’s fine—he could live without any real connection and he’d have been, more or less, fine.

the thing about when he says “i can take care of myself just fine!” is that he isn’t really wrong, you can infer that he’s been doing it his entire life anyway, it’s that ‘taking care of yourself’ isn’t the same thing as really living or being happy. todd’s an introvert, certainly, and even as he gets closer to the group he defaults to sitting quietly in the background, but he’s also denying himself community out of fear not introversion. todd isn’t friendless because he’s an introvert, although that definitely plays a part, he’s friendless because he pushes anyone that might want his company away. if anyone has every wanted for his attention in the first place. (neil’s unwavering interest in him is unique (even when it comes to the rest of the poets, who are fine with todd coming along and joining the group, but aren’t really hellbent on him being there in the beginning) and his refusal to accept it is a direct result of being so lonely growing up.)

there’s obviously something to be said about the implications of his parents neglect, and the more than likely fact that he grew up friendless, and how those both play a part in in him being so skilled at dodging social interaction/being so avoidant of it, but by the time we see him in the movie he’s all but accepted his fate as being alone his entire life. he’s already accepted being the family disappointment, and he’s already accepted he’ll never amount to anything, and he obviously doesn’t like it, but he’d have managed living with that knowledge without the confirmation that it was all wrong. would he have been miserable? almost certainly. but he’d have managed. he’d done it for that long already, anyhow.

[dimmadoome]

Yall will do anything but actually take responsibility for what you've created. Fanon is literally that. Canon crested by fans. They're all headcanons created by you, yes. Literally you, the person reading this that has written fanfic and drawn comics and posted your essays. You are the people writing stories and sharing art and making tumblr posts. Each an every person on here, commenting on my post outraged that I like the collicteve works of yourself had had a hand in creating fanon just by existing in the fandom. You all speak with such derison about yourselves and its actually making me laugh.

You actually can find fanon from people of color. Many many different ways. From discord servers to tumblr to twitter and beyond. AO3 Is just an archive for writers. It is not the be all end all of fandom. But, while we are talking about AO3.

It is not a streaming service. It is not youtube. The works there are not paid for. They are made by you and me and a billion other people who only want to share their art. THEY ARE YOUR PEERS, NOT A CONGLOMERATE. This whole response makes it sound like you're all complaining about the fucking disney channel queerbaiting you again. If YOU want more Babs stories. Write them. You dont want racist tropes in your fanfiction? Well howdy do you've already proven you can both write and post to the internet just by responding to this post. Write. Create. Build. Just like the rest of us normal people did when we added onto the fandom. If you want Cass to be more present in stories, write those. Jesus christ yall. This is YOUR baby you're trying to throw out with the bathwater.

At the end of the day, you need to step back and realize that if someone is telling you they like your work and the community you built with your own bare hands. Maybe say, hell yeah. Im glad you like it, instead of acting like you're above your own hard damn work.

Also. As a side note. Im an indigenous trans person. I understand what it means to desperately want to see representation for me and to know that i will likely never be able to make it a reality in any canon works. I find that fanon is more likely to be written by people of color, disabled people and queer people than canon will ever be. Fandom is a bigger and more diverse collective than canon. Which makes me love it more. Because I can have my voice heard. Because you can have your voice heard.

Its new and its beautiful and its ever changing and its so, so much better than almost 100 years of writers having to sanitize themselves for the capitalist elite who need every batboy to look the same and cant let gay characters exist without making it tragic or retconning it every two seconds.

In the end all I can say is this

Fanon is beautiful.

Fanon has more for me than canon does. Likely, if you are not white, not straight, not cis or not able bodied, it also has more for you than canon ever will.

You all deserve to love your community too. If there are racists. Well fuck man, do what everyone else is doing by drowning them out with your own, obviously not problematic the sligtest, content. So go. Fix what youre complaing about. But realize that you are part of the problem. You are part of the collective you are angrily decrying and nothing you can say will change anything unless you put your hands to paper and actually start working for the changes you want to see.

Hot take but I prefer fanon Batfam to Canon batfam because at least fanon does its best to give each of the batfam very distinct personalities and looks.

I love living in a world where blue eyed black haired white boy doesn't describe half the group, ya know?

[thedreadvampy]

legitimately insane how to some people, "we should wipe out this ethnic group that we've violently constrained to a ghetto because they're just genetically more violent and dangerous" is a reasonable and justifiable statement but it's Nazi Rhetoric to say something like, "it's bad that Israeli civilians are being killed but acknowledging that as tragic includes acknowledging that the almost daily state-sanctioned murder of civilians by the Israeli government is also tragic and unacceptable"

btw guys speaking of Nazi shit - can we check in, alongside what's been done to Palestinians in the last 75 years, what's the Israeli government's take on the Azerbaijani government's newest round of ethnic cleansing of Armenians? oh are the Israeli government's actions maybe not determined by Jewish identity, but by a commitment to colonial supremacy which puts them on the same page as other violently genocidal states like Azerbaijan, the US, and the UK? god can you Even Imagine?

(framing speaking against Israeli war crimes as inherently antisemitic requires understanding the Israeli state as representing all Jewish people, when it doesn't even represent all Israelis.

framing Israeli war crimes as synonymous with Jewish identity is pretty fucked up if we're being honest. I don't think that controlling water and power and movement for a captive population and shooting children dead for throwing stones is an inherent value of Judaism, any more than I think the torture carried out at Guantanamo Bay is an inherent value of Christianity - in both cases they're atrocities carried out by a far right genocidal government using religious identity as a shield.

Calling statements like "Israel is committing genocide against the people it's displaced" inherently antisemitic is doing more to further the idea that all Jewish people are associated with Israel than saying "the Israeli government is doing war crimes," which is a statement of fact about a country that exists and does war crimes. Is criticism of Israel as a nation often used as cover for antisemitism? Absolutely. Does that mean the Israeli government isn't doing literal war crimes repeatedly, on record, while talking publicly about scrubbing an ethnic group off the map? Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh well in the last 48 hours they've definitely cut off water and power to almost 600,000 civilians and allegedly used white phosphorus against civilians so in an extremely factual and unambiguous way yeah man those are Literal War Crimes whoever does them.)

[discjude]

Yeah this is about right (as always my thoughts are in the tags so there's actually kei content there lmao)

[1tsjusty0u]

man. totk couldve been so good

[tempestmothstorm]

"I think I would have just deleted myself if you didn't show up."

Yeah this is just straight up canon. But i have more thoughts though. So.

Like if you look into her dialogue is like abundantly clear that she’s just suicidal. It’s different from someone like Sayori who’s actively suicidal because she feels she is worse than everyone else, or Yuri who I don’t know is suicidal but has self harming tendencies she takes too far in act 2, or Natsuki who isn’t at all and is like “wtf are you guys ok”. The answer is no btw.

Monika’s whole outlook on it is that she has a lot of passive suicidal ideation that she pushes aside because she has to be the best. Her issue isn’t centered around her specifically being bad but instead a feeling of pointlessness with existing and the fact that the act existing itself puts burden on the world.

She’s also the type to make jokes about it, which I think is telling about her attitude about death, especially when compared to the others where the idea of dying is still terrifying and scary and something to hide. Meanwhile Monika acts casually as if people’s lives actually don’t matter. We all know her “left her hanging joke” and her general nonchalance with the other girls’ deaths, but the secret poem “A Joke” is probably written by Monika too, and the punchline is another reference to sayori’s death. The special poem about cutting is also by Monika, which shows that she would self harm if it weren’t for her needing to be the ‘responsible one’, and that she’d only do it again if she killed herself. She writes it as if it was a quirky relatable diary entry and not something deeply concerning, which in of itself is also deeply concerning.

There’s also the iiiiiiiiiiii.txt file that has her say that it would be “really easy to kill (herself) right now”. Reasonably the easiest way to do it would be to delete herself. While her constantly reminding the player how easy it would be to delete her is supposed to be a hint on what to do next, it does say something about her when she constantly fixates on it, almost as if she’d thought about it. Like a lot. She thinks about suicide and mental illness just as much too. Also a lot. And existential philosophy a lot. And death too. Again. A lot.

Her friends aside, she clearly just thinks about these things on her own, which implies some real bad things about her mental health considering literally everything else we know about her. Like it’s pretty obvious she’s not ok base game. And yet she doesn’t go through, in fact actively avoiding getting deleted because she still wants to see you. Because you are her only hope.

While her attachment to the player has like a dozen factors influencing it, I think a lot of it is also connected to her more suicidal ideas. She does emphasize that you “saved her” a lot in act 3 and while it mean saving her from her reality, knowing some of the other talks, it also could have saved her from giving up entirely.

Not to get too repetitive about how her life sucks, but like she really has no reason to exist in her eyes post epiphany. Nothing outside the literature club exists, there’s no past or future, everything is fake and has no consequence on the real world, and worst of all she’s completely alone with whatever connections she could have being fake. I think this one quote from her “introverts” talk basically sums up her situation:

"You know, I really do think you literally saved my life by being here with me, [player]."

"I can't imagine having been able to keep myself mentally stable, knowing that nothing here is real."

"I think I would have just deleted myself if you didn't show up."

"Sorry, i don't mean to sound dramatic or anything."

"Ahaha!"

"But I'm sure you understand yourself after spending so much time in the club."

"I mean, if you were forced to abandon everything in your life and spend your eternity with a few game characters..."

"...You'd probably find some way of killing yourself, wouldn't you?"

But yeah something something the connections you have with others gives life meaning and when the relationships she did have turned out to be false, she reached out to you, whose love could be real and whose existence as a real person is the only thing that could give her life meaning.

Another Monika talk that’s relevant would be the “No reason to be alive” talk. I’m not posting the entire thing here because it’s too long but the entire thing is pretty relevant. In it she talks about how living is pointless because you probably aren’t special and your existence alone takes up dozens of resources that isn’t worth wasting.

This highlights two factors that I think influence her thought process. One is that she feels like existence is worthless and likely won’t affect society at large, and with the whole being a video game thing the connection is obvious. The other is that she worries about how much of a burden she is on society. She wants to earn her right to exist in this world. When her reality doesn’t exist, this specific framework doesn’t seem that relevant, but when it comes to being a burden to others this ends up becoming a lot more alarming (and also creates another Sayori parallel yayyyyyyy)

Notably she mentions the key to happiness is to live selfishly and just look out for yourself and your friends. This can’t really apply in her own reality when she can’t see her friends as sentient, but when it comes to you, she can deliver just fine. She says she want to “live (her) life desperately striving to pay back (her) lifetime's worth of consumption” and with her own reality being pointless, paying back the people around her (you) is the next best thing.

But what if she failed to

"Of course, even if I fail to do that..."

"I think I would be too selfish to kill myself anyway."

"So much for being a good person, right?"

Sure thing buddy.

Another thing i want to mention is that it’s implied that these thoughts aren’t new. Like with some of these talks it’s ambiguous whether these ideas came pre or post epiphany. With her whole nihilistic thinking in base game contrasting side stories, it wouldn’t be that surprising if her thoughts got a whole lot more cynical over time. But she does seem to talk as if she’s thought about them for a while, while the epiphany was apparently recent in her memory.

For example in the “Dying” talk:

“It's something I used to think about pretty often..."

And in the “No reason to be alive” talk

"But the older I get, the more I realize that it's an immature frame of thinking."

Uh yeah these ideas aren’t new.

Of course it was probably taken to an extreme post epiphany and thinking about existential topics is normal. By itself it’s probably not some secret sign of mental illness, or at least not anything severe. (Sure she talks about a lot of stuff like mental health issues but it doesn’t really reflect on her, it just shows she can understand others perspective. Like she can talk about the introvert experience without being an introvert. Idk she’s just very empathetic and reflects a lot on the world. Makes her epiphany a lot more ironic though. So.)

But her post epiphany persona was very much built on preexisting ideas she had before that. It might not be that serious, but the fact that it’s there at all is concerning knowing what we do. The implications that come if this is all true is facilitating tbh and it honestly makes the side stories more interesting too. Like her whole “i have to be the best” attitude is probably connected to all her worries about being a burden or worthless.

And her whole thing in trust becomes a lot more layered too. The standard she holds for herself are not carried over to Sayori, who she sees as deserving of life just by being herself. She doesn’t want to be a burden or distract from Sayori’s problems, because her own true self isn’t good enough. Sayori is reassured that her existence is valuable and that she isn’t being a burden, something that goes against Monika’s entire act 3 talk yet is some she believes wholeheartedly.

This is also contrasted by base game where she straight up jokes about her death because death barely matters to her either. In base game, Sayori doesn’t matter, she isn’t special or even sentient, just a pile of code that gets in the way of Monika’s plans to reach the player. In base game Sayori is worthless and a burden, where Monika’s worldview has extended to everyone else. Yet in side stories she doesn’t think that, her standards only applies to herself because she loves her friends, they are what give her life meaning. Of course they deserve to live. They don’t need to prove their worth.

She’s a hypocrite because she values her friends more than anything. Again, the Sayori parallels are obvious from this angle, she has these exact same thoughts, with the only difference being that base game Monika projects her fears of worthlessness onto everything else while sides stories has her a lot more similar to Sayori.

Now the difference between side stories Monika and base game is really just how far their ideals reach, because normally Monika is like ok mentally , while in base game she’s suicidal along with everything else. Forget her saying she’s too selfish to do it cause it’s heavily implied she does do it in other universes.

Speaking of which I never hear people mention the MES emails in this cause a singular line puts into perspective how influential the player’s presence is on Monika and just how bad her mental health is. She is the MES’ guinea pig that everyone wants to see suffer (actually I don’t know how common knowledge this is I just got here and mostly stick to tumblr so idk)

So with the Side Stories MES email i think with all the lore drops we sorta forgot some of the more self explanatory info, including the fact that they have multiple VMs of ddlc and that there were “3 or 4 of them created and then destroyed by Monika”

While most people conclude this is just a reference to base game i think a lot of people dismiss that fact that these aren’t the game VMs, these VMs have no access to a player. Yknow. The player she relies on that supposedly saved her life.

Yeah i think she just deletes everything including her in apparently 4 separate universes. She kills her self in 4 universes.

She deletes everything in act 3 too but specifically because they get in her way between you, and the only reason she doesn’t delete herself there is that she still wants to see you. When the idea of reaching you is crushed, she gives in. By act 4 she ends up like all the other VMs, deleting everything knowing she can’t have you, can’t have reality. I mean the only thing keeping her going is the dream of reaching reality and finding real connections to people, and the idea that her existence will forever be meaningless probably pushed her to the extreme.

The player is the only real person who can give her life meaning and value, and in a world where the rest are seemingly fake, you’re also the only human connection she has. Again, the things that keep her going is her life being valuable in some way and the people around her. Post epiphany she only has you to care for with everyone else being thrown to the wayside without consideration of their own wellbeing.

So of course in act 4, where her connect to you is severed and she is suddenly aware of the harm she’s caused, she’s the lowest she’s ever been. Her reason for living is to be there for her friends and somehow pay back reality for how much she’s taken. And yet she let her friends die and let herself use them for her own selfish gain. She failed them, and has therefore become someone she see as not deserving of life. And with her last hope of the player rejecting her reach, she has no reason to keep going. So in the Easter egg where the player tries to bring her file back after deletion, she refuses to follow. She doesn’t deserve to intrude on their happy ending. She doesn’t deserve to come back.

And she doesn’t.

In future games she’ll probably return though, and with all the secret files and her motivations in the normal ending, I feel like it’s going to be for redemption by finally being there for her club.

She sticks around because no matter how much guilt she feels about just existing, she still wants to be there for her friends. Because while a lot of the act 3 dialogue was not meant to be something people agree with, there was one thing that I feel like is good if you look at it in the right way. Maybe people can’t pay back for the lifetime of consumption they’ve done just by living, but people can pay back and be worth existing just by looking out for their friends and those closest to them. Even if there can be doubts about life and existence as a whole, it doesn’t matter in the end when there’s joy to be found in the people you care about. Even if you make mistakes or hurt them, you can still find a way to make it up to them, to still deserve happiness in the end. The one thing that makes life worth it is the bonds you form with others. Because the people around you are what give life meaning.

She can’t let go and she can’t give up because she still has people she loves and wants to protect. So she’ll keep living for the people she loves. That’s all she needs to do in this world to make it worth living.

I hope she succeeds.

(Side note i took a lot of the Monika talk examples from this post. I did have my own ideas even before i read the doc and I already knew about this stuff anyways i just don’t wanna scroll through the entire wiki again to see all the Monika talks and this is pretty comprehensive. The extra imput is also useful so yeah)(anyways thanks for reading this really long tumblr essay. Good job and drink water ;D)

i would like to bring up that monika has probably considered deleting herself before

like staring at a high cliffside and getting the urge to jump

[talkorsomething]

I have Got to get more transgender

[bunnihearted]

.

[dr11ft]

I was so fucking worried. That my art would have no further depth to explore, that I'd be a laughingstock, that I'd be wasting money. That I wasn't actually meant for this. And now, after lying to myself for years, I realize that that's just how it feels to be a developing artist. And I wanted to make art the whole time. That's what I wanted. That's what I want.

[tealfruit]

if you think that someone complaining about the (very real) oppression of trans men must hate trans women that says a lot more about your own beliefs than it does the person you're accusing