#theyre just normal systems

[shitty-proendo-blackout-posts]

mixed origin systems are just regular systems.

[maskedchip]

i think he's really funny

[kaleidoscopedrawsjpg]

Sometimes, I just think about how Shang Qinghua made Mobei Jun after his ideal man. He really just made a big stupid idiot demon lord with communication and anger issues and went, yep, perfect.

Then, he acted surprised when he was all of that and still had the audacity to not understand his idiot King when he was courted.

These two are absolute idiots and I love them so much. I'm definitely completely normal about them.

But seriously, what the fuck.

[icewindandboringhorror]

"We can get through this by working together, reach out to your friends, community is all we have, a social network will be your security in the world, now is the time to lean on others!"

I do agree, and it's scientifically sound (pretty sure there is data about how people with better social networks live longer and etc) but also....augh..... what about the severe social issues, difficulty to leave the house, physical issues which lead to like zero socialization energy a majority of the time, etc. etc. Social support can be a replacement for structural support, but.. I guess I just wish it didn't have to be. Community is extremely difficult to build, even moreso if you're someone who has issues with social cues or group conversations or even just being around others in the first place. And blah, nuance, of course I'm just complaining or maybe being too negative or maybe misunderstanding, but, I hardly have the energy to brush my hair once every 2 months.. how am I supposed to maintain a wide social network and be active in a Community and Join Groups lol... sometimes it kind of feels like "er.. well if thats my only option then...... ruh roh". It's overwhelming

[weafurry]

YAYY YIPPEE HII/silly

(Sorry I didn't get to this till now it was late when I saw the ask and I didn't wanna answer it while I was half asleep. Also apparently tumblr doesn't let you edit asks anymore?? )

Leaving this under a cut tho cuz I know this shit will get LONG

ANYWAYS. The. Big one related to that™ post came from a combination of me wondering how the FUCK Cedric got the yellow phosphor needed to rebuild proto + consequences of the revival of characters my beloved

And uh. Yea any yellow phosphor he does end up getting his hands on I. DOUBT WOULD BE ENOUGH.

So uh. Proto being rebuilt with less yellow phosphor then is probably even remotely adviseable and that causing a whole ton of issues™ . And Cedric not even knowing cuz of the whole just. Scanning the blueprints in.

Also this is proto we're talking about here. There's no fucking way he'd tell anyone until shit got BAD.

LEMME JUST. Screenshots from when I was brainrotting over this in my first OneShot fixation

And yea. The author probably would have had yellow phosphor stored in the lab somewhere just incase. (Esp with the head canon that. Proto predicted his own death a long time ago cuz. Prophet moment. And. Told the author and the prophet but never cedric and rue cuz everytime he went to he would get another vision of them trying to intervene and things only going worse)

BUT. since I want my angst goddammit. That part of the lab collapsed first and while Cedric was abled to salvage some yellow phosphor it ends up not being enough.

BUT LIKE. YEA. the way I always imagined Cedric and Rue actually finding out is. One of those moments where a bunch of errors and shit happens . Happens when him Cedric and Rue are walking in the refuge. And this one's bad enough that he can't just metaphorically grit his teeth through it like the other times this has happened in public. Once it's over Cedric and Rue are reasonably extremely concerned and. Fuckin rush him to the lab to try and see if there something they can do to fix this.

AND UH. That segways into another little detail of this headcanon. BECAUSE. he let this go on for so long with the damage all the errors and malfunctions overtime have caused. It probably would just be better to rebuild him and reuse the yellow phosphor they already have. BUT UH. since the situation around him being rebuilt made it so stressful the first time around, he. REALLY doesn't wanna do that again. I have. Such a vivid idea of a scene in my head for that. They're like. Talking with kip. And shes like halfway through saying the word rebuild and. She doesn't even get to finish he just cuts her off.

So what they end up doing is, in the meantime, using red phosphor to prevent any further damage until they can go to the barrens to get blue phosphor so said phosphor won't have to be replaced as often.

I ACTUALLY. made a dumb little chart of how. I imagined them looking different a few days ago

I imagine that. Actually having a normal level of phosphor would. Definitely HELP. But. There would still be some issues partially because it's not one uniform type of phosphor and partially because of the damage the issues caused. And you couldnt pry this headcanon out of my cold dead hands. Consequences of the revival of characters go brrrrrrr

AND THEN UH. Don't get me started on the night terrors as a result of the whole squares thing headcanons.

that whole thing. Came from me going. "do robots still need sleep?" and ultimately deciding yes when i came up with the other headcanon that. only tamed robots dream.

When I made this headcanon I actually hadnt played solstice in a while, and for some reason I always remembered it as, him handing Niko the disk while the lower half of his body was already in the squares. which. no he actually hands it to them while the squares are directly behind him BUT. I still choose to remember it that way HSHSH. anyways uh. Important and related to this headcanon. He remembers what that feels likeeee. and hes probably the only oneee because in the solstice ending everyone only sayss they remember the squares surrounding themm not actually touching themmm and even robots who have gotten caught in them and liveed probably dont rememberrr especially since most of them arent tameddd and uhh even if he only remembers the beginning of ittt hes probably really good at filling in the gapss with the whole prophet thingg (thanks @malwarechips for that last idea/silly)

ANYWAYS UHm. so the whole. tamed robots dreaming thing right. HIM. having night terrors about the fucking squares.

I always imagined it as like. about a week after solstice, once things are starting to calm down and return to normal, one night cedric and rue wake up to proto just fuckin screaming at the top of his (metaphorical) lungs. And. they fuckin burst into his room to him tossing and turning in his sleep and then fucking jolting awake. and like.this keeps happening like. practically every other night. he's losing sleep over this shit. Which probably isn't helping all the other issues from the whole phosphor ordeal which he still hasn't told Cedric or Rue about at this point. And I mean. I doubt the nightmares would be restricted to just. in the mines. cuz dreams are weird like that esp when traumas involved AND UH. With the whole prophet thing. That. PROBABLY WOULDNT MIX WELL. (once again thanks eve for that last part/silly)

(On a lighter note I did have the thought of Cedric and Rue sleeping in his room one night and him actually finally getting a good nights sleep and thus that just. Becoming routine for them. The thing about my angsty headcanons is 99% of the time there's hurt/comfort potential in there)

I DO HAVE. some more lighthearted not angsty headcanons, but i wanna save most of those for their own posts cuz theyre small enough that i can actually draw them and finish them.

I will say one more though. this one is 100% projection but *points at proto* chronic migraines

[hypxb]

are they. yknow. business partners

[phykoha]

anons are so consistently weird w the bettertwin blogs its genuinely infuriating like WHY ARE PEOPLE LIKE THIS. it makes me so mad

YOURE RIGHT its so frustrating. it says they're (Aged 14-18) RIGHT THERE ARE YOU BLIND.

[themyscirah]

Some portrait doodles I did during my flight today

[everythingsinred]

Family and the Institution of Alice Academy

Was thinking about this ever since someone (I forgot specifically who, sorry) posed a question like this in the GA discord, asking about (I think) Natsume's extended family or something like that. It was a really interesting concept that I've been thinking a lot about since it was brought up, so here are the thoughts I've accumulated. I'll try to be concise but I have a LOT of thoughts and my brain is messy.

My general opinion at the end of all this thinking I did is that I don't think Academy students typically have very close familial ties after graduating.

I think the most apparent reason for that would be that students are expected to graduate when they are twenty years old. Our main four are exceptions to the rule, coming to the Academy pretty late in life. Most children are taken early, as toddlers or even babies. Natsume, Ruka, and Hotaru's families did all they could to avoid Academy scouting. Mikan was entirely accidental--if she had never met Hotaru, she might have never even found out she was an Alice to begin with. That being said, most kids were separated from their families at a very young age, only to be allowed to reunite with them once they're already adults. For many students, they've been away from their parents for close to two decades.

On top of that, the Academy doesn't allow visitations or phone calls and severely restricts letter communications. Only one child from each class is allowed to return home for one week each year, and that one week does not do much to make up for all the time spent at school.

My point is that by the time students are allowed to see their families again, that familial bond has already been severed, for all intents and purposes. That feeling of closeness and protection no longer exists. Students will feel more closeness and connection to their classmates and even to their teachers than to their parents or siblings, and as a result, I can imagine many graduates not even bothering to visit their families.

While I was pondering this, I made the connection between Academy students and the real life example of a similar situation with Janissaries from the Ottoman Empire. Basically, Janissaries were children stolen from the subjugated people under Ottoman rule. They were taken for the purpose of a "child levy", also known as a "blood tax." Some children were even willingly given by their families due to the possibility of socially advancing, and because the children were promised first class status (sound familiar?). Essentially the children were taken, forced to comply with Ottoman standards and traditions (including forced conversions and circumcisions), and then trained for military service. These soldiers would actually end up being incredibly loyal and efficient, despite likely never seeing their families again.

(Edit: forced circumcisions are particularly heinous when you consider that the children were typically at least 10 years old at the time they were taken.... so.... uh.... not pleasant.... But also interesting that the Janissaries were typically much older than the Alice children at the time of being taken.)

That level of separation doesn't endear ties; it severs them. These Janissaries--very often forcefully taken from their families--ended up growing up with very little connection to their parents or siblings. The feeling of belonging to their previous communities was gone. Absence does not always make the heart grow fonder. This was done as a means of creating a strong military force but also to disillusion subjugated communities and tear away their hope. Their children could always be taken; their communities could always be crushed, even without the use of physical force. It's a very effective tool to oppress a group of people.

(There's actually a lot of similarities between Academy children and Janissaries beside the separation of children from their families. They were also paid for their service and were high ranking; the Academy students are given an allowance and many of them, despite being stolen from their families, have a sense of superiority over non-Alices. They feel like they are treasures, and are of higher value and rank. Additionally, Academy students, especially in the DA class, are highly trained and efficient child soldiers, much like the Janissaries. Janissaries are actually a super interesting historical topic and are worth looking into!)

We can even see the effect of this distance when Yuka escapes the Academy and runs away to her family. Yuka was essentially sold to the Academy, with her parents trading her in exchange for money and status. She was very young, far too young to really understand that her parents had abandoned her. As a result, she romanticized her bond with them, and the longer she was separated from them, the more that bond became fantastical. She made many attempts to escape the school to reunite with her parents and she fantasized about seeing them again. When she finally is able to, it's nothing like she imagined. They're cold, and unfamiliar. They don't recognize her. She doesn't know her brothers. They're related, but there's no real connection.

"I shouldn't have come here."

Yuka's is an extreme example, but I'm sure she's not an exception. For most Academy students, the almost 20 years of separation from their parents would be too much to ignore. They would not recognize each other, or be close. I'm sure many parents did not sell their children like Yuka's family did, but the bond between child and family had not been nurtured the way it should have been, resulting in coldness and distance.

Because of that, I doubt most students even bother seeking their families out, or even if they do, it's to visit a few times before starting a new life with a career. That familial bond, now broken, is difficult to repair. The connections people often feel with their families or hometowns is something Academy students instead feel with each other. They are all Alices, all in the same boat together. That feeling of superiority that many kids feel means they view each other as on the same level, and I'm sure that could interfere with family connection as well.

Thus, I don't think there's many multigenerational Alice families out there with close bonds. I don't think families like Natsume's have strong ties with grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. Even the sibling bonds at the Academy are stunted, with the Imai and Shouda siblings being the prime examples of that.

The Imai siblings have a significant age difference, yes, but additionally the Imai parents had a very different approach to Hotaru after seeing what happened with Subaru. They refused to hand her over as easily, wanting to show her important things in life and build happy memories for as long as they could. Even when Hotaru does enter the school, it's more than six months before she even comes across her brother, since the high school and elementary school are not integrated with each other and they do not belong to the same ability class. Similarly, the Shouda siblings are in different ability classes but they have a much smaller age gap. Despite this, Sumire refers to her brother very respectfully, indicating that there isn't a particular closeness.

The Imais fight against this divide, and put in genuine effort into rebuilding their relationship, but it's a difficult process, and one they struggle to admit to for a long time and for various reasons. Familial closeness is not encouraged, not even within the Academy.

(Though Natsume's bond with Aoi is exploited and the school does rely on him caring for her to take advantage of him, but ultimately he is kept from seeing her. Thus, that bond is also severed despite being exploited.)

Additionally, it would make sense to me if many Alice graduates decided to, upon having children, avoid scouting, like Natsume's parents did, and thus ended up moving around a lot to escape Academy notice. Moving around like that and laying low means that you're not going to be hosting huge family reunions or inviting relatives over often, even if all the other points were moot.

Finally, I think all this creates further obstacles for Yuka's wish to "have a family." At some point she says that, for normal people, the desire to settle down with someone and start a family is a pretty modest goal, but for Alices it's almost impossible. Escaping from the school, or even graduating, is a struggle. And you can have a kid, but it's likely that child will be taken from you, just as you were taken, and by the time the child graduates, they will have no connection with you. Wanting to be a potential grandparent, for example, might seem like a definite impossibility, since being a real parent is impossible.

It's even more proof that the Academy exists as an institution to subjugate and undermine Alices, as children and then as parents. Ultimately, an Alice never has control, not as a child and not even as an adult. The pain doesn't end once you've graduated; in fact, it never does.

[st4rstudent]

Winn and the gang the gathered: Can you please answer our questions?

Mac:

*Suit not included.

**I swear I am writing the finale of thinking outside the box, just give me a moment.

[valeress]

. damble

[oceanmojis]

while i'm at it, here! have an image of me (the alter currently working on the mojis)!

I'm Racc, i'm 14 (me, not the body), and this is my main hobby in system!

and if you're weird to me i'll shove a cactus in you where the sun don't shine!

[wittyworm]

officially in my anarchy era i cant fuckin take this anymore lol

[perenlop]

jokes aside idk how you can say team star is just another poorly written anti bullying psa when it’s singlehandedly got the most empathetic and kind approach to bullying victims that doesnt try to downplay what they went through and just tries to advocate for them

[sexysilverstrider]

im so sorry i shouldnt have laughed......

[chisungie]

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