#too bad I cant make something more elaborate

[two-of-tails]

EVERYONE SAY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OUR FAVORITE HERO!!!

As for my universe- I've planned an elaborate surprise party for my own Sonic >:D

[ganondoodle]

I am sorry to hear that the depression has stolen your spark.

I want you to know that you are the sole reason I gave Skyward Sword a chance. Your art was so beautiful and compelling that I just had to know about the media it came from.

Your art introduced me to an incredible community that years later, I am still benefitting from. Your art was the gateway, and I've always been thankful to you for that.

I hope your spark realights, and I hope you can kick depression right in its ass.

i- i did that????? qoq

yes im reviving old reaction pictures

i hope im not ruining the mood bc .. this legitimately made me tear up and i kept thinking of this ever since receiving the ask-

but bc i cant keep my mouth shut (i apologize if you are already well aware of all this i just .. like to talk i guess), i ... idk i have said this before but i feel incredibly conflicted about demise (am i allowed to like him??? do i even like him when i changed him so much??? am i a fraud fan????) and the game he comes from, i .. dont actually like skyward sword that much, or, not as much as it may seem like (my favorite is windwaker, second is botw), every now and then i even feel guilty for demise being my blorbo tm- as much as i love him im under no illusion what his introduction to the series did, the games lore is not .. great, it seems to have kickstarted the decline of the series writing and completely torpedoed any sort of fandom discussion by making zelda a literal reincarnation of the good tm gods of love and light and peace and everything good tm uwu and pit her against an evil demonnnnn that just crawled out the earth one day (??) and was only evil and bad and dark and hate incarnate an hated the good tm gods bc hes jsut so eviiiil, it gave rise to the utter dissmissal of any sort of ganondorf related discussions (funny how it only seems to apply to ganondorf, and none of the other villains hmmmmmmmmmmmm) bc, while not confirmed confirmed (though the fandom likes to pretend that), hes now widely seen as a reincarnation of demise and thus, doesnt need nuance or be given any grace or thought bc apparently when you say someone is a demon (or its reincarnation, which i dont believe ganondorf is, to be clear) that means its fine to not give them any thought bc demons are just evil tm and thats ok and good writing actually (wat????)

(if you take skysw as canonically how it all went down bc my interpretation makes it all be a fabricated lie so the gods can play their little games, there is no godess reincarnation, that was a lie to make way for an opressive kingdom belivieing itself to be irrevocably good no matter what they do etc)

it also cheapens any of the past entries, all of them have been flattened by this, why disscuss ganondorfs motivation lol, he just be a demon/demons puppet, zelda could never be wrong or do bad things bc she literal incarnation of goodness uwu etc- (and then totk, only the second game after skysw, retreads its points and makes it even worse while ALSO trampeling over that game imo)

i dont like saying it, but i do feel a little alienated even from ganondorf fans (i love him too!!!!!) bc they hate demise, and rightfully so, it feels weird having your main blorbo be the reason your second fav is constantly done dirty, why you cant even talk about anything critically bc 'iTs jUst a sIMpLe fAiRytALe' now and part of the reason the lore in general has gone to shit, and i dont know how much i can talk about that before i become an obnoxious 'well ACTUALLY my blorbo, who is the reason for all this, is ALSO done dirty and im gonna explain away the bad stuff via my completely noncanon reinterpretation-' guy, or if i already am what im doing with destiny is like .. my way of trying to fix it and make it interesting again? though at this point i guess im falling into the category of people who change their blorbo so much that there really isnt anythign left of the og, which worries me alot, though i wonder if thats even possible given how little there is to him in the first place, i so often see viral posts that make me feel guilty or conflicted for the way i work with media, "actually my blorbo did all those crimes and thats good you all who need to explain away the bad things are weak and annoying!!" "people who change their favs until they barely resemble the character anymore should just make an oc instead!!"-

i dont know if i take these types of posts too literally, i dont know when or how they apply, but it always circles around in my head, i know not everyone can like what you do, but i want to work with the material i have in an interesting way, not a puritanical way (or however you call that), its not in my mind every second, but it nevertheless makes me doubt what i do with my fanworks anytime i talk about them-

... this wasnt really the point of the message was it ... apologies, i hope not every ask will devolve into a sort of mini rant ;__; i dont mean to invalidate what you said, (and im not saying skyward sword is all bad, its full of charm, from characters to designs, just the lore is .. damaging) it is incredibly touching bc me or my art having a positive impact on people blindsides me every single time like "WHAT??? IMPOSSIBLE you MUST be thinking of someone else, no way i could do that", when something gets brought up my thoughts just kinda start pouring out, i thought about deleting everything i wrote, but then felt like that wouldnt be as genuine anymore (i am not normal tm after all and im long past a point pretending otherwise) and have wasted another hour for nothing, so im gonne leave it in and hope, pray even, it comes across correctly

q-q

[reel-fear]

I think you guys are losing it with the Earthspark critiques now actually like at first I was on board but now it feels like u guys have forgotten we've only got one season so far and 99% of what we have seen was clearly set up for later pay off like calm down a little-

[cryptidmickle]

so what if. and hear me out. i made my own au for shadowvanilla purposes-

au details below

HELLO SO I PRESENT AMNESIAC AU

so you see, i was minding my business, drawing and looking at cookies and how everyone has their own cool aus with awesome designs and i went "well im not very good at designing but i Love putting characters in Situations"

this au is mostly focused on shadowvanilla so dont be too hopeful I'll get into the other cookies besides their little circle, im ill for gay yaoi only okay

So! motions to comic above, amnesia smilk time! let me elaborate

Pure vanilla fucked up BIG TIME, in that he maybe ventured out to beast yeast alone to try and find out more about the beasts and a way to stop them, as people with a savior complex have a habit of doing. Maybe, perhaps, also at the same time, smilk was getting the workings of his new dough body done and sensing pv was nearby decided to take the opportunity to torment him a little, yknow he cant help himself! he needs to see him

a nasty little fight and confrontation in some old structures of smilk (or at the spire) result in pv using a strange spell he spotted in the surrounding papers and documents, and .... accidentally cracks smilk's soul jam! hehe, oops!

and also sealing his memories. double oops. damn, what are you gonna do now pv?

well he cant leave confused smilk alone here, and itd honestly be best the other beasts and dark enchantress dont drag him back there in this state, so he offers a hand.

"Come with me. We can help you, I'll make sure you're okay."

a memory-less smilk is confused by this but... he's already grabbing the other cookie's hand before he realizes it. It'll probably be fine, something about this cookie... makes something in him feel okay.

taps forehead, im still working everything out of course, and i WILL be cursing all of you with sketchy stuff about it when I'm able, i need more time to figure out smilk's behaviors without the soul jam and corruption

of course I'm always of the mind that pre-corruption smilk was kind of a rat and rude but how exactly is the real question!! how bad was it before the corruption exacerbated the negative qualities of knowledge and his personality

anyways,,, feel free to ask questions!! it could help me figure this all out, if yall are interested of course,,,,,,,my,,,, handful of crk followers SNRRKS

[kerubimcrepin]

Wakfu OVA - Book 1, The Throne of Ice [PART 1]

"Finally, we have arrived to one of my most favorite parts of Wakfu... The OVAs!" <- If I said this, I would be locked up in a psyhiatric ward forever, however, there is some truth to that.

I am a big fan of uhh the bits of the second OVA that have Joris, Kerubim, and Atcham in them. Sadly, Book 1 is not that OVA. It will have Sipho posing as Joris, and, well... that's the next best thing, ain't it? At least we'll get to analyse if he's doing a good job or not.

Ecaflip demigod memory retention deniers will be like "Ush being a core member of a powerful cult at 9-10yo for multiple reincarnations is normal".

Anyway, group chats are real in this setting. And Harebourg is their discord mod I think.

Tot I'm begging you to elaborate on this, what do you MEAN by this, what do you—

STOP USING GRIMALKINE SISTERS BEING A PART OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE FORGOTTEN AS A FLEX ON THE HATERS! I'M SCARED!

Them in the Great Wave manga when they show up and say they're at fault for Jahash and Julith's whole shtick or whatever.

Ughh.

Le meilleur journal qu'il est -

boufboul

[cant make out the rest]

little text in the corner: fji de ij

Ngl considering the fact that the King of Bonta dies within the next two years, he might have a legitimate reason not to come: being in the process of dying.

They LOVE Joris in this kingdom.

I bet real Joris would like to remain silent because, uh., lying is bad? If he tries to say the situation isn't as shitty as it seems, it might seem condescending.

So, Sipho fails at being in-character moment counter: 1. Joris would not say shitfuck here.

Oh my god... His fangs... His blush... His eyes...

One of the things I really like about the OVAs are the changes to Joris's design. While yes, like most people I miss the finer details of the previous seasons — but his new design is more sleek, and a bit more... catlike. It takes a lot of inspiration from his Aux Tresors design.

It is not the intention of the authors, but the fact that he is drawn with a mouth makes sense on a character level: he is more understandable and human than he was in the first two seasons. While he used to be a mystery back then, now he is a friend to the Brotherhood of Tofu, — and, to us, the viewers, he's just a guy.

Anyway, there is a big question here — while it seems obvious that other nations are involved — Sadida wouldn't invite other politicians to this meeting, if them seizing the Eliatrope Dofus was a secret, — just how involved were other nations? Was it mainly a Bonta-Sadida project which they let others know about? Were others interested up until the moment the Dofus were stolen, and is it the reason nobody showed up?

It seems kinda too obvious to state, however: Guys, this confirms that Joris and Harebourg are enemies.

Though, let's be real, all three of the Crepin-Jurgens are kind of opposed to the Brotherhood of The Forgotten. The trio is very... god-neutral? The outlook those three have is more of optimistic-nihilism — "the gods suck sometimes, life does too, but whatever. I need to restock the store and eat a soup, why should I ruminate on this." instead of "WE NEED TO KILL AND DETHRONE GODS IMMEDIATELY", which... creates a bit of friction.

Something to note is that Joris and the Kingdom of Bonta were involved with hiding the Dofus.

So, the Dofus disappearing, the proposition, and the condition that Amalia should be accompanied only by the Brotherhood of Tofu, are already both a political incident in on themselves, and a bunch of red flags stacked together.

Just listen: the property of a nation (the Eliatropes), which was in custody of a different nation, and can be used to save a kingdom, was stolen by a different kingdom to unlawfully demand marriage and unification of two kingdoms.

If real Joris was here, I'm sure he would be quietly having a panic attack about the fact that there may be spies in Bonta, and that Harebourg was able to do this without, let's say, knocking him out after he got all the Dofus and stealing them.

So, Sipho fails at being in-character moment counter: 2. Joris would be having a quiet panic attack, and pointing out just how fucked this is. just how fucked this is.

Sipho fails at being in-character moment counter: 3. At this moment, real Joris would come in, and say "YUGO THIS IS FUCKED!! Anyway we are going to beat Harebourg to death when we get there. I didn't want to say anything objectionable because Amalia would be sad."

He already did that in the manga. When Amalia and Eva asked him about his real opinion on Jiva getting the six Dofus.

While I think that Joris is someone who very much believes that the leaders of this world make hard decisions — and for this reason he MUST keep doing war crimes in Waven times to keep Bonta afloat, he MUST keep eating pig people and using slave labour and making explosive devices out of crackler babies, because really, 90% of war criminals quit just before true peace and prosperity—-

But, Joris is canonically enough of a feminist to be 100% pro-"pregnant women on a ship during a dangerous adventure across the world", so I think that outweighs his sense of "greater good".

In my opinion, he is more likely to think "very evil of you Harebourg, to force a woman into a relationship using the lives of her subjects. You're SICK, you're SICK, you have NO sense of romance or how a person should be treated!" and say "ughh we need to beat him up for this, Yugo. This isn't a very good deal for the Sadida. He's holding them hostage, Yugo. My main concerns are definitely not the way Amalia is being treated as an object but the political implications of that, Yugo."

Sipho literally committing character assassination out here. I will count this as the 4th time he does that.

Adamai is still very pissed off about Joris not asking before taking the Dofus. I think Joris deserves this quip very much. I wish Joris could hear Adamai be a hater towards him.

Sipho fails at being in-character moment counter: 5.

At this moment, instead of ignoring Adamai and continuing to talk, real Joris would make a funny face that implied he is in mortal pain due to someone he likes making a snide remark about him.

He is shown to be very much ashamed and worried about the fallout this will bring to his relationship with Yugo and Adamai in OVA 2.

Huppermages already did this, and it kind of failed when Ogrest's Chaos hit.

[ilynpilled]

ive been thinking about this a bit and i feel like i have some very different feelings towards certain things and strongly disagree with the implications present in the ways i see them discussed. i do not like to simplify these themes to “vengeance/punishment bad wahh”, because it does not at all feel complete enough to convey my true feelings, or the themes of the text itself for that matter imo, but like… ofc i personally cant read things like cersei’s walk of shame, where she is punished, humiliated, and dehumanized through the one thing she was unfairly condemned for her entire life— jaime’s brutal maiming and torture where he is humiliated, fed things like horse piss which he forces down because he is so thirsty before vomiting it back up, gets repeatedly beaten unconscious, and is nearly driven to passive suicide— theon’s excessive physical and mental torment that would take too long to list that breaks him entirely— and even a man as deeply evil as vargo hoat (who is not at all three dimensional) having his hands and feet and arms and legs cut off, be cannibalized, and even be forced to eat parts of himself, causing the pov character that swore to enact brutal vengeance on him to feel ill and repulsed once he finds out— and experience much, if any, catharsis, personal feelings about these characters aside. asoiaf is a series where the author pretty often deliberately places us inside the heads of bad people that have done terrible things, who some readers may feel a certain hatred for, as they are put through torment. not to make the reader feel good and satisfied about it, but to present it as something that should not really be a thing that we revel in, and encourage us to be critical about what is even gained through what they are going through. even a morally dark antagonist without a pov like joffrey and his death was meant to have elements of tragedy. during, tyrion notes that he is a young boy with fear in his eyes that he had never seen in the eyes of his father. whether you feel a certain way about it (and i am not arguing that you are morally flawed for not sympathizing with a fictional character, this isn’t real life, i am just discussing themes that i am identifying), the goal was not really to provide us with a feel-good “justice at last!” emotion through the brutally violent death of a 13 year old boy. it makes me genuinely wonder how some ppl come away with the idea that this series is intended to be a celebration and glorification of punitive justice. i am not saying justice in general is not a huge theme, and some catharsis, especially for victims, over the death/defeat of their abusers & tormenters is present in the text as well, understandably so, because it can mean safety. take pia smiling through broken teeth when jaime has her rapist executed and presents his head to her while setting a precedent with gregor’s men. some people need to die, and deserve it, but what does that look like? who decides it? why? by contrast, the instance of jaime actually feeling good when he hangs a bunch of random outlaws reads as something more tied to his current relationship to the self and certain selfish desires at this point in his story than real justice, and it is further elaborated upon and taken apart in the book. anyway, all these questions are present and the answers are not near as simple as i often see them made out to be.

it doesn’t feel like to me that most things that can be interpreted as enactments of punitive justice or moments of karma are these epic events that should just make the reader blindly cheer and applaud, or even feel good about. there is a reason that some things go awry (like with oberyn), and it isn’t cynicism. there is nuance, and not in a way where victims are condemned for fighting back, or a pacifist ideology is idealized. there just really isn’t a glorification of brutal punishment, ‘eye for an eye’ vengeance, and the needless causing of suffering. same with a blind upholding of duty and law based around flawed feudalistic constructs. and all these things should not even be conflated. not to mention that punitive justice exists also in a way where it is connected to institutions. take the faith and organized religion for example. the whole process is interrogated: what is sin? what sins are being punished? how? why? and what are the actual effects? be it jaime’s and brienne’s conversations/interactions with a bunch of different tertiary characters in affc, or cersei’s punishment in adwd. at the end of the day, she is punished for her body, for being a woman. she does not suffer “consequences” for her actual wrongs and the suffering she causes. she doesn’t really learn anything, and it will all just make her spiral more. the whole concept of punitive justice gets focused on especially with theon’s entire identity being withered away through torture. he experiences so much torment that there comes a point where he is robbed of his mind and agency. what does the “criminal” learn? how can a person change in these circumstances? what is the point, and why should we feel good about this? he is not even really “punished” for his crimes, and certainly not by people with any moral high ground over him, he is just being brutalized. same is the case with jaime in asos: it is a bad person being brutalized by men even more vile than he is, and they are not doing it because they want to deliver any justice to his victims. also, though the maiming does kickstart crisis with him specifically, it is not the determining factor when it comes to his reformation. this story is not actually saying that people can be, and should be, tortured into becoming better people, and if they can’t the solution is to just axe them. there is nuance, sure, mercy is not something everyone is entitled to in all circumstances. sometimes “mercy” towards certain evil people will lead to the enablement of the suffering of others, even entire populations. there are certainly circumstances where compromise isn’t an option. but, again, i dont think george is ever holding back on actually interrogating the moral quandaries when it comes to identifying cycles and ending them, and he is for sure not treating every single aspect of these conflicts as black and white. even tyrion murdering his father, who purposefully does have a very ironic and humiliating death scene, which is important thematically, doesn’t end in easy and feel-good catharsis, especially for tyrion, which doesn’t equal “oh, tywin should be forgiven and spared”.

all of this is also why i do not really see how events like the fall of house lannister (first of all, we know it is gonna include the likely very brutal deaths of two innocent small children), red wedding 2.0, valonqar etc would be these grand and glorious moments of justice and pay-off, treated as just the good guys finally getting an epic W. they will very likely be filled with tragedy, so i am genuinely curious about where these expectations for this kind of catharsis come from

[thatneoncrisis]

oh captain my captain, I've read maybe ten TLT fics in all my time here so I'm not necessarily familiar with the common fandom takes. If you haven't already, would you mind elaborating on them? I'd like to know more about the history that prompted you to write your latest fic. please and thank you, I'm still reeling from the update today and I think I need to hear like. all of your thoughts ever about writing it

GUH. christ. idk its like a lot of things, its a year and a half of fucking around on ao3 and getting annoyed in a way i am only susceptible to because im fucking Online. if i get too specific it starts calling people out by name which i want to avoid so keeping it super broad:

the way gideon is written wrt being a trans butch of color

connected to that point like, the insane amount of rizz she has. god its so funny. to me

the way fics have like an interesting premise but run at a breakneck pace to get to the kissing and then it just ends. nooo the world was so cool go back nooooooo

how a lot of stories do this thing where they want ianthe to be a shitty ex girlfriend/half hearted love interest but they cant commit to her being genuinely awful or treat her like a person with feelings so it accidentally reads like her worst crime was being uncommunicative and bad at sex and unfunny, because the audience is already primed to hate her so were just like yeah this tracks

the sixth mommying harrow to an unbearable degree, like they treat her the way they treated nona in canon, this also extends to them wingmanning her

the like. paradox of wanting genuine conflict between harrow and gideon but also retaining their close banter. this is a hard thing to do if theyre like MEETING in a fic for the first time. theres rarely a reason for them to hate each other with such intensity and thus it fizzles out like immediately. i didnt even really bother with this i just did an immediate inexplicable closeness that is then undercut when harrow snaps out of it by going back to how she generally is

wrt harrows relationship with her faith this is less something im upset about and more something i rarely seen done in a way that interests me as an individual. shes catholic Ish, it doesnt really matter re her day to day outside of her childhood or maybe her job, she might pray sometimes or allude to long since conquered internalized homophobia

and in a similar vein like the very. Correct way people talk. its all very precise terminology to describe their sexuality or gender or a diagnosis they got and are actively working on. nobody is a faggot or transsexual or a girlboy or a thing they dont have a word for but know exists

again im saying this as often as i can. if youve done any of this cool. genuinely. keep doing it i cant stop you. its more about how often i see it just compound in on itself over and over, its the vast majority of fics that do at least one of these things. its a personal problem about wanting more from something that doesnt want to be more, and i cant make it more, because its not mine and wasnt made for me

[spectrum-core]

STEPHCLAIR IS BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD

Alternative title: a very angry (and tired) Full Stop fan's thesis.

ok, so me being the stephan/sinclair comparison's strongest hater is a bit i really like to lean into, but for the sake of keeping things semi-serious i will try to keep the actual essay content as free of me ranting my frustrations as humanly possible (which i mean commitement to the bit aside this will be hard bc it is frustrating to see people calling them both the same character, at best it shows a very surface level understanding of either character and at worst it shows just reducing them to cookie cutter meme fandom archetypes neither character actually fits into, so bear with me if i slip up and make unserious comments from time to time)

so before i start the actual essay let me say this: this essay doesnt even scratch the surface of how much i hate this comparison you guys cant even possibly fucking imagine ive been obssessed and i mean OBSSESSED with the full stop office since 2021 and im glad i wasnt in the limbus prerelease fanbase because if i had to see people comparing my beautiful boy and beloved best friend to a guy we had no info about other than "hes based of the guy from demian" i would have turned into the joker this is not even about saving my own mental health this is about sparing the entire pjm fandom of the monster i would have turned into

spoilers for ruina and limbus, universe terminology heavy and surface level references and interpretations of demian by herman hesse because imma keep it real with you guys the first and only time i read that book i was still in high school and i barely remember shit.

Table of contents:

Stephan - a summary

Sinclair - a summary 2.1. Emil Sinclair in Demian (1919) 2.2. Emil Sinclair in Limbus Company (2023)

Addressing common arguments

1.- Stephan - a summary

And of course I will start with Stephan, because I love him very much, just like Liwei he's one of my favorite pjm characters (yeah i like him more than your favorite popular character don't ask) so it's not surprising that i have A Lot to say about him, right?

And of course, I do.

As I said in the serrated duo post, a core part of my perception of the Full Stop office depends on the fact that they are poor. Mentions of money are common all across many factions in the game, yes, but the Full Stops are extremely constant about money, how taking a wrong turn means losing more than they can afford, how they can't afford to drop their weapons because they were too expensive, how even getting the permissions to be able to buy and wield these weapons was ridiculously expensive and so on. Of course, Stephan is the one talking about this the most (something I will elaborate on later), but Liwei and Tamaki also make a few ocassional mentions to it in their dialogue and keypages and considering this is a shared business it just makes sense that this is something that affects all of them.

These are just some few of the callbacks to money that Stephan alone does in his dialogue, without focusing in keypage text or what Liwei and Tamaki have to say about it.

And idk man, at least to me the difference between social classes is an important aspect for their characterization, specially because of how constant the concern with money is for Stephan. From this point alone comparing them feels like erasing a core aspect of Stephan's characterization, a lot about Stephan (and the Full Stop office as a whole, let's be real here) starts making more sense once you read the office as lower-middle class (and I'm saying lower middle class because they can afford some place to live and their weapons, but to me these guys are the types who precisely because of their need to keep bullets at all times can't pay for water or electricity all the time and sometimes they simply can't afford food or if they do they can spend a week straight eating nothing but unsalted pasta).

Now, going back to Stephan being the most outward about his complaints with money, he is in general the most outward about all problems the office is facing, to the point in which he doesn't mind inconveniencing everyone else with his rants, being one of the few guests who interrupt Angela's introductory speech and getting into Tamaki's nerves (something he's well aware he's doing, as these two know each other) at least two times through the course of their pre-battle cutscene, even Roland comments after the reception on how he wishes he would always have been as open about his problems as Stephan was.

However, it's worth nothing that he doesn't spend the entire cutscene crying about his miseries, and he only starts losing hope at three key moments: when they can't kill Eileen inmediately (making them waste more bullets than needed), when Argalia shows up (forcing them to retreat and making them fail their mission, meaning they won't get paid for this after they already lost a ton of money, as well as turning the situation into something much more dangerous than what they had signed up for) and once they enter the Library (an Urban Plague grade threat they have little to no information about, when him and Tamaki are almost out of bullets so Liwei is essentially the only fixer with some chance of putting up a fight and, you know, making it out alive).

Now, while it's true that Stephan is someone who dislikes danger, he isn't someone who isn't used to seeing gruesome events, his instinctive reaction to seeing a guy getting his head put into a meat grinder was cracking jokes and calling the concept of thought gears "a load of horseshit", which is something that falls in line with him being a somewhat experienced Fixer (sure, grade 5 isn't amazing but we can assume it's still either in the higher side of average or barely above average, and for someone specialized in firearms, which are far from the best weapon in the city, getting that high means he must have some experience and skill, right? more so considering he's been at this for 5 years at most) who has seen a fair share of horrid shit and can be unfazed by (most of) it as long as his own safety isn't on the line.

Another point is... he dislikes danger and is always wary about money and expenses, to the point in which he enjoys checking his bank account (or at least he believes so, if we go for the theory of the artbook profiles being more a mix of what the characters perceive themseves as/would describe themselves as to others, which is a theory i go by, I see him as someone who's convinced he does that for fun instead as out of desperation), but this seems to be more a generalized feeling of impending doom at everything rather than something that can be traced back to a particular traumatic event (anything can be dangerous, anything can cost him money), dude's from the backstreets after all, he's seen shit and he's used to assuming the worst. How I see Stephan, he's a guy who already expects bad things to happen but once things go wrong he starts freaking out about how this time They're Screwed For Real, but he never really tricks himself into believing "maybe things will turn out just fine this time?" or who thinks "well, we've done this before, surely we can handle it again."

This is not very related to Stephan as a character in terms of personality but I think it's still an important point to make as it is particularly related to body mods, his physical condition and his body shape.

So we can easily say that Stephan is a strong dude, at least if compared to real world standards without the fancy and insane body mods we see people in the city have access to. He carries that huge rifle around with his bare hands, something that Tamaki doesn't do and that not even Stephan himself in earlier iterations of his dessign did, and his main talent (which based of my theories is something that can be assumed as "something he's proud enough of to consider it the thing he does best") is physical labor.

Pictured, Tamaki's talksprite, carrying a rifle almost as long as she is tall with a strap supporting the weight on her shoulders, like a normal person.

Also pictured, an earlier iteration of Stephan's dessign, carrying the same rifle his current version does, but also holding it with the help of a similar strap supporting the weight on his shoulders.

And finally, Stephan's current dessign, holding that shit with his bare fucking hands in an exhibition of his brute animal strength, what the fuck is wrong with this man (affectionate)

And Stephan's artbook profile, the important part here is his speciality being physical labor, not only he's strong but he aknowledges this.

However, I made a point about the Full Stop office being poor, right? Even Roland says that "giving a whole office augmentation procedures is cheaper than keeping a decent supply of bullets in stock" (not the exact phrasing).

At least personally, I see this as Roland essentially saying "it would be cheaper (and more efficient) to get body mods for everyone in the office and buy another (cheaper) type of weaponry instead", but as things stand, the Full Stops can afford to either buy more ammunition and maintain their weapons, OR to get body mods, and since their whole deal is firearms... well, they can't really Stop investing in them, meaning they have no body mods At All and they got their grades purely out of their own physical strength.

Similarly, Stephan makes a similar point about how body augmentations are required for people to be able to run while carrying their weapons around (specifically talking about the rifles he and Tamaki use).

And... you know, the whole point is that they couldn't run carrying their weapons because they were too heavy, Argalia mocked them for that, Liwei urged them to drop their weapons, something they refused to do because of the prices.

Lastly on this point, while it's true that Ruina talksprites have a very bad case of Long Anime Legs (to the point in which how Roland's legs take about 2/3 of his height is a common joke), if we focus only on his head and torso, Stephan looks pretty Wide, and not only because he's wearing thick, fluffy and multilayered clothing, as other characters wearing similar clothing styles still look thinner than him.

This is all to say: I don't think this guy is a twink, or thin at all. He's a prime example of the strongman build to me and this is yet another hill I'm willing to die on watch project moon turn him into a beanpole once he inevitably shows up in limbus and me turning into the first real world distortion as a consequence.

Finally, Stephan is very notoriously the most informal member of the office, not only being the only one who doesn't wear any sort of formal clothing fully prioritizing comfort and practicality over looks but also completely disregarding formalities with his attitude at work (again, he interrupts Angela's introductory monologue, and again, his first two lines when being introduced are him cracking jokes), being the only member of the office to swear on screen and using several informal expressions and metaphors through both the reception dialogue and his keypage story.

And for good measure, he's a compilation of Stephan being the creature he is.

The literal introduction of the characters, also known as the moment in which Stephan became one of my favorite characters because he's Just Like Me Fr

Very normal behavior for someone who hates blood and violence and isn't used to seeing it. This man is more than capable (and willing, assuming money is involved) to murder kill.

Which, I mean, this attitude is very different from what we see from Sinclair.

2.- Sinclair, a summary

In retrospect I probably should have made this one first because I'm gonna be honest with you, Sinclair is one of the sinners I care about the least (I still like him and think he's pretty cool mind you I just don't vibe too much with most of the tropes making up the character) so what I have to say about him is less me grasping for straws and subtext because I don't care enough about him to be bothered with a super serious and in depth analysis like I did with Stephan and more things we can explicitly see about him in game and things that happen in the novel Demian.

And if I can have a small parenthesis here, people saying that one of my favorite pjm guys Ever is in any way similar to a guy who despite being pretty cool is just Not the type of character I fully vibe with... really, it gets annoying fast. Anyway back to the serious analysis now.

2.1- Emil Sinclair in Demian (1919)

To be able to understand Sinclair as he is depicted in Limbus Company, it is important to first be familiar with the source material of the original iteration of the character, that's it we're doing your high school homework by compiling several literary analysis of a symbolic psychological early 20th century autobiographical novel i hope you guys signed up for this (and if you didn't, though luck! i will do this anyway, I love literary analysis).

In the novel, young Emil finds himself torn between the worlds of light (which can be equated to the Garden of Eden, but it's more tangible meaning for our protagonist is his childhood home and family, a serene and well structure/organized space where he can be innocent, untainted by the evils of the outside world) and darkness (basically all the scary shit that goes on outside, where people do evil things for the sake of it), he finds himself tempted by the violence of the outside world, particularly through the actions of his classmate Franz Kromer, which eventually leads him to consider that due to being exposed to this tainted world of evil he no longer can return to the world of good and innocence.

Here, the character of Demian acts as a guide, someone who helps Sinclair to trascend this binary perception of good vs evil and to see himself as someone worthy of happiness because him witnessing the world of evil didn't taint him as a person but rather merely showed him another face of the world, Demian here mentions the Mark of Cain as a symbol of mental strenght and freedom, considering that bearers of this mark are capable of making their own choices and should be able to go beyond their assigned roles, being able to embody aspects of both worlds. This is to say that Demian's view is less focused on good vs evil, instead taking a more order vs chaos approach (without giving an explicit moral character to either).

In the book, the symbol of a bird breaking out of the egg is frequently used to represent Emil's personal growth, the egg represents safety and innocence, but a bird must eventually leave the egg or it will die, and getting out of the egg is a process than can be seen as violent, as a bird must fight to get out of the egg, and getting out of the egg represents birth but also an irreversible change, it can be seen as breaking out of the world of light and getting permanently in the world of darkness since a broken shell can't be fixed, but it can also mean achieving the enlightment and personal balance to not feel permanently bound to a condition, place or state of being and therefore growing as a person by learning to see himself as a whole human instead of supressing his "evil side" by only forcing the "good side" to surface.

Max Demian is here to show this second meaning of growth/self improvement (while also explaining that Sinclair is permamently growing and must always keep this balance between all the parts conforming the whole being that is himself rather that trying to make parts of himself antagonize each other). This idea of personal growth being one of the core themes of the book.

2.2- Emil Sinclair in Limbus Company (2023)

With Sinclair's source media analyzed (at a very surface level, mind you), we now can start talking about the depiction of Sinclair in Limbus Company, how it parallels the book, why the book symbolism is important for this instance of Sinclair and so on.

When we are first introduced to Sinclair in the game he's clearly nervous, he doesn't know what he's supposed to do as he hasn't worked for a similar company before and he isn't used to the gruesome sight of the bus eating people, this does fit inmediately in the motif of a naive person with limited experience about the world (well, to be fair to him most people won't be seeing man-eating buses at a regular basis, but the average backstreets dweller would be familiar with equally violent situations).

With this said, despite Sinclair's obviously nervous behavior... he isn't really a pessimist like Stephan was, in fact, almost every chapter (counting cantos, intervallos and the short mini chapters such as the Dante's notes update episode) have at least one key moment with him trying to rationalize horrible stuff as something much less violent, or simply going "but I thought this thing didn't work like this..." when confronted with the more horrible realities in the city. He thought the G corp veterans were really going to let them pass without a fight, he thought the people being controlled by headhens were just actors wearing mascot costumes, he thought mermaids were the beautiful half-woman half-fish creatures he heard about in fairy tales, and there's more examples but I don't really feel like looking for The Entire Fucking Plot Because This Guy Is An Actual Protagonist Instead Of A Background Guy Like Stephan Was to make my point clearer than it already is. And it's only when he realizes that the real world doesn't fit his expectations that he panics.

Well, there is one exception to this pattern: his own canto. Here, he panics inmediately as soon as K corp's nest is mentioned and spends the first half of the chapter pleading to turn back while saying that they are going to get killed. So what is different here with the rest of the plot?

Obviously, the fact that is related to his very own very personal very specific trauma. That is to say, unlike Stephan who is wary of anything that can put him on danger or cost him more money than it should, Sinclair has a very specific traumatic event that makes him act Like That (sure, he gets scared and nervous outside that, but these are more normal "I'm unfamiliar with this and I don't fully know how to react, this is normal behavior in a human being" reactions than outright "I am Actually Terrified due to being reminded of an actual traumatic event, this reaction is a textbook definition of post-traumatic stress disorder").

HOWEVER, Sinclair being someone who's deeply traumatized and kind of a scaredy cat when it comes to violence and unfamiliar situations... it doesn't mean that he's incompetent or a bad fighter. Almost all of his identities are terrifyingly good fighters (at least in their lore), Los Mariachis fear jefe Sinclair, Cinq director Sinclair is someone most association members are terrified to duel even during training, Blade Lineage Sinclair is considered a talented killer (it's also worth noting that save maybe for the mariachi one, in none of these mirror worlds Sinclair is precisely happy of being recognized as "the guy who's very scary when he fights people", unlike Stephan who I don't think he particularly likes killing but has a more "as long as I get paid..." mentality about it), the only "not very good at this" Sinclair id I can think of is the molar boatworks id where he's more a mechanic than a fighter so he fears he's lagging behind in that aspect. Hell, even the Canon Timeline so to speak (which is to say: his base identity) has him carrying that huge halberd, going on a frenzy attacking some already mutilated inquisitor's corpse, piercing through Guido's armor and dealing a fatal blow that finally killed him for real. To compare, Stephan is good at physical work, but we don't know about his close combat capacities other than the fact that he dislikes it, for Sinclair however we know he's terrifyingly good at physical combat.

Now, I've seen a lot of people call Sinclair a twink and while it's one of these words that nobody agrees on what it means, let's give it the benefit of doubt and say "alright, for the duration of this analysis let's settle on a twink being a young looking (regardless of actual age), thin man with almost no facial/body hair".

Since Sinclair is a rich guy (not just Any Rich Guy though, we're talking of someone whose family had ties to a Wing, probably not some elite guy like Daniel or Hong Lu, but not a self perceived "mediocre" nest dweller like Samjo either), and pressumably not very experienced in combat in most mirror worlds (we know he has no prior experience in the base one where he joined Limbus, at least), let's say that he has enough body mods for him to be much stronger than he looks like despite being thin, he does look thin and young and much to my dissapointment he also has no facial hair, so yeah, under this very broad definition of the term he is a twink.

However if you start adding personality archetypes to the definition he stops being one almost inmediately, as we've been shown time after time that his "submissive" attitude is mostly a result of him not knowing too well how to impose himself and just going along with what the rest say or do, but he's starting to grow tired of that ever since Hell's Chicken (even if he clearly still isn't great at that), as it should be more than obvious for anyone who even just googled "demian herman hesse literary analysis", Sinclair is undergoing a lot of changes even now, and the game is doing a good job at portraying that.

Honestly I also think he'd be hotter with a sleeper build but really, I don't care enough about him to argue about that.

And for the last point, precisely due to his upbringing as a rich guy AND his traumatic experience with Kromer, Sinclair is not only a very polite and mild mannered guy (again, unlike resident creature Stephan), but also he tries to take as little space as possible, both literally and metaphorically, as Dante notices near the end of canto 3 when they finally comment on how Sinclair never talks about his own problems until it's too late because he doesn't want to bother the others as they probably have it worse (again, unlike Stephan "i don't mind loweing team morale and making everyone in the room uncomfortable as long as i get to vent" Full Stop office).

3.- Adressing common arguments

Alright, now that I talked about each character, let's see some of the most common arguments I've seen people use to compare them.

"They look the same!" No, they don't. The only thing they have in common is being blonde but even their hairstyles are different with Sinclair having a simple bowl-ish cut with slightly wavy hair and Stephan having curlier hair (not to mention the whole point I made about body types because I'm the sort of lunatic who cares about that stuff). I won't even bother with this argument.

"They have the same personalities!" Again, they don't. Stephan is very cynical with a lot of his attitude being clearly derivated from him coming from a poor background and having stayed there his whole life, he also doesn't care about his cynism getting in the way and bothering everyone else. On the other hand, Sinclair is someone who could almost be described as naive due to having lived a sheltered childhood and only having his experiences with Kromer and his time at Limbus as moments of realizing that the rest of the world is Not Like His Childhood House, still believing that the world is a binary of good vs evil and expecting things to turn out fine or be much better than they actually are, just to be hit with the reality of the city Not being a nice place where people are nice and polite and not trying to kill him, this is not to say he doesn't have his own issues but even Dante notices during his Canto that Sinclair makes a point to avoid bothering everyone else with his personal problems, keeping them to himself even if that makes things worse on the long run.

"Both are opposed and harmed by a lunatic!" This is an argument I've seen a lot and is incredibly filmsy at best, half of the city's population are lunatics and the other half are people who got opposed by them some way or another. Will you say that Ishmael and the rest of the Pequod crew can be compared to the Full Stop office (or really, even mention the other Full Stop fixers instead of just focusing on Stephan because he happens to be blonde and can be compared to Sinclair) because of their situations with Ahab? Or the W Corp crew who got their train targetted by Jae-heon and Elena (or, you know, the train passengers who were turned into Love townspeople or puppets)? What about the Vermillion Cross who got killed by the Reverb Ensemble? Or the Cane office fixers? or the Zwei association section 6 who got beaten to death by Gyeong-mi just because he felt like doing so? Or the Liu association section 1 who had to deal with Argalia taking Philip away? Or the Kurokumo clan members when they were attacked by Tanya? You aren't comparing them to either Stephan or Sinclair, right? Not to mention that in her weird and fucked up perception of things, Kromer was less opposed to Sinclair as she was trying to lead him to join her and her cause, even the last things she says before getting killed are her calling him to follow her.

"Both are compared to birds!" Oh, right, because I forgot that a very directed symbolic comparison to a baby bird breaking out of it's shell as a symbol of rebirth, learning about the nuances of the world and self improvement/liberation that is consistently used in the source material Sinclair comes from is exactly the same as one (1) throwaway line the big bad guy uses to mock not only Stephan but the whole Full Stop gang, right. And if you want to say "but Tamaki compares him to a bird once too", yeah she calls him a parrot because he keeps repeating the same complaints over and over, it's still not the same as a consistent metaphor.

"Both are sad blonde twinks! They're essentially the same guy." Sad? Yeah, everyone in the city is sad but their ways to be sad are polar opposites, and neither of them is the pure cinnamon roll uwu crybaby archetype people tend to lump both into, Stephan was merely having a bad day and people decided to make that his whole personality (when honestly we get more insight on his actual personality before Argalia shows up, when he's making sarcastic remarks and getting impatient because they weren't starting killing people fast enough) but he's still perfectly capable (and willing) to murder people, and Sinclair is just... someone who lacks experience about the real world and how it works and has a tendency to get nervous because of this, but he can adapt quickly to situations once he understands them. Blonde? Yeah, but I guess if that's a point to draw a comparison then we should also compare them to Don Quixote, the Tiphereths, Lenny, Yun, Lulu, Olga, every single npc, librarian, and agent who comes with blonde hair from the generator... Twinks? Stephan absolutely isn't one, Sinclair depends on how you define twink as nobody seems to get to an agreement with that, if you define it as merely "young looking thin man with almost no visible body hair" then yeah he is one, but if you go for any more specific definition than that he stops fitting into the definition almost instantly.

In conclusion: if I see anyone else comparing them I'll start blocking people liberally bc I'm sick of seeing that shit (I do that already tbh but just so you know), now scram

[lazyveran]

omg i just read the Ty Lee Azula Katara situationship. Well now of course you need to elaborate on Mai. What's her relationship with Azula and Katara like? does Ty Lee have a similar thing with Zuko and Mai, as her other besties? What is wrong with Mai, bc i get the feeling you've tossed her in a salad spinner as well?

thank you so much. mai is also being whirled around in the salad spinner. miserably, might i add.

mai for me is someone is who is clinging very VERY tightly to the past, and absolutely refuses to deviate from it. ty lee, azula and zuko are her childhood friends? thats IT. thats all the friends she wants or needs. in her mind any change from that past is bad, wrong, and must be reversed back to safe, normal comfort. this is in part because she was happy and innocent and free right up until tom-tom was born - then she was the spare, seen not heard, not understood by her mother, choked into silence, captivity and an intense depressive state. tom-tom's arrival into her life is so bad that mai goes "ah yes, new people? or My People changing into something i didnt expirence before the age of 12? BAD. KILL WITH HAMMERS." and even though she does love her baby brother, she despises the circumstance he brought her. (she's far more like azula than either of them want to admit. they keep seeing glimpses of themselves in the other, like a shattered reflection of what they could have become - silent and meek, or unloved and monsterous. they never talk about it.)

the fire squad is her one and only support network, and she becomes uncomfortably co-dependant. no one else will do. no one else understands. they're comfortable, normal, the shining happy past that she wants to claw back to. she's loved by them, and understood implicity bc of their shared past. thats all she wants. so she's very, very intensely devoted to them, and especially to zuko. her and azula aren't emotional supports to each other, but they are indeed best friends. they both apprieciate each other's loyalty and stability. mai is comfortable with any change that happens around azula - or Her People - because azula is this steadfast, unmoving pillar in her life. azula values mai highly for her skill, intelligence and general disposition. they're the bitchest besties ever who murder for fun.

SO. if she literally cant handle ty lee, azula or zuko changing into something else. at all. then you can imagine her reaction to katara barrelling in and changing up the vibe of their foursome. mai is outright hostile to katara. she's irritable, grouchy, and does her utmost to pretend katara doesnt exist at all. in her mind, katara is forcing their group to change, taking azula away from their terrible little co-dependency circle. change? bad. threaten the new woman with knives. and quickly. make sure azula is apart from that new woman and back in the safe co-dependency circle. if anything changes - if azula changes - she'll turn into dust.

and on ty lee! she DOES. zuko and mai dating isnt too big a deal for her because they still pay attention to her, and the afformentioned co-dependant stability thing overrides her annoyance that they're not looking and seeing her. but if someone flirts with zuko, or mai? its over. shes throwing a tantrum, getting the person to flirt with HER instead, or flirting with zuko/mai. bc WHY is no one looking at her? helloooo???

mai and ty lee get along famously because mai hates change and people, and ty lee gets to hoard mai greedily to herself. its the perfect arrangement, she can farm all the attention she wants from mai and is guaranteed to it. and mai doesnt care about ty lee wandering off to other friendgroups because she always comes back. and it's funny, ty lee makes things not boring.

[corntort]

PLEASE elaborate on the cscu it seems absolutely fascinating

cscu (CAR SALSEMAN CINEMATIC UNIVERSE) is a silly spinoff au incredibly close to me and some friends' hearts. and dicks. mainly hearts.

we saw the one off drawing made by andy tunstall (this one) and went haha ^_^ thats fun! what if he was a ditzy stupid crazy jittery car salesman tho? (MISTAKE NUMBER ONE. IT ALL GOES DOWNHILL FROM HERE)

OKAY im gonna summarize and then get REALLLLY DETAILED so bear with me.

fark and spark live in a mobile home/RV park with ej and astra. ej usually goes to school during the day and astra goes out and does Anything Else most of the time so theyre barely home between school/activities/visiting family. spark is pretty much unemployed, only taking up odd jobs here n there for a little extra cash and spends the rest of the time screaming at the tv/napping/trying to fix her busted up cars in her yard/etc. fark works in the used car dealership obvs. spark spends most nights staking out in front of their mobile home for farks (MANY) enemies that try and get into fights with him. she guards the house with a definitely illegal sawed of shotgun.

spark and fark are a freak ass southern married couple.

the full rundown is fark is working at his used car shop in the DEEP rural south (as in, no other town for at least 60 miles) in a small town. he inherited it from his fsmily after they torn down lots of local loved business for something much "cleaner" and to capitalize on the money they could make of being a good pitstop for traveling formies. clarity and freom were notorious in the town for their disregard of local businesses, making more than enough enemies when they bulldoze/compete with gas stations/hotels/motels for their cleaner more modern buildings. clarity is a pretty busted up bot down here though, unable to get repaired due to her age and her parts growing obsolete, so when she finally shuts down shes shut down for Good, leaving the fortune they made to freom.

freom doesnt use a cent of it, it pretty much just rots in an account since her death kinda fucked him up bad. he lives on the outskirts and doesnt go out pretty much ever.

fark doesnt see much of the money either, separating himself from clarity and freom as Soon as he could. other than them buying the used car lot for him and getting him up and running, he didnt really associate with them, but it disnt matter since the town already didnt like him by association to clarity and freom. and it doesnt help that he oversells the quality of his used cars, giving people pretty shitty deals and making even More enemies out of it.

but the enemies that hate him most are ej (at first) and astra. ej and astra stayed with clarity after fark moved out. fark has a lot of survivors guilt, ej saw him as the brother that left and hes pretty angry about it for a really long time, astra has the same anger but 10x worse towards fark. she suffered the brunt of clarity and freoms manipulation and abuse after fark left and she really REALLY resents him for it. she and ej were forced to move in with him after clarity died and ej warms up to fark because of his youth but astra cant.

theres a LOT of tension between her and fark, but she really likes spark, so she doesnt stay gone for too long (the most is like a week and a half). shes a college drop out because of all the stress it gave her amidst all her family troubles qnd she struggles holding a job down but she gets a bit better with time.

ej is as hotheaded and impulsive as usual, finding ways to take out his aggression in school sports and constant practice. hes just very angry and gets in trouble a lot but he is a really good kid, fark tries his best to nudge him in the right direction, spark also has a lot of patience for both his and astra's tempers, cause she was the same as a kid.

caaaant think of anything else to add its late i shouldve been asleep hoyrs ago.

this is so separated from the canon source it might as well be an oc story between me and my close friends LOL. but i am sharing it with u all as well

[jenniferjareauwife]

I’m in my depressed era, so I would love to read about JJ helping her teenage daughter with a restrictive eating disorder <3

I Feel Like I Can't Eat

pairing: jennifer jareau x daughter reader

category: hurt/comfort

warnings: eating disorder

word count: 942

age: 15

summary: you've been struggling with an eating disorder and your mom notices so she helps you

a/n: i am too in my depressive era and am a hoe for hurt/comfort <3

I bit my lip as I stared at the food in front of me. This was the first time I was eating a meal with my mom in two months due to her crazy work schedule and my sports schedule.

"Do you not like it?" My mom asked softly. "I can make you something else." It was a new dish so I knew she would most likely buy the excuse.

"Yeah...sorry mom." She shook her head, signaling not to apologize before kissing my temple and putting my bowl on the kitchen counter for later.

"Y/n?" She asked as she opened the fridge.

"Yeah?"

"Why is the fridge full?"

"Because I went shopping." I said quickly.

"There's no new food in here." I felt my heart beat quickly. She knew. Of course she knew she was a profiler for the fucking BAU and I was her daughter she knew me like the back of her hand. She knew. "What's with the anxious face?"

"Mom..." I trailed off as she walked towards me with a fruit smoothie. "I'm not hungry." I could tell by her face that she wasn't buying it.

"Baby...I need you to talk to me."

"About what?"

"Don't play dumb, ok? I'm sorry that I haven't been here for a while, I'm really sorry about that. I love spending time with you and I love you more than anything. You know that right?" I nodded and leaned forward as she placed a kiss on my forehead. "But just because I've been gone doesn't mean that I haven't noticed things, ok? Now I need you to tell me what's going on so I can help." She reached for my hand and squeezed it in reassurance.

"I just..." I paused for a second, trying to figure out how to get the words out, thankfully she was patient with me. "I don't know...I just feel like I can't..."

"Cant what baby?" I leaned forward and put my head in my hands. She put her hand on my back and rubbed it slowly.

"I feel like I can't eat." It came out as a whisper.

"Can you elaborate on that honey?"

"It's not that I don't like food...I mean I still like food...I think." It took me a few seconds to string together a sentence. "I just...I can't do it. Because it's so bad for me- mom I'm losing weight! I've wanted that for so long, you know that! And I'm finally getting it but after I'm done working out I get hungry but when I look at food I just get..."

"Nauseous? Anxious?" She finished my thoughts for me and I nodded. "So you still want to eat? You just feel like you can't?" I shrugged. "I can't help if you don't tell me everything baby."

"When I stopped eating I saw how much weight I was losing and I...I just stopped. It wasn't even the intentional at first but it really works, it really helps me lose weight but now I'm just...I'm scared to gain any weight back." I explained. "And I know it's bad, I know but whenever I go to take a bite of something it's like every cell in my body is screaming at me to stop and I can't fight past it." I took a shallow breath and clasped my hands together.

"Hey. Deep breaths." She told me softly, rubbing my back again, sighing as she felt how skinny I had gotten. "It's ok baby, just deep breaths, ok?" I leaned against her and hugged her arm.

"Do you want me to call your therapist? Tell her you need to start seeing her again?" I shrugged.

"I don't know if I want to do that yet."

"But don't you think it would be good to have someone to talk to?" She pointed out but I didn't say anything. She got the hint that I really didn't want to go to my therapist again so she just gave my knee a soft squeeze. "Well what can I do to help?" Her voice was unbelievably soft.

"Be here?" I shrugged and my eyes widened as I realized what I said. I knew how guilty she felt for never being here and I didn't want to make her feel bad, I didn't even mean it that way.

"Ok. Done. I'll take a month off, ok?"

"But-"

"Hey, no buts. I just want to make sure you're ok. You're my daughter honey I want to help you in any way I can." I nodded and squeezed her arm tighter. "You can come to me for anything, ok? I want you to know that y/n." I nodded. "Come here." She pulled me into her arms in a tight hug, something I had needed from her for months but was too scared to ask for.

After a few minutes she tried to pull away from the hug but I didn't let her. "I need you." I whispered.

"Ok. I'm not going anywhere." She assured me. "I love you so much y/n." She slowly rocked us back and forth, knowing that it calmed me down. "Starting tomorrow you're gonna eat at least two meals a day, ok?"

"Mom-"

"No protests. You need nutrition to survive honey. I'm not going to be lenient with this, ok? I need you to eat food. You need to eat food." She stroked my hair. "You can always talk to me about anything but I will be a hardass about you eating, ok?" I nodded, that seemed fair. If I had a kid I would do the same thing. "I love you kiddo."

"I love you too mom."

[doomsdaydicecascader]

please elaborate on your homestuck is like into the woods take because i read those tags and it blew my brain wide open i need to know more but like you are so right what if what you thought you wanted made you miserable and the story should have ended but it kept going and everyones dying horribly wow parallel of feeding the narrator to the giant and hussie being killed by and also part of lord english cant wait for homestuck to make it to broadway

so there's a sideways video that i'm kind of at risk of just repeating word for word from here, he explains it in a way i would just kind of idly repeat when describing the musical construction here

so here's that: the musical moral of into the woods

and you're correct about the "what if what you thought you wanted made you miserable" and "the story should have ended but it kept going" and "kill the narrator" but it's also in its judicious establishment of shorthands. in into the woods, this is in its musical expressions - "i want to go to the festival", "there are giants in the sky", etc etc. each character and each narrative arc is given a leitmotif that keeps the audience on track even with a billion characters running around. and ultimately, the expression of the theme is in relation to these little leitmotifs. these shorthands are deployed to great effect in homestuck too.

vriska is a blueblood whose relationship to breaking eight balls causes her to have snowballing bad luck, something compounded by her complex cycle of revenge, started off by the author figure for her narrative, doc scratch, which is something she overcomes with her ascension to god-tier and then defeat of english in act 7. but when it comes to breaking those eight balls, addiction is a powerful thing.

equius is a blueblood whose relationship to breaking bows reflects his unbendable adherence to rules, an arc that ultimately ends with his submission to the power structures of the world he grew up in, asphyxiated by the broken bow by a highblood he could have summarily defeated if he could have simply just, bent the rules. but addiction is a powerful thing.

jane is a rich girl (blue-blooded, natch) whose relationship to her brands is obviously toxic for herself and her friends - in her introductory pages she's inundated with subliminal messaging, groomed into being the perfect heiress by her imperious condescension, who is actively using the crockercorp brand as the means to reach out to jane. and wouldn't you know it, brand loyalty is a powerful thing.

and since vriska and equius have opposing relationships to this idea - vriska overcomes it, equius doesn't - it creates ambiguity as to how jane is going to relate to it, but there's no question as to whether it's gesturing at the same ideas. and evidently, she doesn't overcome it, at least in the homestuck epilogues, but it is a pattern, it's a beat hit intentionally.

it's this construction of homestuck as a reiteration on itself, repeating itself in new ways that express the story being told that makes it *really really* comparable to into the woods imo, just as much as any of the things you mentioned. also, this is just a bit more shallow, but one of the ways homestuck is divided on the map page is into "sides", side A before they break the fourth wall and side B after, and it just as easily reflects acts 1 and 2 of into the woods, splitting into this "narrative done right", and the ramifications thereof. pretty fun to think about

[broomsick]

Is it alright if I ask you for some guidance on connecting with the Norse pantheon? I'm entering into a really scary time in my life, grappling with going to college in the city despite being (up until now) a lifelong country bumpkin and possibly even moving out for the first time, all while being a timid autistic person with a terrible anxiety disorder.

Basically if there's ever a time I'd need the gods to be present in my life it's now, but I still struggle to feel connected with them sometimes. I still connect with them, I've had dreams where I talk with Odin and Thor and Freyr, but I can't say they're a completely consistent part of my life. Sometimes I even question if they're really protecting me, even though I know that's almost certainly the anxiety talking.

Is there anything you'd recommend doing to connect with the gods during a really stressful time? I have a very small and honestly not very impressive altar so maybe I should work to spruce that up more. Any guidance would be appreciated, sorry for bothering you 🙏 Thanks!

Hi there! First of all, I want to tell you that moving out is indeed scary, and it's very brave of you to consider moving so far! I definitely understand your situation, as I haved struggled with anxiety pretty much forever. Unfortunately, being a pagan with this sort of mental health challenge can bring about a lot of insecurity. And I find that sometimes, it can also make us feel disconnected from our spirituality. I don't think that this is something we can completely overcome. As a matter of fact, I find that it's better to ask yourself "why do I feel this way right now?", rather than say "I should be feeling this way, so why don't I?". What I learned with time is that our day-to-day circumstances affect our spirituality more than we think. For example, I often start to feel disconnected from my spiritual life when I've had a stressful week at work, or even just when I try too long and too hard to connect with the Gods. And on top of that, with social media being the way it is, people cant help but compare themselves with pagans who have more time and money on their hands. Now, I'm no expert on all things psychology, but I do know about spirituality. And I know that it comes and goes in waves: every single polytheist I've met experiences moments when they don't feel as connected to their Gods as they used to. Even those whose very career was tied to their spiritual practices. But those are not bad news! It only means that you have a healthy relationship with spirituality, and that you're not letting it overshadow the other important aspects of your life.

But more on the tips to stay connected to the Gods. What I know for certain is that sometimes, we have no control over how connected we feel to them. But there are a lot ways for you to keep them close to your heart. The first, in my opinion, is to make your spirituality into a safe and happy place. Find ways to make it fun! By listening to music that feels spiritual to you, writing down prayers or devotional poems when you’re inspired, wearing a piece of jewelry in their honor, making a Pinterest board into a little online shrine, drawing a rune or sigil which represents them on your skin, making art of the deities you love… In other words, don’t be afraid to mix your passions and your faith. No matter how “casual” it may feel! Sometimes, “casual” is what we can manage given our busy lives (which is why the size of your altar does not matter, it’s the love you pour into tending it that makes all the difference). It’s both perfectly normal and healthy. And if something about your practice/belief doesn’t feel right anymore, simply let go of it. Same goes if you don’t resonate with something that every other pagan seem to do.

Another tip I can give you is to simply try (don’t worry, I will elaborate). By this, I mean adopt simple gestures to honor them, even if there might not necessarily be a response. I find that this is especially important in moments when you struggle to feel the presence of your Gods. Leave them a small portion of your dinner every now and then. Do a little bit of research on this or that deity when you can. And if you’ve got the time, offer them a fruit, or a cup of coffee! Anything will do, no matter how small. Light a candle for them every night (routine helps a lot), and pray if you’ve got something on your mind. It’s normal not to see some sort of immediate response. But if you look around yourself during the day— if you look at the sunset on your way home from work, at the trees that rustle with the wind, or at the rain pouring outside your window—, and if you listen carefully to what people tell you, you might start to notice some signs. Recurring patterns and omens are a typical example of signs that a deity might send. It’s also fun to draw parallels between every day things and your deities. For example, to think of Freyr when you tend a cute new house plant. Or to pray to Skaði during a snowstorm! I have always loved “inviting” deities to witness certain events, so as to share the joy with them. I simply close my eyes, focus of the deity I want to call out to, and speak their name aloud, or murmur it. Actually, if you’re interested in this topic, I have written this post, which could be helpful to you!

Don’t be afraid to keep trying, that’s my most important tip. There’s really not much else we can do when we feel disconnected from our faith. Make your belief into something that feels right. Spirituality should be a happy place for you, and not a reason for worry. You deserve for your practice as a norse pagan to feel joyful and fulfilling. Above all, don’t force anything: these sorts of moments are inevitable. I’ve known them myself, and so has every other pagan. But things will get better soon, that I guarantee!

[seongminiz]

omgmmfmggnng yes. “in a very fucked up possessive way” i’m nodding my head so hard rn 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

ummm yes i’m completely on board with the fish eggs thing tho.PLS don’t be embarrassed cuz im right there with u tbh that sounds 🤤🤤🤤 so yeah i like the idea of his cock🤭 like opening up once he’s inside u and about to cum.. looks pretty normal (big🤤 maybe some.. squishy scales? idk like ribbed lmfaoo) but yeah when he releases.. instead of cum.. it’s like.. spherical fish eggs the size of chicken eggs 🥚 and probably a lot of fluid too but likeee ok not to be weird now but like what happens after that in ur mind or are we just not worrying about it. like sirens and humans can’t mate right? so do they dissolve.. idk it doesn’t matter that much im just thinking…

that’s really hot though. pls. juyeon keeping u as his pet too.. pls.. like i’m thinking about how he’d keep u breathing cuz you literally need his spit and i’m trying to think of a not too gross like in a not hot way to think of that.. unless like.. he has something that has oxygen in it for u maybe i’m thinking into this the wrong way idfk😓😓

- 🧁 anon

aaaa im glad u didnt think it was too weird 🩷

omhshdjbf yes siren!juyo's dick has soft scales all over it for sure n yea they r soft but they still give some 'texture' to it n it feels so good when hes fucking u ☆_☆

n yeaaaa ,,, fluids ,,, eheh :3 like at the end of the day hes literally going to push his eggs in u n ig before that there can be some kind of ?? kinda precum but it works as extra lube (+ also has the same aphrodisiac properties as his spit ? maybe ?? eheheh) so the whole process is less painful >///<

tbh i was abt to elaborate more on the 'aftermath' but anything involving like .. pregnancy n stuff freaks me out so bad i was like uhhhh nvm lets not think abt it 😁 so yeah me personally i'd just go the dissolving route so we dont have to worry abt it 👍🏻

honestly idk how that would go !! like yea thats probably the only reason he isnt keeping u confined in whatever place he lives (im thinking like ? underwater cave or something ?) , he needs to figure out a way to keep u alive n breathing underwater first !!! bc as hot as needing to make our with him every .. idk 3 minutes or something is , thats too impractical !! idk im thinking maybe sirens have other ways to make humans breathe underwater but hes never thought abt it that much bc kissing was fine enough for him , n before u he never brought a human underwater unless it was one of his preys , but maybe he'll have to do some research n find a way bc everytime he has to bring u back to the beach u met at a small part of him dies a little bc what if u dont come back ? how is he going to find u ?? but even then , if u left n never came back he'd somehow find a way to go on earth n .. look for u in a totally normal not stalkerish at all way :3

(if this made no sense again im sorry 🫠 i fr cant formulate a coherent sentence today its tragic)

[kistless]

this is making me insane because these cut lines from the script are basically the essence of what sex is in succession - logan's view of the power dynamics of sex and how he has passed this on to his children is such a major theme and conflict in the show: you see it in shiv cheating on tom with nate because she likes to "play" with him (break him) and she cant get that in her sex life with tom, you see it with roman's inability to have sex unless he's being degraded, hell, the very first episode of the series is an elaborate breakdown of how Logan's masculinity and sexuality and even gender identity is intrinsically tied with business. Being good at business = being masculine enough to intimidate or bully your business "opponent" into submission = fucking them and therefore being bad at business (ken fumbling the vaulter deal) = getting fucked (Kendall isn't enough of a man to be my successor)

and Lawrence being gay adds insult to injury for Logan because not only is Kendall being outperformed in business (=getting fucked) he is getting fucked by a gay man (which is the ultimate sin for Logan because being gay = getting fucked = being a woman). In the scene where Logan walks in on Kendall saying that he would give Lawrence a blowjob for the deal Kendall reacts like a child caught saying something forbidden (because he was, and it is)

Kendall blatantly says this when Logan announces that he's staying on as ceo by saying "you fucked me" (=you've denied me from being ceo = I'm not a man in your eyes) and Logan replies with "I'm concerned you're too soft" and "I hear you bent [for lawrence]". Logan can't imagine a world in which business is separate from sex, and how a businessman can actually be good at business by playing nice and sucking up to someone (which would be feminine behavior to logan, and is therefore too "womanly" for business)

But the thing is, that is exactly how Stewy does business. Stewy is feminine in a lot of ways, is polite or at least respectful to his business rivals (his insistence on calling logan "sir"), and is physically affectionate with men that he's in business with (eg hugging josh to greet him on the tarmac) and he is still, from what we can see, very successful. He has no need for dick measuring business techniques like intimidation - eg the scene where kendall is threatening to cut off his dick and stewy just repeats it back to him because kendall could try and intimidate him all he wants, the way Stewy does business is so much more effective because Stewy focuses on the money and maintaining good business relationships and at the end of the day, that is all shareholders care about

so to me the cut lines both read as kendall saying "I'm acknowledging that I've put myself in a very vulnerable business position and you could damage my career very easily right now" but of course he is literally saying, "you can't fuck me, because that would mean you are taking away my manhood". Stewy's reply of "that's why we're such good friends" feels like a double entendre of its own - like stewy is referring to them being able to trust each other because of their mutually assured destruction if one betrays the other, but also an acknowledgement that they are only "such good friends" (and not anything more) because kendall is unable to see having sex with a man as anything other than having his masculinity forcibly taken away from him. If kendall betrays stewy in their business deal, he will be forced to retaliate against kendall to save his career, and stewy knows that kendall understands this in terms of fucking and being fucked. He cant resist making a joke out of how kendall relates sex and business, so he deliberately adds a reference to their friendship (arguably the most intimate relationship that kendall has in his life) which feels like stewy saying, "you think you're just talking about business when you talk about sex, but you're also talking about sex."

[thatneoncrisis]

oh captain my captain i didn't know what league of legends game was when i watched arcane. so i thought the plot was alright since i didn't (still don't) know the game lore. if it wasn't basically a prequel story, trying to aim the characters at the way they are in canon, do u think the plot and character arcs would have held up alright? or does that actually make the arcane canon story worse since it wouldn't at least have the existing canon as something it needed to land at eventually as an excuse for any "out of character" decisions? thank u

i wouldnt even call it a prequel story? its like a very elaborate au in a sense, one that feels comfortable changing things to a certain extent- clothes, personality adjustments, motivations, but they still have to hit certain beats. vi has to be an enforcer, jinx has to be a wild card harley quinn type, ekkos time powers ect ect. idk WHAT it is maybe the show needed more time or tighter focus or less characters but i just felt that like, some of the story decisions directly relating to LoL lore werent outright bad but didnt have a lot of time to breathe. the standout example being ekkos time thing, where when i watched that scene i assumed it was both a stylistic representation of a fight and establishing his and jinx's prior relationship (which is kind of too little too late considering they did not fucking speak once as kids pre time skip), and then i had to get a friend to explain to me for SEVERAL MINUTES that he literally died during that fight and it was supposed to be showing his rewind thing. it just wasnt clear at all and his character would not change in the slightest if he didnt have it. but you cant NOT include it so. *

really i have no clue the full extent of the story the writers wanted to tell and how much LoL is binding their hands on story beats. and i REALLY dont want to be inflexible considering i still have a full season coming up that might make me more receptive to certain decisions. but considering how much of the cast i REALLY like just straight up are not in the game, i think they are fully capable of making a solid story completely divorced from league

*someone in the comments told me apparently that Wasnt his time thing and my original read of the scene was correct so im not gonna hold it against the show.