#tumblr: you are going to kill someone we solved it!! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pathologicalreid · 2 months ago

Text

Criminal Minds: Evolution (Recap)

next on CME

providing the people of tumblr with a recap of CME before the episode with Spencer airs, since I know a lot of people are only watching that episode. the goal isn't to have you know everything about the show by the time we get there, it's just so you can watch that episode and understand what's going on without watching the preceding two seasons. spoilers for episode one and two ahead.

Episode 1: Just Getting Started

Written by Erica Messer Directed by Nelson McCormick

Starts in Yakima, WA, we see a man in a storage unit doing some hinky shit with knives. we don’t know him and then we flash forward to 2022.

Good old criminal minds showing you a crime before anything else. We see a girl get kidnapped from her house.

We then flash forward to Yakima but this time in the present day! My beautiful wife Tara Lewis is here checking out that shipping container.

There are embalmed bodies and stuff but the most important thing they find is a polystyrene case of equipment. There are dead bodies in there that are more recent kills and also skeletons.

The FBI has benched the jet! Rossi is the unit chief! Emily is section chief!

The FBI split the BAU up because they say the agents solve twice as many cases when they’re more individual. they were only supposed to be operating like that for six month but it’s been almost 3 months.

Brief mention Reid and Simmons are NAWT with the BAU at this time.

Rossi is obsessed with this case in Virginia. He’s also kind of lost his shit. He’s living in a hotel with crime scene photos and newspaper clippings pasted to the wall.

He’s the first character to swear in Evolution! He says “holy shit” while watching bodycam footage.

Rossi calls JJ about a case in Silver Spring where a guy has a severed spinal cord, and he’s convinced that his case in Alexandria is serial but he doesn’t have evidence.

He goes to a case in Bethesda! He’s with Luke, the killer left a baby alive and kidnapped the teenage daughter. Killed both parents.

The deputy director (Doug Bailey) wants the whole BAU on the missing girl but Lewis is on the case with the shipping container. Mildly reminiscent of the Linda Barnes plotline.

All energy goes to finding the teenage girl (Chrissy).

Dave yells at Luke he’s really gone off the rails and tensions are high between the team. Krystall died at some point between the end of the main series and the beginning of evolution, hence his crash out.

We see the UnSub texting someone about $10,000. This is the first inclination that we really see of the main story of the season. He has Chrissy in the trunk of his car.

First Garcia mention while they’re looking at security footage, there are FOUR people trying to do the job that she did.

Back to Yakima! The local police officer proposes that the killer stopped because he died of COVID and Tara wonders if he stopped because the entire world “stopped” during the pandemic—there was no one to stalk or abduct so he simply… stopped. They need a better lab to analyze everything that was left in the container, Tara proposes bringing it to Quantico.

Luke and JJ decide to look into the family and specifically Chrissy, only to find that her only active internet presence is on a website called SOAR “Safe Online Acquaintance Revolution.” Both teenage girls whose families were victimized only used that platform for social media.

SOAR is highly protected, but Penelope is one of the people who designed it to keep kids safe online. Luke proposes asking Garcia, JJ reminds him that they promised they wouldn’t bring her back to the BAU. In the end, Luke goes to talk to Penelope (he lost a bet). He shows up at her apartment and she is less than thrilled to see him.

She tries to get him to leave, but he hits her with a “I don’t know who else can help.” So… she makes her baking club leave.

She tells one of the members that she and Luke thrive as frenemies. Luke says “We’re friends. Why do I have to be your enemy?”

Luke tells her that her office is still empty, he’s never even met her replacements! (COVID)

The UnSub takes Chrissy to an RV in the middle of nowhere.

They profile why the UnSub befriends the girls first and also the improvement from the first crime to the second crime. JJ proposes it’s almost like he read a manual on how to improve his crime.

Penelope finds someone who communicated with both daughters, a teenager trying to reconnect with his birth family. They use the messages between the boy, RJ, and the daughters to figure out he’s taken Chrissy to a remote area. Garcia then finds a property that was seized by the state and finds that the parents of a young boy, Rory James Gilcrest, OD’d fifteen years ago and the boy was the only survivor.

Chrissy figures out that the person who kidnapped her is the person she’d been talking to on SOAR, she then finds out that he killed her parents, so she attacks him with a hammer. He pulls a gun on her, but thankfully the BAU is right outside. She blames herself for the death of her family and puts the gun to her head. Rossi talks her down.

“None of this is your fault, okay? You hear me? Right now, you can make a choice. You have to choose to fight. You have to want to survive. Listen, I can’t promise it’s gonna be okay, but it’s been almost a year since my wife, Krystall, died, and it still hurts like hell. It’s the little things they don’t tell you. The quiet in the house. I can’t stand it, but in that quiet, I’m reminded of her.”

Ballistics say that the UnSub shot himself, even though he didn’t profile as suicidal.

In the trunk of the car that RJ ended up with, he had a polystyrene case that’s caked in mud like it was buried. JJ says it’s sophisticated for a 19 year old kid. Luke brings up her comment about how it’s like. A how-to manual. The show cuts to Tara looking through photos from the shipping container, including a polystyrene case. The news in Yakima shows that the BAU found the missing girl and in the background, they see an officer moving the case.

Tara sends Rossi photos of the polystyrene case and he calls her, he tells her they need all eyes on this.

The episode ends in Whitfield County, Georgia, where we see someone burying another one of the cases. This person is Elias Voit.

Episode 2: Sicarius

Written by Breen Frazier Directed by Nelson McCormick

The cuck episode <3. As soon as I saw the man being wheeled over on a gurney, the episode came rushing back to me. The UnSub is severing spinal cords, this is the UnSub briefly mentioned by JJ in the previous episode. He places his victims on a massage table and puts his phone on the ground with the front facing camera so he can watch their reactions (he’s also recording, important for later).

We see Penelope, starting the episode in true pandemic fashion with a Microsoft Teams meeting for SOAR. Then we see JJ and Will being domestic and cute, and JJ cancels date night for work and Will says it’s fine but they have a talk about it.

Will has a weird line saying JJ has been really busy “since we got back” and I have never figured out if he’s referencing anything specific or if it’s just an allusion to the pandemic.

Back to Quantico! Rossi is still looking ragged as fuck and living out of the hotel, but they kind of move on from that really quickly and talk about the case. Good looking men in their 30s are being found in Silver Spring, MD with their spinal cords severed. They also both had some apps like Tinder and some more… nefarious (?) apps on their phone.

They are bulls who take part in the kink known as cuckolding and I am not going to explain it to you but they do in the show.

The UnSub took similar steps to the UnSub in the last episode, down to selling his car in a Wal-Mart parking lot. So they’re like we have to take this case and they wonder how it’s connected to the shipping container.

Tara and Emily have successfully gotten the shipping container from Washington state to Quantico, the evidence is being processed. Doug Bailey is displeased.

Back to Whitfield County, GA! Elias Voit is back and he’s fiddling with something in the dirt when he gets an encrypted message and is sent the video from our UnSub of him torturing his most recent victim. There’s a text exchange that follows. Voit asks the UnSub if he followed the rules. This is the first real indication that Voit is the person who has been guiding these UnSubs.

They’re talking more about the case and I don’t have it in me to talk about the kink. They’re led to a politician and decide to bring him and his wife in.

Reid and Simmons mention! Rossi says he misses them.

Penelope gets a message from an anonymous user who tells her how SOAR was compromised, he won’t tell her who he is but sends her details about the case that the BAU is actively working on.

The team questions the couple about the kink. Next.

Emily and Tara try to defend the choice to move the shipping container to Doug Bailey and he’s kind of ridiculous. Tara asks if Emily wants a “friend” from the DOJ to ask around about what’s going on with the brass (It’s Rebecca, her gf).

There is no consistent MO with the shipping container victims, one of them had sicarius spiders poured down their throat. This is how the UnSub gets the name Sicarius.

The cuck couple was sent the same video that Voit was sent earlier, the team watches it. Toward the end of the video, the UnSub accidentally reveals that he has one of those polystyrene cases, the team starts to call them “kill kits.”

Bailey is an expert in “efficiency” and wants to eventually become Attorney General, so he’s marching his way through the BAU and other parts of the FBI in order to get there.

Emily clocks the fact that Tara and Rebecca are dating IMMEDIATELY.

Next stop is Hamilton County, TN, we are stuck with Voit again and he gets a call from the UnSub (Robert) because the UnSub wants to kill again, but since Voit is his serial killer guru, he can’t kill until Voit says it’s okay.

He says he’s in network security, this is also what his family thinks he does.

Luke brings up Penelope again ohhhhh my god he’s obsessed.

When Rossi finds out the lab techs named the UnSub Sicarius he says “I’m not gonna name this jag-off! Fuckhead! Okay? Call him that!”

Okay peepaw let’s get you to bed.

Penelope calls Rossi and gives him the information that the anonymous user gave to her, and Rossi tries to get her to come back to the BAU.

Brief mention, Krystall died from an unnamed disease. Did I say that already?

The anonymous user calls Penelope and she tells him she gave the information to the FBI. He insists she needs to be the one to decrypt it or else people are going to die, so, Penelope comes back to Quantico. Everyone who does her job works from home, so her office is virtually untouched. It’s been 1,009 days since she last logged into the system.

The scene where she first logs in is set to “It’s Tricky” by Run DMC, and it’s just so incredibly Penelope.

The anonymous user has mapped out the locations of thirteen different kill kits. It sets out a homing signal in the kit in Tara’s shipping container. That’s how the UnSubs find the kill kits; they each have a transponder.

An APB is put out for Robert Harris, and Voit sees it. Now he knows that Robert didn’t wait like he said. Robert broke the rules. The rule is that the person who gets caught has to either kill themselves or Voit will find them and kill them instead. In this case, Robert kills himself.

The kill kits slowly shut down, meaning Voit is shutting them off so the BAU has no way to track them anymore.

In her office, Penelope finds the note that she left right before she left the BAU in the series finale and reads it. We don’t get to know what it says, but whatever it says motivates her to remain with the team.

In Seattle, Voit returns to his wife and children. We see that he kidnapped a dog (Freak) and lies through his teeth to his wife.

Fun fact, his TV wife his played by his IRL wife.

JJ asks Will is he thinks “our fears come out in our sex life” (In reference to something Rossi says earlier in the episode) and Will’s immediate response is “Am I in trouble?” They more or less commit to work on their relationship and that’s kind of their theme for the season.

Rossi cleans up (and checks out of his hotel) and then JJ comes in being chipper, leading Emily to ask “is everyone around here getting laid except me?” and Rossi “Oh, I’m not.” (OUCH).

End scene!

the recaps will get a little shorter, but these first episodes are so exposition heavy that this was unavoidable

#criminal minds #criminal minds evolution #cme #criminal minds: evolution #criminal minds evolution recap #cme recap #criminal minds season 16

39 notes · View notes

spiders-hth-is-an-outlier · 5 months ago

Text

There's an "is murder ever okay? Y/N" poll going around, so here's my obligatory I'm Bald:

It's never *okay* to steal a human being's life from them. Murder isn't okay. War isn't okay. State-supported executions aren't okay and lynch mobs aren't okay. If we don't have an inherent right to live our lives, we have no rights at all. It's an act of enormous consequence and finality, and no argument that tries to make it morally good, or even neutral, deserves the slightest amount of airspace. In my opinion.

HOWEVER. Is Murder Okay Y/N? is a fundamentally different question from Would You Ever Make the Choice To Kill Someone? Because of course I would. In any number of situations, I can imagine making exactly that choice. Because sometimes life is not about finding the Moral Win Condition. It is not about preserving your own vaunted sense of your own incorruptible Okayness. Sometimes life is about solving problems in the least terrible way possible. Sometimes *any number* of Not Really Okay things have a place in addressing problems of sufficient magnitude.

And I simply do not trust people who can't abide in or even acknowledge that space, between the right decision and a moral justification. If you have to make everything you do Okay in your own mind, that's a serious cognitive distortion -- the assumptions people are bringing into a dumb Tumblr poll are indicative of troubling cognitive distortions. "Oh, so you're saying you wouldn't even shoot Hitler?!?" No. I'm saying it's not *okay* to shoot Hitler. Of course I *would.* It wouldn't even be the very first Not Okay thing I've ever done! Because there's a *meaningful difference* between values and virtues that exist in the vacuum of philosophy and people's choices in the real world, which almost always take place under pressure from multiple competing needs, values, and constraints of circumstance. I'd shoot Hitler because it might save countless other lives, and to be perfectly honest, I'd shoot Hitler just because I do kind of want to, it sounds really fun. What I wouldn't do is argue that it's fine to shoot people if you think it's helpful or fun. I'm just not a person who can claim they only ever take entirely morally justifiable actions.

But neither is anyone else on Tumblr, though you wouldn't know it from how high on our own virtue most of us sound most of the time.

59 notes · View notes

fancyfeathers · 1 year ago

Text

zainiscompletelydone333 asked a question

omg but imagine william's potential darling to be like agatha christie? a mystery writer whose mysteries are almost impossible to solve. whether or not they are as smart as the masterminds or detectives in her books, her stories do come close to confusing even sherlock or william a bit. if you've read her "and then there were none" SPOILERS its about a judge killing people for being evil and that is so william coded. anyways i'm straying far what I mean is william could be a quiet fan, and as the lord of crime, even replicate some of her stories as part of his crimes. watching his darling's face pale at the unknown criminal doing such a thing.....ASDKSHD an when he finally does officially meet her, he wonders if she'l ever base a character off him. a hero, or perhaps a villain?

For some reason this isn’t showing up in my tumblr inbox but thank god for my email cause this is a gem! Thank you @zainiscompletelydone333 for this!

Okay I love Agatha Christie, an actual icon! Fun fact she actually faked her own disappearance in 1926 and the police couldn’t find her for over a week and she just took a vacation to London after her husband threatened to leave her and she said fuck it and decided to treat herself. Then also Arthur Conan Doyle the author of Sherlock Holmes was hired to find her.

Anyway I am getting so off track but I love this lady so much so here we go!!!

But yes William would absolutely adore a darling like her. Imagine him first finding her works for the first time, perhaps one of his brothers or Sebastian or Fred was reading her work and just out of curiosity he picks up one of her books and is just immediately enthralled. Whenever he is not busy he is reading or even rereading one of her books and even begins to be teased by others for his slight addiction to her works.

Then when he and Sherlock is on the train investigating the murder that is when he gets an idea from both this and one of her books.

Weeks later an aristocrat who had been acting as a loan shark was found dead on a train in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside, just like a murder from one of her most famous book…

But what William did not know is that she was on that same train…

And of course she found the body…

As William was making his way back to his seat to join his brothers, he hears a blood curdling scream and he simply chalks it up to someone finding the body. Then the panicked woman is brought to her seat by the staff and she looks a mess, pale faced, tears rolling down her face, hyperventilating, all things someone should be after seeing a dead body.

She is being asked questions when she finally calms down enough and William’s ears prick up as he hears words he never thought he would hear…

“Oh god… this is my fault…”

He turns his head to the booth next to him and sees her in absolute terror as she speaks to the train conductor.

She is right next to him…

She is terrified, horrified even…

And she is beautiful.

After everything from that incident had settled and she is off at home, trying to work on her next work for the life of her but being horrified by what she just witnessed…

Then more deaths come to surface all with the same pattern…

They are based on her books…

The author is absolutely horrified, she is loosing sleep, not eating as she should, and has rarely left her house in weeks…

Then she gets a knock on her door from a certain detective who was hired to look into one of the deaths, Sherlock Holmes. While he may like her books, he has noticed the pattern like she has and has one request for her…

“I want to help you to solve these cases. Who better to solve murders based on books better than the author herself?”

At first she refuses and dismisses him, but then when she is laying in bed that night she realizes he was right.

Her drawing room becomes a mess of her old notes that she had tucked away from when she wrote her book, copies of her her books with dozens bookmarks in them, newspaper clippings all around, and evidence she had Sherlock get access to with his connections that she doesn’t have.

After days of pure investigation and nights of no sleep she finally was able to figure out where the next murder will be, just by what books are left…

But that’s the thing…

There is not a single work of hers left that this murderer has not take inspiration from…

The only thing left is the author, and she can only assume that she is the next target. So without telling Sherlock, she packs up her bags and fakes her own disappearance, to fool both the police and the murderer.

She spends so much time in the shadows, watching and waiting to see who looks into her disappearance, seeing how people react to it, but nothing, not a thing…

It frustrates her even further…

Then she finally decides to return home, feeling like a failure. Her house if just how she left it, even the papers in the drawing room that look like the work of a madman that she will have to clean up after her failure so she can go back to what she is good at, fictional murders not really ones…

No she can’t do that, that would only give the murderer ideas…

So she quits.

No one hears from her for months as she nods herself taking up a librarian position at a local library, at least she is doing something with her literature. She says goodbye to Mr. Holmes and tucks away all her old books and works in progress that will never be finished on the shelves to collect dust for the rest of her life.

At her time working there she gets a frequent visitor at the library, a Mr. William James Moriarty. He had a fascination with murder mystery novels and the two form a quick friendship over their shared love of them. Everything feels like a new start, a clean slate but then he had to ask…

“Will you ever write again?”

That question has her heart hurt because she adores writing, but to sacrifice lives just for what she enjoys, she would never. She shuts down his question quickly and excuses herself, but then avoids the scarlet eyed man as to not be asked that question again.

But as she is laying in bed one night…

She hears the sound of footsteps in her study downstairs…

She feels her heart stop…

She closes her eyes and prays whoever is there will just go away, but they do not. So she musters whatever courage she has left and slips out of bed to see who is there in her study that has been collecting dust for almost a year…

And she approaches the closed door she realizes whoever is behind them must be the person behind the murders that gave plagued her and-

“William?”

The pangs of shock she feels in her chest when she sees the face of William Jane Moriarty looking through her unfinished works that she shelved away what felt like years ago. She must have looked like a deer in headlights as the Lord of Crime looking up at her with a smile, his red eyes staring into her soul…

She is terrified, horrified even…

And she is beautiful.

“Your unfinished work, will it have an ending? Or perhaps will we have to write one ourselves? What do you think, darling?”

The weeks go by and the next time the author is seen in public again she has an engagement ring on her finger and the announcement is being made about their upcoming wedding. The talk of the aristocracy says that she finally has a husband who is willing to deal with her crazied ideas that ended up killing so many people, not knowing that she is on the arm of the man who killed them…

Just for her.

(I could kinda imagine it ending up as a situation like the book Misery by Stephen King where he has her finish her work even if she doesn’t want to, but what differs is that while he doesn’t necessarily keep her locked up physically he does mentally. Sure go run off, he isn’t going to stop his darling, but just watch the bodies stack up pin ways she imagined, he is using her own mind against her which is the most terrifying of prisons. Then soon fear turns into dependency, she becomes terrified of him leaving her because now she has no where else to go but him so he has no need to hide her away when she clings to his arm like a terrified and wounded animal.)

#william moriarty x reader #moriarty the patriot x reader #yuukoku no moriarty x reader #yuukoku no moriarty #william james moriarty x reader #yandere william james moriarty #yandere moriarty the patriot #yandere yuukoku no moriarty

272 notes · View notes

jellybeanium124 · 2 months ago

Text

to start off this post, I'd like to say that I'm just some fucking guy. I'm not an expert on socio-political stuff, I'm not a journalist, I'm not an activist, and I'm not a researcher or historian. I'm just some guy who has been doing some reading lately and I want to present an idea I had that I'm calling "the unified theory of racism & antisemitism in america." I'm sure someone else must've thought've this before, and probably phrased it better than I will here. so please understand that I'm just some guy doing my best. here we go.

racism and antisemitism are systemic issues in america, in wholly different ways. they are also tools. america, as a white supremacist society, benefits from racism and antisemitism as tools in their arsenal to achieve their goal of an unequal society that misdirects its anger.

let's imagine, for the sake of argument, the ultimate white supremacist. for him (and it's always a cis man, but we're not getting into that today) america is currently failing to be the ultimate white supremacist paradise. the white supremacist has three stories that he tells, to three different groups. one of these stories is his truth (although it is not nominally true), and the other two stories are lies.

let's start with his true story. the true story is the one that the white supremacist tells other white people: we are the only true humans on this earth, and it is our destiny to rule this country and the world. all the nonwhite people below us are grabbing our power away from us, and the jews who control the banks and the media and the government need to be thrust below us. join me and we will take our place as leaders, and subjugate or deport all the people of color and kill or deport all the jews.

the next two stories are the stories he tells people of color, and the stories he tells the jews. this does not account for the fact that some people are both jewish and a person of color. the ultimate white supremacist, of course, does not account for the black jew. he has no separate story for them. as for me, I am not a person of color, just a jew. so when I talk about the story the white supremacist tells people of color, it is based on the reading I have done authored by black gentiles (and thus is incomplete as well, both because I cannot speak from experience, and because black people are not the only people of color in this country). unfortunately, I have not found a book or essay written by a jew of color, and thus I am at a loss as to how to describe that experience. I am sure that that writing does exist, and one day I will find it and read it, but for now, unfortunately, I am going to put a pin in this element of my unified theory. again, I am just some guy writing a tumblr post.

the story the white supremacist tells people of color is that the reason that they are poor, the reason this country is set against them, the reason they face so many systemic injustices is due to the (((elites))) being in control. oh me? the white gentile man? oh no no no, it's not my fault! you see, we are both being oppressed by the (((elites))), by (((the bankers))) who control the money! by (((the media))) which is dead set on painting us both in a bad light! the (((elites))) are your true enemy, and mine as well. once we get rid of the (((elites))) then all my-- I mean our problems will be solved.

the story the white supremacist tells the jews (and again, this is aimed at white-passing jews) is: hey congrats!! you're white now!! isn't this great? to no longer be oppressed due to that silly little religion of yours? isn't it nice to have the obstacles removed from your path so you can easily succeed? you're really quite lucky we gave you guys white cards. now, see, here's the problem... all the black and brown people in this country are trying to take away our privilege and comfort with their affirmative actions and DEIs and critical race theories and the wokes. yeah, they're coming after you now. they hate you! I hear them talk about the horrible jews ruining their lives all the time! so we have to work together to put them back in their place. and then I'll-- I mean we'll have everything we ever wanted and our problems will be solved.

the purpose of these two stories is hopefully obvious. if I may be blunt, the ultimate white supremacist wants to re-enslave or deport black people, and kill all jews. he wants an all-white society, and at no point does he believe either of these two groups are anything but his enemies. meanwhile, he directs each group to fear and hate the other. using dogwhistles, he directs valid and well earned anger from people of color at the wrong group: the jews, who do not, in fact, control the banks, the media, and the government. meanwhile, he uses the ugly desire to be the one wearing the boots inside all of us to direct jewish anger about how we are stereotyped, portrayed, discriminated against, and used as a misdirect by the white supremacist at the wrong target: people of color.

it is my good-faith belief that narratives around white supremacy are incomplete without discussions about how jews are used as a narrative tool. there needs to be a group of people whites need to grab power from. they need an explanation for why the lives of many white people suck if whites are in power. because they're not really in power, the white supremacist says. the ones in power are the verminous jews.

I do hope that my point is clear here. none of this is to say that white-passing jews face the same amount of discrimination and systemic oppression that people of color do. we don't. every white-passing jew I know has stories, incidents, but I've never met a single white-passing american jew who has lived through anything remotely resembling the unending onslaught of systemic racism that every black american has.

as I said previously, my account for the story the white supremacist tells people of color is based on readings and research, not personal experience. but the story I said he tells the jews is based on personal experience. the experience of being with family and hearing them spout things people used to spout about our people. it's based on the time the cops came to our front door because I accidentally used the wrong code to turn off the alarm (an anecdote that already betrays an amount of privilege), and my dad gave the cop permission to enter our home while my mom fished out her driver's license for their incident report. it's based on the way I an unable to make headway with even my mother about the evil, unending brutality of the police (and of my immediate family, she's usually the one who is the most open about more "radical" politics). we have forgotten the ways of rabbi heschel. we have forgotten the important bond with dr. king.

if not us, then who? if not now, when? lewis and hillel, back to back, standing together, is more important than ever.

we must reject the lies told by the white supremacist. we must reject the urge to see each other as the enemy. it is now, more than ever, important to educate ourselves, and to call out each other's dogwhistles for what they are. the white supremacist does not want us to be united. but we must be. we must be united in each other's causes. we must be educated on each other's causes and work together, because ultimately our causes are the same.

thank you for reading.

#nina rambles #I hope this is a good post

21 notes · View notes

selfship-confession-box · 9 months ago

Note

I've been seeing a lot of talk recently about things like ai chat bots and how the people that use them are killing the environment. I'll weigh in as someone being educated in environmental studies; this is true, but, largely also not true.

We don't know exactly what character ai uses for their platform. Most LLMs are powered with reusable energy. We have no way to know for sure what character ai is using, however, it's important to realize that (this is coming from someone who dislikes ai) texting a fictional character is not killing the environment like you think it is.

The largest proponent of environmental destruction are large companies and manufacturers releasing excessive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, forests being cut down to build industrial plants, even military test sites are far worse than the spec of damage that ai is doing. Because the largest problem is not ai, it's the industries that dump chemicals and garbage into water ways and landfills. Ai is but a ball of plastic in comparison to the dump it is sitting in.

It's important to note, too, if you're going to have this attitude about something like character ai, you have to consider the amount of energy websites like Instagram and Facebook and YouTube use to run their servers. They use an exponential amount of energy as well, even Tumblr.

This isn't an attack to either side, as I said, I dislike ai. However, this is important to know. And unfortunately, as much as I wish this could be solved by telling people not to use character ai, that won't do much in the grand scheme of things. As far as we are aware, they use their own independent LLM. We should be going after large companies like OpenAI, who have more than just a small (in comparison) niche of people using it. OpenAI is made and designed largely for company use, not so much individual AI models.

I apologize this is long. But I think it's important to share.

#good lird #also last confession bein posted abt this #self ship #self shipping community #selfshipping community #selfship #self shipper #self shipping #self ship community #selfship community #character ai #character.ai #c.ai

39 notes · View notes

pleasantspark · 5 months ago

Text

To make it abundantly clear. I do see @chaifootsteps as a friend. A close associate. But it doesn't mean spreading false allegations. Just like the pitchforked. I don't like Proshippers or Zoophiles but I don't obsess over calling Chai out 447744747 times over blatantly disproven claims. And thanks to @doodler16 Chai had delivered on concerns that brought up.

I'm a victim of CSA, Grooming and a plethora of false allegations. To have people freak out about the drawing of a chibi character (I don't really understand the difference between the two. Because Cub is child like and chibi is just miniature. People mistake the two a lot.)

"These came from credible SOURCES!!!!"

The screenshots you are referencing and the anti-chai crowd are getting it from DaniDraws and other problematic Twitter users. The same people who exclusively defended against the things YOU claim CHAI did.

They accused Chai of shit that seems to be out of nowhere. Going off assumptions rather then actual logic. Because the crash outs I see is really fucking telling. You can claim someone is a Murderer for wanting to kill a fictional character and the person accusing them of it would be attacked but THE AUDICITY WHEN I A GROWN WOMAN LIKES CELL, A BUG!!!1! INCECTAPHILLA! YOU'RE A ZOOPHILE!

If you're this butthurt about people TRYING to change maybe I don't know? Ignore them. This drama all started because people genuinely can't take a hint and solve this shit in private. And no it's not because "Ohhh I couldn't contact them bc their DMs are private" its really dumb af because this person could've asked someone else to help them contact them, which shows you DIDN'T want to handle it.

I'm sorry if I am laying Heavy on this person but I am sick and tired of false allegations that were proven by the accusee of being false or warped or even worse misconstrued being used around. If you have a problem with someone, go to them. Refusing to confront them but rather call them out as the various people (Newsflash some people who are criticizing them in your Anon Box/Reblogs are on the side of the Stans so they will OF COURSE overexaggerate claims.) who I see are COWARDS who can't even leave a message or go to me to sort an arrangement out, FOR THE LOVE OF SATAN HIMSELF, I have a server where you can sort this shit out.

Some of you are what? in your 20s? Adults? Functioning members of society but you cannot handle talking to people or hiring someone to middleman it? I am genuinely embarrassed of you guys, perpetrating false allegations and pushing the guilty by association just for PEOPLE trying to educate you? No, none of you should be critics at all if you're gonna act like stans, if you disagree and still believe Chai is guilty after his clarifications, then fine by me. No one's gonna change your mind. I just find it time consuming and all in all stupid to continue to focus on shit NO ONE really cares about or just finding more reasons to hate.

Sounds like stans amiright? So whenever you cross a post that has some allegations, don't go get the pitchforks, consider it as false before proven. You are not helping the case, and Tumblr is going to become the next coming of Twitter if we all don't treat allegations as skepticism. Goodnight, and this is my final message.

#hazbin hotel critical #helluva boss critical #vivziepop critical #chaifootsteps

20 notes · View notes

theresattrpgforthat · 7 months ago

Note

This is going to sound really funny, but do you have any recs for TTRPGs based on/around clowns?

THEME: Clowns

Hello friend, I have a few things, but pickings were a little slim! Some of what I found seems to be a supplement for another game rather than a base game, but I hope you still find something you like.

(Also, I think it's really funny that I found not one, but two games about Clowns vs Vampires.)

Clown Husbandry, by Sterf.

Clown Husbandry is a ttrpg inspired by tumblr's clown husbandry community about a group of college students adopting their first clowns and learning how to raise them.

Thematically, this game is about going to clown school and taking classes to learn how to raise clowns, but the focus on the clowns feels akin to a monster-training game like Pokemon. Clowns are raised and trained to use their traits in Goof-Offs, clown mating rituals designed to impress the clown that you want them to procreate with. A successful Goof-Off leads to a Honking, where the clowns mate and produce offspring.

You use a d4 and a Punnett square to determine the child’s breed and abilities, while your clown trainer uses a d6 to overcome obstacles as they explore a town and use their clowns to solve problems. The game comes with adoptable clown cards, and adventure module called Mystery at the Old Manor. If you like games about collectible creatures, and you want to lean into something really bonkers, try Clown Husbandry!

Clown Helsing, by Planarian.

Dying is Easy. Comedy is Hard.

Clowns. We've all seen them… riding their unicycles, blowing up balloons at parties, piling in garish hordes from tiny cars, waddling around in bulbous red shoes, passed out in a dumpster stinking of booze and regret. For what do these martyrs of mirth sacrifice themselves? The answer is they do it for us. Not just to fill our need for laughter and merriment, but because they defy the doom of mankind! Clowns are man's only salvation against… Vampires.

You've seen Vampires too; you just didn't know it. Maybe they were killing the mood at a party, ruining a great punchline, layering red tape onto a business, or just plain old-fashioned sucking the blood from the living. Contrary to myth they do much of this in broad daylight, their only fear of the sun being that it might expose them to mockery. They drain humor from the world because they fear someone might dare to laugh at them. You know the type.

I’ve played Clown Helsing, and had a great time doing so. It uses Rock Paper Scissors, which means that you don’t really need dice to play - and you barely need pencil and paper, as most of the characters only have a few lines of information that they need to remember. The character generation system involves roll-tables (or pick-lists, if you’re not using dice) to generate clown names and clown styles, and for the Game Master, there’s a very helpful section that will help you build a vampire that the players can’t wait to insult and discredit.

But Dracula…, by MacaroniX.

A vampire has descended upon the town, draping the town in endless night and taking residence in the abandoned castle. The town mayor says we have only one hope. Only the Great Clown Pagliacchi can chase the vampire away. The thing is… you are Pagliacchi. Well, you're the closest we’ve got. But you are not alone. You have your clown posse, and the plan is to drive the vampire away in the only way you know how: the power of laughter!

But Dracula… is a silly, fantasy, zero-prep. one-shot adventure RPG where you play a clown that must chase a vampire out of town, or at least lift the endless night curse. Can you find your way to the vampire and save the day?

Created for the BIPOC Vamp Jam, But Dracula… uses a deck of cards to generate NPCs that can either help or hinder you as you attempt to drive Dracula out of town, and a d6 to help generate your clown character. I’m curious about whether or not this game can be used for other adventures, perhaps driving various different monsters out of town!

Tears of A Clown, for Call of Cthulhu, by Paul Mazumdar.

Cambridge, 1893. The annual Midsummer Fair is open for business and one of the big attractions this year is the Fairground Maxiumus, its steam ride and its team of masked clowns. While looking for a lost friend, the players find themselves getting closer to the clowns than they'd imagined.

This may be centred on clowns, but this is strictly a horror game, with body horror and vore definitely part of the story. As with any Call of Cthulhu game, there's a decent chance you don't make it out of this game alive. If you want a game that targets a player’s or character’s fear of clowns, rather than something goofy or light-hearted, you might find what you’re looking for in Tears of a Clown.

C.L.O.W.N. 3rd Edition, by Hero Games.

Welcome to the zany world of C.L.O.W.N., the greatest collection of jokers and pranksters this side of Stronghold (and they hope it stays that way). Some have guessed that CLOWN stands for the Criminal Legion of Wacky Nonconformists, but no one is really sure if it's an acronym, or just sounds good. (If the founders know, they aren't telling.)

The purpose of CLOWN in your campaign is twofold: to provide you with a selection of truly unique villains to put a twist in your adventures, and to give your players a break from the same old world-threatening catastrophes and wrenching moral dilemmas.

C.L.O.W.N. is a supplement for the Champions roleplaying system, rather than a standalone product. Champions is a superhero game, and C.L.O.W.N. appears to be a supplement about providing clownish super-villains to cause chaos and mayhem in your superhero’s city. This is for the 3rd edition, and I think there’s been a few new editions since then, but I think often with these types of games, you can take the stats from an older edition and update them pretty easily to something newer without much work.

If you want clownish antics in the style of the Joker or Harley Quinn, then perhaps consider C.L.O.W.N.

Other Thoughts…

Apparently there is a Killer Clowns From Hell adventure for Pathfinder and Starfinder! You might be able to adapt it to other OSR or OSE games.

You might also like my Circus Recommendation Post from a year ago or so.

If you like what I do, you can leave a tip at my Ko-fi page <3

#clowns #tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #game recommendations #dnd #asks #indie ttrpg

27 notes · View notes

a-very-tired-jew · 8 months ago

Note

Im so tired. The anniversary of October 7th and Sinwar's death have opened up opportunities for anti-semites to show their true colours. For example, a star trek the original series blog I follow has started posting about mourning Sinwar and how violent "resistance" by Palestinians is fine and that October 7th was justified. If you look on my tumblr you will see my reply to one of their posts. Anyways, it's ironic that they are a Star Trek TOS blog since three of the main characters are played by Jewish men (and Leonard Nimoy was openly and proudly Zionist and Jewish), and it's about a pacifist future (they never consider killing someone as a method to fix oppression). How the fuck does someone watch Star Trek and then celebrate the massacre of people because they "had it coming"?!!

Not only were they played by Jews, Nimoy used very Jewish traditions and cultural aspects for the Vulcans.

It all plays in to the fandomization of this war. People using fandom spaces to platform their hate, say “this character/actor would never support X!” while completely ignoring the context of the material or what those characters would do.

But if we want to engage in the “what would they do?”

Well…

There are plenty of scenarios in Trek where the crew changes their opinion on something when they have the full context. In this case you could easily present them this war as a fight for freedom and resistance, and they’d believe it and support it. But then they’d go in and see past actions of Hamas, what their leadership does, and the interview(s) that Sinwar gave where he said he’d sacrifice over 100k civilians for his goals.

They’d be presented the walls, checkpoints, and Iron Dome as tools of oppression. Then they find out that they were built to prevent constant and consistent attacks against Israeli citizens. They’d find out that they were defensive measures built in response.

They’d be presented the colonizer narrative and then there’d be a moment where Spock tells the crew that archaeological evidence shows the indigeneity of Jews. Someone would also ask who they’re a colony of during talks and witness how Hamas and co responds in an irrational and ungrounded manner.

They’d be aghast at all of that.

They’d also find out about the atrocities that Israel has committed and the shit their politicians do.

They’d shame both sides and hold talks until peace actually happens. And if not? Well they’d back off and realize some things just can’t be solved in that space and time, and that some times the Federation has no right to impose its views on others.

It earnestly sounds like a blog that commits Federationless behavior.

#antisemitism #star trek #Vulcan traditions and culture was based on Jewish tradition and culture #if you’re a Trekkie and support Hamas you’re supporting the antagonists and villains

19 notes · View notes

vulpiximisa · 4 months ago

Text

the ceo of ooneko over on Twitter probably already said this but I’m just going to word barf my own thoughts about anime vs game ooneko

so it’s been known that the anime and game depictions of the characters have changed a bit. Mostly Osoto’s depiction, which in turn changes his dynamic with Neko.

as I said before, Osoto’s presence in the anime feels like a constant threat. The inclusion of ep4 along with how graphic it is (imo) hits the point of him being someone who can kill without lifting a finger. I initially thought that they downplayed his crimes because they called it assault rather than rape (for his past victims not ep4) but maybe it’s just a censorship for television. (Same with when Neko had a flashback about a school teacher “hurting” a student. It was SA.)

in the games, I used “Loki in the Avengers Tower” to describe Osoto and honestly, Neko just treats him like A Guy and knowing he’s a criminal just feels like an inside joke between them. Or something. Like she’d go over and ask him banal questions, info dumps her love for idols, when she proposes the game to get him to play piano it’s in good humor.

The thing about chapter 6 is Neko goes to Osoto to ask if there were any records of her name showing up after her stabbing. Osoto was the one to give her good news, that she’s Not Dead. She was in such a good mood. So discovering that he was the one that stabbed her was more of a shock and more betrayal.

(Also forgot to mention if Osoto getting cut by Kyoko in chap4 was anything. Neko being worried about him and having him patched up by Atori and then the three “bonding” over romance talk. Maybe Neko establishing her ideal poly romance really meant for OsoAtoNeko to be real.)

The pool scene in the anime apparently is a reference to Sherlock and Moriarty, which, I wouldn’t know because the only Moriarty I know is voiced by Saito Soma. Anyway, I guess the anime was trying to play up that scene but make it Not Entirely Serious with the guests walking in like “what the fuck are they talking about”.

But in a way, having that scene just makes it all the difference because in the game, after Neko finds out, she wasn’t sure how she would face Osoto. When she does, she’s surprised that they’re still talking like normal. “Not like a baddy vs a goody”, which the anime is trying to depict.

Someone’s post on tumblr said that Osoto shoehorning Holmes and Moriarty is lame but I think it’s supposed to be ironic because Neko wouldn’t call herself Holmes, it’s Osoto doing that. I don’t know exactly what kind of rivalry the actual characters had, but we’ve been know that Osoto is a criminal so it’s not like he’s someone we have to chase down and catch.

The same post also said they weren’t developed enough in the past episodes. I can’t say for ep 6-7 because those aren’t chapters in the game that I can compare, but Osoto shows up enough to make Neko go “ugh this guy again” and that was pretty much kind of their relationship, so I don’t really see how you can’t say it’s not developed, it’s just more like it’s not supposed to be the typical Detective vs Criminal relation.

Ep 6-7 were weaker in terms of interaction, ep 5 has Osoto “actively” helping Neko “solve” a case and ep 8 she calls on him for medical help and challenges him for a favor. I guess ep 10 having him help her with the schedule was a scene, but I think they needed a segue for Neko to go “we could be friends in the real world”.

Anyway, I’m an anime enjoyer, so I like a lot of the things they did so spruce it up for non game players, which is what it should be, I think an anime Should be watchable stand-alone for people who have never seen the original source. It’s just a matter of if it still connects, if they’d still make sense, but since I’ve already played the games it’s hard for me to judge.

#pixi fandom post #re tasohotel #not even in a ship stand point but their relationship overall #tasokare hotel #ooneko #osoneko

13 notes · View notes

cptapathy · 1 year ago

Note

hey! what are you favorite ttrpgs?

Dice tumble

Pen scratch

A held breath

A promised climax

We sit around our table/

At our desk/in a circle on the floor

And together we laugh

And smile and more

We love these creations in our heads

As they dance and fight and flee

And as the night draws close to us

We hold them warm and tightly

These people we conjure are dear to me

For they are the crystal through which I look

To see the life I share with you

And the love we have for each other

Okay so my favourite ttrpg changes as I play them but right now it's A.N.I.M's EURKEA!

I have always been a fan of murder mysteries from Agatha Christie, to pie in the sky, Midsomer Murders, Rosemary and Thyme and everything in between.

I had run several murder mysteries in different ttrpgs and even a couple of murder mystery larps (including a spectacular zombie one) but I'd never found a system that truely captured what murder mysteries feel like.

Then I discovered Eureka and the Eureka mechanic and it all clicked. You could say it was a eureka moment.

I'm going to discuss in some detail the mechanic and give an example but before that everyone should go and

a. Follow A.N.I.M. on tumblr

@anim-ttrpgs

b. Join their patreon so we can get the gorgan playable investigator. Go look at all the cool stuff!

https://www.patreon.com/TheAgencyofNarrativeIntrigueandMysteryPatreon/posts

Essentially A.N.I.M have separated dice rolls into two categories

1. Investigation rolls

2. Non-investigation rolls

Investigation rolls are when an investigator is trying to uncover information or clues to progress the investigation. (Pretty clear definition) non-investigation rolls are all other rolls (combat, hiding secrets, getting out of dodge etc.)

Whenever an investigator makes an investigation roll there are 3 possible outcomes

1 Failure - they do not success and/or complications arise - they gain 3 Eureka points

2 partial success/mixed success - they get part of a clue or a clue and a complication - they gain 2 Eureka points

3 full success - they gain the clue without issue - they gain one Eureka point

When the investigators have a full eureka bar they can use a EUREKA!

This allows them to roll a check with 3d6 and take the highest instead of 2d6 or (my favourite option) gain clues from previous failed rolls.

So to take the most iconic episode of Midsomer Murders as an example - "The Killings At Badgers Drift"

Spoilers and CW for references to incest.

DCI Barnerby arrests the foppish artist on suspicion of murder, during the arrest the artist's sister arrives and the artist crys out "I've been framed" and makes a sign of a square with his fingers.

The DCI Makes an investigation roll but biffs it, snake eyes, complete failure, no hope of discovering that clue.

Later on The DCI is talking to a woman at a call centre who was the last known person to speak to the victim. Apparently the victim said "just like poor annabella" before hanging up. Again the DCI makes an investigation roll this time getting a partial success, there is someone related who has a name similar to annabella who died from an "accident" and the DCI decides to investigate this accident as well now, thinking (correctly) that it might not be so accidental.

But now the DCI has a full eureka bar and so the player shouts out eureka to gain the clue from the failed check earlier. And so, that night, the DCI has a dream of all the relevant clues and realises the clue missed when the artist made the symbol and said "I've been framed" it was a code, to tell his sister that the evidence of their affair (the nude painting he did of her) was in the attic and could prove that they were working together to keep their affair secret. This new vital clue allows the DCI to search for, and find, the painting helping to solve the mystery.

And so that is one reason I love eureka, along with the approach to disability and monster characters. It's currently got a free demo and stuff, go support them they're great.

#jess rambles #lextothemax #indie ttrpg #ttrpg community #ttrpg #poetry #they also have a ttrpg bookclub that i recommend #check them out!#jess answers

41 notes · View notes

thehyperfixationspeedrunner · 1 year ago

Note

HIIIIIIIIIII WE HAVENT TALKED IN A WHILE HRU

WHICH HYPERFIXATION ARE YOU ON NOW HUH 👀

AND WOULD YOU REC?

HIIIIIII, I FINISHED HIGH SCHOOL YESTERDAY AND I'M IN EXAMS SEASON SO I'M NOT DOING GREAT, HRU???

Girl, you just opened a big bag of worms cause this hyperfixation has taken over the other like 4 that were in my mind at the same time (one of them since January).

There are just a few things I have to warn you about the show before I throw my words at you: there is blood and violence, they do not shy from that; there is physical abuse mentioned and shown (although it's just shown in one scene, if that's the only thing bothering you but you wanna watch I can tell you when to skip); there is cursing, nothing major just what a high schooler would normally curse; abusive relationships and bullies are subjects that are heavily spoken about; death, don't know if that's a trigger but better safe that sorry and I'm pretty sure that's it

First, I have to ask you two questions:

Do you like supernatural stuff?

Do you like gays?

If the answer to both of them is yes, then you need to watch dead boy detectives. It's a series about two ghosts (Edwin Payne- "the brains", spent 70 years in hell, sassy little bitch, from London 1916 and speaks like it, gay, a fucking nerd, somehow everyone is in love with him except his crush (more like the crush doesn't know that he is in love with him, but whatever), so much trauma it's insane, tumblr's favourite; Charles Rowland- said crush, "the brawns", so bisexual but doesn't know it yet, do you know that character that is so charismatic and funny but actually has so much fucking trauma? That's him, daddy issues (because of abuse), from 1989, has a magical bag, so fucking british, so fucking protective of his friends it's insaneee like he will kill someone for them) and these two ghosts are detectives and solve cases to ghosts so they can move on to the afterlife.

This show is so fucking well written, you have no idea, like Charles and Edwin's relationship is so unique, because even though there is a romantic subtext they are best friends before eveything and they know eachother so well it's so rare to see such good friendship where they are so open with eachother in media specially between men (also their ship name is painland, if that's not enough reason to watch the show idk what is).

Another great example of the amazing writing is that characters like Charles normally have their trauma super overlooked, but in this show his trauma is treated so well, there is still a lot to work from it (reason 484837 why I need a season 2) but the other characters actually see his trauma and acknowledge it, it's so fucking satisfying to me because these type of characters are always my favourites but they always have that lack of development (I sometimes confuse between my mutuals who likes what but I'm pretty sure you have read hoo so you know Leo Valdez? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about).

Speaking of development, they do not leave characters behind. There is this character called Niko Sasaki, who is this girl who loves anime and loves love and is always so positive and so sweet and always thinking of others. Now, when someone describes this type of character, my first reaction is "oh, so she's just the comedic relief who is going to have a shallow ass personality" (no shade to that type of characters, shade to the writers who leave them behind), BUT SHE'S NOT. She also has her traumas (dead dad, literally almost dies, more shit that I don't wanna spoil) and they acknowledge it and they develop her. She may not be one of the main focuses of season 1 (I'm pretty sure if we get a season 2, she's gonna have more screen time because of... [spoilers]) but she still has some character development, in the 3rd episode they are solving a pretty brutal case and she says that she doesn't want to be part of it because she litterally almost died the previous week and it's totally okay, she stays at home watching scooby doo and eating noodles, again so fucking satisfying.

Since we're talking about Niko, I have to talk about the dynamics of this show because OMG THE DYNAMICS OF THIS SHOW. Like, you look at the way I described Niko and the way I described the boys and you would think that they would focus on Niko and Charles relationship, right? The two charismatic kids, makes sense. Wrong, it's actually Niko and Edwin's. At first, you're like "you're gonna pair Mr. Horrible at relationships with other people and hates physical touch with Ms. Loves love and hugs fucking everyone?" BUY IT WORKS, IT WORKS SO GODDAMN WELL, IT'S INSANE, they easily became my favourite dynamic of all times, it's so fucking good. Actually, Charles and Niko is the only dynamic that isn't really developed in this show (which is a crime honestly, how could they).

Another thing is that there is one (1) antagonist out of four who isn't likeable. And that fucker is litterally Crystal's abusive demon ex (I've realised now that I haven't talked about my queen yet, she's a bitch, she's a physic, she's fucking badass, she doesn't know who she is until the 8th episode (not in a philosophical way, she litterally loses her memory) and her dynamic with Edwin is fucking hilarious, it's an on going competion of who gets to be the bitcher). There is a witch who is immortal, kidnaps young girls to feed to her snake and has an obsession with getting revenge on the boys and Crystal (they hadn't met Niko when they confronted her for the first time), but she serves cunt everytime she's on screen and she's so hilarious, you love to hate her and deep down you also love her. There is a cat king who is the reason Crystal, Edwin and Charles get stuck in the town they spend the season (they live in London, the town is somewhere on the US coast, technically it's just Edwin who is stuck, but they're all ride or die) all because he wants to fuck Edwin but Edwin doesn't, but his hilarious and annoying in a funny way and a loser and a simp. There is a woman from the afterlife office who spends the whole season trying to catch the boys (who are running away from death, it's a whole thing), fails and ends up stuck with them, I just got mad at her when she interrupted a love confession, but we got it later so it's fine. Then there's David the demon (yes, that's his name, yes, that's hilarious) who is Crystal's abusive ex, is able to get inside her mind whenever he wants and is just so fucking annoying (but is such a great simbol of abusive relationships and how much they scare you even after it's over).

Also, no one, and I mean no one, in this fucking show is straight, whether it is confirmed or not it doesn't matter (although 4 of the nine recurent characters are canonically queer).

Don't know if you heard about it, but this is from the same universe as the show The Sandman and there are two cameos in this show (both Death and Despair get a scene).

There are two things that weren't perfect in this show: the fact that Charles and Niko got one (1) scene together (fucking crime) and the CGI, not that it's all bad it's just they focused on the more visual scenes that make you go uuhh and aaahhh but there is a roof where they sometimes talk where the CGI is so bad, but it's just background shit, do not decide not to watch because of it the only scenes like that are the roof scenes and a scene in the forest (again, background shit).

I did just spend around an hour writing all of this, you are not gonna read this whole ass essay, but just watch the show, it's on illegal sites Netflix (although if you have Netflix, put it, even if it's just background noise, we need the views, this is Netflix and a not that cheap queer show we're talking about)

#dead boy detectives #dbda #niko sasaki #charles rowland #crystal palace #crystal palace surname von hoverkraft #edwin payne #esther #cat king #david the demon #night nurse

23 notes · View notes

starryoak · 10 months ago

Text

So! That Dungeon Meshi/Delicious in Dungeon sure is a great show! So much so that I made an OC for it! Please click the link so you can see it where tumblr doesn’t ruin the quality

The thing is, though? I kind of came up with her to fix the most significant flaw I saw in the ending, one that I’m not sure anyone else is going to be insane enough to actually think is a flaw like I do.

The thing is, this flaw is connected to some pretty major endgame spoilers, so if you don’t want to be spoiled, you really can’t stick around; this entire character’s story is intimately tied to the ending of Dungeon Meshi.

Ok! So, to start off, explaining my perspective requires knowledge of one fact; Marcille is my favorite character in the series, for one specific reason. I am extremely thanatophobic.

I have an intense, all consuming fear of death that used to leave me literally wracked with actual physical pain from the nightly panic attacks I would have obsessing over my own impending mortality, something that only stopped because I take intense mood dampeners, not because I ‘got over it’.

So, obviously, Marcille’s backstory and motivation resonated deeply with me, her fears and obsessions over her friend’s mortality, the omnipresent specter of death trailing behind her stealing all her loved ones away, how she grew up with the looming knowledge of her father’s increasing age and his inevitable passing, something that hit me even harder because not only do I do the same thing, obsess over my parents increasing age, but Marcille’s dad physically resembles my own.

Her goal of equalizing the lifespans of the races, ultimately… I think it’s a noble one! It is the ultimate injustice of living that death is inevitable, one that I genuinely believe is worth solving. I don’t actually know if we ever will, it is probably impossible… but that doesn’t mean we should give up. Back in the 1300s, smallpox was inevitable. Now, it doesn’t exist outside of a lab! For most of human existence, half of all people died before puberty. Now, child mortality is down to less than 5%. https://xkcd.com/1520/ sums it up pretty nicely.

And then, the ending of the series. Well. Look. It’s not just that I disagree with how the series ends with “well, if you just eat right and exercise, that will release you from grasping your own mortality”. I mean, it is a lot that. But I’m used to series ending with some form of “people with a healthy fear of their own mortality are evil/insane/stupid/cowards”, hell, most characters genuinely afraid of their own death in media are villains!

Not only that, to a certain extent, it’s very logical that the series end with a moral about accepting the circle of life. It’s inevitable when the series focuses so much on food, because death is an unavoidable part of that cycle; to eat, we must kill. Even vegetarians can’t escape that fact, with how much we’ve learned about how plants are more alive than we once thought.

It's not that the series ended with that moral that bothers me, or at least. I wouldn’t be as bothered as I am, if it was just that. There’s another couple aspects to the ending that I feel were mishandled. One of them is one I think that if most people were honest, would also agree, or at least understand why I think it’s a misstep, and one that only someone who’s insane in the exact same way I am would even care about in the first place.

I’ll start with the reasonable criticism first; I think, if they wanted to really sell me on the idea that Marcille is truly changed and has come to accept death as a natural consequence of life like she says she has when they discuss the potential of Falin’s resurrection failing… Falin should have died, then.

It’s not that I’m not happy she’s alive, or that I don’t want her and Marcille to be together, but rather, it rings extremely hollow to me to have Marcille go “Oh, I’ve learned to accept death, after all of this journey, if Falin’s resurrection fails, I can accept that.” and then have her not have to test that newfound conviction.

It feels too convenient, like the series couldn’t actually commit to that moral fully. Beyond that, if anything, I would think that the journey they went on would make Marcille more firm in her desire to resurrect Falin, if anything.

But I can understand the logic they want you to go with, I just think that it feels like a cop-out to try and sell me on this “death is the natural consequence of life” moral, and then go “oh, except for Falin. Falin gets to live, because she deserves it.”

Why does she deserve it more? Why did you say all that if not to set up the failure? So you could reassure us “don’t worry, Marcille doesn’t have those naive, stupid ideas about improving the lives of the short lived races anymore, she’s learned better! Now she understands that some people just deserve to live longer than others!” Admittedly, that’s me being uncharitable, but it just feels wrong to me.

Now, onto the second, more insane person critique, one that I don’t think anyone but me even thought about, and one that I think most people would think is being too nitpicky.

But the thing is, it relates to the worldbuilding, and as much as people will likely want to tell me “you’re thinking too hard about a minor aspect of worldbuilding”, the thing is that Dungeon Meshi, above all, is very obviously a labor of love from the creator, and she clearly thinks about her worldbuilding a lot!

So it feels like saying that I’m overthinking it is dismissing her intricately crafted world as not worthy of engaging with fully. You can’t have it both ways, where you only want people engaging in your worldbuilding if they’re saying something positive.

Anyway; it has to do with a very minor, throwaway panel in the discussion of the history of the Winged Lion/demon’s interaction with the world outside its dimension in chapter 87; where it’s revealed, offhand, that the differences in lifespan between the races is in and of itself caused by the demon granting wishes, as can be seen here.

And. Well. That sits wrong with me. What happened to the conviction that it’s inherently wrong and twisted to use the demon’s powers? What happened to the conviction that they need to reverse all the changes that the demon forced on the world? Oh, so, since it happened so long ago, it’s no longer a problem? It’s only a problem when someone wants to use the demon to equalize the lifespans?

And I realize it’s insane to care this much about such a minor, throwaway line, but honestly? I think both my complaints about the ending stem from the same root frustration with the hypocrisy of it. Death is natural and worth accepting, except Falin’s death, then she deserves to live because her friends worked so hard for it. The demon’s powers are inherently wrong to use and must be reversed, except when it happened thousands of years ago, then it’s just the way things are and we have to get used to it.

What bothers me especially is how unforced of an error it was. Just have the differences in lifespans be because the world is a fundamentally cruel and unjust place, like it is in real life! You don’t have to ‘explain’ it, because it’s not something that needs explaining.

But now that you’ve brought it up, suddenly I have to ask, well, why were their demon wishes valid and not Marcille’s? Because you said that the demons powers were inherently warped and twisted and that they had to undo all of the damage it caused. And I do agree that the demon was causing damage and needed to be stopped! I just dislike the hypocritical criticism of Marcille’s entirely reasonable desire to not outlive all her loved ones by centuries.

Anyway. So, how does this tie into my OC? I’ll get to that!

This is Lymsie Bens, and she’s a half-foot mage, something that, if you remember, is actually a fairly rare thing for her to be! So how did this come to be, considering Chilchuck says that most half-foots fear higher magic, on account of them being unwilling test subjects for elves whenever they got too close?

Lymsie grew up the daughter of an older couple of relatively rich and very well off half-foots, Benbur Sams and Pamsie Hobs, living in a town in the Eastern Continent not all that far from the magic school that Marcille and Falin attended, and ever since she was young, she grew up with one thing weighing on her mind; The deaths of her parents.

Oh, no, her parents are still alive! Even by the time of this picture!

But she still knew it would happen. She loves her parents, more than anything in the world, and she would look at them every day and count the grey hairs, the wrinkles, small as they may be, considering they’re half-foots, and look youthful for far longer than the other races.

As much as the other races wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at them, they were old! Or at least, older than most couples usually are when they had children, and Lymsie was incredibly aware of it every time she looked at their faces, and saw them getting older and older.

And that didn’t even get into her own fears. As a child, she tried to befriend the gnomes that went to the private school her parents had sent her to, one that had mostly gnomes and where she was one of the only half-foots, and while racism meant she didn’t succeed very often, the times she succeeded, she would always end up having to graduate friends within the year.

She would find herself outgrowing them quickly, and her friends would look at her with pity, like she was just seconds away from keeling over, like they shouldn’t get too atttached to someone who would die so soon.

It made her realize something that left her feeling cold and scared; she was going to die. And not only was she going to die, she was going to die far sooner than she wanted. Well, she didn’t ever want to die, but she especially didn’t want to die so soon!

Eventually, she started feeling bitter and resentful about the whole thing, how unfair it was. Not just that the long lived races had all the power and money, but that they had the lifespans they did at all!

And maybe it would have been easier not to resent them as she grew up if making friends didn’t get harder and harder as she grew up, as kids started picking up prejudices from their parents and started caring about their social status enough that they don’t want to be seen being friends with a half-foot… maybe she would have grown up a little more well adjusted.

As well, while the private school was definitely fancy by the standards of half-foots, it wasn’t a very affluent one for gnomes, and as such, the magic they taught was rudimentary at best.

The teachers clearly didn’t expect the half-foots to get anything out of the classes, to the point where they were practically left alone the whole period, while the teachers focused on the more ‘promising’ students.

But Lymsie wasn’t willing to let that happen to her, to be left behind like her fellows; she wanted to learn magic if it was the last thing she did. She knew there had to be a solution to her problems with magic.

So, despite the teachers’ prejudices, she applied herself, and she forced them to acknowledge her skills. They didn’t like it, but they had no choice but to recognize her skills for what they were; extraordinary, especially for a half-foot, a race supposedly predisposed against magic.

After Lymsie graduated from school with the highest honors that the school was willing to give her, she found herself looking for higher education in the arts of dungeon and healing magic, having learned all she could at the level she was at.

She first tried to apply to the highest magic school nearby, the same Marcille and Falin attended, but there was a problem. The school refused to accept a half-foot, even if she easily passed the requirements.

A half-foot simply didn’t have the raw magical talent that was required for higher learning, you see. No matter how she begged or pleaded, she couldn’t change such a simple fact of biology.

Lymsie wasn’t satisfied. If she couldn’t get into that school, there were others in the world. She simply would have to say goodbye to her parents, secretly fearing, no matter how ridiculously, that they would die before she could get back.

Her parents supported her in her endeavors to learn magic; they were proud of their daughter’s accomplishments and how far she’d come, even if privately they felt her goals unrealistic.

Lymsie eventually found a school willing to teach her, but it was an uphill battle. Magic schools just weren’t made for half-foots; it was a struggle to use furniture made for elves and tallmen, but she refused to give in. Simple setbacks like a little discomfort wouldn’t stop her.

She poured herself into research, defying those who coddled her, cooing over how cute it was she was even trying, when everyone knows that half-foots simply can’t channel the mana required for true magic.

She focused her research on the magic of healing, the art of resurrection had to be connected somehow! She knew there had to be more to it. As she researched more, it became clearer and clearer that there was something missing to the discussion, some secret hidden and kept out of textbooks, and she wanted to find it.

Lymsie’s research deepened, spending her days glued to every book she could find in the library, excelling in her studies and at every test, she was making a name for herself among the school for her talents.

In truth, it wasn’t exactly a good reputation she was garnering. Her stubbornness and bitter affect didn’t make her many friends, something she eventually realized herself, but it was too little, too late.

She couldn’t win back people who were determined to see her in a bad light, for having the opinions she did and the skills she had, so she pressed on ahead anyway. Eventually, she had learned everything she could through conventional means, and she had a choice.

She could head back home to her parents, accept defeat against the insurmountable weight of her own mortality, live out the rest of her life content she had beaten the odds and learned what she could.

Or, she could keep searching. Keep pushing the boundaries she had come across in her research, the walls she had encountered that seemed deliberately put up to stop her from attaining her goals.

There was only one choice for Lymsie, in the end. To keep going. In truth, she already knew where to look, though only because of warnings to stop; dark magic. Of course she had heard the rumors, of powerful magic that elves possessed, of how they would kidnap half-foots for cruel experiments to test the limits of what magic could do.

While she had heard those warnings, the idea didn’t dissuade her; in fact, it excited her. There was potential, magic beyond what she had learned, if only she could find it. It meant there were people out there testing the limits of what could be done with magic!

If she could learn what the secrets were to it, the power could be hers! The idea of being spirited away, of experiments that stretched the boundaries of conventional magic, it was a dream!

It didn’t matter to her that it could be dangerous, it became a private fantasy of hers, to imagine herself whisked away to the land of the elves, to see magic beyond her wildest dreams.

Lymsie would dutifully send letters to her parents informing her of her research, but she kept her fantasies and pursuit of dark magic secret. She knew that her parents would worry for her if they found out she had such dangerous intentions. She didn’t want them to worry, though not enough to stop her search, of course.

She chased after every rumor of dark magic she could, though she began to learn the art of not being a colossal bitch to everyone she meets, of playing into stereotypes to get what she wanted.

It never seemed to get her closer to her true goal, the rumors of ancient magic not enough to satisfy her ultimate desires, no elves willing to indulge the fantasies of a single half-foot, until one day, out of nowhere, the sky opened up.

From massive tears in the fabric of the sky itself, long and terrifying arms descended down and began to pluck people out of their homes and villages, massive eyes peeking out from the dark void beyond the stars above.

Destruction rained, for a brief moment, the world itself seemed like it was going to end. But what Lymsie saw was the culmination of everything she had ever hoped for. Ancient magic, pouring out from the heavens themselves, right there for her to see.

And then it stopped. As quickly as the chaos began, it ended, and with it, Lymsie saw her dreams falling away as well. She knew then, she had to discover what happened. Whatever it takes, she knew that she would do it. Her goals, for once, finally seemed to be in reach!

Even with the desire of elves to keep their ancient magic hidden, in the end there was very little they could do to hide what had happened; the secret of the dungeon’s magic became known. The infinite well of energy that existed beyond the stars, the malevolent will that only desired to feed, and, of course, the entire kingdom that had sprung up overnight.

Rumors flew, of the king who had conquered and devoured the demon, and what was more, of the mysterious mages that had ruled the kingdom before him. The lunatic mage, who rumors say had cursed the kingdom with immortality, it was confirmation; the impossible could be done. Magic could free her from the shackles of her fate.

There were even more rumors, of resurrections and ancient magic, so much that Lymsie couldn’t discern fact from fiction. They couldn’t all be true, could they? She would never know, unless she tried.

She set out to the Golden Kingdom, to uncover the truth at any costs. It was a long and grueling journey to be undertaken alone by someone so small, but her affluence helped lighten the load. Though nothing could keep the travels from being long, it became clearer and clearer as she kept on, that the Golden Kingdom was alive with ancient magic, a kingdom that had been touched so deeply by the past that the very ground was charged with mana.

She was singleminded in her goals, to seek out the truth of what had happened that day, to uncover the center of this grand mystery. And luckily, the kingdom was abuzz with travelers, it seemed that whatever had happened had left the kingdom in dire need of subjects, and they were accepting anyone.

Moreover, they were accepting anyone, of any race. Lymsie had never met a kobold or orc before in her life, and suddenly she found herself surrounded by them. Not only that, but they were welcome as much as any other.

Lymsie tried not to hope, tried not to let herself believe that she could be accepted as well, if other ‘lesser’ races had found themselves welcome, could she be as well? It was almost frightening to imagine after how long she had spent being rejected by others.

There came a point, as Lymsie settled into her base of operations (she refused to call it a home without her parents beside her), that she realized there was nowhere else to look but to the castle itself. The newly crowned royals were the center of all of this, she was sure.

She investigated every rumor, every errant piece of information she could, playing the conscientious citizen who simply needed to know what kind of place she was living in. She was but a small and simple half-foot who didn��t want trouble, you see.

She received bits and pieces of information that told the story of a small circle of the highest echelons of the kingdom, who had come from nothing; privately, she suspected this to be a falsehood.

Who could believe that elves would not have swooped in to appoint their own leaders? She suspected that this tale of simple adventurers rising to power through their wits and guile was simple mythologizing, something all dynasties did to establish legitimacy.

The king, who had devoured the demon, who had destroyed the only hope Lymsie had of solving her problems, and the sister who was rumored to have been resurrected from certain death, beyond anything anyone had done before, the half-foot who ran the adventurer’s union, at the side of royalty? It was so unbelievable that Lymsie had to uncover the truth of it all.

The sister of the king, the one who the most fantastical and obviously false rumors had claimed to be a dragon, was clearly the center of what had happened, and Lymsie knew she had to reach her. If rumors of her death were in any way true, she was the key to everything Lymsie desired.

Sneakily, she began to worm her way upward. With her money, it wasn’t hard to establish herself among the elite half-foots, and though she had no real interest in adventuring, she joined the half-foot’s guild, happy to pay their fees if it meant she could learn more about the mysterious leader who supposedly had ties to the king.

Asking around, it became clear, the rumors were true. He indeed knew the king and his mysterious sister. Waiting for her moment, one day, it happened. A woman walked into the guild while the leader was there, and Lymsie knew instantly, this was the mysterious sister of the king.

Mana radiated off of her like a flame radiated heat, and her eyes were a sight that sent Lymsie off, her predatory gaze giving her an unnatural and threatening aura. Lymsie watched as the union leader talked with the dragon woman, something that Lymsie had no choice now but to believe was true.

Lymsie couldn’t interrupt, but she now knew her target. She would talk to this woman. Discover the secrets she had hiding that had summoned the demon into this world. She approached the union’s leader warily, approaching the subject as casually as she could; was that the king’s sister? Were the rumors true?

She kept it as light and airy as she could, that this was mere gossip to her. The leader was cagey, unwilling to give up any information of substance, as he rightly pointed out it was none of her business.

Realizing she had nothing more she could learn from the leader, she watched as the woman left the union and slipped out as well, staying as far as she could from the very obviously dangerous girl while still keeping her in eyesight, she was surprised to see the king’s sister stop to talk excitedly with another woman… or at least, she assumed she was a woman, given she had so little experience with orcs, she wasn’t sure.

She waited until the king’s sister was long gone, and walked up to speak with the orc woman.

The woman (my friend @vacamariposa’s OC! Thanks for letting me borrow her) introduced herself to Lymsie as Vur, and Lymsie suddenly realized that she had heard rumors about an orc working at the castle, something that many of the Golden Kingdom’s inhabitants found relevant for reasons that Lymsie very deliberately didn’t want to know.

As Lymsie tried to play her usual weaselly and evasive probing game, she found that the orc woman happily would gossip about the dragon woman, whose name was apparently Falin, and about any topic that Lymsie asked. Asking about Falin gave her a veritable wave of information, as Vur was apparently friends with the woman, and she got to hear outlandish stories of how the kingdom’s first feast was apparently made with the body of the dragon that Falin had been transformed into.

But what was more interesting to learn wasn’t anything about Falin, but rather came up when Lymsie asked how on earth a woman could have ended merged with a dragon; she learned of another woman she had never heard of before, an elf named Marcille.

Apparently, there was another mage the kingdom had besides the lunatic, and what was most interesting to Lymsie was how the orc gossiped of the elf’s strange obsessions with ancient magic; neuroses that landed dangerously close to her own.

Though Vur didn’t know her nearly as well as Falin, she still was able to tell Lymsie where she could find this mysterious elf, though Lymsie privately wondered if she should have been so willing to divulge these things to her, she thanked Vur and prepared to meet this mysterious Marcille woman.

Which lead to the fated meeting between minds who, by all rumors, would have to agree. Lymsie woke up early in the morning and headed to the castle. Being a half-foot made sneaking in perhaps easier than it had any right to be and definitely was because they assumed anyone who’d have problems with Marcille would be likely to be another elf, but in the end all it took was some minor trespassing on castle grounds.

And, as Lymsie knocked on the door, she was greeted by the surprisingly unassuming face of the mage who had apparently brought the demon to the surface, and introduced herself as a researcher of ancient magic.

“I sincerely apologize for my actions as lord of the dungeon!” were the first words out of Marcille’s mouth, at the same time as Lymsie asked “Are you still pursuing your research?”, answering her question in a way Lymsie truly hadn’t expected.

What do you mean, you’re sorry? You perform feats of magic that I’ve been dreaming of my whole life, and you’re apologizing!? Lymsie couldn’t believe it! And, alternatively, neither could Marcille!

Marcille, flustered in her usual manner, asked how on earth Lymsie could see what she did as a good thing; all the damage the demon caused and all the lives ruined weighed heavy on her mind.

Lymsie responded that Marcille’s mission, the one she had summoned the demon for, was the most noble cause that she could think of, one that she herself pursued; the secrets of immortality.

Marcille responded, no, you don’t understand, immortality is a curse, watching your friends grow old and die around you, you lose all sense of self, she’s seen it happen!

Lymsie scoffs, of course, how expected of an elf to think of how it feels to outlive someone; newsflash, asshole, she doesn’t want to be outlived either. Marcille sputters in confusion and anger and slams the door in Lymsie’s face.

Well. That could have gone better. Lymsie isn’t giving up, she decides, and she’s back the next day, knocking on Marcille’s door, and shoving her foot in the door before Marcille can slam it in her face. Marcille snaps at the half-foot, why can’t you understand that it’s wrong to decide someone else’s lifespan for them!?

Lymsie spits back that it’s awful convenient for her then, that Marcille is doing just that by hiding the research she had worked on from the world! This back and forth goes on for hours, Lymsie getting more and more infuriated by how Marcille doesn’t seem to grasp the potential she abandoned, while Marcille grows more and more conflicted.

Everything Marcille thought she had learned over her journey, flashing before her eyes; the acceptance she had felt she had over death was slipping away, clawed from her tooth and nail by Lymsie’s acerbic arguments.

Marcille began to doubt, really, as they argued, whether or not she really was as over it all as she thought; she knew that her friends said that the secret to a long life was simply eating well, exercising and staying healthy, but her father had done that, and she still vividly recalled how he had withered away in front of her despite his supposed ‘health’. All the health in the world couldn’t erase the simple fact that death was inevitable.

Lymsie could tell her rhetoric was working, she didn’t necessarily understand the intricacies of Marcille’s neuroses, but she could see Marcille faltering, the elf not being one to hide her emotions on her face.

As the arguments continued, Marcille lost much of the acidity in her retorts; part of how she knew that her quest to conquer death was wrong was that the citizens of the Golden Kingdom already had immortality, and they had become miserable and listless over the thousand years the kingdom remained buried.

Lymsie counters that many of the citizens returned to the surface and had resumed their lives, though now aging, clearly they weren’t miserable anymore. Maybe, just maybe, they were miserable because they were trapped in a single place under the watchful eye of a lunatic who took any complaint and punished them severely for speaking out of turn; perhaps that had something to do with it?

Marcille couldn’t deny the sense that Lymsie was making, but ultimately, her friends didn’t want to live forever, they wanted to grow old and die, as much as that frightened Marcille, it wasn’t her right to decide for them that they should live alongside her; she couldn’t use the demon to make versions of them that would stay with her forever, that’s what she had learned.

Well, Lymsie huffed, that’s all fine and good for them, they can die all they want for all she cares. Marcille gasps in offense, but Lymsie presses on; you’re right, you don’t get to decide who lives or who dies or for how long. But why can’t she decide for herself? Why does she just have to accept her lifespan? Can’t there be some middle ground here?

Marcille feels a little pit in her stomach, realizing that she agrees. She’s terrified of that fact, though, terrified of falling into the habits and allure of the demon; and then Lymsie counters, why do we have to use the demon? Why can’t we research a way to live longer using the magic that already exists? Falin had been saved, hadn’t she?

How come Falin deserves to live and Lymsie’s parents don’t? As Lymsie asks that, Marcille’s heart breaks. She sees the despair on Lymsie’s face and recognizes it intimately. Lymsie explains, finally, a little softer, manipulatively; her parents are old, and she wants to spend as much time as she can with them. It’s not fair that she doesn’t have much longer with them.

As Marcille’s eyes begin to water, Lymsie realizes she might have gone too far, even as her rhetoric clearly worked, she clearly touched something deep inside Marcille she hadn’t known would hit.

Marcille sighs; she says needs some time to think this over, and shuts the door on Lymsie, who isn’t sure if she’s won or lost this argument, as she realizes she has tears on her face as well.

Marcille spends the night ruminating on everything Lymsie said; she had always thought of the difference between lifespans from the perspective of outliving everyone she knew. She had never thought about what it would feel like to be someone on the other side of the equation; living your life knowing there were things you could never do or see, because there simply wasn’t enough time.

Marcille had always seen the length of her life as a curse, as a burden she had to carry, but seeing someone who saw it as a blessing… she had never encountered that before.

Even with how King Delgal had feared death so much that it had become forbidden in his kingdom under Thistle, she had seen that as simply an obstacle to Falin’s resurrection, background dressing to an adventure and nothing more.

She knew what she had to do.

The next morning, Lymsie shows up at Marcille’s door, and instead of having to force her way in, Marcille opens the door and invites her in. Please, why don’t we have breakfast together, so we can discuss our research together?

Lymsie gasps, she can’t help but reach for Marcille’s hand and shakes it as hard as she can. Oh, thank you thank you thank you, so so so much! She knows they can do it! You were a powerful enough mage to resurrect a woman from only bones, she’s heard!

Marcille is, admittedly disconcerted how much Lymsie apparently knows about her adventure, but that’s not important, she can find that out.

Now, Lymsie and Marcille work together to find a way to equalize and extend lifespans, for the shorter lived races first, but even elves; everyone in the world deserves to have the choice to live as long as they want; healing magic should theoretically be capable of this; if they can bring people back from the dead, there’s no reason that they should just have to accept old age.

In the end, they may or may not succeed, I haven’t decided. But they certainly contribute to the nascent field of what is known as “science”, magic written down for the masses, when previously science was the domain of elves alone, and they test the boundaries of medical magic together.

Lymsie doesn’t get along very well with any of the other members of the main cast; she blames them for how Marcille was almost convinced of the divine right of longer lived races to rule over the shorter lived ones, and while Marcille protests that framing, that’s really what it boils down to, right?

Longer lived races just deserve to live longer, the shorter lived races just have to accept their fate; nobody should try to change those facts, because what if I personally like shitting myself and dying?

… yeah, Lymsie still isn’t a very polite woman. She knows Falin is important to Marcille, and she’ll act civil enough around her as long as the subject of their research never comes up. And the less said about the rest of the group, the better. Their dynamic with Lymsie is… volatile, much like her personality.

As well, the dubious spy work that she did to infiltrate the castle eventually earns her heat from the vizier, Kabru, but it’s not exactly her problem they had prepared for elves and received one angry little half-foot, she says. Kabru is simply incensed that such an egregious gap in their security existed in the first place. What if Lymsie had ill intent?… did Lymsie have ill intent? He still isn’t sure, but it’s Marcille’s choice to work with her at all, not his.

Essentially, Lymsie is my answer to the ending of Dungeon Meshi and the failings I think it has. I don’t hate everything about the ending, I truly think almost every other aspect of it is perfect, even defeating the demon itself. I just resent the framing of how equality between the races is seen as a bad thing; and no, they don’t frame it that way, but that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it?

If a real life ethnic group had a life expectancy a tenth of the upper class, that would be considered the gravest injustice in the world; hell, to a certain extent, life expectancy is a matter of class; the rich can buy their health while the poor suffer and die, when we have the technology for that not to be the case!

I understand that I’m taking fictional worldbuilding entirely too seriously, but I find it fun, so I’m going to do it! This is my podium and you all are my audience to preach politics.

Lymsie’s design is inspired by several characters, though surprisingly not Frodo Baggins, despite appearances. Her hair was inspired by Barbara and Barbie from a manga called Shadows House, as well as a little bit of Rei from Persona. One aspect you may notice is that she has the same white eyes as Marcille, something IIRC no other character has, to symbolize that she sees the world in the same way as Marcille! Her outfit was inspired by the uniform of the magic academy Marcille and Falin went to, but with different sleeves, because I couldn’t figure out how to make them looked swamped on her. Maybe someday I’ll be brave enough to try long sleeves. Her clothes meant to look somewhat baggy on her, like they’re made for a child of a different race, not her size.

A lot of her personality was inspired by a specific song; “Show Me The Way” by Billy Talent; despite the song not necessarily being meant as being about the inescapable inevitability of death and only mentioning it in passing. It also works with her dynamic with Marcille, like, I can see an animatic in my head of it; I’d go into it further, but the post here is already so long that I think I’ll just save it for another time.

#dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #dungeon meshi spoilers #delicious in dungeon spoilers #dungeon meshi oc #dungeon meshi original character #character design #long post #my art

12 notes · View notes