#we get implications and vibes

[littlebigmouse]

Same. I sincerely believe the introduction of their mother is the worst scene in season 2 so far, not only because the scene itself is pretty bad, it makes very little sense in context (in terms of the characters emotional states) and retrospectively harms S1Act1.

I fucking hate this, what do you MEAN it explains it, did Season 1 not already explain it?? Did Season 1 not make you understand it already?? Did Season 1 not focus on Vander's corpse and the emotions on Silco's face when Powder tells him Vi left her? Did you not get that Silco empathized with her because he knows how it feels to be abandoned by an older sibling? Did he not spend the entire season comparing Vi to Vander and his past to Jinx's? Were there not already multiple scenes depicting Silco and Jinx's bond and how he came to fiercely love her after years of taking care of her?? You stilI needed another hamfisted justification for his love for her?? He needed to be her godfather and friends with her dead mother for you to understand Season 1? I despise takes like this so muchhh

[vigilskeep]

ranking da love interests on a scale of how unhinged theyd be if their beloved was made tranquil (they would all be maximum unhinged its just a matter of deciding what flavour)

[godblooded]

an unnecessary reminder i will go to bat any day of the week for james sunderland.

[akkivee]

skimmed thru the guidebook myself!!!! here’s what i thought was neat about it!!!

the book cover was warning text all over it lol and it reads:

‘hypnosis mic has the power to interfere with people’s minds. when handling it, please be mindful of the extent to which its users’ influence can reach. furthermore, possession of a hypnosis mic that is not authorised by the chuuoku is subject to strict legal penalties’

within the pages, there’s another warning that’s partially blocked off by the graphics, but is advising to thoroughly read thru the guidelines for optimal functionality for failure to do can cause errors, malfunctions and other issues lol

pretty sure said pages are of the box the hypnosis mics are delivered in lol

the current era relationship chart is insane lmao like there are so many arrows. if it’s important, there’s probably an arrow for it lol

a handful of timeline events were removed in favour of including info about everything all the way up to the music festival. most of these removed events were when individuals met each other, eg dohifu meeting, rei and otome meeting

i think it’s just funny lmao but the section in bb’s story talking about jiro and saburo’s jobs to get ichiro to consider making a team with them, they included a silhouette of some woman to represent hifumi’s stalker LOL

did they update the official site with rei’s blood type??? if they didn’t, he’s type a 🤔

according to dh’s most important persons page, rei and otome stopped seeing eye to eye about the true hypnosis mic and the ramuda clones

the explanations for nagosaka’s abilities are neat!!!

🎋: makes the other person laugh, weakening their abilIties (tho interesting to note it’s not written with the english word ability to imply the hypnosis abilities)

🍮: informs allies, strengthening their power

0️⃣: manipulates any number of people to his own advantage

📿:enters a meditative state that increases concentration to block the opponent’s ability (ability here is written in english to imply it’s the hypnosis abilities)

🌙:gathers courage that restores own power (parallels jakurai’s ability to restore to normality when tled literally)

⚖️:with a shout, repel all attacks back at the opponent and away from allies

otome’s likes are gardening, tea, and antiques. she doesn’t like bugs or coffee. her favourite foods are pasta and risotto and she doesn’t like meat

ichijiku’s likes are ribbons, general goods, and fashion magazines. she doesn’t like pigeons or roller coasters. her favourite foods are sweets and she doesn’t like curry

nemu’s likes are making sweets and aquatic sports. she doesn’t like tobacco or lizards. her favourite food is hamburgers and she doesn’t like shellfish

the guidebook says the effects a person experiences after the true hypnosis mic is used on them varies from person to person. there are plenty of unknowns about it, including why hypnosis abilities disappear once under its influence.

the guidebook actually doesn’t have those pics of shakku and co we got in arb lmao. tho to that point it’s kinda interesting the people’s photos they do include are yotsutsuji and hanabi

[batsplat]

maybe it's from the particularly acute disappointment of marc injuring himself at the sachsenring but this weekend (so far) has made me feel incredibly nervous for marc's future. like no guarantees of course but if marc was going to win anywhere this year (when the gap between the gp23 and gp24 is increasingly obvious, as you mentioned) it was going to be here. and i'm definitely overreacting because i'm emotional about it but it feels like him hurting himself here feels like a bad sign not just for this year but for the future at large. because it's a reminder that his body can't handle the riding style that used to take him so far. scary!

taking these two together ahahaa. this is truly the life of a sports fan huh

honestly with marc I've now swung so often and so far between 'it's so over' and 'we've never been more back' that I've gotten to an exciting point of. well. I suppose we'll have to see. I mean look, back in that jerez to catalunya stretch it did look like he might be able to be a serious title contender this season. at risk of making myself look like an idiot, I think we can pretty safely conclude that's not happening this year. but y'know, broadly what he needs to do is to figure his shit out for the rest of the year... like he kinda needs to just understand what this version of him can do under what circumstances. the thing about winning is that it's also a habit, it's something that becomes essentially muscle memory, you need to kinda have that reflexive understanding of how you've done it in the past - both in the context of races and titles. and it's still in there for him!! but he's just got to... take the rest of the season to chip away at the gap. currently, pecco and jorge don't just have the edge on him in pace, they have the edge on him in process. that's not just the bike, though it is also affected by marc being less familiar with the ducati. but pecco and jorge have just kind of gotten to the point where they know how to approach most weekends in a way where, more often or not, they will kinda maximise what was on offer for them that weekend. sometimes they chuck it down the road! but in terms of pure pace potential, right now they're getting to the point where they're there. marc is just a series of 'what ifs'. they're not all his fault, he's gotten unlucky, he's in a tough situation, he's still getting used to the new tracks on a ducati etc etc etc... but that's what this year is for. figure out the process, figure out how you actually go about getting wins in the current era - keeping your physical condition in mind - and take it from there

the physical stuff is the... yeah. the thing is, I do think he is capable of winning without all this crashing to figure out the limit. honestly, this approach of his made me deeply uneasy well well before what happened at jerez 2020. that injury and aborted comeback didn't feel like a fluke, it didn't feel like bad luck - in an awful way, it did feel like it had been a long time coming. that being said... well, y'know, marc was the only one who could win titles on the late 2010s honda, and part of the reason for that was that he figured out how to get a capricious bike just to the limit during races. you do not need to chuck the bike down the road fifty times per season to win the title on the ducati. pecco and jorge have very much shown that. sometimes it will just be dumb luck who gets injured or not! the sachsenring crash yesterday you can't really put down to marc being stupid or being irresponsible. he was hardly the only one who fell, weather conditions were tricky, shit does happen (not ideal that he tried to save the crash specifically because he knew his other bike had problems, plus the thing where he went out again before going to the medical centre, mind you). sometimes you fall a lot and you're fine, like marc for most of his prime. sometimes you crash at the start of the race and fall in front of the pack and your survival is up to fate. which is of course what happened last year to pecco, still one of the scariest crashes I've ever seen live in terms of crashes where you really do think you just got very very close to watching someone be killed in real time. this is the thing, right... at the end of the day, you can hope that marc finds an approach that relatively minimises the risk to his body - but also, you can only control so much. especially with where his body is at right now, there's only so many bad knocks you can take. you never know, you can only hope

overall, I have been thinking for a while that it's almost a bit... odd? how the physical stuff hasn't really featured at all in 2025-26 hot takes? I reckon people don't really want to think about it playing a big role, and also I suppose 'well one of them could get injured' is treated as just an underlying assumption of following motorcycle racing... but like we saw with catalunya last year, it's not just stuff that takes you out for ten races that can have big title race repercussions. especially given how marc traditionally went about winning titles, how big a part of that process it was for him. we've had such an incredible lucky streak from the start of the season until mugello that being afraid of injuries has almost... receded a little bit? in everyone's minds? after last year, in particular, where it just felt like you were always worrying about someone, it was just so relentless... and now injury worries have just come back with a vengeance these last few weeks and it is a little scary. a lot of this is scary. no real escaping it I'm afraid

but yes! anon! I agree with you! we'll get back to the smile and we'll get back to the optimism too.. at the end of the day, you can only do what you can do. we'll see what happens. if we're all massively underestimating just how much that sweet red bull cash can do and ktm comes out with a rocket ship next year and pedro wins the next ten titles, so be it. you never know

[in-tua-deep]

asleep me has just decided to start world building i guess

Imagine: you are a misfit teenage boy, a con artist. You have a best friend - or maybe a brother? You two are as close as family regardless. You're in a refugee camp when you pull a con - you pass your best friend off as the newly orphaned son of a noble or something. It's just a ploy - to give him an in with the other wealthy kids so you can steal.

Except… he doesn't really give it up? You ask a couple of times when you're leaving, but Will, your best friend, keeps putting it off. He's fallen in with a new crowd. One that respects him, elevates him. And those new friends? Well, they don't exactly like you.

Will starts sending you off on errands when he's with his friends. You go easily, because you want to be helpful, and you ignore the hushed laughter of his shiny new friends. You go on your fake little missions designed to get rid of you.

That's how you meet the Goddess.

Imagine a clearing, golden light, and a beautiful woman who calls you a trickster and says you are destined to be enemies. Imagine freeing the three chained sun gods by accident. (By fate?) Except you tell the goddess that you don’t believe in fate, and what if you become friends instead?

(You offer to steal her, and she agrees - a fine trick indeed, wouldn't you say?)

After this instance you find something out. You can use magic now? But also it seems like you have been cursed as well - you can’t die. Fate rearranges itself every time. A shield moves to a position it wasn’t in before. A sword misses its mark. You are Loved By Fate and it is an Issue.

Time passes and your best friend grows - and you have to use magic to grow with him. He’s a king now. You love him - he’s still your brother - but his smile is more and more strained every time he sees you.

Your goddess takes many forms travelling with you. Sometimes she is a woman, sometimes she is golden magic inside of a pouch. Sometimes she is a child and travels with you, and somehow you get separated with her like that. The king finds her, and immediately is taken with her. He decides to try and find a family for this child who is shy of everyone, and offers for any individual to come and try their luck to see if the child will take to them

You are the last person to try, not because you don't think your goddess will choose you, but because you are worried even if she does the king will not let her go

The king's friends stop you. You know their faces - they are the same bullies they have always been. They accuse you of being cursed because you never die no matter how many dangerous missions the king sends you on. The suicide missions.

They attack you, and they might be cruel but they aren’t stupid. Their ringleader realizes that it must be magic shifting his shield to protect you from the lethal blows.

(You can see every lethal blow that doesn’t land play through your head. The worlds that did not come to pass. You don’t tell them the number of times they murdered you in this fight. It wouldn’t change anything.)

You manage to escape and run up to the king’s room. Using fate’s magic so much has stripped you away of other magics - you look young again. Awkward and gangly with no facial hair (the way you always have since meeting a goddess and becoming something more than human)

He’s in there with an elven woman, a noble of some kind who is wise and anyone with eyes can see the king is in love with her. (You can see in her eyes that she does not love him back, not in that way.)

The king, after some debate, decides to let you try

(He doesn’t comment on your appearance - maybe he just thinks you have a baby face without your beard. Maybe the way he avoids looking you in the eyes means he doesn’t even notice.)

You reunite, and it is beautiful - your goddess surges forward into your arms and kisses you, and you feel fates magic coursing through you and soothing over the exhaustion from the fight.

But the king doesn’t see a goddess and he doesn’t see the magic - he sees a child and he draws his sword. He says many things - that he didn’t expect you to stoop this low. That he once called you his friend.

(How long has it been since that felt genuine?)

Something goes cold in you and enough is enough. Your goddess’s magic courses through you, and you will not be separated again. You use magic to blast them back, use magic to stun them, and use magic to make you and your goddess into a rat that scurries away into the walls

The magic is powerful enough that a cascade of golden chains has manifested down the wall of the room, branching downward like a geometric tree and each one tipped with an amulet with a large inset ruby

The king and the noble awaken, and the king is furious. But the elven woman looks like all her questions have been answered

She talks about how there haven’t been terrible fires throughout the lands, despite all signs pointing to the fact that the sun gods have been unchained

She names you - trickster, calamity

In mythology apparently you are symbolized by a massive golden peacock, each "feather" in your tail with ruby-gem eyes like the chains on the wall

You are named such because you are the only creature capable of going against fate and changing it

(your train of feathers is instead a train of chains - all the fates that you have broken)

(It should make you enemies with your goddess, but you decided in that clearing twenty years ago that you were friends instead)

Apparently on your suicide missions, you have been helping. Wherever you could, you changed the fate of entire cities and towns and prevented the wildfires of the Sun gods from ravaging the kingdom

The elven woman opens a portrait that has a nook behind it. You are sitting there - well, not you exactly. But a copy of you. You are a trickster and love mischief, and you love secret spaces and those who choose to look in them. That’s enough for a part of you to be present, looking sixteen and glowing with golden light

She speaks in the ancient language to you - and you speak it back without thinking. You tell her she’s just as hot as Will with a wink and it makes her laugh. Will cannot understand what you are saying, but you don’t care right now. He’s your best friend, but you aren’t his, and it hurts

He calls you immature, and the elven woman says you’re only sixteen. He snaps back that you are a thirty-six year old man. She shakes her head, and says that you haven’t been since you Awakened. Gods are different, after all

(Maybe it was the differences that drove you apart? Maybe it’s your fault? But if that is the truth then why was there already so much distance between you? You do not ask your goddess if there was a path where you still would have been close.)

You don’t feel like a god, you feel like a person who is just trying their best. You feel tired. You feel sad. Maybe that’s why you are the one who bends fate - you’re the only one that cares enough to try.

Anyway that’s when I woke up but I like my trickster - important to note that he is a redhead with a bit of a baby face

[milfbrainrot]

have always been a bit more neutral to timebomb but it has rly surprisingly grown on me so much ;-; i think i do see it more from the tragedy angle and maybe more one-sided. i'm not sure jinx has ever been in a place to reciprocate the feelings i'm sure ekko has, but it is nice to think about for years down the line and in terms of what could have been.

[waywardsalt]

was going through my blog trying to track down an old post i made talking abt my feelings on jolene and it was. much longer than i remembered it being. and haha yeah i still agree with it. i need to fucking. sort out my feelings on that character and that subplot

[pikolswonderland]

SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 6!!

I HAVE NO CLUE WHO THEY ARE BUT I LOVE THEM 💕💕💕💕💕💕💕

[aromanticasterisms]

so no furina story quest 2 :((

[famewolf]

we spent most of our session dealing with an assassin sent by my character's older brother yesterday and I'm still reeling

[misskamelie]

Head in my hands, I'm doomed, this can't be going on for this long good grief. What the hell does my subconscious want to tell me. Hate the pms hormonal storm

[attackfish]

Okay, but it did not in fact work. It's heavily implied that the Dai Li knew who and where they were, and may even have gotten Iroh the Jasmine Dragon to better keep an eye on him. When Azula showed up and wanted to capture her uncle and brother, they sure got ahold of them real fast, now didn't they?

And when did Iroh get the offer of his own tea shop in the upper ring? Right after the whole thing with Jet. If you ask me, the Dai Li looked into these two refugees at Pao's tea shop, did the math, and decided to keep an eye on them while they figured out what to do with them and how to capture them quietly. That whole time, Iroh and Zuko were already caught. They just didn't know it yet.

i still can't get over the sheer AUDACITY of iroh going to ba sing se. like did it work? yes. but ONLY because the dai li was too busy following around some bald kid looking for his dog to notice him

[galacticlamps]

no idea why but for some reason i feel like the next episode of dr who's gonna be one i'll especially want to be caught up for? again no clue why i feel that way since i'm currently behind - it's not even like i've seen the teaser for it yet or anything - but fwiw the last time i had that feeling was before fugitive of the judoon, and love or hate that episode i'd say i was right about needing to experience it in real time. i've never been one to care about spoilers much but i do very clearly remember making a point of staying off dr who related internet spaces until i got home from work the day that one dropped (and having any feelings that remind me of pre-pandemic 2020 is already a trip in itself wow) & i kinda think im about to wind up doing the same this weekend (since i already know im not gonna be able to watch it right away)

[tyrannuspitch]

working on an odinson twin manifesto. going to be at least a few days till it's in a fit state to post but. teehee. i'm going to be sooo annoying about this >:3

[comicaurora]

So uhh. If you feel like talking about it. As someone who lives in the US, how are you being kind to yourself on this upsetting morning <3

Checked in with my loved ones first and foremost.

It's interesting. The vibe I've been getting from my circle is very different from 2016. Much less… dread and horror at a realignment of the understanding of what can and can't happen here, now, in this place and day and age. More "fuck, guys. again? whatever. enjoy your consequences, maybe you'll manage to learn something this time."

Frustration and anger is not the most positive feeling, or even the most fair one to express, but it is a protective one. It hurts a lot less than most alternatives.

And it's quite a shift. It was earthshattering back then. How could this have been allowed to happen? Why couldn't it be stopped? Why couldn't we stop it? Why couldn't I stop it? Why couldn't everyone see what this meant? Why couldn't I make them understand? Did they really not care? What did that mean about humanity as a whole? Were we so thoughtless? How could anyone be trusted?

It seems… much less earthshattering to see it happen twice. Disappointing, sure. Frustrating. But nowhere near as devastating as the first time I saw it unfold. We already knew it could happen. I've already had time to digest the implications. Now I'm just freshly disappointed.

It also feels less indicative of Crushing Truths Of Reality this time. We've seen shit get bad. We've also seen shit get better from here! We know both outcomes are possible, even inevitable. We know hoping for a better future is always worthwhile. This isn't the apocalypse. It's an unremarkably bad turn of events brought on by unremarkably self-centered well-documented human impulses. It's utterly mundane in its unpleasantness. It doesn't need to be dignified with despair.

A democratic election, no matter the outcome or the side we're on, makes us all acutely aware of how outnumbered we are by people whose worldviews and priorities are demonstrably incomprehensible to us. And the first time you get outnumbered, it's a shock. Defeat is haunting. It didn't matter how badly you wanted it; by the very function of democracy, you do not have the power to override greater numbers. (insert electoral college caveat here)

The second time through, I find myself focusing on a different facet that has dramatically reduced the amount of spiralling I'm doing. I don't expect this to work for everyone, but for me specifically, it helped to crystallize a few thoughts:

You don't have the power to control anyone else. You don't. You can't share your worldview and your revelations with them. You can't make them think or understand anything. You can lay it all out for them, but you can't make them listen, and you can't make it click. A mentor can't make their student learn a lesson; that's why teaching is so complicated and hard. An active choice must be made by the person to enable themselves to understand, and they must put the pieces together in their own mind before it makes sense to them, and the pieces must have been presented in a way that makes sense to them in the first place. Lead a horse to water, can't make them drink.

These elections highlight a disconnect in what different groups of people care about; and no matter how clearly you explain yourself or how passionately you perform, caring cannot be forced on someone. Understanding and connection cannot be forced. You cannot make anything or anyone matter to someone. They have to choose to see how it matters in order to internalize it. If they choose not to, that is not your failing. You couldn't have made them do it by just Explaining Better. They are not your responsibility. They make their own choices. You can't reach inside their head and connect the dots for them.

I'm a storyteller. I make stories and put them out into the world. I hope people get something good out of them, but I have no control over what that something is. I want people to be thoughtful and kind and compassionate and hopeful and see themselves reflected in stranges, no matter their differences. I can craft stories that I hope encourage this. But that is the extent of my ability and the extent of my responsibility. I control no-one's actions but my own, and so while I am not having the best day, I am at least content that I am doing what I can, and I am not shattering myself against impossibilities trying to control the things I can't.

Sometimes, people make decisions that I think are really bad. I can't make that not happen. All I can do is try to make decisions that will result in things I think are good. Today, that means checking in on people, and not assigning too much dramatic narrative weight to an ultimately mundane set of unremarkable bad decisions outside of my control. We'll take life as it comes and help each other out when and how we can. Everything else is out of our hands.