#a theory just came to mind

[zombiejette]

it’s because he’s actually attracted to suffering

Isn’t that funny how Vox is sexually attracted to two very different men

One is totally asexual and doesn’t even realize it

The other is LITERALLY the demon of lust and the porn king of hell

I wonder how this poor tv set is still running

[bull-shit-suji]

hi okay continuation of my dadbastian spiel because i was rereading EW and needed to add thoughts.

originally i was working off sebastian's actions in later chapters to justify his discomposure during EW in a like "well shit hit the fan and now he's cranking up what i Believe to be dad vibes" way but i didn't have a lot of evidence from the arc itself to back up that specific correlation.

turns out i'm an idiot because look. come here. we get a couple of master-servant parallels to sebastian and ciel (angi/soma, claude/alois if you count the anime) but do you know. Do You Know what parallel we get in EW, the arc in which sebastian finally acknowledges the flaws in his current mode of manipulation?

oh yeah for sure. just a soldier, who was trained to be a ruthless killer and in no way expected to end up raising a child, coming to love that child so dearly he abandons his directive. the literal. father-daughter duo of the century.

look me in the eye. the chapter in which sieglinde forgives wolfram, aka the source of the latter panel's embrace, is literally. Titled. "That Butler, Listening Intently." go read the chapter for yourself and tell me exactly what the fuck sebastian was Listening Intently to if not the sickening display of parental adoration going down a few rooms over. learning from it so he might begin to adopt the persona for himself.

wait i'm not done. smack in the middle of the arc is a chapter 99.5, a mini story wherein sebastian tends to a recovering ciel in the aftermath of BOC. except! the soup he brings ciel is of the very same recipe once prepared by vincent for rachel, who had fallen ill, with the help of what we now know was r!ciel, inspiring o!ciel to VOLUNTARILY tell the story.

yana's deceptive framing makes this slightly hard to follow But, given the knowledge we have now, it's safe to say o!ciel was also sick in this memory. so. so tell me what the purpose of randomly throwing a blatant parallel between vincent, his FATHERRRR, and sebastian, wherein they both tended to his illness, both made him the same FUCKING meal, right into the beginning of EW's climax. interrupting the action to say "hey! remember that time sebastian accidentally cooked this kid the soup of fatherly love and fond memories? that was crazy. anyways"

i'm gonna be sick. also honorable mention for EW being one of the few arcs in which sebastian bathes ciel and endearingly pokes fun at his height. which could mean nothing.

[humlase]

Wondering if part of the reason Neil gets babied so hard by part of the fandom is his height. Short man. Shoulder/chest level to most of his peers. Many thoughts in my brain.

[kitabearuwu]

Random crack drawings from an aggie I did with my friend jeni lmao

[i-am-not-a-who-i-am-a-what]

so about the header that proceeded today's statement:

Viability as agent: Low

Viability as subject: None

Viability as catalyst: Medium

i didn't know what to think of this part of the entry at first, but the longer the statement went on... was the institute in this universe trying to manufacture avatars?

the dice can't do anything without someone to use them, they can't be an "agent" by themselves, but might be capable of manipulation, so in that aspect their viability is "low."

the dice could be a "subject" in the sense that they could use further studying, but the statement itself was a very thorough investigation of their workings, so in that aspect their viability is "none."

the dice seem to influence their holder to roll them, or at least find more victims to roll them, and could therefore be described as a "catalyst" for someone's becoming. but, as seen in the statement, their owner can give the dice to someone else (albeit not without consequences), so in that aspect their viability is only "medium."

so what about the line following all this, what does "Recommend referral to Catalytics for Enrichment applicability assessment" mean? if we go by this interpretation, i'd say it could mean the institute wanted to find a way to make the dice even more potent as an artifact, maybe even remove that pesky ability for their owner to reject them.

imho all of this this brings a whole new level of context to the events of episode seven, of unknown violent agents going after an influx of objects that seemed straight out of artifact storage. was that the nature of the titular "magnus protocol" first mentioned in episode four, the one that involved the starkwall group? containing or destroying potential artifacts before the institute could get their hands on them?

it also makes their "gifted kids program," and sam's link to it as one of the kids being studied, all the more horrifying to think about. was it not just avatars in general they were after, but child avatars specifically? no wonder gertrude got so defensive over the possibility of sam and celia dragging gerry back into the institute's business last episode, we all picked up on her clearly knowing more than she's letting on but now we might know the shape of that information a bit better.

and one final bit of food for thought... this statement had a lot of familiar themes, didn't it? free will or the illusion of it, gambling and not-so-random chance, the statement giver being done in by one final hit from what feels like a bit of an addition... all hallmarks of a certain mother of puppets. doesn't it seem fitting that "chester" would use this kind of statement to warn sam about what harm pursuing the magnus institute could bring to him, considering the one his voice might draw from? and doesn't it seem so painfully ironic that his warning seems to have only driven sam further into that web?

[harmonysanreads]

Can Amphoreus come faster I NEED to know more about Mydei, Anaxa and Phainon.

[silverthelovebug]

Brooklyn and Ben definitely convinced Yaz to start smoking with them. Brooklyn pulls Yaz aside and is like “Bro. I think you would benefit from a bit of weed”. and Yaz is mad sus. she couldn't smoke in hs bc of track and just never got into it. but Brooklyn has her hit a joint and Yaz is like “Wow… I love… not being anxious for like five seconds ….”

(Sammy does the minimum dosage on edibles)

[sun-and-flames]

Not historically accurate but somewhat another Alexander reference

In the movie Alexander(2004), Alexander says this to Hephaestion:

"And in the end, when it's over, all that matters is what you've done."

It might be a reach and coincidence but, there are way too many Alexander references in Mydei to not at least consider that they used the movie as inspiration too.

Another - historically accurate - quote, or rather mindset, of Alexander that can be found in Mydei is:

"I do not steal victory." (Alexander said this in response to the suggestion to use stealth to achieve victory against the Persians)

The same mentality can be found in Mydei in this moment from 3.0(I only thought of that after reading the new "As I've Written" today):

There are more tbh and maybe I'll do another deep dive eventually to gather them all.

[chthonic-cassandra]

thinking again, as I often do, about the peculiarity of my own internal landscape and my weird decoy layer of attachment patterns/etc concealing the whole other set of them which is actually the one most profoundly shaping me.

[otisbdriftwood]

Okay what’s your Mr. Reed wife theory?

Where to even begin! This is purely just a theory based on what Hugh Grant said about Mr Reed's secret backstory and I'm just running with it.

According to him, he has suffered a great loss and it was a huge catalyst to why he began doing what he did. So who exactly did he lose? The first to come to mind was his ACTUAL wife.

Although yes, he kept bringing her up to make an illusion of safety to the Sisters, but Hugh played it just a little bit deeper than just that. I like how it's left extremely ambiguous whether he's delusional about having a wife, suffered such a great loss he still thinks about her being present, or just flat out lying as he was with the pie. But I do think however;

1) His random assorted "Hubby" items, his wedding ring, his wife being his "soulmate", and his constant mentions of her are just a little bit too much to be total lies. It comes to him way too naturally. He is practically obsessed with his hypothetical wife, and talks about her very lovingly.

2) He does not see the Prophets as his wife. He makes no implications of this whatsoever, he doesn't talk to them/about them the same way as his "wife", he more so just treats them as something he could play with. However if he DID have a wife, surely his creep self would channel losing her into this....

3) If we do take his hypothetical wife helping him to build the house, his church, she must have been either religious, or had a strong interest in theology herself. Judging Mr Reed's type, I'm inclined to say she was religious. The ONLY display of personal religious items you will see in his house are an altar with decorated crosses at the very back of his library behind his big bookshelves. She may have been Christian, perhaps Catholic considering the style of "church" the library was turned into, and the style of veils he makes his Prophets wear.

4) His reaction to Barnes mentioning her dead father is also very telling. He asks whether she sees any signs of him, and upon hearing she doesn't, he looks somewhat surprised. We know he's been a theology professor, but according to him he started spiraling about the whole matter of the "truth" about 10 years ago. Maybe he was searching for signs of her himself, which brings us to;

5) Fire. I hope no one believed he believed in simulation theory, right? Paxton immediately debunked he doesn't, yet we don't find out what he ACTUALLY meant by fire reacting. Maybe the signs he sees from his wife are hidden in the fire. His demeanor completely changes when we bring fire into the equation and it becomes apparent how unstable he REALLY is. Fire distracts him, almost triggers him, and he spirals. We will never know what he meant by that.

[another-goblin]

I've been thinking. Are Aventurine and Dr. Ratio supposed to be fighters in-universe? I mean, most other characters (with the exception of some Harmony characters, who are not expected to deal dmg) are either professional warriors, or they have weapons, or some object they realistically use as a weapon, or there are some mystical powers they possess. I can imagine most of them fighting in a serious cutscene the same way they fight in-game.

And then there are these two, throwing casino chips and chalk. Realistically, you can't do any damage by throwing these (even the tiles Qingque throws look quite heavy, I wouldn't want to get hit by one of these). So in an actual in-game fight one of them thinks really hard about geometry and imagines dropping some ancient architecture on the enemies, and the other just daydreams about gambling so vividly that it hurts the enemies. Is it, like, the Imaginary thing? Is it what other characters see? Some formulas and graphs appear and hurt the monsters? Does a giant roulette wheel appear under a monster?

My theory is no. They are adequate fighters because they are playable characters in a gacha game, it's just a convention. Outside of fights, they are just normal people (as far as I currently understand them). Because other Imaginary characters deal dmg in ways that I can actually imagine happening in-universe, in a cutscene, for example (Welt yealding the power of a black hole with his cane, IL with his magic, Yukong with her bow and arrows, Loucha with his rapier and his freaky abundance magic). I mean, if Aventurine gets confronted by a robber in a dark alley, he isn't going to throw chips at them or turn the floor into a giant roulette wheel. He'll probably apply his street smarts.

So without his stone, Aventurine is just a guy, that's why he had to be saved by Argenti. Ratio is just a teacher, that's why he didn't help us fight the giant bug on the Herta station (I saw somebody complain about him not helping us), and that's why he needed our help dealing with that phase flame.

upd. People were very kind to remind me that Aventurine is actually a competent fighter and very proficient with a gun. It would be funny if one of his fighting animations was him going "fuck it" and pulling a gun at the enemies.  Still not beating the "normal guy" allegations, though.

[quibbs126]

So I've got a theory as to the demon patterns in K-Pop Demon Hunters and how they work, which maybe someone else has come up with already but I just wanted to say regardless

Uh, note for spoilers, I forgot the movie isn't even a week old yet. I don't know if we're still doing it, I don't know the time to stop tagging spoilers for a movie, but there's your warning, if need be

So throughout the movie they bring up shame when talking about the patterns, specifically on Rumi. But I think that has more weight to it than just being metaphorical, namely in that the patterns spread and grow via things like shame, guilt and lies

We see a flashback with Huntr/x and Celine where Rumi still has her forearms showing, meaning her patterns likely haven't grown too much from the small part we see when she's a child, but then by current day, presumably only a few years later, they've covered her entire arms and torso and are reaching her neck

Going with this theory, the reason her patterns hadn't spread much prior to this was likely because one of the only people Rumi was really close with was Celine, who already knew about her patterns. And even if she told Rumi to hide that part of herself, Rumi never really needed to hide it from her. But then with Mira and Zoey, two new people she cared about, she had to actively keep this part of her hidden from them, never going to the bathhouse with them and never being fully honest with them. That plus them now actively fighting demons, likely worsening the feeling of that part of her, is what caused her patterns to grow so much, as her shame and guilt have now greatly intensified

It's probably also why it was hampering Rumi's voice during Golden, as the song is about no more hiding, being who you truly are, and Rumi is lying through her teeth the entire time, since she's still actively hiding part of herself from her closest friends. And since they believe this song will be what finally causes the Golden Honmoon, those feelings would be intensified now, since she's so close to being rid of her shame, she just has to power through this last lie. And then her voice is fixed after spending time with Jinu and she feels less ashamed of her heritage now, at least enough to sing

Speaking of Jinu, I feel like this fits in with his backstory, or at least, what we can piece together as his true backstory. He says that he became one of Gwi-Ma's demons in the Underworld after his patterns spread too far, which was part of the fake backstory, but I don't imagine that part was necessarily a lie. Most likely his patterns would have spread as he was consumed by the shame and guilt of abandoning his mother and sister to squalor while he lives in splendor in the palace, until he eventually became a demon

It'd also explain why Gwi-Ma seems to take the form of intrusive thoughts (is that the correct term? I mean the voices in your head that are self-deprecating, but I don't know if that's intrusive thoughts specifically) when keeping the demons under his influence. The guilt and shame of their past lives is what spreads the patterns, his demonic influence, and keeps them under his thumb

There's probably more to add, but that's as far as I can think on the subject now, and I feel like I've explained my point well enough, so I'll leave it here now

[willmeowz]

am i late to the party or has anyone mentioned already how it's so interesting that we "watch" everything that's happening in tmagp through technology and there's a huge theme of computers, codes etc and iirc the extinction was supposed to manifest through human technology such as computers, code, and radio . isn't it interesting .

[fireheartwraith]

I had understood that it was Odysseus's plan to ambush the suitors in the armory: their first instinct would be to go there to arm themselves, so leaving it open is bait, but Telemachus got there first.

However, I've seen some people speculate that Odysseus had closed up the armory and Telemachus opened it to arm himself, forgetting to close it behind him.

I don’t know which interpretation is correct but this one doesn't make as much sense to me simply because of Athena. We know that Athena is helping Telemachus fight, so I think she would tell him "hey, lock the door" if he did forget to do so in his hurry. I also don't think he would need to go to the armory to arm himself. Once again, he is Athena's Warrior of the Mind. "Always be ready for battle so you're never caught off guard" must be like, Warrior 101. I don't think he would walk into a palace full of known hostile entities unarmed. Because that would be stupid. Why was he going to the armory then? Well, "check which weapons are missing to get an idea of what you will be fighting against" seems like an obvious thing to do

[seventh-district]

“Why’s he call you Darlin’?”

on my knees begging my brain to stop trying to associate this song with Sam

[renegadephilosopher]

if you go to the Aristotle page on the SEP this is for some reason given as a proof for homonymy 🥺why are they the example. this is cute nevertheless. theyre going on a picnic. theyre opening a... joint account at a bank??? okay sure ❤️whatever you say ❤️