#and to an inevitably lesser extent

[artbyblastweave]

I have a non-zero amount of sympathy for the backlash against the idea that Homelander is a more "realistic" take on Superman purely because he's egotistical and violent- very easy for this to slide into a uselessly crude cynicism about human nature! But on the other hand I also think if you overcorrect too much here you end up more than a little obtuse about the point the story is trying to make about celebrity culture

[hiccanna-tidbits]

This was the Vibe of old RotBTFD fandom when it was nigh impossible to find ANY content with Anna without Kristoff being tacked onto her -_____-

shoutout to everybody who's favorite character is heavily associated with a character they don't care about (or worse actively dislike) by majority of the fandom🥂🥳

[alllgator-blood]

I don't usually do anything for pride month cause I'm fruity every day of the year, but ahhh let's just say this year it felt especially important. Hope everyone is doing safe and that your ally friends/family members are giving you all their worldly possessions + sacrificing heretics in your name! I actually drew a very similar picture last year but didn't end up finishing it, some of the flags were definitely different though. NARINDER HAD THE EVIL AUTISM FLAG FOR SOME REASON. Shamura was the only one I finished so I'll just drop them off here:

Wow look at them go, rejecting humanity and encompassing cosmic knowledge and ceaseless war rather than masculinity or femininity....what an icon

Over the year that I've been in this fandom, I've had a lot of thoughts about Shamura's gender that I'll dump here, I WILL SAY it gets more ranty than I've ever gotten on this blog + talks about the fandom itself, so I hid it under the cut. But I feel like I've been pretty tame on this blog so far and because it's pride month, I have the legal right to make ONE rant about a queer fictional character's perception by the fandom

My weak enby heart still has a fucking death grip on shamura that hasn't been loosened in over a year at this point. They're not the best nonbinary representation in media but they're MY FAVORITE and that's all that matters. I can't stress how awesome it felt playing an actually cool, fun game a couple years ago and seeing that the Wisest, Most Powerful Eldritch Beast in all the land was a disabled nonbinary person. And it goes completely without question, it's like yeah that's shamura and *they're* going to traumadump on you and mind control your followers to rebel against you. Don't even worry about it bro

Being like....nonbinary and disabled and native and butch and yadda yadda, I swear to god I just got used to having no media/characters I could relate to. I didn't even think about how bad it felt until I'd stumble into the odd comic or indie game that had a Diverse Cast that MAY feature someone like me, but generally those types of things don't really *do* much with those characters. Not to be like THEY JUST WANT BROWNIE POINTS but...uhhh.........is it so bad to say that sometimes it does feel that way lmao, I won't play your game or read your comic if I feel like you see me as a checkbox to tick rather than a person with a fundamentally different experience.

I'll take this time to say it is kind of disheartening to see the fandom's treatment of shamura's gender sometimes, as someone who uses exclusively they/them. I've got a thick fucking skin, I've publicly acknolwedged I was genderless since before the nonbinary flag was even made, I've had a lot of time to roll with the punches that inevitably come from being trans. But literally one of the first comments I ever got about my shamura headcanons (when I still posted on reddit like a year ago) was that they didn't like that I made them AFAB and said "why can't they just be completely genderless". Like...making the TRANS character TRANSITION at some point was a bad thing? I wasn't saying "they're a girl in my drawings lol" and I even explained that I made them AFAB so I could connect with them better but. Ough

I s2g just mentioning this character brings up arguments, same with the lamb to a lesser extent, but DO NOT look at the reply chains on the youtube uploads of ANY of shamura's songs. It's always that someone calls them a him or her, someone corrects them, someone crucifies that person for being the Woke Police, blah blah blah IT'S AWFUL. It's funny in a way that the mere presence of a nonbinary person is enough to start a small war, but it also feels dehumanizing to know that my gender just cannot respectfully be talked about the same way binary genders can.

While I'm still talking about this, I don't hold it against people who played the game in other languages and call shamura "he" or w/e because from their perspective, the character is male. I've not changed my perspective of the character because I found out they're male in other releases, so I can readily accept that those folks won't either. But it feels....gross to see people who played it in english who just picked whatever binary gender they wanted shamura to be and went with that. Literally every single character with a confirmed gender is male except like, Heket + Forneus + Monch, so to take the ONE undebatably nonbinary character and decide they're not good enough the way they are is....ough. "It's my headcanon" bro that's erASURE IDK HOW ELSE TO TELL YOU. The people doing it probably literally do not comprehend what it's like to never see themself in the media they consume so I don't hate them or anything, but it took me like two decades to find a character whose gender feels like mine. It's lonely out here man

There's something to be said about me talking about that while making my kallamar nonbinary, but I'll just say this: there are so, so many male characters out there. If there was a crowd of millions of characters and ONE GUY vanished, you wouldn't be able to tell. But if there was like...a broom closet with like 9 they/thems, you'd fuckin notice if one was gone. AND I DO. Nonbinary representation isn't good enough rn to be taking the very few they/them characters out there and being like "nope my headcanon is that you're just some guy/chick", especially when sooo many people do it. Me taking one sopping wet man out of that crowd and being like "you can still be a sopping wet man, but sometimes you're a girlfail and sometimes your gender is squid" isn't the same I don't feel, otherwise I wouldn't have done it. I can't stop anyone from making shamura binary, we're all just random internet artists and do as we please, but I'm still allowed to judge from afar. I've definitely had people judge my headcanons from afar lmao

edit: I walked away and had to run back because I need reiterate, if you give Shamura features that are seen as "binary" but keep them nonbinary I think it's cool and based, especially if you are also nonbinary and just want to connect with the character more. "Gendered features" or w/e that are on a nonbinary person don't detract from their nonbinary-ness and we don't owe anyone perfect androgyny. I have boobs and an hourglass shape but also a lot of body hair + mustache and a good amount of muscle mass, doesn't mean I'm more girly or manly.

Okay end of rant, I had to get that off my chest for like EVER tbh. I really really hate discourse or drama or w/e but this is a topic that does mean a lot to me, so I made an exception this one time to make my opinion known.

[sexhaver]

probably my most rationalist-adjacent tendency is that i view death, and to a lesser extent aging, as abject horrors to be avoided whenever possible. you get one shot at life sandwiched between two eternities of nothingness and even if you get dealt the perfect hand and play it flawlessly you cap out at, like, what, 100 years? with a good chunk of them spent dealing with shitty joints/dementia/papery skin/brittle bones? i'm not stupid, i understand that at a certain point a lot of people reach a level of suffering where death is the best option, but i wholeheartedly reject the notion (which seems to come up a lot in fiction specifically) that death is an essential part of living/the human experience. Slay the Princess in particular pissed me the hell off with this when [SPOILERS] you're arguing with the titular Princess about wanting to create a universe where nothing dies and she (read: the writers) stops just short of waggling a digital finger at you before going "ohoho, but change is inextricably tied to death, so if nothing dies, then nothing would ever change!". which i could maybe accept as copium from someone living in Real Life where death is in fact inevitable, but, like, we're both chunks of a literal God here arguing about how to create a new universe. just make that not the case. have the universe expand at a rate proportional to the addition of new life. figure out something with alternate dimensions or timelines or whatever. you are GOD, stop making excuses, Death isn't going to fuck you

[kulturegroupie]

What is a groupie?

Some of you may have curiously noticed that odd second word in my blog title. If you are not familiar with the rock music scene of the 1960s-1990s, you might not know its meaning.

Allow me to tell you a beautiful tale of music, love, pychedelia and hazy freedom in the air which golden memory still fiercely echoes to the present day.

It all began in the 1960s, when all of a sudden the social wind started moving fast away from the rigid rules of the decades prior: Baby Boomers, most of whom were born in complete poverty during World War II and grew up under the strictness of an unfullfilling capitalistic and patriarcal way of life, caught a sudden collective feeling of revolution.

Driven by the discovery of psychedelics, which in turn inspired an entire new world of art and the sweet, raunchy sound of psych rock ‘n’ roll, youngsters were now gathering in masses, participating in love-ins, moving to communes, leaving their past materialistic lives far behind.

In the haste of a world spinning recklessly towards the side of progression, which only rule was to love all, love vast and love freely, for the very first time women and girls felt like they could give thanks to the artists and musicians who were the voice of a new liberated generation in a radical and empowering way.

In the words of Groupie Queen Pamela Des Barres,

“A groupie is just a music-loving muse. It's a give-and-take with a musician and the ladies who love them, or boys who love them, and it's all one big happy connection. It's inspiring them to be great, they inspire us to be great. It's a real, beautiful, life-affirming thing.”

Being a groupie was all about self-confidence, sexual liberation, show-stopping fashion, choosing to do what you like (or who you like) and carrying love with you wherever you went. No, it wasn't only about the sex— it was being a muse in a modern and feminist way and giving back to the artists that made the whole world shine for you, it was about inspiring those who had inspired you, exchanging love and electrifying moments with the people you admired, and just having a bloody good time, free as a bird, within the context of the glorious fever dream that was the 1960s.

Some groupies were so popular within the rock scene that they became famous themselves. These music loving it-girls had a particular charm, an aura, a presence intrinsic to them, their wild spirit clearly visible within their bright, glossy eyes, often making them even more interesting than the musicians they romanced. The most famous names in groupiedom include:

Pamela Des Barres

Cynthia Plaster Caster

Bebe Buell

Anita Pallenberg

Tawny Kitaen

Nancy Spungen

Chris O'Dell

Roxana Shirazi

Audrey Hamilton

Morgana Welch

Many other girls of rock were mentioned in the countless works of famous and underground musicians, which immortalised their importance as relentless inspirations for the art. We all know love is what makes the world turn ‘round, right?

The groupie tradition carried on proudly throughout the 1970s and the 1980s, when the rebellious and debaucherous rock scene slowly started becoming a parody of what it once was, until the grunge subculture ultimately redefinied what was cool and uncool, sweeping away any traces of what in the 90s was considered demeaning to women.

But was it?

There's much to say about the controversial figure of the groupie and how it inevitably clashes with the blatant misogyny of the time when it was at its peak. Being a muse is not a bad thing, and the only reason why the majority were female is because the music industry was widely dominated by straight males— mind you, it still is, even though by a lesser extent.

Being a groupie in the 1960s went hand in hand with the decade's newly found sexual liberation and the second wave of feminism. It was a direct expression of free love, a way to engage in the counterculture, it was a fierce, radical choice, a clear assertion of female power and what ultimately felt most natural to the people involved, which was to be aligned with and unashamed of one's sexual desires.

It's this spirit, this pure, anapologetic essence that I want to highlight in my work as a writer and entrepreneur. I chose a controversial name for my business specifically catering to women because women's history is controversial and women's artistic expression and voice have been silenced for centuries, just like the groupies' story remained unacknowledged and untold for decades, until one of them decided to speak up.

Thanks to the work of author Pamela Des Barres starting with her 1987 memoir I'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie and culminating with her presence on social media celebrating the role and importance of her community, there has been a change in public perspective of how the role of a groupie concerning the arts is viewed.

The groupie community nowadays, consisting of female and male music fans, insists on its inherent relevance to feminist issues, and it's a mere declaration of love for art and the human experience.

If you want to further your knowledge about groupiedom, here is a playlist designed to reawaken its deepest, most passionate sentiment— including what groupies used to listen to on their record player while getting ready for a wild night out with their favourite girlfriends and rockstars!

“LIVE THE GROUPIE DREAM” on Spotify

“LIVE THE GROUPIE DREAM” on Apple Music

[yandereunsolved]

Yandere Four & Colors w/ pregnant reader—a gift from the goddesses (requested)

ᡣ𐭩 Yandere Four fawns over you. Fawn isn't nearly a great enough word. He breaks down out of joy and hugs you tightly. One arm is pressed against your stomach lovingly, yet almost ominously. He can't leave you alone. It isn't that he won't. It is that he can't.

You belong to him wholeheartedly now, and that is a blessing from the golden three that has been a long time coming.

All he has been through pales in comparison to the joy of you having his baby. Those nights of passion you have shared together were fruitful. A greater accomplishment than saving Hyrule.

ᡣ𐭩 Yandere Four makes sure you are settled. He separates you from The Chain for safety reasons. You may get too attached to one of them, and suddenly they are raising his baby! What if he gets replaced as the father? That is not going to happen.

The Chain will still be able to visit, limitedly. So will others, limited-time.

He needs time for the both of you to grow comfortable in your new roles.

Hyrule is the one Link who is allowed around. Hyrule's healing abilities and calming presence are a thankful aid. Four just makes sure neither of you are left alone for too long. Hyrule sees him as the doting and parently anxious father-to-be. Hyrule isn't daft enough to be blind to the unhealthy parts of your relationship, but he's happy for the both of you.

The Hero of the Four Swords deserves a life—a family.

ᡣ𐭩 Yandere Four ends up splitting more frequently while you are pregnant. There are too many things going on, and he knows that The Colors are able to handle it. You are in good hands with them. They love you because they are him. They have a habit of going to immoral extremes far quicker than Four ever will, but that's just part of their charm.

ᡣ𐭩 Yandere Blue is the most overprotective. You can call him the aggressor out of the four of them. He doesn't want to lift a finger or move. He isn't exactly religious, but he does consider your baby a miracle. It stems from his insecurity. He believes himself to be too weak to protect the darling they were all blessed with, so he overcompensates.

He is the one you are left with most often when they split. If supplies are needed or work orders are piling up at the forge, then you are left with him. The others, especially Red, aren't too thrilled because they are separated from you (and it feels as if each of them may split further when they are deprived of you in such a vulnerable state).

On the few and far between occasions that they allow you into town or around the other Links, Blue is the guard color. He is ready to murder anyone for the least offensive crimes one could commit.

No one touches your stomach except them, even if you are comfortable with others touching your baby bump. Your body is yours and is protected by them. He is paranoid that another's touch may somehow harm the baby growing within you. So he absolutely despises having to handle the other Links trying to coddle you. Hylia knows Red has nearly snapped and murdered Wind because of how clingy the young hero is towards you.

ᡣ𐭩 Yandere Green is Four adjacent, essentially. He leads the other three colors, despite their bickering, and keeps the peace... mostly. Their longest ongoing argument is about how different you treat him as opposed to the others. Their combined anxiety makes them believe you see Green as your true husband and the father of your child. They have made it up in their minds that you reject them, even Green, although to a lesser extent.

So Green obsessively tries to prove to you that they are just as worthy of your love as Four, despite being him. It is complex, and they do not know how to broach the topic. So they leave it to Green to figure out. This inevitably leads to more quarrels, but they are aware in their collective conscience, deluded or not, that Green is the best for this hefty task.

He is attentive and sweet. He is the manipulative 'good guy' that you can always trust when the others are overwhelming you. He stares at you for hours on end and is ready to get you anything you may need. He will prove to you that they will all be worthy fathers of the child you're creating in your body.

ᡣ𐭩 Yandere Red is the clingiest of them all. He approaches your pregnancy with an almost childlike glee. He is the best caretaker, when it comes to younglings, out of the four of them.

He will ramble on about baby names and what you can do when the baby is born. He makes these elaborate plans in crayon. He color codes them and explains how each of them will help you. He'll even paint on your body if you allow him, with non-toxic and non-permanent ink, that is. Shh, you didn't hear this, but he almost forgot about buying the ink that didn't stain. Vio had to remind him.

He picks up a lot of random items and pretends that they are infants. He boasts about his parenting skills and shows them off. He'll lull random creatures to sleep that he found in the forest. He will slay nearby monsters and show you how he will protect you and the newborn. For Hylia's sake, he'd coo and tickle a Spear Moblin if it would bring a smile to your face.

You'll never see the more yandere side of him when you are pregnant. He suppresses that until he is away from you. Then it is a lot of slaughtering and crazed laughter. Yes, it sounds kind of goofy, but a small man with a legendary sword deciding to murder an innocent civilian because his beloved is having pregnancy pains is nothing to laugh about.

ᡣ𐭩 Yandere Vio distances himself. It isn't that he is suddenly disgusted by your pregnant figure or has lost interest in you. It is quite the opposite. He chooses to observe you and your physical and emotional well-being. He is more observant than his counterparts. He knows everything about you.

It goes as far as you growing paranoid that he was blessed with the ability to read thoughts.

He has grown more attracted to you since your pregnancy. You have that glow about you. You seem even more ethereal. So if you grow in doubt of your body during and post-pregnancy, he will always be there. He will go as far as to pop up into Four's mind and try to coach him on what he should say.

He gets you all the snacks you are craving. He is your release when your emotions swing one way or the other. He lets you sob into his chest and hit him. He is close whenever you are doing anything, whether it be your favorite hobby or relaxing. He is your silent guardian, who can't help but be a bit selfish. He may take more of you than you are willing to give, but that's what led you to Four in the first place.

[mossy-aro]

been thinking about the idea of 'coming out' and whether the experience of it is different at all for aspecs. like i feel with other identities when you come out generally (esp in queer circles like most of my friend groups) people already have a baseline of knowledge about gay (and to a lesser extent) trans identities. i think that's kind of different for aspecs though since the default amount of knowledge tends to be zero, or close to it. and so coming out, which is something you typically have to do over and over again, can become an exhausting process instead of a cathartic one (at least to me).

personally, i came out once and then called it quits. i told the people i felt needed to be told, and if i meet more, i'll tell them too. but i would say the vast majority of people i know irl don't realllyyy know that im aroace. coming out isn't really a thing i do. me being aspec/aroace is like an open secret - i'm not hiding it, but it's not something i'll bring up and i'll usually avoid the question if asked. and it's not because i care if anyone knows bc i really don't! but because once that's out there it changes the way people view my behaviour in a way i really don't like. if i say 'that person's good looking' people question whether i am attracted to them and thus my asexuality. it raises questions. if i do anything that contradicts the idea of being aroace = zero attraction and repulsed by the idea of romance/sex, my identity gets questioned and i will have to inevitability explain aspec 101 to them. like no we're not all sex/romance repulsed, also it's a spectrum, also ace and aro people can have sex and date and it doesn't make them less aspec, attraction is complicated, etc. which is something i just genuinely do not and never will have the energy for. i'd rather people just assume i'm allo because it makes my life so much easier unfortunately. my close friends know and that's all that really matters to me. if i sense that someone doesn't already know a lot about aspec people i'm just not going to tell them even if they ask.

[triptychgrip]

Fruits Basket and the temptation to individualize systemic abuse

I certainly wouldn't be the first or last person to think about this, but one thing that I think happens open with Fruits Basket -- or any other piece of media that focuses on generational trauma/systemic abuse -- is that it becomes really easy to focus on an individual perpetrator and to desire for that person to atone for their harm -- in this case, that would be Akito Sohma -- while failing to consider reparations for an abusive system in totality (the Sohma estate and the generations that came before the current zodiac spirits).

And, of course, by focusing so much on the former as opposed to the latter, we often forget that individual perpetrators of abuse are often themselves victims in the system as a whole. NOTE: this does not mean that individuals don't deserve to be held accountable, merely that in the focus on individual accountability, a lot gets left on the table and a lot of nuance gets lost in the shuffle.

The tendency to individualize when it comes to harm is understandable given what we know about human nature; it's much easier to wrap our brains around the concrete in the form of a single emotionally or physically abusive person, rather than to think of an entire system that enables abusive power dynamics to flourish over long periods of time. The latter is so weighty, and if we're talking about pragmatism, reparations offered from a single person are much easier to conceptualize than reparations from the many people who uphold a corrupt system (who are usually indoctrinated from birth to do so).

Spoilers ahead!

We get the sense fairly early on in the manga/anime that the Sohma family is a very powerful one in Japan. As we get further and further into the story, Tohru learns that various people on the "inside" have been responsible for keeping the secret of the zodiac curse (and for allowing the current zodiac spirits to believe that their fate is inevitable). The curse is truly a shackle, and by the point the story begins, it's clear that all of the current spirits -- perhaps with the exception of Shigure who even admits that the curse doesn't really affect him -- feel the heavy weight of its binding.

We learn that Hatori is the only current zodiac member to possess memory suppression, but it's also true that his father once had this ability, and that it was on behalf of Akito and his father that Hatori learned and employed this power (suppressing Kana's memories, Yuki's friends' memories, etc). However, unless I've overlooked something, we never learn Hatori's father's name, or learn about his backstory. Similarly, there are a number of "insider" maids -- some part of the "Ren" faction, and some part of the "Akito" faction -- that we see throughout the story, but we don't know any of their names either, or their backstories. And yet, these maids are a huge part of what enables the corrupt system to flourish (and to a lesser extent, what keeps the power struggle between Ren and Akito going).

I actually find it a little astounding how little focus there is on the maids, considering that 1) they know about the curse, and 2) they are not part of the zodiac, which means they could theoretically defy Akito without enduring emotional or physical turmoil (unlike the zodiac spirits themselves). And honestly, it would have been entirely plausible for them -- at least, in the most practical sense -- to defy her, as we know that Akito is rather frail. Sure, we see her be physically violent at many times throughout the story, but it's a little silly to think that she would be able to hold her own against one or more of them if they teamed up together.

A question that I find myself returning to again and again is: what incentive do the maids have to uphold the corrupt system they are part of?

Does it truly come down to their being raised with a certain set of values, and a disposition to not go against the status quo? Given what we know about Akito, it's not as if we're led to believe that she treats any of them particularly well. So does their loyalty to the idea of the curse come down to having a proximity to power? Even power in the form of a person who is clearly very fickle, prone to tantrums, and generally speaking, emotionally unwell due to severe loneliness and fears of abandonment (note: this description could apply to both Ren and Akito)? Is the prospect of being a mouthpiece for the head(s) of the family really so appealing?

I obviously don't have answers to these questions, but they still inform my thoughts around how dangerous it is to think of Akito as the lynchpin of everything, particularly when it's clear that she has been so incredibly damaged by the family, both in terms of being told that she is "special" from such a young age -- thereby basically ensuring that she has a life of loneliness due to her being put on a pedestal -- and by way of the more obvious point in being raised as a male, counter to her own desires.

Honestly, the first time that I saw the below manga panel, I broke down.

I think it was my first time truly seeing Akito as the scared little girl that she really is...I mean look at her face. She looks like a wailing baby, so utterly helpless.

She is a victim of toxic abuse, and don't get me wrong: she absolutely perpetrated horrific emotional and physical abuse that she deserves to be accountable for.

But, I really wish we had seen more follow-up to the point of reparations...and not only for the individual zodiac spirits. Perhaps this starts with some decent therapy...and to that point, how would that even work? Wouldn't most therapists just generally not believe in a zodiac curse in the first place? -- but some acknowledgment that all of them, even Akito, were caught up in a world that stripped them of their own agency all due to indoctrination that began long before any of them were even born.

[moxiebustion]

I really love Hogfather by Terry Pratchett, and not just for the Terry Pratchett of it all.

I love it because it actually fully articulates the message that has filled a hundred thousand holiday movies at this point, and that is that it is important to believe in things. It's important that you believe in things starting as early as possible.

(Also that your revenge against the greedy and compassionless evils of the world must be ruthless, violent and funny, which also crops up in a surprising number of Christmas movies.)

Usually the Christmas movie stops at the feel-good point of rewarding someone for believing.

But Pterry went deeper into that meat and actually full on explained that we need to believe in things, especially good things, when we're children. We need to believe in the grandeur and the meaningfulness in the otherwise clockwork mechanics of the universe because it's practice for adulthood as much as learning facts and nuance is. Belief is a story we tell ourselves, and everything we tell ourselves about reality as adults is, to a greater or lesser extent, a story based on whatever information we have. Reality shapes fantasy but, and this is key, fantasy also shapes reality, like water in a jug.

So it's very important we get into the habit of telling good stories. Of believing they must be true. Because that will, inevitably, shape how we view and interact with the real world and the people in it.

After I read Hogfather, so many of those other cutesy, twee, feel-good, tearjerker movies actually started to make so much more sense, in a deeper way, than they ever had before.

[artbyblastweave]

There are two intuitive ways to do an Iron Man deconstruction, in my head. The first is to go back to the original depiction of the character who, stripped of the 1960s anticommunist propaganda framing, is straightforwardly a deeply evil motherfucker. This is the tack taken by Spider-Man: Life Story, and to a significantly lesser extent The Ultimates, where he's portrayed as genuinely well-meaning but nonetheless deeply complicit in atrocity as a byproduct of his job and his Intelligence community connections. To an extent this was also what Garth Ennis did in The Boys with Tek-Knight, where the irony was that despite Tek-Knight being one of the more genuinely well-meaning heroes on a personal level, the power armor he used to participate in the superheroic lifestyle was called out as a truly grotesque and unjustifiable misallocation of resources that could only occur due to the ridiculous sway that capitalism allows a single well-positioned egomaniac.

The other method is that Stark's company outlives him, was always going to outlive him, and moreover was always going to metastasize into an unrecoverable force for destruction because once the ball was rolling it was never actually within the power of one figurehead visionary, no matter how plucky and heroic, to reign that process in. Stark loses the company during a takeover and doesn't wrest it back, or the sprawl becomes so great that systemic evil becomes an unacknowledged inevitability of how many systems the octopus is interfacing with every single day even if he's ostensibly trying to exercise oversight. Stark eventually shrivels up and dies somewhere while the Company integrates itself into the bedrock of global infrastructure and starts to chew. His ultimate failure was thinking he was a sufficiently singular heroic force that he could wrestle the corporate leviathan and win, or even try to tame it; ultimately he was less a visionary and more some guy reading passages aloud from the Necronomicon.

[coffeegnomee]

The nature of opposing your lore.

It is in the nature of Lifesteal to see you do a character, and violently, psychologically and verbally, oppose your character. 

And not even just rigid characters, though the more rigid the greater the opposition. 

And the more rigid, the less room you have to defend yourself. 

S6 Zam is the easiest example; he chooses to kill nobody, and Planet, Bacon, Mapicc, Flame, Mane, Wemmbu, Kab, Ash, Derap, and given the opportunity, literally everyone, opposed him choosing to not kill. All tried to get him to kill or tried to talk him out of his logic.

S4 Vitalasy chose to explore a character who is not evil but has ultimate power. Everyone became hell bent on opposing him and making him see that he was being evil even though he was insisting he was not. 

S5 Ash, Jumper, Minute all chose to be “the good guys” and end the server in peace and Zam, Bacon, Mapicc, Ro, Clown, Leo and the whole server with their voting, diametrically opposed that as the ending and tried to get them to see how they were not good. 

S3 Zam chose to make an empire to repair spawn. Everyone opposed it, even at the last second when he got everyone to join his side again they all turned and joined the opposition when he said it would still be the “PrinceZam” empire. His character's empire.  

S5 Ro chose to “preserve spawn” with medusa and tried to “save everyone” with the end trap, and was violently opposed in the first case by everyone, and in the second by Mapicc who opposed not just with betrayal but with blowing himself up dramatically and banning himself to make Ro rethink his character deeply and realize he was completely alone because his beliefs. 

There’s a concept that it is a law of lifesteal that power must be opposed. 

This is true for simply having 20 hearts. Or being good at pvp. 

But it is more violently - psychologically, not physically - opposed when you are trying to influence the story with character motivations. Which I find imminently fascinating. 

Because the thing is, s3 Spoke was not opposed in the finale. People joined Zam, but as the server ticked towards its inevitable end, most players joined Spoke in ending it, or banned themselves off. But Zam, doing the character of saving the server, was opposed by Spoke and torn down through the convo on the hill and the convo in the base. 

And the opposition given to Spoke s4 wormhole wasn’t trying to stop him from doing it, to shame him out of it, it was just accepting the inevitable and trying to survive. 

But the opposition given to wormhole Zam by Parrot (and lesser extent by Planet) was to try and get him to stop this character and swap back to their side.

Do you get what I mean? It’s like every time you do anything “lore” you get torn down by everyone else. But when it’s a more objective content moment it’s just accepted and fought physically. 

Like nobody tries to talk Clown out of doing anything. 

But Zam Pangi and Mapicc all tried to talk Flame out of blowing up spawn, or violently opposed his methods for getting what he wanted. Flame wasn’t doing lore, but he was pushing the boundaries of content (fight me) and lore (blowing up spawn as a way to influence you to do my fight) 

Somehow, even though lore very much exists on this server, it will always be opposed. Out of spite, out of boredom, out of believing that you’re being boring with the character. 

But it’s a brutal environment honestly. One that you either survive or leave. And not everyone survives. 

The stakes are high. And every good story need high stakes.

And if you manage to survive, you become an unstoppable force capable of weaving lore and story and character and emotion that goes far beyond any story created by another minecraft server. 

[the-ultimate-puppeteer]

Nicole Demara with a ravenlock boyfriend

•It's honestly not that shocking to find out that Nicole has a boyfriend, despite her frequent issues with money and debt collectors being a red flag, as a person and potential partner she's at worst a 7/10

•No no no, the shocking thing is y/n being her boyfriend, he's not only a member of the ravenlock family but one who is well known both for having a waspish personality and unlike many ravenlocks Who're just bark y/n also bites and he bites hard

•The way y/n and Nicole even met was because of the cunning hares being hired by him, the job just being an item retrieval from some thugs

• it was one of the jobs they'd get that didn't involve hollow raiding … So, of course, it somehow went wrong. And of course, y/n had to get more involved and meet in person instead of sending someone in your sted

•And surprise surprise they recognized who he was, which makes sense since even if you're just from a side branch of ravenlock, unlike other members you're very recognizable due to the trouble you'd caused during your adolescence and even now though to a far lesser extent.

•So the cunning hares we're understandably worried, but thankfully, Nicole was able to keep her cool and explain the situation. Which, of course, led to her attempting to increase the commission fee due to having to now enter into a hollow.

•She of course, didn't think y/n would agree off the bat to a larger amount and that she'd need to negotiate. So, of course, she's stunned that instead of being stingy and barely getting an increase, she gets it doubled, and it's y/n who offered the amount!!!

•The other shoe dropped when being told that he'd be joining them saying that since it's come to this you couldn't just leave it up to them as they'd probably damage the item even quoting many of the past reviews they'd gotten in the past

•Thankfully when y/n temporarily joined their party, nothing happened, and by nothing, I mean his overpowered ass blew through every enemy with Anby (the silver goat) till the item was retrieved.

•Nicole was very relieved when they finally exited the hollow since it meant the mission was complete and the hares were finally getting their massive commission fee

•She was still very wary though, since despite it going so well, y/n is still a ravenlock and given the family's track record it wouldn't be a stretch to think that he'd refuse to pay and/or just have them killed

•Which was immediately proven wrong by not only paying them but also giving a bonus on top of the increased fee. Apparently, it was due to the item being undamaged and the hares actually being fairly competent compared to others hired in the past

•This was definitely a huge plus to Nicole, but now she just wanted to get back to their base, de-stress and find solace in that this’ll probably never happen again, that was until he told her to keep her phone close by and that you'd be hiring more in the future then left without letting her get a word in

•That's how y/n and the Cunning hares crew met, now let's dive even deeper into this

•At this point y/n is not only a regular for the Cunning hares, having them sometimes retrieve items for him or accompany y/n into hollows for reasons that appear to be kinda random at times. Seriously, who enters a hollow just because they we’re “bored of fighting scrubs”

•Still either way y/n's become not only a regular client but also a regular guest since you'd frequently just be hanging out at their agency like it's a friend's place

•They can't even kick him out, not cause he's a regular client, outta fear or anything like that. It's literally because bro usually has food with him or ends up buying food while chilling there. That's not even getting into the food that's just stocked their just because

•So with due to how frequently y/n hangs around them, of course, they'd all end up getting closer overtime. Your irritable and waspish personality couldn't prevent the inevitably of becoming friends with the cunning hares

•So of course that includes Watching movies and buying untold amounts of burgers that you and anby should definitely not be eating and watching starlight knight with Billy and sparring with him so he can not only improve his accuracy but also making badass poses while firing.

•The person y/n ended up being closest to being Nicole weirdly enough. It was actually becoming a bit of a regular thing to see y/n hanging around with Nicole, whether it be shopping or playing with her at the arcade

•And of course, y/n also drags her into doing things he likes doing, which tends to involve sweets, VR, or playing with street cats. I should also inform you that this also includes hanging out(being dragged) at night.

•Normally she'd definitely refuse to do a few of these things, except she really enjoyed hanging out with y/n, finding your irritable personality and sharp tongue both amusing and cute to a degree

•Given how y/n is, you probably were under the impression that he initiated the relationship between them. Well, you're wrong it's actually Nicole who ends up doing it. She's the one who noticed that she not only caught feelings but that y/n definitely had to.

•Nicole didn't even bother trying to play hard to get or mind games like other women might. Since in her words both her and y/n feelings aren't games and she has no interest in acting like some highschool girl who thinks she shouldn't have to confess to the guy she loves

•Yeah, Nicole is a very upfront person when it comes to those she's close to and y/n is no exception. So she's either getting a boyfriend along with a best friend or just a best friend those are the only options in this confession

•So Nicole now has a waspish and tsundere boyfriend and while the Cunning hares still do have money troubles to a lesser degree, thankfully the house is almost always stocked with food, also debt collectors now think thrice before trying to harass Nicole since a lot of them get found folded and need to be sent to the ER when they try it

[kyzveryown]

Let's be honest about Kingdom Hearts Missing Link: the game was too ambitious for it's own good. To my acknowledgement, the only GPS-based game that managed to succeed was Pokemon GO (and to a lesser extent Dragon Quest Walk in Japan) and that was mostly due to brand identity. That was never going to work for Kingdom Hearts. Even if the game did somehow manage to launch, it probably wouldn't have lasted very long (see FFVII: First Soldier). The GPS-based game trend passed a while ago (for obvious reasons).

The game was also stuck in development hell. Multiple delays and radio silence tends to be a sign that things aren't going too smoothly (not always though). Add that to the fact that Square Enix has been going through company-wide restructures for a while, which meant that at some point some projects were inevitably going to be axed for one reason or another. KHML just happened to be one of them.

It could be that SE lost faith in the project due to the money, time, and resources spent over the years with no foreseeable return on investment. It also could be that the scope of the project got too big to a point it was impossible to see it realistically come to fruition. Maybe it was both of those. Either way, it was determined the project wasn't a priority nor worth the investment anymore.

Whether you like it or not, this is a positive. More time and resources are going into KHIV (supposedly) and hopefully we'll be getting news on that sometime within the next year. Placing story, characters, and lore that are pivotal to the overarching story in a mobile/gacha game (when the main series isn't) is still, in my opinion, a terrible decision especially when there's other ways to do that. I'm hoping this is where that ends but given how things have gone over the years, I doubt it.

All that to say I'm still interested in the story, characters, and lore of KHML. I hope that Nomura can find a way to repurpose it somehow.

[syndrossi]

What are you most excited to get to in Resonant? And what do you think, based on your interactions with us, are your readers most excited for?

Let's see, there's nearer-term and longer-term things.

In the near-term:

The harvest ball, for sure. I had plans for things, and it provides the perfect setting for it, honestly. And the tourney for the Princesguard, where we get to see who shows up to fight for the honor of protecting the princes (and princess)!

Based on reader comments, y'all are most excited about Jon getting to show his stuff once he's cleared for action, and to a lesser extent, Rhaegar getting to show off his harp skills. There's some excitement for seeing Rhaenyra finally make it back to King's Landing as well. And the hatchlings learning to use their dragonflame!

Longer-term:

I'm still deciding on whether a particular thing happens prior to the Stepstones finale, or after. It'll be fun either way. I'm also very looking forward to Daemon and the boys getting to visit other locations in Westeros. The boys' next name day. The political wheels moving. Crayne's eventual, inevitable reappearance. Allard's fate.

As for the rest of you, I'm sure everyone is excited for when the hatchlings are large enough to fly the boys, though it'll be a while yet. I find this harder to predict, honestly, in part because you folks aren't sure what's coming up! The boys getting to meet the Starks and/or go to Winterfell will almost certainly be a hit, though.

So I'll throw it back at you:

What are y'all looking forward to most?

What are you dreading the most?

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

Was suicide really seen as noble during the French Revolution? Was there any recorded tension regarding this cultural shift with more religious or less revolutionary people/groups? Thanks!

In the book La liberté ou la mort: mourir en député 1792-1795 (2015) can be found a list of all the deputies of the National Convention that died unnatural deaths between 1792 and 1799. Of the 96 names included on it, 16 were those of suicide victims, and to these must also me added a number of botched suicide attempts as well. 

Only a single one of these suicides appears to have been driven by something outside of politics, that of the deputy Charlier, who shot himself in his apartment on February 23 1797, two years after the closing of the Convention. The rest of the suicides are all very clearly politically motivated, more specifically, deputies killing themselves just as the machinery of revolutionary justice was about to catch up to them. There’s those who killed themselves while on the run and unsheltered from the hostile authorities — the girondin Rebecqui who on May 1 1794 drowned himself in Old Port of Marseille, Pétion and Buzot who on June 24 1794 shot themselves after getting forced to leave the garret where they for the last few months had been hiding out, Maure who shot himself while in hiding on 3 June 1795 after having been implicated in the revolt of 1 Prairial, Brunel, who on May 27 shot himself after failing to quell a riot in Toulon, and Tellier, who similarily shot himself on September 17 1795 due to a revolt directed against him in the commune of Chartres. Barbaroux too attempted to shoot himself on June 18 1794 but only managed to blow his jaw off. He was instead captured and guillotined. There’s those that put an end to their days once cornered by said authorities — Lidon, who on November 2 1793 shot himself after having been discovered at his hiding place by two gendarmes (he did however first fire three shots at said gendarmes, one of whom got hit in the cheek) and Le Bas who shot himself in the night between July 27 and 28 1794 as National guardsmen stormed the Hôtel de Ville where he and his allies were hiding out (according to his wife’s memoirs, already a few days before this he had told her that he would kill them both right then and there wasn’t it for the fact they had an infant son). In an interrogation held two o’clock in the morning on July 28 1794, Augustin Robespierre too revealed that the reason he a few hours earlier had thrown himself off the cordon of the Hôtel de Ville was ”to escape from the hands of the conspirators, because, having been put under a decree of accusation, he believed his death inevitable,” and there’s of course an eternal debate on whether or not his older brother too had attemped to commit suicide at Hôtel de Ville that night or if he was shot by a guard (to a lesser extent, this debate also exists regarding Couthon). There’s those who committed suicide in prison to avoid an unfriendly tribunal — Baille who hanged himself while held captive in the hostile Toulon on September 2 1793, Condorcet who took poison and was found dead in his cell in Bourg-la-Reine on 29 March 1794 (though here there exists some debate on whether it really was suicide or if he ”just” died from exhaustion) and Rühl, who stabbed himself while in house arrest on May 29 1795. On March 17 1794, Chabot tried to take his life in his cell in the Luxembourg prison by overdosing on medicine (he reported that he shouted ”vive la république” after drinking the liquor) but survived and got guillotined. Finally, there’s those who held themselves alive for the whole trial but killed themselves as soon as they heard the pronounciation of the death sentence —  the girondin Valazé who stabbed himself to death on October 30 1793 and the so called ”martyrs of prairial” Duquesnoy, Romme, Goujon, Bourbotte (in a declaration written shortly before his death he wrote: ”Virtuous Cato, no longer will it be your example alone that teaches free men how to escape the scaffold of tyranny”), Duroy and Soubrany who did the same thing on June 17 1795 (only the first three did however succeed with their suicide, the rest were executed the very same day).

To these 24 men must also be added other revolutionaries that weren’t Convention deputies, such as Jacques Roux who on February 10 1794 stabbed himself in prison, former girondin ministers Étienne Clavière who did the same thing on December 8 1793 (learning of his death, his wife killed herself as well) and Jean Marie Roland who on November 10 1793 ran a sword through his heart while in hiding, after having been informed of his wife’s execution, Gracchus Babeuf and Augustin Darthé who attempted to stab themselves on May 27 1797 after having been condemned in the so called ”conspiracy of equals,” but survived and were executed the next day, as well as two jacobins from Lyon — Hidins who killed himself in prison before the city got ”liberated,” and Gaillard who did the same thing shortly after the liberation, after having spent several weeks in jail.

With all that said, I think you could say taking your life was considered ”noble” in a way, if it allowed you to die with greater dignity than letting the imposition of revolutionary judgement take it instead did. It was at least certainly a step up compared to before 1789, when suicide (through the Criminal Ordinance of 1670) was considered a crime which could lead to confiscation of property, opprobium cast on the victim’s family and even subjection of the courpse to various outrages, like dragging it through the street. To nuance this a bit, it is however worth recalling that this was only in theory, and that in practise, most of these penalties had ceased to be carried out already in the decades before the revolution, a period during which suicide, in the Enlightenent’s spirit of questioning everything, had also started getting discussed more and more. The word ”suicide” itself entered the French dictionary in 1734. Most of the enlightenment philosophes reflected on suicide and the ethics behind it. There’s also the widely spread The Sorrows of Young Werther that was first released in 1774. Furthermore, most revolutionaries were also steeped in the culture of Antiquity, where suicide was seen as an admirable response to political defeat, perhaps most notably those of Brutus and Cato the younger, big heroes of the revolutionaries. Over the course of the revolution, we find several patriotic artists depicting famous suicides of Antiquity — such as Socrates (whose death is considered by some to have been a sort of suicide) (1791) by David, The Death of Cato of Utica (1795) by Guillaume Guillon-Lethière, and The death of Caius Gracchus (1798) by François Topino-Lebrun. According to historian Dominique Godineau, the 18th century saw ”the inscription [of suicide] in the social landscape, at least in large cities: it has become “public,” people talk about it, it is less hidden than at the beginning of the century,” and she therefore argues that the decision to decriminalize it in the reformed penal code (it didn’t state outright that suicide was now OK, but it no longer listed it as a crime) of 1791 wasn’t particulary controversial.

Furthermore, that committing suicide was more noble than facing execution was still far from an obvious, universal truth during the revolution. In his memoirs, Brissot does for example recall that, right after the insurrection of May 31, when he and other ”girondins” discussed what to do was an act of accusation to be issued against them, Buzot argued that ”the death on the scaffold was more courageous, more worthy for a patriot, and especially more useful for the cause of liberty” than committing suicide to avoid it. The feared news of their act of accusation did however arrive before the girondins had reached a definitive conclusion on what to do, leading to some fleeing (among them Buzot, who of course ironically ended up being one of the revolutionaries that ultimately chose suicide over the scaffold) and some calmly awaiting their fate. In her memoirs, Madame Roland did her too consider going to the scaffold with her head held high to be an act of virtue — ”Should I wait for when it pleases my executioners to choose the moment of my death and to augment their triumph by the insolent clamours of the mob to which I would be exposed? Certainly!” In his very last speech to the Convention, convinced that his enemies were rounding up on him, Robespierre exclaimed he would ”drink the hemlock,” a reference to the execution of Socrates. The girondin Vergniaud is also said to have carried poison on him but chosen to have go out with his friends on the scaffold, although I’ve not yet discovered what the source for this is. It can also be noted that the number of Convention deputies who let revolutionary justice have its course with them was still considerably higher than those who attempted to put an end to their days before the sentence could be carried out.

According to Patterns and prosecution of suicide in eighteenth-century Paris (1989) by Jeffrey Merrick, there was indeed tension regarding the rising amount of suicides in the decades leading up to the revolution. Merrick cites first and foremost the printer and bookseller Siméon Prosper Hardy, who in his journal Mes loisirs ou journal des evenements tels qu'ils parviennent a ma connaissance (1764-1789),  documented a total of 259 cases of Parisian suicides. Hardy saw these deaths as an unwelcome import from the English, who for their part were led to kill themselves due to ”the dismal climate, unwholesome diet, and excessive liberty.” He also blamed the suicides on "the decline of religion and morals," caused by the philosophes, who in their ”bad books” popularized English ways of thinking and undermined traditional values. He was not alone in drawing a connection between the suicides and the new ideas. According to Merrick, the clergy in general ”denounced the philosophes for legitimizing this unforgiveable crime against God and society, which they now associated with systematic unbelief more than the traditional diabolical temptation.” In practice, many parish priests did however still quietly bury the bodies of persons who killed themselves. The future revolutionary Louis Sébastien Mercier did on the other hand blame the government and its penchant for inflated prices and burdensome taxes for the alleged epidemic of suicides in his Tableau de Paris (1782-1783).

In La liberté ou la mort: mourir en député, 1792-1795 it is also established that there weren’t that many participants of the king that killed themselves once the wind started blowing in the wrong direction, but that is not to say they didn’t exist. As example is cited the case of a man who in April 1793 shot himself on Place de la Révolution, before having written ”I die for you and your family” on a gravure representing the head of Louis XVI. There’s also the case of Michel Peletier’s murderer Philippe Nicolas Marie de Pâris, royalist and former king’s guard, who, similar to Lidon, blew his brains out when the authorities had him cornered a week after the murder.

Sources:

Patterns and prosecution of suicide in eighteenth-century Paris (1989) by Jeffrey Merrick 

Pratiques du suicide à Paris pendant la Révolution française by Dominique Godineau

La liberté ou la mort: mourir en député, 1792-1795 (2015) by Michel Biard, chapter 5, ”Mourir en Romain,” le choix de suicide.

Choosing Terror (2014) by Marisa Linton, page 276-279, section titled ”Choosing how to die.”

[assmaster-8000]

i legit forgot about my obscura oc??? they were supposed to be the evening star (hesperus/vesper), younger brother to the morning star (eosphorus/phosphorus). essentially— because they share the same soul (both represent venus), the stronger brother will withstand the agony of an incomplete soul, whereas the weaker brother will inevitably be destroyed by the weight of their incompletion to thus allow the stronger brother be 'whole'. because hesperus' father was a mortal, and eosphorus was born of 2 gods, he was naturally weaker— and hence afflicted with fractum anima.

both are priests of the solar god. they are not children of the solar god, but are related to it (their mother, venus, is a lesser deity made of the solar god, but not considered it's daughter). the solar god, in my interpretation, IS real— and is rejecting hesperus to succeed the role of the head priest, in favor of eosphorus. so, in other words, it won't help hesperus. eosphorus insists he can cure his brother with his own divine might, and forbids him from straying from his side. but years are a luxury a dying mortal like hesperus is not afforded. at age 45, it only eats away at him to agonising extents. he then gets desperate, and ventures into the marketplace to find lunar ichor under the guise of vesper. when eosphorus catches wind of this, he's absolutely livid— torn before anger, fear, and betrayal. so he, too, goes into the marketplace to retrieve his kin.

other than that, both brothers have their respective factions. eosphorus has the largest faction of followers in the world, commanding an entire city; while hesperus leads a quaint covenant, otherwise known as the hesperides. the older generation's origins are mysterious, but they're the ones who tip hesperus off to the marketplace, and who guide him through it. in a bad ending, eosphorus burns the hesperides alive to force hesperus back.