#less of a ramble and more of an unhinged analysis

[blackbloodteeth]

ah, I wonder what some of your takes about Fire force are

Y'all better strap in.

Actually, I'd like to start this off with reiterating that I did enjoy Fire Force for the most part and was largely into it for it being its own thing, so this isn't just "Soul Eater guy takes a dump on thing that isn't Soul Eater for fun" and most of my opinions come from a standpoint of my experience with Fire Force as a standalone series.

I'm also gonna try to be vague, but this will inevitably touch upon some level of spoilers, so read at your own risk.

That being said, I'd like to mention some things I liked about Fire Force to start off with: While the setup is admittedly very slow, the mystery it builds is intriguing as hell, and had me on the edge of my seat when it proceeded to somehow get even more batshit insane. There are a lot of good characters that end up really shining (to an extent, more on that in a bit) – Joker was a phenomenal antagonist and extremely entertaining. Benimaru and the twins were fun characters (hell, his whole district was probably one of the funnest settings there). Plague doctor guy is a huge piece of shit (/affectionate). I could list quite a few characters because they have an interesting way of existing in this strange, post-apocalyptic world that steadily unravels.

Also one of the biggest positives this series has is the range of abilities. You wouldn't think making every character a Fire-type would be inherently engaging, but somehow the creative ways to interpret the concept of thermodynamics just keep on giving. The human body's responses to heat causing unique and devastating effects? Literal fucking time travel via inhuman speeds and the leftover heat of the universe? How do you come up with this shit.

There's also a really fascinating concept that gets executed in a fittingly batshit manner later in the manga that has me itching to know how the fuck they're going to adapt that, but on the account of that being a later incident, I'm not going to elaborate lmao

Now. Here's where things start to go wrong.

I don't think you need me to say Ohkubo somehow got worse at writing women, because everyone and their mum is already aware of this. Bare minimum personalities, usually a tool to service the male characters, literal objectification, etc. Why is he is like this.

I think the only interesting female character was probably Haumea (and Shinra's mom to some extent, however I'm biased towards her design), but that I think had something to do with her design not really mirroring anyone in Soul Eater's and because she's a spiteful little shit, god love 'er.

And of course, it's obligatory that we have to mention Tamaki, who is probably the mascot of said writing issues at this point. Thing is, though, I actually love her design – A flaming two-tailed cat is an inherently awesome concept, which is why it sucks to see her potential completely squandered in favor of a "running gag" that genuinely no one is comfortable with. A lucky cat who brings misfortune onto itself is a very fun concept, and you went and used it for that. The attempt to write in a self-indulgent excuse of this whole thing late in the manga was not only irrelevant to the rest of the plot, it was, as the kids say, extremely cringe.

Look, I'm not here to soapbox against sexy woman, but when the character who has spent the entire series being distressed and uncomfortable about being unclothed and groped by other characters who are equally distressed and uncomfortable by the male author's fetish, suddenly decides she's going to have to accept being sexually objectified by men for "the sake of humanity", it really makes you think about Japan's view on women. Also she's canonically 17 at most, fuck off.

Anyway, with that out of the way: Joker. I could write a lengthy memorial piece for how brutally the writing murdered him by the end. I said I wasn't gonna spoil, but you just gotta know, when you give me an incredibly entertaining deranged man and then throw him in the trash and then light that trash on fire before the plot reaches its climatic big'n, I'm going to be just a little bit upset about it. It's incredibly obvious to me that Ohkubo didn't know what to do with him after a certain point on the account that his story eventually fizzled out in favor of literally anyone else, but not even showing him in the background of the epilogue was such a personal insult to injury to me. He might as well have actually died at that point.

I think part of this issue lies in that there were almost too many characters to keep track of by the end of the big climax, hence why this led to poorly juggling who actually gets screentime by the end of it. This, of course, is only a symptom of one of Fire Force's greatest downfalls: In that it had no time to actually properly work through its ending after the sheer amount of setup it was playing with.

One could potentially assume Ohkubo is just terrible at endings, however I've also heard there was an actual crunch to complete the series in the amount of chapters allotted, so take that for what you will.

See, I've said I found the mystery of the series to be fascinating and engaging in keeping me hooked to continue reading. I think that steadily building up the insanity happening within this world to the point by the time we learn the answer to the question first proposed at the beginning, it's only a footnote to what's unraveling, to be one of the most entertaining and gripping media I had the privilege of laying my eyes upon (momentary shout-out to the fan translation team for the manga, by the way, they absolutely killed it). That, unfortunately, is where it ends.

After a certain point, it keeps building up this insanity much like a train derails, lunges off a cliff, and then continues going so fast it rides across the surface of the ocean. The problem with this is that at some point it becomes so much, it's suffocating. There was a lot of action so it eventually became somewhat mind-numbing due to the lack of anything to really break up the pacing, which wouldn't have necessarily even been that much of an issue if it had actually given the audience a breather by the end. I mentioned there was an epilogue, but it was, like, one chapter at most, and a significant portion of it wasn't even dedicated to Fire Force.

One chapter to finally soak in the conclusion, and you don't even really get to spend it with the characters you've gotten invested in throughout the entire series. No time to take in what's happened to them, what's gonna happen to them, or even a sense of accomplishment as it just scoots the reader along to welp, show's over, folks. We got one panel of Shinra after the events of the series conclude. One, of the main character.

This of course dives into the delicate topic that is Ohkubo's futile escape from having been the guy who also made Soul Eater. Obviously that's probably my favourite series of all-time, and yet I am absolutely livid with the incredibly shallow connection he attempted to force into the ending, and I have several reasons for this:

It's incredibly cheap. It feels like it was done specifically to get more "attention" on Fire Force through easy means and not its own merit; less like a cute easter egg or nostalgic throwback, and more like it was just thrown in as bait for a starved fandom's wallet. Sure, maybe I can't confirm if that was really the intent, but it sure's shit feels that way when it takes up half the epilogue and the lore tie-in is as stable as the economy.

Like I mentioned, the attempt to integrate Fire Force into Soul Eater's lore leaves way more questions than it answers (and also sets itself up for failure regarding appearing like Soul Eater was going to get a sequel, however that's its own issue). There was so much I wanted to know about Fire Force's world by the end, and instead it kinda just... shoved it all under the rug, and said "alright, you figure it out" considering some of said lore doesn't necessarily mesh well with Soul Eater's world as it stands, for as little as we know about it. Sorry if this is repetitive, I'm starting to get a little loopy from how long I've been typing, haha.

Biggest one for me personally: Earlier in the series, there was an actually tasteful and interesting reference to Soul Eater through a dimensional rift that leads to Death City. This makes the later tie-in a complete slap in the face, because not only did Fire Force not do anything with this dimensional rift set-up, the ending almost retcons whatever the hell it was trying to allude to with that idea. Why must the good ideas die young.

I mean honestly, I'm not necessarily against Fire Force connecting with Soul Eater in any form, I just think it needed to be done right. Fire Force was already being stretched thin by its own plot, so throwing that in with bare minimum elaboration without expanding upon its own world just kinda feels... disrespectful, to both medias.

I won't say that the end of the manga wasn't the most hype shit known to man when the chapters were releasing (you really had to be there for it, haha), but after all the adrenaline died down, I was left drained and somewhat critical of the writing given I had genuine attachment to the series as it was. It didn't really need any fanservice to prop it up, which to me is why said connection feels shallow at best when it eats away "screentime" from Fire Force's own conclusion.

Honestly, part of why I'm intrigued to see how the anime adapts the rest of the manga (aside from certain events) is because I truthfully hope it fixes the pacing issues the climax suffered from. I'm not terribly optimistic about it given there's only a couple more seasons in the works, and the manga set it up with a loaded question regarding the Soul Eater tie-in, but can't exactly say the ensuing chaos won't at least be entertaining.

Alright, I've been at this for well over an hour, so I'm gonna go ahead and roll the credits here since I've got most of it outta my system, haha. This is the danger of asking me discussion questions / my opinion, hahahah (you think this is bad, you should see me on Discord).

[khruschevshoe]

"You too, huh?": An Unhinged Ten/Jack/Martha Meta

Alright, so, Ten/Martha/Jack's dynamic has been rotating rent free in my brain all week. You have two people- Jack and Martha- who both admit to fancying a man who could never love them back, a man who is so embroiled in grief over a woman that Jack clearly once loved as much as he loved the Doctor, a man who showed them the stars and showed them the horrors of the universe. A man who directly leads to them both becoming greater and worse than they ever were before, a man who took their lives and twisted himself inside of every strand of them forever, a man who offered them a hand and kissed them and became the best and the worst thing to ever happen to them.

And it's not just the Year That Never Was- it's more than that. It's Jack dying for the Doctor and then being cursed with eternity and yet despite a century of being tortured by Torchwood/waiting for the Doctor, he never lost hope in the Doctor being able to fix him. It's Martha going through some of the worst shit any companion has had to in a single season (the racism/hopelessness she had to face in Human Nature/Family of Blood, being stuck in the 1960s for months and having to get a job with no guarantee that she'd ever make it out, having to walk the dystopian earth for a year with the weight of the literal world on her shoulders, nearly burning to death due to a living sun, taking on the psychological weight of keeping the Doctor steady- hell, the Doctor's purposeful ignorance of her feelings isn't even at the top of the list and yet it still did damage) and yet managing to find the strength to respect herself and leave.

It's the way that both of them have their images of the Doctor irreversibly cracked at the end of the Year That Never Was. They still believe in the Doctor, would still go to the ends of the earth for the planet, as we see in Journey's End, but they don't quite fancy him anymore. They can't. Jack was tortured and killed over and over again by the Master for a year straight and Martha was forced to walk the burning earth for a year straight while her family was tortured and yet at the end of it all, the Doctor didn't comfort them. He cradled the Master in his arms and begged him to regenerate and sobbed when he didn't.

It's the way that Martha and Jack are the ones to make the initial threats to Davros in Journey's End. (Yes, Sarah Jane helped with the warp star, and made threats of her own, but Martha and Jack opened up the comms. They looked the creator of the Daleks in the eyes and said do you hear me?) Martha and Jack walk off at the end of Journey's End holding hands, because they're so similar, at the end of the day, because they understand each other, because "you too, huh?"

But it's also the Doctor looking at them both and seeing Jack and seeing something wrong with the man he once loved (don't tell me that Nine didn't reciprocate his feelings, I've got a whole post on the Rose/Jack/Nine dynamic) that he can't ignore, because he's the last one of his species and he's the only one left to pay attention to the laws of time. It's the Doctor needing a doctor of his own, someone with a better grasp on themselves than he does, and completely ignoring the damage that it does to her to keep him steady.

It's the Doctor being unable to love Jack while Jack over and over again coming to his call. It's the Doctor coming the second that Martha calls him in the Sontaran Stratagem and maybe, just maybe, realizing that he got something wrong. It's about Martha being a doctor being a soldier and the Doctor being a soldier who never wanted to be a soldier but won't admit that he's a soldier and Jack being a con-man who was fixed and broken by a doctor and so became a soldier to find his Doctor.

(It's about the fact that after Journey's End happened and the Doctor lost Donna and Rose, he really should have realized what he could have had waiting for him. Maybe gone back and groveled and maybe gotten slapped and then gotten hugged. Or kissed. Or they slept together, if that's your jam.)

[screamcicle]

I can see Nirei as the type of hypocrite who tells his friends to share their burdens but doesn't share his except for the mundane or super obvious ones.

That one Bofurin chat log where he asks for tips with his bed hair? Sure, that's fine, that's normal. How much he dislikes being a weak fighter? Well, yeah, that's obvious, no use hiding it. He'll openly say he's pathetic because surely others see it too, he's just saying it ahead of them. He'll ask Suo to teach him how to fight because he wants to be useful.

But everything else? Nah. I can see him mentioning being sick because he's a vice-captain with responsibilities, but he won't go into it or ask for help. If he sees his former bullies and they approach him? Oh, he's taking that to the grave. Spiralling thoughts about all his friends finally getting tired of him for being weak, pathetic, nosy, and weird because he definitely has some sort of abandonment and trust issues from years of being bullied? Why would he bring that up? Why wouldn't they leave him eventually? It's fine, he can deal with it.

I think about those QnA videos on the official Wind Breaker twitter and his answers are like (idk, maybe I'm reading too much into it) "What did you do during breaks in elementary?" "Pretended to be super heroes with my friends." but he says it so hesitantly, like he's lying or like he isn't sure what to say when it comes to his past. Like you're just saying you played pretend, a generic childhood activity, so why do you sound like that? This is pure speculation, but did they abandon you to save themselves when the bullying got too bad so all your memories feel tainted? Or are you just lying about having friends?

There's another one that goes like "What do you like others doing for you?" And his answer is just being thanked. It's not about being cared for or reassured, it's about being thanked because he's always helping everyone!! I truly believe that Nirei wouldn't know what to do with himself if he got a fraction of the attention he gave others. He'd probably feel like he's being coddled or looked down on, but because he's also an objective person, he'll keep it to himself because he knows it's just him being fucked up and irrational.

But oh, he doesn't have to worry about that anyway, because he's so open and cheerful. :) So everyone thinks he wears his heart on his sleeve. So of course he'll share his burdens all on his own. :) But then you sit down and think, and it hits you: has Nirei ever told you anything about himself, or is it all mundane surface level stuff?

Not to project (I'm projecting) but as someone who was picked on as a teen and also had horrible luck with friends (they were mean to me :((( ) I think Nirei would really struggle with suddenly having a group of really nice friends.

We don't know much about his past other than "he was bullied" but we see him getting stomped on!! There's no way he's not still recovering from that treatment, pair that with his horrifically low self esteem and I think he's the type to always wait for the other shoe to drop.

That's not to say he doesn't love and trust his friends. He ABSOLUTELY does - need I remind you of what he says to Sakura during the Endo fight - but I also think that, deep down, he thinks if all of his friends turned around and stopped liking him one day, it would make sense. He's used to people not liking him, perceiving him as weak and pathetic, so if all of Furin decided that they didn't want him around, I don't think he'd fight it.

Ohhh my little boy (ಥ﹏ಥ)

[cellarspider]

Rambles in Star Wars History: The extreme shenanigans that changed an Empire

Bioware games can absolutely fascinate me, in part because of their worldbuilding, and in part because of where the worldbuilding ends. I mean, I did a whole long series of posts on the grammar of Qunlat and I have at least a dozen essays worth of material of exegetical analysis of religion in Dragon Age kicking around in my brain, which I keep threatening to actually manifest.

But since I'm here with my worldbuilding hat on, I'm going to ramble about Star Wars: The Old Republic, focusing on some of the sometimes-hilarious drama that's implied by the plot, and the implications for how these shenanigans remade a major galactic society in the process. Involved will be a man who faked his death to get out of going to meetings, a wine uncle who might become emperor, a living scowl with dangerous shoulders, and other assorted animals.

Expect a lot of bonus rambles in the image alt-texts, which is where I store commentary and jokes that I can't fit into the flow of the main post.

———

Before I dig into the topic at hand, I have to set the scene for those who don't know the game, or have forgotten in the fourteen years since the game launched.

Spoilers in the post below for Act 1-3 of the Imperial Agent, Sith Warrior, and Inquisitor storylines, Act 1 of the Jedi Knight storyline, the post-Act 3 Battle of Ilum flashpoint, and for various expansions including Rise of the Emperor, Knights of the Fallen Empire, Onslaught, and Legacy of the Sith. Assume that all reference links to Wookieepedia contain major spoilers.

SWTOR is an MMO set 3600 years before the Skywalkers crashed through the ceiling tiles of the galaxy, though it's not to say anything was less chaotic back then, just different chaos.

(Pictured: Anakin Skywalker, circa 32 BBY-4 ABY)

In this time, the titular Old Republic is opposed by a Sith Empire, which is precisely as functional as one might expect. After a decades-long conflict that ended with a Sith victory but left both sides exhausted, a state of cold war began. The Jedi, their Grand Temple destroyed, left Republic space to settle on an ancestral world. The Republic, battered and reeling, tried to recover its stride through use of its superior size and resources, and producing a truly unhinged number of superweapons.

The Sith Empire, in some ways, tried to pretend everything was fine for quite a while. They had successfully forced the Republic into a favorable treaty to end the war. They'd gained territory, they had a lot of work to do there.

…But as things started to look more and more like war again, they were left with the uncomfortable realization that they had sorta kinda killed most of the Sith in the last war, and Imperial citizens in good standing weren't producing enough Force-sensitive kids fast enough to rebuild the losses. Might've had something to do with most of them being dead.

The Empire, of course, is an absolute clusterfuck of a society. Slaves toil to maintain its power. Children of a slave and a citizen will be citizens themselves—unless they're "aliens", a category that includes everyone that isn't a human or a Sith pureblood, the original Sith species.

Being a citizen isn't great either: The Force-blind face mandatory conscription into the military, and can never rise to the highest echelons of society. Above them, the Sith act as a semi-hereditary aristocracy of evil space-wizards that serve an immortal, eldritch Emperor, their living god who has also kiiiind of gone AWOL for reasons only a few of them understand. He's torn between doing his job or staring at a living paperweight, and the paperweight has been winning. He also recently got trapped by an evil hole in the ground, it's complicated.

With the Emperor incommunicado, the duties of the state fall to the Dark Council, a ruling body of up to twelve Dark Lords of the Sith. Each have their own sphere of governmental influence, which are, one can only assume, very dark as well.

Presumably, the Dark Council had something to do with the inevitable yet still surprising solution to their space wizard deficit: over a thousand years of laws were suddenly overturned. Slaves, aliens, and prisoners were not only permitted to become Sith, it was now mandatory that they report for induction into training programs if they possessed any hint of Force-sensitivity.

This is how one of the eight protagonists of the MMO gets their start: if you play the Sith Inquisitor plotline, you begin as a former slave who has survived basic training and made it to the Sith Academy, where your teacher dearly wants to kill you. Your first mission: survive school.

I'm sure this is very relatable to quite a lot of you.

Now that I've got my PhD with only a few gray hairs, I'm looking back at this premise and thinking: This would completely upend the social framework of the Empire. You'd have every established Sith Lord in the Empire scrambling to kill these threats to their power, or harness them against their enemies, or both.

This is actually canon, but canon never touches on the broader, systemic implications of what the new Sith would do, and who they were before—Sure, the overseers of the training programs seem to be doing their damnedest to kill and undermine the newbies while maintaining plausible deniability, but enough of them survive to reshape the Empire. We know that. You play as one of them.

How in the fuck did the Dark Council ever manage to get this policy implemented in the first place? Obviously they did somehow, but the specifics are never mentioned.

But the specifics have the possibility to be hilarious.

The Dark Council itself is composed of Sith who either killed their way to the top, or inherited their seat from their Sith master—who they probably murdered. Turnover on most Council seats is incredibly high. The Spheres of Ancient Knowledge, Technology, and Military Offense each have three different Councilors within a single year, for example.

This also means that whoever ends up in charge of a Sphere might be entirely unsuited for it. Who heads up the Sphere of Expansion and Diplomacy? The least diplomatic guy on the Council, naturally. He goes by Darth Ravage, which fits in well enough with the three different Darths whose names mean 'death' (Thanaton, Mortis, and Rictus). The player can even end up as Darth Nox--'Darth Night'. You get the title by killing one of the Darth Deaths.

So, which of these barely-domesticated evil goths probably voted to allow 'inferior' beings to become Sith, overturning a fundamental tenet of imperial sith philosophy? Probably not the guy in charge of Sith Philosophy! We never see him, but he seems to have been a traditionalist. On the other hand, Darth "Murder has no rules" Ravage might not be huge on tradition, so we can mark him down as a "maybe". But he doesn't seem to be an instigator for something like this.

But on the subject of instigators: Darth Jadus.

Darth Jadus is an experience. While many of the other Council members make it quite clear they're angry enough to chew on the furniture, Jadus unnerves all of them by being utterly calm and composed, as long as you don't count how intensely fervent and irrational he sounds when he starts talking about the Dark Side. He's unhinged in a distressingly hinged-seeming way.

Heading up the Sphere of Intelligence, Jadus is a noted iconoclast on the Dark Council, using his authority to open Imperial Intelligence positions to aliens. He chooses slaves and Force-blind citizens to be his advisors and agents, ignoring the traditional power structures of the Sith. He prefers his literal cult following of fanatical adherents instead, who see him as a visionary savior, a terrifying inevitability, or both.

This means he seems to have basically no interest in elevating other Sith. In fact, he hates the way the rest of them run the Empire. Making more of them might potentially be against his interests.

Or at least it would be, if he didn't have some long-running secret plans that he wants to keep the other Dark Council members from catching wind of. Advocating for slaves, aliens and convicts to become Sith would superficially fall in line with his philosophy, and just raising the idea in public could cause such social chaos that his true plans would benefit from it. Jadus is also the most genre-savvy sith in the entire game: he seems to almost be aware at points that he's neither the protagonist nor main antagonist, and thus his evil plans involve not messing with either of them. When he jostles up against the main plot and realizes he has no plausible means to derail it, he responds by leaving the plot entirely.

Given the tactical chaos and uncomfortably fourth wall-touching strategies Jadus makes use of, let's mark him down as a "yes".

But Jadus is an unpopular one on the Council. He's creepy. Sith HATE feeling creeped out. That's supposed to happen to other people, dammit, not them! And with his disinterest in politics and his deep interest in foisting his manifesto on everyone, he's not the most effective Dark Councilor.

He might be able to pull in a few—Darth Decimus, head of Military Strategy, seems to have been quite willing to exploit any advantage he might be able to squeeze out of a situation. Fun side note, his voice actor also played the First Order officer who was just so done with Hux at the beginning of The Last Jedi.

[Video Description: A compilation of Mark Lewis Jones as Captain Moden Canady from The Last Jedi, with the video quality partially encrunchified by YouTube. This includes all of his shots from the film, from arrival of the Seige Dreadnought Fulminatrix, to the extremely annoyed look he gives the fireball that kills him. Sound supervisor Matt Wood was apparently pretty sure "FIRE ON THE BASE!" was going to be used as an EDM drop, and I can confirm, I've heard it out in the wild.]

Who else have we got rattling around in this Council, who might have extremely ridiculous reasons to vote yes? Well, we have Darth Vengean, head of Military Offense, was all about the Offense. Who needs defense? That nerd Darth Marr? HA! No, Vengean wanted to restart the war with the Republic. More bodies for the war machine would probably be fine with him.

Speaking of that nerd Darth Marr, Darth Marr.

Apparently he designed this armor himself. Solid effort, my man.

Marr is in his sixties by the time the game happens. He's one of the longest-surviving Dark Councilors, and he sounds so tired of his coworkers in every scene he's in. Heading up the Defense of the Empire, Marr also is the de facto leader of the Dark Council, by dint of being the only adult in the room.

Much like Jadus, he distances himself from the backstabbery and rivalries among the Council members. Unlike Jadus, he 100% means it, and has been focused on not making the Empire explode. He eventually ends up as the unofficial leader of the Empire until he gets one-shotted so hard it makes his ghost chill out a bit. He keeps the spikes, though.

So, if there's anyone on the Council who might vote for this on purely practical grounds, and has the power to push others into agreeing with him, because so help him if they don't stop holding duels in the conference room he's going to turn this Empire around—

Nobody listens to him on that, by the way. Both the Sith main plots involve duels in the conference room.

In fact, one of those duels is egged on by our last suspect. Marr might be a contender for longest-running Dark Councilor, but there is another candidate: Darth Vowrawn, who seems to be having a much better time being on the Council than Marr. I suspect the only reason why he doesn't have a bucket of popcorn with him in the Council chambers is because somebody made a rule that he had to stop doing that.

Vowrawn is a surprisingly cheerful old bastard who seems to have turned his hobby into his job. He shows up 'fashionably late' to someone else's attempted coup, after lamenting he can't sell tickets to the clusterfuck that's about to commence. In the expansions to the game, he can outmaneuver and outlive all of the competition and end up becoming the Emperor, at the age of 87.

Vowrawn is also indifferent to against the Empire's policies--he supports the ascension of a Zabrak to the Dark Council, and takes one as an apprentice as well. Beyond that, Vowrawn would have to support this move, because he's instrumental in any large project like this, both politically and practically. While the others I've mentioned all have roles explicitly to do with the aggressive expansion or protection of the Empire, Vowrawn heads the Sphere of Production and Logistics. In essence, he's the one who can decide whether all these other bozos get to eat or not.

If Vowrawn didn't accept this change, then it would have failed. So, he's a definite "yes" by default.

Speaking of bastards who are still active well into their eighties, we have one last major figure who isn't on the Council that likely advocated for this: Darth Malgus.

[Video Description: The "Deceived" trailer, set ten years before the game. God, I love this thing. This was the first trailer I saw for the game, and it got me, it really did. The Sith are just as ridiculous as they should be, combined with choreography that feels a lot more crunchy than lightsaber combat had been before, with distinct combat styles for the two main fighters. It's quick, it's impactful, and it's got a memorable conclusion. Love it.]

Malgus is as anti-racist and anti-classist as Jadus is, but without the insane transcendental Dark Side philosophy. Instead, he has an insane philosophy of bettering the Empire through eternal war, which he believes everyone should have an equal ability to participate in. He is what would happen if a Warhammer 40k character had an inside voice.

[Video Description: The "Disorder" cinematic trailer, set before the Legacy of the Sith expansion. Malgus is 75 here. Man's held together by spite and screws and whatever nutrients you can absorb by being thrown through walls. He's fully given up on the Sith Order at this point and is trying to do his own thing, and he makes it look rad. The choreography has only gotten better, goddamn. Why did it take me three goddamn years to watch this. IT'S REALLY GOOD.]

Malgus is a big deal in the military, with a lot of support from both the Force-blind soldiers and earning the loyalty of a surprising cross-section of Sith. We know this, because he nearly hijacks the Empire at one point in the early expansions. He'd be into this idea, and he probably advocated for it. While he'd have the most direct interaction with the military-related Councilors we already have in the "yes" column, he also has a history of annoying the bejeezus out of other Sith on "his" turf, so who knows! He may have been more persuasive to the others we haven't dug into.

And we can't really dig into all of them at the depth we have with some. Despite how bogglingly huge SWTOR is and the two thousand four hundred and ninety-five named characters and "Additional Voices" credits in IMDb, we never meet some of the Dark Councilors. If you don't play all the eight main storylines, you won't see all of them in the game. I'll admit, I've never seen Darth Hadra, because I've never gotten that far in a Republic-aligned storyline! The Sith you encounter in their stories can often be more one-note, because they're purely there as antagonists rather than people you are legally required to hang out with, and thus have more opportunity to pester mercilessly.

[Video Description: A clip from my own Warrior run-through, featuring my big lad Rejalgar, his coolest friend Vette, and his boss, Darth Baras, who is presently having a screaming tantrum, which Rejalgar makes worse with the most delightfully straight-faced "Is there a problem here?". The Warrior plotline lets you play things sincerely evil, sincerely noble, or sincerely hilarious. Do you want to see Jedi bluescreen when a Sith just straight-up refuses to be violent? Do you want to sidestep a boss fight by offering a family a government pension, something your boss commends as being very devious and evil? Do you want to break up a fight between gangs by threatening to eat them? Come play the Sith Warrior storyline, and be the chaos you want to see in the galaxy!]

[Video Description, from a clip I uploaded to YT specifically for this post after I found out you can only upload one video per tumblr post wtf: A clip from my Inquisitor run-through, featuring my extremely shirtless lad, Sericus, playing coy and a little airheaded when called up by his Sith master, Darth Zash. Back in the day, Purebloods weren't supposed to be played as canon for this storyline, but there were tweaks later made to dialog that provided a canon explanation for how someone with visible Sith ancestry could end up in this situation. The storyline, however, unfortunately does not fully account for a character whose ideal job description is 'villain's beautiful and deceptively intelligent consort, the true power behind the throne'. It assumes you're playing a character who wants to go conquer and/or do mad wizard-science. Bonus points for eventually letting you marry your eight foot tall razor-faced cannibal thrall though, that's very fun.]

Why don't we see all of the Dark Council? Well, because they're ultimately not important to the story as a group. Events keep you locked tightly under the purview of just one or two of them on the Sith side of things, before the post-game and expansion plots launch you into the experience of being a major player in Imperial affairs, and Imperial affairs launch themselves at you in return.

Everyone realizes the Emperor wants to eat them. Then he dies, except he doesn't. Malgus takes over the Empire for a few weeks. Marr takes over, but half the Council is dead and the rest are still in orientation and are probably also dead, because their would-be successors assassinated them. The Emperor, only mildly inconvenienced by also being dead, eats a planet. Then things go completely off the deep end, and the Dark Council is no longer your concern at all.

It's economical storytelling to not belabor the rest of the Councilors, and playing through as an ex-slave Inquisitor, you continue to face enough challenges directly linked to your background that the resistance feels systemic, even if you don't actually see all that many others who are facing the same issues.

But I think there's a lot of potential for some really wild storytelling in there. Your character receives some level of basic training before they reach the Sith Academy, along with a whole batch of ex-slaves. What did that entail? How was it organized? What happens when folks from abolitionist movements start being trained as sith, gaining all the attendant legal authority over the life and death of others?

And what about the prisoners who were released for training? While one canon option is to play a character who was facing immediate execution for participation in violent anti-Imperial resistance, at least a fair chunk of Force-sensitive prisoners were probably serving longer sentences. What happens when prison gangs start gaining a foothold in the Sith Academy, where they're too dysfunctional to even form Mean Girl cliques? What happens when some of their members become full Sith? How many of them might have Hutt backing, or even funding from the Republic Secret Intelligence Service?

These are the sorts of things the Sith themselves are terrified of. This earns a very sarcastic thoughts and prayers to them, of course. Yet it truly is wild to think about the decision-making process that went into this massive societal shift that the game treats as simply a piece of inciting incident for two plotlines out of eight: Twelve unhinged people sat down in some extremely high-backed chairs one day and voted to give everyone equal access to lightning.

I love Star Wars, it's just the funniest shit imaginable sometimes.

[minluce]

Hello, I really liked your analysis of Wolf Keum, especially the parallels between Wolf and Gray. Do you think if circumstances were different, say if they went to the same school or if they had met before, they could have become friends? Maybe similar or to the same extent as Gray and Stephen were close? Sorry for my bad english, its not my first language :p

Hi Anon, sorry for not responding to this sooner! I've been super busy with irl and stuff. But tysm for sending me an ask, I love to ramble about my interests. Here's my thoughts:

Okay so. Honestly? I think it could depend on how you headcanon middle school Wolf. Based on the tiny snippets we see of him in canon, we kind of get this mixed image where he's still unhinged enough to be getting into fights and allegedly tormenting Grape, but as many have pointed out, he's also weirdly not on anyone's radar up until High school. He's introduced as a "Dark Horse"— someone who rose up the ranks quickly and unexpectedly.

Another thing worth pointing out is his appearance: but specifically how it reads to other characters in-universe. Phillip Kim (iirc) refers to him as a "Four-eyed normie" in the chapter where he's having a flashback to first meeting Wolf, so basically with his short purple hair and glasses he absolutely looked like a huge dork and probably attracted opportunistic bullies all the time. Which contributes to the idea that middle school Wolf was more of a "loser" than a "king".

He also gets very sensitive about people stealing and messing with his belongings (see: the whole Union Thief debacle) and if you go back to reread his whole monologue while he's beating up Rowan and Eugene, it sounds like something he's used to experiencing in the past. Getting his stuff stolen or messed with, and then the culprit lying about it and pretending to be innocent.

This made me think about Eugene's own experience with bullies: getting his math textbook stolen, his glasses smeared, etc. by that Eunjang student who wanted to buddy up with Gray. When Eugene tried to confront the guy about it, he just shrugged it off, or even just straight-up pretended he didn't do anything at all. You could clearly see how being on the receiving end of this kind of harassment could quickly become something of a pet peeve; combined with Wolf's unexpected rise to power, it ended up translating to spinning a misunderstanding completely out of proportion.

So this is all to say that I think "loser"-era Wolf could absolutely be friends with Gray, albeit I still get the impression that Wolf would have been the type to get angry and be prideful even before he had the strength to do anything about it. And I think both Wolf and Gray aren't the type to be outwardly social, so their friendship would probably start off with some kind of altercation, before smoothing out once they find somewhere to meet in the middle.

However, I think their relationship would be of a different nature than what Stephan was to Gray, because Wolf and Stephan are fundamentally different types of people. Stephan volunteers at the local soup kitchen after school, Wolf is chain smoking cigarettes under the bleachers. And I think Stephan's optimism and compassion was something that really resonated with Gray— who might have been the type to just stay in his little studying bubble if it weren't for Stephan inspiring him to stand up before injustices.

In contrast to that, I think Wolf would have brought out Gray's "mamba" side much earlier, had they met in middle school. They would have become "beating up bullies in the parking lot" kind of buddies. This may even result in a completely different High School era Gray— still studying-obsessed, but far less concerned with the ethics of beating other people up. But, I think as much as Wolf might draw out Gray's dormant "mamba", I think exposure to Gray might encourage Wolf to use his head more often— there's no way Gray could successfully turn Wolf Fucking Keum into a good student, but I do think there would be gentle nagging to "do your homework, Wolf, or I won't help you next time you start a fight with Sam Lee in public".

In conclusion: Wolf would make Gray slightly worse, and Gray would make Wolf slightly better, and they'd meet in the middle somewhere and become the most terrifying friendship in Yeongdeungpo.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Robert Reich:

Friends, A few weeks ago, at a rally in Nevada, Trump told his followers that boat manufacturers are now required to use electric engines. He claimed that someone at a boat company in South Carolina told him, “It’s a problem, sir. They want us to make all-electric boats.” (There is no such requirement.) Trump then said the South Carolinian warned him “the boat is so heavy it can’t float. Also, it can’t go fast because of the weight.” [...] I ask you: Is this the speech of a rational human being? But how much attention did this incoherent ramble attract in the media? Very little, especially in comparison with the nonstop media assessment of Biden’s verbal stumbles during the debate. Trump is showing growing signs of dementia, but isn’t facing nearly the same scrutiny as is Joe Biden.

[...] These are not isolated examples of Trump’s incoherence. During the last several months of Republican primaries, Trump repeatedly claimed that his opponent Nikki Haley was in charge of Capitol security on January 6. (Haley never had any connection to Capitol security.) He has repeatedly confused who he ran against in the past, such as stating, “With Obama, we won an election that everyone said couldn’t be won.” (Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016.) Trump has confused Biden with Obama so often that he’s had to put out a statement that the slips have been intentional. 

[...] True, Biden has occasional difficulty keeping his train of thought, as we witnessed during the debate. But Biden has gotten major bills passed. He’s been negotiating with world leaders. In terms of running the government, Biden has been functioning as well if not better than most presidents. And what of Trump? As president, he accomplished nothing except dividing the country with his paranoid bloviation, and since then has mounted an attempted coup against the United States. It’s Trump — who has a family history of dementia — who’s increasingly unhinged.

[...] But just because Trump has shown mental instability in the past doesn’t make his mental problems any less relevant now that he is seeking reelection. They’re more relevant. He appears even more delusional than before. If Biden’s difficulties are fair game, why isn’t Trump’s apparent mental decline front and center? Biden may appear frail, but he’s rational. The growing evidence of Trump’s dementia and paranoia, on the other hand, poses a clear potential danger to the future of America — if he’s reelected. At the least, the media should be investigating and reporting on it. Right?

Robert Reich’s analysis on why the press is ignoring (or downplaying) Donald Trump’s real cognitive decline problems over the past year or so while hyping up Joe Biden’s smaller cognitive declines over that same period is a must-read.

[gensokyogarden]

You know, I think review and criticism are quite important things. Art is something that is always changing ~ we always hone our skills and it is through the opinions of others that we can shape them. Additionally, most folks don't have the time or resources to engage with every piece of media to ever exist. So reviews as an indicator of quality can really help people to find what they want.

I also just love media analysis and discussion. I think any interpretation of a work is valid as long as you can point to the text that backs it up (very anti authorial intent here) and generally love hearing what meanings others derive from works.

But I have to admit, as far as casual versions of both go, I'm starting to have some concerns about trends in video essays. Particularly in regards to their length.

Like, lemme be clear, I quite enjoy putting on a long video essay while I work on other things. I'd ramble about some of the ones I particularly enjoy but I probably shouldn't pad out the length of a post complaining about length. So I'm not opposed to this trend as an idea. I would go as far as to say I enjoy it.

But outside of entertainment I'm not sure how effective any of those sorts of videos actually are. Like honestly a 9 hour video is more than I would expect from a big thesis paper breaking down both interpretations of the themes of a work and their greater implications. But most of these long videos are just incredibly surface level.

In most cases they really are just indepth summaries of what happens in each episode of the show or the whole plot of the game. Like the furthest criticism or review seems to go is some joke about "yeah this show is hot garbage but I watched every episode please help me" and most of the time the only interpretation of the plot are jokes about "I think the implications of this is [something absolutely unhinged for humor values].

So I just, I dunno, am getting disillusioned with the term video essay. They aren't particularly essays so much as they're a book report, ya know? An entertaining one but when I sit down and think about it half the time I'm left feeling a video managed to contribute less than old "I'm the angry about everything/Here is everything wrong" YouTube critics (though the new trend is still more entertaining while contributing less).

I dunno I'm just a Touhou rp blog but, like, that's been in my mind repeatedly.

[durgesupremacy]

durge fic writing process thoughts: guilt versus shame

Write whatever you want! Headcanon your best life! And, I noticed a pattern in how I think about durge's character arc, especially because I'm currently writing an evil-to-the-end durge. No one asked for this (though asks are open!) but here it is, some rambling on how my durge(s) feeling guilt vs shame for their urges impacts whether they choose violence / stay evil.

(apparently the brand for this blog is Long Post Only)

I have a *lot* of oc durges. I'm writing Solace (they/them wood elf rogue / fighter) because they're the only one who fully pursues Gortash pre- and post-tadpole and I want to write durgetash rn. But in my weird personal multiverse of durges, the ones who were self-satisfied and confident pre-tadpole are the ones who become more "good" post-tadpole. The durges who were the most troubled pre-tadpole are more likely to do evil things, or at least be morally flexible.

Why? For me, a durge who experienced some kind of self-confidence, fulfillment, and/or pleasure during their time as a Bhaalist murder baby enters tadpole life with a seed of self-acceptance. Though they can't remember why, their amnesiac self has some preexisting inclination to like themselves for who they are and have more trust in their own judgment. They experience their urges for a second first time with enough security in themselves to reject them. They feel guilty, but they don't think this is who they are. (The internal conflict at this point is accepting their villainous past, which will be differently fun to write if I ever do it).

But a durge who moved through their Chosen of Bhaal phase with fear, insecurity, and/or low self-worth enters tadpole life with vestiges of self-loathing. Their broken brain leaned into traumatic rewiring, and when they re-encounter their urges they're predisposed towards self-hate and identify with the urges instead of challenging or rejecting them. Being Bad makes more intuitive sense to them than being, idk, Good with a Serious Problem. Something is wrong with them. They feel shame.

But without their memories, they don't really know why. Depending on party composition they can get praised and rewarded for the things they feel ashamed of. And in time, they realize they don't have to feel shame - after all, it's their reaction. They can react differently. If they stop fighting their "true nature" they can finally enjoy themselves. They'll even get rewarded for it and more or less have what they need to survive. (There's a whole other point of analysis here on companion interactions and community vs isolation, I can write that at some point if we're into it).

Ultimately, my post-tadpole self-loathing villain-arc durge is tempted not just by the urges, but by not feeling bad about themselves. Without their memories of who they were and why they should feel ashamed of that, they have the freedom to indulge in their worst traits. It might look like self-acceptance, but it's not. They just stopped caring about anything and followed the dopamine. And the more they give in to their "true self," the more inevitable it seems to them that their only path towards meaning and worth is through Bhaal. (At least it makes Solace go perfectly with Gortash. Misery doesn't love company so much as it hates being alone).

I guess this feels worth saying because I've seen nuanced discussion about durge's capacity for redemption, but the evil arc for durge seems mostly like them leaning into misc Bhaalist insanity and/or being very comfortable in their evil. I'm curious about (and enjoying) writing an evil durge that's less unhinged and is experiencing more relatable emotional arcs, even when we can't relate to their stabbing. Hopefully.

Stay tuned for more rambling

[blacknidstang]

1 and 7 for the fandom ask game!

1. list 3 positive things about your current fandom(s)

Wincest fandom (rather than the entirety of spn) has been the greatest fandom experience for me for tons of reasons but here are few of em:

1) My absolute favorite thing would be how the fandom is still so alive even three years after the ending. New people join everyday, many older veterans are still around, many just deciding to come back. There's always some new take, analysis or just scenario that I haven't seen likes of, but also posts everyone has been rewriting in their own ways AND THAT'S JUST BEAUTIFUL. Everyone at certain point watching spn and losing their mind over one specific thing. It feel makes it so easy to feel connected no matter when you join.

2) The abundance of webweaving here. I know it's in general a popular tumblr format but I don't think I've seen it so rampant in one specific fandom the way it is in Wincest corner. The fandom had such history with webweaving and comparatives that even Siken mentioned it and this has lead me to discover many many amazing poems and literature.

3)This fandom is absolutely UNHINGED. Like I haven't seen a fandom so collectively deranged and the crazy part is that the morbid madness is not just for wincest but also ppl who are more strictly into weirdcest/platonic samdean. Ive seen enough nonshippers also obsessed the madness inducing fucked up thing between sam & dean and i love love that. But srsly Shipping wincest is a slippery slope into necro, gore, dadfucking, carfucking, cannibalism, stuff that in some previous fandoms i had much harder time to find group of people for.

7. your favorite tropes to read/write/draw

When it comes to reading, even begore spn i think my main food has been angst/whump/hurt no (or sometimes and) comfort, noncon and generally dark themes, feeling realization, first times, unrequited becoming requited, angst with happy ending, but also bad ending & character death and the NON-fixits that make things worse<3

But thing with sam & dean is that i become even open about thing i didn't like before??? Like i hated soulmate trope for certain reasons but with sam and dean im just, yep, soulmates. Domestic bliss & established relationships was so so boring to me but with sam & dean it can be sooo comforting (and even angsty in less traumatic way). I also doubled down on character death bc i want my boys suffering <3. God i DID NOT like anything involving parenting and children but i grew sooo fond of samdean parenting jack. and oh gen fics!?? I would read gen fics sooooo rarely before wincest but now i also madly love weirdcest that is genuinely gen with non-shipping goggles that go "fuck im not even making this up". AND omg I'll shut up but this one being sooo new for me but outsider oc or random mentioned character viewpoint. (That blurry wife pov fic and few others like that making me go insane) like i was never into oc fics but with sam & dean defining them through other lenses is addictive!!!

Thank you for letting me ramble <333

love your fandom ask game

[fumifooms]

Magic, Desires & Funnels

So I read this fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33935719 (cool theory go read it btw) And it got me thinking… Less lore wise and more thematically though. Or a mix of both?? You can skip to the middle of this post if you don’t want to read my unhinged thesis on the in-world magic-desires dynamic as a preface to my other smaller magic-desires dynamic theory, if you can even call it one. This could just be a thematic analysis essay more than a theory on worldbuilding I have no clue at this point, we are too many layers in of intangible powers and unknowable entities that themselves embody abstract concepts, someone help

But yes I def agree that the demon is a funnel for magic from the other dimension and I quite like how consistent of a theory it is and the worldbuilding implications, but in a very different way, I think the demon is a funnel for desires. Literally and very obviously in the story but I mean, existentially as well.

If mana is in every being, is this abstract energy, then it isn’t so unlike desires in a way, and besides birds of a feather flocking together, it makes sense for an abstract concept to eat another abstract concept, for one to fuel another. It’s interesting too because in this sort of worldbuilding, usually it’s implied that magic is sort of like air, invisible but still physically present, and if it ignites into a fire then it’s not that the fire just came out of nowhere, but had the right conditions to transform as such. But what if that isn’t the case? What if, even if mana does work like that, ancient magic, magic from another dimension, doesn’t? What if magic is about materializing things that don’t, shouldn’t exist, like a force like gravity rather than an element or energy per se. Then it’s more about conjuring, than manipulating the laws of the world for the outcome that you want like any other science. It bends to the wishes of the mage. The mage desires something, and magic serves it on a silver platter out of literally nothing but itself. Magic comes to life when someone desires something and uses it to attain that thing, desires that otherwise couldn’t be materialized. This is what I mean when I call the demon a funnel for desires. But then, what I’m rambling about is that I think the Winged Lion can play with the very nature of physicality and immateriality, and thus it’s interesting to think about desires and what… Makes them. How they exist physically in the world and what makes them special. We do know that souls have a physical dimension to them due to ghosts, due to them being tangible, but what of desires? Is it truly something physically graspable or do they not operate on the same plane? I definitely think it’s the latter, I don’t think it’s truly something that you could separate of someone without incredibly powerful unknowable magic that breaks the fabric of existence and the space between dimensional planes, and I think that’s why Laios needed to become a monster with the specific ability "able to eat desires", because what that ability grants you is to be able to materialize them so you can then eat them. And coming full circle about birds of a feather, I think that you could consider desires to be a sort of magic, another type of deeply primal energy that comes from life itself rather than its contrary the void. Desires are fuel for the mind, are the driving force for self-made power rather than externally achieved one. Abstract forces will feed off of another abstract force, and vice versa like an ouroboros. Infinity fundamentally immaterial, existing only in the mind, and infinity materialized, only manifesting through physical means.

Ok I got a bit sidetracked but here’s what I’m actually getting at:

Livings beings are designed to instinctively seek out what they need, beyond normal cravings like food and water it can be more subtle and subconscious as well, like light for moths and plants, or specific food and nutriments when you have nutritional deficiencies or medical issues like high/low blood pressure (sugar, salt, vegetables, fibres), etc etc, and I think that’s true for demons as well.

Demons are very abstract beings but they too seem to have individuality and agency, like we see how the Winged Lion comes to want to eat desires through observation and curiosity, so I don’t want to say it’s 100% just an innate craving, but there’s a case to be made. A demon at the core of it is a being of magic. They are entities interlinked to magic, it’s their source of life and it is them. In the Lion’s own words, he is Power. And what does magic, what could power possibly instinctively seek out? What tries to wield power, and what can become warped by it and consumed in turn? Desires. Ambition. Goals. Power was born to be attracted to these.

Power feeds off of desire.

[ourstaturestouchtheskies]

So: what does the record—the album, that is—mean to you? Why do you like it? I’m curious!

hello lovely Rose! ☺️

I apologize for taking so long to get back to you, but thank you for this fantastic question! ☺️🥰

I must admit that I have not yet given the record what my sibling and I call "a ✨professionnelle✨ listen" (pretentious French accent very much encouraged 😂) where I really just sit with the album while not doing anything that takes my attention away

unfortunately, just because of the way stuff has gone, I haven't had the time to commit to that yet, so my thoughts on the album are not as developed as I would like them to be

however, I know that I love both "not strong enough" and "emily I'm sorry." as you've probably seen from my numerous edits, "not strong enough" especially hits for me 😅. the last portion of the song feels so joan of arc-coded, and joan is a figure with whom I really identify and find fascinating. also, I really relate to lucy dacus' commentary on the "always an angel / never a god" line about being praised for making yourself small. as a chronic people-pleaser, I really felt that. I also love that the way that the line is repeated and the speaker seems to get more and more upset with the idea of never being able to rise to the level of a "god," but the repetition keeps them trapped in this loop where they are only ever the "angel." but then that final chorus breaks through with "I think I've been having revelations" where it feels like the speaker has finally broken that mental cycle and can maybe work toward transformation. I then find the repetition of the earlier line "I don't know why I am the way I am" to be a bit more hopeful, and perhaps less about thinking there's something wrong with themselves and more about not knowing who they are now that they've finally broken free of this cycle. but in the not-knowing comes the opportunity to actually discover themselves in a more meaningful way

whoop okay sorry that turned into an unhinged analysis of "not strong enough," which was not what you asked for - sorry!!!!! 😅

idk if any of my incoherent ramblings made sense, but I suppose the long story short is that I absolutely love a couple of songs from the album, but I really need to sit with the rest of it some more to solidify my thoughts

what does the record mean to you? do you have any particular favorite songs and/or lines?

thank you again for this lovely question and I hope you're doing well!! 🥰🥰

love always,

charlotte 💙

[supervisormeero]

An Unhinged Analysis of 10 Songs That Remind Me of Syril and Dedra 

Behold, a breakdown of/ramble about a few songs with lyrics that I think fit Syril, Dedra, and whatever delightfully messed-up mess they're likely to have going on in Season 2. Putting most of it under a cut because seriously, I had Too Many Thoughts (shocker) and no one needs to see all of them unless they're prepared. Anyway—

“Egoist” by Jenna Holiday

“I see myself in you, I’ve always been an egoist/I want the best for you, you show me where my ego is…” 

For two of the most self-obsessed people in Star Wars canon, a song all about egos and arrogance and loving someone because “I see myself in you” is a little too perfect. After all, Syril and Dedra don’t care for each other because they’re actually in anything resembling real love; at least in Season 1, Syril’s obsessed with Dedra because she is who he wants to be, and Dedra tolerates Syril because he’ll help her get what she wants. Also “you’re thinking of you/while I’m kissing myself”… like, yeah. Provided they ever kissed, that’d be them.

2. “Oleander” by Mother Mother

“And if you leave me/rest assured, it would kill me/like an oleander, white, white leaves”

This song describes a toxic, codependent relationship, and that’s one of the directions I could see Syril and Dedra going in Season 2 (the toxicity, certainly). They don’t love each other, but for various professional and personal reasons that get inseparably jumbled, they need each other - perhaps more than they’ve ever needed anyone. That terrifies them. Neither of them have the capacity to deal with those emotions healthily, and thus, the possessiveness, jealousy and toxicity commences. Also “I’ll make a mess/and you’ll be there to help me undress” has the spirit of post-Ferrix Keero, what with Dedra “making a mess” of Ferrix and Syril “being there to help” by rescuing her and calming her (take or leave the ‘undress’ lyric, but at least half the fics on AO3 are about something of varying levels of spice happening in the broom closet). “If you leave me, rest assured, it would kill me…” I suspect they might be the death of each other in the end, so... sure. Either that, or somebody’s ending up alone and very pleased with their advancement to a lucrative new position on the Death Star.

3. “Money Power Glory” by Lana Del Rey

“I want money, power, and glory/oh hallelujah, I’m gonna take them for all that they got…”

This is probably more Syril than Dedra, since (in my opinion) he cares more about money, power and glory; she doesn’t need accolades, she only needs control. It’s a typical Lana song, but it’s all about climbing to the top and wanting power above even a romantic relationship. I suspect that’s the direction we’ll see Syril go in Season 2, eventually leading him to betray Dedra in favor of climbing the Imperial ladder.

3. “Drumming Song” by Florence + The Machine

“There’s a drumming noise inside my head, and it starts when you’re around/I’d swear that you could hear it, it makes such an almighty sound…”

I think most would choose “Kiss With A Fist” for Keero. I understand that. But for reasons I can’t fully articulate, this song makes me think of Dedra being dragged into having feelings for Syril entirely against her will. It’s about falling for someone to the point where their presence has a physical effect on you; hence, the “drumming noise that starts when you’re around.” She wouldn’t know what to do with any of that, of course, because I sincerely doubt Dedra “never been touched” Meero has felt any of it before. But I do think it could happen - and if it did, she’d hate him for causing that "drumming noise" and making her weak.

4. “Love Love Love” (Cabin Sessions) by Of Monsters and Men

“Those bright blue eyes can only meet mine/across a room filled with people that are less important than you…”

This song is almost too sweet for Syril and Dedra. But certain of the lyrics fit so perfectly that it's unsettling, so I threw it on here. At its core, it’s about having someone fall in love with you and knowing that for whatever reason - circumstance, a lack of reciprocation, you having no understanding of or experience with relationships whatsoever and being more rattled by someone touching you than stalking you - you can’t return their feelings. I’m probably too stupidly sentimental about a ship that laughs at sentimentality, but it almost landed to me as Dedra reflecting on Syril’s attitude toward her. Plus, “bright-blue eyes across a room filled with people that are less important than you?” In my ridiculously elaborate headcanon that will never happen on this show, that’s Dedra making eye contact with Syril across the meeting room table after he weasels his way up from the Bureau of Standards to the ISB.

5. “Us” by Regina Spektor

“We’re living in a den of thieves/and it’s contagious…” 

A den of thieves = the ISB, and the Empire in general. Aside from that, the song references having a “statue built of us,” and while I don’t think Dedra’s necessarily after that level of recognition, I don’t think she’d turn it down were it offered. Syril would love a statue built of him so he could proudly show it to his mother. He and Dedra are both trying to achieve a goal that would lead to that sort of laudation within the Imperial ranks, and in the end, they’re probably hoping for a timeless level of appreciation and respect. In some form, that’s probably Syril’s greatest hope: a statue of him with Dedra at his side. 

6. “Easy to Hate” by Waterparks

“You’re selfish and a half, and the other half is me/all that I can do is fall in blame with you…”

This is a fun, catchy song. 2. This is a song about hating someone almost as much as, if not more than, you love them, because your partner loves themself more than they love you. To me, that rings as Syril realizing Dedra doesn’t really care about him, much less love him or see him as an equal, and she never will. So, “it’s too easy to hate you/you’re hard to love.” And yet, as the lyrics state, he’ll “fall in blame” with her, but he won’t initially break off whatever weird connection they develop. Partly because of what he feels for her despite her apparent and cutting indifference, partly because he thinks if he keeps trying he’ll make something happen between them, and mostly because he needs her in his quest to gain power. 

7. “Breezeblocks” by Alt-J

“Please don’t go, I’ll eat you whole/I love you so, I love you so, I love you so…”

I have loved “Breezeblocks” and the whole An Awesome Wave album since the early 2010s, and so now I have little choice but to cram Alt-J onto any fandom mixes I create. In this case, though, I think it mostly fits: especially after the bridge. Much like “Beggin for Thread,” there’s a power imbalance here and such a consuming, obsessive desperation to keep someone close that you’d “eat them whole.” Huh. Who’s known for having consuming, obsessive tendencies almost to the point of delusion? 

8. “Beggin for Thread” by Banks

“Stooped down and out, you got me beggin for thread/to sew this hole up that you ripped in my head/stupidly think you had it under control…”

Look. I can’t resist a sewing reference because of Mr. “(Please) Look At Me, I Tailored My Uniform, And My Suit, And Everything I Own.” But like many others on this list, this song deals with power imbalances, mind games, and needing to have the upper hand in an unhealthy relationship. Kyle’s talked about how Syril and Dedra’s relationship in Season 2 delves into the concept of who does and doesn’t have power, and I think this song is a decent example of that. Whether intentionally or not, Syril and Dedra are going to mess with each other’s heads in their unending attempts to Prove Themselves to the Empire. The vibe of this song aligns with that. Also “my words can come out as a pistol and I’m no good at aiming/but I can aim it at you”… Dedra sure can’t defend herself in a riot, but she can definitely “aim her words” right at Syril’s heart.

9. “Sober II (Melodrama)” by Lorde 

“They’ll talk about us, all the lovers/how we kiss and kill each other/they’ll talk about us, and discover/how we kiss and kill each other…”

Circling back to The Toxicity, this song is all about two people who have an on-and-off relationship riddled with miscommunications, misunderstandings, and constant tension. If that isn’t Syril and Dedra, I don’t know what is. Plus - “all the glamour, and the trauma, and the fucking melodrama” - seems very ISB/Imperial to me. It’s glamour on the surface and backstabbing and trauma beneath, and the reality of that is going to cause some very real melodrama for Cereal and Debra. Plus, this song has the coolest combination of strings and a beat. Just… listen to it. It’s short, it’s one of my favorite Lorde songs, and you won’t regret it. 

10. “Daylight” by David Kushner

“Oh I love it and I hate it at the same time, you and I drink the poison from the same vine/oh I love it and I hate it at the same time, hiding all of our sins from the daylight”

Okay, so, because I’m old and not cool and on TikTok or wherever I suspect this song blew up, I just found it. It’s actually probably just about garden-variety infidelity, but there’s enough wiggle room in the writing that you can twist it to the right angle to fit Syril, Dedra, and their (presumably?) super-secret Season 2 investigation into Axis and Andor. “Hiding all of our sins from the daylight” could be embarking on a “sinful” non-sanctioned hunt for the rebels who ruined both of their reputations, or it could be embarking on a sinful non-sanctioned hunt for the rebels who ruined both of their reputations and falling in the most doomed, toxic, imbalanced, non-sanctioned love at the same time. “You and I drink the poison from the same vine” feels very Keero to me; the poison, of course, being Imperial ideology. And, because Syril and Dedra are twin flames, they’ll “love it and hate it at the same time.” Dedra would love how well they work together and how efficient they are as a team, but any of the feelings… cannot process. Complete shutdown. At least listen to the last minute of this song; whether or not you think it applies to Keero, it’s gorgeous. 

[arcane-temp-fandomblog]

Viktor & Jayce - science partnership and being sane together

I was supposed to write more substantial analysis but I haven't slept more than 2 hours so I can't do anything serious.

I'm just going to note how insane their storyline sounds when taken apart: First, Jayce is a random student that went on a gap year to a dessert to look for magical crystals. To prove everyone wrong and make his mom proud.

Entry #2 I can't afford to be wrong again. The Kirammans are counting on me. My mother thinks this is a fool's errand. But she understands that power of magic, even if she's not willing to admit it. She'll be proud of me. It won't be long now.

Magic crystals. That's his plan.

Without seeing Jayce's flashback, he sounds... unhinged.

He even sounds unhinged to the one person that was there with him in the flashback. He's the force of change but mostly he's a hazard to other people and his surroundings.

Then when he's caught being a hazard to his surroundings and is supposed to get slap on the hand or worse, another student appears - Viktor - who heard Jayce's ramblings and decided to put his whole hard earned university career on this theory, breaking out the research papers and all.

This is what Viktor read btw. in this most scientific of journals:

Entry #2 I was walking my - failed - experiment to the scrapyard and ran into Dmitri.

TRY TO BE MORE CAREFUL NEXT TIME! CAN'T RISK BEING FOUND OUT!

The Academy's best and brightest...

He wouldn't know true progress if it hit him in the face.Say that next time you see him!

Think of something better to say... You will make an excellent teacher. Will he get that this is an insult? Maybe he wants to be a teacher? Maybe I should just stick to science...

Encouraging, Right? And all for science of course.

He hasn't even considered what happens if they're wrong. Well we're either right, or [error 404]

Since Viktor is only hazard to himself with his own self preservation.

That is all pep talk Jayce get's from him.

> But out of all character's that enable Jayce's tendencies to do what he wants, Viktor is for sure the one with results most positive for society. 'Coz Jayce is very insecure in his assumptions, he always comes from the place 'what if I'm wrong'.

May I remind you, this is still about some uni student that has a theory about life saving magic stones.

But their scientific method:

Well I guess we're as ready as we'll ever be.

.Anyway, the originator of the magic stone theory is not really sure, but go big or go home... or rather go dead. Same difference for Viktor.

Post time skip, they actually did not achieve most of their plans to change the world but more importantly they get separated for most of two arcs and just a jist of it: Jayce lives his Piltover highlife:

1. Gets upgraded to parliament.

2. Sells for free first rights access to their gate project to all corrupt politicians - just so they're not mad that he tried to root out corruption and preferential treatment.

3. By nearly an accident becomes the "president" of Piltover.

4. He is also asked to build weapons by two most powerful women, at that time in Piltover, to protect it from big bad scary undercity. And this is what he comes up with:

Which I'm sure Ambesssa Medarda had in mind when she wanted him to make weapons. You know how a 5y/o could propose a superhero weapon that could be both a giant hammer and a cannon because the child can't decide what's cooler. Yep, this is Piltover not-president's idea.

5. But his little excursion with Vi to the undercity proves that yes, in fact Jayce is still a hazard to his surroundings when left unsupervised.

In contrast, the reasonable workaholic Viktor toils on his own theory in seclusion of their lab. In quick succession, well under duress of illness but he's less concerned with own life than with how his life's science contribution improved the world (and imo. it's a deliberate writing choice, loosing own life is low stakes in stories):

1. He has a vision and decides to pursue it, this imo. is not less unhinged than Jayce's magic stones btw. It's not even tangible experience, it's something whispering to him from different plane.

2. When they can't work out how to make it work, he reaches out to his mentor with practices PETA wouldn't approve / future-current war criminal

3. Decides to smuggle illegal 'magic strength opium', which will allow him to test his magic cube (maybe? that is unconfirmed since no one has a magic cube aside from him), into Piltover.

Please remember the magic cube idea comes from a vision he has.

4. Decides to test magic vision cube plus magic strength opium by inscribing runes onto his body with a scalpel... "unsurprisingly" it works.

5. Runs out of magic strength opium...

6. Better be right then.

Viktor is only hazard to himself... eh, no, sadly. But that's what he thinks.

Anyway, they kill respectively one person per person, and U turn hard on their idea of how to do science and scale their plans of change to more human scale. Plus one purple hand and leg.

I'm not sure when and I fear when these two will become separated again (if we follow OR Lore). Because idk, they don't do that well when apart on taking sane actions.

As for hexcore, the poor new lab pet that shivers when Viktor wants to boink it:

imo there's some incling in Jayce's journals:

Entry #3 I have collected several theories I've discovered on my journeys on how the power of the Arcane might be harnessed: Crystals form bonds with a sole user - their power is channeled though it Can a device be created to manufacture such a connection? What determines the bond?

Entry #4 The interaction with the crystal is generated by power from ANY user. Does the power react with the crystal externally or internally Could this power be recreated successfully and repeated?

Entry #5 Do you need an object to house the power? Some type of staff Too on the nose.'

Entry #6 Best practices: wind and/or water turbine? A current channeled through lightning?

Entry #7 My own theory: the Arcane is a field around us, invisible to the naked eye but ever-present with careful use of a particular source of energy (still unknown) we can crack into this field, and merge it with our own reality

My only request for season 2 is that the way to fix the Hexcore is to 'blitz' it.

Ps. I'm going to laugh very hard if these two are based somewhere deep down on Engels and Marx partnership. Is the time skip between act 1 and 2 seven years? That'd be a bit too funny overlap of historical figures.

[thejolteonmastertj]

Media meta/analysis master-post

See my analysis posts in Chronological order: #TJ Overanalysis

Tags to mute, if desired: #Undescribed (For posts with undescribed images), #Unsubtitled (For audio-reliant posts without subtitles or a transcript).

[I sometimes leave predominantly text posts with undescribed images untagged if the content of said images is implied or happenstance described by the text's analysis itself, but do let me know if I should be more or less liberal with the undescribed tag.]

Topical tags that include reblogs:

#LU Meta

#LOZ Meta

#Linked Universe

#My Hero Academia

#Folklore Stuff

#Disability Stuff

#LGBTQIA+

#Fantasy Anthropology

#Magical Girls ✨

#Described (I describe a lot of Legend Of Zelda content & the occasional Linked Universe fanart, especially those associated with prose-based fanfiction. You'll also find reblogs of artist-described art from various fandoms, the quality of which may vary depending on the fandom because I want to encourage those new to the art of description to keep at it! I'll never knowingly share completely useless descriptions or outright malicious misuse of the alt text field, and am open to input on my own style, as I do tend to experiment quite a bit.)

#The Gurlz Of LOZ

Additional tags that may be of interest (Behold, the most elaborate tagging system known to man): [Under construction]

#Hero Of The Wild (Includes all linksmeet AU & vanilla LOZ variations, including some but not all the posts I tag as LU Wild.)

Anyways, below is a list of hyperlinks to some of my notable media meta posts organized by franchise. Not all of the old ones have described images at the moment.

~Linked Universe~

That one heckin AWESOME chapter

The Attempt To Prevent The Prophesy Will Ensure The Prophesy’s Fulfillment - The Heroes Shade

Legend & Wind’s argument on Possesion

Legend & Time, An Unhinged Ramble About Predecessors & Succesors

~Echoes Of Wisdom~

Zelda’s personality part 1

Zelda’s personality part 2

I ramble too much about EOW Zelda here too

Final dungeon & boss comments

~Sky: Children Of The Light~

The Spirits Could Fly pt.1

The Spirits Could Fly pt.2

Tinkering Chimesmith Is Autistic-Coded

~Avatar The Last Airbender~

All the matchups & combat made an insane amount of sense (reblog chain I added onto)

~Ranking Of Kings ~

That One Heckin Scene

Episode 6 Foreshadowing (takes you to my twitter account)

At The Intersection Of A Real Life Disability And A Fictional Disability

~My Hero Academia ~

World-building:

Depth of Quirk Discrimination revealed by the words of background characters in UA’s entrance exam.

Aftermath Of The Sports Festival: Reactions To Deku’s Quirk

Implications Of The New Provisional License Exam Grading Criteria

The deftest method of portraying a flawed society without endorsing it: Aizawa, that’s it that’s the method.

General Narrative:

Subverting the damsel in distress trope in the provisional license exam.

League Of Villains

Narrative meta

Midoriya Izuku (Deku)

I  don’t think Deku’s doctor stole a quirk from him as a kid, but the   connection carries some... interesting implications of a different sort.

Uraraka

Genuine working-class representation (Takes you to my twitter account) (Marked as having a manga spoilers but it doesn’t anymore cuz the anime’s caught up since I wrote it)

Uraraka & Asui (Also takes you to my twitter account)

Kirishima

Privilege & Compassion: Deku & Kirishima Are Foils

Mina

Mina meta

Monoma

Monoma meta

Monoma meta followup

What’s up with that one face???

Pony Tsunotori

Pony meta

Magne

Magne meta

The One For All Quirk (OFA)

An oddly specific thing All Might said

I can’t believe Horikoshi put the best possible tutor for Deku right in front of us only to keep him too mad at the MC to be relevant

Manga Spoilers

If it doesn’t show up here, it will show on my alt’s masterpost

[devilishgreen]

 There’s no particular reason for me making this post other than I am having thoughts again and I wanna rant about them. Below you will find the unhinged ramblings of why I ship Drakkgo (Shego x Drakken). And somewhat of a personality analysis for both them. 

 Okay listen 

 Listen 

 On the surface is may seem like they are by default paired together because they are sidekick and villain, and yes that is a perfectly valid reason to pair them because sidekick and villain ships are awesome, but there’s a lot more that I really like about this pairing. It basically has all the makings on what I consider ‘OTP’ material. 

 First things first is to clear up misconceptions. A lot of people equate Drakken with somehow being the ‘less evil’ of the pair. Which is true, in the abstract sense. But Drakken isn’t out there frolicking in a flower field, even after he got plant powers. He’s still evil. He canonly is motivated purely by pettiness and the need for revenge, and he’s willing to go to wicked extremes to get to it. 

 He does things that Shego even considers abhorrent. Such as cloning for one, and cloning against someone’s will. Shego also has some beef with mind control chips, and he still does that. He also commits attempted murder and his victims range from Kim Possible to children to old ladies. He has almost no qualms about doing what it needed to get a job done. He’s pretty ruthless as well, not to the extent Shego is, but he isn’t some wooby baby who just because he is bad at carrying out evil, doesn’t mean he isn’t. 

 Next, let’s clear up some things about Shego’s character. While Drakken is far more nasty than people sometimes make him, Shego is... yeah pretty nasty. But she ALSO has some lines she refuses to cross. She refuses to steal wheelchairs, she gets upset whenever animals are involved in schemes or could be hurt, she refuses to let her brothers be without their powers and loses in a fight deliberately against them. She is also on a whole far more lazy than Drakken is. This makes her not as big of a threat, because she chooses not to be. Unlike Drakken. 

 Okay so, time to get into why I ship them together. 

 People might think this pairing consists of Shego endlessly dogging on Drakken while he simpers and takes it. That is not the case. At all. These two are partners. They balance out each other’s weaknesses. They are in tune with one another. They value each other. Shego’s teasing of Drakken is filled with much less malice as compared to her taunting of Kim or her brothers. Shego snarks at Drakken and mocks him, but what people sometimes overlook is that Drakken does the same to her. That’s what makes it work. Drakken takes it, but he also dishes it back out. He regularly teases and taunts Shego, playfully annoys her, and does things to deliberately drive her up a wall. The ONLY time they are seriously mad at each other is when Drakken placed a behavioral modifer on Shego, making her listen and obey his commands. And Drakken was quick to apologize. 

 So we have a basis on banter, of mutual friendship, and teasing. They get along together. 

 I wanna talk about how each of them care for each other next. 

 Starting with Shego, it’s a bit harder to see the ways Shego cares for Drakken because she is definitely an action person. Shego REMEMBERS things about Drakken that nobody else does, and she knows his personality inside and out. Shego will regularly step up and protect Drakken, even when she doesn’t need to and it’s outside of her contract. Take the holiday episode, where she rescued Drakken from the snowstorm even though she was on vacation, which she takes very seriously. She ALSO defends him verbally when he’s not around, take her interactions with the Seniors and how she takes care to say that she sees him as someone who is capable and worthy. 

 She has a deep trust in Drakken, and this takes place in the form of allowing Drakken to see into various parts of her life that often aren’t available to the public. Shego also is the first person to go back to Drakken. She may complain about being there, but she will ALWAYS return. Whenever Shego becomes the Supreme One, she gives Drakken free will and continues their same dynamic. Meaning in her perfect world, her and Drakken still have that kind of rapport and bond. Shego never betrays Drakken, like she does with other villains or heroes. Shego, while also under the effects of a mood modifier, became extremely open about her affections for Drakken. I fully subscribe that the mood modifier only amplified her emotions and on a whole amplified emotions that were already there. Finally, Shego RESPECTS Drakken, something that is huge with her. She will follow his orders even when she thinks they are stupid, which is huge for her. 

 Respect is a huge aspect of their relationship. 

 Moving onto to Drakken, this one is a bit more obvious. We’ve already talked about their playful banter, but Drakken definitely takes a way more fun approach to teasing Shego, than Shego’s darker jabs. His way of teasing Shego is more along the lines of giving her sappy and fond nicknames, calling her ‘Marshmallow’ among other things. Drakken likes throwing back what Shego gives. He enjoys their conversations and misses when Shego is gone and he can’t get that dialog. He also greatly respects her opinion, and takes what he says into account. He treats her extremely well compared to other people, and Shego is someone who he relies on frequently. Without Shego, Drakken is notably worse off. He can’t even open a pickle jar. He always lets Shego know her worth, something even her brothers never did. He also pays for her vacations, as a thank you for all her hard work. 

 He tries to take a genuine interest in her likes, and takes special note of what she prefers and dislikes. Drakken sometimes takes advantage of her, yes, but he also always shows her his appreciation. He values Shego’s worth. Moreover, he’s also protective over her. It’s obvious Shego doesn’t need protection, but Drakken still does, out of affection and fondness. Despite knowing more than others what she’s capable of. He always jumps to her defense, and gets jealous of any other men who take an interest in her as a love interest. He also went BATSHIT when he heard Shego was hurt by Aviarious. (I know I’m not spelling this right.). This is also huge, and a large point, but Drakken sees beyond Shego’s looks. Villains and heroes alike always comment on her looks, her body, hit on her or try to get with her before realizing her dangers. And keep on pursuing in some cases. Drakken NEVER does. He always is attracted to her mind, her personality, her power. Even when she was throwing himself at him, he NEVER took advantage of her. He also never makes one disrespectful or sideways glance when she’s in a swimsuit or some other dress. 

 And whenever he does get plant powers, which react without him knowing and following his emotions sometimes, his vine wraps around them both pulling him close. And he doesn’t pull away. Even SHEGO looks delighted and thrilled. 

 They both have lines they won’t cross, they both respect one another, and they both acknowledge the other as capable and genius. Shego gets the respect and acknowledgement of her abilities, and Drakken gets someone who defends him and appreciates what he does. 

 They are both evil, at least until the series finale, they are both horrible people. They both do villainous plots that would make most people shudder. They bring out the best in each other, which is evil to everyone else. They aren’t a straightforward case of bumbling boy and strong and intelligent girl. They both have qualities that are valued by the others. Shego’s capableness and toughness, and Drakken’s creativity and scheming. They have a partnership that transcends the usual dynamic of their situation, and something that is unique. 

 In conclusion, Drakkgo fucking rocks I’ll see y’all in my next unhinged rambling. 

[hopefullystillatheatrestudent]

okay so i’ve been going crazy these past few days. all about cockles/jensmish and obsessively watching their panels or reading the transcripts BECAUSE. THEY ARE LOUD. LIKE. i saw some fancams on twt and i thought people were just exaggerating but noooooooooo!!!???? so, getting to the point. you said that how do we know that jensen is performing masculinity? because jared isn’t and THAT IS A BIG BRAIN MOMENT. ON POINT. I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH. a particular moment from gag reel that jumps out (which you’ve talked about) when jensen goes ‘cas, you are my baby daddy’ and misha goes, ‘i know i love you too’ and jensen goes, ‘i didn’t say i love you’ and misha goes, ‘i know you wanted to’ and jensen says, ‘i love you’ WHAT THE FUCK! that was NOT a joke. yes, people took it as a joke and had a good laugh BUT I HAVE WATCHED IT TOO MANY TIMES AND IT LIVES IN MY MIND RENT FREE BECAUSE IT WAS NOT A PERFORMANCE. THAT WAS JENSEN. THAT WAS MISHA. jensen has a had trouble with the pda and being all touch feely (the breakup theory) and he gradually grew into it, accepted it and misha was right there all along, never pushed it. it was like a deancas au but tbh, 99% of destiel is because of cockles and we all know it. i just. jensen has latched onto dean as an emotional support because he tunes with it. understands it. projects on to it. yeah, i just had to say it and get it off my chest. (and what about those poetry pages on instagram? alma? what is your opinion?) btw, you have a lovely blog and your analysis are right on target.

so there is a LOT i’m going to address here(how dare you bring up [gunshot] i HAVE to talk about it now) so again!!!! under a cut it goes but i hope you appreciate my rambles anon it seems like you do :,)

1. jared vs. jensen and performing masculinity. hell yeah man. jared and jensen are both just ‘guys from texas’ but they are still so vastly different. today i actually had a revelation that i’m pretty sure has to do with me being bi. and it’s that i have a group of straight friends(that i love dearly but they care too much about hockey and pitbull imo could not be me) and i have a group of queer friends(who are also batshit[affectionate]). and it’s like whichever group i hang out with a different side of me emerges? they’re both me, it’s just that certain aspects of who i am as a person only surface depending on who i am around. however, i will say i feel like i watch what i say around my straight friends more. i see that very clearly in jensen as well. around jared during panels and on set, he’s definitely putting on an air of machismo and engages in typical guy talk. i do think an element of it is performative, because he wants validation from jared that they’re still just two dudes from texas taking on the world together despite his sexual identity. does that make any sense??? i hope so. but when he’s with misha he is an entirely different person and his sense of humour becomes wildly different. the machismo fades away, he’s way less caught up in what people think about him, lets his guard down, etc. to go back to my original point which is how j2 are different in that regard....jared does not do this. he is a constant. he does not flip a switch between ‘performing masculinity’ and ‘not’ because he isn’t performing any part of who he is. he just IS. so yeah these two are similar in many regards but there’s somewhat of a dissonance between them when it comes to how they perform masculinity because one of them is putting on a show and the other is merely being.

2. that crypt scene blooper(here just in case you need to see it again. do it. as a treat.) when i tell you i have easily seen this over thirty times??? since it first came out??? i mean it. it is such an overlooked(r*mantic) moment and it means so much more than people think it does. i’ve talked about the context behind it, and i think that’s why this blooper was so meaningful, so i’ll mention it again. jensen and misha had a LOT of trouble with this scene. the reason is that jensen couldn’t wrap his head around why dean would be saying these things, if i remember correctly, and both of them sat down and scoured over how they should play it for a while before filming(teamwork ;) teammates *ahem*). [to be honest we all know why jensen had a hard time with that scene and it is because it is blatantly romantic. rip to him but i would simply give in to it at that point but oh well] so anyway, their heads were scattered going into shooting, which is NEVER a good headspace to be in for a scene, ESPECIALLY not a pivotal one. but they had each other to help them through said weird energy on set that couldn’t possibly have invoked the best feelings, especially considering jensen STILL doesn’t think he played that correctly(but he praised misha on his performance :,) ). and with that context every single part of that video hits haRD 

-’stop pulling my face towards your crotch’ i think this is objectively hilarious because it really really looks like jensen is pulling HIMSELF towards misha’s crotch. again, you’re fooling no one, jensen. misha’s wheezing laugh and the way he wraps himself around jensen is also,,,sweet??? like i don’t know how else to describe how i see it but this moment really reads as jensen, in his weird ‘constructing elaborate rituals’ way is asking for security through a physical touch from misha and he happily obliges and gives jensen what he needs. because i mean...watch it again. jensen ‘fights back’, but not really at all, actually. pretty wimpy counterattack. he literally lets himself be smothered by misha, and i would literally describe what they end up doing as cuddling. 

-’i need you, cas. you’re my baby daddy’ i love having an actor’s perspective on things bc i think i can explain what’s going on here. jensen just delivered what was(in his own mind) a rotten take of the lines he’s most scared of delivering. so the scene was already messed up. therefore; ensuing fuckery is warranted to help him feel better. but there’s also for sure more than meets the eye for what he says here because of misha’s reaction after??? like he seemed genuinely touched. first of all, he’s saying ‘you’re my baby daddy’ as half-jensen, but not necessarily dean either(because he didn’t say the previous lines as true to his character...you get it), to misha, not cas. i think i’ve made this point before, but every single innuendo in the gag reels is to misha specifically, never once cas. therefore; logical conclusion: ‘you’re my baby daddy’ was for misha and it meant something deeper than we think because of what follows it

-this part. jensen’s giddy ass smile after he sees misha crack and then misha says ‘yeah, i know’ (can i just say his voice when he says this is so intimate???? like am i intruding guys??? sorry i’ll let myself out) also he is smiling SO BIG

- ‘i know’ ‘why are you laughing?’ ‘no i know i love you too’ this analysis is already so long but i still want to get into what THAT whole exchange means. ‘why are you laughing?’ to me sounds like jensen’s pretending to be affronted by misha laughing at something that is serious. and it’s serious because he quite literally meant ‘i love you’. he did. misha knows it. misha’s really REALLY good at cutting the bs and just getting to what people are actually trying to say. he has an innate sharpness to his sense of humour. so yes, misha is being 100% accurate when he says ‘i know, but you wanted to say it.’ misha isn’t lying here. jensen did want and mean to say ‘i love you’. and then he actually does say it(in a jokey way but not really). 

- so yeah. it is actually so romantic??? like in a weird way jensen was professing his love for misha here?????? and that’s why this clip will NEVER. ever. get old. 

3. jensen having trouble with pda and projecting onto dean: we can all call ourselves dean coded cas girls but NO one deserves that title more than jensen ackles himself. he is dean winchester but marginally less repressed because he actually did admit he was in love with his best friend and let himself be happy, and pretty early on too. one year and two months as opposed to twelve years. so. happy deancas au is correct. and yes about the pda thing: one day i want to write my own post about both of their body language when it comes to each other, but all i can tell is jensen, even in the early days, couldn’t help himself from flirting with misha, but if misha ever crossed a line, jensen would not be happy. clearly he’s come around, however. what i find sweet is that misha always follows jensen’s lead when it comes to how much affection they’re allowed to show each other onstage. it touches my soul

4. destiel is cockles fault. yeah. and the thing is everyone knows it, too. even non-cockles shippers will explain early destiel as entirely dependant on jensen and misha’s wild chemistry. and that chemistry is easily explained by the fact that misha and jensen are literally just wildly horny bisexuals who were crazily attracted to one another and were falling in love on screen before our very eyes. and when you have THAT insider info(which sounds cray doesn’t it!!!! the destiel actors are in love irl??? huh???) everything really does click into place. why destiel got SO popular when the show and actors never ever intended for it to happen.(i know some people think misha was playing cas as gay the whole time for shits and giggles, and i won’t deny that[especially considering he found out early on that destiel was why he was staying on the show], but i don’t think he really wanted it to amount to anything, nor did he care??? i mean he has the real thing with jensen, for one, so their characters aren’t really as important. for two, he loves joking about destiel because it’s a cultural phenomenon and it’s fascinating, and i’m sure he did ship it because he’s unhinged, but i don’t think it was vastly important to him either way.) destiel got popular because everyone was and is unintentionally reading into the real deal. i could pull up countless gifs that people have used as destiel proof that is actually just jensen and misha being messy. mainly jensen. if i’m being honest.  the symbiotic relationship between destiel and cockles is why i’ve stayed onboard the destielcule and shellerscape for three solid months now; because it is utterly fascinating to witness and kind of super beautiful, too. 

5. alma(and others). so. i do NOT want to really REALLY get into this in its entirety here and now so i will just give you my opinion on if i think alma is misha or not. also; i don’t want to mention the other poetry accounts here bc i feel like that’s a bigger breach in privacy, but a lot of people do know about alma now. way too many, actually. this is why we can’t have nice things. anyway-to answer your question-there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that yes, misha is running that alma poetry account. i am 100% certain. some people think it’s actually three people and they’re all connected to misha in some way but that is so needlessly complicated. as it goes in psychology; the easiest explanation is probably the right one. it’s just one person running that account, and it is misha collins. i don’t know why it’s so hard to believe KNOWN POET misha collins(who is known to spend most of his free time writing poetry anyway) would have created a secret poetry account to write about his intense secret relationship under an alias and also get legitimate feedback since no one used to know it was him. oh and the handwriting is identical??? you are blind if you do not see that i am sorry. and a million other things prove it’s misha too but yeah all you need to know is yes. it’s him. it would take a literal livestream from a random woman on that account to convince me otherwise. and honestly not even that because a random woman could technically still log in if misha asked her too. so. it would take a hell of a lot to convince me otherwise, clearly. that said DO NOTTTTTTTTTTTT GO ONTO THAT ACCOUNT WITH A SUPERNATURAL RELATED USERNAME AND COMMENT THINGS THAT ARE COCKLES RELATED. ARE YOU BRAIN DEAD WHY WOULD YOU THINK THAT’S OKAY. sorry i got heated but god please just don’t be dumb so many people have already gone way too far 

6. thank you for your lovely compliment on my analyses!!! i love doing them but i don’t know if people actually like reading them so i really appreciate it