#lets fucking discuss...

[floorpancakes]

we don't discuss the crossover potential between douwata and wataaka (tatami galaxy, not the xxxholic ship lol) enough

[chimerafeathers]

i really love how intensely Mirabelle reacts to act 5 Siffrin botched friendquest.

Isabeau is mostly operating out of concern and, eventually, hurt. he already knows something’s up before Siffrin gets to him. he knows something truly awful must be wrong for Siffrin to be lashing out like they are, and as soon as he can’t handle the situation anymore, he leaves and asks (with strained cheer) for time apart to cool off.

most of Bonnie’s anger comes from being upset and afraid that Siffrin would willingly put themself in danger for no reason, when that’s exactly why they’ve been so unsettled since the eye incident. they hate that Siffrin values their own life so little, they hate that they’re the cause of any pain or loss for him, and here he is, putting himself in that situation AGAIN. on purpose. it’s loud and explosive, but it’s familiar, too, being “hated” by Bonnie for this reason.

Odile pushes, and keeps pushing, until her concern overwhelms Siffrin and they strike where they know she’s most vulnerable. she gets physical, just for a moment, grabbing his collar before controlling herself and letting go. her fury shuts down into cold detachment, and she walks away.

but Mirabelle—dear, sweet, gentle, loving Mirabelle, “the most wonderful being on earth,” with her secret “ruthless side” that largely involves lightly badmouthing people behind their backs and then apologizing—slaps them. immediately.

and then COMPLETELY RENOUNCES THEIR FRIENDSHIP.

not just “we’re not friends anymore,” but “we were never friends in the first place.”

that’s!!! pretty extreme!!!!

of course, she ALSO starts by asking what’s wrong. something must have happened for him to act like this. but as soon as Siffrin brushes her off, she jumps past that line of questioning and dives headfirst into re-evaluating everything she thought she knew about them as a a person.

if he could say something like that to her and not see anything wrong with it, then she was wrong to treat him as a friend, wrong to read camaraderie into his teasing, wrong to think they must care about them all under their aloof demeanor.

that’s how Mirabelle phrases it—“I was wrong about you”—but i think that there’s a hidden layer of I was right about you, too.

she talks about the way they tease her like she had to convince herself that he was doing it in a friendly way. she says they talk like they “know better than her” like that’s a thought she’s had for a LONG time.

“Always soooo mysterious, Siffrin, always talking as if you're better than me! As if you know me!!! But you don't, Siffrin!!! You're just as lost and useless as I am!!! So stop!!! Talking!!! As if you know me!!!!!!”

none of this comes across as a new, sudden way to view Siffrin for her. it doesn’t shock or confuse her. it makes her angry, defensive, almost like she was waiting for something like this to happen at some point. the feeling of resentment, frustration, jealousy, being patronized and condescended to—this is something she’s been actively pushing down and rejecting this entire time, but they’ve given her ample reason for it all to boil to the surface. violently.

Mirabelle’s kindness is not inherent or easy. it’s a choice she’s making. she treats Siffrin warmly because she gives him the benefit of the doubt—refusing to act based on anxiety-fueled, cynical speculation, and reassuring herself that his actions are driven by care and friendship even if she can’t quite see it.

“I was wrong about you” doesn’t mean she always and without question believed them to be a fundamentally kind, caring person from the beginning—it’s that her first, colder instincts were right, and she was wrong to convince herself otherwise.

never mind that she asked what was wrong at first. she barely gives them time to speak in their own defense, to explain what they really meant by what they said. all of her suppressed doubts and frustrations are getting aired out now, now that all the trust she’d so deliberately placed in him has been betrayed. her pain feels bigger than this singular moment, so when she hurts him back, she makes sure it extends back through the entirety of their relationship for him, too.

“You're awful. You're not my friend, not my ally, not anything. You never were.”

like the others, she goes back to the clocktower and tells Siffrin not to come back until later. but there’s a finality to the way she ends this confrontation that isn’t quite there with the others. Isabeau and Odile reach their breaking point and remove themselves from the situation, asking for space to cool off but still somewhat leaving the door open for Siffrin to tell them what’s really going on at some point. Mirabelle is the only one who tries to fully cut ties—after everything else she says, her “I don’t want to see you until tonight” reads to me somewhat as “I don’t want to see you anymore unless I have to.”

I can’t wait to never see you again.

even back at the clocktower, Mirabelle doesn’t really defend Siffrin’s place in the party when Odile suggests leaving them behind out of concern for their trustworthiness on the most important day of the journey. Isabeau and Bonnie protest out of sentimentality and faith in Siffrin’s abilities and connection to them, and Mirabelle agrees, but…

“I agree, but... B-But would he even agree to come with us, still? Maybe they won't even come back tonight...”

she doesn’t say much outside of that. maybe the stutter and hesitation here are signs of regret about how things happened, but she lacks Isabeau and Bonnie’s confidence that Siffrin even wants to come back to them in the first place. she doesn’t trust that their bond was real anymore. maybe it never was in the first place, or maybe she broke whatever was there herself.

and she’s still mad when they finally catch up to Siffrin at the King! and she makes sure Siffrin knows that—after saving them, assuring him that he no longer needs to fight, that they’re all there for him. she still cares, of course she still cares—she’s still hurt, too, but they can figure that part out once there’s less world-ending stuff going on.

she’s the first to say that they all reserve the right to still be angry at Siffrin later—and that they’ve already forgiven him.

she’s also the first to say we want to stay with you, too. it’s not just you.

she was wrong! she thought they didn’t care but they care so much, it’s overwhelming, it’s world-ending.

i think she’s gonna be wallowing in guilt post-canon the moment she remembers what she said and did TO SIFFRIN and not just what Siffrin said to her. especially now that she knows Siffrin’s exact hangups, and especially especially if she figures out what Siffrin was trying to say.

they put themself through hell out of loneliness and fear that none of the others cared about him the way he cared about them, he was going insane from repetition and exhaustion and hunger and trying to keep them all safe and together, and all they did in the midst of all that was say something kind of mean to her one time (that turned out to not even be MEANT to be mean it was supposed to be HELPFUL they just SAID IT ALL WRONG) and she SLAPPED THEM? and told him that they WEREN’T FRIENDS AT ALL??? how could she!!! she should have known better!! what they said hurt a lot but still!!!

so when they eventually manage to try to talk about it, they end up almost in, like, a guilt competition.

Mirabelle apologizing for how she reacted, that she shouldn’t have yelled or hit him, that she doesn’t want to be the kind of person who acts that way out of anger and she’s sorry that she made Siffrin expect that reaction from her, she should have known better and believed in him more and they only messed up like that because they were losing their mind in a time loop but what’s HER excuse—

and Siffrin going nononono stop I deserved it—(HUH DON’T SAY THAT NO YOU DIDN’T)—and that he should never have said such awful things to her, ever, and she was under so much pressure already with the weight of the country and everyone’s lives and futures and her religion and their whole party counting on her to do this impossible task because she’s the only one who can, all this unbearable expectation and hope crushing her, and they KNEW that but they thought they could skip to the ending as though her feelings didn’t matter at all, like helping her wasn’t as important as saving a little time—

until they’re just. in tears together, apologizing for all the horrible things they did in between complimenting each other’s strength and kindness and resilience and how much they admire each other and saying that no, everything you did was completely understandable, actually, the only one who sucks here is me. which neither of them will accept coming from the other!!

they’re so similar, in ways they couldn’t really understand, before.

warm, affectionate, perfect Mirabelle, the resolute hero, a beacon of compassion and hope for all those around her, who wears her heart on her sleeve, her fear making her courage shine all the brighter—nothing like the insignificant, forgettable Siffrin, too terrified to be known, too fragile to touch, too selfish and disgusting to bear letting go.

cool, mysterious, unflappable Siffrin, the worldly traveler, as charming and silly as they are confident and skilled, who brushed off losing an eye like it was nothing, accepting the risks of this journey with barely more than a shrug—nothing like the anxious, stagnant, undeserving Mirabelle, a fraud and a nobody crumbling under the weight of a mission too important to be entrusted to someone like her, doubting herself, doubting her friends, doubting her mentor, doubting her faith, too weak and brittle to bend and change the way the world needs her to without breaking.

not worth bothering others with their problems. they should be able to handle this alone. stay positive, stay calm. breathe in, and out.

they’ll struggle with it, still—the hiding, the minimizing—but now, they understand each other a little better. they can hold each other accountable for what they leave unsaid.

it’ll get easier, eventually. they have plenty of time.

[deadsetobsessions]

Sea Cryptic! Danny AU- Pt.4

[Pt.1] [Pt.2] [Pt.3] [Pt.5] [Pt.6] [Pt.7] [Pt.8] [Pt.9] [Pt.10]

Danny was sitting in the back, his backpack obnoxiously taking up the seat next to him, when the door to the lecture hall creaked open near silently.

“What are you in here for?” Danny asked the guy who crept into class. He sympathetically took his backpack off the Seat of Shame and allowed the guy to sit down. Funnily enough, they had the same hair and eye color.

“Gen Ed. Undecided. You?” The guy grunted quietly back.

“Environmental studies. I’m Danny.”

“Tim.”

With the implicit understanding of two people in a required class they could not give less than two fucks about, Tim and Danny tuned back into the lecture. When the class was assigned group work, Danny looked over to see Tim softly snoring, head slammed down on the table.

“Tim. Wake up, dude.” Danny poked his shoulder.

“Huh? Class over?”

“Nah, we got group work. Discussion board.”

“Oh shit, thanks for waking me up. Wanna team up?”

Danny shrugged. “Sure. We should aim to post it in the middle so the professor doesn’t read our answers to the class.”

“Yeah, sounds like a good idea. Any idea what we’re talking about?”

“Kind of?”

“Good enough for me.”

——

Tim Drake kept seeing Danny Fenton around on campus.

“Danny! Dude, what are you doing?”

Danny turned, gloved hands full of crumpled trash. “Picking up after the student population, apparently.”

“Didn’t think environmental studies was that serious.”

“Global warming is very serious, you jerk,” Danny smirked at him, crossing the grass to put the trash into the trash can. “Reduce, reuse, oil shouldn’t be spilled in water and all that.”

“Basic stuff,” Tim grinned. Nice, he basically had a friend past Bernard now!

They were friends, right?

“And yet humanity fails to comprehend it. Incredible. Incredibly stupid that is.”

“They get it. Major corporations just don’t care.”

Danny sighed. “True that. You on your way to your next class?” He took off his biodegradable gloves off (nitrile and nylon, baby!) and chucked them into the trash.

“I’ve got free time, actually. Prof cancelled for his daughter’s surgery.”

“Oh, shit, that’s rough! You wanna go downtown and join the strike?”

“A strike? What for?” Even as he asked, Tim hiked his bag higher onto his shoulder, ready to go. They fell into step as the two left campus.

“Apparently, Quillan Pharma was doing some shady shit at their manufacturing plants. I think it’s like killing kids, and pouring toxins into the ground.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah. Oh! Poison Ivy’s gonna be there!”

Tim blinked. He casted a sideways look at Danny. Sure he’s been here long enough to know… but it couldn’t hurt to check. “You know she’s an eco-terrorist, right?”

“Okay, but like… people suck sometimes. And all she’s asking for is like don’t kill the planet. And she doesn’t do that whole mind control thing too much anymore! The Sirens are so cool. Plus, one of my best friends at home might actually kill me if I don’t try to get her autograph. Poison Ivy is like, Sam’s personal hero.”

Tim snickered. “Yeah, okay. Mind if one of my friends join? His name’s Bernard.”

“The more the merrier,” Danny nodded. “Ooo! Hot chocolate. Want some?”

Danny bought three drinks as Tim trailed behind, texting Bernard.

“He said yes.”

“Cool! We should meet up somewhere before the drinks get cold.”

Well, Danny got the autograph. Tim got a new friend, and Bernard got a drink from his crush.

——

“Oh, you’re the glowing dude that Batman always talks about!”

Danny blinked, eyes scanning the wing-like cape and the yellow emblem on the hero’s suit. Danny was indeed glowing, stars and nebulas freckling across neon green skin, and glowing hair the color of a white dwarf star, tinged with the blue from his ice core.

“I… have absolutely no idea who you are,” Danny lied, like a liar. He’s found a surprising niche of entertainment in messing with the local vigilantes and he’ll be damned if he missed this opportunity.

He heard a snicker from the comm lines as Red Robin visibly brushes it off.

“I’m Red Robin. Why are you picking up trash?”

“Picking up after you humans, apparently.”

The both of them blink, feeling a weird sense of déjà vu. A moment of awkward silence passed before they both shook it off.

“Are you here to help? No offense, but the track record for you people is terrible.” Danny strode over and grabbed a bag. He opened it, and shook it at Red Robin’s face. “See? Batarangs, these odd bird looking ones, the R’s. Seriously, pick up after yourselves!”

“Oh, woah, can we have these back?”

Danny yanked the bag back before Red Robin could get close. “Pay me. These were incredibly tedious to pick up. Especially the batarangs. I mean, I even found a whole bunch of old rusted ones in the middle of the bay. What did you do, dump an entire bag in there from the air?”

Red Robin sighed and took out a wad of cash, with tracking fluid all over it. Danny grimaced, smelling the odd scent on the money. “That’s not real cash. It smells off. Are you trying to give me counterfeits because you’re broke?”

Red Robin gaped, oddly offended. “No! They’re real!”

“Doesn’t smell like it. It’s stinkier than the trash. Go get the one with the money, the litterer. Tell him I’ll be back the next full moon. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.” Danny grumbled, disappearing on the spot to watch Red Robin flounder with the stack of cash and the piles of dead bodies on the shore.

“What the fuck even is my life these days?” Red Robin wondered out loud, stuffing the cash back into his pocket. He looked over the plastic wrapped bodies and slumped, sighing.

Oddly enough, Danny felt a sense of sympathy. Well, he’s not getting paid for sympathy. He’s not getting paid at all tonight, actually. Danny flew off, plunging once more into the depths of the significantly cleaner waters, and used his ice to scoop out oil stains.

Danny glanced around and sighed. He had a lot of work to do.

——

“So you’re saying he’s like a werewolf mermaid fae child immortal god thing, right?”

Bruce grunted.

“B, what the hell are you smoking these days? You know drugs are bad, right? Do we need Superman to give you that PSA?” Jason snickered.

Tim, massaging his arms from having to haul an ungodly amount of dead bodies, grunted. He’s so similar to Bruce that it gave the people currently in the cave hives.

“He said full moon. I don’t think we can track him with regular stuff. The bugs kept shorting out.”

“Oh boy,” Dick sighed. “Don’t fall off the spiral cliff, Tim. You’ve got midterms to think about so no stalking the guy.”

“Yet,” Tim shot back, changing out of his suit.

Bruce grunted, setting aside a huge stack of cash.

[lucabyte]

Different standards

[menlove]

average post about paul mccartney: I want to bend him over and fuck him so hard he starts crying god I hate him so much my beautiful princess

average post about john lennon: estrogen would have saved her. look at her. that's My Wife. she's evil. she's insane. I want her.

average post about george harrison: has anyone ever served this hard? personally, he should have murdered john and paul and ran off to have beautiful bisexual sex forever and ever 🫶

average post about ringo starr: ringo! 🥁

[stump-not-found]

hrgh rambled on vc about theraprism bill for hours and i woulda kept doing it . will tuck it safely under the read more

institutes are banal in their cruelty . agency is a complicated subject . bill is a cornered rat who's always been a cornered rat . what does he look like in a scenario where he's back at square one ?

i think he'd lock tf in honestly . tbob wasn't a bad attempt . like the book was a mess of him oversharing, but he managed to get something out the door that wasn't meant to . high security facility for tyrants and he still slipped something thru the cracks -- that's interesting ! i wanna play in that space which takes into account bill cipher is competent and more than willing to rip his fate out of the jaws of whatever sick punchline the universe is setting up for him

i think bill cipher can have his moments of patheticness . he's fun to put in the blender for a lil bit i also enjoy a bill cipher jamba juice from time to time

i just also think he got where he was in life for a reason . he's charismatic . he's funny . people genuinely like him, a natural born cult leader . he's extremely smart, and knowledgeable . he's willing to do a lotta shit most people wouldn't which already puts him ahead of the game

i think the thing that's the most fun about bill being in the theraprism is when you acknowledge he's a person . he's been put in a place where he no longer has any agency . his entire life has been chasing any scrap of agency he can get, and never feeling like he's got it . i love that thread, because this wouldn't be anything new for him -- bill's never had agency as far as he's concerned . always clawing his way for the right to exist

he's a cornered rat, he's always been a cornered rat, and he's gotten pretty god damn good at clawing his way back to the top . i think it's fun being able to explore what that looks like, how that power struggle would function in a place where he is pretty well and truly powerless

then if you throw ford into the mix, now he's got a wedge . and it's fun playing with bill trying to reconcile the ways he wants to use ford as leverage, with the reality that ford is his weakness . that doesn't change just because bill beefed it big time . the fact he won't acknowledge that just about dooms him to it, and that's awesome . i love cycles man. keep pretending that love did not undo you in a mind-bogglingly brief amount of time, i'm clapping and cheering about it yippeeeeee

ohhh it's just so fun . take my man and have him lock tf in . i wanna see him clawing at those walls and being a genuine threat to the system, while coming to terms with the fact that reincarnation is just about inevitable

it's such a weird fucking situation . you can talk so much about personhood, and agency, and how he took those things from others, but like . dude you still deserve to be a person . you still deserve to be treated well . so did all the people you hurt . theraprism presents such a good pressure chamber to have a narrative exploring how someone like bill reconciles those facts, if ever

rooting for you man . i think your success is more narratively interesting than failure

oh goddd and don't get me started on the meta implications of reincarnation as a narrative representation of how so frequently "character redemption" equals the death of the original character, replacing them with someone completely different, usually "good" and "domestic" hhhhhhh

turn him into a moth . turn him into a human . at the end of the day his personality has been so twisted and warped it's not even the same person anyways

my tuoyyyyys

[altschmerzes]

if the only time you bring up A Secret Third Thing is when someone has suggested generally celebrating or uplifting platonic/queerplatonic fictional relationships in spaces that ordinarily obsess about romantic ones to the exclusion of all else perhaps consider why you’re doing that and also stop.

[ganondoodle]

okay now, im a little pissed off- i wont be reblogging the post bc its and old shitpost and i dont want to attract more notes on it but

i am so fucking, and i mean FUCKING, tired of all the shit ass excuses some people try to make to defend ganondorf being a nothing burger character

this dumb ass comment really goes all in too, and here i painfully see how much damage skyward sword has done to him bc people cant fuking think i guess "as of skysw he doesnt have an true motivation of his own- hes evil just bc he is there nothing else to it" shut the fuck up man oh my god, you dont think thats a problem? you just accept that? no no OOT also already showed hes nothing but evil tm uwu he doesnt have a reason - AND THATS A PROBLEM YOU ABSOLUTE BUFFOON

if you think that giving ganondorf a miniscule amount of ANY sort of sensical reason to do what he does, a backstory, fucking anything 'changes him into a different character'- HOW in the FUCK do you not see the problem here

and my favorite (refernceing a different character) "If hes evil, like ganondorf, which means an absolute evil, then his backstory wouldn't matter a lick" HELLO??? HELL FUCKING O???? "absolute evil" do you know how you sound like??? also EVERYTHING MATTERS oh my god, but no no of course it wouldnt matter and make no difference if you knew more about a character, no, actually, knowing less of a character is better even! why even write anything tbh? you just give them a label of good or evil and then you dont need anythign else heehoo i cannot believe this shit is now hanging on one of my posts, im struggeling to even dismantle it bc its just so goddamn stupid what do you mean it woudnt matter???????? if i knew ganondorf had a personality (especially totk bc its the worst case), if i knew he had loved ones once upon a time, he laughed and was allowed to feel like a person, whatever made him go down a bad path to end up making you defeat him would mAKE IT ALL HAVE MORE OF AN IMPACT (this is assuming that whatever path it is leads him to oppose you but also .. it doesnt have to mean hes evil or done all bad deeds, guess what, you the player could also be playing the real "villain", wouldnt that be a change of pace .. or it wouldnt, depending on how you look at it (oh NO shift of perspective???) it already is, even if i personally prefer it ALL being a spectrum and not just a label of good and bad and just rolling with this badly definable bunch of words)

do you know why i didnt give a flying fuck about the final battle in totk?? bc its all fucking NOTHING, ganondorf is a goal post with a face that got "BAD GUY" written on it in big red letters stapled on it and nothign more, you cant care about nothing and the point of any story at all is to fucking CARE

honestly a reason why i hate both "redeemable" and the good and evil descriptor is that its so ... limiting, redeemable, what does that even mean really?? it just sounds like you are applying some weirdo christian sins to make up for with good deeds shit onto characters that are, or should be, meant to make you feel something and be a pinnacle of jesus instead, like a checkbox, a scoreboard, and now its being mainly used as a negative word to dismiss legitimate criticism of boring or shitty writing bc giving any character any depth at all now automatically means you want to redeem them and thus absolve them of their sins or some shit, make them uwu perfect little good guys which is not the point (even if there are people like that, sicne guess what, theres lots of different ideas of things all around, inlcuding this hellhole- and yes there are shitty ways to give a character depth! the problem then isnt the motivation to give them depth, its the WRITING of it)

the whole good and evil thing also is just so darn limiting, what does evil even mean, who defines it matters alot, what does good mean, the definition is also really really bendable- link kills more living things than ganondorf ever has yet he isnt evil (bc hes on the side of hyrule, the designated good gouys uwu which means anythign they do is okay), the royal family having a torture dungeon and persecuting the shiekah into submission doesnt make them evil uwu but the gerudo have to suffer for the "crime" of having birthed ganondorf at some point for all eternity i guess

(as well as the very very obviously stupid turns and things ganondorf does and doesnt do literally just bc they needed him to do soemthign you could call bad even if it makes no sense at all, why would he attack his own fucking people out of nowhere, why destroy everything, literally what for, why give himself up if he wants to rule its jsut as stupidly nonsensical as the dumb magic pebbles that just gives random powers out just to force the outcome they wanted to happen)

redeemable, saveable, whatever, giving a character depth doesnt have to mean you want them to join the good tm guys either and im so fucking tired of this way of thinking, EVEN considering that hey ... it would be cool actually to have a ganondorf as the main guy, but we all should know that would only happen if he is a servant of hyrule, which i would consider to be more out of character than ... GIVIING HIM ANY SORT OF DEPTH??? to sympthaize, be conflicted or see the guy you need to defeat has a point is like, not a bad thing?? you can make someone be the most sympathetic guy of all time and still make you fight him ??? and i will repeat again, ganondorf being a nothing burger (espeically in totk) hurts EVERYTHING, everything suffers from shitty writing and lack of writing, the thing that link and zelda are almost just as flat istn .. isnt good either?? its also bad but hes got it way worse (and the racism oh bOI)!!! (there is a reason why ww ganondorf is widely seen as the best one and itse literally bc he says ONE or two lines that may make you think omg .. he is person.... he might FEEL OoO- man the bar really is below the ground isnt it)

and they dont even care to try to make him actually be dislikable, he doesnt tease zelda with killing her father or soemthing, he doesnt have any sort of connection to any of them, every line he says (in totk) is like a prepackaged microwave villain line, you could apply it to anyone, even rauru and it wouldnt seem out of place tbh (which is BAD), more depth would have connected him to the story, the world the literal everything which means people care which means a better story i dont know how to explain to you that you should be able to care about characters??????? he gets the stamp of "evil guy" on his head and they expect you to be happy with that, accept any stupid thing they make him do and others say about him without question? do you NOT feel at least a little insulted???

and like, this is still written, this is a piece of fiction, they had to sit down and write all that, or .. well, NOT write it, they decided to do it like this, despite the ocean of potential in front of them, you could do so many itneresting thigns with this world and they jsut dont and then theres people like this that are so entrechned into this boring ass writing they think that its the point, liek the point is its bad hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

"but hes not meant to be a person he jsut ev-" SHUT the hell up, nevermind the whole curse thing is an englsih trnaslation thing and also perhaps not meant to be taken literally, you think that makes it ok? that well there was a demon once (who also doesnt get any sort of depth btw!!! problem shoved one place over but still the same problem!) so that means hes not actually a person but idk a demon puppet or soemthing- doesnt change anything imo, are you not bored? are you not tired? are you happy with not thinking? not being engaged with at all? to see chaarcters to utterly flavorless you fall asleep and choke on them? i am not, i love thinking, im addicted to it even, i think every day even, right now too, they got a convenient excuse to put not even the barest fucking minimum of writing care into a character and you are jsut going with it!! where are your tastebuds buddy??

[arthursfuckinghat]

So, I've been wondering something.

In red dead online, there isn't too much use for Dead Eye because it doesn't/can't slow time down since you're playing on a server. It's still a powerful skill if you work on the upgrades for it, but one thing I noticed a lot (because I rarely use Dead Eye in online mode) is that your character really doesn't like having a low Dead Eye meter.

As in, your character will cover their eyes and scrunch up their face and wince as if they've got a bad headache (this goes for playing in story mode too). Now I know they're just visual cues for the player to see and be able to tell that the Dead Eye is low (because your aim is much worse with low Dead Eye), but the implications are pretty interesting to me.

So the question is, does having low Dead Eye hurt and why?

We know that both Dead Eye and Eagle Eye are learned skills, and things like cigarettes, cigars, chewing tobacco, alcohol, snake oil and cheese all benefit your Dead Eye when it's low. It's a crucial meter, just like your heath or stamina - which raises more questions in itself.

Dead Eye and Eagle Eye are fascinating to me because they're very valuable abilities that can be used at will, and have specific set limits for how long they can be used at a time.

But only Dead Eye needs regular sustenance, or "feeding" I suppose.

This gives me the impression that Dead Eye is constantly dormant, instead of something that's "turned on" when needed. Like a constant state of being on high alert that's running on the sidelines of your character's day to day life.

When your character hasn’t used Dead Eye for a while and it still drains, it could mean their brain is struggling to maintain that high level of alertness in the background. This constant readiness, or the potential to drop into Dead Eye at any moment, would be like someone constantly being on high alert in real life. Even if they don’t act on it, the strain of staying ready for danger builds up.

Dead Eye uses an almost superhuman level of focus and precision. To enter that state of hyper awareness where time seems to slow down (even if it's just the perception of it), your character's brain might be working much harder than usual, forcing the mind into overdrive. Just like overusing muscles leads to physical fatigue, overworking the brain through intense focus could lead to mental exhaustion and physical symptoms, like headaches or vision problems.

And since Dead Eye depletes like a stamina bar and requires nourishment (cigarettes, alcohol, cheese), the skill could be linked to the body’s energy resources. Using Dead Eye probably increases your character's heart rate, sharpens reflexes, and probably even increases adrenaline production, which are all very taxing on the body.

Which makes sense as to why things like tobacco and alcohol help replenish it.

Stimulants like nicotine or the rush from alcohol might help keep that mental sharpness in check or at least alleviate the strain. It's as if the brain needs to be sharpened or soothed with substances because it's working overdrive in the background, even when you’re not actively engaging with Dead Eye.

So if we treat Dead Eye as something that affects the brain’s chemistry, like sharpening focus and precision, it could also deplete certain neurochemicals or hormones over time (adrenaline, dopamine, etc). Tobacco or alcohol might simulate the release of chemicals that help regulate those abilities. The discomfort your character feels when Dead Eye is low could well be on the same level as withdrawal symptoms, where the brain is craving more of those chemicals to return to its state of super focus.

I mean, what a fucking fascinating concept right?

Dead Eye is solely tied to heightened awareness for life or death situations, focusing entirely on people who can fight back and threaten your life. So while you're using it, you're engaging with targets that could potentially harm you, and that’s why it probably has such a taxing effect. Your mind and body are fully ramped up for combat, for precision, and for survival. It’s essentially a battle skill, designed for quick, decisive violence.

You also gain Dead Eye points for killing people, so you're not just using this dangerous skill, you're learning every time you use it and kill with it.

From a world building pov, this really deepens characters like Arthur or any other Dead Eye users. They're not just "good with guns" - they're managing the toll that comes with honing such a deadly skill. And unlike Eagle Eye, which is more of a passive, less draining ability, Dead Eye seems to tap into something more intense and unsustainable. Which is really fitting for their lifestyle.

Eagle Eye is taught through patience and understanding of the natural world, Dead Eye is forged in fire and the result of a life steeped in bloodshed and conflict.

[nellasbookplanet]

I know that after Downfall the perspective of 'the gods are a FAMILY' has permeated fandom on both sides of the kill-all-gods argument, but frankly that isn't all they are and acting as if it's suddenly their only motivation flattens both them as characters and the narrative they (and bells hells) are in.

The Wildmother and The Raven Queen didn't 'let' Lolth get away with nabbing Opal and killing Cyrus because she’s their sister. Come on man, we've already seen that the primes are plenty capable of opposing and fighting their siblings on the side of mortals (is the calamity a joke to you??). I'm not saying the primes aren’t capable of picking the lives of their betrayer siblings over mortals (downfall showed as much) but that's not what the situation with Opal and Lolth was about in the slightest.

They let Lolth 'get away with it' not because she’s family, but because this is the very rare instance of them not only having the same goal, but of them actively fighting for their lives. As far as we know that has only happened once before on Exandria, and that time they also entered a truce to defend themselves. The vast majority of the time, the primes picking their siblings over mortals won’t happen because mortals can’t actually threaten the gods (normally), making the 'they're family argument' a moot point. The primes won’t necessarily agree with Lolth's methods, but they won’t go throwing away both hers and their own champions in a meaningless struggle when they need all their strength to stop the fucking apocalypse.

[coldarena]

regular billy n mini billy

[da-rulah]

right well after that i'm going to need 3-4 business days to recover thank you

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

bllk men who u can boss around without consequence: reo . ness . some of the others i guess

[gordonsicedcoffee]

CARY ELWES and KYLE MACLACHLAN SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL (2004) Park City, Utah

[bimbroad]

it always bugs me when people act like meljay fans are this unnecessarily militant and hostile group of people as if they haven’t been witnessing the horrors of fandom antiblackness (not even discussing the writers themselves, because Amanda you *will* be dealt with) since the moment Jayce and mel locked eyes. like yeah, if everyone called one half of the ship an evil manipulative she-devil jezebel fujo cuck and the other a mindless idiot whose only purpose is to be a subservient dog to his white partner, I too, would become a Batman villain

[crossdressingdeath]

I am once again begging people to realize that Ivenci does not in fact want to "make Antiva better", that's not why they want the Crows gone. This is someone who straight up let Treviso get occupied by the Antaam who fuck up every city they occupy (and tbh it is actually insane to me that a mage let the Antaam occupy their city after the atrocities in Ventus, which must have happened before the Antaam took Treviso because occupied Ventus is referenced in Eight Little Talons which happens before Antiva is invaded; it says a lot that Ivenci thought that was a good idea). They tried to gas the city with qamek (again, insane thing for a mage specifically to be doing after Ventus, these experienced writers did that on purpose) to remove the Crows and their supporters yes but also anyone who spoke out against the occupation too loudly. Guys, please, Ivenci wants power. We are repeatedly told and shown that they want power. They'd rather destroy the minds of half the city and give those remaining to the Antaam than not have power. Their immediate response to being told they'll be put on trial—with the knowledge of the king and merchant princes, so even if we assume the Crows don't have the legal right to do that they fully intend to cover their bases on that front—for all that treason it is at this point well documented they've been committing is "You can't do that to me, I'm the governor of this city". Them saying the Crows are bad does not mean they're right because they could not more clearly think the Crows are bad because they're getting in their way specifically.

They're not even right about why the Crows are bad; first and easiest the stuff about the Crows murdering people in the street is just straight up nonsense, there is literally nothing in any other game or this one suggesting they do that, they kill people they are hired to kill (and because they're so expensive those targets are extremely unlikely to include random people on the street) and claiming they're as bad as the Antaam (who we do see dragging people away during the first visit to Treviso) is ridiculous. And second... I've said this many times, but defending Antiva is literally the Crows' job. If the people of Treviso or Rook (or Ivenci, although they wouldn't for obvious reasons) went to the king and asked for help to free Treviso, the king would send them straight back to the Crows because defending Antiva is their duty and they do it proudly and as well as they can. Keeping Ivenci in the loop is the limit of what they're really required to do, and frankly given Ivenci is a) incredibly rude, b) wildly suspicious and c) entirely useless it's really more than they deserve, someone please replace this person with a competent governor who actually wants to help their people. Also no I won't ever be over them standing around doing nothing except insisting Crows Bad right outside the field hospital the Crows set up and are fighting to defend from the Antaam in blighted Treviso. This is where everyone involved in this situation who claims to care for Treviso should be putting their money where their mouths are and it is telling and pointed that the Crows do at great personal cost—the Crow casualties dying of blight and getting warped into monsters that the other Crows with Rook's aid have to put down so they aren't suffering and can't hurt anyone was deliberate, can people stop acting like the Crows are totally fine and untouched in blighted Treviso—and Ivenci and the Butcher don't, that was a deliberate storytelling choice and I would like people to stop ignoring it.

Ivenci is not insisting the Crows should stay out of it because it's not their job and they're overstepping; they're saying it because it is the Crows' job and they are interfering with Ivenci's plans, which is in fact evidence of the Crows working as intended in their role as Antiva's defenders (which does make the argument that Ivenci's right about the Crows being bad for Antiva somewhat ironic, given they're walking proof of the Crows being pretty good at their role even while being actively sabotaged and before anyone suggests Rook's doing all the work I'm saying right now that that's not the case, the Crows are clearly doing a lot when Rook's not around, and if you claim it is because we don't see them doing it you'd better be claiming that literally every faction is completely worthless because that argument does not apply to just the Crows). I am begging people to use their critical thinking skills, people saying things you agree with in broad terms and people being right are two entirely different things.