#they have a lot of communication flaws i don't like (beyond this stuff)

[zipquips]

i haven't been to class or campus in a few days bc i'm having a tough time and i'm kind of upset none of my friends have noticed or reached out

[eldritchhimejoshi]

Okay, but more bobitms thoughts! Cw: extremely vague bobitms spoilers, but spoilers there are.

I feel like, for as many people who react poorly to Alice's chapters and the repetition of her Catty memories, I end up finding a new thing about them that I love. Though, if i'm honest, I feel like Alice's chapters are perhaps the most challenging because they're so unsparing when it comes to her flaws and the fact that those flaws are incredibly relatable.

Alice is a young woman stuck at the cusp of her life, and has delayed that step beyond for far too long. Though what I think the Catty segments show even moreso is that Alice has always been on the cusp. She constrains herself to manage the feelings of others, trying to keep peace in a household that will never be peaceful (insofar as there is something of a feminist critique to be mined that speaks to an injustice, the very sort Catty is flipping out about), and has to silence her own wants and truth. However, what all this shows you, through each of these memories, is that the timid adult doesnt spawn ex nihilo. Each one of those moments swaddled her in layer after layer, and she's drowning within them, barely able to tread temporal water without being dislodged from her present.

Consequently, it strikes me that much of Alice's story (at least its beginning) is the presentation of a terrifying truth: if you don't make choices in your life someone will make them for you. In delaying her life, the development of herself, she becomes easy prey for Lottie. The perfect prey in fact, if we believe Lottie's reason for taking intrigue in Alice. Alice may have consented to sex, but she was very much hunted in a manner not that different from how Lottie was hunted by Sabine. Prey may choose to run, but the predator is guiding them toward the ambush.

And this is where Alice is so hard for so many to read about. They want to focus on cool vampire powers and hunts; the idea that, like Alice, they'd still be uncool, anxious, and timid despite all their newfound power is agonizing. To be told that you are only going to be more of yourself is awful when you lack a clear image of who you even are! Then there's the elements of shame at play that so many lesbians tend to have these days; while we have so much more language than our elders did (like Sabine and Lottie), there's a lot of invisible structures in play in our lives that leave us inept at even talking to girls. Made all the worse when our environment is so lacking in other queers, mentor or otherwise, who might show us how we can be. Yet, so many of us turn inward (in part due the lack of a social group usually) and self-flagellate via recognizing how our elders had it so much worse but that they can do all this stuff you're failing at, ignoring the fact that some of our elders had more mentorship and physical community than many of us possess. A strange lack which has meant a lot of us never received a low stakes space to be taught how we might exist in our world.

In this way, Alice embodies so many of the implicit struggles of the modern young lesbian. She might have no been fast tracked toward marriage, but the gravity-like presumption of naturalism that Patriarchy possesses is still in play, weakening our ability to exist. All of which is a hard pill to swallow, but a fundamentally necessary one. Being able to name your identity isnt enough. A single label will not save your life. Only through being able to live your life, make choices for yourself, and surround yourself with a supportive community will save you. To do otherwise is to be left at the mercy of any passing monster.

There's more I could say, but i'll stop for now.

[genericpuff]

So I watched ChattyMia's Lore Olympus video which was great and everyone should watch it. It seems most people who do series reviews of the Lore Olympus don't like the comic for obvious reasons. Then I was reminded by the end that the comic is expecting a TV series which is in development hell. It made me think that Rachel might be better off not having a Lore Olympus TV show. Most praise for the series died awhile ago as the story became an utter mess. If it did get a TV show, people will see the early red flags like the age gap, the treatment of Minthe, trying to excuse cheating, Hades horrible behavior to workers, nymphs being discriminated with no pushback, etc. If some of them read the comic for spoilers they would later see the other big red flags of the series. Excusing slave labor, Persephone threatening the lower class, Hera getting with Echo a 'trash nypmh' as she once called Minthe, Apollo gets community service, the continued mistreatment of Demeter etc. Which I feel will cause everyone to go 'wtf is this series? 50 Shades of Grey mixed with Keeping Up with the Kardashians?'. Then you have to wonder if some of them will do a deep dive and find the stuff about Rachel's tie to Lolita. It would be especially bad if a bigger content creator talked about it. And we already know Rachel doesn't handle criticism the best (i.e. the struggle street tweet, the Minthe cosplay situation or even the merch). So I could only imagine how much worse it would be for her if Lore Olympus got a TV show and more eyes got drawn to it and her. It would no longer be just confided to the web comics fanbase but the much larger TV one. Unless Rachel seriously considered rewriting the TV script (or rekindling it lol) I don't see how a TV adaptation of her show would be good press for her.

Yess I've seen that video, it's great! She did a great job summarizing a lot of the biggest core issues with LO's story and art without getting too lost in the sauce (though god knows the rabbithole of LO's issues runs INCREDIBLY deep in an equally fascinating and "oh god what the fuck did I just read' kind of way), her video editing was very entertaining and her Persephone cosplay was a great touch 😎

That said, regarding the thought of "most people who do series reviews of LO don't like the comic", there is an amount of bias we have to acknowledge there - there's often a lot more to say in the negative rather than the positive. By extension, people who simply enjoy LO and don't participate much in the online discussion surrounding it or the discourse concerning it are less likely to make 2 hour videos analyzing it. So while the popular opinion of LO has shifted more towards a negative point of view, that doesn't mean that fans of the comic don't exist - it's just that most of those fans are blissfully enjoying the comic and can only sum it up as "it's very pretty and the plot is great", whereas many people who didn't enjoy it are more likely to voice their opinions as to why in far more explicit detail (though on the flipside of that, it also goes to show that there's a lot more to analyze in LO's flaws than its strengths - it's ironic that the fans often don't have much to say beyond "it's cute" or "I relate to Persephone" and anything further than that is relegated to pure headcanon pieced together by assumption and best guesses to make up for Rachel's lack of writing).

All that aside though, regarding the TV adaption, at this point it's less a matter of reception and more a matter of relevancy. The perfect time to release or at least show us proof of the LO TV show was years ago, when the comic was at its peak between 2020-2021. The second best time was at last year's NYCC when Rachel was a headlining guest. The fact they still had nothing to show for it at this year's NYCC, with Rachel nowhere to be seen and instead focusing more on the Freaking Romance adaption with Snailords filling the role as their featured guest (an equally if not even more problematic creator), is astounding, but unsurprising.

To me, LO feels like a real life case of "Tortoise and the Hare". Back at the start of it all, in 2017-2018, it was doing what no other comic on the platform was doing, presenting us a retelling of the Hades and Persephone story - which was very popular on Tumblr at the time - through a modern setting and with art that was incredibly unique for the platform. That, paired with WT's aggressive marketing, propelled it far ahead every other comic on the platform, creating a gap so massive that even the comics in second place on the trending tabs still weren't even close to LO's lead in terms of stats and money.

But then it got complacent. Quality of the comic's writing and art dropped, it was becoming increasingly obvious that LO had become no more than a marketing grift akin to the likes of Harry Potter - easily turned into books, t-shirts, socks, coloring books, figures, etc. - and that gave way to an increase of criticism towards it, criticism that had always somewhat existed even as far back as its days on Tumblr, but was now amplified by the existing ongoing proof that LO was never all it was cracked up to be.

Now, at best they shill $200+ figurine pre-orders, but the show is nowhere to be seen and, with the comic now finished and locked behind Daily Pass, its relevancy is dying out. "Rachel Smythe Presents" still has nothing to show for itself, Rachel's IG and Twitter seem to be purely for merch-pushing by the Inklore team, and Rachel has, at best, two new series that she suddenly announced but, in her words, don't even have anything written or planned for them yet beyond the taglines that were thrown together for her socials.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Greek myth retelling industry is in a renaissance. Hades is still a massively popular game, with its sequel now in early access; Epic: The Musical has been making waves on Spotify and TikTok far exceeding that of LO's in terms of audience reach, and even has more to show for itself in the way of official animations than LO ever has; and now Kaos has recently launched its first season after being in production since 2018 - yes, you read that right, it got commissioned around the exact same time LO became an Originals series which suggests the idea for it was already floating around and being pitched prior to LO - and, frankly, has beaten LO at its own game by achieving everything LO set out to do - weaving a Greek epic-style story in a modern setting, balancing romance with prophecies and world-ending stakes. It took a while, but Kaos made it past the finishing line, while LO has been dragging itself behind it, still making empty promises that a TV show is "still in the works" and "coming soon", with not a single thing to show for itself.

LO may have gotten a head start in being the "sleek, modern, sexy Greek myth retelling" by the virtue of being a weekly webtoon, but slow and steady wins the race - the productions that have taken their time cooking in the oven are now coming out as beautiful and delicious as we, the guests at the table, were told would be, while LO is simply the short-term gratification junk food that bombards us with gimmicks but sits like a rock in our stomachs and leaves us unfulfilled and wishing for a better meal.

Those better meals are here now and they were absolutely worth the wait.

[osokasstuff]

on topic of AAC users & proper grammar (or lack of it)

i think there is another aspect besides struggles with language & cognitive struggles & other internal stuff. and besides some AAC apps/methods don't support creating proper grammar.

have people considered that it's difficult to communicate with all proper grammar, punctuation, etc. when you have to type out most or all of your communication?

fully verbal people with no speech impairments don't always speak with proper grammar. because it takes time and energy. because conversations can be fast, emotionally loaded, or just low efforts. people don't communicate only in perfectly articulated essays with all proper grammar and all thoughts perfectly structured. people interrupt themselves and each other, use shorthands and slang, just mess up with grammar, and it's totally fine! because they still understand each other, and if they don't, they ask for clarification. and same for typing. fully verbal people with no speech impairments use shorthands, use memes, use slang, use simpler grammar, mess with grammar, etc.

but gods forbid AAC users do the same. we're suddenly stupid and unreadable and whatever. we suddenly have nothing to communicate. our communication is suddenly flawed.

i know a lot of AAC users' struggles with grammar go beyond "regular grammar mess that people with no speech impairment can do." i don't say it's same thing. i don't try to diminish AAC users' struggles with language.

i just mean that. even if someone has zero struggles with words & grammar & expressing their thoughs through written language. it's really exhausting to communicate everything or a huge chunk of your thoughts by text on daily basis. it's impossible to communicate in perfect essays on daily basis. that's why we have essays and have regular speech.

but AAC users get denied in having daily language style that can be messy and lack of proper grammar and not perfectly articulated AT ALL [PT: at all].

because A LOT OF [PT: a lot of] "support" for AAC users is something like "actually, you/they/we can communicate in always perfect grammar & style, you/they/we are actually always well articulated and can explain everything and express your/them/ourselves through essays constantly!" our right to communicate and value of our communication is justified by saying that we can communicate perfectly ALWAYS. ALL DAY EVERY DAY EVERY TOPIC EVERY MOMENT OF OUR LIFE. [PT: always. all day every day every topic every moment of our life]. and when we can't meet this unrealistically high standard, our right to communicate and value of our communication is immediately questioned. because our right to communicate & value of our communication were initially tied to that unrealistically high standard.

(and these ideas throw AAC users who can't communicate with proper grammar or express their thoughs perfectly through text under the bus. which is extremely ableist).

let AAC users have REGULAR DAILY SPEECH PATTERNS PLEASE [PT: regular daily speech patterns please].

(and again, all AAC users, regardless of their ability or inability to communicate with perfect grammar, have right to communicate & their communication should be listened to, taken respectfully, and not dismissed).

[misanthrapologist]

okay I have some stuff I wanna spout about nowhere and ivan himself now having the official lyrics and various translations. someone please listen to my ramblings.

starting off this song is clearly about him and his struggles about himself and his whole life. we see this overall from the lyrics and of course the cover.

if black sorrow was hopeless then this is beyond hopeless. the "this/that always happens to me" is just a clear sign right off the bat about this along with the "it's so typical, typical to me" it's it's obvious just how used to always being in these awful situations he is "that's just how it is" and how it'll always be, how it'll end "it's stained with blood" (can he stop that man you just jinxed your own pretty much suicide) he's always expected a death that's obviously not going to be that normal or say "happy" for lack of me thinking of a better word of a death, but it's okay, he's content with that cause it's what would've always happened no matter what. it's always how everything goes for him. fate sealed to an awful end from the beginning of his life.

the dream and hope slowly going from rose to purple to black once again shows this hope slipping away never to be fully back again no matter what. even if for a second he gains a bit of hope back, it's pointless. it'll always end wrong and it's back to his usual life. "wake up, wake up in my overwhelming daily/beautiful life. is it for real? an existence like dust, I can't stand to look at it, close my eyes and my mind" he's clearly unhappy with his life (to a point) and himself, preffering to look away, ignore it and forget as much as he can as to not stress about it anymore than necessary. it's easier that way rather than facing it or communicating about it at all. and we know how he is when it comes to all that. he's shit at it and doesn't know how to really do it so obviously that's what he does. the "is it for real?" is honestly kind of funny tbh. yet so meaningful. in a way it could mean that it's hard to believe what's happening and that it's better than anything he ever had in the slums or in general. maybe a feeling of unworthiness of these things in regards to the "beautiful life" line, since although not the best, again, better than anything he could've ever wished for. or maybe something else.

we already knew he does not like himself and is truthfully not confident. he certainly.attempts to be as we see from the act/personality he puts on but even then he ends it off with a way to slightly jab at himself as we see in his interview where when asked about his charm he says he has more flaws and his looks being "quite average". along with a mention about his teeth or rather tooth. here I'd like to mention the line "with that revolting tooth"/"with these disgusting teeth" this stuck out to me since it's very obviously him once again hating on himself. it's clearly a part many like/mention about him a lot. but it's him, who he is and of course he hates it. the constant descriptions of him from the team and himself being that he's "twisted" and variations of that further show just how deep this hatred goes. this feeling of abnormality and wrongness. the feeling you're so vastly different from everyone and needing to learn how to be normal and like the others in order to fit in and be liked. an act. one he's put up his whole life nearly down to his death before he does everything at the end of round 6. even in official arts of him being genuine in canon we don't see much except strong distress. which is so utterly fitting to how he thinks and is. of course he's distressed whenever he's alone and himself, putting on an act so different from himself pretty much all day every day of your life really takes that kind of toll on you. I don't blame him for looking so pissed off when he's alone it's stressful pretending to be someone who you're not, someone who you had to learn to be to survive, someone who you were forced to perfect to the best of your abilities to be likeable in some way, someone who may as well be their own separate person at that point. (I could go on and on but I have so much else to talk about my bad.)

"this painful wound that keeps getting worse, I become more and more numb to it" says a lot and could be referring to many different things. but why not everything? I see it as this reffering once again to his life as a whole and way of living as an act. after so many years, you get used to this the more you do it and the more things happen.

"In the dark city lights I can't find anyone, anyone, anyone" this could mean a variety of things really. having no one to truly relate to as a metaphor of sorts or just being alone in the past in the slums or both even. a lot if not most of these lyrics as seen tie back to the way he lives and thinks about himself, further making me believe this song truly is just a better, even clearer look at his true self.

now with lyrics I thought had one meaning even before the official release that just become less of a reach on my end that I'll talk about more broken up. "that's just the kind of kid he is, so laugh, laugh because he can't do anything" this one I immediately think about his issue about not presenting and being like everyone else having to learn to be "human" in a sense. (along with his again self deprecation being the one writing these and singing them) "can't do anything" makes me believe this even more since he didn't really know how to express anything considered human before being taught how to or being forced to teach himself for example how to smile. a basic human action everyone naturally knows how to do. but he doesn't. he had to learn and be forced to do things like that. observing people and picking up how to do things "right". "no one cares about him, there's nowhere in the world for him to rest, that's just how he is" again reffering to his true nature. feeling uncared for and "rightfully" hated in your own eyes. wanting to change and trying to change and pretending yet knowing it'll never truly be real or enough to feel something. "rest" here could either mean literally as in he doesn't get a damn break, never really had anywhere to go at all and has been alone his whole life or doesn't get a break from faking everything I mean with such insane security and obviously being under such pressure it's hard to fully put your guard down anywhere. though I won't say only one since I honestly think it could once again have many meanings, cause most things he says in this song can be taken in different ways that still perfectly fit with his character. "he's smooth, flexible, quite easy" and the rest of this verse coullddddd be reffering to his act. I think so at least. I already said how I feel about that no need to repeat myself.

that's a lot and honestly all I got without repeating myself for the rest I hope this was coherent enough and makes at least some sense. I just wanted to get all this out my system and if anyone has anything to add go ahead and uhbmy bad for getting a little personal but writing all this and thinking about it is honestly therapeutic?? in a way. I so awfully and deeply relate to this guy half the time I think or talk about him and his issues I stop and think about how I'm basically describing myself. he's truly such an insanely well written and interesting character I'm not wven surprised I latched onto him so much I don't even really know what I'm doing okay bye :3

[utilitycaster]

Do you think part of the D20 journalistic bias comes from D20 being edited? It gives the appearance of much more effortless play and lets them control the pacing in a way unedited play like CR simply can't do. They get to (potentially) hide a lot of stuff people would jump on as flaws while CR has no choice but to let it all play out. I greatly prefer CR's approach, despite it biting them in the ass a bit through no fault of their own.

Answering these both together to group cause and my opinions, and I do want to note this is specifically about journalism/press coverage, not their respective fandoms even though there's obviously some overlap.

I think there's a couple things, but I do want to note this was actually prompted by Daggerheart, not Critical Role. The response from several prominent voices in the Actual Play journalism community, whom I will not name here but whom I do not respect intellectually, really was, within hours of the open beta (which as far as I know they didn't have early access to - more on that later) "um it could be better, I don't like xyz and also it's sooooooo important to have criticism" and again, it is important to have criticism, but also you act like D20 has never had a mediocre moment and that Kollok is brilliant, so.

This...got away from me a bit. I'd say I'm sorry but actually I adore writing thousands of words about actual play and it will happen again but I'm putting the detailed answer below a cut. The short answer is I think a lot of Actual Play journalists actually sort of fell into their jobs through being vaguely involved in nerd spaces and aren't actually equipped to talk intelligently about TTRPGs and actual play as a medium that should, at its best, be a perfect fusion of narrative and mechanics. So instead they're distracted by flashy edits and bright lights and cool noises and some abstract concept of "novelty" and write only about that. Also Critical Role is the 700 lb gorilla in the AP space (though not, actually, the TTRPG space) and doesn't give them early access and that's meaaaaaan. Indeed, for all I think a lot of their coverage of D20 and Worlds Beyond Number is obsessively fawning, I also think it's extremely surface level, frequently factually wrong, and fails to get at what's truly excellent about those shows either.

I think, honestly, the biggest one is that I don't actually think a lot of Actual Play journalists watch series in full. I was looking for Polygon coverage of Fantasy High Junior Year and they have one glowing article but it's more about Fantasy High as setting and institution and D20 "changing the game" (also more on this later) to the point of outright contradicting the pull quotes they used from interviewing Brennan Lee Mulligan (also more on this later). So I started looking through their coverage and actually, quite a number of their write-ups are based on only one episode, or half a season. Clearly, they haven't read the full open beta (nor have I, but I think their complaints about the character build process belie a profound misunderstanding of what TTRPGs are, also more on this later). So editing is certainly part of it because it's really easy to see cool special effects and sound design within one episode and shit out a hacky article about it, whereas actually getting to the substance - character relationships, cohesive narrative, storytelling - requires work that I do not think they're doing. And on the one hand I do kind of get it, because yeah, if journalism is your livelihood then you perhaps do not have the time to watch 4 hours of D&D a week for 2-3 years if you're only going to get one article every six months out of it. But I don't think the answer is "focus intently on Microsoft Powerpoint-esque scene transition tricks while ignoring that nothing occurring at the table is actually fun to watch." For more on this, see this post.

The second, which is very relevant to Daggerheart but also is actually a big gap in D20 and WBN coverage in my opinion, and which I put in the tags, is that I actually don't think a lot of journalists have a solid understanding of TTRPGs nor of most genres. And I think Critical Role has a particularly good understanding of both these things, actually, if one skewed towards collaborative storytelling that is not rules-light. I think one really big example is that one person within the space is mad at the Daggerheart questions for the character archetypes because what if your character doesn't fit these. I think this is dumb as shit. I actually think that a common criticism of D&D - that you can't play ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING - is not valid, or rather, it's a valid opinion to hold but if you want to play a character who doesn't fit into the available archetypes perhaps you need to find another game. We all inherently understand that Blades in the Dark characters will be members of a criminal organization in a relatively low-magic setting, correct? That you can't show up to BitD and play a lawful good wizard prince because that's not the story being told? Or like, how in Honey Heist, you are a bear and you are trying to get honey, and you cannot play a human child investigating the old abandoned house at the edge of town, but there's a cool game called Kids on Bikes that will let you do that? Great! Why is this suddenly so hard to understand in the realm of heroic fantasy, that you will fit into specific archetypes? Why do people's brains, if they have them to begin with, vanish suddenly? I know I just did a big old rant that included this within it but genuinely I think a lot of people are deeply ignorant of heroic fantasy, or don't like it, and either is fine, but then they get mad at the heroic fantasy game for having heroic fantasy archetypes when the answer is "maybe this will never make you happy because it's not for you." (Frankly, I think this is also why they love D20, because it doesn't really do straight-up heroic fantasy, and that's fine, but they do keep acting like doing a Game of Thrones pastiche is equivalent to the invention of the wheel.) Like...I remember in the Midst Q&A that Xen said they tend to not like playing typical D&D classes, but their solution was to, you know, create Midst instead of sitting around going "actually, because D&D doesn't support cyberpunk narrative and the character archetypes within very well it is an utter failure." (I could go on forever about how actually TTRPGs are not a showcase for your already extant OCs to prance around but that's a totally separate post).

Mechanics and story are inherently intertwined, is what I'm trying to get at (sorry I'm really tired and have a lot to do but I'm passionate about this answer, it will be rambly, she says like 3 pages in) and I really don't think most actual play journalists get this. At all. And I do think that CR, and Daggerheart, and the people working for it, and especially Spenser Starke, Rowan Hall, Matt Mercer, and Travis Willingham, get this more than almost anyone else in the field. I also think Brennan Lee Mulligan and Aabria Iyengar get this, and the thing is, for all the praise showered upon them, much of which I think is deserved and most of what I think is undeserved is not because they are lacking but because the person writing about them is an idiot crediting them for things they (Brennan and Aabria) would never claim to have invented, their mechanical prowess is rarely if ever written about well. Fantasy High Junior Year's downtime mechanics actually fill in a famous gap in D&D, namely, downtime, and provide an excellent marriage of story and mechanics in my opinion, and I haven't really seen any discussion, because that would require watching the part of the TTRPG show where they play the TTRPG, and knowing the vague word on the street about D&D criticism that isn't just "*nods sagely* capitalism is the BBEG."

And finally: related a bit to the edit but Critical Role used to not be able to provide any early access to press, because it was literally a live show, and I suspect they never broke the habit, and I think that is for the best. As discussed a lot of D20 coverage actually feels like they watched the press screener and then never returned to the show. And I do not know the politics about them, but given that several of these publications (notably Polygon, but some others) have been shitting on Critical Role for several years, and just generally given the way CR's leadership vs. how D20's leadership respond to fandom pressure, I suspect Critical Role does not give these journalists a ton of early or increased, if any. Honestly, why should you, if you're getting interviewed in Variety? And I think the journalists are mad, because they think they're special and should get treated as such.

I do want to wrap something up, and I want to thank @captainofthetidesbreath for talking a little about this in game design/ttrpgs and giving me the idea, but in story, you should be challenging your audience, expanding their horizons, and being new and interesting. In the actual playing of TTRPGs, especially a new one, it is vital to be inclusive and easy to understand and patient and provide points of reference. I really feel like many Actual Play journalists and some TTRPG ones as well have this equation flipped and are looking for challenging concepts that most people will never be able to get a group to be willing to play, and bells and whistles in production, but leave story as an afterthought. Critical Role designs games to actually be played and to be used specifically to tell good stories, and puts story before production, and I think that undercuts those journalists' whole deal.

[anarchblr]

Literally seeing communists literally throw grassroots organising under the bus and act like the only way to achieve anything is through “capturing” institutional power like just telling that MLs are just like the Democrats they criticise they don’t give a shit about organising unless they think it might get them into state power.

Also so fucking stupid like “ah yes community building is stupid and doesn’t impact anything and is just an over glorified social club. Instead of that why don’t we have another leftist minor party that only cares about clamouring for funds and trying to run for office in a fascist dictatorship. It’s not like those groups have become literal cults of personality or just self-destructed under sectarianism.

That and the constant shitting on Food not bombs orgs as “baby’s first step to leftist organising” just condescending shit like heaven forbid we feed people because it doesn’t generate political clout for your political party/group/definitly not a cult or a massive vanguard to purge the ideologically impure from the ranks. MLs are just Democrats with a soviet fetish

Oh is this about that shit apas wrote about mutual aid or am I missing something? Or sex-haver talking about FnB?

For what it's worth, I don't think one person complaining about one local, grassroots org necessarily counts as "shitting on" it; we're allowed to complain about the situation we're in; vent, if you will. Talk shit so long as we do the work, y'feel? Like, I complain about some people associated in some stuff I do, but it's not like I'm shitting on them.

If it's about apas "mutual aid is fundamentally flawed because I can't lead it ", an opinion that aims, in part, to deal with the theoretical basis of mutual aid while knowing next to nothing about it in order to discredit it, then don't worry about it. Despite the correct observation that a lot of what gets called mutual aid on here is, in fact, charity; anarchists, and I among them, have constantly delineated this difference long before MLs said anything about it. The rest is just bad commentary, it only functions to strengthen the in-group mentality MLs have when it comes to other socialist schools of thought and traditions, particularly the anarchists of course, but it's worthless to comment on it beyond that.

That kind of commentary is more of an insight into the bankruptcy of their political educational and learning and inability to form strong connections with other people who want revolution rather than an incisive and devastating critique of grassroots organizing centered around anarchist principles, so don't worry about it.

[noinoi10101010]

my 2nd favorite Sams character earth

god I adore earth. She is such a great character and is an absolute sweetheart. She was made with one purpose and one purpose only to be prefect the perfect sister, the perfect mother, the perfect teacher, the perfect daycare attendant, absolutely beyond perfect that a lot of pressure to put on someone. But dispute this earth still manages to be extremely kind hearted as she was the one to help sun when he was hallucinating blood moon and more importantly fixed sun and moon broken brotherly relationship as before earth sun and moon would constantly lie and unintentionally hurt each other mentality like when sun harness star power and nexus found out and got pissed at him who helped them earth she sat booth of them down and made them talk about there feeling and communicate with each other and it solved the issue she literally solved the issue all on her own. And not only that she helps gives the rest of the celestial family a comfortable environment to talk about their issues and the other characters in the show with her therapy sessions. She actively trys to make others have confidence environment to vent about their problems cause without earth therapy sessions some of the other characters would probably been a lot worse mentally as some of the stuff that they kept bottled up would remain bottled up. But that's earth main problem she puts others needs before her own and it portrayed very realistically. She needs to learn that some times she can't help everyone and needs time for herself with was done amazingly. Another thing is earth daddy issues this is probably one of the first times we have seen just how evil the creator is outside of using kill code urge to kill. The creator took earth kindness for granted lied to her and made it so she can't think about him negatively. It was so bad that even when the cat was out of the bag and she Eve found out the trust he that the creator never loved her she still loved him for months after the fact as said by nexus. And the said thing is that it happened again with nexus and it's no wonder why earth hates it when people lie to her cause she has a history of people who clam and are shown to care and her and love her only for it be revealed they don't give a damn about her and it's just heartbreaking and you can't help but feel a little bad for earth. And back to earth being perfect she has very minor flaws but still flaws that she has learns to accept like her being naive, her being a hypocrite after she becomes friends with eclipse dispute all the bad stuff he had done to the people she cares about like lunar sun and moon, and not comforting lunar when he had a breakdown about wither he should leave and become an astrol or stay on earth, the point being earth flaws while very small not easy to notice are still flaws. And the whole point of earth she is not perfect she is flaws and I love her and all her flaws.

@lednet-sorrow-au-blog

[bestworstcase]

Tbh I don't think anyone's saying that Oz has Never Done Anything Wrong Ever, or at least, personally, that's not my belief.

While personally I believe that Oz hasn't tried actually destroying Salem or erasing her from anyone knowing about her at all, I ALSO believe that Salem Is Not an irredeemable monster. I do believe she's trying to overthrow the gods rn, and that she hates the sword of damocles that is the mandate and has been trying to keep Oz from summoning the gods up until now (bc yknow, why wouldn't she try keeping the Relics from him??).

Plus, her fear wouldn't be unfounded (I still believe Oz was gunning for the task for a long time), and the narrative of "Salem is right" can still easily happen. Plus it's not like Oz is innocent; 1. He lied to Salem for their entire marriage 2. He decided to gun for the task Light gave him 3. Hasn't even tried communicating with Salem and 4. Has demonized her in his mind and to those in his circle. Both and neither are at fault imo. Oz fucked up big time, and he knows this, but the belief Salem hates him and his own self hate is keeping him from Actually Doing Anything. I think this also goes for Salem, fear and possibly self hate keeping her from communicating.

I just come from the perspective that both fucked up, Oz a bit more than Salem ofc. I just think that Oz isn't nearly as bad as people make him out to be. Like, this probably sounds really rude so I'm sorry in advance (/gen), but I feel like Oz being paranoid for No Reason and constantly trying to destroy Salem or erase her from public knowledge and demonizing her for No Reason beyond his own paranoia and unwillingness to change makes him seem... almost cartoonishly bad. Like it makes him sound like an abusive husband 100x worse than Adam and Jacques combined. And beyond that, it makes Salem seem completely innocent pre-war, that she was just dealing with her Abusive Husband who's delusional and paranoid.

To me, it doesn't feel nuanced, or at least as nuanced. I DO like the idea, but only as an AU. Not only that but I feel like it'd be really unfriendly to casual fans, people who don't do analysis n stuff, bc unless you bother analyzing every 2 second scene, you won't pick a lot of this up. And this is in terms of the writers, not you lol. Rwby IS meant to be analyzed, but not a lot of people will bother, and those who do haven't exactly picked any of this up.

I do think they're good theories to have though. Really it just gives me an excuse to re-analyze scenes and see if my thinking is flawed. I mean, if it's straight up Confirmed that your theories are right, then I'll be like "Oh, huh, I was wrong". I figured I'd just give insight to what people are probably saying bc I haven't seen anyone say that Oz is an innocent uwu wet paper bag. Cause he's NOT innocent, but I just don't think he's as bad or evil as people insist he is. And I do my best to analyze without any form of bias. I *did* come to the same conclusion about Salem lol.

Anyways sorry, this got long dhchvj. I hope I don't sound rude, I'm really tone blind (autism), I'm just doing my best to give insight to what people think. Cause trust me, it annoys me just as much as you to see people try to claim that Oz is innocent or that Salem is an irredeemable abusive witch. Cause obv neither is true lmao.

I hope you have a good day :] /gen

you’re fine. 

the core issue i have with the reasoning laid out here is that it demands a presupposition that oz is… well, a miserable spineless cowardly fraud who’s spent untold millennia pretending to believe in a pointless cause that he knows he will never lift a finger to advance in any meaningful sense. because it’s made quite clear that ozpin’s inner circle believes that they’ve been at war with salem for decades, that the huntsmen academies are fortresses oz built not to merely defend the relics but specifically to "stop salem"—that’s the language qrow uses in V4 and oz echoes it in V5—and that this is what oz has been doing for centuries if not   thousands of years, fighting to protect remnant from salem. 

the way qrow discusses the great war in both WOR and V4 insinuates that the conflict was really a proxy war between oz and salem, glynda chides ironwood by telling him "ozpin has experience the rest of us lack," in V3 the inner circle tells pyrrha "we are the protectors of this world" and "our group was founded [hundreds of years ago] to protect both mankind and the maidens" by "remov[ing] the maidens from the public eye, allowing their existence to fade away into legend." or as qrow puts it in V2, "we’re the ones that keep the world safe from the evils no one even knows about!"—i.e., from salem—"[which is] why we meet behind closed doors, why we work in the shadows."

now, while ozpin’s difficult relationship with the truth means we do need to be skeptical as to the veracity of these historical claims… the inner circle is circumspect on the details, but they’re not lying or misrepresenting the purpose of their group. they earnestly believe these things because this what ozpin told them, and in V5 we see oz recount the same general narrative to team RNJR: "i am the combination of countless men who have spent their lives trying to protect the people of remnant […] this curse was bestowed on me by the gods because i failed to stop salem in the past, but we must stop her now."

so there is no ambiguity at all about the story oz tells his closest allies: he is trying to protect the world from an ancient hidden evil called salem, who defeated him once in the distant past but can be stopped now by keeping the relics out of her hands, and in order to do that it is essential to keep the relics and the maidens secret (lest world rip itself apart in wars to claim this incredible power) and likewise to ensure that salem’s existence remains hidden (lest everyone panic and be wiped out by grimm). oz and his inner circle frame this as an secret struggle that has been ongoing for centuries, if not thousands of years. 

his inner circle had no reason to disbelieve what ozpin told them prior to jinn’s tale. and even after the lost fable, no one questions the narrative that oz has been fighting salem for a very long time. "ozpin believed that the best way to fight salem was to do it in secret," says ironwood. "ozpin spent his whole life, many lives, keeping this secret," says qrow. later in V7, ironwood describes salem as "an ancient and terrible evil," and in V8 ruby says "this isn’t some new enemy or invading kingdom, this is a force we’ve faced before, for centuries… salem."

for the moment we’ll just accept the presupposition that salem’s war against the huntsmen academies began with the attack on amber following perhaps a decade of planning and careful preparation, incited by whatever happened when she met summer rose, and that before that time salem was not actively participating in shadow war. 

if this is taken to be true, the question with regard to how ozma has spent all this time becomes: do we believe that he’s been doing what he says he has—trying to "stop salem" by guarding the relics and keeping all these secrets—or not? because it is undeniably true that this is what ozma CLAIMS to have been doing for centuries if not millennia. when ozpin tells people this story about who he is and what he’s spent lifetimes trying to do, is it because he genuinely believes that he and salem have been embroiled in a secret cold war all this time, or… is he just lying?

why would he lie about that? 

consider the things he definitely did lie about. why didn’t he tell anyone that salem can’t be killed? he feared they would fall into despair and give up, lose all hope and the will to keep fighting. why did he lie about his personal history with salem? he believes loving her is his greatest mistake ("the hearts of men are easily swayed" etc) and he feels ashamed, guilty, regretful, desperate to make amends yet certain she will never forgive him and terrified that even if she did it would doom the world—the truth is messy and complicated and he’s convinced that what he wants is evil, so he buries it. 

why, then, would he pretend to still be fighting her when he actually isn’t? if ozma had, at some point, resolved this inner turmoil on the side of "salem was right, the god of light is wrong, i am not going to fulfill my task and will instead dedicate my existence to insuring that the relics are never brought together, the best way to protect remnant is by rejecting the gods and their redemption," why would he lie about that? why would he continue to promote faith in the two brothers and the final judgment he foretold long ago (ozpin includes this story in his anthology with notes urging his readers to believe in it and to act each day as if the gods will return tomorrow)? why keep telling his closest allies, his friends, life after life, that he was sent to remnant by the gods themselves to stop salem from changing the world? 

why wouldn’t he change course?—and i want to be very clear that i’m not asking why he wouldn’t seek reconciliation with salem, because emotionally that’s quite a lot harder. but if he decided the divine mandate was bullshit and he wasn’t going to follow it any longer, why would he not… er… stop telling people that the brothers are the Real True Gods who left behind these divine relics which he is put on this world to keep safe until the final judgment? 

ozma strove to keep salem and the relics a secret for lifetimes—and ozpin was stridently opposed to revealing the truth, we see him and his inner circle balk at the idea time and again explicitly because ozpin insists that secrecy is essential to stopping salem, so we have no reason to doubt that he really did feel strongly that keeping these secrets kept people safe—so in the event he changed his mind and came to believe that the brothers were enemies of humanity who must be kept at bay… surely he would shut his mouth. 

but the brothers and their final judgment aren’t a secret! ozpin published that story in a book of fairytales with a commentary telling his readers to prepare themselves to be judged! after jinn’s tale, nobody freaks out about the divine threat of execution should mankind prove unworthy because they already knew that part; it’s the mainstream doctrine of a well-known religion that exists all around the world, which qrow and ozpin had already told them was real and true. 

oz is not a bad person. he certainly isn’t some sort of craven charlatan who’s spent thousands of years exhorting the world to believe in and follow a creed he secretly opposes—even if he still believed that salem was dangerous and needed to be stopped, it would be so simple to cast the gods as dangerous adversaries who must also be prevented from ever coming back. 

like, he wants people to live. he wants the world to be safe, even if at the cost of his own happiness. that is always what ozma is trying to achieve—even during the ozlem kingdom, he sacrificed the happiness he’d found with salem in their little cottage to try uniting the world with her because he truly, genuinely believed his happiness came at the cost of humanity’s salvation. 

it follows that the reason ozpin tells his close allies that it is his god-given task to stop salem by keeping the relics out of her grasp whilst striving for unity and keeping all this a secret, he does so because he truly, genuinely believes that it’s the best way to protect the world. likewise, when he uses his public platform as the headmaster of a prestigious academy to publish an anthology of tales, including the one about the two brothers that articulates the divine mandate exactly, upon which he comments this: 

We have a fragile peace, and in some ways, we are more divided than ever. Even if the gods aren’t real, even if they don’t return to judge us for our deeds, we should act each day as though they are arriving tomorrow. In the end, we will be the arbiters of our fates. We will either create a beautiful, peaceful world and live in harmony together or destroy ourselves and our planet, and the gods will judge what we have chosen.

ozpin really earnestly does believe that proselytizing the brothers, imploring everyone to live as if the gods will return for the final judgment tomorrow, while keeping salem, the maidens, and the relics secret, is necessary and the best way to keep people safe. he wouldn’t be doing this if he thought it didn’t protect people!

so the story he tells his inner circle about WHAT he does—his purpose, his methods, his strategy—is true. it must be true because it would be both reprehensible and beyond foolish for ozpin to convince his allies they’re fighting in a war he knows isn’t real for a cause he doesn’t actually believe in, and ozpin is neither reprehensible nor stupid.

it follows that ozpin a) believes he has been fighting a protracted covert war over the relics with salem since the ages, and b) can be taken at his word when he says that insuring the relics and salem’s existence remain secret is an essential part of his strategy, especially because without fail he prioritizes secrecy above every other concern throughout V1-6 so he’s very much putting his money where his mouth is in that regard.

in V3, the inner circle makes the claim that their predecessors ("this brotherhood"), centuries ago, chose to "remove the maidens from the public eye, allowing them to fade away into legend." while i do have my doubts about the historical accuracy of that claim—a) the nature of the maiden inheritance rules would make it very difficult to keep the maidens under wraps and b) i think it’s more likely that ozma always intended for the maidens to act covertly, didn’t know what would happen when the first four died, and only pieced it together after a few centuries had gone by and he started to hear stories about young women blessed with magical power and went "…ah."—i don’t think there’s any reason to doubt that the maidens became a fairytale because ozma decided they should be kept secret. 

neither oz nor his inner circle make an exactly equivalent claim about salem… but. the situations are quite similar: the maidens were once "common knowledge," and when ozma first reincarnated he traveled around for years hearing tales of "the witch" wherever he went. some time long ago, ozma and his allies undertook to suppress public knowledge of the maidens, and in the present the last trace remaining is an old fairytale that no one could believe holds any real truth. as for salem, no one knows about her anymore either, and "ozpin spent all his life, many lives keeping this secret." 

the existence of the relics, similarly, is a secret because ozma chose to keep them secret—although the crown seems to have passed through at least a few pairs of hands before ozma tracked it down, hence the fairytale. (this is a subject for another post, but i actually don’t think 'the indecisive king' is about ozma—ozpin’s commentary on it is VERY impersonal and perfunctory compared to what he has to say about 'the infinite man,' 'the girl in the tower,' 'the story of the seasons,' or even 'the grimm child.' i think the original inspiration for the tale was some other person who had the crown before ozma found it, and he included the story because, as he says, he thinks it has an important message.)

so, basically, in the present ozpin and his inner circle are hiding three big secrets: the maidens, the relics, and salem. it’s stated outright that the maidens are secret because ozma and his allies chose to hide them from the world. 

of the relics, three are entirely unknown and one is the subject of a single fairytale of which the reliability is unknown (although my bet is on "the real crown isn’t that straightforward and may not actually work like that at all"); oz has been in possession of all four for at least fifty or so years. we know he found the lamp first, thousands of years ago, that he used both the sword and the crown to end the great war eighty years ago, and ozpin raised atlas using the staff. it’s very likely that he found the other three much earlier. the fairytale inspired by the crown suggests that one might have eluded him for a while.

in any case, once he had them all (and a few centuries had gone by to allow the story about the crown to be forgotten as anything but a fiction), ozma would’ve had nearly absolute power to decide who knew about them—salem being the only other person who could tell anyone, and at the time she didn’t know anything more than "there are four relics of some kind, somewhere in the world, that will call the gods to remnant to judge humankind if they’re ever brought together."

so the relics, too, are secret because ozma decided to keep them secret.

this leaves salem. before the rise and fall of the ozlem kingdom, she lived on the fringes of civilization and knowledge of her existence was widespread. (her decrepit house sat at the end of a paved, well-maintained footpath—she was within walking distance of the nearest town and did not make herself remotely difficult to find.) thousands of years later? nothing but fairytales that are, like 'the story of the seasons' and 'the indecisive king,' either believed to be entirely fictional or (in the case of 'the grimm child') about a real, if very rare, phenomenon unrelated to salem herself. 

this is not something that could have happened at all if salem hadn’t withdrawn from civilization as far as she did—which is one of the core reasons i think she hasn’t been at war with ozma all this time—so she tacitly allowed it to happen. but why did she withdraw so far? 

here is the part where it gets murky and highly speculative because we just don’t know what happened or where she went or what she did in those first few hundred years after the ozlem kingdom fell. it is plausible that salem just ran and kept running until she’d gotten as far away from people as it was possible to get, and stayed there in self-imposed isolation until, well, now—in which case ozma’s effort to suppress the knowledge of her existence would have mainly entailed not telling anyone about her and maybe destroying bits and pieces of the historical record. 

(i do think he’s made an active effort to keep her secret all this time, regardless: that is his first priority at all times until jinn spills the beans in V6, and if he can’t keep the world safe by destroying her then making sure the world doesn’t know she exists is the obvious Plan B. if nobody knows about her, no one can piss off the gods by siding with her. it’s really more a question of whether she put up a fight.)

hooowever. salem is a character defined by loneliness and longing for freedom, which to her explicitly means connection with others. love. companionship. this is why the gods punish her by making her immortal—separating her from the one she loves forever—and then when she overcomes that by going out into the world and turning her immortality into a gift that brings her closer to people and allows her to form new alliances and friendships, rather than a curse imprisoning her in isolation, the gods just. kill everyone. and leave her alone in the ashes. 

and as i said, even when salem is miserably isolating herself before ozma, she isn’t that far away from civilization—she’s living by herself but close enough to somewhere that she could walk into town, and her presence there was not only well-known but welcomed enough that people built a road right to her doorstep. this during a period of her life when she was so profoundly depressed that her house was rotting and falling apart around her! 

the point is that while salem does inarguably have self-isolating tendencies, i… don’t think hers are anywhere close to being as severe as ozma’s. his rendition of himself in 'the story of the seasons' may well be more poetic than literal ("So cold was his heart that the lands around him were covered in snow, the trees were bare, and animals and Creatures of Grimm alike avoided him. For centuries, no one dared disturb his peace…"), but at the time ozma certainly would have had the magical power to freeze all the land for miles around to keep people away from him, and even if it’s only a metaphor for how he felt then the implication is that he hid himself away in total solitude for possibly multiple consecutive lifetimes…

…whereas salem, at her absolute lowest, in the darkest depths of her self-isolating depression, lived by herself a short way from the edge of some town whose residents were probably rather wary of her (she’s not exactly friendly, nor human, and everyone knows she’s a witch) but nevertheless accepted her as a member of their community (because salem certainly wasn’t the one bothering to take care of that path). 

the way things ended between her and ozma, his deception, the deaths of their children, their kingdom collapsing, all of this was extremely traumatic for her and haunts her to this day just as ozma; i have no trouble at all believing that salem would flee to the edge of the world in the immediate aftermath. 

but i find it a lot more difficult to believe that she would stay there for thousands upon thousands of years if the only thing preventing her from returning to the margins of civilization were her own guilt and self-hatred. the gods punishing her by murdering the whole world, being completely alone for hundreds of millions of years, grimming herself, and the way humans would have treated her in an era when faunus were hunted down and caged like beasts wasn’t enough to drive salem into exile. i don’t believe her self-loathing, by itself, is strong enough to overpower her desperation to be free for very long.

i also really doubt that ozma would just, for lack of a better word, trust her to stay gone. especially not if—as jinn implies—he believed salem kept finding him somehow and sending grimm after him, which probably wasn’t true (her command over the grimm seems to be restricted to the ones she makes, and the incarnations we see in this part of the lost fable were not at all significant persons easily identifiable as ozma), but it isn’t an unreasonable fear for him to have? given how badly things ended between them. 

we know salem doesn’t like, obsessively devote her time to scrying until she’s found ozma again (because she doesn’t bother to do that after ozpin dies, she’s caught completely off guard by oscar—and if she doesn’t do so while she is actively waging war against him, it’s unlikely that it ever crossed her mind to try it at all, or else her scrying just doesn’t work that way), but ozma doesn’t have any way of knowing that. we know salem doesn’t control every grimm in the world, and oz seems to have figured that out eventually, but in those first few centuries before he found the lamp? he had no idea what salem might be capable of, what powers she might have hidden from him!

like it isn’t that ozma has No Reason to be paranoid. he knows that he hurt her really badly and that when salem gets hurt she lashes out, often in extremely vindictive and extremely violent ways. (he has no way of knowing that salem has spent these thousands of years clawing her temper under control, and no reason to think she would try.) he probably had no idea to what extent salem being grimm might be influencing her thinking—that’s where all the really deep distortions start to take root, ozma anxiously second-guessing every little thing like were there warning signs i ignored? was he right? did i let infatuation blind me to what she’d become from the very start?—by the time he finds the lamp, assuming jinn didn’t skip over any lives, he’s on his fourth life since the end; that’s a span of like, at least two to three hundred years depending how long he lived and how much time it took him to reincarnate each time. 

that is plenty enough time to convince himself she’s nothing but an evil monster who needs to be put down before he finds the lamp, and then he immediately uses his three questions for that lifetime so it would be another full century after that before he had the opportunity to ask jinn anything about… what salem is doing now, or what she lied to him about, or if she told him the truth after all. which is a terrifying prospect to even consider after a) multiple centuries marinating in an inescapable anxiety torment nexus echo chamber and b) hearing she can’t be destroyed, period. like what if the truth turns out to be "yeah the pool of grimm destroyed her soul and also she wants to burn the world to the ground and eat your heart now because you ruined her FOREVER!!! and there is nothing you or anyone else can do to fix her. you stupid fuck." like his cursed haunted brain keeps screaming at him 24/7?!

so.

we don’t really know anything about this period of time before ozma went after the lamp, except that "no matter where or how he lived, her presence was always felt." jinn combines that with a memory of two beowolves attacking ozma’s town to insinuate that salem kept sending grimm after him, or at least that ozma believed as much. 

but. but—"during his years of travel, he heard the same frightened whispers that spoke of a terrifying sorceress who commanded dark powers in the wilds, among the beasts and monsters. ozma was convinced that this woman was salem, and decided that he needed to see what she had become."

"but no matter where or how he lived, her presence was always felt. if humanity were ever to stand a chance at being united, one thing was clear… [he had to destroy salem.] knowing he could never rid the world of her through any mortal means, ozma sought out the power of the relics: armed with my knowledge, he believed he could fulfill his promise to the god of light."

<- these are parallel statements. everywhere he travels, he hears stories about a witch; no matter where or how he lives, her presence is always felt. ozma was convinced that this terrifying sorceress was salem; ozma grew convinced that he had to destroy salem for humanity’s sake. he needed to see what she had become; he needed to find the lamp to guide him. see the repetition? the echo?

i don’t think salem just vanished into the wilderness. i imagine she ran pretty fucking far, but remnant is a big world and there are people all over—there have even been people living in the southern region of the now-uninhabited continent where salem presumably lives, based on the map shown in WOR: vale. 

(the markers for those settlements are red in color; all the other markers are color-coded to the kingdoms, orange for vacuo, green for vale, while for atlas, blue for mistral, yellow for menagerie and what i assume are a couple of faunus settlements in southern anima, with tracks with the white fang’s headquarters being located vaguely in anima. in the blood-splattered map in the great war episode, there’s a fire burning in the southern peninsula of the uninhabited continent—implying battles were fought there and possibly that some of those red settlements existed as recently as eighty years ago. 

i turn this over in my mind a lot. it doesn’t make any sense to me to think that salem could have been remotely present in civilization anywhere within the past century, but rwby is so particular about color that the only reason to choose red for the now-defunct(?) settlements on the continent where salem lives would be to imply some degree of association with her, and if a WHOLE KINGDOM had been destroyed i think that would have been mentioned so these were probably just free towns and villages—possibly with a loose connection to vacuo? it’s sort of the logical place for displaced peoples from vacuo to wind up after fleeing their conquered kingdom. and in that case their "connection" to salem might be nothing more than her having taken pity on a bunch of refugees with nowhere else to go and kept the grimm off their backs until the great war…happened. but i would like to know.)

…the point being, i think "her presence was always felt" because salem, after some decades, maybe a century, hating herself deep in the wilderness, crept back to lurking on the periphery of civilization because a) ozma was gone and she had no idea where, when, or even if he would ever come back again and b) no matter how determined she is to punish herself, she just isn’t capable of wallowing in abject misery forever, even when she was the only person alive with absolutely no hope she kept moving until she found something to try.

so naturally people would have kept gossiping about the terrifying dark witch who lives in the woods among the beasts and monsters, and ozma would have known it was her. imagine if he’d reincarnated for the second or third time, wound up on a different continent altogether, and immediately started hearing the exact same sort of frightened whispers as before? even if it was pure unfortunate coincidence and salem did not have the slightest idea he was there, how terrifying that would be? and if salem didn’t want him to find her because she was scared or ashamed or angry or all three, then she couldn’t stay in any one place for too long—so this sort of indirect crossing paths oh-gods-she’s-already-found-me nightmare scenario could conceivably happen more than once.

(frankly, even if salem wanted nothing to do with him and was trying her level to avoid him without just never being able to come within sight of another person again, i think her not vanishing forever makes ozma’s intense paranoia so much more understandable because like. very literally, no matter where he lived, her presence would always be there—rumors, frightened whispers, everywhere. of course he’d start seeing her in the shadow of every grimm!)

i don’t think they’ve ever actually come face-to-face since that night—maybe glimpsed each other from afar across a battlefield, but if they’d met or spoken to each other i imagine it would have been necessary for jinn to show it happening. BUT i do think it’s likelier than not that there were several centuries when salem was legitimately an inescapable presence dogging ozma through life after life because she was just sort of… wandering around in a miserable traumatic haze on the very, very edge of civilization. and people talked about her.

so he went for the lamp, and fell into the depths of despair when jinn crushed whatever passed for his hope at that point. that is, almost certainly, what pushed him into his hermit era. 

now! if the fairytale’s centuries of eternal winter isn’t a pure fiction—if there is even the smallest kernel of literal truth in there as to ozma using magic to force people, animals, and grimm to stay far away from him, then. if salem was not already living in exile, this would have been when she began to hear rumors about him. yes? this is the first thing he does that would rise to the level of local legend salem might possibly hear. 

that his seclusion ended with "and then i met four young women who reminded me how to be a person so i gave them my magic" as opposed to "and then salem turned up with thousands of grimm to murder me and salt the earth" suggests that if she wasn’t living in exile at this time, her interest was probably more in avoiding him than vengeance.

and if that’s so, what does she do upon finally discovering where he is? er, probably travel as far away from the Cursed Wizard Forest as it is geographically feasible to go and decide that this is fine, that’s his continent and this is her continent and they can just stay on opposite sides of the planet until the end of time and never have speak to or see each other again. amen. 

if we take the fairytale literally, several centuries pass. lifetimes. enough time for salem to find somewhere to, if not quite belong, at least become a constant because well she’s been here since before granny was even born and no one knows who or what she is because she doesn’t really talk to anyone, but she’s not hurting anyone either, and legend has it that a goliath once attacked our town and the witch just walked out of the woods and exploded it with a glare, and that’s why grimm never come here, so she’s our witch. maybe enough time to send someone halfway across the world to check on the Cursed Wizard Forest to reassure herself that yes ozma’s still there, he’s not going to come after her and he must have come to his senses about the gods so she’s. safe. ish. as long as no one ever finds those relics. 

the fairytale ends with the hermit dividing his magic among the four maidens, and then he says: "My rest is over. It is time for me to resume my journey and work as well."—they didn’t just resuscitate ozma’s will to live, they restored his faith and his commitment to his task. maybe the world can be saved! maybe he can really do it this time, now that he’s found people willing to help him shoulder the burden!

(i do firmly believe that ozma told the original four maidens about his task and salem’s sworn hatred of the gods and the danger she could pose to the world if he emerged to try again, before offering them magic—as we see in v8, he isn’t naturally predisposed to lie or manipulate people, that’s a pattern he only falls into when he feels hopeless and scared. so i think he and the original maidens planned to gather the relics and get to work on uniting humanity, and the vague fairytale ending is an obfuscation.)

aaand i think that’s when he went after salem, because he emerged from his Cursed Wizard Forest after multiple lifetimes rotting in solitude, filled with new hope and ready to try again to complete his task, immediately tripped face-planted into rumors about the witch in the woods AGAIN and panicked. 

he can’t kill her, he can’t get rid of her… she can’t be stopped but, as oz says to hazel, she can be fought and someone has to try. doesn’t he have to try? if he believes the world can be saved, isn’t it his duty to try?—he knows she’ll never, ever bow to the brothers, she made that excruciatingly clear, and as long as she’s present in the world, as long as people might listen to her about the gods, remnant is doomed. so he has to make her go away. somehow. he has to try.

i think for salem all it would take is once. one time. if she still tried after everything to do what was right, leave him alone and not hurt anyone else and pick up the pieces as best she could. because the thing is, salem blames herself for getting her daughters killed in her anger—that’s why she tries so hard to keep her temper in 6.4—she hates herself for lashing out that night as much as ozma hates himself for the same. that self-blame would counterbalance her anger at ozma: yes he lied to her yes he tricked her yes he attacked her but she attacked him right back and now her children are dead.

how much of a temptation is vengeance with that clawing around in her head?

but if her mindset was like, "that was the most horrible thing that has ever happened to me and the worst thing i’ve ever done, and i don’t understand why he lied to me but i just want it to be done, and he’s over there and i’m over here and we can just. leave each other alone forever," and she found a place for herself where she started to feel maybe almost kind of ok again and then ozma violated the truce she’d invented in her mind but never thought to communicate to him by appearing out of the blue to attack her, completely unprovoked as far as she could tell, and whatever little town or village or even just one single person who’d been kind to her got destroyed in the resulting fight?

that’s an injustice. that’s i did nothing to deserve this, how dare you do this to me. 

and… that’s also, i think, the one thing that would compel salem to willingly cut herself off from all civilization and remain in exile for thousands and thousands of years (because she’s impossible to kill and too powerful to force her out if she decides she’s not going to go gently into the night). her fear of collective punishment. if she thought there was even the smallest chance that ozma might start doing what her father did or what his gods did to anyone close to her, i think she’d go and stay gone until she felt absolutely certain she could take him down forever.

(also theres a certain narrative elegance to the idea that they had their horrible mutual-incineration duel where they were equally matched in every way… and then ozma rotted in isolation while salem tried really hard to be okay and convinced herself they could just stay peacefully at a distance forever, until he found a spark of hope that ignited all his desperation so he went after her and she was blindsided by this truly awful and unfair and egregious thing that he did… and then she rots in isolation and ever-mounting desperation while ozma tries really hard to fix everything and pull the world into a semblance of peace until she finds a spark of hope and blindsides him with this brutally ruthless charge for the relics. 

they explode each other, fly in opposite directions—downward spiral vs picking up the pieces—then reach critical mass and explode again so hard they fully reverse positions and do the whole ordeal again. so it’s both a journey of learning to understand each other and a vicious cycle they can only escape by inversion of the first exactly-equal fight that exploded out of nowhere from a seemingly happy partnership, i.e. both reaching out unexpectedly in the midst of a seemingly inescapable conflict. it’s about symmetry)

This Has Been A Very Long Post Sorry About That. but—all speculation about the details aside—i do strongly feel that the most compassionate reading of ozma is that he is completely sincere about whathe’s trying to achieve (uniting humanity without committing genocide or turning salem into a scapegoat so everyone can be saved including her!!) but has absolutely no idea how to make it happen and has only just, in his second-to-last life as the king of vale, accepted the reality that it isn’t possible, and thence the whole building a replica of salem’s father’s castle to put his office in her tower-prison and hucking his emotionally tortured anthology of fairytales out the proverbial window (you know, like the girl in the tower who writes herself out of danger, coming from mr. fairytales this is a tornado siren of a cry for help) so forth. 

thus what he and his inner circle say about his efforts both past and present is true—he has been actively working to keep salem a secret for as long as the maidens have been hidden if not longer. as long as salem cooperated by not wandering around letting other people see and/or talk to and/or run away screaming in terror from her, what "erasing salem from public knowledge and keeping her existence secret" means, practically speaking, is tracking down any texts that clearly describe her as a real person (not a fairytale) or artistic depictions of her from the ozlem kingdom and destroying Those, and perhaps muddying the waters of all those folktales by inventing new nonsense out of whole cloth or mixing stories about her with other stories that definitely aren’t about her to a) blur the details and b) make it look to future scholars like the witch-in-the-woods was a loose folkloric archetype encompassing a huge variety of different beliefs and superstitions as opposed to one very specific kind of story about one very specific witch. 

which is a bit obsessive and weird but given the fate-of-the-world stakes at play here and the plain unarguable fact that humanity cannot be redeemed if anyone sides with salem against the brothers, which is demonstrably something she can accomplish if given the opportunity, honestly pretty restrained. 

and so the million dollar question is: what does it take for salem to cooperate by staying in exile? is the fight in lost fable and her guilt over her daughters shattering enough to lead her to just give up and hide forever alone?—who knows, right now it’s purely a matter for speculation, but i think the circumstantial evidence suggests "no" more strongly than it does "yes." 

which is not to say that she was the pure innocent victim of an abusive revenge quest, but rather that i think the facts of the situation for her would, in the immediate aftermath, tilt her in a more positive direction (he did a horrible thing but so did she, and she’s survived many horrible things before, and she can’t exactly lay down to die instead so she has to do something, and she doesn’t ever want to see him because it hurts so much and she’s so angry but her anger killed her daughters so she cannot ever let it out again so she’ll just have to stay away from him and live with it) whereas ozma. yknow. Spiraled. and her being elusive but inescapably present in the world make that so much worse, which isn’t either of their faults, it’s just a terrible situation.

it’s like. short of literally stumbling into each other by chance and yelling at each other until it was all Out There. i think no matter WHAT she did, ozma was bound to snap and lash out at her sooner or later because he spent centuries. centuries!!! with all this trauma reverberating and intensifying in his head with no reprieve because there were stories about her everywhere he went.

and then as soon as he does that salem’s lifelong extremely traumatic history with collective punishment and her self-hatred and guilt are going to smash together and she’ll run the fuck away to alternately freak herself out and plot his downfall and tailspin while ozma, meanwhile, after a few centuries of her being gone and the endless rumors fading into just old folktales no one really believes anymore, finally gets the distance he needs to catch his fucking breath—his hermit era doesn’t count he was just ruminating for centuries—so he can focus on other things. and by then keeping her a secret mostly boils down to "don’t talk about her" lmao

his paranoia never really goes away, as we see in 9.10, although he does also get really complacent by ozpin’s time, and i think it’s irrational and grounded in a lot of very wrong conclusions he reached during those first couple centuries of Spiraling—but given what he did and did not know at the time i do also think the reasoning and inferences he made were fairly logical; it becomes irrational over time as the reality of the situation (salem avoiding him) increasingly doesn’t line up with his perception, but as we see in V2-3 ozpin is supremely, irrationally confident that salem is not about to unleash a major attack, which suggests that on some level he’s aware that his paranoid beliefs are unsound even if he hasn’t yet had the conscious realization. he’s right on the cusp. 

& then none of this precludes smaller scale, limited conflicts like e.g. salem assassinating a troublesome member of his inner circle or throwing grimm at people to intensify social conflicts and insure ozma never gets comfortable enough to invite his gods to remnant. i’m very sure that salem has made it a habit to check in on him at regular intervals and cause problems if it looks like he’s doing too well because she Does Not Want him to ever summon his gods. and that’s obviously going to be one-sided because i don’t think ozma actually knows where she’s hiding, and salem’s terror of collective punishment is her own seething bundle of irrational paranoia, because after he digs himself out of Spiraling ozma absolutely would not kill people just because they happened to be near her. 

[lemonlimestar]

👋🏼Hi Bug!!So first i wanna say your DC content is beyond based,your art is soooooo good i am running around with it in my mouth like the world's most autistic cat and your hcs are so real!!!And for the second thing and what inspired me to send this ask is i wanna hear more about your black biracial(i'm assuming she is?correct me if i'm wrong)Stephanie!I headcanon her as that too but blasian,as jamaican-korean because we need more mixed characters that aren't just part white and from research first it fits her pretty well.By 'more about her' in case it's not clear,i mean why you see her as such,how you think she does her culture,any Timsteph or Stephcass stuff involving it,etc

(You don't gotta anwser this if you don't wanna!!I'm just very starved for blk Steph so i thought to ask.Also i wanna say the basic white girl allegations drive me nuts😭She's literally a girlfailure punk girl with isolated weirdkid trauma wtf)

AAAA hi hi tysm :] it is really funny u ask this bc honestly have been going back & forth on my steph hc lol. like on one hand, she’s one of my favorite characters so i hit her with the same culture/race beam BUT also i wanted to be aware of the stereotyping that would go into making crystal or arthur black or brown (with arthur being cluemaster & crystal struggling with addiction). (and steph herself as well, esp with the way she gets treated for her flaws in certain spaces & in the actual narrative at times, but that’s easier to navigate imo). what i have as of now is that arthur is white and crystal is black (specifically african american). i feel like a lot of her character & relationship with steph is sort of flattened down to her addiction or, more frequently, straight up ignored so!!

a lot of my deigns start off as me just having fun, but i do try to be aware of how these changes would fit the character (which is why i typically do black hcs because that’s my lived experience :P)

as for steph specifically, most of my hc is based in hair. i think she had a relaxer as a kid but eventually switches between wearing it natural + crimping & straightening it. for the sake of comic book antics, her straightening her hair would hold up while vigilanting lmao. i think a lot of her choices are rooted in convenience, although she does enjoy dressing up (as is mentioned in bg2000). i think she wears it curly when she has her lewis-era bob, but by the time she’s robin it’s back to straightening. i think that tim would very cheesily tell her that he likes when she wears her hair out, so around that time when they’re at their peak sappiness, the appearance change kind of has to do with that. i think her playing around with different protective hairstyles when she’s older is also fun to consider, as she moves into indulging herself more. i feel like a big part of her character is her isolation, whether it be from her peers or from the hero community. it especially comes up when she mentions how the suburbs are disconnected from the city and don’t get as much attention from batman & robin, i think her being black in a suburban setting plays into that isolation more, adding an extra layer.

sorry for kinda rambling but i hope this was enjoyable!! :) ty for asking <3

[cazort]

Whenever I post about how I am voting for Kamala Harris and think it's important to vote for Democrats, and my post starts blowing up, I get a lot of negative comments from people who claim to be progressive, saying things like "Voting doesn't matter." or" Both parties are the same".

And here's the thing. I always check out these people's blogs.

And you want to know what? I never, not once, have found any of these people posting anything actionable to move beyond the two-party system. None of them mention or talk about ranked choice voting (RCV) or total vote runoff (TVR). None of them talk about the laws and structural factors that keep the two party system in power. None of them even have a candidate that they recommend voting for as a protest vote. None share and link to articles in high-quality media sources that break out of the right-left binary. And the ones that are calling for really radical solutions like revolution, none of them have a constitution, none of them have a proposed tax policy, none of them have a proposition of the way a radically different (such as growth-free) currency system could work.

And here's the thing. I do all of these things. I've been doing it for decades, since before I was even on Tumblr.

I'm not just voting blue. I'm voting blue AND advancing RCV and TVR. I have written pages and pages on tangible tax policy reform, on local zoning reform (I'm active locally pushing for such reform), transportation funding reform (pushing for it for 20+ years now). I've been involved in prison reform and abolition activism at the local and federal level. I even started a community currency 16 years ago.

Listen to me and listen to other people who are doing the work. We are all saying the same thing. Don't listen to these people who aren't doing the work. They claim to be radical but they're not doing anything at all. I don't know if they're real people or not, but they're butting into my posts and they're telling me and other people not to vote because it doesn't make a difference and doesn't do enough, but like...they're not doing anything at all to push society in a good direction, to solve problems, to build a better world. They're just posting negative stuff on some blog and they're not even posting information on their blog that might help tear down the systems they're supposedly opposed to.

I don't trust any of these people and I don't want you to either.

Seriously, if someone is telling you not to vote, telling you that your vote doesn't matter, scrutinize them. Who are they? What are they advocate? If they are telling you not to vote, what do they want you to do?

99% of the time they don't actually encourage you to do anything positive. And I have a sneaking suspicion that these people don't actually want to tear down the systems they are superficially criticizing, they are secretly trying to support them. I suspect that they actually want you to feel negative about voting and disengage. They want you to feel helpless, and to step back from the political system, to step out. They are serving the people who benefit when you don't vote. And that's the far-right authoritarians.

If you, like me, want a better society in a deeply flawed two-party system, you vote for the better of the two parties AND you take other measures too, supporting RCV (which had massive wins in both Maine and Alaska and could be implemented in more states if we work towards it) and TVR (far superior to the IRV used in Maine and Alaska), and researching and talking about issues and getting involved in issues that aren't being discussed. Join the Strong Towns movement and work to move beyond car dependence. Join the movement to expose the injustice of payroll tax and abolish all payroll taxation including FICA and all the smaller ones too and replace them with other taxes such as carbon tax or other, progressive consumption-based taxes. Start thinking critically about currency, maybe read Greco's book "Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender".

I am outside the two party system and have been so my whole life. I am doing the work and have been doing the work for decades now. So listen to me when I tell you to vote blue. Vote not just for Harris but research and look up your house and senate races and your state and local races as well and vote in all of them. It's a small but important step. And don't just stop there, do all of these other things I'm telling you about too. It's a "both...and" scenario.

Don't submit to these people trying to tell you not to vote. Scrutinize them. You will see what they are really about and once you see it you will not be manipulated by them.

[dreamnants-mis]

It's time for yet another "more stuff I noticed while re-reading chapters". Today's focus is on miscommunication, especially when it comes to someone protecting someone else and how easily wrong it can go when one party does things against what the other party wants.

It got really long, so uh, sorry about that.

Spoilers for up to Chapter 183!

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Billy

Ah, Billy. There's a lot to unpack about him.

Billy's greatest flaw is his kindness and protectiveness. His wish to protect others is not a bad thing on its own. Where things go badly is when he decides to protect the younger Union members by betraying them and stealing their powers so they wouldn't have to fight. But of course, right away, this action hurts Tatiana, the girl who he treated like his daughter and who saw him as a parent. Not to mention the hurt feelings of everyone he hurt in the process who saw him as an ally and friend.

There's another thing about how Billy's desire to protect actually ends up in a sense demeaning the people he wants to protect because he isn't quite seeing them as equals or colleagues or shows he trusts them.

Something I don't think really gets talked about is how Billy did everything trying to protect the Union, but as the vision of the original unaltered future showed, forming Under indirectly caused Sean to kill Fuuko during the Autumn quest and her death causes a chain reaction that leads to the end of the Union as a whole. And this would have just broken poor Tatiana since Fuuko was her friend on top of Billy's betrayal. Things only don't end this way because of Anno Un's interference, but I think it really highlights how Billy thinking what's best for those he's trying to protect is quite the opposite since he's failing to communicate with the other party and that would have destroyed the people he was trying to protect.

This all neatly fits into what Unfair's flaw is: Billy cannot use his copied abilities to the same potential as the originals because he doesn't have the same understanding the original users have with living with the abilities. Billy for example uses Undead for regenerating only, but never uses any of the Undead techniques like Parts Bullets because that technique is something only possible for someone who lived long enough with Undead to make pain more like background noise.

There's another moment Chapter 72 has a subtle moment with this with Kururu (Unchaste). Her ability works on infatuation, and this is what she has to say about Fuuko when she tries using it on her:

Note Kururu saying Fuuko "fell in love with the mere idea of romance".

If it's possible Kururu was told this about Fuuko from Billy, than I imagine that's why Kururu was on guard duty even though if you think about it, Fuuko has the best chance of escaping her since Kururu can't do much else to stop her if her ability doesn't work, which it does because Fuuko has grown to love Andy.

But this also shows Billy views Fuuko as naive and thinks of Fuuko's feelings for Andy akin to a shallow schoolgirl crush, especially since he knows Andy protects her to use her to die and therefore he needs to prevent her from fighting in something she got pretty much dragged into. Of course, the latter fact was true. But, while Billy would have no way of knowing about what Andy and Fuuko went through in the Autumn arc, he does overlook that even as early as the Unrepair arc (which happened in September) that Andy was beginning to care about Fuuko beyond just a means to off himself. And Billy also ignores the efforts Fuuko went through to train herself to be stronger. I mean, Fuuko freaking blew a part of his face off with a gun when he betrayed the Union, which I don't think someone without resolve could have done.

While Billy knows what influences the strength of Fuuko's Unluck is how much she likes a person, he also overlooks it's Fuuko that makes Unluck such a dangerous power. Fuuko is a kind,empathetic and determined person that was given a cruel ability that would hurt her the most by putting people she loves at risk or worst. Yet, even at the lowest point of her life, she was still able to cry over a man unable to die who wasn't afraid to touch her surrendering himself to save her life.

AKA Billy doesn't recognize what about Fuuko makes Juiz see her as a beacon of hope and ends up focusing on just her ability, which alone isn't enough to kill God. I think Billy wouldn't be able to summon meteorites if he'd even been able to copy Unluck. And this is something even Billy ends up understanding and accepting after the Spring battle to end up regretting deciding to betray the Union in the first place.

Actually, Billy is also a little like Victor...But where Billy ends up differing from Victor is how he is able to recognize what he just harmed the people he wanted to protect and is able to make up for harming Tatiana to stay by her side until she dies.

Err, anyway, I think I've talked enough about Billy for this post. Let's move on.

Rip and Latla

Rip actually has some parallels to Victor and Juiz while he's mainly a foil to Andy... I focus on Rip for this one, but this also applies to Latla too.

Rip we already know is doing everything to get the Ark and loop to stop Leila's disastrous operation that killed her when Unrepair manifested, and he's done a lot of things (ex.cut his legs off, threaten people, kill people, etc.) in order to make that happen. Therefore, the other party is deceased.

But something interesting is how Chapter 109 reveals everything Rip and Latla have been doing is completely against anything Leila wanted for him or Latla to do. What Leila wanted from them was for them both to forget about her and focus on using their abilities to save others. I interpret these words as a genuine belief in them that despite their abilities being ruined by their Negator powers, there was something they could do with them to help others. Leila wanting them both to not focus on her death but rather the happiness they gave her despite her limited time to then focus on bringing happiness to others.

(Forgetting is actually another thing that pops up every now and then come to think of it.)

Unfortunately for Leila, Rip and Latla only despair and become desperate to do anything to save her, completely forgetting what Leila truly wanted and leading to them wanting the Ark to save her and only her. Something that ultimately ends badly for them both, and Rip in particular becoming a shadow of his former self to get to the Ark.

(Doesn't this sound familiar?)

Rip only remembers after both he and Latla are fatally wounded what Leila would have wanted would have been to work with the Union to kill God, the one truly responsible for her death.

A little detail I've I think is important to think about is the cover of Volume 13:

Leila's posture in this cover has her hands clasped together as if praying away from both Latla and Rip. We don't know what expression she has on her face, but I imagine being forced to watch your childhood friend and sister do anything for your sake, even though that was nothing you wanted, subjecting someone else to unhappiness, would make it a pained expression.

Is Leila praying for someone to save Rip and Latla from themselves before they do something that can never be taken back?

Based on Leila's words on her deathbed, I suspect if Rip had been able to loop and if she knew what it took to save her life was making another man lose the love of his life and dooming humanity in the process, I doubt she would ever be happy with knowing her happiness was at the cost of pretty much everyone else's happiness.

In fact, in the Sick arc, Leila shows signs she doesn't want to protected by Rip and Latla all the time, since she volunteers willingly to have Fuuko operate on her on the battlefield to be bait for Sick as her way of being able to fight alongside them. I mean, I think that speaks a lot you're willing to make yourself bait for a living personification of the world's illnesses and diseases without hesitating that's giving the organization dedicated to fighting them a tough time. So yes, it does still show Rip and Latla both due to their love for Leila end up forgetting what she would have actually wanted them to do, hence miscommunication.

Going back to Leila on Volume 13's cover thinking about it in the context of the Sick arc, perhaps Leila's praying may have been not only a wish for someone to save Rip and Latla from themselves, but a wish that she can protect Rip and Latla in turn after everything they're done for her, which is something she may be able to do in the 101st loop that wouldn't have been possible if Rip had ridden the Ark to save her.

Who knows?

Juiz and Victor

I talked about these two in a different post, but I really wanted to talk about it a little more here because of how these two are mirrors of Fuuko and Andy.

In this case, the miscommunication is very mutual on both ends. I think in the end, the ultimate breakdown of their partnership came when the two stopped being able to communicate with each other. As we learn, what Juiz and Victor want is for the other to be happy. But 99 loops of failure embittered and changed them both for the worst (Juiz became increasingly unfettered and Victor became nihilistic, and both became increasingly distant from their humanity).

Perhaps both of them ended up unable to be honest with each other, Victor not being able to articulate how painful it was to watch Juiz to become someone he was starting to recognize over an impossible task, and Juiz being unable to see what she was doing was starting to make Victor despair.

This part in particular where I felt that disconnect in communication between them. And that showed throughout the earlier conversation where it almost felt Victor couldn't say what he actually wanted as if he thought nothing he would say would get through to Juiz.

And well...we all know what happens next.

In the end, Victor hit the breaking point and tries to kill Juiz after deciding the only way for Juiz to be happy is for her to forget killing God and him and live the last loop peacefully. This is contrasted with how Juiz kept going in the first place because she wanted Victor to be happy, which wouldn't be possible if he kept being unable to die, resulting in her sealing Victor away with Remember so she can continue to try killing God, even if Victor wouldn't be with her anymore.

And the sad thing is in the end, neither of them get what they really want.

Juiz does indeed die like Victor wanted, but it's clear Victor realizes that it wasn't at all what he really wanted, because Victor became so disconnected from his humanity he probably only could understand why the others kept fighting after he lost the person that mattered the most to him. And it's sad on Juiz' end because she never did get to see Victor truly happy again, and could only wish to be able to meet him again in the final loop.

We might not know what might have been Victor's true wish unless he makes an appearance (and he probably will, considering there's actually a line that indicates another Negator near Void hidden by a text bubble in Fuuko's Negator roadmap).

Though I could theorize what both Victor and Juiz wanted in the end was to be able to be happy together. And hopefully, that may not be an impossible task.

BONUS

"Oh my gosh, you still have more to say?"

Err...yeah.

While on the bus today, I remembered that Rip is a foil to Andy and it reminded me of the conversation Andy and Victor had in Chapter 110 that I think highlights something about this theme:

Andy admits he's actually like Rip and Latla in that he wants to see the person he loves happy. But what's interesting is how he also knows, considering the person Fuuko is, if something happened to even someone considered a foe, she wouldn't be happy. Therefore, for her to be happy, they are both necessary for that, leading to the conundrum of whether or not to let them take the points. Ultimately, in order for Fuuko to loop, Andy has to fatally wound Rip because he's beyond reasoning with, and that is something he isn't happy about doing.

It's a subtle thing, but it does show something interesting about why both Andy and Fuuko are the beacons of hope for humanity winning, and I think that's just neat.

Okay, I promise, that's all for this rambling!

[bisluthq]

I read your update and fuck dude. Glad the psychiatrist is open to new diagnosis and seeing what works for you and not being stubborn (I’ve had that, it sucked). And I hope it helps.

Ok tough question, but do you think FG and your mum share the same worst traits? People joke about marrying one of their parents and my cousin married someone who seemed nothing like her dad but the reasons I don’t like my uncle are the same reasons I don’t like her husband. The husband was charming at first, but then his pet peeves and ultimately a lot of his values were really similar to my uncle, but shown differently? Idk but you said how your mum calls you names but also sounds like she is present for you even if she goes about it a fucked up way? He puts you down and puts you on a pedestal.

You said they’re both stubborn, a lot of people are I guess, but do either of them see the bigger picture? Because the money thing - as an outsider who only knows what you have shared, and knows your mum is flaky and FG is financially ok with or without the money - definitely both TAH because of what it’s doing and has been doing TO YOU.

I’m one of your single anons, but one of the reasons I’m actively single is I have fucked up patterns and i keep repeating them. I’m a big people pleaser too, so I burn out in jobs because I’m first to enter and last to leave, I have a low opinion of myself/ imposter syndrome so I’ll EVEN SAY OUT LOUD “oh I don’t need a pay rise this year I’m just happy to be here” (everyone else got a pay rise). I put no demands on people so I’m a pushover because I have such low self worth. I grew up in chaos and chaos feels comfortable. When things are actually good, I’m waiting for the sky to fall because I haven’t accepted it won’t fall and some things actually are healthy and safe lol. I am getting comfortable in safe and calm environments, and I’m getting better at not taking shit because I’d rather be alone (that scared me before because I have rejection / abandonment issues). I’m still not a great communicator though because I need to tell ~my story or a lot of details to feel like I’m expressing myself accurately - see: this last paragraph lol. But does any of that sound familiar to you and your life?

I feel like a lot of people who had a certain sort of unstable or chaotic life or parents with untreated mental health conditions (or just unable to regulate) have no idea what healthy looks like in real life sometimes and bad situations can seem ok because we’ve seen BAD or at least worse situations so drama feels normal but people with healthier love maps or whatever they’re called think our situations are messy.

Fuck hope that didn’t get too heavy.

I’m proud of you for taking photos and sending them to people for accountability and stuff though - that’s a big step and want to give you a virtual pat on the back for it 🫶

well yes this is what my therapist said. that my mum and GF are extremely similar people and my dynamic with both is actually very similar (which is like they go ABOVE AND BEYOND and then put me down lol and I run around trying to please them and make them like me more). I knew before this whole mess that he shares some traits with my dad, but it wasn't in a weird daddy issues way - therapist has always and still does agree - like more in that things I respect in my dad are things he also has going for him. They’re both successful, know a lot about a lot, idk have a similar vibe but in like a "I love my dad and I think he's mostly a good husband to his wife and I'd actually love to one day be in a dynamic that's similar to my dad and his wife's where after almost 30 years together he'll swoop in and take her dancing or take her on spontaneous trips somewhere exotic or come home with flowers" way and I could see FG and I having that (prob don't see that anymore). So yes I think I somehow went for... someone who presents like my dad, without a lot of my dad's FLAWS, but treats me almost exactly like my mum does and shares a TON of negative traits with her.

Also DUDE ARE YOU ME IN THE FUTURE because GUESS WHAT *I* turned down a pay rise this last week? They're bringing in more children so I'll have more kids to teach and they asked me how much more I want for that and I said "no that's no bother because I'm already here" and in hindsight why did I do this??? I SERIOUSLY DOUBT A BLOCKBUSTER BUDGET WOULD FEEL AN EXTRA 100-200 A WEEK BUT GIVEN I LIVE IN AN AIRBNB AND EAT UBER EATS FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE LIKE I WOULD??? SO WHY DID I DO THAT???

So yea. I'm excited to do a single era away from all these fucking people. My dad can stay lol haha. He's not the problem. Ironically also, this week, my dad and I have been talking A LOT because he is truly my fucking rock. And he opened up to me about his mental health, which he's never reaaallly spoken to me about (like I've SEEN some of it but usually his advice to me is to just go do exercise haha when I tell him I'm low) and he said he has been thinking more about himself with my diagnosis/diagnoses and reading about it properly he thinks he might be cyclothymic. Because while he doesn't have my levels of highs and lows, he says he KNOWS he has more highs and lows than the average person and he says his lows feel REALLY fucking bad and the highs are AMAZING and that's when he's doing things like booking extravagant vacations for my stepmum. My dad is also OBSESSIVE about his weight kinda same as me. He also blames himself for fucking EVERYTHING hahahahah including somehow all of this mess?? EVEN THOUGH HE DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!! THEY DID THIS!!!! TO ME!!! HE DID NOTHING WRONG!!!!! But yea he's opening up because he feels like he DID do it at least through genetics lol but I don't know if it even works that way and now HE is in a low and I'm like... dude... just go get medication, don't just go for a run lol. We also talked about the lack of impulse control that comes with the bipolar family of stuff and wbk my dad cheats A TON but he told me this week he never really means to? Like he's not actually always sure why he does that because he loved my mum and he cheated lol and he loves his wife SO MUCH but he's cheated A TON. He also, more recently, has been having sober eras because he drinks a bunch lol and he described it as having "all the cockroaches coming out" when he does so he is never sure why he does it or why he can be so happy sober for months on end and then have a HUGE night and come out feeling miserable and having done/said dumb shit and then the misery lasts ages (this happened to him LAST night and *I* thought like "that's my fault because I've been stressing him out" lol so really WE are the same person).

The "I grew up in chaos and chaos is comfortable" also hit hard. My mum is INSANELY chaotic and I think I look for that unstable fucked up environment. My dad is not chaotic AT ALL like he's VERY regimented. He does get into moods as I said, and he can drink too much, and he enjoys a party a bit too much, but he is SO disciplined with his work and his exercise routine and even his mealtimes and he's lived in exactly the same place for like 40 years lol and basically never makes changes to it, even if he needs new things he tries to make it look like it did haha.

Re the moving even - FG moves ALL THE TIME as does my mum and as have I but I have done it as a result of personal circumstance (my mum or financial constraints). I think a huge part of what really made my relationship with FG so serious was the whole house buying business and me being so excited to "have" a house (because it really did feel like my house until recently). I was looking forward to being THERE for the next 40 years. He, fwiw, has been talking about selling it basically since the moment we finished the renovations and I have a VERY strong suspicion if this breakup goes through, he will sell it (and actually make money on it, and in that he's like my dad). He will also blame other people (in this case me) for needing to do that. He's, I can already predict, going to say he can't stay in the house because there are too many reminders of me but tbh he would've done that anyway UNLESS I had been there to be like "I REALLY REALLY REALLY don't want to move". I'm actually not sure if I love him as much as I love the house. I'm IN love with him and obviously I'd follow him to the ends of the earth but idk if we'd have gone to the ends of the earth if we'd stayed together because I would've wanted to stay right there (and he does listen to my wants/needs) forever and I think I would indeed have done that.

Urgh. The "in love" feeling will, I know, pass. And I can buy my own fucking house. If I stop turning down pay rises.

Thanks hun. This gave me a lot of hope and made me articulate a lot of stuff out loud.

[diivineray]

♥ What's the WORST thing that has happened to you rp wise? (Pooki im spamming you sorry im on my phone)

the salty af munday meme | accepting

*readers be warned*

listen, hell hath no fury for the woman you scorned.

I've been around a while, but tumblr is a shit storm of mentally ill people who lack the maturity to be carry the relationships they desperately want with people. Something about me attracts a certain kind of person, someone who lacks a lot of self-love and needs a lot of attention and reassurance. I accept the role I take when I cater to those emotions until it literally starts to drain me. My lack of boundaries definitely played a part in this, and I acknowledge it because, one thing about me is I will take accountability for the mistakes I make. I believe it helps me to learn and do better.

I care very deeply for the people I become friends with, honesty, loyalty all mean something very deeply to me, so when people I am beyond good to take my kindness, take my heart and make it into a joke, embarrass the fuck outta me? I'm less nice about the way I receive it.

I had a friend, who unfortunately I met within the danmei community, and ppl know who they are. Call it shit talking if you want, but recalling facts about a situation is just that, facts. if you don't want ppl looking at you differently, don't be shitty. regardless, despite the flaws, they did mean something to me. we talked everyday, watched movies, played games, wrote so much together. they had become a part of my life, but I was going through a lot in my personal life, i didn't always have the energy to write. for them, writing, rping was their only outlet, it was how they determined the meaning of the friendship, and that is just not how I measure friendship. the pressure of feeling like I gotta always be up for or down for plots and stuff when depression was gripping me, was hard to do some days. I was in therapy, I was working on myself, and I continue to do so. But i recently got back into the twst fandom at the time, because despite how shitty that fandom is, i really love writing leona.

I was happy getting back into the swing of writing that muse again. and while they will deny it, they asked me to introduce the game to them, because they wanted to be close to me. and yes I got receipts. to me? that always makes my heart go doki doki !! like I love when people put effort to get into the things I love and enjoy the same way I will for them. Going back into this fandom was risky, and I knew that, cuz my ex is in this fandom and she got her own issues. we broke up years ago, but they always see me as toxic for falling out of love with them. and it wasnt like i was uninterested, I still cared for them deeply, but love just wasn't there anymore. and yeah i know it sucks. i gave them the time they needed, friendship was always on the table if they were ready for it. they never were. and evntually drama hit the fandom with ppl claiming they were stealing each others headcanons and it became a whole thing, callout posts were written, threats were made, they doxxed this person. and they were saying about pressing charges because it caused as lot of drama and stress and suicide attempts.

I hate bullies. I hate people who think that no one can have the dame thought as them, who think their portrayal is the one true one. when it comes to disrespecting people over petty ass shit, i'm gonna look at you funny. and I didnt like that attitude people were giving off. the other person wasnt the greatest, but situation was so absolutely crazy and my ex had the attitude of like 'well they arent mean to me so i dont think its that bad' and I knew right then and there that I did not want to associated with those kind of people. i dont care about writing that much that I would ignore my moral views and enable assholes here on the internet for ships. its just not who I am. and to this day i see those same people around posing like nice people when there's never been apology or any kind of remorse for bullying someone to want to take their own life.

time just passes and people think they can just forget about it and move on. NAY. for me it is that deep. SO , with that said, I told this friend of mien I was inviting into this fandom space, all of these deets. they agreed with me, how crazy it was ppl were acting like that. crazy how my ex seemed to support and enable it as well. i told them if they wanted to interact with them, they could. all I asked from them, was for them to tell me so I could blacklist or whatever, do I don't gotta see it. I am not gonna tell ppl who they can and cant write with.

Days were passing, we were growing farther and farther apart. despite several long conversations about how we both felt, how we were trying to mend things, how to work on it. up until this point, my ex wasn't even a subject until i got randomly blocked. removed from discord, they left our private server and i started to see them both being all buddy buddy. which struck me as WEIRD cuz huh ? naturally this upset me, and it felt like a big fucking ass betrayal so I confronted both of them privately cuz i wasn't about to just let that happen without answers. my ex friend just tucked their tail between their legs. denied everything, acted like i was yelling at them when yes I was being upset, but assertive and yelling are two different things, but hey, the victim is what they know how to be so whatever. my ex on the other hand, was gaslighting me, trying to make it sound like I was making it sound like a big deal. acting like i was just making it up in my head that it was just a coincidence that my friend randomly ditches me and is suddenly SO close to you. Me and this friend wrote wangxian together too, like I paid for custom made themes for both of us, and then I see them being like this is my wwx and this my lwj lmao okay. and it gets better, cuz I learn from a friend who has been burned by them before, that this isnt the first time they've done this to someone.

always shipping wangxian with that one person, until something happens and then they are moving onto the next one selling a sob story to the new person about how that person just abandoned them. their stories arent for mine to tell, but it was eye opening listening to how this person played me for a fool. and i wouldnt be as mad if it was a random mutual. it was my ex gf who they knew i had history with. it just felt so deliberate. and so they are also dating now. and it fucked me up for months. i was lied to, I was embarrassed that I spent so many hours crying over this person who now paints me as an abusive person because thats how everyone person before them is painted. like when they told me the danmei fandom hated them, at the time i was like FUCK THEM THEN, they dont deserve you. but now??? bitch , I know why they dont fuck with you now. there's so much more in terms of how they made me feel special but really its just rehashed shit they told ppl before me. and its very much why i am so selective, so picky about who i let in my space, because, people really don't give a shit about you sometimes. people who only can think about rp are ppl i stay away from. cuz yall need help. you need to find other hobbies, you need to touch some motherfucking grass. learn how to keep a job. something productive. cuz i refuse to ever let myself be in that position again. and fuck them both seriously <3

[the-flowing-river]

🕳️- Talk about a research rabbit hole you fell down! Don't be scared to get into the nitty gritty details. I wanna go down the rabbit hole too!

Moving cities. This is a bit of a long one, so here's a "what we'll be talking about, and also i should remember to save this because this is my third time making this post."

Spoilers for mortal engines, by philip Reeve.

1. Moving cities.

1.1 cities on water

1.1.1 base definition

1.1.2 issues.

1.2 cities on wheels/legs

1.2.1 the cities

1.2.2 a mortal engines tangent. (Issues, but illustrated. Also gives me a reason to rant about ME wich is always a good time)

2. How i implemented it.

2.0 disclaimer.

2.1 cities on water

2.2 cities on legs/wheels

2.3 other neat cities, maybe they don't move.

1.1 cities on the water.

Cities on the water are basically the great idea of a community of people living on aquatic vessels/a vessel. Pretty sure there's some people who tried this IRL and failed miserably. I vaguely recall seeing a trailer.

Anyway, it has a lot of issues, such as population growth, food, how one is going to move between vessels, waste, and drowning kids.

Population growth is an issue because where are you going to put all the new people? Like, resources are limited on the ocean! You will have issues if your city is built for a million people and they all fuck and have kids! Where are you going to put those?

Food... Should be obvious. What are you going to eat? Fish? Where do you get veggies from? Seaweed? Okay, but eventually that's all going to run out because it's hard to do sustainably, and honestly, a lot of your people won't care.

Movement between vessels: if i wanted to visit my neighbor, how would i do that, because there's water there, this one doesn't apply if it's just one vessel.

Sustainability. What are you going to do if something breaks? Resources are limited, remember? You could just buy a new X but the nearest place they sell X is half an ocean away, and the X that's broken is the current backup, so both X are broken.

Waste. What are you going to do with trash? Both stuff that breaks, (see above) and human waste, like pee, poop, and corpses, because grandma will die someday.

Drowning kids. Because Kids need to learn how to swim. Best get on that somewhat soon.

If you manage to pull this off, and have a community wich can sail the open seas, that's pretty cool. I'll talk about how I implemented it.

1.2 cities on legs/wheels.

Mortal engines is a great example of this, it's cities that can walk/roll around. It has a bunch of issues, such as fuel, stability, food, population growth, as well as ethical concerns we won't get into.

Mortal engines is a great example because it gets into some of the flaws, such as fuel, food, population growth, materials to fix shit, and stability. One of the main themes of the series is that there's not enough fuel, because cities have been eating smaller cities, and now there's no more smaller cities. Also, the ground has been ravaged, so there's no plants. The city of london realized both food and fuel are problems, (and also population growth, but they just unethicalify that out of the way. Huzzah, slave labour) so they try to solve the fuel issue by going to asia, wich is still rich in resources because that's where the antitractionist league exists. (They are against walking cities) They fail, but before that they make a fascinating case study in "what could possibly go wrongism" here's how they attempted to fix it.

Fuel: by eating smaller cities, wich they would then burn for combustion fuel.

They also try to get past the great wall of china, beyond wich rich lands still lies, but that fails.

Food: is never explicity adressed, but one of the scientists is making a new snack. What it's made of is never explicity stated, just know that it's brown and very, very efficient.

Population growth: slave labour in keeping the engines going, and working on MEDUSA. We don't need to talk about MEDUSA. (Note, this is only if i recall correctly)

Stability: never adressed, but the city had a collapse a while back wich killed the parents of one of the protagonists.

2.

2.0.

I am Not attempting to be realistic, this is me going "this sounds awesome!" And making it. Glad we got that covered. Also, not covering every issue. A lot is for you to color in. (Send more asks)

2.1. Cities on the water.

2.2

Basically, they are a collection of rafts, wich are all nailed to one another, making for a massive city. They all use sails, and the people living in the city are from a group in the population with a very specific kind of magic. (Basically, movement cities took place during the second people, wich was split up into a lot of different tribes, all of whom had different magic. For example, the people of the Floating cities could access it, wich was rare, and controlled the weather, and the people of the monasteries had ages in the 10 of 1000's of years.). They have crops, wich are the most sacred part of the city, and they are sustained by the remaining nutrients in waste matter (corpses, fecal matter, spoiled food, wich is a bit of a heresy, actually) , i

The walking cities use massive engines powered by magic, wich has lead to certain tribes being essentially slave-farmed to act as fuel. Those monastery guys i mentioned? They keep the engine going for a full month! So many tribes got their own crawling cities, and war was common between them. Then something happened, (they worshipped the god of war too much, and it woke up the more horrific and powerful version of said god, driving them all mad, and leading to a lot of people doing cannibalism and violence, and kind of ending the age of machine-cities. There were a couple of survivors, but definitely a minority (like, 112 people? Not counting the atraxin who were in cryostasis at this time, or the vampire who's just locked up for eternity (until he wasn't)

2.3. Some standout cool cities i want to talk about that have nothing to do with the above.

Okay, so, the very first city (that has surviving records) was made by a coalition of species, namely the vampires, atraxin, and dawnbreakers, back when they were still known as the nightfolk because dawn had not happened yet. It was a city wich was built around the core of light, wich is where a lot of symbol magic comes from. This was pure light, physically unable to hurt even the vampires, who will get the raw end of the deal at the end of the story, trust me.

Anyway, from this city, the first empire grew (they're not an empire, more like a republic, but who cares, empire sounds better in the marketing) until it surrounded tge whole world, essentially, there were bits and bobs that weren't covered, wich become relevant later, but we don't need to get into the tragic history of what happened. The city ended up burning in a pointless war, millions of people died, and the coalition was broken.

Another neat city is the city of amrash-la, wich is basically on the other end of the timeline as it currently stands. This was a huge, bustling metropolis, of the fleshcrafter (group of people whose whole gimmick is the ability to change bodies, summon spirits, and be trans wish fulfilment) nation. It was built atop a massive cave system, and partly stretched out into those caves, for the people who preferred a more nocturnal lifestyle, and had a massive tree in the center, wich it also stretched out alongside, basically, people lived in the tree as well as in the caves, and it would take you a full day of unobstructed travel to go from one end to the other. This city mostly fell in the war between the four nations, wich was a massive horror, resulting in one of the four groups being mostly dead (more on that in a bit) and the rest being basically exiled. Also their cities don't exist anymore.

The final city i want to talk about is called amone-van.

Amone-van used to be the city of the destroyers (wich sounds more evil than they were.) until the war between the four nations. And what happened after was pretty neat, because due to technical mayhem, the city got erased from existence. Everyone in the city, (so most of the destroyers) got tied up in the whole "city not being real anymore" thing, and were presumed dead. They're not though, they just don't currently exist, but outside of that, it's been a hundred years, whole generations have come and gone without ever knowing anything outside the city even existed. It's also the home of the spire of yekallo, wich was a creationist monument to the stars, consisting of a recreated fragment of a star, trapped in glass. It was the pride and joy of the creationists, until the destroyers stole it from them five hundred years ago. After that specific war concluded, it was kept in the city as a sign of peace, and it was pretty important in the war between the four nations.

Thanks for reading all of this, If you have any questions, my ask box is open, here is a gif of a kitten i found.

[din-skywalker]

Reading through your Miguel tag… it’s such a nice refresher from what I’ve been seeing in other online spaces as of late. I have a big gripe with how people are handling his behavior and refusing to take in the deep psychological gash that is watching an entire world dissipate before your very eyes because of a decision *you* made. I hate the jokes about him overreacting or being “crazy”. I don’t know if it’s because I’m autistic (haha) or something, but I never once found him to be as irrational or rude as people say he is. Not to say that, in general, he isn’t.

A lot of people are making Miguel out to be an elitist, egotistical, unreasonable mastermind. Why are we forgetting that an antagonist does not need some sort of jarring malignancy to be an antagonist? The missing pieces of the puzzle that is SV Miguel are meant to elicit a sense of mystery. The problem is it’s very easy to take that lack of information and replace it with inaccurate assumptions. All of a sudden, Miguel isn’t capable of flawed thinking, he must be incorrigibly wrong. It just sucks to see such a multifaceted character get misunderstood so deeply. :/ It’s nothing new in fandom, but it never stops being frustrating. There are several lines in the movie that pretty much sum up his motivations perfectly, and they are uttered in very important scenes too. Either people don’t sympathize with him, or they project what they find attractive onto him and still misconstrue in the process. What a sight.

On another note, however, I’m really fascinated with his place as Miles’ persecutor. He’s so caught up in his own grief (as anyone in that position would be) that he unknowingly allows for it to bleed into the very framework of his life. It’s part projecting onto Miles, part trying to salvage himself from the unbearable guilt of his mistakes, part feeling a genuine duty to protect. It’s funny how in a way, Miguel is presenting a philosophy that contradicts what the movie is building up as what being Spider-Man means. It’s about a spider-person’s response to tragedy, not the tragedy itself. It’s kind of telling on what Miguel thinks of his own life that he begins to identify with these pains so deeply. But despite that, in a weird way, he’s also simultaneously being a “true” Spider-Man by rising up against that regardless. Though, I guess you could say that saying that is hypocritical. That’s what I think anyways, could be wrong. Even someone like Miguel falls for basic emotional needs like community and safety, cause he’s (part) human too. Imagine seeing thousands upon thousands of people just like you. Beneath your frustrations, it’s still solidarity. I don’t know.

Beyond that emotional stuff Miguel is flexible, he is capable and responsible in the ways he can be and that is what we see in SV2. Is it puritan, or even good? Nope. But. He’s just a silly guy. Not saying that I like seeing some kid get bashed against a train ofc lmao.

Anyways I’m terribly sorry for rambling so much in your asks, hope you don’t mind. Have a good day.

i agree with everything you just said and don't even feel like i need to add anything. thank you 😌