redsoultrait

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The hero with a heart of gold The hero with a heart of determination The hero with a heart of darkness And a Vessel

if not destined to be the correct heroes, why the hearts in their designs...

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kids & bugs

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oh, dunno if you were aware, but someone else posted a vid showing how if you go into the z-rank room with the pipis in your inventory, it wont shut the fuck up. :(

NO WAY! THANKS FOR TELLING ME ANON! I AM NOT OKAY!? HUH?! SHE IS REACTING TO HER LOST DAD'S OLD ROOM!! SHE'S CHIRPING SO MUCH!

Toby Fox really did that! HE REALLY DID THAT! You will have to have so many highly specific conditions to ever reach this hidden little piece of content but Toby Fox, that mad man, really cares enough to add this because he cares about his stories and characters so much and he cares about Pipis! I love Deltarune!!!

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Thought about ralsei a lot today

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Jimmy reacting to my “Allegations Animatic”

THANK YOU @zeethecatlady FOR FINDING THE VOD MY SWEET ANGEL💖‼️

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is the radioactive monkey shirt your loudest one perchance

1) no i ebay'd it a long time ago

2) i've gotten shirts that are MUCH worse since then

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not beating the puppy allegations

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Im With You In The Dark

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Every time I have to return to the Leveilleur estate to do custom deliveries for Ameliance I leave gnashing my teeth over the subject of wealth and class politics in Sharlayan. The game is pretty uninterested in exploring it but it's so in your face with the centrality of the Leveilleur family. Like this is a culture where taking the time and effort to make food taste good is considered extravagant and inefficient, meanwhile the Leveilleurs live in a mansion with a massive entrance hall almost entirely devoid of furniture, surrounded by miles of empty brick patio.

Compare this to like, the Fortemps Manor entrance hall, which is colorful and richly furnished. It's a display of wealth and status for sure! It's also a space where you can not only welcome guests but sit down with them by the fire. It's full of warmth and color. It has windows! In a city of cold gray stone, Fortemps Manor displays luxury through comfort.

The Leveilleur estate is nothing like that, yet it's also a display of wealth and status in its own way. Rather a display of wealth through comfort, it is a display of wealth through space that is kept to be used for absolutely nothing. There's barely a stick of furniture in that massive hall with its vaulted gold-adorned ceilings and sterile flower vases taller than you are. It's a place that's meant to be seen but not enjoyed in comfort. You are not meant to be comfortable here. The stone patio that encircles the estate is almost worse. There's a row of perfectly manicured trees out front and one tiny, lonely flower box on one side, and other than that it's just bare expanses of paving-stones.

Perhaps the deeper interior of the Leveilleur estate is more comfortably furnished... but we never see that. In Fortemps Manor I feel like I can easily extrapolate what the Warrior of Light's guest room might look like from the decor of the front hall. In the Leveilleur estate I'm left guessing. Our guest room in the Baldesion Annex is more interestingly furnished than anything we see in the Leveilleur estate.

The luxury of Ishgard's high houses is grotesque in contrast with the Brume and the desperate poverty of the lower classes. The luxury of House Leveilleur I find grotesque in a different way, because they are clearly sitting on a massive amount of wealth and yet nothing about their home even looks comfortable to live in, so what is it even for? We know that Sharlayan is a society that purports to value the pursuit and safeguarding of knowledge above all else. Fourchenault is supposedly a diehard believer in the principles of his country. Yet nothing we see in his home reflects those values. Where are the bookshelves? The glass cases showing off rare and valuable tomes and artifacts? The botanical gardens and greenhouses? If Sharlayan culture does not discourage generational wealth hoarding (which it clearly doesn't, even if it doesn't have a formal aristocracy), then shouldn't that wealth at least be displayed in a manner befitting the culture's values? But it isn't. It's just... empty, unused space.

We could certainly point to this as a failure of environmental design, or corners cut to avoid having to instance the entrance hall. I don't dismiss that as a possibility. But it's also grimly compelling to me to analyze it as a deliberate choice (whether or not it was). It might be said that Sharlayan values the appearance of austerity and efficiency, more than the actual thing. One of the richest and most powerful families in Old Sharlayan can sit on a massive amount of generational wealth and live in a mansion with more rooms than they could possibly use... so long as they do so sitting in uncomfortable chairs in underfurnished rooms, and don't season their food.

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You know how, like, with Gerson. He isnt real, his letter isnt real. So Susie, fully immersed inside this fiction, has to carry the memory of the fiction in her head to bring to the real world.

because if you hold on to it

if you grasp onto it for dear life and dont let go

it stops being what you remember it as. it becomes something different if you try to keep that fiction your reality

. . .

You start to exhaust every dialogue option.

You read every book.

You burn every book.

You kill everyone, just to see what would happen.

You end up holding onto it for almost 10 years, remembering vague feelings of what it was like originally.

500 hours looking at it. Playing with it.

You still talk about it, think about it, what it could possibly mean.

Every loose end has 1000 different scenarios you've considered it going towards. Some rational, some absolutely unreasonable, but still thought of because you need to consume this fiction until there is no thoughts left to think about it.

You might even end up taking a picture of every single word and sharing it with the world.

You made it part of your world, but it's no longer the same.

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zero braincells

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the goobers

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Madoka Magica is a modern Buddhist folktale

With the new film coming soon I was going to talk about one of the most neglected aspects of Madoka Magica in the English fandom. It’s very explicit use of Buddhism which is often discussed by Japanese critics.

The show is Buddhist in two primary ways

The wish system is based on the first two Noble truths

Madoka is the story of a young girl choosing to become a Bodhisattva, specifically Madoka’s story is a retelling of the popular Buddhist figure Kannon in a modern setting.

Both of these are done in a way that would be very obvious to a Japanese audience. While the show has a reputation in the west as dark or subversive I’m going to argue that it’s not out of line with common Buddhist themes.

(As a note, There is controversy that “suffering” is too strong a translation but since the show uses despair I’ll keep it.)

First the wish system and Despair. Though many see the show as dark and nihilistic, in Buddhism suffering is considered an inevitable and unavoidable part of life. Suffering is inherent in Buddhism because we desire and cling to things but nothing is permanent, everything is in a state of mutual dependence and change flowing forever.

We might achieve happiness, success, our goals but these are temporary. We age, we lose the people we love, the world we are born into changes around us, our relationships change. Even in minor ways the happiness of achieving what we want is not permanent. Consider any major goals you have accomplished in your lives, was that happiness itself totally permanent and unchanging and enough to carry you through for the rest of your life? Notably in Goethe's Faust, Mephistopheles offer’s Faust only one perfect moment for his soul.

So while the discourse has always been on if the wishes were selfish or not the real issue is that no wish other than those that threaten the wish system could ever work.

Sayaka wishes to help her childhood friend and crush. She thinks she’ll never regret the wish until she discovers the true cost. Hitomi and Kyosuke start a relationship none the wiser to what Sayaka has done and she can do nothing as her lifelong friends move on from her. She tries to throw herself into the magical girl role only to find out the people she protects are sometimes unsavory. Sayaka was attached to a naive view of the world that changed while she bore the cost.

Kyoko wished people would attend her fathers ministry to help her family. For a time this worked but her father discovered magic was involved and she lost everything in a night.

Mami wished to live after a car accident, she was left alive but lonely and without a family. This loneliness was so deep and crushing when she was given the chance to no longer bear it she became careless, got herself killed and dragged her friends into her dark world.

In the other timelines Madoka wished to save someone else. In every single one she was either killed or fell into despair when the threat was eliminated but the costs were made clear.

All the wishes provided real happiness to the wisher but when that wore off and the cost remained the girls either fell into despair or were left alone to fend for themselves. Only Homera’s wish and Madoka’s final wish, wishes that threatened the system, avoided this.

When despair becomes too great a magical girl dies and is reborn as a witch. Witches have motifs based on the magical girl's thoughts, a death echoing some Buddhist beliefs . While these witches share continuity with their magical girls they cannot be reached even by people they knew in life, in line with Buddhist rebirth. Becoming a witch is like being reborn into a hell realm of which there is no going back.

Now it’s necessary to compare Madoka to Kannon.

Kannon is a Bodhisattva and extremely popular in Japan. Bodhisattva is someone who can achieve enlightenment but vows to forgo it to help all sapient beings achieve it.

Her Chinese counterpart Guanyin is described as a woman in white robes like ultimate Madoka.

To become a Bodhisattva one must have good karma from many lifetimes. Homura provides this as Madoka’s kindness inspires Homura to loop time over and over again. Kyubey explicitly confirms that Madoka is the center of Karma of many timelines.

Kannon saw the suffering of different beings and released her good Karma to either purify a hell realm or create a pure land for those suffering to go and achieve enlightenment. Madoka uses her karma to create a mysterious realm for magical girls she rescues.

Kannon is said to rescue those who are in their last moments who cry out for her help and save them from a negative rebirth. Madoka rescues magical girls in their last moments before they can become a witch.

Both Kannon and Madoka cleanse the Karma of those they help.

Kannon works tirelessly for others' salvation, Madoka assures magical girls that she is always fighting for them.

Madoka has a similar origin to Kannon and other Buddhist figures in general terms. She is relatively sheltered and privileged, unaware of the full extent of the suffering of the world. She still however suffers and has little sense of worth but great compassion for others. She wants to help but is ineffective until enlightenment.

Madoka after rescuing all magical girls past present and future achieves Nirvana. She describes Ego death with her consciousness spreading through the cosmos.

edit: corrected error

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anyone remember this vine

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7.0+ A new reference for a new arc.

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baby cat