#.....so apparently i only know two people who've got kids

[the-chickenshit-oddity]

Kid prompt

Kid character is young and has a bad habit of telling everyone they meet the word 'kidnap', which of course causes no end of panic and trouble for the kid's adult, because the strangers assume they've abducted the kid, meanwhile, the kid's gotten used to being lovingly called 'Kid' by their adult and really, really wants a nap. Kid nap.

[apocalyptic-chaos]

I went through my blog and realised I never actually talked about the dream I had about tma?? I failed y'all

Anyway, I dreamt that Rusty Quill had decided to make a movie about the magnus archive and made an announcement on Twitter about it. In said announcement, they said that the movie would take some time to make, as they were planning to film EVERY SINGLE EPISODE instead of, you know, just keeping the most important plot points.

Also, one week after they announced it, the movie released worldwide.

Since we were all so excited about it, some mutuals from a Discord groupchat I'm in (who've I've literally never met before irl and also don't know all that well) and I decided to go and watch it together. Conveniently, we all lived in my hometown, so wee met in front of the local cinema, where we could already see some people waiting for the doors to open. All in all, there wasn't much going on. I remember a mom and her two kids being there and a guy with a giant white dog. Nothing you'd expect at the tma movie premiere.

Once they let us in, I realised the cinema looked quite different than it does irl, instead of seats, there were just wooden benches you'd use in PE class, and instead of the usual giant screen there was just a normal flatscreen TV. I didn't question that, as I was too excited for the movie to start.

However, there was a problem: Apparently, the movie's audio got corrupted and was unusable, which meant that we could watch the movie but had no sounds. The cinema directors solution was to personally call Rusty Quill, who then sent over every single person who had ever voiced a character over to this small town in the middle of nowhere, Germany, to live voice act the ENTIRE movie.

Of course, everyone arrived within 10 minutes as the town had an airport in my dream. (???)

I remember them voicing some of the movie (must have been a few podcast episodes) when Jonny told us they'd take a break to get some ice cream. We decided to wait, of course.

While waiting, I turned to my friend and told them how excited I was for Micheal to show up for the first time. They turned to me and told me that Micheal was the only thing they cut out of all 200+ episodes. I was so offended by the lack of Micheal that I told my friend, "Well then, there's no reason for me to be here," and woke up.

[letssendacountrysomecupcakes]

So I got dumped yesterday for saying I believe that transfemmes do experience male privilege pre-transition. My ex did not give me a chance to expand on that belief *at all*, just got triggered and decided I'm unsafe.

I'm going to expand those views here because I genuinely think I'm approaching the topic pretty reasonably and at this point I need to get the processing I've been doing written down.

First off, let me say that my opinion here comes EXCLUSIVELY from transfemmes I've talked to over the years as well as my own experiences with transmasc erasure. (My ex claimed that ALL of the transfemmes I know who've said that they've experienced male privilege only think that because of "internalized transmisogyny" while simultaneously refusing to engage with any of my experiences with erasure that are *specifically* things that happen bc of the learned behaviors inspired by the external factors of male privilege and socialization.)

The actual line that I have on this is that male privilege is an *external* force, not an internal one. It is entirely based in how you're perceived and how *others* interact with you based on that perception. It is based in the *societal and systematic* benefits someone receives based on the fuckin gender marker on your ID.

I absolutely do not think that that means transfemmes *interact* with male privilege in the same way as any c*s person, especially pre-transition. I do not think the *effects* of that privilege are the same and in almost every case it's going to be extremely complex and nuanced based on the individual. I *do* believe that, because that external force is applied *constantly* from a very young age, some aspects of that force can and often do come through even after transitioning.

Part of this being so upsetting for me is that it sounds like a rehashing of the "gendered socialization doesn't exist" argument that was going around here in like 2016 and is apparently resurfacing again. As far as I remember, when that argument stopped because the people who were pushing the conversation were outed as t*rfs who'd been posing as queer teens. The intent was to confuse the community and divide the younger and older trans folx.

The argument that gendered socialization doesn't exist (which, as far as I can tell, is the same argument as "transfemmes never experience male privilege) is laughably dichotomous at best and harmful at worst.

On the dichotomous end, we have someone who talks *frequently* about missing out on "being raised as a girl". If that person also does not believe in gendered socialization, they have the belief that they were also "not raised as a boy". Unless you come from a family or culture that has a third option or treats their kids the *exact* same (unlikely), you were fuckin raised in a way that was distinctly *gendered*.

That can transition to the harmful end *very* easily simply by not processing, analyzing, and questioning your learned behaviors. My ex spent the whole conversation calling me misogynistic and denying/devaluing my friends' experiences. She also very specifically made all of her points while simultaneously telling me I wasn't allowed to respond. At the point that I said, "Hey, I can't keep getting messages tangentially related to this when I'm not allowed to respond so I'm going to respond to a couple things, please keep your boundaries in any way that makes you feel safe", she immediately reengaged herself into the conversation fully, sent 3 messages - one of which was the dismissal of my friends' experiences, and blocked me.

I want to make it very clear that I put my responses under a break, specifically so she wouldn't have to read them immediately. I cannot be the one to enforce *her* boundary that *she* was repeatedly breaking. At the point that someone tells me they want a break from a conversation, I say okay and don't fucking respond until they do. I got two additional texts from her, both of which emphasized her points while continuing to disallow me from rejoining the conversation.

If that ain't the EXACT shit I've dealt with for my entire fucking life 🙄

[raleighliving]

Raleigh Apartment Culture

So I'm of the mind that Raleigh is a great place to live. It has my favorite things, my favorite people, and I'm too broke to move anywhere else.

Raleigh works for me, but I recognize it doesn't work for everyone. Some people had less than ideal childhoods and wanna escape the state ASAP, some just want to live closer to their dream jobs or have new opportunities. That's all fine, but what if this describes where you are now?

What if, for the sake of argument, you're outside of NC and wanna move in? Moving is expensive, time-consuming, and risky at the best of times; so you wanna make sure that wherever you're landing is at least as good as where you started 90% of the time

"But RL," I hear you say, "you make Raleigh sound like an idyllic dreamscape populated with parks and a diverse kumbayah of peoples living in harmony"

I do talk about Raleigh in a positive light but, like a life saving medicine flavored like ass, sometimes you have to take the good with the bad.

So before you spend thousands of dollars on moving vans, boxes, and grits; here's a crash course on what it's like living in a Raleigh apartment, coming from someone whose majority of Raleigh Living (heh) has been in apartments.

First off, location. Any realtor will tell you that location is 80% of the sale to sound profound, and as anyone who has lived in the middle of ass-backward nowhere can tell you: It sucks having to drive 30 minutes to go anywhere.

Good news: With the Raleigh Beltline and connecting roads, there are very few places in Raleigh where your trip will last longer than thirty minutes one-way. Bad News: where you set down still matters because cutting down on travel is important for car and mental health.

North Raleigh is different from south Raleigh is different from northwest Raleigh, and the locals aren't the only difference you'll find between locations. Each segment of Raleigh has something to offer, with easier access to some attractions than others and neighboring cities for when you need something outside the RDU area.

Using downtown as the center of our wheel, people generally divide Raleigh into North and South Raleigh (with distinction given for NW, SE, NE, etc when needed). N.Raleigh is considered generally more upscale, a slice of suburban living interspersed with plenty of shopping centers for families and the moderately wealthy; but it's boring as all hell.

Want some fun? Excitement in the evenings and a more traditional urban experience with bars, night clubs, strip clubs, and more? South Raleigh is your best bet, at the cost of being the "sketchy" side of Raleigh. That kind of place where you'll see a bunch of auto shops that look abandoned but haven't been closed in the past 5 years and there's at least one customer from time to time.

Of course, this is a lot of generalizing but you'll find that it's still mostly accurate. The main exception in this is Capital Blvd, a highway cutting across north and south Raleigh on the eastern half of the city; a high crime corridor that's undergoing some changes in the northern half that have (somewhat) reduced crime but most people will still associate that area with the majority of Raleigh's crime and debauchery.

More importantly, is the distinction Raleigh citizens put on inside the beltline versus outside the beltline. The I-440 and 540 highways that wrap around Downtown form the mythical beltline, and to a degree what you have access to. Inside the beltline is the majority of workplaces, stores, and shopping centers; while outside you'll still have these things just to a more... dispersed extent.

North Raleigh actually kinda exemplifies this perfectly. Living inside the beltline, you have access to places like North Hills, Crabtree Valley mall, and Triangle Town Center. Live outside the beltline, like I currently am, and you're looking at 10 to 15 minutes to the nearest sheetz for that late night double hot dog fix.

So for point one: How important is it that you're near things? The majority of apartments and rental properties are in or around the belt-line, but if you want to save some cash on rent checks the cheaper properties are gonna extend your trips a bit.

Next, what can you expect in terms of neighbors? Does Raleigh have a hip party scene full of teens renting cheap apartments and blasting trap music at 3AM?

Depends on where you live

I swear not every point is going to be this, but there's an important distinction this time that affects the type of people your complex will likely have surrounding you; are you in North or South Raleigh?

North Raleigh has a ton of pre-schools, k-12 public schools (Leesville, Hillburn, Lead Mine, just to name a few), and office complexes that make up the job market. As a result the majority of apartment renters in north Raleigh tend to be families with a few small kids or so.

As a result, living off of Glenwood North and Edwards Mill I never had any noise problems from neighbors, the worst being kids playing outside at 3PM sounding like they were being murdered (which apparently is a common thing and I apologize to any neighbors I frightened with ghastly shrieks).

What I did have a problem with, however, was the typical Karen's you hear people complain about online. Renting a property now, we have access to our neighborhood's NextDoor page and it's hilarious sometimes to go on and read the comments, but living at a certain property we had a sort of mini-Facebook for residents

That thing was always full of either people who were moving out looking to sell their furniture or people passive-aggressively challenging each other/the apartment managers with comments about things happening around the complex.

Once I logged in to see one man accuse another, without ever actually accusing someone specific ("I know who did it and they should be ashamed" type post) of putting glass beer bottles under the tires of his truck to try and puncture them. Everyone acts civil in public, but then online they'll stir the pot harder than a chef with a hand mixer.

South Raleigh, you have the schools like Shaw University, Meredith, and NCSU; so the people renting down there are typically college kids. You'll see more apartments that cater towards them like University Village or University Woods, but sometimes these places will cater to both college kids and working adults

Avoid these places like the plague, because despite sometimes having a lower cost to live there the neighbors and their shenanigans will drive you up the wall (unless you're the type to join in, then go wild).

I've had friends stay at places like University Village and The Proper (formerly The Vie, formerly Wolf Creek) who've shared horror stories. 3AM parties ending in property damage or vomit in inconvenient places, drug deals not even trying to be subtle, and maintenance workers doing nothing because regardless of the apartment conditions; no school's gonna pull their contract with them unless news articles start getting written.

http://www.technicianonline.com/news/article_898ddf34-82f5-11e7-b3d8-07059d248619.html

https://www.wral.com/vie-at-raleigh-residents-finally-able-to-move-into-clean-units/16887833/

http://www.technicianonline.com/news/article_ea8ed7aa-a092-11e8-a2af-e70af36566d0.html

Otherwise, south Raleigh apartments are largely like north Raleigh apartments; except the crime rate tends to be a little higher and you'll run into more singles and people working full time.

Otherwise, Raleigh apartment culture is like apartment culture anywhere else in the country. You have a mix of apartments catering to those just looking to live versus more ostentatious luxury apartments with fancy pools, exercise facilities, and tech packages to draw people in.

If you're renting in Raleigh, however, do try to get a roommate or two if you can manage. Even with a decent job paying 800+ on a one bedroom one bath apartment can be exhausting at best, but with even one other person that can functionally halve your expenses

So if you're a young professional, or a student, or even if you have a small family, I can safely recommend renting in Raleigh. There's plenty of places that'll accommodate you, and cater towards your needs.

But what about everyone else? Are there people who shouldn't rent in Raleigh?

No

But there are groups who I'd seriously ask to consider their other choices before picking Raleigh as a destination for their new home.

For instance, are you a member of the LGBT community? A trans or non-binary individual? Well then, first off, I want you to know that you're loved and valid. I'm accepting of who you are and appreciate everyone's right to identify how they choose, but I'm not everyone.

Raleigh's bluer than other parts of North Carolina, as I've stated in other blog write-ups, but it's still part of North Carolina unfortunately and as a result, you'll face some challenges.

I doubt anyone's gonna burn a cross in your yard or knock over your mailbox, but Raleigh doesn't offer LGBT protections for housing, jobs, or credit/lending discriminations according to the Movement Advancement Project's website.

We have support organizations for LGBT and NB individuals, plenty of high schools and colleges have Gay-Straight Alliance clubs, and there are numerous businesses downtown that cater specifically to those individuals... but we're also the state that got into a lot of hot water because of a stupid bathroom bill, and our politicians are trying to pass anti-trans sports legislation (because they now magically care about the integrity of womens sports).

By that measure, but to a lesser extent, if you fall outside the Liberal/Conservative political spectrum then be prepared to have no one to discuss your politics with outside of a few sparse networks like the DSA.

Additionally, if you don't have someone to room with or a significant other to split costs with; you may want to try searching somewhere a little cheaper.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Raleigh housing prices aren't terrible for a major metropolitan city, but we're not the best prices in the world.

You can get prices on apartments and rentals lower than say, California or New York. However, compared to other parts of NC like Greensboro or Garner; rentals are still a bit much.

On average, a Raleigh apartment can run you about $900 for a single bedroom and a single bathroom. You can find cheaper, but often times there's some risk associated (Crime levels, quality of the room, quality of the property manager, etc.) Looking for a two bedroom? Then your average price is gonna jump up to around $1,200, and this is all before utilities and cable come into play.

It's true a lot of companies around here will pay more than the $7.25 minimum wage, but most low-skilled jobs will pay around 10-11 an hour.

I guess though, that's kind of an obvious statement. "Don't live in Raleigh if you can't afford to live in Raleigh."

I might expand on these thoughts at a later time, but hopefully for now I've given you some food for thought; or at the very least an entertaining read for a few minutes.

I love my city, and I love the friends I've made in it, but the sad truth is that nowhere is perfect for everyone; leastways Raleigh. If Raleigh sounds like the kind of place you'd like to live in, at least take a day trip to come visit and see how things go that way. Visit some stores, meet some locals, and form an opinion off of more than travel blogs and youtube videos.

[noviceaoiryusei]

「 DUET 2020.04 」 Kansai Junior interview

Kansai Johnny's Jr.

A heart that jumps out

Fluffy spring time

We had 9 Kansai Juniors tell us about a relaxing happening. The kindness of someone, the places that they had visited... an unexpected moment, they seem to spend days warmly.

Gaku Kawashita

(Spring time) During this time, I enjoyed eating a steak together with grandpa and grandma. I had them choose their favorite from the menu and we ate it. "I couldn't even imagine that we would have a day (like this) to have a feast", I'm so glad, I felt relaxed.

(Recent happening) When Oka-chan, Sawata-kun, us three went to watch a movie after work, it was so crowded that only two seats were available. Then Sawata-kun said, "it's okay, let's go together"; he was so gentle, I felt numb! Sawata-kun is so cool, I've always wanted to talk to him. Recently, we got along with work and we became friends, I'm so happy. Next time, I would like for us three to go again together.

Yuri Oka

(Spring time) The best place to relax is definitely at the futon. The duvet is light and warm, it's really the best. The way I sleep is different, rather than covering my whole body with the futon, I put my feet out of the edge. Then, I enjoy the difference in temperature between the warmth of my body and the coldness of my feet. (laughs) As you might think "why do I do that?" but, it feels good to me!

(Recent happening) I went to Arashi's exhibition with my mom. There are lots of old photos and costumes and it's amazing! The most amazing thing is... I don't want to tell it in full details since it'll be a spoiler but, it's the one with Matsumoto (Jun)-kun's handwriting. As I thought, Arashi-san is so cool, I'm so impressed!

Riku Koshiba

(Spring time) I feel warmth whenever I talk with everyone in Kansai Juniors. What is amazing in Kansai Juniors is that the role of boke and tsukkomi are divided! Kansai Junior has lots of boke but, Fukui-kun and Sawata-kun will precisely plunge in. My high school friends thought that it's funny but, there's no one who stops the boke. Unnecessarily, I felt that Kansai Junior has a good balance.

(Recent happening) Suddenly, the "soccer boys club" went out, we went to a nearby park with my high school friends and we kicked the ball for 5 hours. My friends are good at playing soccer and even if I missed a kick they will absolutely pass it to me again, it's fun. Before the soccer heat is gone, I want to do futsal.

Daichi Imae

(Spring time) I feel relaxed whenever I eat the pumpkin that has been simmered by my mother~. I also like pumpkins so, I make it good. It always makes me pleased. If you're troubled with the side dish, you can make it! Although it makes me worried sometimes. (laughs) It's overwhelmingly delicious!

(Recent happening) I'm addicted with anime and (anime) figures. There's an (anime) figures event in Tokyo but, it's dissapointing that my schedule doesn't fit so I can't go there! My favorite part is the posture (of it), I am an apprentice of the anime fan "master", Sakuma (Daisuke)-kun. Also, Sakuma-kun who respects Miyata (Toshiya)-kun said "call with respect the first generation"! (laughs)

Nairu Koja

(Spring time) When I met small kids who've recently joined Kansai Junior, I felt that I should be kind (to them)~. I thought of one of them who's an energetic kid and talks well, choreographer-san said "that kid, don't you know his name? It's "Akito" (Iwaizumi Akito)". It's the same name as (Kiriyama) Akito-kun! "That's why he's so talkative!", I laughed a lot. "Akito" 's soul, it is inherited.

(Recent happening) I want my hair to be of the same lenght enough to hide my ears. Since I want my hair long without getting damaged, after shampoo I tried an after care treatment with hair beauty substance. Then, I went to a salon, they said, "a ring of an angel has been made on the hair" behind!

Masaya Sawata

(Spring time) I'm getting relaxed whenever I looked at the little kids of Kansai Juniors. There was a time when I'm still a kid that I'm doing some strange movements all by myself. Atsushi is doing it innocently, looking at it makes me really tired. Also, Oka-chan is cute! But he isn't a kid. (laughs) His idle face, how he talks, it's the same level of cuteness as those kids!

(Recent happening) Gaku, Oka-chan and I went to watch a movie but there were only two vacant seats left. Then I said, "It's okay, I'll go watch it later" and gave it to them. Apparently, those guys fell asleep while watching the movie. I gave it to them but why did you fell asleep!? (laughs)

Koshiro Fukui

(Spring time) Before going to bed is the best time for me. Actually, I'm the type of person who can sleep anywhere immediately. (laughs) But after all, I'm happy when I'm able to sleep on my bed at night. ♪ My bed is surrounded with railings on it's four sides and it somehow gaves me a security, the reason why I sleep soundly. Sleeping is good but, "I don't move at all while I'm sleeping?"; that's what I've thought because when I woke up, I'm still at the same position as when I've slept at night. (laughs)

(Recent happening) My university exams are over! During the exam period, I had to sleep for 2 hours for 3 consecutive days so, I'm so happy that it's finally over! Taisei, Koji (Kojima) and good friends that forms the "Fukumoto gundan", let's talk about going snowboarding. I'm going to play a lot!

Taro Yoshikawa

(Spring time) I was watching at a video site when coincidentally, the ending song of an anime that I used to watch played. "Hayaku otona ni naritai" (I want to be an adult already) said the kid, "Kodomo ni modoritai" (I want to go back to being a child) said the adult, it's like a duet song. When I was a kid, I used to symphatize with the children now, I'm surprised that I can understand the feeling of the adults. I'm reminiscing the memories of my childhood, it somehow made me feel warm.

(Recent happening) At the last spring break in high school, I studied, played the guitar and played games. I think it's nice to be able to spend all day doing the things thay you like. (laughs) When I was in junior high school, I have plans to meet up with my friend who had moved to Nagano for the first time in 6 years so, I'm looking forward to it!

Sota Okumura

(Spring time) There was an event that inspired me to visit temples and shrines. One rainy day, I thought "there might be a few people today" so, I visited a temple with a beautiful garden. Then, as soon as I sat down on the porch and looked at the garden, the rain had stopped and the blue sky appeared between the clouds and a yellow butterfly flew in the garden. It might be awkward though but I thought "it might be a welcome", I remember being happy with that.

(Recent happening) At the end of the shochiku-za performance rehearsal yesterday, Fuga invited me and said "Let's go to Messi", I said "If I have a chance" but, I was taken to a family restaurant. (laughs) The moment I saw the sign by the distance, I instinctively said "It's definitely over..!". (laughs)

[rottenappleheart]

Alright, friends who've played Bastion, I need your help.

I couldn’t sleep because I was Too Upset. Not about the game’s themes or story, like I should be, but because I have clearly failed to grasp something. Let me explain my (mis)understanding of the game. Maybe one of you will see where I got muddled, and untangle me in a spoiler-free fashion, so that it will actually mean something when I make endgame decisions.

I’ll write it my thinking chronologically, in case that helps you track my mistakes. Long post ahoy!

Here is what I believed, going into the “rescue Zia” mission:

The old man narrator is, in fact, the Kid grown up, and there are wacky time travel shenanigans happening somewhere in the background. He knows what the Kid is doing, and how he’s feeling about it, because he remembers living it. (I’ve been convinced of this since very early in the game, but maybe I’ve been dead wrong! Maybe that’s been screwing me up the whole time!)

The people of the City, whose name I forget, were screwing over the Ura in some fashion with regard to land acquisition, construction, and their treatment of refugees/POWs.

The Kid’s from some other minority population??? In his memories, the old man narrator talks about him and his mom getting grief about their white hair, but literally all the non-Ura characters met have white hair, so IDK what the people of the City were supposed to look like normally.

The Ura created the Cataclysm to get back at the people of the City.

(A sidenote: from the very beginning, the old man narrator speaks about the cataclysm as though it’s a known thing and everyone understands what happened? I don’t? I guess a bunch of people turned to ash where they stood, and also the world started floating? But parts of the world also floated before???)

Zulf and Zia were spared by the Cataclysm that hit the City (because they were Ura?) but didn’t know about it ahead of time. When Zulf finds out the truth, he… agrees with what the Ura were trying to do? He says he’s going to succeed where the Cataclysm failed, and he attacks the Bastion’s core before leaving.

The animals have been building a Bastion of their own, which uhhh implies a level of intelligence that I really think needs to be addressed? But the old man narrator says that the Kid has to destroy it, but that completing the main Bastion will… save the animals too? Which sounds iffy because right now, the entire surviving population of this world appears to be the four survivors gathered on the Bastion, and three pets. (At this time, for the record, the game hasn’t mentioned that the Ura survived.)

I do, in fact, get (unless I am DEAD WRONG) that what the Kid is doing to repair the Bastion is causing a lot of wreckage in other places. I am fully expecting to learn that the Kid is accidentally the villain of this play, and maybe the final act will be him choosing not to carry on (and… not become the old man narrator? Pick a different future for himself? IDK.)

The “you’re probably the villain” feeling is boosted by that one hallucination the Kid has in which he relives the first few scenes of the game, only this time the old man narrator talks as though he is on a murderous rampage through a still-living city, instead of escaping a ghost town. And maybe the part about “he sees the rippling walls, the work of years, destroyed in an instant” wasn’t about the Cataclysm, but was a reference to the player inevitably going hog-wild with the hammer while they’re learning the controls.

At this point, we learn that the Ura have apparently all survived the Cataclysm.

Zulf wrote to Zia to win her over, but failed. He also warned the Kid against going back to the Bastion, because the Ura will attack it. They do, and kidnap Zia.

But things started to go sideways on the actual mission of rescuing Zia.

The game definitely wants me to feel bad about fighting and killing the Ura, because unlike monsters, the Ura leave bodies behind. Read ya loud and clear there, game devs. Also, not super jazzed about exterminating every other living thing in this world! I continue expecting to be the villain.

But the old man narrator begins addressing Zia directly in this sequence, saying that she wasn’t really kidnapped, and that she arranged all of this herself? She was in cahoots with the Ura the whole time? So I start side-eyeing Zia as well as the old man narrator.

The Kid doesn’t find that out, he just “rescues” Zia, and takes her back the Bastion. I assume she’s basically a ticking bomb with a secret plan to destroy everything.

(If you’ve played the game, I feel like you are starting to squint at the screen at how Incorrect all of this is.)

Off I go to the Taral Tunnels, which I believe are pretty much the end of the game. And my understanding of the plot goes completely off the rails.

I’m here to… I guess stop Zulf from whatever his plan for Cataclysm 2.0 is?

The old man narrator reveals that it was actually the people of the City who created the Cataclysm, which isn’t what I believed, but also doesn’t surprise me.

They intended to hit the Ura, to… prevent war? Which is a nice bit of fancyfooting, logically speaking, because this means that I have no evidence that the Ura have ever done anything except be oppressed.

So now we’ve got a story in which the people of the City first wrecked all the Ura’s shit, and made them second-class citizens, and then said “you know what, let’s just wipe them out completely.” Got it.

I can see why Zulf went “SCREW THIS I’M OUT,” and why the Ura have been attacking the Bastion, which is the last stronghold for the people of the city (… inhabited by two Ura refugees, three pets, and one also-a-minority boy and his elderly time-traveling alter self???)

Specifically, it was Zia’s dad, an Ura POW forced to work for the people of the City, who created the whatever-it-was that caused the Cataclysm.

I know from Zia’s memories that he told her to hide inside that last day, so he probably deliberately botched the work so it hit his captors and not his own people.

Except he also never told Zia about their people, or even their language, so IDK how attached he was to them.

The story about this one dipshit who used Zia to get close to her dad, SOLELY TO BE RUDE TO HIM IN HIS OWN LANGUAGE, and then thwart their attempts to escape the city… I don’t know what to make of this story anymore, or the notion that Zia is the one who suggested they escape, given that she knew nothing about her own people. It’s a good setpiece for “the people of the City were awful to the Ura refugees,” but I’m not sure how it interacts with the developing plot twists. Unless the boy was the Kid? Or, not THIS the Kid, but the Kid who grew up into the old man narrator in some… alternate… history???

I no longer know what Zulf said he was going to do that would succeed where the Cataclysm failed. I no longer know if he meant “wipe out the people of the City” or “wipe out the Ura [his own people].”

The old man narrator continues to address Zia like she’s a villain, AND maybe also a time traveler??? He mentions her getting to “try again” all the things that “didn’t go her way.” Now I begin to build a theory castle about the Kid being the old man narrator’s cat’s-paw to… repeat and manipulate a bad past, using his younger and more trusting self, and maybe Zulf is the same thing for Zia, given that she knows things he doesn’t? Maybe she used him and his outrage to bring the Ura down on the Bastion???

I build another wing onto the theory castle in which Zia and Zulf are the same person from different times/realities like the Kid and the old man narrator are??? I DON’T KNOW ANYMORE

(I have a headache just looking at this)

Then the old man narrator says that when the Bastion is completed, they’ll all… cease to exist? And go back in time? The Bastion is built to reset the world to an earlier “save state” and is essentially a giant time-traveling floating ark?

He also says that all the places the Kid has been aren’t real, or aren’t real anymore, but are visions of the past?

Are the Ura even alive in this day and age, or have I been fighting their ghosts and then returning to the Bastion in which there are literally only four people alive in the entire world?

But that doesn’t work if Zia and Zulf have also gone back and forth???

At this point I started completely fragmenting, losing the threads of what he’s saying.

The Ura are pissed off at Zulf for leading the Kid here, so they beat the shit out of him. That part I got loud and clear. You’d better believe I dropped everything to carry that nice gentleman out of there with me. And I wanted to be really upset and invested in that long slow awful march, but I was just so confused.

So I get Zulf back to the Bastion, and complete its construction. Now the old man narrator and Zia BOTH want to talk to me, and Zia finally has a voice, which is great. But my conversation with each of them just made it worse.

The old man narrator keeps giving me more confusing information about the Bastion and the people of the City, which I can’t even recreate here, because I got so lost. I think what he wants me to do is use the Bastion to… go back in time to before the Cataclysm, so that the people of the City will have survived… except that the people of the City were supposed to have fled onto the Bastion in the first place, it was supposed to be their “life raft” in case of trouble…? So is the problem that no one else made it there but the Kid, or is this its intended function, to just be a big reset button?

Zia is telling the Kid that she wouldn’t undo anything, that the happiest memories she has are all after the Cataclysm, which is nice and also it sounds like being an Ura has really sucked, but uh! Literally everyone is dead but the four of us now, thanks to the Kid’s last blitz through the Ura! (If that was real and not a ghost-memory anyway!) The entire world is a cinder! This is not a good outcome to maintain! I don’t like this! I don’t like giving the appearance of siding with the genocidal people of the City, but this particular ark is never going to wash up on solid ground and start new, Zia!

Then the game gives me the actual choice, one of which is “evacuate” and one is… I forget what it was called, but NEITHER ONE OBVIOUSLY RELATED TO WHAT THE OLD MAN NARRATOR AND ZIA JUST TOLD ME. I don’t even know what choice I’m making anymore, or what the outcomes will be.

This is the point at which I realized I was crying and just went to bed.

I feel like I have badly misunderstood something. A lot of things. And I don't THINK I've been missing major clues, because I've been going through all the memories and talking to everyone about the significant artifacts I find. I just put the pieces together wrong and got lost. Please, please come to my inbox or reblog and tell me what’s actually the story, because I was really enjoying this game and would like to continue enjoying it until the ending, instead of crying in frustrated confusion and giving up in the final moments.