#And have you actually thought of all this‚ and in an unbiased way of possible‚

[fragmentedblade]

Stupid criticism about Jing.liu's quest again over on twitter

[thewertsearch]

Anonymous asked: You: "Wow Homestuck is my favorite comic ever! Kanaya is the best :)" Hussie: "LOL, LMAO" @morganwick asked: (Try not to think about the idea that the conversation future Jade alluded to where Kanaya got the password was the one with past Jade that immediately followed that conversation, and that Jade is waiting for a password from Kanaya that'll never come…) @bladekindeyewear asked: [...] regarding the password Jade said earlier she had been patiently waiting for… unfortunately, I think we saw Jade give her said password just before the walkaround… and in hindsight, it’s quite a regrettable one. “GG: the password is…………… GG: CROOOOOOOOOOOAK”

I had the same chilling thought over the weekend.

Yes, it's very possible that Kanaya closed her password loop in her very next conversation, which means the timeline doesn't actually require her to be resurrected. This removes the main piece of evidence I had that she's coming back - but even so, I still don't think she's gone for good.

What it boils down to, basically, is that Kanaya still has a lot to do.

First of all, her arc surrounding the survival of her race is still unresolved. Sure, someone like Karkat or fellow Space girl Jade could pick up the baton, but this arc isn't theirs. Jade has no personal investment in it, and Karkat, while obviously motivated to save his species, isn't connected to the Matriorb or Mother Grub the way Kanaya is. This revival plotline is hers, and right now, it's dangling like a loose thread.

If that was the only narrative issue, I could look past it - but it's not.

Guys, this was her last conversation with Rose. And I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that one of the longest-running ships in the comic would end here. Kanaya's romantic arc with Rose is really just getting started, and their last conversation really doesn't scan as a goodbye, even in retrospect.

Like, sure, these last words would be kind of ironic, but is this really how you close the door on one of the most kickass compelling relationships we have? Rosemary deserves a better death than this.

Speaking of which...

This is how we're disposing of Kanaya? With an (admittedly kind of funny) SBaHJ reference?

Bro, a significantly less important character, gets a dramatic death pose, framed by one of Karkat's best lines, and Kanaya - Kanaya Fucking Maryam - gets a sparkly Hope wand and a meme? I'm calling bullshit.

Now, Homestuck is more than happy to give its characters undignified deaths. Tavros certainly got one - but Tavros also died at the end of an intense, dramatic flash animation, and his murder served as the culmination of the Vriska/Tavros arc we've been following since early Hivebent. Tavros died without dignity, but the narrative weight of his death was enormous.

Kanaya died in the middle of multiple character arcs, in a manner that lacked dignity or narrative weight. She was essentially collateral damage to an unrelated feud between Eridan and Feferi. She died like a secondary character, and she's not.

I'm self-aware enough to admit that this is partially wishful thinking. It's not like I'm an unbiased observer - Kanaya is my favorite character, and I dug deep into the comic for evidence that her death doesn't make sense. But, that said - her death doesn't make sense. My narrative instincts are telling me that Kanaya is coming back - I just don't know how.

[huellitaa]

friendship breakups 🎀 . ࣪˖

OKAY. so. i was best friends with this girl for 7 years and only recently i ditched her! after so so so so long i ditched her. finally. and my god i feel SO much better.

˚₊‧꒰ა friendship ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

someone that you experience a bond with.

˚₊‧꒰ა toxic friendship ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

someone who drains you and hurts you while still considering themselves a friend.

i think one of the hardest parts of this whole situation is figuring out what makes somebody toxic for you without constantly over-romanticising all the good parts.

˚₊‧꒰ა clear signs of a toxic friendship ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

♡ dreading communication with them

♡ feeling drained after interactions

♡ being insecure and fearful around them

♡ holding off on telling them big things

♡ used as a joke way too often

♡ kept in the dark as just a "backup plan"

♡ left out & overlooked.

a friend should be somebody who hypes you up and makes you laugh and rambles for ages with you and makes dumb jokes with you and makes you happy and doesn't leave you out or make you feel alienated or upset or anything like that. it took me 4 whole years to actually realise this.

now, if you find yourself in a position where you are experiencing these signs of a toxic friendship but aren't really sure what to do, this is what i did!:

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ weigh out the goods & bads

if you're currently stuck with somebody who makes you feel drained and insecure and whatever else may be making you feel as though maybe you should cut them off, it sounds a little weird but as somebody who works way better puzzling things out when doing it on paper, i made a whole pros and cons list of what this friendship brings to my life. having a physical representation of your confusing thought process around the whole situation can be very beneficial and help to put your thoughts into clarity so you can make a decision that actually helps and aligns with you and go from there.

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ figure out your friendship standards

everybody always talks about having standards in romantic relationships and love and all that but i barely hear anything on standards for friendships. friendships are just as important as romantic relationships, and having standards for friendships is equally essential as it would be in a relationship if you dont want to attract scruffy, dirty, insecure people who will only drag you down. ask yourself what your ideal friend looks like; somebody who shares your interests, somebody who supports you, somebody with a similar mindset to you, similar background to you; what is it that you want in a friendship? how do you define friendship? what does that look like for you? make a list and keep it somewhere safe. refer to this when making new friends and cutting them off.

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ think back on your actions

a harsh truth of life is sometimes we are the problem. something i did for way longer than i should have is spend time going back over my every word, every movement, every action to see if there was something i did wrong. now dont do what i did, but do just sit down for a little bit and think if there was anything you could have possibly done and bring it up with them to resolve it if you did. admitting your wrongs is not weak. it is the strongest thing one can do.

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ get a second opinion

one thing that helped me was talking to my mum about it. me and my mum are really close so i chose her but it can be another close friend, a parent, a partner, just whatever you feel comfy with. try to put it into a hypothetical situation so that they have no prior biased views on the situation and explain to them the scenario and see what they would do and what they would say. if you have no one to do it with, then thats absolutely fine because this is completely optional and just helped me to reassure myself a bit, but you can also think of it from an outsiders perspective or if a friend was telling you that they are experiencing what you're currently going through so you can get an unbiased opinion from yourself.

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ let yourself feel how you feel

if you need to, just sit and cry for a bit. journal, write, wallow in your own sadness for a bit if thats what you need to release it from yourself. suppressing and holding all this in is way, way worse for you than letting it out could ever be. just have one night where you rot and cry and be sad about it. this releases the negative energy you've been holding onto about it and i promise you will feel so much lighter afterwards.

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ demonising and romanticising

in these situations, its best to keep a neutral mindset towards them. even if its toxic, they were your friends in the first place for a reason and even if you shouldn't romanticise them dont demonise them and completely despise them either because thats not good for you or them. they are still an experience you went through in your life and are to be learnt from, nothing more. respect the good parts just as much as the bad parts.

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ dealing with conflict

something i really really worried about for years when i wanted to leave my ex-best friend was the falling out and the social backlash, seeing as she's fairly popular too. but while i was expecting sooo much backlash and conflict, it turns out that if you do it the right way, nobody really cares. sure, it might attract a little attention for a while, but trust in yourself and remembering that nobody will actually care about this in a few weeks will get you through and you can move on with your life. if people can turn against you from only hearing one side of the story, they were never your people. plus, why are you stressing about validation from people you don't even like in the first place?

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ detachment

one thing that has saved me in many, many situations, including this one, is not giving a fuck. i will be making a post on detachment at some point but detachment in friendship breakups especially is so important because its easy to let your emotions get the best of you and control you and make irrational decisions in these situations. staying completely indifferent and detached and comfortable in yourself with you as your main priority has to be one of if not the most important part of this whole process.

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ moving on

obviously moving on is difficult. moving on might be one of the most difficult things about the whole experience of a friendship breakup. so along with feeling the emotions and releasing them like i mentioned earlier, acknowledge that it's okay to mourn the past, even if they were bad for you. thats perfectly normal and okay. but do not let it consume you. trust in yourself and that this is for the best, and be proud of yourself for getting out of that friendship because there's so much you haven't yet learned and so many people you haven't yet met that will change your whole life in ways you can't possibly imagine right now. ♡

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ trusting yourself

trust that no matter what's going on right now you will always be able to bounce back from it. trust your judgement and that if it makes you feel this bad, you arent overreacting, you arent overemotional, you arent just sensitive and it is genuinely affecting and impacting you. everything is an experience to be learnt and grow from and this is no different. its uncomfortable and its scary but the shift to getting everything you want is often scary and uncomfortable because of how much has to change to achieve that reality. if there's one person you're always going to have no matter what, it's going to be you. you are your own best friend. trust yourself above anybody and everybody else.

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ actually cutting them off

one thing i did that i feel could have ended things a lot easier is not procrastinate the process of actually cutting them off. it was a little easier for me because she was ghosting me anyway so i did the same and told her no whenever she wanted me to do something because i refuse to be a second option, but if you're not comfortable with that and can't do it in a good or polite way because of whatever circumstances you might be in then just politely tell them. plan out what you wanna say in your head, dont think about it and just tell them. it will all be for the best, i promise. being uncomfortable is a part of change. you can do this.

overall, everybody enters your life and everybody leaves your life for a reason. please don't take this personally. people are not meant to stay forever. relationships are precious and fleeting, no matter what kind, and you should treasure them, good or bad, while accepting it might not be right for you anymore. people aren't supposed to stay forever and losing friends shows that you are growing. you've got this, okay? 💞💗

[moodooivy]

So I have many theories of what happened between Vox and Alastor, but I have to decide on something. So, I will be going into as much detail as I can analyzing the possible theories of what happened. I'll try to be as unbiased as I can and not let my shipper brain get in the way. (I will be saying maybe and possibly a lot so get ready for that)

Theory 1: Alastor's deal;

In this theory people say that Alastor had to decline Vox's offer to join the Vees and leave him because of his deal. That he had no choice. Another idea to this is that Alastor was threatened to agree to the deal for Vox's protection or happiness. Another possibility is that Alastor had to disappear because of his contract and that left Vox bitter because he thought Alastor abandoned him. As much as my RadioStatic mind loves this idea, it is extremely unlikely. I mean the way Alastor treats Vox does not give "I had to betray you in the past when I didn't want to". It gives "I'm bitter and love to mess with you, fuck you". Though this outcome isn't impossible. A possible way I see is maybe Alastor's deal involved taking away his ability to show feelings? It could explain why Alastor is always smiling. But I don't think that's the case. As for the reasoning of Vox feeling abandoned, I don't think that's it either. I feel like there would've been a scene acknowledging that to be the case already. So I'm going with no, probably not this.

Theory 2: Love confession;

Ah yes. The classic love confession theory. In this theory, people say that Vox was in love with Alastor, but when he confessed to Alastor he was rejected. Either then Alastor left or they got into a fight and then Alastor left. Either way, Al left Vox bitter and rejected. As much as I love RadioStatic, I hate RadioSilence and am not a believer in this theory. Again, I feel like we would already know if this were the case. And Vox just doesn't give me bitter rejected vibes. I just feel like if it were the case, I don't know, Vox would make it more obvious? But that doesn't mean this is impossible. Plus, there's always a possibility something similar to Blitz and Fizz happened. One of them was about to confess but then their fallout happened. That honestly does sound likely. Or, maybe Alastor misunderstood Vox. Vox wasn't actually asking him to join his team, he was asking Al to join him. Alastor didn't understand this and rejected the offer, or he knew full well and thought Vox only saw it as a business thing or maybe even a sex thing, since Valentino was apparently in the picture at that point. There is a reason why I just said love confession and not Vox's love confession. I actually do believe it is possible Alastor had feelings as well. People forget that Alastor was never confirmed to be aromantic, and even if he was, AroAce people can still fall in love, so it's not impossible. In fact I feel like it is very possible there was some mutual pining between these two. Where they both liked each other but just didn't realize it. To all those who have read Daughter Of Discord, tell me you don't get the thought of Discord and Chrysalis's past in your head. This brings me to the next theory.

Theory 3: They were changing too much;

In this theory, it is thought that Vox was changing too much. Alastor and Vox used to be friends, but Alastor didn't like how his old pal was becoming modernized and different. Alastor seems to really dislike change, and that could either be because of the fallout or contributed to the fallout. Perhaps when Vox asked Alastor to join him that was the breaking point. He thought Vox would try to change him. Change his name, make him use modern technology, change who he is. I believe this is the most likely situation. Another possibly, and what I think is most possible, Vox was growing powerful way too quickly. Alastor loves power. He took immediate disliking to Lucifer and I am pretty sure it's because Lucifer is probably the only thing in Hell stronger than him... But at the same time. Alastor is smart. Like, really smart. I feel like the last thing he would think of doing to someone he thought was growing more powerful than him would be to cut ties with them and make enemies. Alastor messes with Lucifer because he knows if Lucifer hurt him he would destroy his relationship with Charlie so he can't do shit. Another possibility is that Alastor's strange moral code might've gotten in the way. Unlikely I know, but Alastor does have some moral to himself where he seems to not harm, in fact somewhat protects those that are weak and defenseless. Maybe his and Vox's morals didn't align and Alastor didn't like the immoral path Vox was taking.

Theory 4: Velvette and Valentino;

In this theory, it is thought that the idea of the Vees is what caused Vox and Alastor's fallout. Maybe Alastor thought working with three would be too much. Maybe he thought they would hold him back. That would fit into the timeline. In the series I think it is supposed to be hinted that Velvette wasn't around during the fallout, so I'll look at it from that perspective. Alastor didn't like Vox's company of Valentino (Honestly who doesn't) so when Vox offered for Alastor to join them, Al said no, they got into a fight, Alastor disappeared, and so Val and Vox recruited Vel instead.

So, what do you guys think happened. Let me know because I am very interested. I apologize if this is hard to understand, the way I speak can be like that, but hopefully everyone gets this.

[puckpocketed]

caps fan here!

as follower of pld (the few, the proud, the courageous!), i was wondering if you had any thoughts about how he might fit in with our team, assuming he's going to be 1C with Ovi on the left and one of Wilson or Mangiapane on the right, and basically taking the former Kuznetsov/Backstrom spot on the halfwall on PP1. my thinking is that he can easily return to being a 60 point player just by the increase in ice time alone this coming season, and maybe even flirt with 70 if he has a triggerman like big O on his wing.

as someone who knows a hell of a lot more about PLD than i do, is that just wishful thinking because i'm a caps fan? what do you think?

The PLD Post, Part 2: mask-OFF

Hii!! (we are SO brave and SO correct). i am so sorry this took ages to answer, i was trying to decide how serious to be. I will admit, I was hesitant about going mask-off and hitting up the microstats and revealing that i do seriously think he can be better than he was bc that shit is kinda lame ESPECIALLY when defending a clear failhorse. but at this point any rep i have as someone with good opinions must be gone considering how many media scapegoats i've attached myself to (i got a fucking. c.gauthier ask the other day aslkjdkljas) so. mask is coming off. we've hit somewhere between well-considered manifesto and vibe check so . um. enjoy!!

I remain optimistic going from everything I've heard and from what you're saying here! But, big big asterisk. He absolutely needs to take ownership of his lack of engagement. when he speaks in media availability I believe him when he says he wants to change. The will to change is there, idk if it’s possible that any player would be satisfied with their performance being the way his was. There’s a lot that needs to be unpacked about his lack of production, the Character Issues, and what his role might look like going forward. You and any other Caps fan who reads this will have to tell me if the fit is right. Hockey talk below the cut lol!!

So before I start I have to say I know dick all about the Caps except:

You're dragging that old man (Ovechkin) to Gretzky's lawn (record) to set it on fire (break it before he retires)

Everyone is pining away for your very very injured 1C who is also Ovechkin's boybestfriend/perfect set-up guy/work wife

There's. intricate pre-game rituals?

So I'm not sure I can speak to how he will fit with your (our? i AM picking the Caps up fr given every acquisition/draft pick they've made) team with any depth or specificity. also i don't think i'd call myself a PLD expert. like. i just got here !! I haven't been following him since he was drafted or anything!! I have, however, consumed TOO MANY Kings games this past season and I can give you a broad look at what actually happened with them and why I think it didn't work out. I will not be making any overtures about being unbiased. My biases WILL slip through because I think Dubois is a sweetheart and I find the mental exercise of defending him fun <3 I’ll give you stats and observations and I will build a story that runs counter to what the prevailing media narratives say. While I stand by my opinions, they're also just one of many available interpretations of what happened.

character concerns

Everyone will be bringing it up at the first speed bump of the season, the first bad game he has. Please be prepared to have a crisis of faith and also be deeply disappointed in him. god knows I am, like, all the time <3 But... I always want to dig deeper when it comes to dominant narratives, because in following multiple teams I’ve become acutely aware of just how miserably Bad media can be at reporting on teams that aren’t their own.

I hear “Locker room cancer” accusations bandied about and I’ve yet to see anyone produce a primary source for this — podcasters, journalists, even people on nhl broadcasts will throw these words around so casually, assuming they’re correct because everyone knows the story. Some confounding factors in the character narratives arise when you scratch the surface. People who've worked with him speak well enough of him. Todd McLellan called him “misunderstood”, and had nothing bad to say about his character.

Matt Roy, who also just got picked up by the Caps, has recently said he’s a great teammate. MORE proof if you want to hear it directly, Roy went on Dropping The Gloves and had this to say about Dubois (transcript by me):

[on what actually happened] Honestly, I don’t know. I mean if you asked him he would say he had a down year. But it’s nothing like — I feel like the media paints this picture of him, and to me it couldn’t be further from the truth, you know. He’s a great teammate, he’s a great locker room guy, he gets along with everybody. So, in terms of all that I don’t know where the media is getting all this stuff. If I hated the guy I probably wouldn’t have come to Washington. He’s one of my friends on the team and I really think he’s going to have a bounce back year. I think he’s really going to be good for the team.

Matt Roy signed with the Caps of his own free will as an RD, a contested free agent in a sparse market, knowing Dubois was already here. He could’ve gone to plenty of different places. Why the hell would Roy sign here long-term, clearly wanting to play and win, if Dubois was as disliked as some pundits would have us believe??? Credible reports (and not just speculation) point to PLD’s other teammates liking him!! 

And here’s some propaganda; I direct you to this extremely sweet video where he gets asked about assisting on Akil Thomas' first NHL goal (and a bunch of other first NHL goals). He is so, so genuinely happy for Akil, who battled through injuries that set back his development for years. Just LOOK at his smile!! He can’t hold it back. (Others have said this but it looks like a little v. Like :> !!!! HELLO !!)

How does all of this happen when, supposedly, he’s a low-character asshole and a “locker room cancer”? It doesn’t line up for me.

On the other hand, I have seen Dubois cruise. He really can’t seem to bounce back from a poor start, and if you were just looking from the outside in, the scoresheet this year reflects this. The critique is fair; I’ve turned this over in my head enough times. there are less physically gifted, less skilled players, who are working so hard to stay in this league, and Dubois’ poor showing does feel somewhat like, idk, something I’d be mad about usually.

Here comes the “but”. Call this next bit the narrative section, because I’m showing my ass here: I think Dubois gets a lot of scrutiny because of his infamous Shift, which went a specific kind of viral, under the exact right conditions, and it has just. defined his career. And okay… I am not denying that the shift happened, but plenty of guys in this league have taken shifts off. come on. the season is long and they're only human. I’m not excusing it either! It was bad and he deserved his benching. Ideally, he one day becomes a player who always puts effort in. Working hard is one of my favourite traits in any player, and usually this would be enough for me to dismiss him as not worth being invested in.

and yet…. the reactions to his floundering performance feel so much like they’re about expectations as seen through the lens of The Shift. They’re calibrated differently because he went 3rd overall, and he's got this big body, the speed, the skill — it's the fact that he's got the tools and seemingly squanders them. All of this is amplified by the contract he's sitting on and his run of short-term stays on teams. Does he get this much scrutiny if he went in the 2nd or 3rd round? Does he catch this much heat for his low energy performance if that one shift clip hadn’t done all that damage? We’ll never know obviously but . I do wonder.

Final word on the character stuff is that we don’t know what truly went on in those locker rooms and i don't want to give more air time to baseless speculation. What we can examine is the hockey. The hockey tells the truth <3

the 23-24 la kings

Assuming the plan is to give PLD a look at 1/2C while he’s on the Caps, I think he’s a complementary type of player. The way he is right now, I don't think he can drive his own line or pull people up. He works with the calibre of lineys he's got and will produce the expected outcome. That sounds so obvious, but what I’m saying is I don’t think he’s capable of miracles like the best playmakers in the league, he's not about to make your guys look 15 years younger. In this vein, I look at his many first NHL goal assists as a symptom of what kind of linemates he was being paired with all season, and how unstable the situation was. His drop in point production IS more complicated than "he's just a piece of shit". From this article, the best summary I've seen of the Situation PLD was in:

LA acquired a player who had been a top-six center (and at times, winger) his entire career playing with established NHL talent. Yet after investing multiple assets to acquire Dubois and sign him to a significant contract, the team decided to put him in a third-line role where his most common linemate was a first-year NHL player who wasn’t expected to be on the roster in Alex Laferriere. Those two had a revolving door of wingers throughout the season. Moreover, Dubois’ most common on-ice teammates after Laferriere at 5-on-5 this season were Matt Roy and Andreas Englund. Gee, I wonder why he didn’t produce?

Context about Roy and Englund: Roy is a quiet but capable d-man who is defensively geared with a bit of offensive upside (j'adore. does things the right way and is very responsible and good. will throw hits but doesn't chase them or headhunt. I think playing away from the Kings’ more passive system will unlock more of his offensive potential. Matt Roy you will be SO good for the Caps I truly believe mwah mwah); and Englund is a leg weight/goon who, going by every single stat I can pull out, makes his d-partners Worse (with affection <3). Point here is neither of them being on the ice was particularly conducive to a lot of scoring chances.

As I said in my previous post, I think Dubois absolutely needs finishers. At some point there was hype around his shot but I didn't see much of that at all on lak? Eye test says: he was unwilling to shoot, and when he did shoot it felt like there was low/no commitment, no power behind it. Comments on his shooting called him “too deferential” at different turns. That’s just an insulting way to say a guy likes to pass and I truly think it circles back to the expectations thing. Would there be anything wrong with him not being much of a shooter this past season if he was another player? (Can't we just say he passed a lot this season without bringing value judgement into it? leave my failhorse ALONE!!!! like must a man score goals ,can't he be very very sweet and happy for the rookies he assisted ? wailing about it forever.)

More fun stats from that same article:

#1 on lak for passes that led to high-danger scoring chances, and scoring chances in general <- again, not a miracle worker. did not have finishers who could capitalise on these chances. its so fucked up what they did to my failwife

one of the best on lak in actually carrying the puck into the o-zone. (another reason i quite liked watching him!! transition forwards my BELOVED) everything I've ever observed about him off the cuff holds true here: he draws penalties this way, because he's fast and when he's locked in he is pretty good for controlled zone entries <3

Dubois had a career high in even-strength assists per 60, this is all in spite of his weird linemate situation and his reduced TOI and the power play mess (more on this later). he might have been deferring, but I truly think the lack of stability + good finishers, and ice time held him back from being more productive.

jim hiller

Building off that last point: even worse on the stability front, which I did allude to in the initial PLD Post, was what happened when Jim Hiller took over. You must understand one of the first clues that we were working with a different animal of a head coach is he was NOT afraid to line shuffle, and shortly after he found short-term success with that, they started running 11 forwards and 7 defensemen (you can see where it started precisely if you scroll back in lak lb because you'll find ME yelling about it LMAO). This shortened forward bench resulted in mid-game line shuffling, as in it was uncertain as to who they would be playing with from shift to shift. Hiller is on record saying he thinks it was beneficial, per this article:

It’s all about getting his deep forward corps engaged in the game. That’s sometimes difficult if you’re running four full lines and there are penalty kill or power play opportunities that alter the flow of the lines. Especially for the group of forwards who don’t kill penalties – think Kevin Fiala, Viktor Arvidsson, Quinton Byfield, Pierre-Luc Dubois – it’s an opportunity to get them extra shifts and engage in the game. “Some of our other players who don’t penalty kill, you know they can lose the flow of the game, so they enjoy it more I know,” Hiller said of having 11 forwards in action. “We’ve talked about it a lot. We really just think for our team, the way it is right now, that gives us an advantage getting those players more ice time.”

(and ok sorry to go off about my gripes with how the kings are run but .They were doing this into playoffs. This article was written during playoffs. god. CARL GRUNDSTROM, WHO HAS NEVER NOT PLAYED HARD, PLAYED 25 SECONDS IN GAME 2. all this while they were trying to get people 'engaged'. Idk. Maybe it did work for some players. I wasn’t behind that bench. But sitting one of your most energetic and committed forwards during a series in which you’re trying to come back from being down several games was a CHOICE!!!! also like what if you didn't double-shift QB. what then. And we all know how that series ended. lak coaching/management i am beating you with a pillowcase stuffed with bricks . <3)

Much was made of the Hiller takeover. I liked it at the time. In his first couple of media availabilities post-TM, Hiller emphasised bringing back "fun" to the game for many of the players who were slumping — and a reportedly tense locker room during the big skid that lost McLellan his job. It was all very Ted Lasso of him. Hiller also introduced a new way to rate Dubois for his performance every night, separate from the scoresheet. I made jokes about PLD's very special star-chart, everyone who knew about it was making jokes about it. This merit system was tailored towards communicating with Dubois what he did and didn't do well, and while no one ever went into depth about it we do know a few things:

It measured things outside of +/-, goals and assists, and was likely a score out of 5 per metric.

One of the metrics was about hits/physicality, another one was likely ‘compete’ levels.

He alluded to being measured on penalties drawn?? Or something??

Anyway it sort of … worked?? The change in Dubois was pretty immediate, the moment he was given some clear direction to work in. He played some of his BEST games of the year in the wake of this change. He got involved physically, he was not losing steam, he was drawing tons of penalties because he’s huge and fast and has good hands and IF he puts his mind to it he can truly be a transition monster.

CUE THE LINE SHUFFLING… imo, much of the progress made seemed to be lost, and the rest is history.

NOT saying Dubois is free of fault here. Needing that extra motivation to get physically involved is kinda wild, and I understand why for some people it’s a bridge too far. EYE am here for the laffs though and it's really funny that the communication came in the form of super special individualised performance evaluations/a glorified sticker chart. This is why he’s my temperamental desert flower. Wilting violet. Soggy kitten. <3 and for the record I truly don’t think I’d care if he put up 40 points per szn for the rest of his career. I don’t care because he’s a sweetie and the Bit i do when defending him is too funny. I don’t think I’d care if everyone was right about him — I just don’t actually think they are.

the power play problem

So okay, as per part 1 (my last email <3) we know Dubois thrives net front. It’s where he scored a bunch of his goals on the Jets. Every stat and the eye test supports this. So how come Lak had him stationed on the half wall doing jackshit, if he was on the power play at all?? I will admit I drove myself half crazy studying power play structures and watching LA Kings games back before coming up with a garbled, half-formed idea about how LA runs their PP. I was going to attempt to explain it here — had to do with Kevin Fiala and Dubois being lefties and how that's just an awkward passing sitch — but it turns out more than one person has had this thought and MAN I love being validated by actual hockey people. I fully thought i was making shit up in my head for a good week or two, and was seriously considering scrapping this portion . but it’s SO important for contextualising the production drop, so here goes !!

As early as September 2023 there was a story published about PLD’s role on PP1 — a place where he certainly should’ve belonged as a top-6 guy with plenty of ppg’s under his belt. From this article, which explains the issue very very neatly, and much more eloquently than I could ever hope to:

The addition of Pierre-Luc Dubois was a big one this summer; at first glance, he should be a great addition to the power play. But when digging deeper, the Kings might struggle to fit him onto the top unit. Dubois played mostly as the net front player for the Winnipeg Jets last season, the role Gabriel Vilardi often played for the Kings last season. So, it’s an easy one-to-one switch in that spot, right? Not necessarily. Dubois has all the talents to be an effective net-front player. He has the size and strength to battle in front, with the skill to effectively pop down low and create chances. However, his handedness is a big problem for this role. The Kings run their power play primarily on the left side with Kevin Fiala — Anze Kopitar when Fiala is hurt — which necessitates a right shot down low. When a right shot player pops out on the left side, there’s an easy passing angle for the half-wall player and more options for the player down low. Quick passing is key for a successful power and a left-shot can’t move the puck quick enough down low. They would have to either move too far into the corner or take the extra second to step out from and open up their body to create an effective passing angle. Time that would slow the power play down too much and allow the opposition penalty kill to get back into position. There’s also minimal shot threat from a lefty down low. We saw both Vilardi and Viktor Arvidsson frequently take the pass down low and quickly turn it into a shooting opportunity, something a left shot wouldn’t be able to do.

It then goes on to suggest 2 solutions that aren’t appealing at all:

Flip the power play entirely to accommodate Dubois net front. Not great as they dont have the players for that, and if they tried it they’d be hamstringing Adrian Kempe’s one-timer.

PLD on the bumper position. This one’s hard to swallow because that displaces Kopitar to PP2, there’s his position as captain and the optics of moving him off his spot.

In this article it is once again suggested that LA MUST flip their power play and figure out how to get PLD net front. In this article they point out how useless he was playing on the wall down the stretch, and how the only reason he seemed to be able to produce something was because he’d taken Kopitar’s spot in his absence. This article calls to attention Dubois’ worlds performance, where team Canada utilised him net front.

Big picture, the Fit

Do we see the problem here yet? It’s not the flat narrative I was sold by the national media, random assholes on twitter, and podcasters who don’t actually watch Kings matches!!!! Do we see how weird and messy and complicated it is, beyond “hey he’s just a sack of shit who isn’t trying hard enough”. Rob Blake himself has come out and admitted that they didn’t put Dubois in a position to succeed. And absolutely there was effort required on his end — a different player might have sucked it up and adapted to circumstances, a different player might never have needed that extra bit of communication, a straight up better player might have dragged his less skilled lineys up to a higher level. But the problem has always been two-fold: LA was trying to coach and manage a completely different player to the one they had in front of them and expecting good results; and Dubois was unable to keep competing with all he had in the face of that. I think both parties are at fault here. And I think, given the chance and the right circumstances, Dubois can hit 60 points again.

Okay, circling back to the big question of Fit. Will he be able to work with Ovechkin? Hard to think he could fail with one of hockey’s best goal scorers on his wing, if he does get a look at 1C. People who know the Caps better than I do, does this sound workable? Is Dubois going to be too difficult of a nut to crack for your coach? Your locker room?

And, of course, the power play issue. Maybe Dubois learns to be better on the half wall! Idk!! Maybe it was a matter of coaching and he thrives in Washington running your PP1 from there. For my money… I like him better playing net front or bumper. Do the Caps have the bodies to accommodate this? I did ask someone familiar with the Caps PP to explain it to me so I could try and figure this out but ouuuugh. My head is spinning. Someone smarter than me please jump in. I am TIRED . We don’t know what it will look like, what they’re planning to do with Dubois on the power play. You guys probably have a better idea about what’s possible than I do <3

Conclusion?

PLD is fast, big, a passing threat and a formidable net front presence when he’s given the opportunity and playing his A-game. As far as I can tell, his B-game is garbage </3 His poor performance is more complicated than people think and I’m pretty sure only the LA Kings beat reporters + the 12 kings fans on twitter know this. Most of them still dislike PLD anyway bc his low motor. I don’t blame them, I’m just more inclined to be forgiving because I love redemption arcs and I think he’s a good person. i would love to be wrong about his low-effort B-game LMAO but im trying to be realistic here. I want him to fit in and be embraced by the Caps so bad <3 Your coach sounds like he wants to help PLD succeed and is up for the challenge. The vibes from my friends who follow the Caps are always good, I’ve read through various tags and it sounds like a place that will take him in whether he likes it or not. I might be stupid but I believe in him !!! and I’ve laid out all the hockey bullshit for you to the best of my ability. Given all of this… do you think he’ll do well?

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

Hey bestie popping by with a random ask: what have been your favs so far from your old jbl project?

Hi! Thank you for the random ask.

I was actually just working on my monthly breakdown so I was trying to write just a couple of sentences about what I watched this month so this comes at a good time because this month I definitely saw one of my favs.

The Novelist. I don't know if I can coherently convey my thoughts about it but I'll give it a try. I think there were several factors that made me take so long to watch it. I never read full reviews about it, because although I don't mind spoilers in general, I also like to go into some shows as unbiased as possible. That was not easy. I basically went into it thinking it was depressing and it involved a lot of sex that I wasn't sure where it would land of the consent scale. I don't really remember where I got this idea tbh. Anyway.

Although after hearing people like you, @twig-tea and @bengiyo talk about it in different contexts I was less wary about it for sure. So I went into it with a more open mind, even with reservations. I mean I basically went through the lighter parts of the ojbl list first, so part of me was dreading the rest. I don't mind darker stories, or darker bl's. I have way darker ones coming up on the list. But I always feel like I need to be in the right frame of mind for them. Because I can get too emotionally invested and my moods tends to swing easily.

All this to say, I wasn't expecting a story about two lonely people 'using' each other to fight that loneliness. As I was just writing in my breakdown post, Kijima was such an interesting character to me. Because in the beginning I was just curious about him, like there was something odd about him, his demeanor. And when I realized that he was faking part of it and just using Kuzumi I hated him. So much. But, and I have to give major props to the actor, because in episode 4 when Kuzumi leaves and Kijima in on the table just listening to the record and crumpling the pages, I was gone. I fully saw him for the first time. That man is lonely and hopeless and I felt so much for him in that moment. And that of course lasted through to the end and that smile

I was practically clapping. Brilliant. It was such a beautiful ending. I felt like the show broke my heart a bit and it was all healed in this moment.

So to recap, not only was this a wonderful surprise that completely obliterated my expectations, but it's so beautiful. Everything is good. The cinematography, the music, the acting, everything was brilliant. So good. So if everyone that reads this has not yet seen for some reason or another I urge you to do it. I still have yet to see the other installments so I can't speak to all of it but this one is so worth it. I honestly can't believe that Kijima has become such an important character to me.

I think before this one, my favourites were for sure the first two I watched. Ai No Kotodama and No Touching at All.

They were both such great surprises. Let me just quickly look through my notes because my memory might betray me. Oh okay.

Ai no Kotodama I really enjoyed how it was shot and edited. I liked how they used several things to mirror the relationship, the perfume , the stair gazing and the other couple. I felt everything served the story in a really interesting way. I also like that the girl wasn't the usual bl girl and in the end she was actually jealous of their relationship more than in love with either of them. I also really like how the film made me unsure about their relationship almost from the start, because it makes sense in this case. My confusion mirrors Shinya's confusion and fear.

I also really liked No Touching at All's directing. It was really interesting how they used the camera work. For most of the film the couple is usually far away from us, the camera is on the other side of the room or something like that. And it's almost keeping us at a distance. So when the camera finally gets close up, it's during their break up, which I thought was intentional to cause the most emotional impact. Like now you should be invested in this moment because so are they. They are being honest for the first time so there are no more barriers for us because they are being truthful and removing their own. I also think Shima's internal struggle was really well portrayed, I liked the fact that he initiated the break up for self preservation reasons and so Togawa coming back to him at the end is what allows him to trust it. It makes me believe more in their future together.

This got a bit longer than I intended. These three are definitely my favourites but I'm really enjoying this project, even if I don't love everything, I think there's always something positive about all of them. At least the ones I've watched.

Anyway I hope that answers your question. My next one will probably be Mood Indigo and I'll have to look at my list again but I know I have a couple other ones on there still to watch.

Thank you so the question.

[goldenmorningglory]

of course, it's possible crowley knows about love. see it happen etc etc.

but.

I'm starting to wonder if him being so floorred after nina's remark about him and aziraphale isn't because he never thought he could feel love.

he's a demon. demons can't feel love. crowley may have seen love being performed through acts of courting and circumstance in films. his context for love is humans performing a series of actions and labelling it love. so that's all he does know. he can't feel it the way aziraphale can. it would be an external limb for him, a part of him but with no sensation.

let's deepen this.

in the scene where nina asks about him and aziraphale, crowley is actually pretty straightforward in how he answers. boyfriend? partners? nah they know humans are fond of such small lil demarcators but they're...angel and demon. aziraphale and crowley. they are whatever they are.

bit on the side? aziraphale would never. he's too righteous and too honest for that. he's an angel? crowley is literal. he is, indeed, an angel.

but you see, it's when nina makes an almost dismissive comment of how other people's love lives seems easier that crowley pauses. love life? whose? his and aziraphale's? that's not possible!

isn't it?

see, for crowley and aziraphale, love is always something of god's to give. to humans especially. so they know that their relationship is unconventional, even by angelic and demonic standards. crowley hasn't really known love the way aziraphale has, in that, aziraphale can at least sense it. crowley would never have known what it is like.

but he knows hed do the silliest things to indulge aziraphale. pop into France mid-revolution. drop a bomb on some Nazis. stop time and face satan.

hed lay waste to the universe for aziraphale. he'd step into fire for him. face damnation for him. protect the world for him and abandon the world for him. he'd do anything for aziraphale.

so for crowley, a demon who was ordained by god to never be able to feel the warmth of love again, to be told that what he was feeling, a product of millenia of small acts of kindness and faith exchanged, was love , to understand that even though he's damned, aziraphale was the one who let him feel this again, not a freely given love but earned...it shook him to his core.

see thing is not that crowley can't feel love. it's that he thinks he's incapable of it, owning to being a demon. and as a result he's never labelled his feelings for aziraphale as love. until nina, a completely unbiased and external spectator commented on it. then he becomes aware that yeah, regardless of him being a demon or not, it is love.

crowley had refused heaven, not just because he detested them, but also because he had found his heaven. he had found his god in aziraphale, the one who let him feel and be in love.

and yet, god's love is cruel. he had it a second time. could feel it. until once again, he was cast away for it.

for asking a question,

"you and me, what do you say, hm?"

[under-lore]

Hi, I recall seeing a post on reddit by you of an analysis on the narrators progression over the course of the game? I was wondering how you determined which catagory each line went into?

The process wasn't particularly complicated actually.

First i went one by one through every line the narrator has in the game, and sorted out of those lines the ones in which the narrator says something which is relevant the question of how do they treat Frisk. (The other ones could be ignored for the goal of this analysis)

Once you have those ones, it was simply a matter of grouping them by type, and showcasing the evolution of which "types" appeared the most frequently in each of the game's areas.

Most of the time, that category attribution process tended to be surprisingly simple and straightforward. A joke is a joke, an insulting comment is an insulting comment. There aren't many possible mistakes to make.

The choice as to what the possible categories would be in itself though was a slightly more nuanced one, but it was chosen mostly via my prior knowledge of which type of lines were common from the narrator in that regard, and of which categories could be used in order to make them both form a gradual scale from more to less rude/friendly and to make sure to maintain the categories broad and distinct enough to have as many representative data points as possible so that the end results would be as unbiased as they could be in reflecting the big trends of the narration.

There are a few cases here and there though where more extensive literary analysis was required to accurately be able to judge the meaning of certain narration lines to settle on their category, but those cases are actually quite a minority, and even if you were to ignore them all, the overall result of the analysis would actually have remained the same, since it is based on broader trends rather than individual examples. So im not too worried about these.

That "literary analysis" can consist of things like watching out for context clues, making comparisons with other things the narrator says, wether it makes references to another thing from the game or not, character speech patterns, or established things regarding Chara's character (as that analysis did assume NarraChara theory as pre-established) amongst other things. I also in some cases went out of my way to ask other people on discord or such for their thoughts on some of those lines in order to make sure that my personal biases or interpretations would not skew the analysis through my category choices for some of the most debatable lines.

Its difficult to make a general answer to that as most of those were determined on a line-by-line basis, but that was the idea.

Really, though, most lines were actually very simple/natural to rank.

[dazais-guardian-angel]

Okay, a good amount of time has passed, and after having seen this post by @weretiger-be-my-horse , I've been turning it over and over in my brain going absolutely feral over this concept. I need to expand upon my thoughts on this idea and all the evidence there is pointing towards it, whether that be actual tangible things, or purely strong vibes I have.

First of all, full disclaimer: I did not like the season 5 finale, and how it wrapped up the DoA arc. To say that I "disliked" it is putting it extremely lightly, in fact -- I absolutely hated it, and I am still, to a degree, in disbelief that I actually even watched those 24 minutes with my own two eyes, and that it somehow wasn't a complete fever dream. While I'm not going to go in long-winded detail into all the ways that I feel like the finale almost completely bastardized all of its featured characters and destroyed any and all buildup we've had going on in this arc for 50 some chapters now, because that's not the main point of this post, I will not make any attempt to hide the fact that the theory-crafting I'm about to pose here is partly influenced and prompted by how much I hated the finale, and how much I desperately hope that it will not end up being manga canon. Therefore, if you enjoyed the finale — and that's fine! — and don't want to read any negativity about it, then I would not recommend reading any further (I mean, you've probably already left by this point, which is fair lol), While obviously it's important that I be as objective and unbiased as possible when explaining my thoughts, some of my negative feelings about the writing will be a part of this analysis, even if this isn't going to be a full-blown rant. Just know that if you proceed.

With that out of the way, let me continue.

So. In the aforementioned post, the theory presented is that the anime may be operating on an alternate timeline, and that this will become evident once we read the upcoming October chapter, wherein things will go completely differently post-chapter 110 than they do in the final episode — probably for the worse, with the s5 finale intending to lull us into a false sense of security and make us assume that everything in the manga arc finale will wrap up as smoothly and consequence-freely(? lol) as it did in the anime one. It also suggests that the Fukuchi we see at the very end that sskk are fighting came from the manga timeline, where he won, and that he used the Book to jump to a timeline where he lost, the anime one, proven by the fact that this Fukuchi is wearing a mask with the same design on it as the mask Fukuchi is wearing on the chapter 110 DoA color spread/title page.

First of all, I want to note the fact that it's not just the mask design that's the same: the entire outfit is roughly more or less the same as well. It's not completely 1-to-1, because the anime can never fully match the intricacies of Harukawa's beautiful outfit designs, and the Fukuchi in this scene has the kimono half-off because of the... super saiyan mode he's in, but most all of the main pieces of clothing are there. Any small inaccuracies could also be attributed to the fact that Harukawa probably didn't have this finalized art ready back when this episode was being made, so the animators wouldn't have had the complete design to work off of. But in general, because it's all so similar, I think we can quite confidently say that the ending episode Fukuchi is meant to be the one from this manga art.

Also, people have pointed this out, but it's worth mentioning that the mask Asagiri wore at Anime Expo in July was referencing this Fukuchi. It's not a crucial detail, but it just proves more that Asagiri is a gigantic fucking troll, and that he clearly wanted to draw attention to this Fukuchi design. It's important. He describes the mask here as made in the motif of an ellipses inside a speech bubble... could that perhaps be referencing meta aspects, like the Book?

Next, I want to talk about the even bigger elephant in the room, which to me is the most damning and undeniable piece of evidence there is of the anime operating on a completely separate timeline from the manga:

This Fucking Hand™️

As we all know, in the anime, Fyodor injures his hand when the password input device blows up, and as we all know, this does not happen in the manga. In the last episode, Dazai claims that the final nail in the coffin of his impromptu plan to kill Fyodor relied on this hand injury: because Fyodor couldn't pilot his escape helicopter himself, he would ask one of his Meursault vampires to do it for him, unaware that Bram and thus this vampire was now on the ADA's side, and said vampire could kill him while his guard was down.

Ignoring how utterly stupid and contrived this plan is when you stop and think about it for more than two seconds, the fact of the matter is that something that initially seemed like nothing more than an odd but inconsequential anime original addition ended up snowballing into being the entire reason one of the big bads was brought down. If Fyodor hadn't hurt his hand, he wouldn't have needed another pilot, and so the traitor vampire wouldn't have had an opportunity to get near him and kill him without him expecting it even though said vampire was presumably with him as they were leaving Meursault, and was probably already a traitor by then, so there was plenty opportunity for him to still die. not to mention by Chuuya's hands at literally any time he wanted to, because Chuuya was coherent the whole time. Also there's absolutely no way Dazai could have known exactly what Ranpo would do, no matter how smart he is and how much he trusts him. idk it's fucking dumb, just roll with it. Therefore, putting aside all other variables for now, we can conclude that, on the most basic level, this signifies that no hand wound = no death.

And let me tell you, this hand wound bothers me. It really, really does. Because they focus on it a LOT — they go out of their way to draw attention to it MULTIPLE TIMES, from the moment it first happens to the end of the season. Fyodor even talks about it to himself, about Dazai being able to cause him tangible, visible, bodily harm, (something that, again, as far as we've seen, has never happened in the manga). Hell, even after Fyodor's death, they're still drawing attention to it, because his right arm is all of him that survives, and Dazai picks it up and gives it to Nikolai to do his hilarious sad little gay fondling of it played completely straight even though there's nothing straight going on here at all! It's like it's a big red flashing sign at all times going "you see this injured hand? This is important. Are you picking up that it's important? Are you taking note of it?" Why is that? Obviously, it serves to give us the lore crumbs about Fyodor and "that man", but that's hardly the main, much more glaring reason, as I've already mentioned.

Fyodor doesn't hurt his hand in the manga. Fyodor won't die here in the manga. I am so dead serious by this point about this, and it's not just simply the fact that this was absolutely not at all the time for him to die, or the fact that his hand is the reason for his death in the anime in and of itself, but how much EMPHASIS they place on this, and on the hand in general. What would be the point of adding something like this, if it's not meant to alert us to the fact that it has a major impact on how the story plays out? We all know Bones: they struggle to get right and include everything that's already there in the source material; they would never go out of their way to add something this noteworthy if there wasn't a very good reason for it, if it wasn't absolutely necessary. I've seen a few people bring up the fact that Fyodor gets shot in the shoulder by Sigma and that that could lead to the same outcome in the manga, but I disagree: although he has blood on his shoulder in the manga, it seems like the bullet just grazed the top of it, because his arm and hand appears completely functional afterwards (not hanging limp by his side or anything). But that doesn't even matter, because this isn't even about the semantics/logistics of how the hand wound caused Fyodor's death because again, it's a stupid outcome, or what could serve as a substitute in the manga — thematically, this is a textbook example of the butterfly effect. Countless parallel universes exist within this series, ones where even the most minute differences lead to a majorly different outcome: this just happens to be one of them. There's no reason to think it isn't, and there's no reason to not think that the anime wants us to clue into the fact that things only went as smoothly as they did on the Meursault side because of this wound; in other words, that things will go very differently in the manga thanks to the absence of said wound. They wouldn't have added it in the first place and put such clearly deliberate emphasis on it otherwise.

Things are going to happen very differently in the manga, at least when it comes to the Meursault crew (but then, if you assume that, you then naturally assume it all will be very different). This is the only conclusion one can come to with the presentation of this anime-only wound, combined with the fact that parallel universes are a very real thing in BSD.

I'm going to go on a bit of a tangent, so bear with me. I play a lot of visual novels, and although such concepts aren't really as original now as they were a while ago, some of my favorite and some of the very best VNs out there are the ones that break the fourth wall and make the visual novel branching route format directly intertwined with the story: you know, the ones where the characters go "if only I had done things differently, maybe everything would have turned out better...!" in a wink wink nudge nudge moment, and the ones where the characters are aware of the different timelines, even, or even have the ability to gain information from their selves in said alternate timelines to influence events in their current one (I'm intentionally not naming the games I'm thinking of for the sake of spoilers, but if you know, you know lmao). It gets very meta in this regard, and this is how I started viewing BSD through the lens of ever since I first learned about Beast: like a visual novel with many branching routes, and only a few routes that feel entirely "right".

When I first read Dazai's Entrance Exam, I was struck by how unnerving the ending sequence in the abandoned hospital felt. Obviously, Kunikida's internal struggle over Sasaki's actions and motives is him still desperately clinging to his ideal world that does not exist, but the specific type of phrases he uses — "who is wrong?" "[who is] the cause of all this?" "there has to be an ideal world" "there has to be something, I'm sure of it" "There must have been something we could have done!" — and the framing of the scene in general, is eerily reminiscent of a bad ending in a visual novel, to me. There's a haunting, looming, bleak sense that a different outcome could have been achieved, if different decisions had been made, or if things outside of anyone's control had been different... and we know that this is true, because in Beast alone, Kunikida never goes through the Azure Messenger incident, because Dazai doesn't have his entrance exam. Hell, you could even consider the anime's version of the Azure Messenger arc an alternate timeline in of itself, if you really wanted to, long before we even arrive at season 5.

When it comes to Beast, this timeline has almost the opposite feeling of what I described above, that I've also encountered in visual novels: the idea of a "good route" or "good ending" that still doesn't feel quite earned, or as perfect as one would expect. Beast is presented as the "ideal" timeline purely for one sole reason: Oda is alive. It is the only timeline where he's alive, and keeping Oda alive is the ultimate goal Dazai wants to achieve, the only reason this timeline exists; therefore, disregarding all else, Beast should be the best timeline, because Oda's death is the greatest devastation in the series to date. We all want him to live, so why wouldn't the timeline where he does be the best one? And yet... of course, it isn't. Dazai is alone, and steeped in darkness and loneliness without Oda, and dies by the end of the story for Oda's continued living. Atsushi has Kyouka still, but he's suffering and more traumatized, and unable to heal while stuck in the mafia, and neither can Kyouka. Akutagawa is living a much better life in the ADA... but without his sister, and without what he has from his bond with Atsushi in canon, that isn't replicated in Beast. And Oda... Oda is alive, and he has his children and his novel, but there is a feeling that he is aimless, that something in his life is missing. He has everything he ever wanted, but all that means nothing without what he truly needs: Dazai, and his time with Dazai and Ango at the bar. In this way, things going well and us getting what we want — in this case, Oda living — goes against how it's supposed to be, the natural order, which is why it feels so hollow. In the specific visual novel I'm thinking of here as a comparison (again, shoutout if you know), there's an alternate ending that involves you inputting information you gain at the end of the game very early on in the game, wherein the protagonist now has memories of the future and is able to bypass and prevent all of the events that take place normally. This means that people who die or are hurt somehow in general are saved from that fate, and nothing bad ever occurs; everything wraps up neatly and nicely... but again, there's an undeniable, unsettling feeling of emptiness, of a victory that rings hollow, because what's the point if everything is simply handed to you easily, where's the sense of accomplishment, without any struggles to achieve said victories, or any growth along the way? How can it feel earned if one doesn't have to, in Dazai's words, "scream within the storm of uncertainty, and run with flowing blood"?

You can probably already see where I'm going with this.

This finale feels weird. Really, really weird. It feels too cheap, too simple, too unsatisfying. So much so, in fact, that for almost the entire runtime, as I was bombarded with resolution upon resolution one after another, I kept thinking "There's no way this can be real. Where's the catch? When is the "gotcha!" moment gonna happen? The "it was all a dream" reveal?". And this isn't just because I hated the writing, and that it really did feel like a fever dream watching fanfic levels of bad (actually, that's an insult to fanfic writers, tbh; they could do better) — no, it genuinely feels so incredibly fake. Even upon rewatching it and already knowing what happens, my brain still naturally keeps expecting some kinda of "sike, you THOUGHT!" moment to suddenly appear. It just.... feels "too good to be true". Dazai and Chuuya come out unscathed, and it's revealed that they were never in any real danger to begin with. Fyodor, one of our biggest threats, is dealt with supposedly for good (I say "supposedly" only because of the Jesus line, but if anything imo, I think that's just a hint that this won't be the canon ending in the manga, so in a sense he's going to "come back to life"), and Nikolai seems somewhat at peace with his death. The other biggest threat, Fukuchi, is also dealt with, and he and Fukuzawa get their final moment together of closure. Yes, Sigma is left in Meursault don't even get me started on how angry this alone makes me, and Fukuzawa loses Fukuchi, but overall, everything is portrayed in a positive light, and any negatives or losses are quickly glossed over. Everything is tied up nicely, neatly, and smoothly. ...And that is exactly what makes it feel so wrong, and hard to trust in.

I'm not sure if this will make sense, but to me, the finale is so incredibly poorly written that it almost feels.... intentional. It's so bad to the point of feeling self-aware in how bad it is, how unrealistically happy and convenient an ending it is. It had to end this neatly in order to rush to wrap up this arc for the season finale and not leave the last episode on a cliffhanger — which imo is chiefly the main reason it turned out this way, and, if this whole theory is true, Asagiri just used it to his advantage — and I'm not saying this was probably an effect Bones had in mind intentionally, I'm sure they just threw shit at the wall and went with whatever stuck, maaaaybe with some suggestions/approval from Asagiri, but the result is that you have a conclusion that contradicts so much of what was set up before and goes against so many character arcs, making some characters so out of character and even regressing in their development Dazai. I'm talking about Dazai abandoning Sigma, because he would never; hashtag #NOTMYDAZAI. Also Nikolai, Nikolai for most of that is so ooc I can't even begin to describe it oh my god. Everyone is OOC to a degree though lmao, and opens so many plot holes, to the point that it's impossible not to watch all that and get the feeling that it is subtly saying to you "did you really think it could be this easy? It feels wrong, doesn't it? It doesn't feel satisfying. It feels unearned." I find it incredibly interesting and suspicious in particular that they confirmed multiple theories people had about soukoku in Meursault: that Chuuya slowed the elevator's fall so that Dazai wouldn't die from it, that Chuuya slowed down the bullet so that it only penetrated Dazai's skin and not his skull, and that the both of them used Fyodor's camera angle to their advantage because they knew he wouldn't be able to see certain things from his view. I'm not saying that Asagiri trawled BSD twitter and tumblr after those chapters dropped for the most popular theories before the final episode was made lmao, there was no time for that (imagine though lol—), but I do think it's highly likely that he already had in mind exactly what theories would be made about these parts (I mean, the evidence for the gun scene was all there), and that Dazai rattling them off in his long monologue to Fyodor at the end is essentially him speaking to the audience and going "yeah, that's what you would predict, right? Those are the clichés, after all", much like him suggesting earlier that he can maybe bring Chuuya back to himself with a few moving words and the power of friendship, and Fyodor using the split personalities trope to fool Sigma. We expect these tropes to be true. Of course we'd fall for them, as Fyodor tells Sigma, especially if the evidence is right there. But Asagiri himself has explicitly said that he likes doing the opposite of what people expect. And so just because people predicted correctly with the three things I mentioned in this timeline... doesn't mean they'll be true in the manga's. Things happened how we wanted and expected it to, and everything turned out happily. So we can relax now, right? Everything will work out just as easily in the manga, right? Or... is the reason most of this finale feels so fake and unsettling and unsatisfying because it's meant to lull us into a false sense of security before all our heroes lose in the manga? Because deep down, we don't want an ending that's this simple, because we'd rather have a conclusion where our characters have struggled more and grown more and come out the better for it, and we know it?

After rewatching the episode a lot, and watching some other videos, and doing a lot of thinking, I am pretty confident in suspecting that the only part of this finale that is actually from manga canon, aside from Aya jumping off the building of course, is Fyodor and Nikolai's exchange after Fyodor leaves Meursault — specifically, them talking about Fyodor leaving Sigma behind, and their "new game" and Nikolai being excited at the prospect of it. This little conversation actually feels in character for them, and it's easy to tell this when contrasting it with everything that happens immediately after, wherein Fyodor is fatally stabbed, and Nikolai, completely at odds with what he was just talking about, just... stands there and watches Fyodor die while Dazai monologues lmao. I'm not sure if the helicopter is still a factor, but I would bet good money on Fyolai getting out of Meursault being manga canon, and that Dazai and Chuuya getting out as well and killing Fyodor + everything with FukuFuku, is part of the anime original ending, in order to wrap up everything positively. It makes much more sense if you think about, in reality (aka in the manga), Dazai and Chuuya still being left behind in Meursault (where they can eventually try to get Sigma), because none of it was an act and things did not go according to plan, and Fukuchi having an entirely different goal that doesn't feel so stupid and contradictory to his character, and Fukuzawa possibly dying — everyone seemingly loses, with Aya still being the last hope, perhaps by awakening her ability like we all speculated.

There's a youtuber I watch who covers BSD in-depth, despite being an anime-only (she reads the respective manga content after each season, though). Going into this finale, she knew about the fact that the anime had overtaken the manga, though she didn't know where the cutoff point was; despite that, however, she made predictions about what was from the manga so far and what was anime original, and it was almost entirely spot-on, based mostly on what she basically described as "anime original dialogue." She talked about how you can always tell when dialogue is veering into the realm of anime-original, because the sentences are very short, choppy, and slightly out of character, but generic enough to not be TOO out of character, and so that anyone can easily write said lines, even if they're not extremely familiar with the character like the original author would be. And when I heard this explanation, everything clicked — because so much of this finale has dialogue like that. The Fyolai scenes just feel peppered with it, around the lines I mentioned earlier, the Dazai dialogue does too, and ESPECIALLY shit at the end like Fukuchi and Fukuzawa exchanging the cliche death lines to end all death lines: "Are you there? I'm a little tired." "Rest up." That just isn't Bungou Stray Dogs. That isn't Asagiri. BSD is cheesy at times, yes, but it isn't like this; it's smarter. The dialogue is smarter, the explanations/plot twists are smarter, Asagiri is smarter, and the aforementioned youtuber I watched agreed. She's a pretty casual fan of the series, so if even she could pick up on these things, I think it speaks volumes.

I mentioned this briefly earlier, but this theory makes sense if you consider that this situation probably came about because of Bones wanting two seasons back-to-back when they did, and this arc being as long as it is. Season 3 aired in 2019, and I imagine Bones would have wanted season 4 in 2020, and might have then been willing to wait a bit longer for season 5 in order for more of this arc's manga chapters to come out — but then covid happened. Because of that, season 4 was delayed to 2023, creating the longest gap we've had between seasons, and I wouldn't at all be surprised if the delay made them want season 5 right together with it, after getting so far "behind", so to speak. S4 was announced in November of 2021, and roughly around that time, Asagiri was finishing up writing the plot of the DoA arc. If Bones came to him sometime in late 2021 and said they wanted two seasons now (so basically, one giant two cour season), Asagiri would know that not only of course would this arc not be finished publishing in the manga for a very long time yet, but that roughly 20ish episodes would not be enough to cover it all to the end, with this arc being longer than any arc the anime has adapted to date. Because of all this, and the arc manga chapters being nowhere near fully drawn to completion, he'd have to make a decision about what to do, and what to give Bones. Without ending season 5 on a massive cliffhanger that wouldn't be resolved for years until an eventual season 6, the only other option would be to rush towards an anime-original ending for the DoA arc.... and for Asagiri to take advantage of that, and integrate it into BSD's lore. Thereby creating a truly unique cross-media experience that utilizes the different mediums to create multiple timelines, that could make both the anime and manga interact with each other and become part of a bigger picture (not that you'd need to see both to get the full experience, mind you, just that it'd provide a little bonus if you did).... and would without a doubt be Asagiri's biggest surprise yet.

...I feel like at this point I'm starting to ramble, and my evidence become more and more incoherent and less substantial lmao, so I should probably end this post. 💀 Thank you if you've read this far, and hopefully it made some semblance of sense, despite not being structured very well; I know I promised at the start to try to be as objective as possible and curb my negative feelings, but I'm not sure how well I succeeded in that regard. If it weren't for the Fukuchi thing and the Fyodor hand thing, I probably wouldn't take how wrong and strange and bad the finale feels to me as serious evidence about it being an alternate timeline, especially since I seem to be one of the only people who actually hates all of it.... but combined with everything else, I am just so convinced of this theory being true. It started off as pure copium, but as more time has gone on, I fully, 100% believe in my bones (ha) that there is no way that finale is the same Bungou Stray Dogs I know and love, for so many reasons. It just isn't. It can't be. I know BSD better than this, I know Asagiri better than this, and I know that it's absolutely in the realm of possibility for him to cook up this whole scheme to completely blindside us with in the upcoming chapters, because that's exactly the kind of shit Mr. "Please Be Surprised!" himself would pull. If I end up being completely wrong, I guess I'm wrong, and you can laugh at me all you want then.... but I just know that ages ago people were teasing the idea of the anime operating on a different timeline from the manga, and I truly do think that only now are we finally seeing that idea come to fruition, as a setup for Asagiri going full-bore insanity with the Book in the upcoming arc(s). if I and the OP of that theory end up right, this will be the wildest time in the BSD fandom's history.

Like. I cannot even emphasize how hard they are trolling us at this point. Something is going on. Something is being cooked over there, the likes of which we've never seen before... and I don't think any of us are ready for it.

Oh yeah, and one last thing of note: both Fyodor and Nikolai here have their right arms hidden from view. Is that alluding to anything? I'm not sure. I also think that since chapter 110 was so short, next chapter will likely be 110.5 instead of 111, and if that's the case, this title spread could still technically be associated with the next chapter... wherein we might see this Fukuchi, who ends up wreaking havoc, right before he jumps to the timeline in the anime, as we see him at the end of the s5 finale.

I guess we'll find out on Tuesday.

[franollie]

do you personally think that fandom brings up misogyny unnecessarily and even when it has nothing to do with the issue at hand?

like some people get up and arms if you don’t ship batcat or brutalia (you’re not obligated to like anything for any reason) or if you ship bruce with someone else this topic will come up for whatever reason even though when there are actual instances of blatant misogyny in fandom and it’ll go fully ignored by these same people.

a point of bruce’s romance is to establish that he can’t really be endgame with any one person so i personally ship him freely. i don’t know why fandom is so obsessed with tokenizing certain shippers as certain prejudices when i’m sure that they genuinely have never interacted with said shipper one on one in their entire life

sorry for taking so long on this i have a LOT of thoughts on the topic

ok so in short: yes, i do think fandom loves to cry misogyny.

that being said, fandom operates in a blatantly misogynistic way (see how in large fandom favors men over women regardless of whether or not that man had more or less screen time than the woman). misogyny in fandom is a very real thing, but it is more a fandom as a whole problem than an individual problem. the only way the problem of misogyny in fandom can be solved is by actually engaging with the women in whatever franchise you're enjoying (writing for them, making art, reblogging art, writing metas, etc). show them the same amount of love that you show other characters

with that in mind, it is also important to note that sometimes you just don't gel with a ship or a character. i agree that people are drawn to certain dynamics and relationships, and you are allowed to ship what you ship. let's take the brutalia/batcat v bruharvey/batjokes because they are similar in dynamic (batman and one of his rogues). it wouldn't be fair to call a bruharvey or batjokes shipper a misogynist just because they don't ship brutalia or batcat. now, if they ship batjokes but hate talia for killing, then you could play the misogyny card. really it's just a matter of how you specific people interact with characters. i think a better example of this is superbat v clois.

i'm gonna try and stay as unbiased and objective as possible because superbat fans scare me lmao but a lot of the criticisms for superbat are about how it ships these characters at the expense of their relationships specifically with the women in their lives. to be even more specific, clark's relationship with lois. it isn't fair to say that "all superbat shippers are misogynist because they ignore lois" because i don't know why every superbat shipper ships superbat. maybe superbat is nostalgic to someone because they grew up reading justice league comics or the world's finest comics, maybe they haven't read or watched that much stuff with lois/clois in it, maybe they just think the idea of superbat is fun, who knows what the reasoning is. the problems really arise when they begin to change lois's personality and character to fit their ship whether it's by writing her as some bitchy ex of clarks or as a "girlboss who doesn't need a man and is superbat's biggest shipper uwu".

i do think when it comes to comic book fandoms in particualr there is another added layer of fandom superiority when it comes to shipping where there are the "correct" ships and the "incorrect" ships. but that's a whole other topic for another day

just to reiterate: fandom misogyny is a very real problem (look at the top 10 ships on ao3 for the past 5 years and that becomes abundantly clear) but the only way to combat it is by actually creating and sharing works positively featuring the women you like.

[ultraviolet-cello]

Alright since the @tristampparty is Well under way now I'm gonna do a little day by day analysis or details I like about the episode of the day, along with my usual art hustle :3!

Because this is going to end up being Super long we'll put this under a cut! [Spoiler warning for All of Trigun, primarily Tristamp and Trimax]

Tl;dr? I'm normal about how Knives is in Tristamp

So I'll be going point by point in chronological notes that I kept while writing abt this episode :] thank u to Mal for putting up with my rambles hehehe.

So the Seeds ships specifically are reminiscent, to me at least, of the Angel Arm (probably moreso the tristamp version which, can you believe, is incredibly difficult to get a screenshot of lmao)

That's interesting to me because it could be just a design choice but if it is an in-universe thing, it does,... imply some things about Plants. Granted, Independents probably weren't known abt when the Seeds ships launched, but is there another aspect of Plants that takes that form? And is that impactful enough for a human fleet to design their ships after that? Much to think about for something that's probably just symbolic lmao

Now for Knives! So a little bit of context that I will elaborate on as we watch, but I think the narrative is heavily biased against Knives when he was a child, and that we will get some recontextualization next season that's more in line with how we know him in Trimax.

In particular, I think the beginning flashback is possibly theeee most unbiased depiction of events because all the rest are specifically memories being told to others by Vash or Knives, or the whole memory thing in July. Granted it's still very Vash-focused but it gives us two major things.

Knives seemingly wanting to take Rem along with him. In Trimax, it's semi-implied that Knives would have initially wanted Rem to live and spirals very hard into telling Vash he hates Rem as a coping mechanism (which I will elaborate on if anyone's interested in my reading of those scenes), and it seems to be even more overt here.

He doesn't stop reaching out either until Rem shuts the escape pod/pulls the lever (Unclear on when that is)

2. From that scene, the only time we see Knives' face/expression again is when the escape pod is being like. Slung out of the ship. The rest of it always blocks his face and expression in favour of seeing Vash's far louder and emotional reactions.

and we just straight up do not see knives again until his big maniacal speech thing and that's,,, well we just don't know how long it's been since they crashed. could be minutes. could be hours. could be enough for knives to have had a breakdown and start laughing at the sky because he just doesn't know what else to do

i think (hope) season 2 might end up having a lot of the same flashbacks from knives' pov/an unbiased pov :]

Moving on with the episode: Roberto! I love Roberto a lot actually, he definitely grows on you. Something I did notice is that throughout this ep he says that Meryl and Vash would not last long on this planet which. That's interesting, considering he doesn't say that to Wolfwood, and yet Wolfwood and Roberto are the ones doomed by the (sometimes meta) narrative.

So when Vash is found he's been strung up by the Bad Lads gang (who have far more presence in episode one than I originally thought lmao), and he looks... a little dehydrated maybe, but overall fine.

The guys next to him, though? not doing remotely as well. Now while there is the possibility that he just got tied up later there's also the possibility that. While he does need to eat he doesn't need to eat as much as the average human. Which. is a lovely thought for the two dead guys. [Also a possibility that if Vash does need to consume less than a human, it could be another justification to himself for his eating issues]

The bounty! So it's technically Knives' bounty but whatever. [Sidenote: the idea that Vash and Knives look very similar is hilarious to me because they do not and never have to me] The particular notes are that Knives definitely had a hand in this - Vash is the only person specified alive, the bounty is obscenely high (compared to the other wanted posters), and it's specifically stamped with July Military, which. Well Knives and Conrad operate in July, and Conrad (by extension Knives) very clearly has a Lot of power in that City because he has the tower, that massive lab, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if they were the ones who initially created the bounty/wanted poster.

This Thomas carrying co... coffins? Are they coffins??

Background wanted posters for B.D.N, Marilyn Nebraska, Rai-Dei, and some other characters from trimax/98. And also for Nightow. for 30 $$ you can bring in Nightow the Comix Artist dead or alive! Wanted for Couch Crimes

Roberto kinda fascinates me as a character, especially when he sticks up for Vash and suggests a duel. My friend Mal describes him as a tsundere for friendship and. yeah okay that works lmao. for all his,,, roberto-isms, roberto has a a bit of a moral streak (he gets maddddd when he learns that children have been experimented on, hesitates in defending himself against Elendira, and lies to the police to get information out of them). He's just a Lot jaded, and we're already primed to like Meryl because, well she's Meryl, but he tends to be right when it comes to Meryl's inexperience. i like him. It's also, come to think of it, possibly because Vash fascinates Roberto a little bit. Roberto really saw Vash and went "I gotta study this guy" lmao

Vash having absolutely Perfect trigger discipline lmao

OKAY SO THIS PART IS MY FAVOURITE. For reference I am a black belt in a couple different martial arts, and working to become a sensei in Goju Ryu Karate, so this sequence is delightful! Let's break it down :] The initial block is one we use to open up a person's body - if that arm is clear out of the way you can keep control of the gun arm in this case by just pushing outwards (And with Vash's additional strength in his prosthetic that's Pretty Dang Effective, especially because in gun situations you want to keep the gun barrel away from you, so you're taught to use two arms - Vash doesn't need to do that)

From there, he goes and grabs the guy's shoulder to pull him forward unexpectedly - this throws him off balance and shifts his weight onto Vash's, so Vash is taking all that bodyweight. From there, all Vash has to do is maintain his grip on the gun arm's wrist (keeping the gun away from both parties in case he accidentally fires or there's a misfire), then turn sharply and let the body follow through!

From there he keeps the grip on the wrist and twists, which sends the gun out of the guy's grip and out of danger. At the same time, he spins his own gun's grip and hits the back of the head with the barrel - Notably he lets go of the wrist, which, if he'd kept holding it, would break the arm. I'm not entirely sure which martial arts were referenced for Vash's style, but this is exactly the type of thing I teach! [For anyone interested, I practice Goju Ryu karate, aiki jiu jitsu, iado (sword), self defense, and general okinawan kobudo (weapons like the bo staff, sais, and nunchaku)]

okay i blacked out and am no longer in teaching mode. Vash's arm, when he picks up that rock, glows very very green

what does that mean? I have 0 idea, it could be that it's overstrained, or using more power than usual. I mean, he did rip a rock out of the ground.

Zaziecam birdworm heading to July from Jeneora Rock! Probably how Knives got word of where Vash was

This fucking scene. man y'all this scene HAUNTS me.

It's so. unreliable at best. this scene goes adult vash saying he has a brother into this flashback. knives says, in order, that "he finally did it", not to worry because the plants are fine, he got rem killed, and tells vash not to get mad because he's already his accomplice, and nothing else. now we Know that that's not the case because Knives directly adds in information in future renditions of this flashback (That Vash gave him the launch codes). Which. What else don't we know about this scene. Clearly it's been a little while, the fire is burning, and Knives had all this time to climb the tower while Vash was (unconscious?). I want to see it from Knives' pov.

Knives keeping a bunch of last run plant corpses as statues to.. remind himself of his goal I guess. I read Tristamp Knives as Trimax Knives taken to the extreme (will elaborate in one of the flashback episodes), so I think he's a touch uh. Extremely unhealthy.

And that's it for episode one! I hope if you read this you had fun and it wasn't too much of a slog to read lmao i'm just rambling. I hope you had fun if you made it this far :]

[aspd-culture]

Hey this is kind of a silly question but I figured I'd ask it anyway. I know pwASPD can feel fear but what are the limitations of that? This is mostly about myself because I'm questioning if I have ASPD and I'm really afraid of heights, in my case I think it has more to do with a lack of control than anything else but I'm not sure. Anyway I hope your well.

No worries, with a disorder with this little legitimate, unbiased research, I don't know that many silly questions exist, and yours is definitely legitimate.

In general, I would say there is not a cap to how much/how intense fear can be for someone with ASPD, any more than there is for anyone else. In fact, because pwASPD nearly always have it caused by some amount of trauma, and PTSD causes responses like anxiety and hypervigilance, I'd argue many pwASPD may feel fear more frequently and more intensely than untraumatized prosocials.

PwASPD can have blunted emotions, but that isn't always the case, and when it is, which emotions are blunted is entirely individual. For me, the main emotions that were blunted are sadness (the genuine, not depression one), contentedness, and affection. All 3 of these are emotions I *do* feel, but to a lower degree than most. They become extremely blunted during flares to the point where it feels as though I am incapable of feeling them, and then they come back.

I've heard of pwASPD who feel all "negative" emptions very intensely with "positive" ones being blunted, and I've heard the opposite where they almost feel numbed to fear, sadness, etc. because those are their natural state of being and have been for so many years, but when they are given genuine reason to feel happy/excited/etc. they feel that very, very intensely. Any combination thereof is possible, and it's also common for a pwASPD to not deal with any emotional blunting or nearly all emotions blunted.

The only emotions I've seen any contention about being able to be blunted are anger and its cousins (jealousy, frustration, etc.) and boredom. Because these are noted in associated features to be fairly intense for pwASPD, some say it isn't possible for those to be blunted. In my personal opinion, I don't think that's the case, or else those would be listed in criteria. Even criteria dom't all get met by every pwASPD, and when dealing with personality disorders, it isn't very rational to say for certain that an associated feature has to be present in everyone with that disorder.

Personality disorders exist on a spectrum in a similar way to autism because both affect a person's entire life. Every thought, action, etc. are influenced to some degree by personity disorders for those of us who have them; that's just the nature of PDs. When you're dealing with a range of symptoms that are *that* wide, you can bet that thete will be heavy variation between pw that disorder.

A fear of heights definitely does not mean you can't have ASPD or vice versa. That's considered an overactive survival instinct, which pwASPD still definitely are capable of having. In fact, many ASPD symptoms are direct results of unstable survival instincts. In some ways, we disregard our safety, yet our reactions to social situations and other people are a direct attempt by our brain to survive in a world we were taught was dangerous early on. So whilst there isn't a fear I think would exclude any person from having ASPD, this one in particular actually makes a lot of sense for someone with ASPD to struggle with.

I hope this helps!/gen

Plain text below the cut:

No worries, with a disorder with this little legitimate, unbiased research, I don't know that many silly questions exist, and yours is definitely legitimate.

In general, I would say there is not a cap to how much/how intense fear can be for someone with ASPD, any more than there is for anyone else. In fact, because pwASPD nearly always have it caused by some amount of trauma, and PTSD causes responses like anxiety and hypervigilance, I'd argue many pwASPD may feel fear more frequently and more intensely than untraumatized prosocials.

PwASPD can have blunted emotions, but that isn't always the case, and when it is, which emotions are blunted is entirely individual. For me, the main emotions that were blunted are sadness (the genuine, not depression one), contentedness, and affection. All 3 of these are emotions I *do* feel, but to a lower degree than most. They become extremely blunted during flares to the point where it feels as though I am incapable of feeling them, and then they come back.

I've heard of pwASPD who feel all "negative" emptions very intensely with "positive" ones being blunted, and I've heard the opposite where they almost feel numbed to fear, sadness, etc. because those are their natural state of being and have been for so many years, but when they are given genuine reason to feel happy/excited/etc. they feel that very, very intensely. Any combination thereof is possible, and it's also common for a pwASPD to not deal with any emotional blunting or nearly all emotions blunted.

The only emotions I've seen any contention about being able to be blunted are anger and its cousins (jealousy, frustration, etc.) and boredom. Because these are noted in associated features to be fairly intense for pwASPD, some say it isn't possible for those to be blunted. In my personal opinion, I don't think that's the case, or else those would be listed in criteria. Even criteria dom't all get met by every pwASPD, and when dealing with personality disorders, it isn't very rational to say for certain that an associated feature has to be present in everyone with that disorder.

Personality disorders exist on a spectrum in a similar way to autism because both affect a person's entire life. Every thought, action, etc. are influenced to some degree by personity disorders for those of us who have them; that's just the nature of PDs. When you're dealing with a range of symptoms that are *that* wide, you can bet that thete will be heavy variation between pw that disorder.

A fear of heights definitely does not mean you can't have ASPD or vice versa. That's considered an overactive survival instinct, which pwASPD still definitely are capable of having. In fact, many ASPD symptoms are direct results of unstable survival instincts. In some ways, we disregard our safety, yet our reactions to social situations and other people are a direct attempt by our brain to survive in a world we were taught was dangerous early on. So whilst there isn't a fear I think would exclude any person from having ASPD, this one in particular actually makes a lot of sense for someone with ASPD to struggle with.

I hope this helps!/gen

[beatriceeagle]

“Beauregard could be lying, of course, or exaggerating. It was possible.

"Why did you ask about Kamordah?" Beauregard said. She always sounded brusque, but right now she was slipping towards something more like "combative."

"It's what I was reading about today. Dalis Feredon presented the story… differently than I expected."

"Oh." Beauregard's voice evened out, and she turned away from Bren. "I'm from there, you know."

"Kamordah?"

"Yeah. My father was very into the Empire, and so were most of the winery owners, but if you sat in a dive bar on a bad night, you'd eventually hear some real fuck-the-Dwendals talk. Some people never really got over it."

If she was Kamordahn, she was hardly an unbiased source. But then, the Empire's story was that Kamordah had annexed not only willingly, but at their own request—if that were true, they'd have no reason to be bitter.

And it did seem, didn't it, that the further the history got from the Empire, the more likely it was to agree with Beauregard's story.

What did it matter? If Kamordah joined the Empire willingly or at swordpoint, it had no bearing on Bren's situation. He was not Kamordahn, and however the annexation had happened, it had happened, and would not be undone now.”

i loved bren researching, reading a “traitors” work, and slowly realising that maybe everything ickythong said wasn’t true. also really appreciate learning more about exandrian lore! it’s one of my favourite things in fanfiction – suddenly learning new things of the source material

DVD commentary under the cut!

Beauregard could be lying, of course, or exaggerating. It was possible.

"Why did you ask about Kamordah?" Beauregard said. She always sounded brusque, but right now she was slipping towards something more like "combative."

"It's what I was reading about today. Dalis Feredon presented the story… differently than I expected."

I had put a lot of thought into the relationship between the Zemni Fields and Rexxentrum for previous fics I'd written, but this was my first time digging into the history of the Marrow War. There's a lot of lore there, and obviously I focused in on Kamordah because of its connection to Beau, but I could've done ten chapters just on all the various atrocities of that era. I've got to shout out @road-rhythm here, because her deep dives in our conversations about Empire history and lore very much informed this section.

"Oh." Beauregard's voice evened out, and she turned away from Bren. "I'm from there, you know."

"Kamordah?"

"Yeah. My father was very into the Empire, and so were most of the winery owners, but if you sat in a dive bar on a bad night, you'd eventually hear some real fuck-the-Dwendals talk. Some people never really got over it."

I'm a little obsessed with the chip that Beau has on her shoulder about the Empire. Obviously the Empire sucks in a lot of ways, but one of the things that's interesting to me about early-campaign Beau is that she hates the Empire even before she is fully aware of all of those ways. She hates it foundationally. When Caleb asks her how she feels about the Empire in episode 18 (which is funny in its own right, since by that point she's initiated several conversations with him basically by saying, "Hey, we're both Empire kids, right? It sucks, right?") Beau is incredibly vague about what her actual issues are with it. But she sure does mention that her dad was an Empire man through and through.

To go slightly off-topic, one of the reasons that I think that Beau and Caleb work as a partnership is that when they meet, Beau is all fight and outrage and no direction, and Caleb is pure direction but has lost his principles and will to fight. Caleb gives Beau a productive target for her rage; Beau gives Caleb will and perspective.

All of which is just to say, I think that Beau's feelings about the Empire are very wrapped up in her feelings about her father, which are necessarily wrapped up in her feelings about Kamordah, which is why asking about Kamordah feels like poking a vulnerable spot at the moment.

If she was Kamordahn, she was hardly an unbiased source. But then, the Empire's story was that Kamordah had annexed not only willingly, but at their own request—if that were true, they'd have no reason to be bitter.

And it did seem, didn't it, that the further the history got from the Empire, the more likely it was to agree with Beauregard's story.

What did it matter? If Kamordah joined the Empire willingly or at swordpoint, it had no bearing on Bren's situation. He was not Kamordahn, and however the annexation had happened, it had happened, and would not be undone now.

It was an interesting balance to try to strike here: I wanted to show the beginnings of Bren unlearning propaganda, but one day at the library is not going to undo a lifetime of jingoism followed by years of intentional conditioning. So I thought of this as a snapshot. Bren learns some new information, and because he is who he is, he thinks through it very deeply—but he's human, so we also see a lot of the cognitive dissonance and protective measures that his brain throws up against challenges to his belief system.

[charles-leclerc-official]

I was talking to my psych teacher about biases in experiments and the importance of planning procedures around them when I started telling them about what I'd noticed in journalism and stuff and I finally put words to the thoughts I'd been having:

Biases are inherent to people, like people will be biased it's not something we can change, people can make efforts to be objective but I feel that some amount of bias will always seep through, which is fine! But what I find really really annoying is when people claim to be unbiased and then VERY CLEARLY have biases, which again is pretty common if not annoying, but the thing that pisses me off is when these people expect their audiences to believe that their very biased opinions are fact instead of what they actually are

Like I know its a lot to expect from people nowadays to be able to critically process things without letting their personal feelings cloud any information but it's still irritating

Like I myself am biased towards things but I don't pretend my opinions are anything but opinions unless there's factual data to prove my point

I really appreciate your blog because even when your analysis is pretty fucking filled with actual solid data to back you up your still pretty clear that you have preferences, and that's something I rlly respect

I used to have problems bc I used to take everything too seriously and if I saw even one negative thing someone said I'd start spiralling and internalising shit, like the f1 fandom doom posting would have honest to god actually affected my mental health, but I worked and am still working on it and I regret getting into sports a little but I've loved it soo much for so long I'm like ill just cope fuck it

Blogs like yours and brakeboosted and umm ackshually on twt are super lovely and I really appreciate all you guys so much

Anyways sorry for ranting I just have a lot of feelings about this stuff

Hi, yes I completely agree. One of the reasons for the name of this blog is to hold myself accountable for bias, and also to advertise to anyone who comes upon it exactly where my bias lands. My frustration with the clear bias under the guise of objective reporting in F1 is one of the reasons for this blog to begin with. Got very tired of the way Ferrari and Charles were being reported on. But also just to have a source where is bias is clear and people can choose to take it or leave it. If that makes sense.

I can't get rid of bias, it's a sport we all have favorites. What I can do is try to be aware of it as much as possible and be open about that fact. I do go to a lot of trouble to make sure I am being fair, I always look at what the other perspective is, what the other driver and their fans are saying, how they are interpreting things(naturally through their own bias as well)

I like the facts and data because I can't really lie. Especially with the raw data. I can't make Charles look faster if he wasn't faster etc. It helps ground my own opinions as well to see if what I think I saw is actually reflected in data.

Biases are normal to have, and I think it's important and healthy to reflect on them, try to be aware of the ones we have and take it into account when presenting information and sharing perspectives and opinions. I am naturally always going to be inclined to give Charles the benefit of the doubt. I try to see if that is warranted and see what the other side is saying and if they have a point.

And this issue goes beyond F1. Journalists for other areas often have clear bias but try to present themselves as neutral. It's frustrating and isn't helpful. I'm just doing what I want journalists to do, just come out and admit your bias and we can go from there. It's healthier and more informative that way. It's not possible to have a fully objective opinion with no preferences one way or another. So to combat that I try to make my stance clear. Sometimes I think I could do better, so it's an area I am always working on.

Thank you anon, this is a good topic to bring up and a good thing for people to think about when reading reports and the like.

[minimujina]

opposites attract !

i love that even though heizou is definitely an arrogant bastard to some degree, he’s actually a very caring and thoughtful person. i imagine he’d become so incredibly soft as a boyfriend, bro would seriously just melt at the precious darling in his arms as you run to hug him after a long day at work. he might know a lot of shit, but your innocence and headfirst acceptance will always be things that elude him since he happens to be quite the opposite. you are always likely to bring a fresh, unbiased perspective that he admittedly doesn’t consider sometimes, which he appreciates. to be a good and fair detective, he must be willing to consider multitudinous possibilities.

you’re also easily flustered, which he will 100% take advantage of. heizou is such a flirty bastard, but he knows what your limits are just by your demeanor, so he’ll never go so far as to make you truly uncomfortable (though he will always apologize with a gentle kiss on the lips regardless). heizou just knows how to read people, you especially—he knows what you’re likely thinking and feeling at any given moment, which makes the two of you oddly in sync for being opposites. and you, even if you aren’t particularly good at reading people, you seem to understand heizou in a way no one else does or even tries to do.

for example, only you know that heizou can be deeply affected, emotionally speaking. despite his aptly logical mind, there are certain things that will strike him to his core and convict him deeply, prompting out of control and emotional responses (though only internally). ironically, what really gets him going is actually his job to contain—those who prey on the innocent, corrupt what is good, and get away with committing evil acts. his whole reason for being a detective stems from the simmering anger in his gut that some people would choose to be so cruel, and yet no one would ever know about this anger unless he outright told them. he’s so easygoing and flirtatious that it seems like he’s got no deeper understanding of the justice system—but you know that this is not the case, and that’s enough for shikanoin heizou.

“love, what’s wrong?” the detective mused, gathering you up in his arms the way he knew you loved. cradling you across his lap, he leaned down to plant a tender kiss on your forehead. you loved to be held like this, which he had come to realize very early on.

you studied him with a quiet, gentle smile, shaking your head very subtly. “nothing’s wrong,” you murmured. “you’re just handsome. and you make a cute face when you’re thinking. and i love that.” you paused, letting your smile grow into a full grin. “and i love you. that’s all.”

heizou laughed in the most affectionate manner, losing himself in your starry, far-off gaze. it was a moment before he realized he was gaping, as if his mouth were searching for words—but the hunt turned up empty. his throat was dry, his lips a bit cracked, and still, he had nothing to say. it just so happened that the only person to ever render him speechless was you. and to be completely honest, this occurred way more often than he would have liked to admit. lucky for him, you weren’t one to spill secrets.

watching heizou struggle, you pursed your lips in an attempt not to laugh—then you just cuddled closer to him, nuzzling into the space between his shoulder and collarbone to feign innocence.

a grand sigh fell from heizou’s lips—he surrendered to your affection, placing one of his hands on your head and the other around your waist to pull you even closer. though flustered, the detective could only smile at what you’d said so nonchalantly—he’d never let you know, but he’d been deeply affected by your words, and they’d be bouncing around in his head for weeks on end if he wasn’t careful enough to focus on his job.

it’s okay, though. you already knew that. you just didn’t want to bruise his ego by telling him.

𝑀𝑀 𝐸𝐻𝐸𝐻𝐸 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑘𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑚𝑦 𝑏𝑙𝑢𝑟𝑏 𝑖 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑚𝑎𝑛

[bohemian-nights]

What do you think of Rhaenyra’s reluctance to issue war? Do you think this is because she genuinely didn’t want war or was this another one of the writers ways of making her seem like a “girlboss who really would never have done any wrong but was just pushed there?”

I actually blame this on both the writers trying to shoehorn the prophecy mess(which Viserys realistically shouldn’t know about himself) and them trying to make Rhaenyra into a girlboss.

They made it seem like Rhaenyra was going to give up her claim and go along with Aegon being king because there is this war between ice zombies and humanity and the Targaryens will be the saviors of Westeros(which is all a load of bull crap because according to GOT the savior was Arya…Stark🫠).

This made 0 sense whatsoever even in the context of the show because she literally begged Daemon’s a** to marry her since she thought the Greens were going to do her in. She was low-key preparing for war in episode 7 and then the finale rolls around and she’s like “Hmm maybe I should like bow down to Aegon for the prophecy’s sake.” 🫠

I haven’t rewatched the show(and don’t plan on doing so because it is crap) so someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I could’ve sworn Viserys told Rhaenyra about the prophecy way before episode 7(I think he told her in episode 1 which is further proof that this show is just so inconsistent, they can’t even keep up with what they’ve written 🤦🏽‍♀️). She didn’t give a damn about the prophecy before, but now she does 🙃

Book!Rhaenyra would never do this because she was always firm in her belief Aegon II was a usurper and even if there was a prophecy she would think it was referring to her line so she’d definitely push for her claim.

If they wanted to make Rhaenyra look more empathetic they could’ve played into her being a mother and had her say “I don’t want to fight in a pointless war and see my sons die,” but they gave the lamest excuse possible by adding in a that stupid prophecy.

This show is just bananas. Its biggest problems are trying to make it connect to the mess that was the final seasons of GOT and trying to turn Rhaenyra into Dany 2.0. They could’ve presented us with an unbiased version of what happened during the Dance(showing that the main claimants were f*cked up people who were screwed over by a self-centered King who almost got their entire family killed), but instead, we get this🤦🏽‍♀️