#IVE LITERALLY CONNECTED THE DOTS

[s0fter-sin]

soap's whole deal being sniper and demolitions gets me going bc on the surface they sound so different but when you get into it, you realise it's bc soap's smart

sniping is all math; calculating distances and wind interference and bullet drop. something i think people overlook is he was listed as a sniper first so it can be implied that he's better at it than demolitions. he does more sniping in both campaigns than demolitions work; in capture or kill, ghost specifically calls on him to take down the aq snipers

and demolitions is math with a hit of chemistry; knowing what mixes with what, knowing how much to use, recognising environmental factors and adjusting accordingly. it's not just about the boom; so much work goes into contained/ planned explosions. especially when having enough power for a breacher charge and not bringing down the whole building is the difference between mission success and failure

the chemical bombs he makes in alone can't just be any old cleaners, they have to have the correct reaction to each other; he just knew off the top of his head what would mix with what to create what reaction. he would also potentially have to recognise them by sight/smell bc they would’ve been written in spanish

soap would also have to know architecture; recognising structural integrity and weak points so he knows exactly where to plant a charge to bring it down and how it'll come down

he has an incredible soldier's mind people just forget that bc he's sociable which itself is a skill

we know he tends to buck against orders he doesn't agree with like when he pushes back against ghost in capture or kill and shepherd when he tells them to release hassan

he gets closer to people and sees if he can trust them and that's when he follows them without question. really think about how he talks to alejandro and rudy; he asks about their home and alejandro's family and rudy's relationship with him. those aren't questions you ask a stranger after a few hours of knowing them. that's not even touching on his relationship with ghost

he also deliberately brings people of higher ranks down to his level; talking informally with ghost and giving him a shoulder punch, addressing alejandro (a colonel!!) by his first name and rudy by his nickname despite literally just meeting them. he personalises all of them and it’s in direct opposition to the reason most characters do that; it’s not due to insubordination or lack of respect, the more he respects and trusts someone, the more casual he is with them

he digs into people; he wants to know what makes them tick and that determines if he can one, trust them and two, follow their orders. once he decides that, he's the ultimate soldier; he bleeds loyalty which makes him vicious when that loyalty is taken for granted

he isn't naive or bubbly or insecure; he's an incredibly smart and aware soldier. he's aggressive and bloodthirsty and loyal and intuitive and i love him so much

[imogearne]

maddening...............

[threepoint14art]

Almost the whole thing

But not quite

[jacksoldsideblog]

Tyler gets hard when the narrator watches him piss in the soup and that's why he tells him to stop looking so he can piss and also partially why "the crooked thing Tyler tucks back into his pants is boiled pink as a jumbo prawn." hm.

this is law to me now

[rosyjuly]

if seb goes to imola for the wec weekend, prepare to me being even more unsufferable than usual

[smolalienbee]

ken 🤝 s3 jaskier: i am (k)enough

[waywardsalt]

thinking abt bellum v hard. (fyi there are 1658 words under this cut)

there's not a lot of concrete stuff to think abt but there ideas. he's kind of already won by the time link shows up on the scene. he's not really actively antagonizing the world of the ocean king, he mostly just has the ghost ship to go around collecting prey for him while he has the yook and anouki turned against each other and seems to have infested the different temples and whatever with monsters to delay any opposition. is he the one who destroyed the cobble kingdom? they're meant to be supporters of the ocean king so i think we can guess that bellum is the one who tried to eradicate them.

maybe he was the one who... mind controlled? or otherwise meddled with the yook to keep them from checking out the ice temple and keeping the anouki occupied with dealing with them. (tbh theres some untapped potential in the relationship between the yook and anouki) he doesn't really do anything to the gorons but maybe he doesn't see them as a worthwhile threat since they see the crimsonine as more of an artifact and not something they should really do anything with, and link has to pass a test to even be allowed to go to the temple. the cobble kingdom is already destroyed, and it can be assumed that he mightve mimicked their engineering based on eox being the hostile boss of the last temple and turning into sand, suggesting a relationship to bellum, and maybe that he's trying to hide the fact that he's the one fucking with everyone. i'm not even sure if characters (besides the main group) even know that bellum exists until link's quest is more known.

taking a note from the manga, where bellum says something along the lines of feelings of love and friendship creating more worthwhile life force for him, so taking that into account with stuff in the game suggests that he maybe doesnt make his presence well-known to avoid something like a mass panic or a persistent fear in people, which could downplay positive emotions that makes their life forces more worth taking to him along with other worthwhile forces maybe being ones connected to divine power (like his taking of tetra and seeming desperation to keep her specifically, since she's most likely a descendant of hylia's mortal form), so he likely is very hands-off with how he's affected the world in order to preserve the value of his prey, somehow. idk why he turns people into statues maybe its a preservation method. maybe hes saving tetra for some reason or maybe trying to bait link in as well. maybe he wants to grab link, too, but failed to catch him the first time and resorted to allowing him to go down the path of dismantling bellum's work all so that bellum can try and capture him himself.

the spirits he does manage to capture and left alive and instead just sealed away within their temples, which i believe is because spirits and gods and whatever in loz can't really die unless they explicitly permanently become mortal (hylia) and can only really be sealed away temporarily in some form, mostly due to a lot of them being a sort of representation of some part of the world (i like to imagine that demise is the god or whatever who created monsters, he's the father of monsters and opposes hylia due to the way her favored creatures [hylians ig] attack and kill monsters and he wants the world to be habitable and safe only for his creations)

it's probably safe to say that the ghost ship (like. the whole thing) was created by bellum, and in some form is perhaps some kind of living being, hence why bellum is capable of effectively possessing it the way he does, since it's an extension of himself like the boss monsters, it just maybe takes parts from some existing ships, or maybe it's not alive and bellum is capable of creating large structures like that he is compatible with.

bellum himself turns to sand when he is defeated, as well as most of the other boss monsters, but the cubus sisters (who certainly have a relationship with bellum due to having the same eyes and being connected to the ghost ship) do not turn into sand, which makes me think that bellum didn't actually create them; maybe they're corpses or something being remotely puppeted by bellum.

bellum is clearly made up of the sand of hours, a crystallization of life force, and oshus is said to have used those sands to create the phantom hourglass, and the sands are also mentioned to have been created from the force gems connected back to oshus himself, so bellum was probably created from those force gems and therefore those sands of hours at some point somehow (i enjoy the idea that oshus was the one who created bellum; with oshus being our main source of info on bellum, i think it'd be interesting if he was the one who originally made bellum but obscures this fact by just talking about how he 'appeared' and whatnot).

bellum seems to have a weird sort of... inverted? perverted? ability to create life (perhaps a sort of parallel to the one we can assume the ocean king has if we assume that he created the three spirits as well as bellum maybe) but only in a hivemind or derivative sort of way, only able to create things that follow simple commands and when he possesses something else he takes it over. (i like to take him in a more biological or physiological way rather than magical, when he is removed so is the control, but there might be little remnants, but his influence is gone. i take bellumbeck aftereffects to be terrible sickness rather than others going with the idea of taking on some bellum-like traits or residual controls. the things bellum creates can only follow simple rules unless he is directly in control therefore he can use it as he wishes, but if he takes control of something he did not create, it's a bit more of a battle, he has to contend with that other being's subconscious or whatnot and has no effect unless he is physically connected. his control is more limited and ends up incorporating some of the hosts' subconscious desires with some guiding from bellum himself to achieve a favorable outcome.)

with the world of the ocean king being a sort of parallel/separate world to link n tetra's great sea, it's interesting that the ghost ship can be physically present outside the world in which it was created. definitely there can be contact between different worlds in loz (like hyrule and the dark world/lorule in alttp/albw and a little bit with termina if you take that as a literal place and a little bit with koholint and then the twili realm and whatever i'm missing) but it's interesting to see bellum as a villain capable of (in some way) contact and interact within other worlds and drag inhabitants of those other worlds into his own (oshus can send people out of his world, so i assume he can also bring them in, maybe that's how link gets in despite falling off of the ghost ship, unless somehow the ghost ship is still within the world of the ocean king but is also present in the great sea but the area around it is a fragment of whatever part of the world of the ocean king its in superimposed over the great sea... idk) so it's interesting that bellum could bc considered a villain able to tamper with or at least interact with world boundaries to let things in and out, maybe it's something that he is only capable of with whatever power he's attained by the start of the game.

whatever relationship he may have to oshus and the other spirits is not at all a part of the game, but at the same time we don't learn a whole lot about them anyways. there's also stuff with the chief of the golden frogs as another ally of oshus, but i imagine bellum didn't bother with him because he has no relation to the spirits' locations and the pure metals, and zuaz was left alone perhaps because his location is secret, while astrid and kayo were maybe found due to living on a more populated island (more prey for bellum to go after, more people to know about astrid and kayo). a lot of the monsters in the dungeons were probably already there, while the bosses were specifically made to protect what was hidden there, or maybe the bosses came first and their presences attracted other monsters.

i think bellum created the two monsters you fight overseas on the spot; they existed specifically to try and kill link because at those two times (link going to get the final spirit and link going to get the first pure metal) bellum suddenly panics and decides to try and eliminate link at the cost of the loss of a possible worthwhile piece of prey. bellum was probably also the one to begin the rumor of the ghost ship; i imagine he can take a sort of human form the same way oshus can, and spent a bit of time after defeating oshus and creating the ghost ship integrating him within some pirate crew and using them to grow and spread the rumor of the ghost ship, eventaully leading them towards it and taking them has his first victims (and along the way taking the time to foster good relationships with them in the hopes that their positive emotions and feelings would make them more worthwhile prey, back to the manga snippet idea of feelings of friendship and love [and probably positive emotions in general] being another form of better life force).

bellum's cool

[socialtomcat]

OH MY GOD EVERYONE SHUT THE FUCK UP

KATRINA THE CARNIVOROUS POSITIONING HERSELF TO BE DOT IN THE SUNDAY AFTERNOON ON THE ISLAND OF LA GRANDE JETTE POSE

now no one can say ive lost my mind when i write my carnivorous carpentry sitpwg au LOOK AT THE MATERIALLLL

[arundolyn]

i just now realized that like.. did mori look at slayer and go "i want a cool vampire character too im gonna do everything the opposite of this and its gonna be cool"

like. slayer being an old guy. rachel looking like a kid. he's literally just pleasant to be around and she verbally berates everyone all the time. he likes being nosy on purpose, and granted so does she, but she faces consequences of being too nosy like Not Existing Anymore. slayer at least has the intent to assist while if rachel does she sucks at doing it. he's super powerful and so was she but she keeps getting less so bc she wont mind her business. theyre both from the uk but slayer is inexplicably scottish. they both live in castles but villa vampir is cooler

[lovely-v]

To continue my liveblogging of Everything Everywhere All At Once. Let me say it. The scene where Joy and Evelyn are rocks in a universe that has no life and their dialogue is displayed above the rocks in complete silence is VERY Football 17776

[battleram-skirmisher-fr]

Wait, hold on. Did we get the forgotten cave scene because dusthides were coming?? :thinking:

[zathechaosgod]

hey so. so the dutch nintendo acc released a trailer for TotK today. including a shot of the seven heroines. BUT THERE SURE AIN'T SEVEN ANYMORE

THERE'S ONLY FOUR??? WHERE DO YOU TAKE THREE MASSIVE STATUES

i literally looked up someone doing the seven heroines quest to double check but like yeah no they are MISSING

theory ramblings and bad drawing under the readmore:

(additional points bc i think it was pointcrow who i saw raising the point that the "tears" shown seem to match the puzzle balls for the shrine quest there, EXCEPT THAT DOESN'T REALLY HELP)

i present to you the ugliest drawing ever that i used to double check which statues are missing (green circles) and which puzzle ball symbol belongs to which one. This is kinda where my lead ends, but i do think it's really interesting (suspicious) that the comma one that i believe is supposed to relate to the tear zelda has in the trailer, is one of the ones that's missing.

Are the missing statues the ones whose tear has been activated? the comma for zelda, the ball for a possibly cursed/bound yunobo, and the S shape in hands of the zonai or gifted to link?? (and the missing eight statue representing ganon and its absence masking his return)

[note-boom]

My favourite grasping at straws parallel is the one where I thought Kyouka falling off the train into the water to symbolise her breaking away from the PM was a great callback to the way Dazai likes falling off things and drowning and he's left the PM....

[help-is-on-the-way]

Now that i've listened to Coco Moon nonstop for like 3 weeks, i kinda feel like rambling. I cant keep my thoughts contained.

I like connecting songs to one another. I wanna point out something that stood out to me and i havent been able to get it off my mind since.

In Vitamin Sea, adam says "I ain't concerned if i sunburn, i'll catch all the rays i can". And then 1 song later the blonde girl in Learn How to Surf says "Kick up the sand cause your tan proves you lived through the burn". And, like, i know adam has a TON of ocean/water themed songs, and sunburns are obviously common in the beach. But i just can't help but think of Sunburn (the song). Cause, uh, duh.

It's actually super cool to think about, comparing the quotes side by side, plus adding Sunburn's very own chorus of "We both put our sunblock on / Played on the beach / And vowed that we'd live and we'd learn / But she got a tan and i got a sunburn". Especially since, to me, Sunburn has always been about a relationship that reached its end, and the persona adam sings through seems to have gotten the "bad end of the stick". He got sunburned, hurt, stuck to all those memories he can't let go, while the girl, tanned, with a heartstopper of smile, is able to move on.

And it's super interesting how easily it all ties together. She got a tan and I got a sunburn. I aint concerned if i sunburn. Cause your tan proves you lived through the burn.

Idk id probably have a more eloquent conclusion to this if i actually knew how to express my thoughts, but yeah. Its cool to me. It's like a character development, if you assume those three quotes are from the same persona. At some point the boy stopped being scared of getting sunburned, of putting himself out there. An experience is an experience, let it be good or bad, and sometimes the consequences won't matter that much. And he's willing to go through it. He's tanning, after all the sunburns. I think it's very fitting, also, considering how much more confident adam has been presenting himself in his songs lately.

[iveneverbeenmorestressedinmylife]

Just learned that bourbon vanilla ice cream has -wait for it- bourbon in it. Shocking. I found out from an ace attorney fanfic.

[maidofmetal]

i bet u $10 my sister thinks I made up anti psychiatry because I have bpd