#Of Defined Self At the Time

[mumpsetc]

Not to forgivr III for anything but I think right now Bot’s in the middle-ish of finding themselves out? Like they talk with Floor about what they wanna be/look like, but they’re still messy on that front, and their arc in the future is about becoming mire solidly their own person

Though there is Some setup with Bot about them being notably courageous/“badass” with how they were the first person to approach the volcano, but imo that’s rather weak character writing. It’s like dumbing their personality down into “#girlboss, gender-unspecified robot coming of age edition”, with nothing of real substance to back that.

It’s like. I can see where this is going already- a sorta shallow, “finding yourself” type arc continuing through however many episodes that ends with Bot going home their own person, yay! It makes it so they can eliminate Bot anytime they want and still have a somewhat-satisfying narrative ending for them, y’know?

Good Point, They Do Still Have Some "Being a Person" to Figure Out Beyond Gender Stuff and Them Continuing to Do So Till They Can Be Neatly Eliminated Would Make Sense for the ii Crew. I Guess I'm Just Frustrated Because You Can Portray Someone In the Midst of Finding Themself and Have That Character Be Something. God You're Right Though Bot is Probably Just Gonna Become Generically Nice Generically Badass and All Complexity Their Character Could Offer Passed Over Because That Makes Them Less Epic Squee Adorable. I'll Be Surprised if They End Up With Any Negative Traits at All and Isn't Just an Uncomplicated Bastion of Good.

[soybean-official]

Compiled the Disco Elysium style MGS2 portraits into 1 post!

[dreamofbecoming]

listen i know we all love steve “completely ignorant of queer culture to the point that bisexuality is a surprise” harrington being roasted and educated in turns by robin and eddie, yadda yadda, good stuff. i read “they made a horror version of rocky?” in a fic recently and cackled. also a big fan of “he knew he was bi from the start and just never talked about it” as a trope, love it excellent well done

but what about steve who realizes after starcourt that the most important person in his life now has this thing that’s a major part of her life that he knows nothing about, and what if he fucks it up? what if he says something ignorant or rude by accident, and hurts her? what if he loses her because he didn’t know the right thing to say? what if he can’t keep her safe because he doesn’t know what to look out for? absolutely fucking not, this steve says

and listen she’d never say anything, because she can tell that he can tell how much she likes teasing him and teaching him things, so he plays dumb, and she thinks it’s very sweet. but she notices when the zines she keeps under her bed that she buys at that one secret bookshop in indy when she can sneak away on family trips start going missing, always one at a time, and replaced in a few days with another disappearing. and she finds the new ones he must have gone to buy the weekend she was at her aunt’s house hidden in the back of his closet when she goes to steal one of his sweaters. and she notices when he slips more of her queerer movie recommendations into his personal take home pile rather than the movie night stack when he thinks she’s not looking.

she doesn’t notice when he drives to indianapolis after she tries to explain to him why she can’t just ask out a cute girl, tries to impress on him the fear attached to every moment of attraction that he simply has never had to feel, but later she finds a crumpled receipt from a diner in one of his jacket pockets when she’s looking for his keys, and the address is across the street from the bar the gorgeous woman at the bookstore told her about, the one she memorized the address of but hasn’t worked up the guts to think about visiting, and she knows he must have gone looking for a place like that, must have been trying to understand, must have been scoping it out to make sure it was somewhere she could feel safe, after she told him she never had.

so when eddie nearly pops a blood vessel when they clock each other and she mentions that steve is the only person she’s ever come out to before, her hackles come up. because she gets it, she does, he’s only known king steve until recently, so it makes sense that he would be afraid, be concerned for her safety.

but steve is her person, and no one- no one- has ever made her feel as protected or as cared for as he does. no one has ever tried as hard to understand her, no one has ever put so much work into making her feel safe and seen and loved. and she thinks maybe even if no one else ever does, that’s ok. because she has steve, and more importantly steve has her, and that means no one gets to question his ally credentials in her presence without a dressing down to remember, no matter how well they mean or how recently they helped save the world.

(and maybe she’s not as surprised as she could be when he figures out bisexuality all on his own, because she’s been reading all the same pamphlets he has, after all. and she’s seen the way he looks at eddie, i mean come on. maybe no one else has noticed, but then, nobody knows steve harrington like she does.)

[milfygerard]

man remember when that nyt interview w gerard dropped in 2014 and gerard stated directly that they identify heavily with woman and didnt and never could relate to men and the main reaction was people freaking out at gerard using "straight" as shorthand for "attracted to women" while discussing how that attraction was impacted by their struggle with their gender identity

[vaggieslefteye]

ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ᴍᴇ ᴄʜᴏᴏꜱᴇ ↳ anonymous asked: HUSK and ALASTOR or angel and valentino?

[imaybe5tupid]

Why bother? (Why bother?) It's gonna hurt me. (It's gonna hurt me.) It's gonna kill when- (Why bother!) -You desert me! (Gonna hurt me!)

Set after Nightmare. Laios is reminiscing and contemplating.

[asterbats]

don't think about it

[sunnykeysmash]

Man of words

[grayintogreen]

Respectfully, but a character can be and SHOULD BE allowed to be more than one thing without it being considered "contradictory", "retconning," or "negative character development."

[cyb-organ]

happy lesbian visibilty week to her. i gave her a little bird

[yellowocaballero]

So fucking glad to see someone talk about SSS Class revival hunter 😭 I lived it so much and I feel like no one ever mentions it against more popular titles like ORV or even The Lout of the counts family, so I'm so glad to come here and see your amazing takes :>

Thank you for the ask which lets me talk about SSSCRH (the version I read was titled 'Suicide Hunter', which tbh I like more - no beating around the bush).

It's hard to draw an accurate comparison since I'm going off just the webtoon for SSSCRH, while I'm going off both the webtoon and the webnovel for ORV. And I love ORV, ORV is my media blorbo right now, it hydraulic presses my brain, I am writing ORV fanfic - it's, like, funner to enjoy. But SSSRH is just better. In the vast majority of ways it is is better. It's better than the holy trinity by a wide margin. TW talk of suicide obviously.

I can't believe I'm saying this but you need a basic understanding of Buddhism in order to understand SSSCRH. It's not about Gongja's suicides - he doesn't suicide from depression or lack of self-esteem. SSSCRH is about suffering in the Buddhist sense - dukkha. I don't want to make this an essay, so I might reblog this with more information, but extremely shortly:

The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism is the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering. You've heard that Buddhists say 'life is suffering'. To put it one way that doesn't require defining a lot of words: the cause of suffering is experiencing the world as we percieve it instead of how it truly is. Suffering isn't just being miserable and in pain, and life isn't suffering because life sucks and global warming exists and people voted for Trump. Life is suffering because we can experience beautiful and joyful moments in this world, but we do not exist in the moment of that happiness or place our ego/'self' between us and that happiness. Living in that moment, accepting the moment as it is unconditionally, is freedom from suffering. The Buddha tries to free people from suffering through teaching Buddhism.

"What does this have to do with the webnovel and manwha about a guy murdering himself thousands of times" it has everything to do with it. Because SSSCRH is about suffering, and it is about using suffering as a tool in order to experience a world unfiltered by ego and break down the artificial boundaries between human beings. Suffering in SSSCRH is not a bad thing. Gongja has the unique capability to (reincarnate.) experience a person's suffering in unity with them, which dissolves the delusion of separation between people and puts us in touch with the reality of oneness.

The Murim arc was fucking insane because Gongja pulls a Big Bodhisattva Move and walks through the suffering of the world in order to achieve full understanding of the human experience. He takes all of the suffering of the world into himself and is liberated. You can tell it's Buddhist because death was not presented as a bad thing - death was an aspect of a happy ending for the Heavenly Demon lady, because she was finishing her life according to her own joy, and because her teachings were passed on she did not truly die.

But the purpose of embracing suffering is to discover the ability to fully embrace life, and that's where Heavenly Demon's teachings were incomplete - as the ghost dude said, Gongja hasn't even experienced his own full life and the infinite capability for his own happiness. You can only feel the depths of sadness when you've felt the depths of happiness. Sadness deserves its place in the world and it can strengthen you, but so does happiness.

Gongja is attention-seeking, envious, and unbelievably petty. When he drills down into his own desires and why he wants the things he wants, you see that he has a very strong sense of justice and right and wrong - he realizes he doesn't want to be famous, he wants to be acknowledged, but on an even deeper level he is desperate for love and to be loved. Everything he does is to experience love, and as such he learns to love others. His love for the Flamey Asshole was purely parasocial and ego-filled, with no concern for who he was as a human. Throughout the manwha, he grows to care for people as they truly are and pierce through any delusions or misleading outward appearances. He has released all attachment to life and death, and as such does not fear death, and as such has taken a step on the road towards becoming a Boddhisatva who frees others from the cycle of samsara, and as a result has learned sick sword techniques and is sooo good at beating people up.

I think the only other thing I want to mention here because otherwise this is an essay: in almost every time loop/regression story, only the final regression matters. In stories with dungeon monsters and NPCs, only the humans matter. The regressor exists in a space where there are no consequences for their actions, so they act terribly and do whatever because none of it matters. In Groundhog Day Bill Murray acts like an asshole because he can. That's not the case here. Everything Gongja does matters. The NPCs are fake, but Gongja never treats them as anything less than real people who deserve life. Once he understands a person's life he never treats them as unimportant. No loop is thrown away and no person or life is disregarded. His choices matter, the way he treats others matters, and Gongja never treats anybody as if they don't matter except for himself.

That was not short. There is a lot more. The female characters are so good and so rich. From a craft perspective it is excellently paced and has a wonderful sense of set-up/payoff and balances tone and maintains a lot of momentum, which is really hard in a time loop story. You have to do a few very specific things to write OP characters well and SSSCRH does it very well. There's more to say from a craft perspective and it's hard to judge accurately from a webtoon but it's good. I was so strangely struck the entire time about how sincere and genuine it was, how it said what it said with no trace of irony of confusion, and I think that's what stuck with me the most.

TL;DR: SSS Class Revival Hunter is good for a lot of very normal reasons, such as excellent pacing and set-up/pay off and characters, but it's also so sincerely and genuinely Buddhist that it blew my tits clean off.

[fromtheseventhhell]

I want to make a longer post about this someday but: I think Arya's TWOW arc is going to include her coming to terms with her identity as a Lady. This has been an ongoing conflict with her since her first chapter and I think her flowering in winds is going to mark a turning point. The theory of her having an apprenticeship with the courtesans holds a lot of weight and the idea of Arya going through puberty among a group of unconventional women she's fostered a positive relationship with is just too perfect. It would really have an impact on Arya reconciling her personal idea of what a Lady should be. There's also a lot that she could learn from them in terms of courtesies, communication, appearances, body-language, etc. that would elevate her current skill-set and ways her relationship with them could push the plot.

Not to mention she will undoubtedly reclaim her identity as Arya Stark, and her being a Lady is inseparable from that. Arya Stark is a Lady Stark and being a Lady is a social position, not a measure of how well someone preforms feminine tasks. She shouldn't have to relinquish her position because she doesn't fit patriarchal standards. That's not to say that she's ever going to be the perfect example of a traditional Lady but what I think will happen is that she becomes capable of playing the part. She plays several identities throughout the series but she's always been Arya underneath, so I think it's appropriate that she learns to adopt a "persona" that's part of her. Her remembering Ned putting on his "Lord's face" (+ the various examples of other characters being separate from their ruling persona) makes me think that Arya will be donning her "Lady's face" when she makes a return to Westeros.

[sesamenom]

@general-illyrin @tar-thelien @who-needs-words I think you all mentioned being interested in the reverse gondolin au - is anyone interested in helping with wrangling the timelines, especially the second age stuff? Here's the current outline:

(Edit: anyone feel free to help out if you're interested!)

YT 14365 - Birth of Lomion

YT 14373/FA 1 - Death of Argon

FA

2 - Aredhel adopts Lomion

300 - Birth of Idril

316 - Turgon & Idril kidnapped by Eol

400 - Turgon & Idril rescued. Death of Eol

465 - Finrod more-peacefully passes throne to orodreth while on Quest. Everyone except beren still dies

472 - Nirnaeth. Turgon named High King of the Noldor.

476 - Turgon abdicates official title. Aredhel named High King of the Noldor.

496 - Tuor comes to Gondolin

502 - Wedding of Idril and Tuor

503 - Births of Earendil and Elwing. Idril begins to have foresight dreams about the Fall.

506 - Second Kinslaying. C^3 dead, celebrimbor stays in gondolin. Aredhel denounces the oath/kinslaying and disowns C^3

Elwing survives & is found by Oropher & Thranduil // Galadriel & Celeborn. oropher, thranduil, oropher's wife, and thranduil's then-gf // galadriel & celeborn take Elwing to Gondolin as refugees. The Silmaril is left hidden in the woods of melian's domain.

507 - Elwing comes to Gondolin.

509 - Idril captured by Morgoth. Idril reveals the location of Gondolin in exchange for an Oath to not harm her family (Turgon, Tuor, and Earendil). Idril rescued.

510 - Gondolin prepares for war with Morgoth.

513-522 - Siege of Gondolin. Deaths of Duilin and Rog. Gothmog slain by Aredhel the Huntress. First use of the Three Rings by Lomion and Celebrimbor in defense of Gondolin. House of the Hammer of Wrath destroyed.

523 - Maedhros believes a Silmaril is with Elwing at Gondolin.

525 - Earendil weds Elwing. Lomion weds ???. Adoption of Gil-Galad

532 - Births of Elrond and Elros.

538 - Third Kinslaying at Gondolin. Death of Amras. Elrond and Elros kidnapped by Maglor. Deaths of Elwing and Turgon. Second use of the Three Rings by Lomion and Celebrimbor. Deaths of Maedhros and Aredhel. Lomion named King of Gondolin and High King of the Noldor. Deaths of Salgant, Penlod, and Tuor. Earendil named Lord of the House of the Wing.

540-549 - War declared between Gondolin and the Feanorians of Himring over the Third Kinslaying and kidnapping of Princes Elrond and Elros.

549 - Elrond and Elros recovered. Feanorians and Gondolin severely weakened. Celebrimbor // Gil-Galad declared heir to the High Kingship.

552-554 - Second Siege & Fall of Gondolin. Third use of the Three Rings by Lomion and Celebrimbor. Deaths of Ecthelion, Glorfindel, Egalmoth, and Turgon. Idril and Celebrimbor lead survivors through the Secret Way.

555 - Gondolithlim refugees arrive at Sirion.

556 - Idril departs for Valinor.

558 - Earendil searches for Valinor.

560 - Havens of Sirion destroyed by Morgoth. Gondolithlim/Doriathrim survivors scattered. Elrond and Elros rescued (as adults) by Maglor.

572 - Morgoth controls Beleriand. Earendil and reembodied Elwing come to Valinor and rally the Host.

575-617 - War of Wrath

618 - Maglor claims the Silmaril from Eonwe's camp and casts himself into the Sea. Death of Maglor.

620 - End of the First Age.

SA

1 - Founding of the Grey Havens and Lindon under High King Lomion

2 - Elros becomes the first King of Numenor

c. 500 - Sauron returns to Middle-Earth in the East.

650 - Eregion is founded

1000 - Galadriel is given Vilya; Lomion wields Nenya

1170 - Annatar comes to Lindon and Lomion turns him away. Lomion warns Celebrimbor of Eregion of his suspicions.

1200 - Annatar comes to Eregion. Celebrimbor takes him in to monitor.

1250 - Celebrimbor creates the Seven; Lomion creates the Nine.

1410 - Annatar is kicked out of Eregion.

1600 - The One Ring is forged. Sauron remains in hiding.

1610 - Sauron begins to gather and prepare armies in the East.

1673 - War of the Elves and Sauron begins.

1675 - Sauron invades Eriador.

1677 - Fall of Ost-in-Edhil. Celebrimbor and Lomion remain at the House of the Mirdain. Death of Celebrimbor in battle // Fourth use of the Three in battle. Sauron does not learn of the Seven. Founding of Imladris.

1678 - Sauron defeated by the Numenoreans and the Elves of Lindon.

1679 - Sauron flees to Mordor. First White Council held.

3147 - Civil war in Numenor.

3225 - Ar-Pharazon seizes the Sceptre.

3228 - Elrond claims the Sceptre. Ar-Pharazon disowned. Tar-Miriel named Ruling Queen.

3232 - Sauron taken to Numenor as a prisoner.

3274 - Elrond kicks Sauron out of Numenor and outlaws the morgoth cult.

3310 - Morgoth cult publicly reappears.

3319 - Downfall of Numenor. Tar-Miriel leads a greater force of the Faithful away.

(green // blue means two main options, red means i need to think about it more)

The main details I'm figuring out right now are

does Celebrimbor still die at Eregion - I don't think he's getting captured/tortured, but he could still die in the battle. On the other hand, he could probably survive by using Narya & Lomion using Nenya, but that would definitely have repercussions further down the line

how does Idril's deal work - I'm currently thinking of Idril exchanging the location of Gondolin for her family's guaranteed safety, because it seems in character for Reverse Idril? But on the other hand, even if I limit it to immediate family at the time of the oath (tuor, turgon, earendil) then idk where turgon dies? Maybe Maglor can kill him but that seems kind of random

where and how does Turgon die

how does Prince Elrond's character even work

how does Numenor still fall when factoring in Prince Elrond - I'm thinking that the morgoth death cult gained enough traction during the time sauron was there that even after Elrond kicks him out, the cult still sticks around and reemerges later? The Fall still happens, but they never go to attack valinor and there's a good deal more Faithful (maybe 40-60%?)

[20001541]

I find it fascinating how afo is able to understand others emotions easily and able to manipulate them through that understanding, but when it comes to his own emotions he's overwhelmed and struggles to process them. often leaning on the denial of them in order to deal with them.

[koetjingwarrd]

You're my baby, say it to me...

[read-write-thrive]

platonic and romantic are not some sort of binary that relationships have to be divided into. they’re not even two ends of a linear spectrum. they’re fully just abstract concepts made up of culturally-dependant social behaviour and expectations that are continually forced upon people to reinforce religious, legal, and broader societal/cultural norms, often and repeatedly to the detriment of non-normative groups including, but not limited to, the queer community. and I am sick and tired of those norms being replicated in fucking fandom discourse, of all places