#am i missing something or what

[princessinyellow]

Is it just me or does everything Bayonetta 3 added to the setting either mean nothing, or actually take away from the thematic depth? Like, what do Singularity and the Homunculi represent? A thing that wants to kill Bayonetta a lot. What do fairies represent? They represent that Luka and his kid have superpowers that make them almost as powerful as Bayonetta without needing training, knowledge, or any kind of impetus.

What does Arch Eve and Arch Adam mean? It means that Singularity wants to kill Bayonetta a lot, and also that Luka is elevated to the same narrative importance as her (unironic male pandering). It also means that BayoLuka is canon in the entire Multiverse no matter what. It only gets worse the more I think about it.

[gammija]

the real reason tmagp is on break 'til april 11th is so sam can observe ramadan without being chased by a murderous clown blob

[sepia-mahogany]

Lan WangJi replied, "We will wait until we find them. After all, we do what we must." Wei Wuxian, "Just by using nets?" Lan XiChen, "That is right. Does the YunmengJiang Sect have other methods?" Wei Wuxian smiled but didn't respond. Of course, the YunmengJiang Sect used nets as well. But, because he was a good swimmer, he had always jumped into the river and dragged water ghouls out. However, this method was too dangerous; he definitely couldn't do it in front of the Lan Sect's people.

....I'm sorry, what

[stressfulsloth]

I've seen a couple of takes about Disco Elysium being copaganda going around recently, and beyond the fact that DE is relentlessly critical of the police force in general and makes explicit reference to the failures of the system that allow the officers in game to abuse their power, I also think it's important to note that there very literally is an in-world version of copaganda that the writers of the game use to parody that romanticised view of the brutality of policing. The RCM at their inception were structurally inspired by in-world copaganda- their culture, their "fashions, even weapon preferences, borrow heavily from classic Vespertine cop shows." Every investigation is it's own little drama, every officer imagining themselves to be the bad-ass hero of their own crime serial. Detectives name their cases like they're naming episodes of a TV series in a "robust but literary system"; a title that "draws inspiration from snoop fiction and Vespertine cop show staples". They give themselves nicknames to sound like cool, suave fictional officers- Ace, Dick Mullen, etc.- from the cool, suave world of copaganda.

The legend of the RCM's inception, the "point of contention" over its uncertain origins, is even an extention of that; the whole organisation is shrouded in this self-fictionalising mythos that allows for distance that in turn obfuscates much of its violence to the officers that participate in it. They get to convince themselves that they're not abusing their power; they're the hero of the story! The dichotomy of "good guy" taking out the "baddies," a manifestation of the libertarian fantasy of the "good guy with a gun" who does what it takes, just like in Annette's detective novels, and at the same time who rails against oversight bodies like Internal Affairs/'the rat squad' because due process slows down the immediate satisfaction of Swift Justice, despite Internal Affairs existing to protect the citizens from overreach on behalf of the police. "Wanton brutality" from police in their real world is a cold bitter reality but Dick Mullen was "made to crack skulls," "bend the rules and solve cases no one else can," and which version of that story is more comforting to the overworked, underfunded officers of the RCM?

The level of fantasy and detachment required for the cops to still see themselves as the good guys after everything that they do in the line of duty mimics The Pigs and her breakdown too; she parallels Harry so clearly. Both "did right by the kids" in the past, hoping for a better future- Marianne (The Pigs) by looking out for Titus and the Hardy boys when they were young, Harry in his role as a gym teacher. Both abandoned and left behind by the system that the RCM uphold- a brutal capitalist landscape with no safety nets. Both turning the source of their trauma into a costume, a performance, a shield, shaped by "radio waves and cop shows." The Pigs uses RCM items scavenged from the Esperance where they'd been thrown away, while Harry uses the Dick Mullen hat that Annette gives him but both are essentially in costume.

Harry identifies himself with the fictional detective as a kind of wish fulfilment; Dick Mullen is "wicked smart." He doesn't fuck up his cases and when he's sad it's not pathetic; it's effortlessly cool brooding and everyone sympathises. Everyone loves him. His violence- "skull crack[ing]"- is justified because he's a "good guy" enacting that violence against the victims of police brutality sorry "bad guys". He doesn't ever face repercussions; "Dick Mullen won't be sent to the clink for the sake of some legal niceties!" So if Harry is Dick Mullen then his failures, his breakdown, they're all just a part of being a "bad-ass, on-the-edge disco cop." He's not wrong, he's a hero! This idealised fictionalised idea of the police force, this "new, sadly better, reality" that both Harry and The Pigs cling to is "escapist stuff," "receed[ing] into a ludicrous fantasy world," so far removed from the brutal material reality that they're in.

My point is, idk. Disco Elysium is so far from being copaganda. It is a multi-million word long dissection of it, of the purpose of policing, of state sanctioned violence and its interaction with capital and the fallout experienced within the wider community as well as the trauma cycle created for individual officers. A dissection of how copaganda interacts with RCM culture and perception, and by extension how we interact with irl perceptions of police through that lens.

[jiiyawns]

im what you get when the stars collide

[floccinaucinihilipilificationa]

Hello may 31th anon! Look at that, another year behind us and a new one to come. Have a nice day! ₍՞◌′ᵕ‵ू◌₎♡

[vaguely-concerned]

In light of the info about the properties of souls in The Unwanted Guest, I want to shout out that Gideon — with no grounding in the theoretical underpinnings of the subject whatsoever — actually makes basically the same observation about the permeability of the soul at the end of Harrow the Ninth, when she's in Harrow's body and (with some justification) is pretty sure she's about to die in the River:

Harrowhark, did you know that if you die by drowning, apparently your whole life flashes in front of your eyes? I didn't know, as I died and took you along with me—having kept you alive for what, a whole two hours?—whether it was going to show me both. Like, at the end of everything, if it was going to be you and me, layered over each other as we always were. A final blurring of the edges between us, like water spilt over ink outlines. Melted steel. Mingled blood. Harrowhark-and-Gideon, Gideon-and-Harrowhark at last.

‘As we always were’! ‘Melted steel, mingled blood’! (Also interesting that despite saying earlier in the book that all she ever wanted was for Harrow to eat her (oh Gideon), the metaphors Gideon reaches for here are not about consumption ala what Ianthe’s deal and thus traditional lyctorhood is presented as in TUG, it’s about similar and equal substances joining together to a new whole, more like what we see with Paul. I personally feel like a Paul-style merging for Harrow and Gideon is not in the cards and would not be a satisfying ending — it worked as a bittersweet conclusion specifically for Pal and Cam because those two are utterly nuts in all their sanity lol, but I don’t think the series means to present it as The definitive answer to the central question of individuation vs. connection. There is something so moving to me, though, in the fact that right at the end this is what Gideon wants for her and Harrow. Not for Harrow to eat her, not simply to be of use to her, but to be made together from the same stuff. It’s a longing for connection and union that’s finally at least in imagery free from the imbalance within the ultimately hierarchical roles of necromancer and cavalier that Gideon internalizes through her corruption arc in Gideon the Ninth, understandably so as it’s the only model she’s presented with in their society to understand intimacy and attachment and devotion through. But Gideon says Harrowhark-and-Gideon, Gideon-and-Harrowhark at last, mutually and equally. And I’ve written about this before, but at what must be almost exactly the same time, the same process is happening in Harrow’s mind through the evolution in the symbolism of her dream bubbles. Help I am emotions now) 

Palamedes is so right, Gideon is a lot smarter than most people -- including Gideon herself -- ever give her credit for.

[lottieshauna]

Lottie isn't going to die.

[seagull-scribbles]

“Ain’t turtles supposed to be endangered?”

“Only the ones who can’t do this!”

[razzek]

One thing that's starting to really get to me with the James Somerton stuff is a real strong undercurrent of disdain toward his fans. And yeah, I was one of them. A good scam artist isn't as easy to spot as y'all seem to think. You forget that you have all the information right now. Two days ago most of you had never heard of him and it would have kept going. Anyone can fall for a scam, nobody is immune. I would love to have had whatever resources you guys think we all should magically know about so I could have kept my sad $5 a month I really needed but thought was going to something worthwhile. Some of us can only devote so much energy into things and when you have no idea whatsoever that something is amiss of course you're not going to go digging for sources, why would you when everything is fine as far as you know? I really wish I could have seen the dissenting opinions on him but for many, many reasons that aren't just that the dissenting voices weren't widely circulating at the time all I had was the thought every now and again that "huh that doesn't seem right" and then go on with my day. And I think that happened to a lot of us. So yeah. Say what you gotta say about Somerton, he has more than earned it with the damage he's caused, but maybe don't shit so hard on his former fans because that is going to be you someday with something, it happens to everyone sooner or later.

[paradoxbeta]

cycle of life

[cinnamonsikwate]

"why couldn't shuro have just been honest about what he felt with laios and falin it's not that hard" are you. are you White

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Aw! XL cooking reminded me of when I was working with children and they'd get nightmares/scared of monsters, so was go to the garden and make Monster Soup! Anything that looked good would go into the nearest source of water (often a bird bath) so that the monsters would know we are kind people and stay outside and not come inside. Also the monsters would think of us as friends and protect us instead of scaring us. Now I'm hoping that I have turned any of these kids into bad cooks bc I was like that flower looks good! Toss it in! 😅😄😄😄

Thank you for reminding me of this memory!

I'm-In-Love-With-The-Monster Soup.

[this-is-a-name-dont-worry]

"Wait is that lore?" moments in Antoine's return stream

These ones are likely jokes, but (you can use it in your headcanons):

With Tubbo, explaining his absence by saying "I was dead, I think, but not anymore, I was tired of being dead"

"I couldn't explain to you, it's out of my understanding how I'm dressed. The human mind cannot comprehend how I'm dressed and so the human brain shows it that way, but it isn't exactly like that. It's not powerful, it's just weird"

"You know me well!" "Heh, I know you as if I made you!" *silence* (closest to maybe serious)

These ones are more serious:

He isn't romantically interested by Cucurucho, he just likes his ass (that totally a human is aro that's what I mean)

He really missed Pomme, he stopped coming because without her it wasn't interesting anymore (this one is just cute)

Very invested in knowing what happened to the eggs while they were away

Accidentally gave Pomme one of the books Ourson (I think it's this one?) gave him, immediately panicking when he realized. When Pomme asks what it was, he first tries to pretend not to understand, and is pretty serious when he tells her that it's nothing; he'll tell her about it one day, and it's his little secret garden, everyone should be allowed to have secrets, don't she think? she isn't against secrets, right?

Certain that the eggs went to some kind of other dimensions/got doubles?? I mean there was a theory inspired by Stranger Things but despite what Pomme is saying he's not letting go of the idea

After asking Pomme if she met dark Cucurucho and she talks about the Watcher: "Je crois pas qu'on parle de la même chose. Là tu me parles de l'oeil, et moi je pense que je te parle de quelque chose d'autre. Je pense que tu me parles du Watcher... là où moi je te parle d'autre chose." ("I think we're not talking about the same thing. Here you're talking about the eye, and me I think I'm talking about something else. I think you're talking about the Watcher... when me I talk about something else" again how does he know the name "Watcher".)

Knows that Maximus is dead, when all the other players seem to have decided to play the "don't know if he's alive or dead" card (bonus: Antoine and Pomme talking about telling Aypierre, and Pomme thinking she won't be able to find the right words "I don't think there are right words..." ok im sad now thanks). Since we're at it, when reading Pomme diary where she worries about Baghera and Antoine being dead, saying they can't be dead, he doesn't share that worry in the slightest, as if he knows Baghera's not dead (this one's dubious and I am very willing to put it as cc!Antoine not thinking rp)

He and Pomme are talking about what she remembers of the Watcher and honestly the whole conversation deserves to be clipped and transcribed. To go with him name dropping the Watcher, he is now only calling it the creature with one eye because that's how Pomme calls it

Pomme explains that the Watcher was observing her and Richas and there was a threatening aura to it, so they immediately fled. Antoine in a very serious voice "You were right to, you were right to, you were right to. Because I think it's this person who was at the origin of your disappearance."

[mishapen-dear]

i love it when bad is very specifically a good roleplayer by giving other people good prompts. like casually bringing up wilbur now to tallulah. or when he put missa in the petting zoo. or all those times he Tormented the Lesbians so they could protect each other from him. its just so !!!! I love watching roleplayers be considerate of other roleplayers and gleefully hand over something they Know the other person's character can react to. i've seen cellbit do it, too (that time he handed his knife to bbh. oh my god). it's not a rare thing, and it's possible to be a good roleplayer without keeping that sort of considerate back and forth in mind, but its one of my favourite things to notice. foolish does it too, sometimes- i haven't watched him much, but i did take note of when he Made Sure to bring jaiden along with him on a cucurucho quest. and basically every interaction he had with bad when the eggs were missing. its just so so good

[lbhslefttiddie]

youve heard of sex flowers get ready for the flower that makes you into a celestial shoujo herione complete with particle effects you cannot turn the fuck off and creates a wifebeam so powerful it can incapacitate and maim and keeps making you burst into tears and fall on your ass which makes the wifebeam More Powerful and you also cannot turn this off either. and is also still, sort of, a sex flower

from one of my favorite fanfictions, Celestial Afterglow by elanor_pam, a fic that defies description in the best possible way