#and given me a crisis

[sizzlingrebelbarbarian]

Recently watched Victor/Victoria as a transmasc who’s been a Julie Andrews fan since before I could walk. It really is a great movie and worth the watch but I have to many conflicting feelings about the ending. And King Marchand. This movie needs to stop trying to convince me that they are a straight couple. They can pry gay transmasc Victor from my cold dead hands, but damn can he do better. Marchand has his moments but wtf was the watching Victor in the bathroom scene. Too many emotions

[benevolenterrancy]

@achilleasfury Xue Yang thinks this meeting could have been an email

for anyone that actually wants to see the very professional and carefully thought out powerpoint

the "dad's approval" graph i think was an excellent touch on her part

[jemmo]

Making sense of love for love's sake: the game

Despite all the things i absolutely adore about how the plot unravels and expands in love by love's sake, upon first watch, there's some things i couldn't piece together, which @lurkingshan echoes in their post:

'The way the author was messing with Myungha and forcing cruel choices on him really does not track with a desire to help him find happiness.'

And to preface, this is not something i fully get yet either. I think i'll need a good month and a sizeable reading list of relevant resources to understand just what/who this author/sunbae is and what his role is and how he is associated with myungha. But as always with the best shows for meta (aka bad buddy), as a plot unfolds, you can always find a better understanding by looking backwards and re-contextualising what you've already seen. so i watched ep 1, specifically the scene between myungha and his sunbae at the bar. And i will talk about how everything said in this scene has a whole new meaning now we know the full story, but for now i wanna focus on that question that they keep coming back to; "Then... will you change it for him?".

When you watch the show for the first time, your brain follows the simplest, most obvious version of the story you're being told, one where myungha has been pulled into the world of his sunbae's novel that's being turned into a game and given the opportunity to fix the thing he didn't like about it; making yeowoon happy, and thus you just think the rules of the game are imposed by the author, and so when these cruel choices first come up, you see them as the difficult roadblocks that are nevertheless necessary to any kind of game, forcing the player to make an impossible choice so that the game can continue in a certain direction and its only after that you learn whether it was the right choice or not, or there is no right choice, it simply changes the game you are playing.

And when its revealed what this game actually is, at first i tried to interpret these cruel choices, namely the choice between yeonwoon and myungha's grandma, and at best i could come up with the concept of this being a choice between staying stuck to the past aka choosing his grandma, even though he knows that choice doesn't mean she's safe bc he knows the future where he loses here, its an inevitability, but thats the small happiness he knew before it was taken away and thus that happiness is known and safe, theres no risk, versus choosing to pursue a new happiness, a love of yeowoon and thus himself, which he doesn't know, he hasn't experienced yet, and could be risky. Its a happiness that isn't guaranteed like his grandma, but its a happiness that looks to the future and has hope in it that he can find a new happiness to pursue despite what has happened in his past.

And that fits nice, okayish. But then i watched ep 1 and heard that question "Then... will you change it for him?" And watching through the rest of the eps, we come back to this scene at the bar and each time we get a new run up to the author asking this question, either new dialogue is added or we hear a different piece of the conversation entirely. It starts at the beginning of ep 1 as:

"Because Cha Yeowoon is the only one who's miserable." "It can't be helped that some people's lives are like that" "The fact that some people are destined to live that kind of life is what's vile."

Then a bit later in ep 1 we go back and its expanded.

"It can't be helped that some people's lives are like that" "The fact that some people are destined to live that kind of life is what's vile." "Why? Do you think you'd write it differently?" "Yes, definately. Someone like Cha Yeowoon, or someone like me with an awful life, can also be happy."

And then all the way on in ep 6, we get this new dialogue.

"I don't like talking about destiny." "Why?" "Because it means everything is predestined." "Then do you not believe in fate?" "Fate and destiny are the same. My grandma likes to say that. She said life is like a written book, and how you'll live and die are written in it. (...)I don't like things like this. Even if fate is already destined, I think it can still be changed. Otherwise, there's no point in trying." "Really? Then Myungha..."

And while we don't hear the author ask the same question, I feel like him getting cut off like that insinuates that the conversation leads to that same ending point. All that is to say, every time we hear this question being asked, its like we learn more and more about what this whole thing is, what the game is, what myungha is saying he will do by agreeing to do what the author asks. And every time, we see myungha being more defiant against the idea of yeowoon being resigned to his miserable ending. He starts off thinking that kind of life is destined, and while it's miserable, its not something he can fight. Then he says he'd want to write the story differently, bc yeowoon, or even him, could be happy. He challenges the idea that yeowoon, and thus himself, is fated to be miserable, and opens up the possibility for happiness for them both, but doesn't yet have the means or resolve to do it, its like he knows its possible on a fundamental level, but doesn't see it as something he can actually achieve. But then we circle back to the idea of destiny and books, both of which came up in the previous quote, and seems incredibly pertinent seen as this whole thing is about a novel this author has written. Myungha talks about how he hates the idea that life is a book where everything written is predestined to happen, from the moment you live to the moment you die. He says "Even if fate is already destined, I think it can still be changed. Otherwise, there's no point in trying." That vile way of life he described before that he said was destined, he is now saying it can be changed, and that possibility is now something he's holding onto, its what he sees hope in so that he can keep trying, bc now he finally is trying, he has the resolve, he's trying to realise this thing, this impossibility of rewriting the life he thought was destined through the way he loves yeowoon.

And coming back to those cruel choices, given this fresh context, it made me think. bc this isn't actually a game that myungha has been put into where the rules are dictated by an author completely separate from him. He said himself, he'd rewrite it, he'd change things for yeowoon. And when you start to think of it less as him fighting against a rigid, removed system and more like him being a character in a story he is trying to rewrite himself, that has both the author and his own limitations, or just his own if you're in the school of thought that the author is some figment or part of myungha himself or his conciousness, then you can start to see where these cruel choices might come from. They could be myungha, the author making edits to this new story, imposing his own doubts and limitations on himself. When he says he has to pick between Yeowoon and his grandma, what if that's the new author myungha seeing this story unfold and thinking no this isn't right, he can't have it all, i'm not deserving of this much happiness.

And what makes me like this idea even more is that when we get that second choice between ending after 14 days or getting 100 days back at the cost of resetting Yeowoon's affection to 0, that whole conversation happens in what I think the bar actually is which is this frozen moment in time where myungha is in the water with this extension of a voice in his head that is talking through these things. That conversation in itself needs its own post, but when you look at it both as a decision to break up or not or a decision to hold onto life or not, you can see how the author is just this soundboard relaying the decisions myungha is going through in his head. The author's voice is his own, weighing up his decisions. And if he is the author here, it only reinforces that the person making the rules of this game is him. You can even extend it further to the idea of the debuffs, where he puts in place this thing that makes it so he causes harm to yeowoon when he's around, and its only by garnering affection that he can prevent it. He gives himself a reason from the get go to stay away from yeowoon and reason it as him doing it for yeowoon's safety, when in fact the only way to make yeowoon safe is to increase his affection, which he can only do by being near him. Its a system that at first gives myungha a reason to stay away aka not like himself, but ultimately says the only way you're going to make yeowoon like you, or the only way you can like yourself, is if you accept risk. And that in itself screams to me of a myungha writing in these game systems that are trying to encourage his own-self love while falling at the hurdle of his own lack of self-worth.

The idea is still messy in my head even for me, but i just really like the idea that myungha could be trying to fix this thing both as a character and game master, and that both these versions of him have these flaws that manifest in their different ways to cause the events we see. It kinda is the definition of being your own worst enemy, the idea that in order to work towards loving yourself, the biggest obstacle you have to encounter is yourself, bc we are the ones holding ourselves back, making all these rules that make it harder to like ourselves and pursue our own happiness. The voices in our head telling us that we aren't good enough and aren't deserving are our own, and while the things that happen to us can inform what they say, we're the one's reinforcing those words. And what this show teaches us is that, if we're the one holding that pen all along, we can choose to change what those words are. If we make the rules, you don't have to create a game with concrete ultimatums, you can create a game where rules don't control you. Instead, you make the decisions, and you can make the ones that make you happy.

[orchid-n-petals]

So I've already shared parts of this on a discord server, but I have to scream about Ketheric Thorm on here as well. Obviously spoilers about the character under the cut! It's a long one.

The entirety of act 2 is about him, right? Jaheira, Shadowheart and numerous other NPCs shit on him for his fickle faith. First Selune, then Shar, then, as we meet him, Myrkul. You hear about his changes of faith on a whim, you hear that he's the person responsible for the shadow curse, he is painted as a villain, plain and simple.

You can figure it out pretty early on that Isobel was resurrected and that she is his daughter; the detail as well that he wants Isobel alive is so on the nose, it gives him away completely but there are still a few questions that remain unanswered, mainly about his faith.

And then you get to the mausoleum and the picture assembles; this entire tragedy, the death of hundreds if not thousands and the complete ruination of a landscape was all, ALL because you had this absolutely wrenched, heartbroken father who had lost everything and nobody answered his grief. He was left woefully alone, the Goddess whose daughter his daughter was involved with did nothing to save Isobel.

Imagine outliving your wife and your daughter. Imagine dedicating your life to fight the Lady of Loss, your Lady of Silver's enemy, and then be left so completely alone and in silence with your grief, with your loss. It's so, so poetic how and why he turned from Selune, and it's so understandable as well; he broke. His spirit completely broke. He couldn't deal with that void of having lost the only two important people in his life, seemingly undeservedly so. He was going mad with this and a lot of his ire was likely targeted at Aylin who, in his eye, represented Selune; she's literally her daughter, after all, and it was implied that even before the deaths of his family, he sort of saw Aylin courting Isobel as Selune taking his daughter from him, despite his service. This relationship was clearly not seen by him as a boon of "giving his daughter to the Moon-maiden".

His ways in the past clearly didn't spare him from tragedy and having to cope with it (which he clearly didn't, he snapped under the weight of his grief). He was clearly angry and unable to do anything, furious and helpless, which is a dangerous combination. A good part of his first change of heart must have been fuelled by a sense of revenge.

But then Shar didn't provide any balm to his aching heart either. If you read his letters in Grymforge and in act 2, he is so focused on enacting the will of Shar because he believes that healing lies in oblivion. Everything would be easier if he could just forget, if the damn world could just forget, if nothing was remembered because without Melodia and Isobel, nothing was worth remembering.

Then came Myrkul. Literally the only god who was not only able, but WILLING to give back his daughter to him. Imagine spending your all, EVERYTHING you have to serve two gods who would not give a single shit about the greatest suffering in your life. You were basically nothing, your loyalty didn't matter for shit, everything that was taken from you amounted to no recognition whatsoever: you should simply cope and seethe. Your grief will not simply go unanswered (which is not inherently antagonising) but ignored.

And then comes this supposedly evil entity who can alleviate your pain just like that, snap of a finger and it's a done deal.

I am so serious when I say that I believe Ketheric's main incentive was to extend Aylin's immortality to Isobel as well. You can read in her diary that she feels a taint after having came back, and there are things not even Selune can cleanse, but at this point, Ketheric doesn't care about Selune, vengeance is secondary if not tertiary, he's done that war during his Shar years and what did it give him? Literally nothing.

He doesn't even care about the fact that Isobel is still her cleric. He cares about the single most important fact: Isobel is back. Life is worth living again, there is something for him, and it was not Selune or Shar who gave it to him but Myrkul, and for this singular gift, he would raze the world for the Lord of Bones. Like people can clown on him for being disloyal but the man has the loyalty of a dog bonded to its owner.

He is powerful and is willing to go to insane lengths for crumbs. What is raising a single life for a god? Nothing. It has happened and it will happen again. But Ketheric will go to the ends of the earth to serve the single god who actually listened to him. The one god who didn't ignore him.

He knows that what he does is not the morally upright thing! He is so insanely self-aware that allying with Orin and Gortash and doing this entire plot with them only to then betray them is morally reprehensible at the best of times, he knows that people hate him, etc-etc. He was a Selunite at one point and he's not stupid. He just doesn't care; it could be literal Asmodeus and he wouldn't care as long as he got what he wanted, no matter the price.

He is probably the only one from the three of the chosen who has complete clarity over his situation, he almost sways (if you pass the check during his confrontation), he is not an inherently evil man blinded by power.

But he is inherently loyal to those deserving, and as of the story's standing, completely broken by his grief. In his eyes, at this point, the only one deserving loyalty is the one who actually listened to him. Isobel lives. It doesn't matter that she hates him, that his entire life has fallen apart, that literally nothing else that is good has come of it, because Isobel lives.

I don't think he regrets a single thing. His consciousness might tear at him at the end, but I believe he would do everything over again, exactly as he did, because in the end, his daughter was brought back. Because what would a grieving, broken parent give to bring back their child? Everything. Absolutely everything. And it's such a simply given answer, no second thoughts, no doubts.

Nobody can tell me that this man is fickle. Nobody. This man was willing to burn the world to the ground, create a Boudica destruction layer all by himself for the one single thing he wanted. For any God that would listen.

I don't know, I just have a lot of thoughts about his character.

[evil-ontheinside]

I have the feeling that Mike would lose all respect for Eddie if he sees him together with Steve. He sees Eddie pathetically flirting with an oblivious Steve and pulls a face, then goes to complain to Will about why Eddie has to have a crush on Steve. Will gets nervous bc fuck Mike is homophobic? but Mike just tells him about That Night (the one before 'human anatomy?') and that Eddie can't be cool anymore when he likes Steve who lost any chances of being genuinely respected by Mike. And now that Eddie has a crush/is dating Steve, all illusions of Eddie's charm are lost forever (this might also lead to Will coming out to Mike when he realizes that he wouldn't hate him and perhaps Mike coming out and love confessions and-)

So, whenever Steddie do something in front of the Party Mike has his look of irritation on his face and Eddie thinks he misjudged Mike when he notices bc Mike might be a little homophobic? Which doesn't fit into the whole dynamic he has going with Will but who knows. So Eddie asks him (in front of everyone bc he's not above outing a homophobe to their very accepting friend group) and Mike pulls that face again and just seconds before he opens his mouth Eddie recognizes it as regret and realizes Mike Wheeler is a little piece of shit. "I just can't believe I thought you were cool once" and Will (who now that he heard the story would give a lot to have seen that firsthand) starts to laugh while Eddie fully realizes that he lost any cool points he ever had with Mike

In the beginning, Eddie is so confused bc this child used to admire him, listen to everything he had to say, worship the ground he walks on and now he's dragging him every chance he gets. When Eddie asks why Mike suddenly lost all interest in him Will whispers 'it's the Harrington effect', Mike just nods and that's the only answer he gets

Mike becomes just as snarky and annoying with Eddie as he is with everyone else. And every time Mike gives him that look that says 'you're as dumb as a rock Eddie how do you not know this' Eddie is incredibly close to strangling him but also kind of happy that Mike finally is himself around him and not the blind puppy he was before

Eddie is also reluctantly impressed (reluctant bc now he can't give Mike the satisfaction of being impressed, not when he's such a brat) with Mike's problem-solving bc we know it's Mike who usually figures everything out. At least now he knows why Mike was such a good strategist during their campaign

Steve gives him a pat on the back in a moment of despair and says that it's probably his fault. Hopper chimes in that Mike is allergic to any kind of father/authority figure and that, now that he has parent status in the Party, it's just a natural development. Eddie has a whole new crisis that he's now some kind of father figure to the kids

[kaiowut99]

Jaden, how are you holding that

[msfcatlover]

So. Did you know there's a backstory to Dick's mullet?

Because there is.

Mirage convinced Dick to let her restyle him while she was impersonating Kori. Which he went along with, because Kori had been incredibly depressed for the last several weeks and nothing Dick said or did seemed to be helping her. Dick had pretty clearly hit the point where he was willing to do just about anything to make her happy again.

Which I know doesn't even begin to compare to the many other ways Mirage took advantage of him (trust me, I just read it,) but has made me hate the mullet jokes now, because that was not Dick's choice.

(I'm sure it's just a coincidence Dick's hair & costume came out of it looking a lot more like the future!Dick Mirage was pining over. Contrasts between future!Dick & the classic Discowing Dick was wearing in the arc right before this one below the cut.)

-------------------------------------------

Here's future!Dick...

....Aaaand Discowing.

Obviously, she somehow magically grew his hair out several inches. But even beyond that...

Look at the stripe shape & placement on the new suit, lining up with both future!Dick's stripes & his mesh armbands.

Look at the glove shape, going from a segmented gauntlet to a single elbow-length piece with a curved upper edge.

While Dick's boots are considerably less dramatic than his future self's thigh-highs, they are still much more strongly emphasized in Mirage's version of the costume.

While future!Dick has the diamond on his abdomen like Discowing, future!Dick's costume has much less detailing around his abdomen.

Discowing also isn't the one with a utility belt. A belt which just so happens to have the same insignia as future!Dick's shield. Weird that.

While neither of the prior versions have the little glider-cape, I would like to note it's something future!Dick probably could've gotten a lot of use out of, given the way his sidekick usually carried him around.

.

So anyway, I have gone from being kinda tired of the mullet jokes to actively disliking them. Less jokes about the mullet, more jokes about the rat-tail please.

[twistedappletree]

when you’re trying to get advice from your friends but you all share 1 collective braincell ✨🧠✨

[dysphoresque]

Text ID: How wonderful will be / the end of all things / as my body rots / and I am destroyed.

— All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001) dir. Shunji Iwai

[mzminola]

Preboot Batkids and the Batman mantle:

Barbara Gordon: most similar to original Batman for spying & controlling tendencies.

Dick Grayson: most accepted by other heroes as legitimate successor to Batman mantle.

Helena Bertinelli: actually made herself into The Bat of her own volition when Bruce left Gotham after the quake.

Cassandra Cain: most likely successor to uphold Batman as a symbol of fear & hope.

Jason Todd: most obsessed with Gotham and closest match to world tour of earning skills.

Stephanie Brown: most likely to act the same as Bruce as Batman.

Tim Drake: running away from the Batman mantle the hardest despite Bruce trying to drag him into it.

Damian al Ghul-Wayne: thinks he's supposed to be Batman someday the most.

[61below]

I really gd love how Cang Lan Jue digs into the way enmity just perpetuates enmity (unchecked) like, not only does Yunzhong immediately go ‘if she isn’t a fairy and she isn’t human, then she MUST be Yuezu’ but like the whole thing just escalated (so quickly) from what was just a genuine question that should have had an easy answer: what is XLH? And the thing is, we know that her true form can be read, that was like, the third thing DFQC did after meeting her. Including his instinctive reaction to kill all fairies on sight

So why couldn’t the high immortal, Sansheng, do it?

I think that the protection DFQC conferred upon her also protected her from any kind of magical intrusion or interference, too. Not just physical attacks, but magical ones. But like an anaphylaxis response to allergens, it’s not that good at telling the difference between an actual attack and just someone trying to … what, scan her meridians? Idfk how it works, but I’mna run with the idea that to sample something you gotta take a piece of it, so to ‘read’ her form, one has to dip into her qi. But the bone orchid registers that as HEY YOU DON’T BELONG HERE!!! and does the meridian-level equivalent of throwing up a wall of hellfire around her. Which is why what Sansheng projects ends up looking like flames. She can’t read XLH’s true form bc all she ‘sees’ is the firewall.

(… and ok now I’m actually interested in whether or not the Yuezu doctors were able to do any magical diagnostics on her. Like, did it not register as an ‘attack’ to the bone orchid bc it’s Yuezu cultivation? Did she refuse to let these nosy strangers even do a check? I am CURIOUS.)

But my POINT is that it’s really interesting that the story takes ‘here is someone just trying to defend what’s theirs, but the State of Hostilities is so Hot that even the very act of defense is seen as a Threat’ and gives ‘the INSTANT response to any Perceived Threat is with Aggression. Up to DEATH.’

… and where do you even begin to start conflict resolution from there? It’s no wonder things escalated as far as they did.

[catboyidia]

I DIDN’T KNOW THAT COULD HAPPEN?!?!?! i got bonked because cait sith decided he hates me?!

[itskenickie]

HOW DARE THEY ANIMATE MY FAVORITE MANGA PANEL!!!!

[silverwhittlingknife]

dick and tim in gotham knights 10 | titans united: blood pact 2 with blue filter

they are everything to me

[isogenderskitty]

tw suicide mention

this is extremely dark, but like... hear me out. what would steph even do with herself if she had ended up killing pete? she has no family to go home to, no clear aspirations... and i'm sure she doesn't even want to think about the possibility of someday getting over pete and finding someone else. i can't get the idea out of my head that she would've just... hung around long enough to see the lords in black make good on their end of the deal, and then... created a parallel to romeo & juliet, if you catch my drift.

[spirit-praise-and-beauty]

hey ummmm jsyk the red cross is going through a severe blood shortage. if you are eligible, please donate—from the beginning of august to about mid-september 2023 alone, the red cross has lost about 25% of its blood supply, and has been sending blood to hospitals at a MUCH faster rate than it has been receiving donations.

giving ONE pint of blood can save THREE people’s lives. power red donations (which require certain conditions be met) can allow you to safely give TWICE AS MUCH blood. plasma can be given once every two weeks, making it more frequent, but again, you must meet certain conditions.

also, i’m not sure if this is a thing in just my state or nationally, but if you give blood before October 20th 2023, they give you a free $15 Amazon gift card. i believe we shouldn’t need incentives for things like this but in case that is a motivator for anyone, check what they’re doing in your state!

i cannot understate the importance of giving blood right now if you are eligible and have the means. you could help so many people by regularly giving. someone in the united states needs blood every two (2) seconds, and while three people doesn’t sound like a lot, many people together donating could save up to thousands.

please share this around. it’s something i’m insanely passionate about and i wish more people were.

source for shortage stats: https://www.redcross.org/about-us/news-and-events/press-release/2023/red-cross-announces-national-blood-shortage.html

schedule near you: https://www.redcrossblood.org/give.html/find-drive?cid=p-max-oct-23&med=cpc&source=google&scode=RSG00000E017&gad=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwsp6pBhCfARIsAD3GZuZNFjPI2X1wURQ0VQWnVxx-KYW2rV1ASBZWp6cvpehVLl4wHqmlRusaAuQLEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds