#and i’m dying to talk about ppl with their ideas and interpretations of stuff

[scoutpologist]

Dunno if this is weird but like, seeing you talk about your experiences with religion and Judaism is like, really cool? Idk how else to explain it, its just nice to see?

oh this is. so sweet i needed to hear this ;;;; it’s not weird at all and it means so much!! i very much have a sort of. anxiety? when it comes to talking about my spiritual experience, because i’m very worried that i specifically am being a bother when i talk about it. so it’s really really nice to hear someone enjoys me talking about my experiences w judaism and the conversion process!!!

[musashi]

sending u this ask as an opportunity for u to talk to me abt fi!! i love ur thoughts n words on things nd i don't send asks as much bc i don't have. good words to talk to u abt stuff but i rlly enjoy just. ur Passion nd stuff. autistic people r the best at talking abt stuff i stand by that we r just Epic. anyways if u wanna, i'd love to hear more about just... how fi sorta. changes, over the game? like the Little Things that show her starting 2 care abt link more, or becoming more "human"!

i love this whole ask. you’re right autistic folks r sexy as hell idk how the divine powers that be fit so much passion into my tiny body but i’m glad they made the attempt. 

ANYWAYS FI. i don’t think i’ve ever actually laid this out because for the most part it is incredibly subtle and requires a lot of filling in gaps yourself, and i think that someone who cares less abt her can probably come away from it with an entirely different interpretation. fi’s development of actual feelings are a very sudden a mysterious thing, and i have a LOT of thoughts about them going in a lot of different directions so forgive me if this answer isn’t particularly linear or coherent. i’m not just gonna talk about her slow burn into feeling things, i’m also gonna talk about... why i think it happens.

we don’t get to learn a lot about sword spirits and how they come into being, other than it takes great power to enchant a sword with a spirit/temper a sword with one inside it. hylia obviously created fi and, presumably, demise created ghirahim, and they are pretty much as opposite as two people can be with their only real characteristic in common being precision, intelligence & otherworldly loyalty to their respective masters. 

we thus don’t get to learn how much control the creator of a sword spirit has over what kind of spirit comes of it, if their personalities are organic to their experiences or crafted from the moment they awaken. what i mean by this is like... ghirahim could have been a cold, calculating AI like fi when he was first tempered and gained his dramatics over time, we have no idea how long he’s been alive in comparison to her, if his personality is so much more extroverted because he was allowed a life outside his blade whereas fi was isolated in hers for millennia. or if he just came into creation immediately ready to scream and stick his tongue in ppl’s ears.

i swear to god i’m going somewhere with this. ok. anyways.

fi in the beginning of skyward sword is, i think, how most people remember her--data-interested, icy, and detached. there is a reverence in how she addresses link from the start, even before he formally becomes her wielder, but beyond that she is calculating and precise and rarely wastes words. all of this kinda paints a picture of hylia creating fi, to me--breathing life into the spirit and willing her to be effective, be efficient, be loyal, and be sharp. when you have that image in your head, a lot of how fi operates makes sense--she wasn’t created to have emotions, because emotions get in the way of what her purpose is. hylia made a weapon and a servant, not a friend. it sucks to think about, but that is fi’s purpose.

the game is very careful, however, to show you it’s not that simple from the beginning. because hidden in Ice Queen Fi’s introduction is... a surprising amount of personality.

like this shit, where she straightup just dunks gaepora in the trash because his #Lore is out of date. it’s hysterical because you really do not know if she’s just a) an AI who doesn’t understand when she’s being kinda Rude or b) being snarky On Purpose. and that ambiguity in itself crafts this beautiful air of mystery where you, from the get go, don’t entirely know what to expect of fi all the time.

or this, which she says directly after link hesitates to accept the blade:

this scene, which people who have edgier takes on fi constantly use to paint her as intentionally manipulative, where all i see is... her using emotional validation to calm link down enough for him to take in what’s happening. a really important thing about fi is that she’s paradoxically an empath? she can read auras and detect emotion with extreme precision even if she’s incapable of feeling it herself in the beginning. so she knows everything link is experiencing here, understands that it’s holding him back, and takes care to deconstruct the whirlwind of emotion he’s collapsing under and explain to him why he can and should trust her words.

again this is all in her introductory scene. they write her very specifically to be a seemingly flat character with this... rumbling of something more going on under the surface. so much so that the first time you get to a sacred spring and fi, completely randomly, just starts skating across the water’s surface and speaking ancient poeticisms to you, you don’t question it. you’re not like hey, why is sword alexa doing a little dance? you just accept it as something fi is doing, because fi always feels like she’s at her job, and you don’t know how she acts outside of work, but you kinda feel like maybe you want to.

fi’s affinity for music is another way they insert humanity into an AI without making you think too hard about it. singing and dancing are inherently human, artforms are something we associate with the heart and soul. even teaching a robot to paint is, in itself, an art project crafted by a human hand. but you don’t really... consciously think about that, when you watch her do these things. you just kind of accept that she is this otherworldly thing guiding you. you don’t think about the contrast of this programmed assistant performing music alongside you in a sacred ritual. you’re just kind of like, yeah? i can’t JUST play nayru’s wisdom on my harp, i need someone who can sing and god put a vocaloid in my sword???

throughout the game, fi’s dialogue chains when you summon her don’t change in any meaningful way (besides based on what you’re carrying, where you are, etc) but as you near the end, there are a couple things of note. one that sticks out to me is what she says about one of the mid-game minibosses, who is also an artificial intelligence--

a lot of people laugh abt this line and make jokes about fi being hot for the tall handsome robot pirate and they’re valid. but the thing is, like, from the beginning of her mission, fi knew she’d essentially be dying once the world was saved. and early game fi has no hesitations about her part in things regardless, because, as we know, she wasn’t created to feel things like that. she wasn’t created to fear death, to grow attached to life or anyone in it, or to experience sorrow at the idea of saying goodbye. but this is mid-game fi, who still... never says anything she doesn’t deem entirely necessary, but she says this. for no discernible reason, she says this. it’s an unskippable dialogue option, one they WANT you to see and one that is different when you know where she ends up. admiration is already something you wouldn’t really expect of her, but it’s more than that--she’s longing for her own story to mirror it. by the sand sea, fi has started to realize she doesn’t want to go to sleep.

it’s another one of those moments where you’re kinda like, ‘haha, what, fi?' and then move on. another one of those moments where she kinda does something a little unexpected, but not so unexpected you question it too hard. fi excels at those.

before you go off to fight demise, fi stops you to warn you that it is the final battle, and you cannot return. and when you tell her you’re ready, she says this:

as i’ve said, fi doesn’t waste words. almost always, everything she says is for the purpose of efficiency, and rarely does she offer thoughts without fixed probabilities and ultimate endgoals in mind.

this is a sentiment.

it serves no purpose. it is purely an expression of devotion.

and because of EVERYTHING i’ve mentioned thus far, this line both hits you HARD as significant and foreboding in how suddenly tender it is, AND manages to read as in-character for her to say. because the way they write fi’s humanity is so beneath the surface, so easily missable, so hard for me to even lay out with concrete evidence despite the fact that i’m a person who reads a text dump of all her dialogue before bed every night.

but to me, what lays out fi’s inner workings best is actually her actual goodbye, and... not the moment most people would think, tbh? it’s not her tender farewell that speaks her emotions loudest to me, but the moment right before:

these lines, which would read as perfectly in character if it were early game fi, cut you. her complete and utter flippancy, the way she talks about all you’ve been through together as though it were nothing to her, the absolute coldness here after everything. you as a player feel kind of pathetic when she says this, like you were misguided in growing attached to her and thinking of her as a friend. and you KNOW thats the intended effect, because this is what link looks like:

he takes a moment in that last shot to like. swallow sadness and turn away from her, but even as he’s turning his head, he doesn’t take his eyes off her until the last possible moment. she hurts his feelings! why.

because it’s an act, is why. of COURSE fi loves him. of course she’s grown attached to him, of course she’s happy to have known him, of COURSE they’re friends. but fi was NEVER supposed to feel that way, she was never supposed to have the capability to love, and there’s no calculation she can run to set the uncertainties of that at ease within herself. so those lines up above is her trying her best to reset herself to who she was in the beginning, to snap herself back into the role of an emotionless servant to the goddess, to convince herself--not link--that saying goodbye won’t hurt. she’s trying to cope with something she has no idea was in the cards for her, and that’s why she’s seemingly so cruel for a moment.

all of this becomes apparent when she calls him back moments later and tells him how she really feels. there’s major whiplash because fi herself is Going Thru It. but essentially what’s happening in that moment is she thinks she knows what will hurt the least, but she miscalculates and backpedals and realizes even if saying goodbye hurts, it hurts less than pretending she doesn’t want to.

i think a lot of people overlook that line--“the most precious data i have on record.” fi, who contains multitudes within her. who contains knowledge immeasurable, the thoughts and feelings and stories of thousands. of civilizations, of gods, of countless ages passed. everything she holds within her is dwarfed entirely by what she feels for link, beside link. nothing in her encyclopedic knowledge can even compare to her friendship with him in the significance it has to her. like all things, fi has her own way of communicating her meanings, and this is her way of saying she really, truly loves him. 

in addition, she very carefully does this after he abandons the sword, so it’s clear that it’s of her own will, not a part of her purpose as his servant. for this whole cutscene, up until she end, she drops the honourific and calls him just Link. 

and while i see a lot of people debate if she truly does ‘feel,’ anything, like... she says it right here, she does. whether or not she was able to feel from the beginning or not, she can feel now. she has trouble putting words to those feelings, or explaining to herself and others where on earth they came from... but she feels now. that cannot be disputed.

happiness that she was able to know him. loyalty she wants to transcend lifetimes. sorrow at the idea of them having to part. gratitude that he took the chance, and did so beside her.

let’s talk about gratitude.

in skyward sword, gratitude is a tangible source of magic. it opposes malice, which as of botw is a reoccurring thing in zelda lore. skyward sword has two items--evil crystals and gratitude crystals--that represent malice and gratitude respectively. while the first isn’t entirely relevant, the second is something you’re actively encouraged to more or less harvest by helping people and basking in their thanks toward you. these feelings of gratitude are so canonically powerful in the zelda universe that they can turn monsters into humans entirely, and the outpouring of energy that event causes makes every monster & hostile creature within all of skyloft turn docile at once. 

according to batreaux, the monster in question, this is well-established legend, the idea of gratitude granting humanity to the nonhuman. skyward sword literally said the power of love was canon.

the song that plays over the goodbye, of course, is called fi’s gratitude.

this is just one theory i have on the matter, but... whether hylia intended or foresaw fi to be capable of feeling human emotion or not, i do believe it was gratitude that woke her heart up. whether she was meant to love or not, link’s spirit contained within it enough love for the both of them, enough to touch her soul and rouse her from her cold and emotionless state. as always, through everything, they work in perfect tandem--his passionate heart touches hers as it sleeps, her wisdom holds him steady and level-headed. 

when fi says “may we meet again in another life,” she says it like a prayer, because it is one--she knows hylia, knows that hylia loved link’s spirit just as she did, and knows that hylia of all people understands what the sword spirit is going through. and fi also knows that hylia immortalizes those she loves with cycles, with reincarnation, eternal life without the pain of never dying. fi doesn’t have a soul that hylia can bring back from death nor a physical body to revive, but she works with what she can--and so long as link’s spirit breathes anew, he finds fi. in a sunlit grove, with light bearing down on her, safe and warm and always loyal, even as the world rages on outside. fidelis, she was named for--“faithful.”

the fandom doesn’t really talk abt it, but fi is an angel. she’s an angel god sent to watch over one human, and when god said your mission is complete fi faced god and walked backwards into hell. her divine mission is long passed, but it stopped being about what she was fated to do long ago.

fi began to watch over link because he was her master. and fi resolved to stay forever because he was link.

[flyingcookierambles]

so i finished reading the northern caves

hey its a book ramble! after uuhhhhhh.. a year. anyways the northern caves! (https://archiveofourown.org/works/3659997/chapters/8088522)

i binged it in a whole day. and i have feelings. i think?

so ppl hyped it as a lovecraft-ish/otherworldly horror story and i think i got a bit sucked into that and let down a bit because to me the horror story wasn’t the implied dark magic connections the author had with uh. the Mundum. it was the unreliable narration and betrayal of friends. spoilers below!

so, if you’ve read the northern caves, you know what the Mundum is. it was just kinda introduced as some mystical thing in the universe that the author believed in. whether or not it was real was kinda left open ended i think.

if you for some reason haven’t read the northern caves (which will just be either the caves or tnc for typing speed’s sake), it’s about a group of online friends in a 2004 internet forum dedicated to a children’s book series called Chesscourt by Leonard Selby. the author died before he could publish his final book, The Northern Caves. thankfully, one of the ppl in the forums, metamarsh, is actually distantly related to the author, and in the event of leonard selby’s death and then marsh’s aunt’s death (i think she was selby’s sister or something), marsh’s family got all the belongings of leonard selby. all his journals, notes, and unpublished works left behind. TNC was one of them. marsh (or his aunt or some other relative) scanned the pages and released it online ig sometime before the story. and so the events of Spelunk 04! starts, in which the friend group of this forum plans an irl meet up at marsh’s house so they can go over the author’s belongings and try to make sense of tnc. tnc is, to put simply, a mess. there’s lucid parts and non-lucid parts, by which i mean that there’s entire pages of nonsense and also it’s mentioned that there are 3 entire pages that are just the letter “a.” this can easily be dismissed as the writings of a senile old man, until the revelation of the Mundum (mentioned above) comes up. 

then things so super wrong. 

so, the entire story is a “report” by a man on the forums named Paul. his handle is GlassWave. he is a person who went to Spelunk 04! and is part of the reason why the meeting went so wrong. around the part where the journals abt the Mundum come up, he totally gets into it. the narration around this part gets uh. kinda creepy. it also definitely doesnt help that there were drugs involved - adderall.

so uh. basically. paul and another guy, Arron/Errent Knight, get the Mundum. they dont understand why their friends dont understand it. the solution according to paul? put adderall into the coffee and stay up for 60 hours straight reading tnc in a group circle.

yeahhhhh.

so i personally wasnt super scared abt the entire lovecraft-ish/other worldly implications of mundum being real or not. it was the paul’s state of mind when he spiked the coffee with drugs. it was the entire betrayal thing. 

i personally haven’t really had the entire internet friends experience bc im p shy irl and online. i dont usually go talk to strangers in chatrooms/discord or anything. also stranger danger lol.

but i hear a bunch of stories abt that kind of stuff, the early 2000′s internet experience before ppl had more awareness of internet stranger danger. also i’ve been watching and reading abt a lot of internet drama thru commentary channels i watch nowadays (therightopinion is p good), and uh the whole parasocial relationship thing (so ive seen it be described as) is on my mind a lot now. since we view ppl as relatable and feel like we know them. now, of course, there’s a difference in the personal experience one can have between a youtuber or internet celeb and a person on an interactive forum/social media platform. i would think that more interactive platforms like forums or discourd would feel more personal to some than a celebrity but still. 

the entire narration of paul’s during the spiking the coffee scene was so rational-seeming to him. and then the betrayal that his friends, the ones at Spelunk 04! and online felt hit me. like, i’ve never personally experienced that kind of betrayal since i dont have internet/stranger friends, but still i think it’s really relevant now. on the 26th chapter (2nd to last), the forum comments of JimWind and Sally’s Lil Sis hit especially hard. 

JimWind:

Wow. Wowwowow. I just finished reading the whole thing through the latest bit GW's posted. I had heard things about Spelunk 04 having something to do with restaurant workers dying, but I just figured that was a baseless rumor because it seemed so hard to understand how that could have happened. But what really shocks me here isn't even that, it's the fact that GlassWave dosed his/our friends with hard drugs. (Adderall is just prescription amphetamine, AKA speed! WTF!!!) "GlassHole" indeed! TBH it really makes me uncomfortable with GW and getting this whole story from him. Of course when I first read this

“maybe not even the other forum members, not even the best among them, not even Jim, say”

I was flattered, especially cause GW's always seemed like one of the sharpest and nicest posters around these parts (until now!!). But now it kinda makes me sick to my stomach. I don't want this guy to think I'm one of the "best" Cafe people. And I'm holding back judgment on all this Spelunk nonsense until I hear about it from someone WHO ISN'T GLASSWAVE. (Plus, this is stupid, but there's something that makes it even worse about the fact that the diner has my name :P) No matter how you slice it, it's a sad day for the Cafe. D:

Sally:

Yeah me too JimWind. I'm literally crying rn. First Spelunk went wrong, then we have to wait to hear about what happened, then we finally get the report but it's from this jerk! I'm really sad bc this forum has meant a lot to me over the last year (its been a really tough year for me) and now I'm worried that everyone here might be some sort of drug-pushing creep :( :( :(

before this, everyone felt connected in some way w/ chesscourt and safe. and paul/glasswave was a decent person in the community! he talked to other ppl. ppl trusted him enough to invite him to this thing and meet up irl. and then he just. spikes coffee with adderall.

idk, maybe its just me since i was too young to be on fandom spaces in 2004 and be on chatrooms and stuff, but i feel like when the internet first came out everyone felt safe on it to some degree and the internet and real life were seperate spaces. now, esp with social media like facebook, real life and the internet are super connected. 

the fact that paul caused harm to his friends by spiking their drinks without consent is horrible. but like i feel like to ppl from 2004 who might not have experienced this kind of closely tied internet/real life drama before and also might not have the same sense of internet stranger danger that ppl have today, the idea of a person from the internet harming you in real life could be terrifying. today, i think that horror stories of ppl meeting online and then things going wrong is so common and in the news that we don’t bat an eye to it. but i guess maybe to 2004 ppl, this is like the ultimate nightmare.

when i finished the book, i felt a bit let down by the ending and stuff. it felt a bit anti-climatic. but after thinking about this from (what i think is) a 2004 person’s perspective, this is p awful. and the whole unreliable narration thing was very good.

i thought of midsommar a bit when i was thinking abt the ending. like, sure a bunch of horrible gory stuff happened and ppl died. but the real horror sets in afterwards when you realize that the movie is abt a vulnerable lonely woman in a neglectful relationship being indoctrinated into a cult thru drugs, isolation, and love bombing, and it was kinda shown as a “good thing” bc the protag finally found a place she belonged. when really, she was being further trapped in life, this time in a cult.

idk, but i guess that’s my ramble on the northern caves.

tl;dr - i read an original story from AO3 that was kinda hyped up for a lovecraft-ish horror, but i ended up interpreting the horror aspect differently and didn’t really get the mundum/lovecraft-ish part i think?

[jupiterjunebug]

heyyyyyy you said to ask you bout them hcs about the councils war crimes.... and this is me..... asking away.... blease give me the hcs.... blease...

i was going to write like 200 words but here I am. here i am with a 1.5k word fuckin. Essay with multiple citations. Under cut because I Apologize For Being Like This.

Alright buckle in motherfuckers it’s time for my long andprobably fuckin’ stupid waxing poetic abt the political ramifications ofsylvains current…everything.

“But the worse that things got in Sylvain, because of thehumans, the stricter their laws got. And today they got some pretty draconianlaws in effect governing who can and can’t live there. And the outcasts, wellthey don’t really got anywhere to go.” That’s Mama, in the third episode ofAmnesty, talking about how sylphs ended up at Amnesty in the first place.

We never get an answer as to what EXACTLY “draconian” means. @transagentstern theorizes it’s in the form of a one child policy (hence whydani’s on earth, she has a brother), someone else said it might be a form ofsubspecies racism, my person hc both joking and serious is everyone got ousted forshit like jaywalking and littering. Either way, we’re first introduced to thelaws of sylvain as “they’ll take any opportunity to throw someone off the boatif it means it sinks slower.”

Then we meet Janelle and Vincent, who are NICE, and we meetwoodbridge who’s an ass, and we meet Alexandra who thinks Aubrey should go die.Woodbridge and Alexandra both Don’t Like Humans, but Woodbridge is so goddamnforgettable I deadass forgot he was a character until I started reading ficwhere he got brought up, and Alexandra’s the “im eleven so shut the fuck up”meme and also never onscreen.

The ones onscreen are Janelle and Vincent! Who are nice!Janelle mentor-figures Aubrey despite not having time, and Vincent asks forDVDs of human shut cuz he likes them, and it’s all good. It’s all jokes.

They’ve got some pretty draconian laws in effect.

It would be easy to blame all those laws on Woodbridge, whohates humans, and whose title as “Minister of Preservation” could be taken as“guy in charge of this awful triage situation.” You could blame it on Alexandraor the past Interpreters, and say that whatever they’re interpreting boileddown to “tell all the people that snowboard without a license that they have toleave.” You could say that “today” doesn’t mean they passed the WORST of thelaws recently, but that 200 years ago the laws were shit and they just got MOREshit recently (I do say this, actually, more on that later). That would meanit’s not even the current ministers faults! I mean, except maybeeee Woodbridge cuzhe’s a ghost and his “business” to finish before passing on might deadass besitting at sylvains sickbed until it dies or a miracle cure comes in.

Even if they didn’t make all the laws, even if they didn’tmake ANY of the laws, they still enforce them. Vincent might have a good funconvo with Aubrey about Shrek, but he and Woodbridge and the Interpreter andHell probably Indrid when he was around to some degree, and Janelle who isn’tblameless even if she was too busy reading her books to really pay attention atthe trials. They all still enforce them.

Like I said, this is an awful triage situation. It’s hard,living on a planet that’s in its death throes. They have to do something to keep people alive as longas possible, even if they AND all of the people on sylvain KNOW that it’sfutile you can’t just give up. But, you know, establishing a dictatorship whereyou can get exiled for reasons Mama considers “draconian,” well that’s. That’skinda. It’s not QUITE a war crime, and I’m not sure how else they would’vesolved the issue, but that’s the backdrop of this situation. Sure, Janelle andVincent are nice, but they or one of vincent’s subordinates were probablypersonally responsible for jake coolice getting ousted from sylvain, or atleast they didn’t stop woodbridge from doing it.

OK so step one is “we’re kicking half of our population out,we need to do this, this is the lesser of two evils.” Step two is “where do wesend them?”

The only option other than Earth or execution that I canthink of would be The Corrupted Lands. Now, kneejerk reaction is Earth soundscomparatively awesome for the exiles, yeah? Death is death, and The CorruptedLands would be WORSE than death cuz you end up infected with the Quell and allthat junk. At least on Earth you don’t end up, like, losing your entirepersonality and goi-

Barclay: Anotherday or so and we’re gonna start losing the stuff that we know and love aboutour friends Dani and Jake and Moira and the whole team here. So, as quick aspossible would be better.

Ned: What do youmean “losing stuff”? Are they gonna start dyin’!?

Barclay:Eventually, but before that happens they’re gonna start going a little bit…well, I guess, feral is the word.

Wow thanks for that reminder, this convo from Amnesty ep. 10that just started playing in the room all by itself. That’s right! Sylphs thatdon’t have crystals (like Indrid does, and Barclay is shown holding in thefirst ep, and we know do SOMETHING bc Indrid’s fine and Barclay doesn’t includehimself when talking about ppl going feral. So either that or somethingsomething Indrid and Barclay aren’t sylphs that’d be a whole ‘nother hc post imstopping that here) spend days slowly losing their will to live, then becomeuncontrollably violent, and then die!

But that won’t happen and the council knows that becauseAmnesty Lodge exi-

“-And the outcasts, well they don’t really got anywhere togo.” Thanks Mama. The Lodge wasn’t built on Sylvain’s orders. Every gateprobably DOESN’T have a convenient hotspring that prevents people from losingtheir goddamn minds, because look at that phrasing. They don’t have anywhere togo. The Council had no PLAN for where the exiles would end up, and in Kepler itjust so happens somebody else decided to MAKE a plan.

Techniiiically, before Kepler all the sylphs that weren’tgiven crystals could’ve been executed or sent to the CL. But I don’t think so.And the reasons why the councilmight’ve chosen to send people to earth instead of the other two optionsdepends on your interpretation.

It could be that they didn’t like the idea of having toactually square up and kill people like big kids, so they decided to exilethem. It could be that, while the thought of someone going feral on earth mightSUCK, there’s a CHANCE exiles might stumble on someplace like Amnesty, whereasthe CL WILL make you bonkers, and not the Dr. Harris kind, 100% of the time.More pragmatically, they might’ve been worried about executed people turning upas ghosts, and people in the CL coming to attack the wall.

Or it could be, yanno. War crimes.

Woodbridge hates humans. Granted, it seems like he hateseveryone. But his introduction to the show is literally him looking at the PGand saying “Hi, yes. I ensure the survival of our kind in the wake of yourworld’s countless ruthless assaults.” Alexandra’s not fond either, as herthoughts say: “I wish [Aubrey] would stop coming here. It’s her world’s faultthat Sylvain is dying in the first place.”

How recently did they start exiling people? Was it less thanthirty years? More than thirty years? I like to think it was more. In episode6, Dani says that her type of sylph gets a bad rap because some of her kind hasdrunk peoples’ blood to get more energy. The perception that vampires drinkblood has been around……….a long time.

Sure, that idea could’ve been around during/before theassault on sylvain when some dipshit sylphs just left of their own accord andthen decided to drink people for yolos. Or it could mean that people have beenexiled for a WHILE, and the fact that the laws got more “draconian” just meansMORE people have been exiled now.

A lot of non-violent cryptid sightings happening a long timeago could be chalked down to sylph that WEREN’T exiled goin’ and doin’ stuff,but killing someone to feed smacks of desperation OR being the sort of personthat hated humans so much that the first solution to “im hungry” was “im goingto eat a person.”

Either way. Picture this. Thirty-five years ago, the gate toKepler isn’t open. The gate to NYC is open.A sylph gets pushed out of it. There’s no springs, or if there is there’s noMama to guide them there. No Mama to help them fit in. They go feral in the middle of New York, or in the middleof where the gate before New York was, or the gate before that, or the gatebefore-

You get stories about monsters like the Jersey Devil,monsters that kill midwives and children. La Llorona, who drowns little kids,might look like Dani up close.

Sylvain is dying, and they’re at the rationing stage. TheCouncil has to know what happens tosylphs that don’t eat. The Councilhas to know they’re pushing people that might try to murder and eat humans intoa populated space. The Council has to know that they’re pushing people thatmight try to murder and eat humans into a space populated by a race thatdestroyed their planet.

Killing two birds with one stone.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

✨how did you get into MK? what position do u usually sleep in? How often do you spend on a piece of art that you take from sketch to colored? What are your favorite snack foods? Do you get your hair cut every 6 weeks and do you stick with the same look?✨

hmm mk is a bit of an anomaly for sure….even tho ive been sifting around webcomics for abt a decade now, i really only ever am keeping up w a handful and rarely actually pick up any new ones. i’m the same way w like, all other forms of media, like shows and music and stuff…its not like even me being all too critically picky, coz i can hardly ever convince myself to check out shit i know i do/will like. but anyways i suppose it was a couple yrs ago and me freezing my ass off in a barely-insulated terrible expensive apartment while dying of depression & it was the middle of the night & i wasnt tired, and sometimes i reread a comic coz i realize ive completely lost track of the plot or characters or something…so i was doing that and there was a guest comic by the artist for mk & i was like, well you know, thats cute and funny and i like how they draw, i’ll just put this in a separate tab and maybe come back to look at their comic for once in my life b/c its not like i hve anything better to do at like 4am. so i finished my reread and figured i’d check out at least a bit of mk & when it drops kip on you right off it took me like 2.5 pgs to he like “well so………he’s gay right? and a nerd?” and so then i was like, obviously i have to follow through on this Gay Lead. b/c i mean, you never really go into anything assuming that anybody will actually get to be Not Straight, no matter how obvious it seems b/c you can’t trust anyone. so even though its right there and makes no sense for him to be straight i was still like going along trying to keep my hopes down even tho there’s no other interpretation….even when the surprise came that he has a beautiful Ex Boyf & i had like a heart attack b/c that far along i was already like “woops i also love him” i was still like trying to come at it from some other angle like…… Maybe This Is Just… Um….. i dont remember but i was like ok but seriously this Has to be an ex right? i mean my god. anyway by that point i was also deeply invested in the fact that kip is v….v much many Char Types i love and xtreme relatable plus he’s flawless and deserves the best despite being doomed for the worst……. so anyways at that point it was like 7am & i was thrilled and yelling a bit about that sweet rare vindication of This Is All Gay Right and like gosh hope he gets kissed by like everybody…… and thats about how that went

oh god…… trying to find a sleeping position can be the worst a lot of the time. like, it changes up and i have to do the tossing and turning bit… sometimes its all huddled up and other times my body wants to be stretched out… im sabotaged by the whims of my body re its comfort tbh. like i’ll be fine in any position and then suddenly my limbs or hips or whatever decide they’re uncomfortable. the other week it was only sleeping on my stomach that was tolerable. i guess on avg i sleep on my side but theres no real standard position, i wish there was

phew i…honestly can rarely draw anything in a matter of less than hours. under 2 hours is shockingly rare. it depends on the day for sure, sometimes drawing comes more naturally, sometimes my focus is less terrible…. for a guess at whats average though, for like a usual drawing that i also add color to, i’d put it at maybe, 5-7 hrs? i’m awful at paying attention to when i start/stop something. and i have a lot of pauses in there b/c of the terrible focus bit. but usually i don’t do coloring thats too fancy so it only tends to add on a couple of hours to the lineart, which is helped along if i’m doing it digitally w how easy it is to erase stuff and not worry abt the sketch being too messy to clean up or whatever. sometimes i wish i could spend another eon on the coloring also, but you can spend just as much time on colors as the lineart and i like to do everything in one go too much for that really… plus just that i’m bad w colors and dont expect to ever be as good at them as with the lineart element of things. anyways tldr all you need to know is…i’m really slow :(

oh god snacks…. i love to eat anything really. i’ll make anything a snack or a meal or whatever. i like stuff like corn chips or just dry crackers… i like to eat cereal just plain… i’ll eat a box of corn chex any day. or a box of oreos probably in like one go. i am a fan of cookies and ice cream and everything. pretzel sticks are great too. fruit snacks are great… a few times ive just been in the mood to cut some like orange bell peppers into strips and eat that…carrots are amazing too… theres this cucumber/cream cheese dip that is…fantastic with chips. idk i like to eat most things

i actually used to tend to wait too long to get my haircut and put it off till it’d been like two months and was getting too long in the back and i hated it lol….. i know we’ve talked abt the Homophobia In The Salon how you have to try to wrangle the stylist into accepting that yes, you really want it that short, and keep them from trying to take it in their own direction. and i’m nervous enough w social stuff like that where i cant know what to say beforehand, and doubly nervous b/c of it being really stressful and exhausting for me to try to just like stick to what you actually want and explain this very simple cut to ppl who sometimes will act like they have no idea what you mean…and it would be triply difficult b/c back in the day i’d catch all this shit over having my hair as short as i wanted b/c my mom was having a whole internal shitstorm about me being a wholeass queer and so of course she was gonna flip out about how i look as if that will solve things for her. i always forget that i Was in fact abused for the ol “not seeming properly cishet” business. so the nervousness abt the haircut experience lingered!! but it helps that sometimes i’d find a really nice stylist who would be friendly and remember the general idea of the cut i liked, and i could stick with them and that was helpful. but for the past year i’ve really just been giving myself a continuous haircut myself w the occasional aid of a bathroom mirror, i’m not fancy. my Ideal Cut gradually got shorter and shorter over the years, w it now being maybe an inch and a half on top and shorter on the sides in that General Undercut format. i rly dont like much length on the back of the neck or by the ears lol…plus it doesnt help having glasses when your hair is getting too long. maybe it would be nice if i could someday dye it my favorite kind of blue, right. but in the meantime, as long as its short enough i’m good

[lilietsblog]

LETS GO MIRAI NIKKI LIVEBLOG THIS TIME HOPEFULLY WITH SCREENSHOTS

(update: nope didnt work. guess i do have to save the pics separately and not just copy-paste them into an rtf o well)

last time on: is Gasai trying to kill them??? i have no idea last time she was onscreen they (she and Yukki) were drinking soda from the vending machine????

I LOVE AKISE AND HIS FACIAL EXPRESSIONS SO MUCH like theres the normal guy freaking out and then theres this beautiful white haired disaster

meanwhile I think Yuno is??? roleplaying??? like she counts on him being non-responsive to play out her fantasy of being a caring housewife? anyway yeah she's done this offscreen huh. that was a jarring transition

AND SUDDENLY OPENING its somehow SUDDEN every time and I admire that man I love this opening so much and I cant take a single screenshot reflecting how awesome it is because the entire Thing is constant movement so hey Akise whatcha thinking man I love just the CONTRAST Akise:

Other people:

what is it with me and characters who never show their emotions on their face or in their voice but act exclusively based on them??? like theres this very specific anime trope of a white haired character who is stoic as fuck but instead of making rational decisions motivated by human people logic they do 100% self-destructive things based on curiosity / love / sense of duty / whatever the fuck else and in the end they appear to be missing precisely one emotion and that's self-preservation (yes self preservation is totally an emotion look it up) Akise is that exact trope and I LOVE IT SO FUCKING MUCH meanwhile, Yuno is having trouble feeding an unconscious prisoner... what an unexpected problem that could in no way be foreseen. let me guess: she's going to try to wake him up so he can swallow his damn katsudon ah no instead Hinata intervenes. hon SHE BEAT HIM UP AND TIED HIM TO A CHAIR HOW MUCH DO YOU THINK SHE CARES IF HE WANTS KATSUDON. what made you think speaking up was a good idea here

theres a meme of 'ask someone whos not in the fandom to interpret whats going on in this picture' but you know i think random ppl would identify this situation 100% correctly +- who Hinata is to Yukki. this anime is a cultural icon "Aren't you Yukiteru's girlfriend? Can't you tell?" I love the moon logic this anime operates on, that people inside it are forced to work within. Hinata knows how to put it in the one and only way Yuno would be willing to engage with it, ha. Aaaand looks like it's less roleplaying and more delusion. oh Yuno ah she figures out how to make him open his mouth by pressing on his jaw Yuno honey maybe the police wont come after HIM but after the shit you pulled it sure as fuck will come after YOU then again according to Akise it was coming after you anyway I guess I'm morbidly curious as to exactly how Yuno is going to organize Yukki peeing >_< huh, a sock aaaand Akise goes for the win! two skulls alas I already know One Spoiler that they are her parents, and her actions Almost Kinda Make Sense in that dream logic way so I think last time we saw the bodies they were mummies? but now that's definitely skeletons. huh

okay I'll be honest this is a reaction I did not predict this anime keeps surprising me with happenings that make perfect sense in retrospect, I really respect that about it OH IS THIS THE SCENE THAT SCREENSHOT SET WAS FROM NO I THINK THAT WAS YUKKI ASKING HER but Akise what the fuck are you counting on, that she'll come murder you in person??? I doubt all three of you could overpower her in Murder Mode tbh did you see her with an axe oh right you didnt :>

OH HEY THAT'S CLEVER I like how Yuno goes between 100% self-delusion about Yukki and painful 100% sane clarity about the horrible stuff with the other option being relatively normal interactions with Yuuki, memory suppression about murders and cheerful willingness to kill anyone for Yukki I think that second option really is better for her long-term )= you two do you realize she hears you as well maybe shut up okay no not really -I- know she's thinking because of the camera movement and stuff, -they- don't aaand she laughs. i dont think anyone (other than Akise I guess) saw this coming okay yeah looks like the gamble failed. the mind-preservation instinct of retreating into delusion overpowered the more mundane concerns so that's totally ventilation up there huh. I'm not sure if the gas plan will work for her huh so hum moment of truth WILL Akise send the email to the police or was that just a threat? (orrr the police might know already? he might have told That Nice Cop Guy about it) awww Kousaka's dying message is kinda cute

kinda superfluous - the police already know who they're looking for - but nice AHAHAHA POST LIMIT THAT'S KINDA HILARIOUS THAT'S WHY EVERYONE ELSE JUST USED THE MEMO FUNCTION ah no the rank increased fair enough wait what????? what the fuck @ Deus ah okay to clarify: what the fuck @ 8th well hey it worked out! I still quesiton a ventilation duct in a gassing room but hey I guess there was a lot of gas and Yuno didn't see a reason to conserve it and Kousaka's question is of course why the fuck is Yuno in her underwear. I mean... fair enough, I'm kinda curious too omfg

HELLO POLICE I WOULD LIKE TO REPORT A MURDER oh right... bad joke anyway I like how camera doesn't play along with Kousaka, while he's saying he's the ultimate weapon he's literally blocked by Yuno's head. we know who the main character is oh hey Yukki is coming to his senses! but can't talk huh right I figured it'd be the soda

*whaps with newspaper* NO NO BAD YUNO STOP THAT (she's drawn so prettily tho damn <3)

oh my sweet summer child you don't know the rules of this game AT ALL hum and the girls can't escape the same way he did because they aren't tall enough dude she's gone up against like five diary owners already and came up on top every time you don't know who you're challenging

huh she actually agrees to play the game wonder if that's genuine or if she has a plan like, I can imagine she's just been pulled into the situation and the role of the big bad setting up traps enough to enjoy toying with people and not just getting her way at the very least she hasn't axe-murdered him... or Hinata for that matter... yet

SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED it definitely wasn't just one event tho. Yuno doesn't act like someone who used to be a normal healthy kid in a supportive environment until One Bad Thing Happened and took their entire world. No, Yuno is acting like someone who'd built up the dissociation/delusion defense mechanisms over a long, long time, like, say, a victim of abuse who finally snapped and then didnt find a way to snap back I just wanna knooooow

OH MY GOD SHE SOUNDS LIKE SHE HAS A PLAN IS IT NECROMANCY IS SHE GONNA DRESS UP YUKKI AND HINATA AS HER PARENTS WHAT THE FUCK hum what did Yukki realize that's not a key is it?

IT ACTUALLY WORKED I CAN'T BELIEVE aaand

yeah at least she didn't kill him... immediately hum

Hinata and Yukki are both tied up so I'm not sure what they can do together behind Yuno's back but I know a foreshadowing shot when I see one for all that this anime keeps genuinely surprising me with twists, it does take care to make the events easy to follow, and I like that this is Quality Storytelling

yeah but it would have shown a Dead End, right??? or does it not work like that because it's like a 'secondary' diary, an offshoot of the 8th??? I wonder

AHAHHA sorry Yuno you're used to being up against diary owners, but so is Yukki, and he's been growing more competent at this too

NICE and she'd given him his own diary -> ???? brilliant decision but seriously if Hinata did something to Yukki wouldn't that be predicted orrr I guess Yukki's actions were actions of a diary owner so when he made a new decision based on his diary (again, brilliant decision) it changed he prediction ooooohhh she kicked the key that wasn't doing anything to Yukki in itself, it just enabled Yukki to act, which, again, the actions of a diary owner three diary owners????? please tell me that's Akise and Mao and oh right Kousaka was the third one the math doesn't add up :x I think the three diary owners would be able to find them bc of Kousaka's Diary and that's the 8th's plan

this must look so utterly surreal from the side

Yuno? You're not going to drug me and tie me up and try to kill my friends, are you? This girl seriously needs to learn how normal relationships work and I Yearn to learn what the fuck fucked her up like that.

BAD MOVE YUNO HE ALREADY TRIED THAT THIS IS THE RESULT

congrats Yuno you Fucked That Up

sorry but... yeah. you deserve this

???? someone in the cast lives in an orphanage??? I'm calling Akise in that case

oh nm it's something else huh

ah that's what it was oh Kousaka everything about you was a bad idea ...

... what

it really, really fucking isn't Yukki acted on information he had, and made the best decisions he had available. but he can't control other people's actions

...are these... the apprentice diary owners? how does the system work, anyway? how does the 8th send them after anyone? Kousaka has no clue...

uh was the dramatic slo mo effect in-universe too??? they were kind of racing on opposite lanes that couldn't have taken more than like. two seconds

see that's not wrong but. you really need to up your girlfriend game dammit im just rooting for Yuno in all this. you go girl. you fight your inner demons and figure out a happy ending for yourself damn that felt like a really long episode. probably because of the screenshots here's a proposition of a new function for the tumblr staff: uploading .rtf files automatically, splitting into several posts if they are too big. thats the kind of convenience the social media is supposed to offer, right? oh hey Murmur's diary! third installment of the You Saved Me series

beautiful

you naive fucking child oh my god Murmur

MURMUR NO

so was this, like, a dream or something? hum interesting