Okay this is gonna be rambly, feel free to ignore because like. I don't even know where I am going with this?
I remember when I used to want to be Dean - buying a jacket similar to his when I was 13 (I still have it, broken and old and barely fittinh...). Only listening to the music he listened to (I grew out of that). Relating to him through the abuse we faced. And I thought I was nonbinary, really, but now I know I'm a trans man. It was a recent discovery. Or, more so, realization to be honest. And then I look at the other men I want to be like. Or that I relate to. Namely Gadreel (Tahmoh Penikett) and Arthur Ketch (David Haydn-Jones). Tahmoh is always so soft spoken, so quiet. Gadreel loves the world, despite what he went through, despite the fact he would be excused if he wanted to hate it. But he sort of... Can't. He still has hope. And I relate to that so hard, fortunately or unfortunately. Arthur, I do relate to him in the sense of what I see in him. Or how he let the abuse he faced consume him and made him become a monster. A warning of sorts. What I'm letting myself become. But he also tries to redeem himself. David is fucking hilarious, and he tries his best despite what his real life throes at him. To be honest, he's also transition goals. Both Tahmoh and David showed me that there are other ways to be a man - that I don't have to be aggressive. That I don't need to become my father, always screaming, always violent. Always Hateful and disillusioned. They sort of gave me hope that I can be something that isn't shaped by who I was raised by. That I can be different. That I too, as a man, can be soft. That I can love my family and friends and the world.
And like yes, they're hot. But that's not the point of me liking them, and people reducing it to that kind of hurts.
And so I think of this tonight. And like. I have these thoughts swirling in my brain, and sometimes it comes up in conversations (rarely)... But that one post I reblogged made me like. Focus on these thoughts again. And I wanted to let them out.
When Tim Drake, who was tossed in the Pits after losing his spleen, suddenly crash lands in Clockworks Tower during Danny's Ghost King lessons, all the time keeper says with a 'I know more than you' smile "Ah, so it's this timeline being played out. How fun this will be. Danny, come. I have a new... friend for you to meet."
"CW...." Danny starts, staring unbelievable at his Ghost King mentor before sighing "Why are you like this?"
"Hush now my King. You will thank me later for the introduction between you both but for now summon forth Frostbite, we'll need his medical expertise for this one "
being an adult means we can buy or make as much self-indulgent shit (as we can afford) and unironically have trinkets of our fave things cause our teen years was bullied for liking things and hiding/denying we were ever neurodivergent to the point of suicide. sucks for anyone that thinks its weird cringe but I'm going to try and allow myself to love myself in little ways now
i wish for peace in our lifetime, i wish for love to seep into every crack of this planet, i wish for it to penetrate every heart and soul. i wish for brutality to face its end, i wish for evil to turn to light. i wish for us to create such a place where cruelty cannot resurface. i wish for communities without borders, i wish for human and nature to be reunited by love and protect each other.
persona misogyny is so fucking wild. ignoring literally everything else about the entire rest of the games, every single s.link with a female character is like “entirely for having been born a woman i have had to work twice as hard for a fraction of the benefit. even now, i am stripped of my agency in a position i never wanted in the first place” and/or “i’m put on a pedestal by the people in my life because of my looks. men see me as an object to be conquered, women hate me for ‘stealing’ ‘their’ men. if i’m withdrawn i’m a bitch, if i’m friendly i’m easy. because of this, i’m alone” and/or “because of my personality or hobby or lack of cooking skills, i feel like i’m failing at femininity. if being a woman is something i can fail at, then where does that leave me? i’m scared at the loss of my identity and place in society”
like very consistently they present female characters with complex thoughts towards their place in society as women, femininity as a whole, and facing issues stemming from misogyny, and then the payoff is always “my problems were entirely my own fault. i wasn’t strong enough, i was a coward. but now, i’m gonna work hard to be exactly what society expects me to be (which is what i want to be)! i’m gonna do better at femininity (which is still something tangible i can fail at)! i’m going to try hard at making friends (which was my fault for not doing)! all my problems are solved through personal responsibility (that im totally culpable for), effort (which i previously was not putting in), or you, a man! i am Happy and Satisfied with this outcome, can i be Your woman?”
and like hello? why are we here. what the fuck are we doing. why do we keep doing this every single time. can we not do the constant lukewarm attempts at criticizing misogyny so you can jerk off to your own thoughtfulness, while ultimately reinforcing patriarchal systems and brushing off any deeper misogyny-bred issues as a lack of deference to one’s rightful place in society? like maybe don’t do that? for fucking once? just an idea
i like to make fun of murderbot for being all "i hate everyone, i don't care about anything or anyone, fuck off" while simultaneously caring very much about the people around it and the situations it finds itself in. i love how it "accidentally" ends up caring quite a lot about the friends it makes along the way.
but i think something that i tend to forget is that murderbot actively decides to care - at least at some point in its story.
idk, as a person that struggles with depression, this paragraph from artificial condition really resonates with me. prior to all systems red, murderbot had contracts. it had routine and it had protocols. it knew what it had to do to just get by, how to perform so no one would notice it had disabled its governor module. it was deeply depressed, yes, but it was functioning (for lack of a better word).
in artificial condition, murderbot's routine is gone. it cannot go on in that state of numbly going-from-contract-to-contract, putting in as little effort as possible, consuming media to cope. that option is gone because it escaped (and note that escaping the company was not an active choice, it kinda happened to it). murderbot has two options now: it can either gather all its energy; actively do something new and difficult and distressing; change something in its life and try. or it can let the numbness and the emptiness take over and stop trying. if murderbot wants to survive as a rogue secunit, it has to try. no matter how difficult that is.
the wording in that paragraph really hits home for me. the way the non-caring sees an opportunity to slip in and to take over. does murderbot even care? does anything really matter? is anything really worth the hassle? wouldn't it be so much easier to just let your mind slip away a little, to go numb, to be passive, to watch media and wait for things to happen to you? wouldn't it be nice to stop thinking and struggling and feeling complicated things? to stop making an effort? you've been dealing with a lot lately and maybe it's time to just shut down. maybe you'll just take a little break. just slip deeper into this chair and start the show. time flies when you're not paying attention. trying is exhausting. who cares if you don't do the things you wanted to do, you were supposed to do. it'll be fine. let's just ignore those things for now. just let the non-caring take over. just stop thinking. you can deal with the aftermath later. just watch your shows. who cares.
but murderbot cares. it decides to care. it decides to fight with all it has and i think that is so brave. and i think in the later books caring is less of an active decision for murderbot. once you start caring, it's easier to keep going than to stop; and murderbot, for all its "i'm a grumpy rogue secunit, leave me alone" behavior, knows just how important caring is. so it's not that it doesn't know what's happening; rather, it lets itself care.
tl;dr: caring is not the default for murderbot, it's just the more difficult of two options. and it decides not to take the soft option. it decides to struggle. it decides to care. and so it does.
I’m in love with how they are giving so many subtle hints about Alhaitham and Kaveh’s relationship and how important it is to Alhaitham, despite the way they always seem to be bickering.
Throughout the 3.2 archon quest Alhaitham tells us that the reason why he is so interested in helping Sumeru is because he doesn’t want his daily life to change. After that Kaveh starts being mentioned very frequently by him or we hear other people in the akademiya complain about how they daily argue.
Then, of course, we meet them both arguing with each other in the House of Daena, which was quite the argument. We also know many of their casual interactions and how they go to the café/bar frequently together. Furthermore, Alhaitham pays all of Kaveh’s bills (something no one would do for someone they don't care for).
And now, during Alhaitham’s quest, their tones were so soft (At least in JP and CN) and also domestic. Kaveh seems to worry a lot about Alhaitham and exchanges glances with him, which made me melt inside. I also love how Alhaitham is constantly smiling while bickering with kaveh. Remember, we dont see him smiling like this that often. Which means he really enjoys it. I really liked how after the second time Kaveh asked him if he is okay, he replied with a tease about the painting Kaveh had mentioned before. Also smiling.
But most importantly, something I see no one talking about: the moment when Alhaitham was explaining why he resigned from being the Grand Sage to being the scribe again and he tells us that “It’s important to keep your priorities straight”, the camera points at Kaveh.
I know this game will probably never have any canon ship because they need to make everyone happy, but we do get hints like this from time to time and I think this was one of them.
After all, why would they bother to add all of those scenes with Kaveh when the quests had already concluded, if not for showing us how is what is Alhaitham’s daily life he wants to protect that much? We saw how happy he is, how eager he was to get home and go have dinner with Kaveh. We also see how Kaveh had been waiting for him as well.
I’d like to know more about their relationship, even if it ends up not being romantic (though how do you explain that face Kaveh made when paimon asked if they are friends).
Huh, found an older art piece of the FSM as a child
My anatomy is meh here but oh well. The eyes around him are basically the onis and the dragons. Its the pressure he felt when they were making him chose sides in a war… yikes.
Rambling below cut (and sketch!)
I hc he ran away when he was 14-15. This is him as a kid, basically 14. Also, i thought it’d be fun if he looked like both his sons hence the two toned hair (personally think he made his kids asexually btw cause its hilarious)
I also like to think hes a lot like BOTH his sons personality wise.
ANYWAY that moment when trauma hits you like a truck. As a child soldier, you are robbed of your childhood (lloyd parallel fr) and then you run away making 16 realms, 2 kids and possibly humans as well. You ingrain it into your everyday life and never realise your coping methods are unhealthy until you suddenly realise you’ve hurt your sons, but its too late by then.
My angst material is focusing on the generational trauma here btw
I mean FSM runs from the pressure from everyone around him -> Wu and Garmadon feel pressure to uphold their fathers expectations and everyone elses -> Lloyd trying to uphold expectations from everyone around him…
(Also, so fun cause my lloyd design looks like his grandfather, OOF think of the parallels is what i’m saying)