#and she is not clear on her own motives

[scary-white]

What do you think it would’ve been like if Sue did tell the gym teacher that the reason she asked Tommy to take Carrie to the prom cause Sue felt bad for what happened in the locker room?

unrealistic. susan is too stupid to make good decisions.

[keii]

Mint Eye Yoosung making a reappearance. Despite the red flags in his head, he keeps coming back to MC's quarters since Saeran is usually busy to check up on her.

[qbedience]

[shadow0-1]

I mean i looove Valeria, i think she's portrayed nicely as a woman in a world dominated by men BUT what i don't get is how it goes over someone's head to call her a tragic hero instead of villain?? Aus and all that are fine, I'd do that too but she's literally murdering people in las almas to send a "message"??? She's a friggin drug crime lord that has possibly done god knows what to her city and beyond just because she acknowledged to herself her way is better.

And now she's going to fight fire with fire with Alejandro. C'mon like villains can be evil and they can still be great characters, no need to goodify them smh , sorry for a wee rant

It's true and you should fucking say it

[commsroom]

if we’re sharing maxwell opinions, my possibly controversial one is that “maybe i saw you as a friend, but the colonel and daniel were family” says a lot about hera, but next to nothing about maxwell. like. it’s an imagined line said by a dead woman, from the perspective of someone who is coming to terms with the fact she may never have actually known her at all.

the conversations in boléro are all about the stories we tell ourselves in order to grieve, to find some answers to the questions left behind by people who... “how could you just... just do that, and then be gone?” ... but. they’re just stories. and any one of those stories seeks to... emotionally simplify things, because it’s a complicated situation, and hera wishes she could decide how she feels about maxwell now. if she hates her or not. if she can empathize with or understand her at all. because if maxwell saw her as a friend, it’s so much harder, and so much worse, for hera to imagine a situation in which that is true and maxwell could still have done what she did to her, of her own free will. and in that context, i think that particular line is an interesting story for hera to consider telling herself.

or, to put it another way: hera saw maxwell as a friend. she put her trust in maxwell, something that’s very difficult for her to do, and put herself at risk to defend her. but if it actually came down to it. life or death. ... do you really think she would’ve chosen maxwell over eiffel and minkowski? because i really, really don’t.

[vaugarde]

ohhhh thinking about the parallels between odin/maya and frost/marlow/valerie rn

[dcviline]

the fandom discourse has circled back to “Cersei does love her children and is a great & unselfish mother actually” and honestly I might meta about it again at some point bc it irks me how much people insist on whitewashing her character. You can’t say you appreciate Cersei as a character and then erase her bad traits 😭

I will say show Cersei and book Cersei are two completely separate characters in terms of motivations / actions / etc but before I scream let me just drop this snippet and run

[bumblingbabooshka]

Have you considered Mirrorverse Janeway & Tuvok’s potential ‘Mad King & Her Most Trusted Advisor’ dynamic?

[spiritofjustice]

Rewatching Beauty and the Beast and I’m still mystified by that one Disneycember review the Nostalgia Critic did on it where he said Belle was a better Disney princess than most because she actually knows what she wants and is specific, then proceeds to say what Belle wants is “something more, something she can barely comprehend.” How is that more specific than the princesses wanting to be married, or to be something they’re not, or to be able to make their own choices, Doug??????

[nonsupe-a]

a lot of s4 is unknown mostly cause i haven’t gone digging and it’ll probably stay that way but thinking about the fact that shiloh probably has to bury himself deep in all of vought + h0melanders bullshit to burn all ties that could lead to an easy victory for him,   stalling any process as much as he can.   having to deal with all that Nightmare aftermath of half the tower blowing up in wake of s0ldier boy and maeve.   dealing with the congresswoman immediately after.

thinking about how shiloh won’t get to rest any easier in s4.   how much more he’ll give of himself and how he’ll be even more go go go,   playing the sides to his advantage when and where he can for that end goal.

[brittlebutch]

getting anything written has been a struggle and a half recently, so i doubt it’s going to happen any time soon, but one day i do actually want to write a fic about amy being a canon-compliant, prominent member of totheark 

[wishesofeternity]

"The concentration of Stratonike’s public appearance within the Antigonid milieu introduces a frisson to the notion of her voiceless compliance with Seleukos’ schemes for dynastic succession. In her public appearances on Delos she is distant from her affines; in her own words she was the daughter of a king and a queen, not wife of two kings. Clearly the evidence is not fulsome and does not provide the personal motivations for such decisions or the emotional attachments present in these relationships, and neither can we say that Stratonike never attended to Seleukid interests nor Apama to Baktrian ones. The Antiochos Cylinder’s portrayal of Stratonike shows that her persona as divinely appealing consort got good traction in Babylonia, at least, and she could have exploited it elsewhere.”

-Gillian Ramsey, "The Diplomacy of Seleukid Women: Apama and Stratonike", "Seleukid Royal Women," (edited by Altay Coşkun and Alex McAuley)

[rhysgore]

.

[shisurus]

this panel from the world guide of falin being surrounded by other girls while laios is all alone kills me because. that's it. that's the key difference in their journeys.

as laios states himself, he left the village in order to create a home for him and falin elsewhere. a home that won't collapse due to others' hatred and fears like their old home did, a home where they are loved and accepted unconditionally. but as he soon found out, even before earning money, or having walls surrounding him and a roof above his head- what he so earnestly desired was to meet other people who will accept him for who he is as well. instead, he kept being tormented by those around him, shunned and sneered at. his loneliness quickly became all-consuming until he truly had nothing left except for the monsters in the pages of his book, but even that became a target of mockery and destroyed. that's why ever since the day he left the village, he never felt that he truly made the right choice. so he kept running away: unable to resist and unable to accpet.

and an ocean away from him there was his sister, who never managed to fully fit in herself. but unlike him, she met a person who became a home to her and learned what a true friendship was for the first time in her life. and laios clearly realizes that too when he finally sees falin and marcille together, he can tell his sister obtained the greatest treasure there is on her own- the exact thing he never managed to find anywhere himself, thus coming back empty-handed to the sister he left the village for.

but when you read this part of the manga, laios's focus is on falin's loneliness, not his own. he talks about how it hurts thinking about all those moments she had to spend alone because he wasn't there for her, so it almost sounds like he's the one who couldn't bear her suffering and therefore decided to not let her go again. but we do get a glimpse of their first meeting after that almost-decade long separation in the manga, and then we see more of that in the world guide and daydream hour- and it becomes abundantly clear that it was falin who was trying to protect and save him from this pit of loneliness and depression he was in.

so instead of just doing his best to atone for leaving her behind in the village and making sure she is never lonely again, it might also be that laios was desperately clinging to the one person in the world he felt that accepted and loved him unconditionally. those words he used to describe his motivation to stay by falin's side are the exact words she would've used as well; she couldn't bear leaving him behind in this state. in a sense, they were each other's shackles.

but then she did. she died for him and their friends, and ironically enough, it was by leaving him alone like this that he was finally able to stand on his own and put his full trust in others. to have the courage to reveal who he is and give others the opportunity to accept him after such a long time of hiding. it was a long journey, but his hiding finally came to an end when he faced the others after shedding his monster form. and i love that the person who was falin's "home" all those years away from laios, marcille, became just as meaningful to him during their time separated from falin- the first one to find him and show him that he isn't alone anymore. just as he did for her.

so at the end of the story when falin talks about all the places she would like to go, it's not just that she wants to pursue her own dreams- but that she actually feels free to do so and go anywhere she desires. and one of the main reasons for that is that her brother finally found new people he wants to be with; his own home.

[daydreamerdrew]

The Incredible Hulk (1968) #269

[dana-chan-the-control-brain]

TADC: Thoughts on Jax in Episode 2

Thoughts on Jax after Amazing Digital Circus Episode 2 Dropped.

Massive spoilers below the cut. Just watch the ep before you read.

Amazing Digital Circus had an amazing second episode as we're introduced more to what the adventures are like, and what NPCs are like and ofc the existential horror of being a living AI only created for a source of entertainment.

Also, I love the dream sequence at the beginning, because we actually get some deeper insight into Pomni's thoughts on Ragatha. Feeling like her helpfulness is the guise of like "man, you're not cut out for this like the rest of us" which is typically something a lot of people who have been bullied in highschool perceive genuine acts of kindness and engagement. (which I kind of suspect Pomni might have been, or at least, been a shut-in and didn't have a lot of friends in her human life. )

Jax wasn't really the main focus of the episode, but it wasn't really until the end of the episode I understood his behavior and what this episode is foreshadowing overall.

Since while Jax isn't the focus emotionally, he is definitely the plot device to push things forward. And I mean, a plot device in a very active and quite literal way. He's the one that causes Pomni to clip out of the map, takes advantage of everyone and is just... genuinely an unpleasant person.

I actually really like this.

As, I know the first episode in the digital circus, many people (me included) could perceive or analyze Jax's actions as someone who is "helping" in a roundabout asshole way. Episode Two has none of that here. He just wants Bloodshed, And I love that we're getting additional context on his character.

It's hard to tell how much fan reception Gooseworx saw of episode one before episode two hit production, so I don't know how much of the fandom perception of Jax had an influence on the writing process, but I can't deny that might have been a factor in assuring us "no he's not secretly helpful, he's just an asshole" But I'm just going to assume that this has been part of his characterization from the start and it becomes way more clear as the episode goes on.

But there was something in his behavior throughout this whole episode that seemed off to me. Like Jax was taking up a majority of the B-plot, while Pomni had the A-plot. So I was wondering why Jax seemed to be the protagonist with the B-plot when Pomni was the A-plot when they seemed to be so disconnected with eachother in motivations and telling us things about the characters.

But then it hit me when the episode ended and the two plots merged together.

"who... knows... what could happen..."

And then it hit me.

Pomni finds comfort in an NPC who is going through a similar experience to her and can emphasize, despite their being other humans who have gone through the same thing, due to her self-admitting to being a loner in her human life. Well, she didn't admit it outright, but from how she perceives Ragatha's kindness as an act, or patronizing, it seems like she doesn't have a lot of friends...

Meanwhile... Jax... He treats the adventure like a videogame. Why shouldn't he? He's trapped in a videogame, right? But it really goes beyond that.

The fellow humans that Jax is trapped with, he treats THEM like they're NPCs, while Pomni treats the NPC like they're human.

Jax says to Gangle "Aren't you supposed to be the suggestible one?" Which you wouldn't typically wouldn't say to a person, right? That's something you would say more about a character that you maxed out the dialogue trees in.

He calls Pomni "His Bridge" even.

They're his objects. His tools, his own npcs he's exhausted the dialogue options on.

Jax dehumanizes the players in a way that Pomni humanizes the NPCS.

These are two opposite ends of the spectrum but what really sold it for me was Jax's reaction to the funeral.

And Jax is the one member out of the cast who doesn't even show up to the funeral. (aside from Caine and Bubble but they are AI.)

He does NOT want to think about the Players as real people. And showing that opposite perspective compared to Pomni I think is much as important going forward.

Jax was the plot catalyst of this entire episode, and served the thematic theme of the episode quite well, even if it didn't look like it on first glance.

I absolutely loved this episode and I can't wait for more.

Also... Poor Pomni can't have shit in Detroit