#but has also destroyed at least two whole planets

[razzek]

Absolutely nobody: ...

Me: (literally 30 years late to the fandom) Guys have you heard about these Metroid games?!

[tritoch]

i have seen people be like "if you think what the dawntrail protagonists do in zone six is valid you have to conceded emet's approach/perspective was valid, what you do is basically what he does" and it's like...nah. it's obviously intentionally very similar ("it's like poetry, it rhymes") but there's some key differences:

emet is disgusted by sundered life, which he sees as inhuman, and longs to return to the unrecoverable past. so he does seven(ish) planet-wide genocides. the endless aren't new life, their ability to grow and learn is specifically in question (at the very least they are fundamentally incapable of taking in new sensory experience of certain forms), they're shades from the unrecoverable past, and you are destroying them in favor of those still alive.

also, we aren't disgusted by them nor do we think anything is fundamentally justified if done to them (everyone pretty much no-sells cahciua "we aren't alive so it doesn't matter if you kill us :)," in fact). we don't have like 12,000 years and the most advanced magic known to anyone alive. we are forced by serious exigency to destroy them due to a political impasse with their leadership's policy re: resource extraction. this tonal difference is in fact extremely important.

the endless themselves seem pretty ambivalent about the whole deal. they're bored or they're wary of the way their world keeps shrinking, and it's very explicitly neither a functioning society by any recognizable human terms nor a paradise.

related to the above, basically every named endless turns to the person most relevant to them (cahciua to erenville, krile's parents to her, namikka to wuk lamat, otis to you) and is like, huh, i really appreciate having this moment of grace at the end of my journey to see that it was all worthwhile and to resolve my lasting regrets, but i understand what you're here to do and yeah, it's probably time for us to go. (does the writing put a finger on the scale by doing this? sure, but the writers also designed and built the scales and everything they're weighing on them, so i find it hard to discredit any one aspect for being the writers' invention.)

finally uh no one in the party has kids with the endless or lives a full human lifetime as one of them lol.

it's important to remember that emet was definitely at least somewhat lying about not seeing the sundered as real people. the fact that he has "lived a thousand thousand of your lives . . . broken bread with you, fought with you, grown ill, grown old, sired children and yes, welcomed death’s sweet embrace" makes everything he did soooooo much crazier than what you do. if i managed to convince an endless to fall in love with me and i had a kid with them and i loved that kid so much that their death threw me into a permanent grief spiral then like. yeah i guess i would have to be like "well hats off to emet, folks." but luckily the game doesn't make you do that.

even if you insist everyone in living memory was a full living person that we killed, you're still weighing like a city of people versus 7+ planet-wide mass murders. you do not under any circumstances got to hand it to him.

living memory absolutely is evocative of everything that happens in shadowbringers. but rather than placing us in emet's shoes, it forces us to relive what we already did, to really fully face up to what we have done by promising to remember emet's culture after destroying any chance of its return. after two games going hard on the hope part of the game's central theme of hope arising from grief, now we're doing grief. we are forced to see the past of our memories not as a cold, ghostly art deco cubus-plagued socratic method hellscape but as the most beautiful technicolor theme park where everyone's happy and no one's sad and there's parades every day and your parents are alive and they love you so much. and then the game's conclusion is, yeah, you were still right to let go. in fact, you were and are morally obliged to let go. the living were and are worth more than the dead. our grief in letting go of them may be immense and turns our world to bleak nothingness for a time, and that is important to recognize, but at the end of the day our most pressing duty is to those we can yet save, not those we have lost.

[esamastation]

Shizuroth, part two?

-

In a restroom near the infirmary, Shen Qingqiu takes a long look at himself, at his life, at his situation.

Though he's not Shen Qingqiu anymore, is he? He's someone else now. Someone super tall, super buff, super dangerous, from what he remembers - someone, who like all the great superstars, only has one name.

Sephiroth.

It scarcely makes sense. Actually, it doesn't make any sense! And neither does his mirror reflection! Nor the utterly ridiculous coat he's supposed to be wearing! Even Binghe didn't have his chest this badly exposed! There's so much leather! Leather trousers and boots and coat and no shirt, at all, just his chest all out for the whole world to see!

Shen Qingqiu's adopted xianxia sensibilities are swooning in shock at the indecency. Indecency, he says! He's used to wearing the minimum of six layers, none of them skin tight, and in the meanwhile Sephiroth barely fits into three! Technically two and a half! 

Sephiroth is - he looks like -

He actually looks a lot like Shen Qingqiu? Mostly around the face. Same kinda narrow features, sharp eyes, straight nose… the colouring and the, ahem, proportions are a bit off - Sephiroth is huge, maybe even taller than Binghe! Muscles on muscles, seriously! But, give him a hair dye and some robes, and, well. He might pass for Shen Qingqiu's taller, buffer brother!

Which is kinda, ahem. Shen Yuan sort of also had that resemblance, just in the other direction. Smaller and softer. It probably means something, but he's too busy trying to get his stupid indecent leather coat to close at the front to care.

The coat does not close. It's literally too small. Who would've thought, the big bad badass boss of Final Fantasy VII had his tits out, because his clothes were just too small! What, did he out grow them?

Get a new coat!

Giving up on the clothes, Shen Qingqiu - or should he think of himself as Sephiroth now? - runs his only slightly shaking hands over and down his hair. At least that's sort of familiar. Sephiroth's hair is a bit longer than Shen Qingqiu's, but at least he's used to handling long hair like it. The colour is new, and he can tell it hasn't been oiled like his used to be in PIDW, but instead it has that nostalgic quality of being conditioned. And that's, honestly, something to look forward to! Shampoo and conditioner and, oh, gods, showers! Not only that, but there's electricity, and there are electrical appliances - so, following that logic, Sephiroth might even have a hairdryer!

If only it didn't come with the burden of becoming yet another doomed-to-die villain. At least it's not a scum villain this time - no, just the crazy one with mommy issues who tries to destroy the planet! Fun!

Curiously gathering his hair into a loose version of Shen Qingqiu's usual updo, he turns his face this way and that. Damn, but Sephiroth is pretty. Glowing green eyes and hair like spun silver, and body of Adonis. Yet another beautiful man with a terrible past and worse future. 

Maybe Shen Yuan's soul is cursed in some way. 

Dropping the hair and letting it cascade back down over the pauldrons capping his already ridiculously broad shoulders, he leans over the restroom sink and tries to remember what even happened in FFVII.

It's been well over two decades since he played it! It or Crisis Core - or whatever it was, the PSP sequel-prequel thing with Zack? Sephiroth had made a bunch of cameos in other games too, and then there was the movie - so who knows which version he's in! Which timeline, which moment in which timeline? Maybe he's in Kingdom Hearts! He could be! For all he knows, he might be in some official novel version, and he'd never read any of those, if they even exist!

Safe to say it's before the main game, though, what with him being alive and, judging by things… in Shinra. Figure they probably wouldn't be doing medical stuff for him if he'd already stabbed the president to death. And that happened years after he died, so, uh… it's probably somewhere in the Crisis Core era. Or any number of the mobile games that took place in between, though he'd never really looked into those. So. Uh…

After having his life revolve around PIDW and cultivation and Luo Binghe, it's weird, trying to remember an ancient PS1 game. Though he'd played it emulated on the computer. Thankfully, he's not in that version, graphics-wise, that would've been painful. And speaking of pain…

If nothing else, he's well out of Luo Binghe's reach now, far better than he would've been in just the Sun and Moon Dew Flower body. He paid back his debts best he could when he self-destructed, and now he's off to a whole different world, genre, even the media is different! No being torn limb from limb here! Just a lot of stab wounds. And, well, maybe some medical torture. And, uh, several short-term resurrections followed by more stabbing to death… while slowly losing his mind… and growing extra limbs… uh.

Still, definitely an upgrade from years upon years as a tortured human stick before being killed by his favourite character! And he doesn't even have a System here! No OOC lock! No B-points or System punishments!

He lights incense in his heart for Airplane-bro, all the while nodding to himself in congratulations for this positive turn of events. Airplane would've felt similarly in his boots, surely. His ridiculous, knee-high, edgelord boots. 

Feeling a little better, he rummages through Sephiroth's pockets and comes away with a treasure trove of props. Keys, key cards, glowing marbles of Magic, which he knows are Materia, but which to his lingering Shen Qingqiu sensibilities look a lot like first grade spirit stones… and best of all…

He brings it out slowly and holds it up reverently. It's the most special, most magical thing he's seen in years! It's so beautiful, he could weep!

Sephiroth, it so happens, has a smartphone.

-

*muffled giggling*

[thesoftboiledegg]

I wasn't sure what to make of "That's Amorte" before it aired. When signs pointed toward "the spaghetti comes from aliens," I wondered if we had a rehash of Futurama's "The Problem with Poppers," where the crew finds a delicious treat on a planet only to learn that the "popplers" are underdeveloped alien offspring.

Rick and Morty's take on Soylent Green also seemed likely. Everyone knows the twist: Soylent Green is people! A dark sci-fi concept like that could be a ripe parody for this series.

However, "That's Amorte" adapted a concept that other shows have referenced a thousand times and took a right turn. No one's angry at the humans for eating their suicide victims: in fact, they love the spaghetti and turn it into a corporate product.

This is an obvious shot at capitalism and how companies will destroy the environment, brutally slaughter animals and turn cities into concrete wastelands just to make a buck. And I mean--chowing down on this spaghetti isn't that different from eating meat. I'm an omnivore, but I kept thinking that at least these pasta producers chose to die.

The suicide element gave this episode a poignant touch instead of turning it into an edgelord slog where the humanoids kill people and throw them in a meat grinder. Admittedly, the clones leaned in that direction, and that scene also shows how Rick struggles to understand the world outside himself. He doesn't react when the clones kill each other, but one of his daughters is a clone, and he'd be horrified if anything happened to her.

On its own, "That's Amorte" is a great episode. However, when you take the whole series into account, the plot retreads the same old Morty narrative: Morty tries to do the right thing, it backfires, Rick dodges responsibility while antagonizing Morty to be petty, Rick gets stuck fixing everything and Morty tries to pretend it never happened.

I keep waiting for something good to happen to Morty. Rick has plenty of episodes where he makes positive changes: going to therapy ("Analyze Piss," "Air Force Wong"), improving his relationship with Jerry ("Final DeSmithation," "The Jerrick Trap"), trying to do right by Beth ("Bethic Twinstinct"), being kinder to Morty ("Full Meta Jackrick"), etc.

Season five doesn't emphasize his character development as much, but plenty of scenes show how much he's changing. Even season four has moments where he's gentler.

Rick's being his petty season-two self in "That's Amorte," but even here, he does the right thing by showing the world exactly what--and who--they're eating. In earlier seasons, he would've done that just to be an asshole. Here, I don't think that he was trying to torment people as much as he just knew that this spaghetti shitshow had to end.

Same with the spaghetti itself. He didn't feed it to the Smiths, then show them the dead body just to torture them. I think he genuinely wanted to share the spaghetti because it was delicious, but he also figured that they don't want to know where it comes from.

On a similar note, I enjoyed Rick's moments of physical gentleness. Great animation detail.

So Rick gets a little character development and saves the day again, and Morty gets...nothing. Just a rehash of old storylines. "Mortynight Run" in particular has almost the same plot, beat-for-beat.

"That's Amorte" touched on Morty's depression and his family's coldness toward him but didn't go further than that. Morty keeps cycling through the same issues with no resolution. He blows up in one episode, then shuts down the next. His attempts to do the right thing go astray. When's this kid going to catch a break?

Again, this episode isn't bad. It's funny, original and well-written and has a lot to say about ethics and capitalism. Still, I don't understand why reviews on other sites keep emphasizing Morty's character development because I didn't see much.

I will say that everyone's horror at where the spaghetti comes from was a great takedown of the meat industry. Everyone loves sausage, but nobody wants to see how it's made!

Still, next time we get a Morty episode, I hope that it says more about him and less about the world outside his cartoon.

[grahambaham]

Something that has always annoyed me is the habit of many fans to declare that a villain of a certain piece of media is in the right when they are most definitely not.

A few examples that I can think of right now are Thanos, Magneto and Doom. What. The. Fuck.

First of all, Viktor Von Doom barely even has anything to be right about. The guy’s goal in life is to get as powerful as possible and use that power to rule the world or whatever, prove to everyone he’s smarter than Reed Richards (he is not) and to inflate his own ego as much as is psychically possible. Though that last one could be a result of the first two I guess. He basically wants the basic ass stuff all villains want, even if it’s not what they’re focusing on specifically. There is nothing for him to even be right about, my guy. Alright so the wanting to rule the world thing isn’t for his ego, though it helps. It is because he has a fucking god complex and thinks he’s the only one who can truly do it and properly protect the Earth from any future attacks. Everything about Doom basically boils down to his ego.

Now, I understand how Megneto, otherwise known as Max Eisenhart (Erik Magnus Lehnsherr is just an alias), can be a sympathetic villain. He’s gone through a lot and when very simplified his goal seems fairly noble. Dude just wants to protect mutants, make sure they’re safe and living their best lives or whatever. The problem is that he believes mutants are the superior species and treats humans how you might treat a mosquito. He wants to eradicate them completely, and so the world would be there for mutants to rule over and live happily ever after or whatnot. Any of that sound familiar to you? Yeah… Anyway, the point is that even though we can understand how he might’ve come to the point where he’s willing to do such horrible things, that does not mean he is right at all. People seem to think that the humans deserve it for the way they’ve treated mutants, even though there are a lot of good ones who most certainly don’t do that shit AND so many of them are children too. Because you do know that Max would legit murder even the little toddlers? Not for any reason other than ‘they’re human’. So yeah, he was not in the right. He was not the good guy all along or whatever. He is a villain and a horrible person who has also been treated horribly their whole life. Those two things can both be true. Having a bad childhood does not excuse your shitty actions though.

Last and certainly least we’ve got Thanos. First of all, that fucker did not give a shit about overpopulation or whatever in the comics. Bro wanted to court Death so he went around murdering people and destroying planets to impress her. Not very noble of him, I gotta say. Now as for the MCU, his goal is in fact to kill half the universe so more people could get more resources because he’s seen the way the poor live because of that lack of food and other things essential to living. Now, instead of using that infinite fucking power that he had in his hands to create more shit to give to everyone or, I don’t know, anything else? They’re called INFINITY stones for a reason? This fucker instead decided to just commit genocide real quick. I genuinely believe the only people who think this loser was right are actual children. Twelve years old at the most. Because there is no way in holy hell that grown men and women think Thanos was good and smart to use the INFINITE POWER IN HIS HANDS to just KILL A BUNCH OF PEOPLE INSTEAD OF SAVING MORE BY JUST WISHING FOR MORE RESOURCES OR FUCKING WORLD/UNIVERSE PEACE OR WHATEVER THE FUCK? Thanos is secretly twelve years old and hasn’t gained any critical thinking skills yet, I swear to fucking god.

So yeah, I guarantee whichever villain you think was right was not in fact right, they’re simply easy to sympathise with or their cause is. But if their way of making that sympathetic idea come true is murdering/torturing/conquering etcetera, then THAT MEANS THEY AREN'T RIGHT AT FUCKING ALL.

Good night.

[badass-queer-couples-battle]

Gay wrongs tournament, round 2 of the losers bracket

Propaganda:

For John and Jack:

So, they both are literal murders. One of them is a little bit more insane than the other. Okay, the little bit part is not right, totally insane that is John, yes. But gonna love him though. He had been in rehab for alcohol, drugs, sex and murder. Don't kiss him, he might be wearing poisoning lipstick. They are canon mlm. They had been stuck in a two week time loop for five years, which was like leading a married life for them. They didn't actually marry, but they were partners, both in business and sexually. They worked together for an time agency. Then Jack's memories of two years were erased and he left. He went into  independent self deployment, doing scams using his knowledge of future events. After that he build an alien hunting institute in Cardiff, Wales. When John and Jack see eachother again after years, you don't know whether they will they kiss or fight. They do both. Did I tell you that along this story Jack became an inmortal who can't stay dead? No matter how or how often he dies or is killed, he keeps coming back to life. This is all very scraping on the surface, but oh boy, would it be at least a novella to describe them.

They worked together in the Time Agency where they did horrible things to the extent where Jack had two years of his memory stolen so that he couldn’t know what he’d done. They were also in a time loop together for five years where they canonically thought of each other as the wife (John was a good wife :3), and were basically married. Then they had a divorce arc and they both separately went rogue from the Agency to become conmen, although they still worked together/clashed on occasions, always still with that spark of passion. “Frenemies with benefits” Jack called them once, although John preferred “my lover, my rival, my nemesis and destiny. And bane of my bloody life.” Canon finds us where Jack has tried to reform and be a better person, but John is still chasing cons, and all he wants to do is bring Jack back to the stars with him, back to the crime and the glitter of the galaxies (it doesn’t work and he shoves Jack off a building but Jack got himself immortal so he’s fine <3) anyway I am very normal about them xoxo

In John's introduction to the series he shows up on a roof where some guy is mugging someone, grabs him by the throat and dangles him over the edge of the building while this guy begs for his life before dropping him just because he felt like it. When John and Jack interact for the first time in the show there's a super cool guitar riff, very evil western vibes, they walk up to each other, look deeply into each other's eyes, make out, then start throwing punches to Blur's Song 2. In one of the audio dramas we're told about various times where these two conned people, stole a bunch of money and gold and gems and stuff, then had sex with whoever it is they conned before (sometimes) killing them. When Jack devided he was done and left John to die John escaped and married the queen of England (Victoria) then locked Jack up somewhere to take his life force and live forever, destroying the timeline in the process. John has tried to kill all of Jack's friends at least twice to have him all to himself. He found Jack's long lost brother and when the brother turned out to be a terrible person with a vendetta against Jack John did everything he could to save Jack. Their relationship is canon but very one-sided most of the time

just this video

For the Doctor and the Master:

Immortal genderfluid war criminals <333

So we all know the Master has killed plenty of people, but, despite their reputation, the Doctor has killed a more than average number too. Sure they undid the whole destroying their own planet thing, but that's still something the Doctor did. Also there's apparently a novelization out there where, when they were children, the Doctor killed one of their childhood bullies but then made a deal with Death so that the Master had the memory of it and became Death's champion, which is pretty messed up and murder husbandish. There are plenty more war crimes on the Doctor's hands, and the Master has killed countless people in a variety of creative ways. Also, I'm having trouble finding the quote, but I swear the Master once said something to the lines of "trying to kill the Doctor is just my flirting" or something similar. But I do know Missy (also the Master but female at the time) described their relationship as "older than your civilization and infinitely more complex". They love each other, they're constantly trying to destroy each other, they are the only friends they each have who can even begin to understand everything they've been through; they've known each other since childhood and they've watched (and helped) civilizations rise and fall together. They may not be who you first think of for murder spouses but they really are a beautiful example.

[hiveworks]

June is winding down, but our recommendations are never ending. Now is also a great time to remind you that our creators are supported by ad rev. When you read these comics, be sure to white list their websites and support your favorite creators!⁠

Ghost Junk Sickness by @studiocartridge

Trigger Elliot is a bounty hunter who travels around the galaxy with his not-so-fully-licensed-and-technically-illegal-hunting-partner Vahn Gavotte. They're lousy at what they do and often resort to petty tactic just to get a bounty. This is their life. Their home planet, June 7, is a world rebuilding itself form an inexplicable catastrophic phenomenon that destroyed 75% of the planet's surface. It has been 5 years since the destruction of June 7 and the planet now thrives on the transient and growing population of bounty hunters. Trigger and Vahn's routine changes when an ambiguous huge bounty surfaces; an alleged bounty hunter killer named "the Ghost" with frightening abilities and an unknown motive. When Trigger's past catches up with him, there begins a strain on his and Vahn's hunting dynamic, forcing them to become further involved in chasing the elusive and unpredictable ghost. Ghost Junk Sickness is an action packed sci-fi LGBTQ+ comic created by CARTRIDGE.

Kochab by Sarah Webb

Kochab is a YA wlw fantasy comic about two girls lost in a pile of ruins under the woods, inspired by various myths and fairytales. A lost skier trying to survive a snowy wilderness and find her way back to her village stumbles across and awakens a fire spirit trying to fix the home that she’s let fall apart around her.

Shaderunners by Alex Assan & Lin Darrow

A thousand years ago, the last colour in the world faded to grey. Now, after the great archaeological discovery of Queen Sorizahana’s shade-stocked tomb, it stands ready to enter the world again. Ironwell City will become the birthplace of the burgeoning colour industry, where colour is pumped out of factories, poured into perfumed bottles and sold at exorbitant prices to those wealthy enough to afford the luxury. At least, that’s the plan according to the Five Financiers of the Sorizahana excavation. One part Prohibition fantasy, one part Robin Hood, and a whole lot of epic heist, Shaderunners follows a group of ragtag bootleggers and bohemians who band together in an effort to steal colour from the wealthy echelons of Ironwell’s high society. Among them: a philosopher, a puppeteer, a gutter rat, an opera singer, a naval officer and a hopeless romantic. Together, they run The Glass Dial, former watch shop and future night club, where all the house drinks run red. Speak easy, pal, ‘cause the road to ruin is paved with good intentions.

Augustine by @windywallflower

Augustine follows the adventure of August and her friends: Brick, Heti and Ande as they survive in the perilous region known as the Crater. You can call them all Trouble (with the capital T) as they wrack up bounties for their rowdiness, most especially from the local head honcho Tanto the Bull. During these escapades, however, the group stumbles into an ancient artifact, a possible piece of an old myth surrounding the Crater. This discovery soon leads them down a path of chaos, chased by bounty hunters and old forgotten gods. This comic uses aspects of Greek Mythology, and delves into concepts of ancient relics and the deities they represent and what it means to find your own family.

[south-sea]

i've been promising it for ages, so here are finally some notes on the two iterations of black arms/doom i write for. in this house we ignore the "black doom is an evil space tyrant for the sake of being an evil space tyrant" thing and have fun exploring his motives from different angles

(it's because i had no idea that was even a thing until like a week ago. i've always thought the motivator was Just Food, and i like that significantly more.)

i like to think of eclipse's paternal qualities as something telling to black doom/the species as a whole, at least outside of canon instances. so that's an intentional trend across both.

it's also intentionally implied the alt arms are more or less what aruna's hive could/would have turned out like if he were less traditionally stubborn and foolhardy.

as for their plans and how things ended up:

alt doom started out as generally interested in how humanity might progress. once in contact with gerald, his plan was to trade his DNA for the chaos emeralds as a source of energy for the black comet, as its at-the-time power would have been mostly depleted by the time it circled back around in 50 years. this agreement was doomed to fail; both he and gerald almost immediately realized how badly it could backfire, got paranoid, and mutually planned to destroy each other. the fact humans are good sustenance for the black arms was just a convenient bonus at that point.

given shadow didn't make it past SA2 on this timeline, it left sonic to defeat the black arms. and in sonic fashion, this meant putting them in their place and sending them packing without properly destroying them.

alt doom is not so much one to accept he's been beaten, and more one to re-approach something from a different angle once he realizes his methods were flawed. this leads to him picking up and just going Somewhere Else. he's a scientist too, on some level. he can figure it out. and he does. rather than being all traditional and stubborn, he learns to work with other species, which in turn leads to securing better/more diverse materials, more ethical/convenient food sources, etc. the arms' population booms and advances at breakneck pace from then on. they diversify and spread out. without having to fight for survival, things are chill. it's considered the good end.

aruna's is the bad end. shadow is present on this timeline, and summarily wrecks his entire shit (for good reason).

the trouble with aruna's hive is it was in a constant state of nutritional deficit. they were the multiverse's scavengers, tending to pick planets clean whose populations were already critically low. not for any moral or ethical reason, just that the hive itself was so comparatively small in numbers, they didn't much have a choice.

this led to desperation. he got Tired of it. his last ditch effort to secure some means of easier travel/means to acquire food was to obtain the chaos emeralds. so he struck a deal with gerald, as these things always go.

he comes back 50 years later, finds his son has sided with the humans, and just snaps. just goes absolutely nuclear. if the deal isn't going to be upheld, and shadow sees the black arms as The Enemy, then he's just going to take the emeralds (and by extension the whole planet itself) by force. he's done playing nice. he and his people are starving. have been starving for enough years he's lost count.

this ends with the entire comet being blown up, and that's the last thing he sees as he's falling back to earth.

what all goes on after that point is between nobody but him, the multiverse's worst and, somehow, eventually, a familiar fallen god. (it's going in another aruna-centric post, some day, maybe, i hope.)

there's even still more i could say about how their respective hives operated and how they interacted with them personally, but that also needs to go in another post because this one's already long enough. but oh man is there more to say.

(and a shoutout/direct link to @motobug as always for the mobian design)

[infinitevacancy]

Was looking through some tags and I saw you reblogged a picture of Jill Valentine and you basically gave some meta about the catsuit and why Wesker did it, and I just wanted to let you know that your observation/meta was spot on and I like the way you think. Hope you’re having a very good week.

ty! idk how long ago this was but for anyone reading this after the fact:

i hate jill's design in resident evil 5 because it's so anathema to her character - the devs of the time pretty blatantly said that they wanted to make her look sexy, which is also why the P30 control device is on her chest - and it's generally, from a doylist perspective, the worst thing that can ever happen to a person's favourite character.

however.

however.

if you take Jill's change of hair, outfit, and general presentation as a direct result of Wesker now having complete control over her... it all makes a lot more sense.

Wesker is an egomaniac with a god complex who sees everyone else as inferior to him - so to have two regular people - jill valentine and chris redfield - continually pop up to ruin his plans and by extension contradict his worldview must be maddening.

then Lost in Nightmares happens, and despite once again failing to kill chris thanks to jill, wesker now has her in his clutches. the in-game documents shed some light on what happens next, so i'll just focus on the fact that now the bad guy with a god complex now has one half of the biggest obstacle to his supremacy over the human race under his control.

Wesker is arrogant. you could consider it his fatal flaw - he has a lot of those, but his arrogance proves to be his downfall by the end of the game... because he doesn't just kill Jill. he wants to break her and Chris, psychologically and emotionally, and let's face it he might not even want to kill them then. i think it'd be perfectly in character for Wesker's projected endgame plan to involve having both Chris and Jill as unwilling thralls, unable to resist and screaming silently the whole time as he forces them to help him destroy the planet and watch.

so what Wesker does is he puts Jill in a torturous situation - it's not expanded upon much but he forces her to infect civilians with bioweapons; which is absolutely going to fuck up someone who has dedicated their life to preventing such a thing, and also gives some insight to how Wesker views said civilians - as tools to further his own twiated ends. he even further assaults her mental state with the aforementioned catsuit and blonde hair, the superficial changes that act to remind Jill that her life and body are no longer her own to control - that's Wesker's territory now. you could extrapolate a deeper meaning from this about how patriarchal society views women's bodies, but RE5's dev team already proved me right.

so Wesker dehumanises and degrades Jill for three years, files off every sign of autonomy he can find and forces her to commit atrocities in his name. and then he pits her against Chris in a fight to the death, knowing that the only way it's going to end is with at least one of them dead - if not both - and the survivor wracked with guilt and misery.

but he doesn't count on Sheva. Wesker practically ignores her at every turn in dialogue, and i think he only refers to her once ("don't you two ever tire of failing your mission?") and i think it's another case of accidental brilliance by capcom where they want to make the game a big Chris vs Wesker showdown, but have to reckon with the fact it's a 2-player co-op game. Sheva helps Chris in disarming and freeing Jill, and then they work in tandem to exploit a weakness (that they only know about because of Jill! because they were able to save her because Wesker didn't just kill her!) and then finally they kill Wesker together, as partners and equals.

i don't really have a conclusion to this post, it was a lot of rambling, but my read of RE5 is that Wesker is very much aggrieved by Jill having the audacity to interfere with his plans and then putting her down in every way possible as punishment - and does this in big ways (P30 mind control shenanigans) and small ways (putting her in sexualised outfits) in order to cause her as much trauma as possible.

[pocketgalaxies]

what did you mean about laudna and ashton driving you nuts?

mmmmm. dangerous territory! for me, i mean. to indulge the side of me that don't give a fu about–

it's pretty interesting how this ep turned out to be a direct comparison between laudna and ashton and how they discover and come to terms with the idea that there is an option for them to ostensibly destroy themselves in the name of protecting/helping/saving the rest of the party

a few ppl have already discussed this with far more thought and nuance than i'm willing to put into words right now but something something both of them taking this as an opportunity to Be Useful and Contribute to the cause, blind or perhaps willingly ignorant to the fact that these people love them for who they are and that they don't need to Do Something in order to be loved - in fact, losing them is actually a far less acceptable outcome to the party than whatever reward they perceive to be gained from their self-sacrifice. which is all very sad and tragic and juicy and pulls at the heartstrings which i always love. but this is kind of where the similarities end?

laudna follows this with a conversation in which she tells imogen what she would want to happen in rather explicit terms. and when imogen responds by saying she'll do everything in her power to stop it from getting to that point, laudna says "i can accept that." the next morning, they tell the whole group what happened. on the other hand, ashton pulls fearne aside and has their own grave conversation but in more vague terms, at least in the sense that i don't think fearne picked up what they were putting down or at the very least wasn't given the opportunity to really process and respond to what was asked. and then ashton isolated the two of them from the rest of the group to undergo this transformation without their knowledge. all of which drives me nuts! to see the direct comparison in which one is so much more communicative than the other

and i don't think it's fair to say that this is a consequence of the party being poor communicators overall. it's somewhat reminiscent of vax's initial response to scanlan leaving in c1 - we don't know your mother's name because you never talked about it. aka there's a difference between ashton bringing up this desire or plan to hold both shards and everyone brushing it off/not sufficiently exploring it vs. ashton choosing not to ask for their opinions, ideas, or feelings about it because he thinks they won't let him do it. he unilaterally made the decision for everyone, which is the most frustrating part for me. they presume to know what is best for everyone, and they presume to know that this is the only option, despite being surrounded by not only some of the most powerful people on the planet but also the people who care for them the most. which he said himself: nobody will miss me when i die, given that we all die - implicitly saying that if i am the only one who dies, i know you all will miss me. so to me it feels disrespectful to them, because even having acknowledged that they care, he doesn't trust that they might have ideas for a better solution or that they might recognize what this means to him and try to help him survive it. or that they might not want to be "saved" if it means losing him. or that they might like to say goodbye.

i know many people are saying that this is in line for ashton's character, frustrating or not, which i think is true. but it feels stagnant to me. ashton has come a long way in terms of learning to care for these people but they have learned little about being cared for. and while laudna is trying to believe what others say to her (that they love her, that she's important, that she deserves life) with varying degrees of success, to me ashton feels like they have made minimal progress and/or aren't trying to make progress. they refuse to see bells hells for what they so loudly and clearly are - people who love and care for each other, ashton included. and unfortunately, 77 episodes in and coming up on a vastly important mission (the first in a while), this brand of hypocrisy (taliesin's words not mine!) and lack of awareness for the group's feelings in the name of High Risk High Reward is something i have a rather low tolerance for ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

and for the record i've been thinking about this a loooot because i know most of it is colored by my general apathy toward this character. and i understand that a lot of people who love this character are so so fascinated by and invested in what happened. but my apathy toward ashton is something that i've tried to circumvent or logic my way out of a LOT in the past few years and at this point it's kind of an immovable object. and doing mental gymnastics to try and enjoy someone that i simply don't makes everything so much worse! so i don't mean to rain on anyone's parade but these are my thoughts whether i like it or not

tl;dr the end of this ep didn't make me excited, it just kinda made me feel annoyed and crazy. sorry

[brujitaadinbo]

They say that mothers have a highly developed sixth sense for everything and let me tell you that I fervently believe it. I just checked this after watching Ahsoka with my mom, she has no experience in SW, she never watched Rebels and it was her first time watching the series, just like when she watched The Mandalorian, she deduced a lot of things just by watching.

I can only tell you that I always base myself on the facts and what has been seen on TV.

Sabine definitely feels something more for Ezra and it is not simply a "sisterhood" I love that both here and in The Mandalorian they show you the characters in their worst moments, in depression, in their duels and in some way they also show you that sometimes what they want or need the least is what actually helps them, or it's what they want or need.

Bo Katan did not want to see Din again and technically managed to save his life, give him back his planet, build a beautiful relationship (because it is, canon or not, they combine very well and hate will not change my mind) And above all, return some glory to the Mandalorian people.

Sabine lost her family and doesn't want to know anything, she lives her grief and a very particular one, she distances herself from everyone and takes refuge in Ezra's home, she takes care of his things and unites hers in that hiding place. Grief can be experienced in many ways but let's be honest, when you lose a family member, especially a brother, it is hard and very difficult but unfortunately life has to go on, it is very different from when a mother loses her child or when someone you lose your loved one.

Sabine shows it in every moment, it hurts her not to know what happened to Ezra, she is immobile, the pain does not allow her to move forward. My mom, seeing this, asked me, who is Ezra? Why she miss him so much? I replied, you have to keep watching, I won't tell you anything. But in particular we both agreed that when Ahsoka showed hope to see him again, with the map, Sabine came back to life. He regained the shine on his face.

We also agreed and you can see that Ahsoka had that feeling all the time, that knowing, that Sabine had an irrational need to see Ezra again. That's why he says it more than three times. Until the moment he says, Can I count on you? Somehow he doubts and senses that Sabine did not destroy that map.

That's why Baylan convinces her to go together to Peridia, for his "lost friend" despite all odds. That's why Thrawn also tells him so. "that foolishness of finding your lost friend" and she answers "you would never understand" because Sabine has always been defensive about the feelings she unconsciously shows towards Ezra and does not recognize them even when she is exposed. That's why she hide them and I'm sorry, but I do have a brotherhood with someone, very close, I don't care what they think, I show my affection because we are brothers. I explain?

It doesn't make sense unless they're setting up something big later.

The best thing is the moment of Sabine and Ezra's reunion, the hug that "according to them" doesn't prove anything, but the sighs I could hear, well, why hide what you feel? My mother told me "They hug each other very affectionately, it doesn't seem like their friend, it seems like it's the boy they like"

Also when Ahsoka already finding these two, she tells Sabine "Looks like your bet paid off" In the end Sabine feels good because she found Ezra in some way or another, that irrational foolishness calms down and even her use of force is shown magically… coincidence???

I don't believe it. and to conclude...

Sabine prefers that Ezra go home, the whole situation becomes complicated and at least she knows that he is alive and well, her heart is calm. Now he knows that he should be with Ahsoka, she is his teacher in a way, she gave him back the hope of finding Ezra, of seeing him again. He has to be with Ahoska because thanks to her she was able to see him again.

To affirm that Ezra and Sabine only see each other as brothers is to deny the facts and deny what was experienced in Rebels, the development of the relationship of these characters and above all to deny that Sabine prefers Ezra to the galaxy.

I'm sorry but I will also send this ship and not abandon the DinBo, only time will tell us who was right or at least what will happen to all of them.

this is the way....

[omgahgase]

din "fuck around and find out" djarin is a hothead. he acts first then doesn't even bother asking questions after bc what's the point when the blade of his knife is already pressed to someone's throat?

luke "i will literally put myself in front of a blaster for you" skywalker is also a hothead, but he's asking questions while also trying to stay alive. sometimes it works out, other times it doesn't, tho he still manages to survive (just barely).

so what happens when these two end up dating? their sisters are officially Over It.

bo-katan needs to com leia at least once a week to check in and make sure luke hasn't asked din to go investigate another destroyed jedi temple with him and get captured by only god knows what is lurking in there (again). leia has send bo detailed reports of what din and luke destroyed while trying to save an outer rim planet from pirates or other sentients who want to take over or—and this is new—a herd of local creatures who have somehow multiplied in thousands and is now running amok. that wasn't a happy day for anyone.

bo and leia have had to drop everything they're doing tine and time again to save their brothers bc no matter how capable din and luke are, they're still humans with faults and weaknesses and so much stupidity they can fill a whole planet's ocean with it. but do they continue to do it? yeah, of course. they'd be as stupid as dinluke if they didn't.

honestly, dinluke are just two guys who want to live normally and settle down but they somehow find themselves in situations—not always caused by them!!—where they almost die and their sisters have to come to their rescue and they get their heads chewed off bc their both so stupid.

and yes, grogu is always with them, and yes, grogu is the one to snitch

[bigblueoctoling]

I Hate Octavio With All Of My Heart

I'm genuinely so pissed about Octavio being at the grand fest at all. Like it's genuinely a serious hampering on what is otherwise a really nice event. It's even worse that cuttlefish is there. This genuinely severely lowers my opinion of the Splatoon writers.

So like. On its face, I despise the general angle of going easy on Octavio. It's not headcanon that he's objectively a pretty terrible person for a lot of reasons- like, it feels very intentional that one is meant to read it like Octavio is an old war vet who's artificially keeping the "us vs them" mentality of the great turf war. It feels intentional that one is meant to read him as a very vain and controlling person who actively spreads propaganda (see Splatoon 1). It feels intentional that, at the *VERY* least, what Octavio did to Callie in Splatoon 2 was Bad, if not Morally Reprehensible. It feels like, with the way Octarian society is described in Octo Expansion and Side Order, we're textually meant to read the hyper-militarization of their society as a bad thing.

I feel like, if Splatoon was ultimately intending to present Octavio as a morally grey antihero type of character, they have completely and utterly failed to do so. Merely having him be the leader of Octarians doesn't implicitly make him a good guy just because Octarians are oppressed- Octavio is obviously, on some level, a figure with political power in Octarian society. Octo Expansion largely served to show that the surface world has progressed past the conflict of the Great War- so if Octarians are still facing oppression, that only really falls into the hands of the Octarian elite. If the intent was EVER to imply that that doesn't define Octavio, they made literally no effort to show it.

All of this being said, you could still argue that Octavio's help in Splatoon 3's ending is meant to represent him turning a new leaf- It's an argument that I'd still fervently disagree with, but you could hypothetically make that argument.

Except Splatoon also doesn't make that argument. Literally one line Marie says in the post-game has her posit that Octavio might have turned a new leaf- A line I've always hated, but it feels as though the game has just sort of ignored the busywork of actually showing that any change has been made to the primary antagonist of the franchise and has just leapt to the conclusion because Octavio has done one vaguely morally good action ever- an action done to save the planet, which obviously is also in his own personal best interest.

Isn't Octavio, like, a threat? Like, he literally has a criminal record and is a military leader, why is he allowed at this venue?

Moreover, why are Octavio and Cuttlefish suddenly chummy?

The fact that Octavio is sat with Cuttlefish makes this feel like a cheap, hollow gesture to appeal to the fandom- like, yeah, people like to ship cuttlefish and octavio, but that's not, like... basis to decide what the canon is? Like, you need to actually establish their relationship in the canon first, you need to show them interacting together LITERALLY A SINGLE TIME BEFORE JUST ACTING LIKE THEY'RE BEST FRIENDS WHEN EVERY SINGLE PREVIOUS INTERACTION BETWEEN THEM WAS DIRECTLY ANTAGONISTIC.

And, just to reiterate: I DESPISE the idea of shipping the two of them. Not for any moral reasons, I just personally find both characters wretched people. But like, if you wanted to do this, you should actually do it? Instead of just plopping a literal war criminal in the middle of a venue as if it's totally fine. Like I genuinely despise that he's here. It's so fucking lame.

I think if you actually give a shit about Octavio's character, you should be pissed too. Like... They're just acting like they've totally redeemed Octavio and he's gone through a whole redemption arc when he's done literally ONE GOOD THING EVER, and it was still something exclusively for his personal gain (the planet not being destroyed). This is pretty major character development they're just not actually bothering to do or explain they're just sort of shoving him and cuttlefish together as if that instantly makes them best friends. It's so fucking lame and pandering, it feels like the end of a cheap kids movie where they have a funny dance party and the main antagonist is also there for no reason.

Like, I genuinely gotta wonder, is it my fault? Am I the one who doesn't see the textual evidence of Octavio being a good guy, somehow? Have I somehow missed something? Because it genuinely feels like a complete rejection of how they've characterized him up to this point, to just suddenly act like Octavio has been redeemed and there's totally nothing wrong with being his best friend. Like I feel like I've been playing a different Splatoon Franchise than anyone who'd think that's normal.

[theaviatorthatcouldnotfly]

I miss Milo Murphy's Law :(( did you have any Season 3 ideas?

jsbfksjflls I HAVE SO MANY IDEAS ANON YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE-

of course milo and zack getting chased by something big and round in the first episode (maybe some topiary thing because it would be spring)

milo and his new telepathy!! chad feels kinda down and milo gives him a hug and tells him he hopes he feels better soon. joni is uncomfortable in class because it's way too cold and milo gives her a spare jacket. bradley is nervous about not doing well on his math test and milo wishes him good luck and tells him he'll do great. amanda forgets her eraser at home and panics for a second before milo, from across the room, tosses one onto her desk.

(and all the whole everyone's just like ".........how'd you know when I didn't even SAY anything" and milo's all "well, what doesn't kill you on an alien planet only gives you telepathy!" and no one can tell if he's joking or not)

oh and speaking of bradley: an episode where he and milo get trapped in a classroom or just have to spend the entire day together and within the span of 11 minutes of one-on-one interaction with milo he kinda has a "huh. you're not so bad" kinda moment. he even lets milo hug him for an entire 2 seconds at the end!!!!

for the sake of continuity some recurring character/s have their "a big round thing is rolling through the school and it may or may not be caused by my own actions so I need to stop it before things get destroyed!!! also 'just roll with it' is magically playing in the background idk how that happened" subplot

an episode with the kiddos (the entire mid-afternoon snack club group + chad pls) spying on mr drako (chad insisted) to determine whether he really is a vampire. in the end there is still no definitive answer and everyone but chad is tired

i need dakavendish follow-up i need them to be the biggest losers in existence with each other

they absolutely have to call each other "balthazar"and "vinnie" at least once

joshua pruett mentioned that they were playing around with dakavendish being promoted and actually getting opportunities to save the world but they (particularly cavendish) end up hating it. I need that to happen. I NEED IT. the angst potential has entered the room

ZALISSA FOLLOW UP!!!! a bit of awkwardness perhaps bc they are dorks. romantic directness on the same level as S2 milanda please

also more milanda more milanda more milanda im-

another school dance episode!!

zack has to take care of his twin siblings for the day and they want to meet the other two members of the infamous trust triangle so he goes and invites milo and melissa over. chaos ensues and by the the time milo and melissa leave the house the front section of zack's lawn has been burnt to a crisp and the twins have fallen fast asleep even though it's barely 7 in the evening

MEETING YOUR SECOND DIMENSION COUNTERPARTS???? since season 3 was supposed to be directed towards interdimensional stuff??

bonus points if dakavendish is canon in the second dimension

milo goes over to amanda's house to work on a project at one point and amanda already warned her parents about murphy's law and told them to baby proof their most prized possessions. they both end up taking a liking to milo and his positivity while also being slightly terrified of him. by some miracle the project does get finished but not without the typical dose of chaos and fires

an episode dedicated to bradley, mort, chad, and amanda and what they do all day when they're not actually part of the main plot

and more bradley mort chad and amanda in general I just love of all of them

more saneal!! I need them and milo to go to a dr. zone comic con together and dress up and be the gigantic loveable dorks that they are together

doofenshmirtz still needs to continue his professor time arc so he's still gotta be there ofc but give him less screen time than s2 pleaseeee. it's milo murphy's law and at the end of the day the focus should always be coming back to milo, zack, and melissa as well as dakota and cavendish

MORE JUST GETTING STARTED!!!

dakavendish finally gets that trip to hawaii

the murphys go on vacation for spring break and yet again total chaos ensues

more school field trips to the museum

for the sake of middle school shenanigans and continuity another sports-academics thing. I'm coining the term cherography (chess-marathon running-geography) but literally anything would be fine by me

the kids go to a public middle school so the inevitable standardized testing episode must be done

I'd love to see a school talent show or a school play episode (run by amanda and assisted by milo of course)

episode/s where melissa is just trying to go about her day with milo and zack when she suddenly disappears after getting caught up in the newest Time Travel Related plot of the week. zack and milo are confused until suddenly she and savannah reappear out of nowhere to deliver an out of context warning ("DONT GO NEAR THE DUMPSTER" or "GO BUY COTTON CANDY NOT ICE CREAM") before disappearing again to fix things

just more melissa and BOTT shenanigans in general honestly i love to see it

an episode focusing on the mml gals!! it could be brigette and sara it could be amanda and melissa and lydia it could be all of them it could be other characters but just an episode like that!

there's a mandatory science fair thing and milo and zack are partners so they decide to go with the most convenient option possible which happens to be a potato-powered lightbulb. somehow they literally flood the school gym with their potato-powered lightbulbs but as it turns out half the class didn't bother to or forgot to do their projects so they just take the lightbulbs and use those as their projects. by the end mrs. murasaki gives everyone a 'C' for functioning but unoriginal projects apart from melissa and bradley as well as amanda and joni

yeah that's all from me but first and foremost I wish mml would get renewed!!!!! for s3!!! usvfkajnfkajmfmalmdlanfms

[thefirstknife]

Helloooo sorry this will be a long ask. So i was thinking about the spooky memory rooms the Witness shows us in the campaign (eg. the Ghost room, my personal favorite) and my mind landed on the Starhorse one. Even if you ignore the giant horse statue right in the middle, the room is obviously about Xûr and the Nine. There's a lot of scales buried with the gold and they all have the symbol of The Nine, which is just one of many examples. So i was wondering, do you think the Witness showed us a room entirely dedicated to that just because it's one of our many memories, or because maybe there's something more going on? Why would the Witness specifically make a room about the Nine when it could've picked so many other memories? It's not like we're super involved with The Nine, and Trials of the Nine was part of the 30th anniversary pack which is pretty much just a huge easter egg, so why specifically that? I've always wondered about potential Witness/Nine connections or involvements of the latters with our story (i once saw a video, i think it might've been Byf's? anyways, it said that The Nine were the ones who somewhat orchestrated Uldren's escape from the prison and also Cayde's death, as in it wasn't just a casualty). I think it could also be foreshadowing, because if you take that and the codename "Frontiers" for the next storylines then it gives me the idea that we'll venture out of Sol, and maybe run into the Nine? Or at least be more involved with them. They also had their whole plan revolving around Gambit, which I don't think we ever got a proper explanation for. How did Gambit help them? Since that scene where Orin tells Drifter to keep playing the game is also mentioned in the False Idols lore tab it HAS to be relevant for the near future. For my own sanity. Anyways I'd love to know your thoughts! Sorry again for the super long ask.

We don't currently know much about it, nope!

I personally don't think it has much to do with some new secrets of the Nine or the Nine being connected to the Witness. In my interpretation, the room with treasures, especially when paired with the Witness' dialogue, shows that the Witness doesn't truly understand us or what we do. It saw us enjoying loot and rewards and treasures (the Nine stuff probably serves as the most direct visual link to it; we literally go to a game show to receive outrageous amounts of loot) and it thinks that if it recreates that, we will join it.

It basically tried to tempt us with the same thing that we receive from other factions, thinking that we are in it for that and nothing more. It's desperation. I think the treasure room was supposed to just be symbolic and mimicking the easiest thing the Witness could copy, which was dares stuff (also a little bit of meta thinking, but they made those models for Xur's new space so they also put it there).

The Nine shouldn't really be connected to the Witness, generally speaking. I'm not sure about Uldren's escape, but it IS confirmed that one of the Nine participated in helping Ghaul take the Tower in the Red War, and it was punished for doing so. The Nine appear to have two factions; one that helps us (they send Xur and the Emissary) and wants to understand the Light, and another that is kinda... not really against us, but they don't really care about us.

I'm not sure about frontiers because from the little we understand about the Nine, they are tied to our solar system. Literally. They are a sort of sentient consciousnesses formed from dark matter and gravity of our planets; in a way, they ARE our planets. They depend on life in the system to also live; this is why one of the factions wants to be free of their dependence on living matter. This is also why one of the Nine who helped Ghaul was punished because if the system was destroyed, so too would they have been. This also implies that they would not want to be aligned with the Witness, especially with the Witness taking planets.

With Gambit, from what we can understand, they were involved in seeing us prepare to fight to defend the system in the future. Same with Prophecy dungeon. In both places they helped us understand Light and Dark, and to learn using them both to get stronger. Gambit was one of the first places that had us utilising Darkness abilities (experimenting with Taken stuff) to show us that there is no difference between Light and Dark fundamentally or morally, it's just about how we use it. The same was repeated in Prophecy. From what we can tell, the Nine are invested in seeing us win to keep protecting the system, which means protecting them. Though again, some among them would rather seek a way to free themselves from being dependent on us and organic matter.

But honestly, the story could take the Nine in any direction and find a way to explain it either way. They're a really bizarre concept. I do wonder if they're planning something in the future because they did drop the stuff about the Emissary a few times last year (if I remember correctly, there were at least 2 mentions in Season of the Deep) and now again with False Idols. In False Idols, it feels like it's mostly about just Drifter reminiscing about Orin, but all other mentions also focused on Orin before. Maybe some hints about us saving her in the future? It's possible!

[onehundredandeleventropicalfish]

so in most ways, the game in hell in 1x04 is (at least in my opinion), a vast improvement on the comics, it adds so much extra drama and interesting character moments and it looks so much cooler and i love it

(also, for context, dream played against choronzon in the comics, not lucifer, which is another point in the show's favour, that was way more interesting)

but the downside of seeing it in tv form, is we don't get dream's inner monologue during it

and there's two moments specifically that stand out to me

one is this elaboration of the rules

and then the second is this, in between the butcher bacterium move and i am a world

and i wish we'd gotten that in some way, because it says so much about dream

because like. he knows, going into hell, that he lacks the strength to properly fight anyone. he puts on a brave face with it, but even when faced with the prospect of fighting choronzon, let alone lucifer, we get this bit of inner monologue

and he certainly makes his best attempt. but even if he was at full strength, lucifer making the first move set the battle as a test of violence. and dream may be the king of nightmares, he's no stranger to violence, but against lucifer? against the being that has personally overseen every kind of violence since very near the dawn of time?

and lucifer isn't playing fair, either. dream plays moves of strength, of physical might, he is a hunter, he is a bird of prey - cunning and clever predators, to be sure, both are creatures of precision rather than brute force, but they are honest and straightforward in their intentions. lucifer plays the serpent that you don't notice until it's too late, with a venom that will kill you in a single bite, plays an enemy too small to see but that will eat away at your flesh and render you incapable of even trying again. and dream could keep bringing bigger and bigger enemies, but everything has a weakness, and lucifer is oh so practiced at finding it

if he keeps playing to lucifer's strengths, trying to win this fight with violence, he's gonna be on the back foot the whole way, fighting to keep up, and eventually that won't be enough

however, as dream says, being physically unable to make your next move is only one way to lose the game. you also lose if you're too scared to keep going, or if you can't think of a counter quick enough. he doesn't have to play to lucifer's strengths, of killing your opponent, he can play to his own.

i think i will abandon the offensive.

and dream, for all he struggles with his own depression, and often needs reminding to hope for his own future, he is still made of dreams. he believes in people, and their hopes for a better world. we see that in his speech to john dee in episode 5, dreams aren't about lies, they're about potential. imagination, creativity, kindness, hope. the endless are all keepers of their opposite as well as their aspect, and in the same way death has power over life, dreams have power over reality. if you can imagine your better world, you can make it.

even nightmares are only temporary, but hell is eternal. lucifer could imagine a hundred thousand better ways to be violent than he could. but they can't use that to counter warmth and kindness and hope, because if violence could truly kill dreams, it would have.

and that turns the entire game around. suddenly lucifer's on the back foot, because it's not a test of strength anymore. a planet isn't going up against anyone in a cage match, a planet is here to support life. all dream has to do to win is survive, while lucifer has to come up with greater and greater, impossibly enormous threats, just to keep playing. even when lucifer's sure they won, they don't ask "what could destroy the anti-life", they ask what could survive it

and the truth intrinsic to dream's being is that in the end, hope will survive anything